The Burglar in the Library (2 page)

I
should start at the beginning.

Well, near the beginning, anyway. At my apartment, say, some ten days before Carolyn and Raffles and I caught a train to Pattaskinnick by way of Whitham Junction. It was around eleven o’clock, and my Mel Tormé tape was about to reverse itself automatically once again, and I was trying to decide what to do about it.

“Would you like to hear it again?” I asked Lettice. “Or should I put on something else?”

“It doesn’t matter, Bernie.”

I reached out a hand, rested it on her flank, and let my fingers do the walking. “We could try silence,” I suggested, “interrupted only by our own heavy breathing, and occasional cries of passion.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to do all the heavy breathing yourself,” she said. “It’s time I got on home.”

“You could stay.”

“Oh, not tonight, Bernie.” She sat up in bed and extended her arms overhead, stretching like a cat.
“I have an early day tomorrow. I’d best be off. I don’t suppose you’ve seen my panties, have you?”

“Not since you took them off. At that point I lost interest in them.”

She hopped out of bed and looked for them, and I looked at her. This was an agreeable task, because she looked absolutely splendid. She was about five-six or-seven, and quite slender, but by no means angular. Curves everywhere, but they were all gentle curves with no hairpin turns; if she’d been a road, you wouldn’t have to downshift or, God forbid, hit the brake pedal. Her hair was the color of tupelo honey, and her skin was the color of cream, and her eyes were the color of an Alpine lake. The first time I laid eyes on her I’d been struck by her beauty, and she looked a hundred times better now. Because she’d had clothes on then, and now she didn’t, and I’ll tell you, it makes a difference.

She put a dainty hand on a gorgeous hip and studied the painting on the wall opposite the bed. “I’ll miss this,” she said idly. “It’s really quite a good copy, isn’t it?”

It’s a canvas some eighteen inches square, with black vertical and horizontal lines on a white field. Some of the squares are filled in with primary colors. I asked her how she could tell it was a copy.

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, its location’s a dead giveaway, wouldn’t you say? You’d hardly be apt to find an original Mondrian here.”

“Here” was a one-bedroom apartment at Seventy-first and West End, and it’s actually a pretty decent place to live, even if you wouldn’t be likely to mistake it for the Museum of Modern Art.

“Besides,” she said, “you can just tell an origi
nal, can’t you? I spent two hours at the Mondrian show at MOMA. You must have gone.”

“Twice. Once when it opened and again just before it closed the end of January.”

“Then surely you know what I mean. When you’ve seen the actual originals, not just reproductions of them in books, you wouldn’t be taken in by a copy like this.” She smiled. “Not that it’s not very good for what it is, Bernie.”

“Well, we can’t all be originals,” I said. “What did you mean when you said you’d miss it?”

“Did I say that? I was talking to myself, really. Bernie, where
are
my panties?”

“I swear I’m not wearing them.”

“Oh, here they are. Now how do you suppose they got all the way over here?”

“They flew on wings of love,” I said. I got out of bed myself and turned off Mel Tormé. “There’s something I keep forgetting to ask you. Are you free a week from Thursday?”

“A week from Thursday. Not this Thursday but the following Thursday.”

“Right.”

“Thursday week, the English would say.”

“They probably would,” I said, “and that actually ties in with what I’m about to suggest. See, I thought—”

“Actually, I’m not.”

“You’re not what?”

“Free. On Thursday week.”

“Oh,” I said. “Is it something you can get out of?”

“Not really.”

“Because if you could postpone it, we could—”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, Thursday would have been best, but I suppose we could let it go until Friday.”

“That’s Friday week.”

“Right. A week from this coming Friday. We could—”

“We can’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Actually,” she said, “I’m afraid I’ll be tied up the whole weekend, Bernie, from Thursday evening on.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Sorry.”

“I was sort of planning on us spending the weekend together, but—”

“I’m afraid it’s not on. Could you hook this for me, Bernie?”

“Uh, sure. Oh, sorry. My hand slipped.”

“Oh, I’ll just bet it did.”

