The Burglar in the Library (9 page)

“Don’t say ‘her,’” I said. “It’s impolite.”

“It is?”

“Of course it is. She’s got a name.”

“Most people do, Bern, but I didn’t happen to catch it.”

“Neither did I.”

There was a pause. “Bernie,” she said slowly, “I know it tasted great and everything, but I think maybe there’s something in that Drums-Along-the-Drocket that doesn’t agree with you.”

“It’s called alcohol,” I said, “and it couldn’t agree with me more. Here’s what I’ll do, Carolyn. I’ll tell you Mrs. Littlefield’s first name, and all at once everything will be clear to you.”

“It will?”

“Absolutely.”

“What difference does it make what her name is?”

“Believe me, it makes a difference.”

“But you just said you didn’t catch her name either.”

“True.”

“Then how can you tell it to me?”

“Because I know it.”

“How can you possibly…oh, God, don’t
tell
me.”

“Well, all right, if you’re sure, but—”

“No!”

“No?”

“Tell me her name, Bernie. No, wait a minute,
don’t
tell me! Is it what I think it is?”

“That depends on what you think it is.”

“I don’t want to say,” she said, “because if it isn’t, and even if it is, and…Bernie, I don’t know how we got into this conversation, but we have to get out of it fast. Tell me her name. Just blurt it out, will you?”

“I’ll give you a hint,” I said. “It’s not Romaine.”

“Oh, God, Bern. I bet it’s not Curly Endive either.”

“It’s not.”

“Bern, spit it out, huh?”

“Lettice,” I said.

“Oh, shit. You’re kidding, right? You’re not kidding. Ohmigod.”

T
he bookshelves in the Great Library of Cuttleford House extended all the way to the twelve-foot ceiling. One couldn’t be expected to reach the uppermost shelves without standing on the shoulders of giants; in their absence, one of the several owners of the property had thoughtfully provided a set of library steps.

This article of furniture was made of mahogany and fitted with casters so it could be rolled to where it was needed. It consisted of a freestanding (and freewheeling) staircase of five steps. It had been the designer’s conceit to give it the form of a spiral staircase, and the steps were accordingly triangular, tapering from a width of four or five inches at their outer edge to no width at all at the center.

I was poised on the fourth step, one hand clutching a shelf for balance, the other hand reaching out for
The Big Sleep,
when I heard my name called.

“Bernie!”

It was Lettice, of course, Lettice Runcible Littlefield. I didn’t have to turn around and look at her to establish as much, but I did anyway, and there she was.

I should have waited. My plan, if you want to dignify it with that name, was simplicity itself. Step One—get the book. Step Two—go home. As long as I performed those two tasks in that particular order, things ought to work out. I wanted to undertake Step Two as soon after breakfast as was decently possible, which gave me something like eight hours to execute Step One and scoop up Chandler.

I thought of sleeping first and going after Chandler at the last minute, virtually on the way out the door. I thought of napping for a few hours, giving the rest of the house time to settle in for a good night’s sleep, and then paying a visit to the library in the hour of the wolf. But I didn’t want to rush, nor did I want to risk appearing furtive to a fellow insomniac. Best to get the book now, I’d thought, and tuck it under my pillow for the night, and make off with it first thing in the morning.

There were guests in the library when I got there. Rufus Quilp, the very stout gentleman who’d been reading and dozing earlier, was still at it, breathing heavily if not quite snoring. A copy of
Dombey and Son,
part of a broken half-leather set of Dickens whose volumes I’d spotted here and there around the house, lay open on his lap. Greg Savage, unaccompanied by wife or child, looked up at my approach to flash the apologetic smile frequently found on the lips of the parents of precocious children, then returned to his book,
a Philip Friedman courtroom novel. It was the author’s latest, and, from the looks of it, his longest; if I’d borrowed Savage’s copy and stood on top of it I might not have needed the library steps.

I did a little reading myself, hoping Quilp and Savage would decide to call it a night, and before long Savage did, slipping away quietly so as not to disturb us. Quilp’s eyes were closed, and what did it matter if he saw me climb the steps and reach for a book? That’s what the steps were there for, and what the books were there for. And, by God, it was what I was there for.

Then Lettice called my name.

“What the hell are you doing here, Bernie?”

I was already on my way down the steps. I touched a finger to my lips, then pointed across the room to the chair where Rufus Quilp sat in a Dickensian doze.

“All right, then,” she said. “Let’s go where we can talk.” She spun on her heel and stalked out of the library, and I followed in her wake.

