The Burglar in the Library (20 page)

Had I ruled out every other possibility?

A chill came over me, along with an awareness of a possibility I had not ruled out, because I
hadn’t thought of it. I took a deep breath and let it out, and I sent my eyes on as much of a tour of the room as they could manage without moving my head. And then I said, in what was supposed to be a forceful but low-pitched voice, “Now would be a good time to come out of the closet.”

There was no response, not even from Raffles.

“I mean it,” I said, wondering if I did. “You can come out of the closet now.”

“No I can’t,” came the reply, in a small high-pitched voice. “I’m under the bed.”

And then she giggled, the imp. I stood up. Raffles sprang forward involuntarily when my lap disappeared, landing predictably enough on all four feet and giving me a look. And, even as I had done a while earlier, out from under the bed crawled the improbable person of Millicent Savage.

“Y
ou’re not a ghost,” she said. “At least I don’t think you are. Are you?”

I considered the question. “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

“Would you tell me if you were?”

“That’s hard to say,” I admitted. “Who knows what a ghost would do?”

“Not me,” she said. “I don’t even know if I believe in them. And when I saw you in the hallway I didn’t think you were a ghost.”

“How come?”

“I didn’t think you were dead. In fact I thought you were right here, in Young George’s Room. You know what my father calls it? ‘Boy George’s Room.’”

“He’s probably not the only one. How come you didn’t think I was dead?”

“Because I saw you under the bed.”

“You did?”

She nodded. “When Mr. Littlefield wanted to
open the closet door, and Carolyn didn’t want him to. At least I thought I saw you under the bed. I saw
something
under the bed, but I couldn’t be sure what it was unless I got down on all fours and checked, and I couldn’t do that because my father was holding my hand.”

“Good for him,” I said.

“Then Mr. Littlefield opened the door,” she went on, “and there was nobody there. And I almost said something.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“‘Look under the bed,’ I almost said. But I didn’t want to help Mr. Littlefield. I don’t like him.”

“Neither do I.”

“And besides,” she said, “how could I be sure it was you?”

“It could have been anybody.”

“I wasn’t even sure it was a person.”

“That’s a point. It could have been a monster.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Well, maybe a troll,” I said.

“They live under bridges,” she said. “
Not
under beds.”

“I stand corrected.”

“When there was an extra body on one of the chairs behind the house,” she said, “I thought it was you, and I was positive I made a mistake thinking I saw you under the bed. But then it wasn’t you, it was someone you killed, and…”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Because everybody thinks…”

“I know what everybody thinks. I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Not ever? Not in your whole life?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m still young.”

She giggled. “I believe you,” she said, “because you say funny things. I don’t think a murderer would say funny things, do you?”

“No,” I said, “and neither would a ghost.”

She thought that over, shrugged. “Anyway,” she said, “it turned out you were dead after all. Somebody stabbed you and threw your body off the cliff. I wasn’t supposed to look, but I did.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Well? Did it look convincing?”

“I didn’t get a very good look,” she said. “I guess it looked like a body, and somebody recognized the clothes. But you know what I kept thinking about?”

“What?”

“The crease.”

“The crease? Oh—” I drew a wavy line in the air. “The kris.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I know. What about it?”

“If
I
stabbed somebody,” she said, “I don’t think I would drag him all the way to the edge of the cliff and push him over. And if he was already standing at the edge I wouldn’t stab him first, I’d just push him in. And if I did stab him for some reason, and then I wanted to throw him in to make it look like he fell, I’d remove the kris and hang it up on the wall again.”

“I guess the kris was overkill.”

“I just kept thinking about it,” Millicent said, “and I started thinking maybe that was you under the bed after all. And then I thought maybe it was a
ghost
under the bed. Do you ever have times when the more you think about something, the more confusing it gets?”

“Boy, do I ever.”

“After everybody came back to the house, I waited until nobody was paying attention. And I came upstairs and I put my ear to the door of this room and listened real hard.”

“What did you hear?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh.”

“I was too scared to open the door. So I went down the hall to my room and sat in the doorway and watched. I can be very patient.”

“An uncommon trait in one so young.”

“Well, I can. And I was watching when you stuck your head out, and I quick drew back so you wouldn’t see me. But I saw you hurry down the hall to the bathroom.”

“And not a moment too soon,” I recalled.

“I was pretty sure it was you and not a ghost. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Ghosts don’t have to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure they do.”

“They do not.”

“They most certainly do. Haven’t you ever gotten a package in the mail? And when you opened it up, did it have some packing material to keep it from getting broken?”

“So?”

“Little white stuff the size of your thumb,” I said. “You probably were told it was Styrofoam.”