“Well, an irresistible impulse drew it here. But if you don’t like the way it feels—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Or if you want me to stop—”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

So we made do without Mel Tormé, and I can’t say his absence was much noticed. Afterward I collapsed like a blown tire, and the next thing I knew she had all her clothes on and one hand on the doorknob.

“Wait,” I said. “I can at least see you downstairs and put you into a cab.”

“No need for you to get dressed, Bernie. And I am in rather a hurry.”

“At least let me tell you what I had planned for the weekend.”

“All right.”

“Because we could always do it the following week, if I can manage to get reservations. Or, once you hear what I’ve got planned for us, you might want to cancel your own plans.”

“Well, tell me.”

“Cuttleford House,” I said.

“Cuttleford House.” She frowned in thought. “Isn’t that—”

“The English country house in the Berkshires,” I said. “Exclusive, expensive, and authentic. A coal fire on every hearth. Serving girls dropping curtsies. Serving boys dropping aitches. Tea brought to your room at daybreak. Guests who still haven’t recovered from having lost India. No television in the whole house, no automobiles anywhere on the property.”

“It sounds heavenly.”

“Well, I know what a passion you have for everything English,” I said, “and I saw how much you enjoyed tea at the Stanhope, and I thought this would be the perfect weekend for us. I was planning on telling you on Valentine’s Day, but it had come and gone by the time I managed to get through to them and make the reservation.”

“What a sweet man you are, Bernie.”

“That’s me,” I agreed. “What do you say, Lettice? If you’re positive you can’t shift your plans, I’ll try to switch our reservations to the following weekend.”

“I only wish I could.”

“You wish you could which?”

“Either.” She sighed, let go of the doorknob, and came back into the room, leaning against a bookcase. “I was hoping to avoid this,” she said. “I thought it would be so much nicer for both of us to just make love and leave it at that.”

“Leave what at what? You lost me.”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said, “that’s precisely it. Oh, Bernie, I wish I could go with you Thursday week, but it’s just not on.”

“What else are you doing,” I heard myself say, “that’s so important?”

“Oh, Bernie.”

“Well?”

“You’ll hate me.”

“I won’t hate you.”

“But you will, and I won’t blame you. I mean, it’s so ridiculous.”

“What is?”

“Oh, Bernie,” she said yet again. “Bernie, I’m getting married.”

“‘Oh, by the way, Bernie, I’m getting married Thursday,’” I said. “And my jaw dropped, and by the time I’d picked it up she was out the door and on her way. Can you believe it?”

“I’m beginning to, Bern.”

I suppose she must have been, since she was hearing it for the third time. I’d told her that night, calling her minutes after Lettice crossed my threshold and closed the door gently but firmly behind her. I told her again the following day at lunch. Carolyn’s dog-grooming salon is on East Eleventh Street between University Place and Broadway, just two doors down the street from
Barnegat Books, and in the ordinary course of things we lunch together, one of us picking up sandwiches at one of the neighborhood delis and conveying them to the other’s place of business. On this particular day I had bought the sandwiches and we ate them at the Poodle Factory, and between bites I told her the same sad story I’d told her over the phone.

Then, around six, I closed the bookstore and went back to the Poodle Factory, where she was putting the finishing touches on a bichon frise while its owners watched, beaming. “She’s such a darling,” one of them said, while the other wrote out a check. “And you bring out the best in her, Carolyn. I swear you’re a genius.”

They left, darling in tow, and the genius closed up for the night. We walked over to the Bum Rap on Broadway, as we generally do, and Carolyn started to order Scotch, as she generally does, and then she paused. “If you want,” she said, “I’ll order something else.”

“Why?”

“Well, if you want to get good and drunk,” she said, “I could make a point of staying relatively sober.”

“We don’t have a car,” I said. “What do we need with a designated driver? Anyway, why would I want to get drunk?”

“You mean you don’t?”

“Not particularly.”

“Oh. Hey, this isn’t going to be a Perrier night for you, is it?”

Perrier is my drug of choice when my plans for an evening include illegal entry. “No,” I said. “It’s
not.” And I proved it by asking Maxine to bring me a bottle of Tuborg.

“Well, thank God,” Carolyn said. “In that case I’ll have Scotch, Max, and you might as well make it a double. They said I’m a genius, Bernie. Isn’t that something?”