We wound up in the East Parlour, beneath the gaze of the putative springbok. I turned on a lamp. Lettice told me not to bother, we wouldn’t be here that long. I said we might as well be comfortable. “Besides,” I said, “how will it look if somebody sees us sitting together in the dark?”

“If it’s dark,” she said, “how will they see us?”

“Sit down,” I said. “You’re looking well. Marriage agrees with you.”

“What are you
doing
here, Bernie?”

“What am
I
doing here? I’m spending a traditional weekend in a traditional English country house, with
more than the traditional amount of snow. I don’t know where you get off being surprised to see me. I told you I had a reservation here.”

“You also told me you were going to take me.”

“Well, you had a prior engagement.”

“So you brought your wife.” She treated me to a sidelong glance. “You never told me you were married, Bernie.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, really? Is little Mrs. Rhodenbarr your mother?”

“Her name is Carolyn Kaiser,” I said, “and she’s not Mrs. Rhodenbarr. That seems to be an honorary designation a woman receives here when she arrives in the company of a man.”

“So you’re just good friends.”

“That’s exactly what we are, as a matter of fact. Not that it’s any of your business. Now it’s my turn to ask a question. What the hell are
you
doing here? I thought you were getting married today.”

“Dakin and I were married this afternoon.”

“What a coincidence. He surprised you by taking you to the same place I’d picked.”

“No, of course not.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“I suggested it,” she said. “You made it sound so wonderful I couldn’t think of anything else. We had reservations in Aruba, but I managed to convince Dakin that we’d have ever so much more fun coming here. And luckily they had a room available.”

“Not with twin beds, by any chance?”

“With a double bed, of course. Dakin’s in it now, sleeping like a lamb.”

“I’m surprised you’re not with him.”

“I was,” she said, lowering her eyes. “You know what they say about lovemaking, that it puts men to sleep and wakes women up.”

“As opposed to the
idea
of lovemaking,” I said, “which wakes men up and gives women a headache.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she went on, “and I knew I had to find you and talk to you. You can’t imagine what a shock it was to run into you.”

“Oh, yes I can.”

“You know, I rather assumed it was your room they’d given us, that you’d canceled your reservation after our conversation. I never dreamed you’d come after all.”

“Well, I never figured you’d show up. I thought this was the last place on earth I’d run into you.”

“You seemed so devastated the last time we were together. I was afraid of what you might do.”

“Like what? Stick my head in the oven? Take holy orders?”

“Nothing that extreme. But I thought you might be in something of a funk for a while. I certainly didn’t think you’d appear all coupled up with another woman. How do I know you haven’t been married all along?”

“At this point,” I said, “why on earth would you care?”

“Because I never date married men, for one thing.”

“Neither do I,” I said, “or married women, either, so maybe you ought to scoot back upstairs where you belong.”

“Why, Bernie!”

“I’m serious, Lettice. You’re a married woman now. We shouldn’t be sitting here in the dark together.”

“If it were any brighter in here,” she said, “I’d need to put on sunscreen. Bernie, you’re furious with me, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“For one thing, you’re glaring at me. You and that animal.”

Had Raffles joined us? I looked around for him.

“On the wall,” she said. “That poor creature that someone shot and stuffed.”

“He’s immortal,” I said. “He’s supposed to be a springbok, but he sure looks like an oryx to me. You can’t really blame him for looking disgruntled. Someone shot him. But why should I be furious?”

“Because you really cared for me, and you truly
were
devastated when I told you I was getting married. And of course you’re furious, you’re positively seething. Bernie, that’s so sweet!”

“It is?”

She nodded. “And you came here this weekend to prove to yourself that you don’t care, but of course it proves just the opposite, doesn’t it?”

“It does?”

“You know it does.” She leaned toward me and laid her cool hand against my cheek. “Bernie,” she said earnestly, “I’m not saying that we can never ever be together again. But this weekend is out of the question. You must understand that.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been married for less than twelve hours,” she said. “I’m on my honeymoon. For God’s sake,
I just left my husband’s bed. You can’t expect me to—”

“To what?”

“Oh, Bernie,” she said. “When we’re both back in the city, when some of these powerful emotions become a little easier to deal with, who knows what might happen?”

“Not me,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”

“But while we’re here,” she went on, “we’ll have to be on our best behavior. We’ll be friendly but distant, reserved. As far as anyone else has to know, we met for the first time this evening in the bar. We never knew each other before.”