“It
is
Styrofoam.”

“Nope.”

“Then what is it?”

“Ghost turds.”

I thought that would get a laugh, but all she did was roll her eyes. “
Anyway,
” she said heavily, “Raffles came along while you were in the bathroom, and I figured he would know.”

“If I was a ghost or not.”

“Right. So I grabbed him and brought him with me and came in here. At first we were both under the bed, but when you opened the door he trotted out to see what was going on. Can I ask a question?”

“I don’t see how I could stop you.”

“Why are you pretending to be dead?”

“Because I’m going to trap the killer.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Tell me!”

I shook my head. “Not now,” I said. “But there’s something you’ve got to tell me.”

“What? I don’t know anything.”

“You know who the latest victim is.”

“It’s you,” she said, “or at least it’s supposed to be. Down at the bottom of the gully.”

“That’s just smoke and mirrors,” I said.

“Smoke and mirrors?”

“Well, clothes and pillows. It wasn’t really me down there, Millicent, and it wasn’t anybody else, either.”

“I know.”

“But there was a real Latest Victim,” I said. “On one of those lawn chairs out behind the house. There was Jonathan Rathburn and there was the cook, and there was a third victim on a third chair.”

“So?”

“So tell me who it was.”

Light dawned. “You don’t know,” she said. “Everybody thinks you know because everybody thinks you killed him, or at least they did until it turned out that you were dead, too. But you didn’t kill him, even if you don’t happen to be dead yourself, and…”

“Right.”

“So you don’t know.”

“But I will,” I said, “as soon as you tell me.”

She looked at me.

“What’s the matter?”

“I know who got killed,” she said, giving it a sort of singsong cadence, “and you don’t. And
you
know who the killer is, and
I
don’t.”

“Time to strike a deal, huh?”

She nodded solemnly.

“Okay,” I said. “You tell me who was on the chair, and I’ll tell you who put him there.”

“‘Him’?”

“You mean it was a woman?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe it was a woman and maybe it was a man. That’s for me to know.”

“And for me to find out,” I finished, “and the way I’ll find out is by you telling me.”

“And then you’ll tell me who did it.”

“Right.”

“Okay,” she said.

“It’s a deal?”

She nodded. “It’s a deal.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So tell me.”

She frowned. “I think you should go first.”

“Why? Don’t you trust me?”

She didn’t say anything, which was answer enough. I could have gone first, but if she didn’t trust me, why should I trust her? I dug out my wallet, looked for scraps of paper, and wound up drawing out a pair of dollar bills. I gave one of them to Millicent.

“In the space alongside Washington’s portrait,” I said. “Just print the victim’s name there, and I’ll do the same with the killer’s name.”

“I think it’s against the law to write on money.”

“If they arrest you for it,” I said, “tell them it was my idea. No cheating, now. No writing ‘Mickey Mouse’ to fake me out. Okay?”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Sure you would,” I said, “and so would I, but not today. Deal?” She nodded, and I printed the name of my favorite suspect, shielding the action from view with my left hand. When I finished I folded the bill, folded it again, and held it out to the child. With my other hand I took hold of the bill she was offering, similarly folded. Our eyes locked, and she counted to three, and at once we completed the exchange.

I unfolded the bill, looked at what she’d written. I looked at Millicent, and found her looking back at me.

“You’re sure of this?”

She nodded, her eyes enormous. “I thought it was going to be you,” she said, “but it was him instead.”

“Gordon Wolpert. With the tweed jackets and the elbow patches and…”

“That’s him.”

“And he was dead.” I frowned. “Do you suppose it was accidental? Maybe he was overcome with remorse and he pulled up a chair to sit next to the two people he’d killed, and before he knew it he’d fallen asleep and frozen to death.”

She gave me a look. “Anyway,” she said, “there were marks on his neck. They said he’d been strangled.”

“Strangled.

“Did anybody look at his eyes? I wonder if he had pinpoint hemorrhages. But maybe you only get those if somebody smothers you. Wait a minute. Strangled? Maybe he hanged himself. Maybe he was overcome with remorse”—I seemed attached to the phrase—“and he hanged himself from a beam or something, and—”

“And what?”

“And cut himself down and went outside and sat on a lawn chair with a blanket over him. Never mind. Gordon Wolpert, for God’s sake. You’re sure it was him? Of course you’re sure.”

“And you’re sure he was the killer?”

“Well, no,” I said. “I was a few minutes ago. Now I’m not sure of anything.”