“It’s great.”

“If I had my choice,” she said, “I’d just as soon be a genius at something else. Nobody ever got a MacArthur Award for washing dogs. But it’s better than nothing, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely. You could be like me.”

“A genius at picking locks?”

“A genius at picking women.”

“I’m already a genius at picking women.”

“Can you believe it?” I demanded, and launched into my third recital of Lettice’s revelation. “What I want to know,” I said, “is when she would have gotten around to telling me if I hadn’t pressed her about the weekend. I mean, it’s not like she had a date to go to the movies with some other guy. She’s getting
married.
”

“Did you know she was seeing somebody else?”

“I more or less assumed it. We weren’t in a committed relationship. Actually we’d only recently started sleeping together.”

“How was it?”

“You mean the sex?”

“Yeah.”

“It was wonderful.”

“Oh.”

“Really special.”

“Sorry to hear it, Bern.”

“But it wasn’t a major love affair. I had hopes that
it might turn out to be, but deep down inside I think I knew it wouldn’t. We didn’t have that much in common. I figured it would run its course and resolve itself with some sort of bittersweet ending, and years from now she’d be one more tender memory for me to warm myself with as I slid off into senility. So I was fully prepared for it to come to nothing, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon, or so abruptly.”

“So you’re essentially okay about it, Bern?”

“I’d say so.”

“You’re stunned but not devastated. Is that about it?”

“Pretty much. I feel stupid for having misread the situation so completely. I thought the woman was crazy about me, and all the while she was getting ready to tie the knot with somebody else.”

“He’s the guy to feel sorry for, Bern.”

“Who, the bridegroom?”

“Uh-huh. A week and a half before the wedding, and his wife’s rehearsing with somebody else? If you ask me, you’re lucky to be rid of her.”

“I know.”

“Lettice. What kind of name is that, anyway?”

“I guess it’s English.”

“I suppose so. You know, ever since you started seeing her I’ve been good about resisting the obvious jokes. Like, what kind of a name is that for a tomato? Or, has she got a sister named Parsley? Or, I hope she’s not the original Iceberg Lettice.”

“She’s not.”

“I don’t know, Bern. She was cool as a cucumber the other day. Who’s the lucky guy, anyway? Did she tell you anything about him?”

“Not a word.”

“Or where she met him, or anything like that?”

I shook my head. “Maybe she just walked into his store,” I said. “That’s how she met me. She picked out half a dozen books by Martha Grimes and Elizabeth George, and we got to talking.”

“What’s she do, Bern?”

“All sorts of things,” I said, remembering. “Oh, you mean for a living? She does something in Wall Street. I think she’s a stock analyst.”

“So she’s not just a bimbo.”

“Not in the traditional sense of the term.”

“And she’s English?”

“No.”

“I thought she was homesick for England. I thought that was why you took her for English tea at the Stanhope, and why you were planning on taking her to Cuttleford House.”

“She’s homesick for England,” I said, “in a manner of speaking, but she’s not English. In fact she’s never even been there.”

“Oh.”

“But she has a faint English accent, and she uses some British constructions in her speech, and she’s very clear on the notion that England is her spiritual home. And of course she’s read a whole lot of English mysteries.”

“Oh, right. Martha Grimes and Elizabeth George. They’re both English, aren’t they?”

“Actually,” I said, “they’re not, but they set their books over there, and she can’t get enough of them. And she’s read all the classics, too—Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers. Anyway, I thought Cuttleford House would be just her line of country.”

“‘Just her line of country’?”

“See? Now I’m doing it. I thought she’d be nuts about it.”

“And it’s a lot cheaper than going to England.”

“It’s not cheap,” I said. “But I had a very good evening around the end of January, and for a change money’s not a problem.”

“One of those Perrier nights.”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “I know it’s morally reprehensible, but I did it anyway, and I wanted to invest some of the proceeds in high living before I piss it all away on food and shelter.”

“Makes sense.”

“So I actually thought about hopping on the Concorde and whisking her off for a whirlwind weekend in England. But I wasn’t sure I could find the right England.”