The Burglar in the Library (21 page)

“Then what killed him?” Carolyn wanted to know. “He wound up parked on the lawn chair next to Rathburn and the cook. How did he get there and what did he die of?”

“He still wanted to kill himself,” Littlefield said, “even after he lost his nerve with the rope trick. He went out back and sat down in the chair next to the man he killed.”

“If memory serves,” the colonel said, “the cook was in the middle chair, with Wolpert and Rathburn on either side.”

“What difference does it make? He probably killed her, too. Or she died of depression because he didn’t finish his dinner, and he felt responsible for depriving the rest of us of decent meals. Whatever it was, he pulled a blanket over himself and died.”

“Of what?”

“Search me,” Littlefield said. “My guess is he had a snootful before he tried to hang himself. He probably had a couple more pops by the time he went out and sat next to the other two stiffs. Wouldn’t have been a stretch for him to doze off and die of exposure.”

“It happens all the time,” I agreed.

“Or maybe he took poison. Wasn’t he the one who knew all about which mushrooms would kill you? I don’t think he ran around gathering mushrooms under the snow, but he probably knew a few other things you could take if you wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. He probably used poison to kill the cook, and he had a dose left and took it himself.” He shrugged. “When you come right down to it, what difference does it make? He killed a man and he’s dead himself now, and if we could just find a way out of here we could all go home.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” I said.

“Damn right it would,” Littlefield said, “and I’m about ready to take a shot at it. The sun’s up and the snow’s not falling, so I think it’s time Lettice and I hit the road. Not that it hasn’t been fun, but—”

“
Orris!
”

It was Earlene Cobbett who cried out the lad’s name, and by the tone and volume you’d have thought he’d risen from the dead and lurched into the library. The whole room went dead silent as we all stared at Earlene, who had the grace to blush behind her freckles.

“For God’s sake,” Littlefield said, “give it a rest, will you? It’s pretty obvious your cousin was
boinking you, and I guess you wound up with a cake in the oven, but all that wailing just gets on people’s nerves. It’s not going to bring him back, and he probably wouldn’t marry you anyway, but the kid’ll have his father’s name all the same. That’s the advantage of incest, plus it cuts down on small talk.” Another cry, this one wordless, issued from Earlene. “Hey, c’mon,” Littlefield said. “Can’t you do something, Eglantine? Fire her and send her home, say.”

If Littlefield was trying to win friends, he was going about it the wrong way. The men frowned their disapproval, while the women glared murderously at him. He looked around, shrugged. “Bunch of bleeding hearts,” he said. “I give up. Scream your guts out, honey. Live a little.”

“All Earlene is trying to say,” I said, “is that we mustn’t forget Orris. Isn’t that right, Earlene?” She nodded furiously. “And her point is a good one. Because there are a few elements your theory doesn’t cover, Littlefield.”

“Like what? The kid in the gully? Hey, he wasn’t too swift. The bridge went and he went with it. It’s a shame, but what’s it got to do with Wolpert killing Rathburn?”

“Why did the bridge go?”

“According to you, somebody sabotaged it. Cut part of the way through the ropes.”

“Why would somebody do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “To kill Orris? It seems like a dumb way to go about it. Look, Rhodenbarr, I know it’s tempting to see foul play everywhere you look, but don’t you think it was possible those ropes just snapped of old age or something?
Maybe they were ready to go for a while now, and the kid just had some bad luck.”

“So Wolpert killed Rathburn and the cook and then took his own life,” I said. “And Orris’s death was accidental.”

“Have you got a problem with that? Because I have to tell you it sounds reasonable to me.”

“Well,” I said, “I might have a slight problem with it.”

“Oh?”

“Here’s how it looks to me,” I said. “As Cuttleford House settled in for a long winter weekend, there were two men in residence with a hidden agenda. The snow began falling. And, late in the evening, two more guests arrived to complete the party.”

“The Littlefields,” Nigel said.

“Lettice and Dakin,” I said, “pressing onward in spite of the worst winter storm in memory. The two of you were the last people to cross the bridge.”

“Lucky us,” Littlefield said.

“A couple of hours later,” I went on, “Rathburn was dead, bludgeoned and smothered.”

“By Wolpert.”

I let it pass. “A few hours after that, Molly discovered the body and raised the alarm, uttering the well-known Cobbett scream. We all came on the run, and when Nigel tried to call the police, the phone was dead.”

“Because somebody cut the wires.”

“We didn’t establish that until later,” I said. “It wasn’t until after Orris’s death that Nigel walked around the house and determined that the phone
wires had been cut. So it’s not inconceivable that the storm had knocked out the phones, and the wires weren’t cut until later. But it’s far-fetched, and it would seem more likely that the phone wires had already been cut by the time Jonathan Rathburn’s body was discovered.”

That made sense to everyone.

“The next thing that happened,” I said, “was that the snowblower wouldn’t work. It was presumably sabotaged, possibly with sugar in the gas tank. And the
next
thing that happened was the collapse of the bridge, spilling Orris into the gully and taking his life.”

There was a small cry from Earlene, ignored by all.

