"Robert Rankin - Brentford 05 - The Brentford Chainstore Mas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

A man of average height and average weight, or just a tad above the one and underneath the other. A
well-constructed face, a trifle gaunt at times; a shock of hair. Well, not a shock. A kindly countenance. His
most distinctive feature, the one that singled him out from all the rest, was of course his-
'Golly,' said Jim. 'Whatever is going on here?'
He had reached Golden Square, a byway leading from the historic Butts Estate. A Georgian triumph of
mellow rosy brick, once home to the wealthy burghers of the borough, now offices for solicitors and other
folk in 'the professions'.
Jim stopped short and stared. There was an ambulance drawn up in front of the offices of Mr Compton-
Cummings. His door was open and out of it a number of men in paramedic uniforms were struggling
beneath the weight of something spread across two stretchers. Something covered by a sheet.

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Jim hastened forward. The genealogist's secretary, the one who had handed Pooley the teacup, stood on
the pavement sobbing into a handkerchief. A crowd was beginning to gather. Jim pushed his way into it.
'What happened?' he asked.
'Robbery,' said somebody. 'Bloke shot dead.'
'He was never shot,' said somebody else. 'Axed, he was.'
'Garrotted,' said yet another somebody. 'Head right off.'
'Talk sense,' said Jim.
'Some big fat fellow's died,' said a lady in a straw hat. 'Myocardial collapse, probably. It's always your
heart that gives out if you're overweight. I used to be eighteen stone, me, but I went on a diet, nothing but
roughage. I-'
'Excuse me,' said Jim, pushing past. He caught the arm of the weeping secretary. 'Is it Mr Compton-
Cummings?' he asked.
The secretary turned her red-rimmed eyes up to Jim. 'Oh, it's you,' she said, between sobs. 'I remember
you.'
'Is it him?'
The secretary's head bobbed up and down. 'He had a heart attack, just like the lady said.'
'Told you,' said the straw-hatter.
'And he's dead?'
 'I tried to, you know, the kiss of life, but he . . .' The secretary sank once more into tears. Jim put a kind
arm about her shoulder. It was a pretty shoulder. Well formed. Actually, all of her was well

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formed. The secretary was a fine-looking young woman, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by Jim. 'Come
inside and sit down,' he told her.
The paramedics, now aided by several members of the crowd who were eager to get in on the action,
were forcing the lifeless sheet-shrouded corpse of Mr Compton-Cummings into the back of the ambulance.
Jim led the secretary up the steps and through the front door. In the outer office Jim sat the secretary
down in her chair. Tm terribly sorry,' he said. 'I came here to thank him for sending me a copy of his book,
and for leaving the bit about me out of it.'Jim placed the book upon the secretary's desk. Unsigned it would
always remain.
'He felt bad about that,' sniffed the secretary. 'And about beating you up. It played on his mind. He was a
good man, I liked him a lot.'
Tm sorry. Can I get you a cup of tea, or something?'
'Thanks.' The secretary blew her nose. 'The machine's over there.'
Pooley applied himself to the task of dispensing tea. He'd never been very good with machines. There
was a knack to technology which Jim did not possess. He held a paper cup beneath a little spout and
pressed a button. Boiling water struck him at trouser-fly-level.
'It does that sometimes,' sniffed the secretary.