“Whatever you say.”

“And we never slipped into the East Parlour together, and had this conversation.” She perched on the arm of my chair, her face inches from mine, and treated me to a whiff of her perfume. “Oh, Bernie,” she said. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”

“You do?”

She leaned in and kissed me, and without thinking about it I kissed back. She was always a good kisser, and she hadn’t lost a step in the week and a half since I’d seen her. I put my arms around her, and she put a hand on my knee for balance.

I guess it didn’t work, though, because the next thing I knew she was in my lap.

“My goodness,” she said, squirming around, and sort of rubbing her body against me like a cat. It was, though, a good deal more interesting than it is when a cat does it.

She moved her hand, then gasped in mock alarm. “Oh, my! Bernie, what have we here?”

“Uh…”

“I should speak sternly to you,” she said, “and tell you to take that upstairs to your wifey. Are you absolutely certain you’re not married, Bernie?”

“You’ve been to my apartment,” I reminded her.

“And made love beneath the fake Mondrian. I’ll never forget that, Bernie.”

“Did it seem like the home of a married man?”

“Hardly. But whether you’re married or not, it’s clear you and your little friend are more than just friends.” Her hand did something artful. “You’re planning on sharing a bed with her this weekend, aren’t you?”

“Well, technically, yes. But—”

“And she’s waiting for you, and you’re down here with me.” She was purring with excitement and delight. “She’s lying awake, and Dakin’s sound asleep, and we’re together, aren’t we?” She sort of flowed from my lap to the floor, as if she were a liquid drawn there by gravity. And she put her hands in my lap, and she put her head in my lap.

I reached to switch off the lamp.

“Poor Dakin,” she said a while later, getting to her feet. “I swore I’d be a faithful wife, and in less than half a day I’ve gone and committed adultery. Or have I?”

“Can’t you remember?”

She ran the tip of her tongue across her upper lip. “I shouldn’t think I’m in great danger of forgetting the act,” she said. “I was just wondering if it qualifies. In terms of adultery, that is. Does what we just did count?”

“Well, what’s adultery? Extramarital sex, right? This was certainly extramarital, and it seems to me it was sexual.”

“Quite,” she said.

“So I guess that makes it adultery.”

“Sitting in your lap was sexual,” she said. “Kissing you was definitely sexual. Rubbing up against you was deliciously sexual. You wouldn’t label any of those acts adulterous, would you?”

“No.”

“It seems to me,” she said, “that anything short of the main event, so to speak, is not
exactly
adultery.”

“I see, Lettice. In other words, you figure you ought to get off on a technicality.”

“Is it a technicality? Perhaps it is.” She grinned. “In any event,” she said, “you’re the one who got off. I just hope your sweet little nonwife won’t be too disappointed.”

“She’ll get over it,” I said.

“Oh, I do hope so,” she said, and flashed a wicked grin, and blew me a kiss, and left.

I
stayed where I was, under the watchful gaze of the presumptive oryx, and I sat and mused. Was this the sort of thing that went on in English country houses? I swear nothing like it had ever happened in any Agatha Christie novel I ever read. Iris Murdoch, maybe, but not Agatha Christie.

Mine had seemed like such a clear and simple program—or programme, as young Millicent Savage would no doubt prefer it. Step One, get the book. Step Two, go home. But now, with an encounter in the Great Library having led to an interlude in the East Parlour, some sort of reappraisal of the agenda seemed called for.

First off, did we really have to cut out of Cuttleford House first thing in the morning? I’d wanted to avoid an unpleasant confrontation with Lettice, but I’d had that confrontation in spite of myself, and, while any number of adjectives could be pressed into service to describe it, “unpleasant” seemed an unlikely choice. It had been unantici
pated, certainly. It had been unsettling, to say the least. But unpleasant?

Hardly that.

My role in the incident was one I would normally have found uncomfortable. There are those who hold that adultery is to adults as infancy is to infants, but I’ve always felt that a wedding ring on her finger places a woman off-limits. I haven’t always walked the walk, and sometimes I have in fact found myself grazing on the wrong side of a Keep Off the Grass sign, but by and large I’ve limited myself to single women.

Otherwise I tend to feel guilty and uneasy, and even if something gets started it doesn’t last long. But now, as I matched the glassy-eyed stare of the oryx with one of my own, an examination of conscience revealed neither guilt nor unease.

I felt terrific.