I got to my feet, crossed to the chest of drawers, and picked up a book I’d been reading earlier, holding it as though absorbing its essence might
somehow empower me. Gordon Wolpert, who I’d somehow managed to convince myself was a multiple murderer, had in turn managed to persuade someone else to murder him.

I opened a drawer, put the book inside. I opened the closet door, got a whiff of Rathburn’s shoes, and closed it again.

“It’s time,” I said.

“Time for what, Bernie?”

“Time for action. You know what Chandler said, don’t you? When things start to slow down, bring in a couple of guys with guns in their hands.”

“Have you got a gun?”

“No,” I said, “and I’m only one man, but it’s high time I found a couple of mean streets to walk down. I want you to go downstairs, Millicent.”

“And leave you and Raffles here?”

“You can take Raffles with you,” I said. “The main thing is I want you to get them all in one room.”

“Which room?”

“The library,” I said. “That’s where it all started. That’s where it should end.”

T
hey were all in the library.

I don’t know how she managed it, but somehow she’d rounded them all up. They perched on chairs and sofas, stood propped against walls and bookshelves, or huddled in twos and threes to talk, probably wondering why she’d summoned them all there.

Which could have been my opening line. “I suppose you’re wondering why she summoned you all here,” I might very well have said.

But I didn’t. I just walked across the threshold and took note of their reactions.

And they damn well reacted. Their eyes widened, their jaws dropped, and a few of them went a shade or two paler. Miss Dinmont’s hands tightened their grip on the arms of her wheelchair, Mrs. Colibri clutched at a bookcase for support, and Colonel Blount-Buller’s upper lip lost a little of its stiffness. There was a fair amount of gasping, but no one actually said anything, until
Lettice Littlefield cried out, “Bernie! Is it really you?”

“In the flesh,” I said, and pinched myself. “See? You’re not dreaming, and I’m not a ghost.”

“But you were—”

“Down at the bottom of the gully, creased with a kris,” I said. “Except I wasn’t, not really. And one reason I burst in on you like this was to see which dog didn’t bark.”

That got some stares of incomprehension. “‘Silver Blaze,’” I explained. “What Holmes found significant was that the dog didn’t bark. Well, if somebody didn’t twitch or gape or go pale at my appearance, it meant he wasn’t surprised. And who would be unsurprised to find me still alive? The person who knew I wasn’t dead. And who would know that better than the man who didn’t kill me?”

“Well said,” the colonel allowed, and a couple of heads nodded their approval of my logic.

Then Leona Savage said, “I didn’t kill you.”

“Huh? No, of course you didn’t, and—”

“I didn’t kill you,” she insisted, “but I was surprised to see you here, because I saw what I took to be you at the bottom of the gully and consequently thought you were dead. I’m not the man who didn’t kill you, but I’m certainly one of the persons who didn’t kill you, and I was surprised nonetheless. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a heart attack.”

“An excellent thing,” I agreed, “and I’m sorry to have shocked you, but—”

“In fact,” she pressed on, “nobody here killed you, because you’re still very much alive. So I don’t see—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Leona,” Greg Savage said. “You always do that.”

“I always do what?”

“That,” he said, with feeling if not with precision. “You know what he means, or you ought to. Somebody in this room is a killer. He killed Rathburn and Orris and the cook, and most recently he killed Gordon Wolpert. And the rest of us all assumed he’d killed Rhodenbarr here as well. But the killer, whoever he is, knew he hadn’t killed Rhodenbarr.”

“Because it’s the sort of thing a person would remember,” Bettina Colibri said softly.

“And consequently he wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “But I got a look at all your faces, and you all looked surprised.”

“I knew it,” Cissie Eglantine said, her countenance transformed. “We’re innocent, each and every one of us. It was some nasty old tramp after all.”

Nigel sighed, and I don’t suppose he was the only one.

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “For one thing, even if the killer knew I was alive, he wouldn’t necessarily expect me to turn up as abruptly as I did. Carolyn knew I was alive, because I’d told her what I was planning. But I got a look at her face a minute ago, and she looked almost as surprised as the rest of you.”

“Well, you startled me, Bern.”

“I startled everybody,” I said. “That’s fair enough, because I was startled myself when I found out about Gordon Wolpert a few minutes ago. And I’m afraid I’m not done startling you.”

Miss Dinmont said she hoped there wasn’t going to be more in the way of excitement. Dakin Littlefield rolled his eyes and muttered something unintelligible to his bride. Muttering seemed to be the order of the day, until Carolyn called out, “Quiet, everybody! He knows who did it. Don’t you, Bern?”

“Did I? I wanted to hedge, to equivocate, to waffle.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I know who did it.”

