The Burglar in the Library

by Lawrence Block

  I’d have let that pass, but Carolyn thought to ask her what made her so certain.

  “Because it wouldn’t have been decent.”

  “To dance with a ghost?”

  “Not like that.”

  “Not like what?”

  “Naked,” Millicent said. “Miss Dinmont didn’t have any clothes on.”

  Rufus Quilp was apt to drop off to sleep at any moment. It might be Pickwickian syndrome and it might be apnea. And it might be feigned—sometimes he appeared to be sleeping, but something he said later would indicate that he’d overheard what was being said during his little nap.

  Miss Hardesty had been seen in urgent conversation with the cook. Greg Savage, who mentioned seeing the two of them, had assumed the conversation had something to do with Miss Dinmont’s dietary requirements, which one somehow knew would be complicated. Now, though, it seemed to him that Miss Hardesty had appeared a bit agitated, and the cook faintly disgruntled.

  Jonathan Rathburn, whom I had observed writing at the desk in the library, had been spotted doing the same thing in other parts of the house as well. There was some disagreement as to what he’d been writing. I’d sort of assumed he’d been writing letters, as that’s one of the things people are forever doing in English country houses, but someone reported him as having written on a pad, and another thought he had been making entries in a diary. Neither letters nor a diary had been found on his body, or elsewhere in the library, which might mean that the murderer had carried them off, or that he hadn’t had them with him when he was murdered.

  No one admitted to having met Rathburn prior to his arrival at Cuttleford House. Hardly anyone could recall exchanging a word with him. Several people described him as preoccupied, and Leona Savage, who’d also seen him scribbling away, had thought he might be a writer. “Struggling to make headway on a book or story,” she said. “He had that air about him, as if he’d come to the country to free himself creatively.”

  “And she never laid eyes on him before,” the colonel said after she’d left the room, “and yet Cissy Eglantine saw Rathburn give her a significant glance.”

  “Cissy could be mistaken,” Carolyn said, “or Rathburn could have recognized Leona even if Leona didn’t recognize him. Or he could have thought he knew her even if he didn’t.”

  “Or she could be lying,” I said.

  “Or she could be lying. Anybody could be lying about anything, couldn’t they? You know those party games where one person’s the murderer, and when you interrogate all the players, everybody except the murderer has to tell the truth? Well, that’s what this is like, except it isn’t.” The colonel looked puzzled, and I suppose I did, too. “Because any of them could be lying and it wouldn’t prove anything,” she explained. “Not necessarily. Suppose Jonathan and Leona had a brief fling twenty years ago when they were both counselors at Camp Yahrzeit. That would be reason enough for him to give her a significant glance, and it might also be reason enough for her to insist she’d never met him before, no matter who killed him.”

  We tossed that back and forth, and wound up agreeing with her. Anybody could lie, not just the murderer. It didn’t seem fair, but that’s the way it was.

  It left me wondering at the point of our efforts. I’d deliberately turned things around during our session with Cissy, switching from a clinical look at alibis and schedules to a more gossipy, anecdotal approach. After she’d left the room I had explained why.

  “You described me as an amateur sleuth,” I told Carolyn, “and that’s what all three of us are, amateurs. We all have a little experience that might prove useful, but we’re not cops. A professional approach won’t work for us. But an amateur approach, where people wind up telling us the kind of observations and inferences they wouldn’t dream of sharing with a policeman, well, that might be fruitful.”

  And I suppose it had been, in a way. We’d since learned from Quilp that Gordon Wolpert was a picky eater and not to be trusted, and in due course we learned from Wolpert that Earlene Cobbett, the freckled chambermaid so distraught over Orris’s fatal fall, had been noisily ill several mornings in succession. “Now that doesn’t mean the girl is in the family way,” he said, “or that Orris put her there, and even if she is and he did, that doesn’t begin to implicate either of them or anyone else in the events you’re attempting to investigate.” But we’d said we wanted to know what he had observed, and he’d heard her retching three mornings in a row, so he was reporting it.