It certainly didn’t hurt that I’d taken an instant dislike to Dakin Littlefield. I’d loathed him at a glance, and I felt sure that a deeper acquaintance would see the feeling blossom into genuine hatred. One look at him was enough to determine he was no good. He was a cad, a bounder, and a bad hat, and he had a cruel mouth.

I didn’t really feel that I was poaching on posted land. After all, I’d been there first, enjoying a perfectly pleasant affair with Lettice before the son of a bitch came along and married her. Technically, though, I had to admit I was cuckolding him, and I can’t say it bothered me a bit. If anything, it gave me a special satisfaction to fit him with a pair of horns that would have been the envy of the oryx, the ibex, the zebu, and every other four-letter
ruminant quadruped that ever stumbled out of a Scrabble dictionary.

If a run-in with Lettice was no longer something I had to take pains to avoid, what was the rush to get out of Cuttleford House? I’d gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get us here, and now that we were here we might as well stick around and enjoy it. There was a lot to enjoy—the food, the company, and the grand house itself, not to mention the odd wee dram of Glen Drumnadrochit. Why miss out on it?

First, though, I had to do something about that book.

In some of the country-house mysteries I’ve read, the houses come equipped with mazes. Characters wander outside and wind up getting lost in the maze. I don’t know if there are many real English houses with mazes, and I don’t know if anybody ever really gets lost in them, but there was no need for a maze on the grounds of Cuttleford House. The interior was a maze all by itself.

I don’t know how many ways there were to get from the East Parlour to the Great Library. I was tracing one of them, or trying to, when a wheelchair rolled out of a hallway on my right and just missed a collision with my foot. I stepped back, startled, and Miss Dinmont, for whom a backward step was an impossibility, shrank against the back of her vehicle and looked quite alarmed.

“Oh, Mr. Rhodenbarr,” she said. “You startled me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to.”

“But it’s I who should be apologizing,” she said.
“Surely the pedestrian has the right of way in these matters.”

“It’s my fault,” I insisted. “I keep looking the wrong way before I step off the curb. I’m American, you see, and I can’t seem to remember that you lot drive on the wrong side of the road.”

“Oh, now, Mr. Rhodenbarr,” she said, and smiled a weary smile, and laughed a weary laugh. She was, I noticed, a pretty woman, albeit an exhausted one. “I was preoccupied,” she said, “or I shouldn’t have come so close to running you down. Have you seen my friend, Miss Hardesty?”

“Not since I saw her with you, and that was hours ago.”

“I think she may have stepped outside,” she said. “She’s mad about the outdoors, you know. And she loves weather.”

“There’s a lot of it out there to love.”

“I know. All that snow, getting deeper every hour. But that wouldn’t bother her.” She sighed. “I was in our room, waiting for her. We’ve a room on the ground floor. Miss Postlethwaite’s Sewing Room, it’s called.” She thumped the arms of her wheelchair. “Because of this,” she said. “It’s not terribly handy on the stairs.”

“I don’t suppose it would be.”

“I can climb stairs if I have to,” she said, “but it takes me forever, and then someone has to bring the chair upstairs, and it’s heavy. It’s awful, being a burden.”

“I’m sure no one would call you that.”

“Perhaps not to my face, but it’s what I am, isn’t it? Do you know what’s the worst thing about my situation, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

I didn’t, but I had a feeling she would tell me.

“Self-pity,” she said. “I am constantly beset by self-pity.”

“That must be awful.”

“You have no idea, Mr. Rhodenbarr. I am altogether powerless against it. I’m quite certain I’m afflicted with the most severe case of self-pity in the history of the human race. It saps my energy and wastes my spirit, leaving me with nothing to do but wallow in it.”

“You poor thing, Miss Dinmont.”

“Yes,” she said solemnly. “I am a poor thing indeed, am I not? I do wish I could find Miss Hardesty. There’s no one like her for jollying me out of a bad mood.”

“I can imagine.”

“But where can she have gotten to?” She gripped the arms of her chair. “Maybe she’s back at our room. She could have returned by one route while I went off on another in search of her. The layout’s confusing here, isn’t it?”

“Especially now, with the lights turned down.”

“And especially when one is in a wheelchair,” she said. “That makes everything just that much more difficult.” She managed a brave little smile. “But please don’t feel sorry for me, Mr. Rhodenbarr. That’s the one thing I’m quite capable of doing for myself.”