There was a long silence. Then Nigel said, “I say,” and I realized they were all staring at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “It just seemed so decisive, putting it that way. You know what’s been wrong with this whole bloody business from the start? It’s too English.”

“Too English?”

“Too polite, too soft-spoken, too cozy for words. Of course Cissie keeps wanting the murderer to turn out to be a passing tramp. The alternative is to believe one of us did the dirty deed, and we’re all such jolly decent people it’s quite inconceivable. And I’ve been investigating the murders in the same decent earnest English manner, first trying to play Poirot and then turning amateur sleuth, asking dopey questions and looking for motives and probing alibis as if that’s going to tell me anything.”

“And it’s not?”

“No, because this isn’t a cozy little English murder case at all. It’s tough and hardboiled, and it’s not going to be solved by pussyfooting around like Miss Jane Marple or Lord Peter Wimsey. This is Philip Marlowe’s kind of caper.”

“Philip Marlowe?” the colonel said. “Don’t believe I know the name.”

“He was Raymond Chandler’s detective,” I said, “and he knew about mean streets, and that’s what we’ve got here in this house once you peel the veneer away. We may be miles away from any streets, mean or otherwise, but it all amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Bern,” Carolyn said. “Look at the murder weapons—a camel and a pillow to start with, and sugar in a gas tank and a dagger with a wavy blade. In Philip Marlowe’s cases they mostly just shot each other, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but—”

“And he’d get hit over the head and fall down a flight of stairs. Nobody’s been shot, and nobody fell down a flight of stairs unless you count the library steps. The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next person to die gets murdered with tropical fish, and you know what Chandler had to say about that.”

“That’s all peripheral,” I said. “When you get to what really happened, it’s straightforward and it’s brutal. And there’s not a single tropical fish in it.”

“Jonathan Rathburn,” I said. “He came here by himself, took up residence in Young George’s Room, and began behaving like a man with something on his mind. He scribbled away in a notebook and sat around writing letters that nobody ever saw. And he stared at people. Someone mentioned noticing him staring oddly at Leona Savage, but it wasn’t because they were long-lost lovers or twins separated at birth. Rathburn stared
probingly at just about everybody, at one time or another.”

“I just assumed he was interested in people,” Cissie Eglantine said.

“There was another guest who was interested in people, too,” I said. “Gordon Wolpert. He was very different from Rathburn, tweedy and mousy where Rathburn was brooding and flamboyant. But he too came here alone, and he was a keen observer of his fellow guests, and he liked a bit of gossip, too.”

“That’s true,” Miss Hardesty recalled. “He had a lot of questions about everybody, and he’d make dry comments.”

“Pleasant enough fellow, though,” the colonel put in. “Seemed a decent chap.”

“But he was a picky eater,” I said. “Isn’t that so, Mr. Quilp?”

“He picked at his food,” Rufus Quilp agreed. “Pushed it around on his plate.”

I looked to Molly Cobbett for confirmation. “He never ate much,” she said. “He would always say the food was good, but his plate would be half full when I brought it back to the kitchen. It bothered Cook some.”

“It bothered me,” Quilp said. “I never trust a picky eater.”

“Well, the man’s dead,” Greg Savage said, “so I think we can forgive him his lack of appetite. Maybe he was just watching his weight.”

“But he was slender,” Leona said.

“Well, honey, maybe that’s how he stayed slender. By resisting the temptation to eat like a horse.”

“He wasn’t resisting temptation,” Quilp insisted. “He wasn’t tempted. The man simply did not care about food.”

“Maybe there’s something intrinsically suspicious about a lack of appetite,” I said, “and maybe there isn’t. I couldn’t tell you one way or the other. What got my attention wasn’t that Gordon Wolpert would never qualify for the Clean Plate Club. I was more interested in the fact that he lied about it.”

“What do you mean, Bern?”

“You were there,” I told Carolyn. “I think it was the first conversation we had with him. Wolpert said he’d extended his stay at Cuttleford House and might extend it again, because the food was so good. He even patted his stomach and made some remark about his waistline.”

“Maybe he was anorexic,” Millicent suggested. “I saw a program about that. These girls were starving themselves, but they thought they were fat.”

“Somehow,” I said, “I don’t think he fits the profile. Anorexia’s pretty scarce in middle-aged males. No, I think there’s a basic principle involved. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but whenever a politician answers a question that you haven’t asked, he’s lying. Gordon Wolpert was doing essentially the same thing. He was staying on longer than he’d planned at Cuttleford House, and he was offering an explanation when none was required. And the explanation was untrue—the food wasn’t what was keeping him here. That meant something else was, and it was something he wanted to conceal.”