  But what good did it do us to know it? What profit was there in having learned that Miss Dinmont danced in the nude, or that Millicent Savage peeped at keyholes? What difference did it make if Miss Hardesty had had words with the cook, or that Dakin Littlefield had been spotted casting speculative glances at Molly Cobbett?

  It was Mrs. Colibri who’d reported Littlefield’s evident interest in the downstairs maid. Lettice in turn had Molly sized up as a saucy tart ready to throw herself at anything in pants. (The most interesting thing about her observation was Carolyn’s reaction to it; she looked down at herself to make sure she wasn’t wearing a skirt.) “My own husband hasn’t noticed the little tramp,” Lettice added, “but we’re on our honeymoon, and that makes a difference. I’m sure the rest of the men have noticed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them have given her a tumble.”

  If Dakin had entertained thoughts of luring the downstairs maid upstairs, he was keeping them to himself. According to him, he hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the staff, or to the other guests either. Nor was he much interested in our inquiry, or in staying any longer than he had to at Cuttleford House.

  “In the morning,” he said, “we’re out of here.” He tossed his head, a gesture that someone must have told him showed off his wavy hair. “I understand if you walk downstream a ways there’s a place where you can get across the creek without breaking your neck in the process. Then it’s just a matter of finding your way out to the main road. It’s too late to try it now, but as soon as the sun’s up that’s what Lettice and I are going to do.”

  “But there’s been murder done,” the colonel told him. “I thought it was agreed that we would all remain here until the police arrive.”

  “Maybe that’s what you thought,” Dakin said, “but so what? I didn’t agree to anything, and the rest of you haven’t got any authority over me. Once we get out of here we’ll call the cops and they’ll be out here like a shot, and isn’t that what you people want?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I don’t know why the hell I ever came here in the first place,” he went on. “It was Lettice’s idea, and don’t ask me where she got it from. This place is supposed to be so exclusive and special, and all I see is a run-down pile of bricks run by a dizzy dame with a drunk for a husband. Every place you go nowadays you got satellite TV with fifty or a hundred channels, and this dump can’t even put together an old black-and-white portable set with a rabbit-ear antenna. Who in his right mind would come to a place like this?”

  “Mrs. Eglantine is perfectly stable,” the colonel said, “and Nigel is hardly an alcoholic simply because he’s developed a palate for malt whisky. And there are special pleasures to be found in the absence of television. As for what sort of person would willingly come here, I may say that I myself am pleased to spend six months a year here.”

  “I rest my case,” Dakin said. “This investigation of yours is a lot of crap, and so’s the idea of everybody tripling up in kinky little trios. I’m with my wife, and the two of us’ll be sticking together, and everybody else can just stay the hell away from us. And in the morning we’re gone, and I’ll tell you, I’ll be glad to get out of this nuthouse.”

  I could see his point.

  “It’s hopeless,” I announced. “I’ve got a notebook full of scribbles, and I’m no closer to naming the murderer than I was when we started. When the police crack this case, they’ll do it by breaking down alibis and asking hard questions and analyzing physical evidence. We can’t do an
y of that. We’ve got no authority, and when people tell us things anyway we don’t know what to make of it. All we can hope to do is keep everyone else alive until the cops get here, and I don’t know when that will be, and neither does anybody else. Jesus, is it snowing again?”

  “I think it’s just blowing around,” Carolyn said.

  “Well, I don’t. I think it’s fresh snow, and I think it’s falling, and maybe it’ll go on like that all night. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Keep a stiff upper lip,” Blount-Buller advised.

  “I’ll certainly try,” I said, “but…”

  There was a knock on the door. I went over and opened it, and Raffles came in. He usually scratches, and he’s not very good at that, and I was trying to figure out how he’d managed to knock when I realized that Molly Cobbett was standing there, waiting to be acknowledged before she said anything.

  “Yes, Molly,” I said.