Maybe the conversation with Miss Dinmont had disoriented me, or maybe I was sufficiently addled to begin with. Whatever the cause, I took a wrong turn and wound up in the kitchen. I got out of there as soon as I realized where I was, and I’d
walked through a couple of other rooms before it occurred to me that I’d missed a golden opportunity to raid the refrigerator. I was seriously considering retracing my steps when a small person darted around the corner in front of me and I had my second near-collision of the evening.

“Oh, hi!” this one said brightly, and I blinked in the dimness and recognized Millicent Savage. “It’s Bernie, isn’t it? What are you doing up so late?” She gaped, and put her hand over her mouth. “Don’t tell me,” she said.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You’re a burglar,” she said, “and these are your working hours, aren’t they? You’re about to break into Cuttleford House.”

“Why would I do that? I’m already inside.”

“That’s right, you’re staying here, aren’t you? I just met your cat again. He’s prowling the halls the same as you.”

“It’s a family tradition,” I said. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, Millicent?”

“Way past it,” she agreed. “I went to bed hours ago, and I was just falling asleep when I woke up, and after that I wasn’t tired at all. That happens to me a lot here at Cuttleford House.”

“Maybe it’s jet lag,” I suggested. “After all, England’s five time zones away.”

“You’re silly, Bernie.”

“Everybody tells me that.”

“It’s probably the ghost,” she said. “Cuttleford House is haunted, you know.”

“It is?”

She nodded. “The man who built it,” she said.
“His name was Frederick Cuttleford, and do you know what happened to him?”

“If he’s a ghost now,” I said, “then he must have died.”

“He didn’t just die. He was murdered!”

“He was not.”

“Are you sure, Bernie?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. “If I remember correctly, he had an apoplectic fit. And he was nowhere near Cuttleford House at the time. He had four or five other homes, and I guess he was at one of them when it happened, but I’m certain he wasn’t here.”

“Oh.”

“And his name wasn’t Frederick Cuttleford in the first place. His name was Ferdinand Cathcart.”

“Then what happened to Mr. Cuttleford?”

“There never was a Mr. Cuttleford,” I said. “The place was named after the creek. It’s called Cuttlebone Creek, and the name ‘Cuttleford’ must come from a spot around here where you can wade across the creek. It’s not where we came in, though, because you have to walk across a suspension bridge instead.”

“I know. Don’t you love the way it sways?”

“No,” I said. “But there’s still never been a Mr. Cuttleford, bridge or no bridge, and…what are you laughing about?”

“I made it all up!”

“You did?”

“Oh, not about the ghost,” she said. “I know there’s a ghost, but nobody knows who it is or what he’s doing here. I made up all that part.”

“You got the initials right. Frederick Cuttleford and Ferdinand Cathcart.”

“I got that from Carolyn.”

“Huh?”

“I met her in the hall earlier,” she said, “and I guess she’s scared of ghosts, so I told her the ghost at this house was a friendly ghost.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t say his name was Casper.”

“I said his name was Colin,” she said, “because I like the name, and it goes nicely with Cuttleford, don’t you think? And she said she thought the man who built Cuttleford House was named Frederick, so when I told you the story—”

“You improved it.”

“Just to make it a better story. Anyway, that’s why I’m awake. How about you?”

“I was reading,” I said, “and I lost track of the time.”

“I bet you were looking for something to steal.”

Time to nip this in the bud. “You know,” I said, “it made a nice joke, Millicent, but it’s beginning to get a little tiresome. I was just kidding about being a burglar.”

“You were?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What are you really?”

“Well, I’m out of work at the moment,” I said. “I’m hoping something will turn up soon. In the meantime, I’ve sort of been helping Carolyn out at the Poodle Factory. What’s so funny?”

She had both hands over her mouth, smothering a laugh. “The Poodle Factory,” she sputtered. “A factory where they make poodles!”

“It’s just the name of her salon.”

“And you work there.”

“That’s right.”

“Just to help her out.”

Kids. Why on earth do people have them? “And to pass the time,” I said.

“And you’re not really a burglar.”

“Of course not.”

“And you don’t break into houses and steal things.”

“Gosh, no,” I said. “I’d be scared, for one thing. And it wouldn’t be right to take things that didn’t belong to me.”

She thought this over. Then she said, “You know how I made up the part about Frederick Cuttleford? Well, I think you made that up.”

“About being a burglar.”

“About
not
being a burglar,” she said. “You know what? I don’t believe you. I think you’re a burglar after all, no matter what you say.” And she flashed me a demonic smile and darted around the corner.