“Brilliant,” Dakin Littlefield said dryly. “Only
it’s a shame you didn’t ask him for an explanation before somebody tied a knot in his neck.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I told him. “I did what amateur sleuths always do—I waited until I could be absolutely certain. I suppose it has to be that way in the books, or otherwise they’d end on page seventy-eight. What I should have done was shoulder my way in and ask impertinent questions. But I didn’t, and somebody strangled him.”

The colonel cleared his throat. “So it was Wolpert who aroused your suspicions,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “I knew someone was sitting right here in this room with Jonathan Rathburn. I was on my way to bed and they were in here.”

“You never mentioned that,” Nigel said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“And you saw them in here?” Lettice said. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, Bernie. Who was it?”

“The lights were out,” I said, “and it was pitch dark inside, so I didn’t see anybody. I could hear that there was a conversation going on, but it was too low-pitched to identify the speakers, and of course I didn’t want to eavesdrop.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to resist,” Lettice admitted. “Didn’t you hear even a tiny bit, Bernie?”

“Not a word, and I didn’t hang around long. I was tired, and I’d had that wee dram of the Drumnadrochit. Besides, I was being well-bred and English, and it wouldn’t have been the proper thing to do. But it’s a pity I didn’t listen a little more closely, or just waltz right in and turn on a light. I might have prevented a murder.”

“Or watched it take place,” Miss Dinmont said
with a little gasp. “If you’d walked in just as the murderer was swinging the camel—”

She broke off, all atremble at the horror of the idea.

“It would have been awkward,” I agreed, “but it never happened, and what did happen here at Cuttleford House this weekend has been awkward enough. What did we start out with? A perfectly delightful English country house—”

“It’s nice of you to say so,” Cissie murmured.

“—with a full complement of congenial if slightly dotty guests.”

This brought a
harrumph
from the colonel.

“Two men seemed out of place,” I went on. “Rathburn, with his penetrating stares and his furious bouts of scribbling, and Wolpert, at once praising the food and pushing it around on his plate. A picky eater, as Mr. Quilp has labeled him, and not to be trusted. My first thought was that one of them killed the other.”

“Mr. Wolpert killed Mr. Rathburn,” Cissie said.

“Well, it could hardly have been the other way around,” her husband pointed out.

“That was my thought,” I said, “but I couldn’t be sure. I knew how Rathburn was killed—the camel and the pillow—and I knew why, but—”

“Why?” Carolyn demanded.

“To keep him quiet,” I said. “He came here looking for somebody and he knew something, and he was a threat to somebody with a secret. I figured Wolpert had a secret, or why would he be disguising his reason for lingering here? So it seemed logical to guess that Rathburn had stum
bled on the secret, or ferreted it out, and Wolpert killed him to keep his secret safe.”

“You know,” Dakin Littlefield said, “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’ve got to hand it to you. It sounds to me as though you’ve got it cracked. Wolpert’s the killer.”

“But Wolpert’s been killed himself,” Leona Savage objected.

“But was it murder?”

“What else could it have been?”

“Suicide,” Littlefield said. “Are you with me in this, Rhodenbarr? Wolpert kills Rathburn to keep his mouth shut—and incidentally, did you happen to find out what secret Rathburn had picked up on? I assume there was more to it than Wolpert’s lack of appetite.”

“I assume so too,” I said, “and I thought I might find a hint in Rathburn’s room. After all, he spent all his waking hours writing notes and letters. But either he found a great hiding place for them or the killer scooped them up before I got there.”

“So the secret died with Rathburn,” Littlefield said. “Well, what difference does it make, anyway? Rathburn knew something and Wolpert wanted to keep it dark, so he killed the fellow. In the ordinary course of things he’d have checked out the next morning and gone on home, but the bridge was out and he couldn’t get away. Eventually remorse overtook him, and he probably realized he’d be caught sooner or later. Who knows what goes on inside a man’s mind?”

“Who indeed?”

“So he did himself in,” he said. “Took the easy way out and did the Dutch act.”

“But there were marks on his neck,” somebody pointed out. “A sign that he’d been strangled.”

“Or tried to hang himself,” Littlefield said. “You know how people who slash their wrists have hesitation marks, little cuts they make while they’re getting up their nerve? It seems to me you’d have the same thing if you were trying to work up the courage to hang yourself. Say you stood on a chair with a rope around your neck, and before you kicked the chair away you bent your knees, just to get an idea of what it was going to feel like. The noose tightens, you realize this isn’t gonna be much fun, so you decide it’s simpler to live. But by that time you’ve already got rope burns on your neck, or strangulation marks, or whatever you want to call it.”