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” she said, “and yours, ma’am, and yours as well, sir—”

  “What is it, Molly?”

  “It’s dinner, sir. Not wanting to disturb you, but it’s served, and they’re all in the dining room. Except for those as are in the bar, having a drink before dinner.”

  “A drink before dinner,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. It sharpens the appetite, Mr. Eglantine says.”

  “Well, then,” I said. “We’d all better have one, don’t you think? Everybody knows you can’t trust a picky eater.”

  CHAPTER

  Nineteen

  Dinner, it turned out, was the joint effort of Cissy Eglantine and the Cobbett cousins. There’d been some leftover ham in the refrigerator, and they’d combined it with mashed potatoes and boiled cabbage and diced carrots and bacon drippings in what Cissy called an old English recipe. It was evidently something of a staple in the Cobbett clan. “You takes what you has got left,” Earlene explained, “and you cooks it all together like. If your people be really hungry, they will eat it.”

  It was actually rather tasty, once you sat down and tucked in, but it offered little in the way of eye appeal. A quaint name would have helped—dog’s breakfast, say, or Taffy-in-the-woodpile. As it was, guests would slip into the dining room, then reconsider and visit the bar first. Once in the bar, one tended to linger, counting on malt whisky to heighten the appetite for the evening meal.

  Eventually, though, everyone got to table, and the main course turned out better than it looked or sounded. There wasn’t much of a market for second helpings, aside from Rufus Quilp, who’d probably have asked for seconds on death angel mushrooms. For everybody else, one portion was plenty. I kept an occasional eye on Gordon Wolpert, but as far as I could see he wasn’t any more picky an eater on this occasion than the rest of us.

  There was good bread on the table, and some sort of custard for dessert. The coffee was weak.

  We were in the library with fresh mugs of coffee when the colonel found us and announced he was going to make it an early night. “I shall return to Trevelyan,” he said, “and slip into a simpler world.”

  I asked which door he’d be using to enter that world, Trevelyan’s one-volume History of England or the more specialized England Under the Stuarts.

  “Neither, I’m afraid. I’m reading his three-volume history of England under Queen Anne. Halfway through the middle volume.”

  “Ramillies and the Union with Scotland,” I said.

  He looked startled. “Quite,” he said. “However do you happen to know that?”

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  “Hardly that. I gather you’re a student of English history.”

  “Some college courses,” I said. “Years ago. And I never actually read the three volumes on Anne’s reign. I just remember the titles.”

  “Marlborough and Prince Eugene,” he said. “The War of the Spanish Succession. The Battle of Blenheim.”

  “A famous victory,” I said, echoing the Robert Southey poem.

  “Famous once. Forgotten nowadays, I shouldn’t wonder. I don’t know what young people remember these days. Shouldn’t think they recall anything much earlier than the day before yesterday. It’s stirring stuff, Trevelyan’s history. You should read it sometime.”

  “One of these days.”

  “Well,” he said, setting his shoulders. “You’ll forgive me for breaking ranks, won’t you? I know we’re supposed to hold in squads of three, but I’m sure I’ll be all right in my quarters, and just as confident you two can see to each other’s safety. So, if you’ve no objection…”

  I could hardly object. They’d all agreed readily enough to hang out in trios earlier, but that had gone by the boards as the day wore on, and by the time dinner was over it had ceased even to be honored in the breach. I’d overheard Millicent Savage whining about having to stay in Lucinda’s Room with her parents instead of being all by herself in Uncle Roger’s Room. So far Greg and Leona seemed to be holding out, but I had a feeling the child would have her own way in the end.

  “Nobody’s taking it seriously,” I told Carolyn. “I don’t get it. There are three people dead and an unknown killer in our midst, and they’d rather grumble about dinner than make sure they’re still alive for breakfast. What’s wrong with these people?”

  She thought about it. “I think they’re just good at adjusting,” she said.

  “At adjusting?”

  “I think so, Bern. They were all really spooked earlier, when we found the cook cooling off in the kitchen. There were bodies all over the place and nobody had a clue who was gonna be next.”

  “There still are,” I said, “and they still don’t, but all of a sudden nobody gives a damn.”

  “Right. They’ve adjusted. Rathburn and the cook are outside where nobody has to look at them, and Orris is way down at the bottom of the gully. You know what they say, Bern. Out of sight, out of mind.”

  “The bodies are out of sight,” I said, “and the rest of us are out of our minds.”

  “People adjust,” she said. “Take you and me. Last night the coffee was strong and full-bodied, and we enjoyed it. Tonight it’s weak, and we’re still enjoying it.”

  “We didn’t adjust to it.”

  “We most certainly did.”

  “We put Scotch in it, Carolyn.”

  “That’s how we adjusted,” she said, “and I’d have to say we made a good adjustment, Bern. It tastes a lot better this way. Somehow you don’t notice that it’s weak. You know, that might be a good way to stretch coffee, as a sort of economy move. Use less coffee and add whisky to taste.”

  “For economy,” I said.

  “Well, if there was a major coffee shortage, say, or if we went to war with Brazil.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Why does anybody do anything?” She frowned. “Where was I?”

  “You were drinking fortified coffee.”

  “Fortified,” she said. “That’s a good word for it. I suppose it’s a crime against nature to put single-malt whisky in coffee, but that coffee was a crime against nature to begin with and I figure they cancel each other out. At least we didn’t use the Drumnadrochit.”

  “God forbid.”

  “I hope we get out of this place soon, Bern, but not before I get one more crack at the Drumnadrochit. Anyway, the answer to ‘Where was I?’ is I was talking about people adjusting.”

  “To murder.”

  “Uh-huh. They’re not really concerned anymore, Bern, not the way they were. Some of them are taking the tack that there weren’t any murders in the first place.”

  “Then where did all those bodies come from?”

  “Jonathan Rathburn fell off the ladder, Orris fell off the bridge, and the cook—”

  “Fell into a deep and dreamless sleep,” I said, “and lo, she doth be sleeping still. That’s ridiculous, for God’s sake.”

  “I know.”

  “The cook could conceivably have had a stroke or a heart attack,” I said, “although it strikes me
as unlikely. But Orris and Rathburn were murdered, pure and simple. And if their deaths were accidental, how do you explain the sugar in the snowblower’s gas tank and the severed phone wires? Acts of God?”

  “They say He works in mysterious ways. I heard someone say that phone wires get disconnected all the time in bad weather. And somebody else was saying that the snowblower probably had a perfectly ordinary mechanical breakdown, and that nobody really smelled burnt sugar after all.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know, Bern.”

  “I ought to siphon a cup of gasoline from the snowblower’s gas tank,” I said, “and make them all taste it.”

  “We may want it tomorrow,” she said, “for dessert, if there’s no more custard. Look, not everybody thinks the deaths were accidental. The rest of them think the cycle’s complete.”

  “The cycle?”

  “Three deaths, Bern. Deaths are supposed to come in threes, remember? Now that the cook’s dead, everybody can relax.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know. But what’s the difference, Bern? It’s not as though we’re going to solve the puzzle. You said so yourself, that all the bits and pieces we picked up interrogating people this afternoon wouldn’t do us any good at all.”

  “I didn’t say they wouldn’t do any good. I just said we weren’t getting anywhere.”

  “Close enough. So we’ll hang out here, and the colonel can read English history. Hey, you never went to college. How come you knew all that about Queen Anne?”

  “I don’t know anything about Queen Anne,” I said. “I had a set of the books in the store. I was beginning to think I ought to have a look inside the covers, and then somebody came along and bought them.”

  “Hey, it happens. She was gay, you know.”

  “Queen Anne?”

  “Uh-huh. Had a thing with Sarah Churchill, whose husband was the Duke of Marlborough that the colonel was just talking about. Why are you looking at me like that, Bern? It’s herstory.”