“Someone severed the phone wires,” I said. “Someone sugared the snowblower. Someone cut the bridge supports. And until we know who did each of those things, we haven’t solved the puzzle.”

“Wolpert,” Littlefield said.

“Gordon Wolpert?”

“Why not? He’s the villain here. If he was desperate enough to beat a guy’s brains out with a bronze camel, I don’t suppose he’d draw the line at yanking out a couple of telephone wires.”

“But when would he do it?” I wondered. “And why?”

“Why cut the wires? There’s a no-brainer. To keep the cops from being called.”

“So that they couldn’t investigate,” I said.

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” I frowned. “Maybe. Let’s let it go for a moment. What about the snowblower? Why sabotage it?”

“So that What’s-his-face couldn’t clear the path and the driveway.”

“Why would he want to prevent that?”

“Same answer. To keep the cops from coming.”

“But why would they even try to come?”

He rolled his eyes. “You know, Rhodenbarr,” he said, “you made more sense when you were dead in the gully. The cops’d come because there was a dead man in the library.”

“But the phones were out, so how would they know about Rathburn?”

“For all he knew,” Littlefield said, “somebody here had a cell phone. I’ll grant you the snowblower bit was kind of lame, especially if he’d already knocked out the bridge. But maybe Wolpert was the kind of bird who’d wear a belt and suspenders. He wasn’t taking any chances.”

“Let’s look at it from another angle,” I suggested. “Cutting the phone wires would keep the cops away. Wrecking the bridge and the snowblower would keep us here.”

“Right,” Littlefield agreed, “but it’s not working anymore, because Lettice and I are about ready to get out of here.”

“Well, stick around for a minute,” I said. “Long enough to explain why the killer would want to keep all of us from leaving.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “So?”

“So it’s interesting,” I said. “Here he’s murdered a man and he’s arranged things so that the cops can’t be called right away. And then at the same
time he’s cut off his own escape route. We can’t leave, and neither can he.”

I let the silence hang in the air. Miss Dinmont was the first to break it. “He had us all trapped. And he could take his time and kill us off one by one. First Orris, then the cook, then Mr. Wolpert and Mr. Rhodenbarr—”

“But Mr. Rhodenbarr’s alive,” Miss Hardesty pointed out. “And Mr. Wolpert was the killer himself.”

“That’s true,” Miss Dinmont said, her voice a little calmer now. “It’s all very confusing, isn’t it?”

“Very,” I told her. “And I was thinking along the same lines as you, Miss Dinmont.”

“You were?”

“I was. And it’s all because I thought this was an English-country-house kind of murder. But it’s not.”

“It’s not?”

“Mean streets,” Carolyn said.

I nodded. “I thought a desperate fiendish killer was going to work his way through the guest register, knocking us off one by one. But what we’ve got in actual fact is a man who killed one person and wants to get away with it. That’s why he did what he could to make it look like an accident, arranging Rathburn’s body at the foot of the library steps. No one would suspect the man had actually been murdered, and if by some miracle the cops found anything incriminating, well, he’d be hundreds of miles away by then. And, to make sure he’d have a head start on them, he tore out the phone wires.”

Littlefield sighed theatrically. “Isn’t that what I said, Rhodenbarr?”

“Not quite. You said the killer also sabotaged the bridge and the snowblower. But he didn’t.”

“Oh?” said the colonel. “How can that be?”

“I guess the bridge was an accident after all,” Greg Savage said, “and I hope your insurance coverage is up to date, Nigel. As far as the snowblower is concerned, well, I guess the thing just conked out by itself. You know how some cars won’t start on really cold days? Maybe it was like that.”

“Snowblowers are supposed to perform on cold days,” I said, “since they’re essentially useless on warm ones. No, I’m willing to bet there was sugar in that gas tank, and I know damn well the bridge supports were cut. But not by the killer.”

“Then who—”

“Someone who didn’t want the killer to get away. Someone who’d been keeping an eye on Rathburn because he sensed an opportunity for profit. If he could isolate Cuttleford House, with nobody coming or going, he might do himself some good.”

“I don’t see why Wolpert couldn’t have done that,” Dakin Littlefield said. “It’s true he tried to make Rathburn’s murder look like an accident, but you proved it wasn’t. So he realized somebody would try to get out and call the cops, and he went and cut the ropes supporting the bridge.”

I shook my head. “No footprints.”

“No footprints?”

“Going to and from the bridge. It was deep and crisp and even out there until Orris slogged through it. You and Lettice got here late last night, Littlefield, and it looked for all the world as
though no one had been on the path to or from the bridge since the two of you.”

“That’s true,” Nigel Eglantine said. “That was deep virgin snow that Orris had to walk through, poor lad. I remember noticing the depth of it when he set out, and there were no recent footprints to be seen.”

“Footprints in the snow,” Littlefield said, and shook his head.

“Late the night before last,” I said, “Rathburn was murdered. The murderer—let’s call him A—”

“Why not call him Wolpert?”

“Humor me,” I said. “Anyway, A killed Rathburn, made it look like an accident, ducked out to rip out the phone wires, and then went upstairs to sleep the sleep of the unjust. Enter B.”

“B?”

“Our clever little observer. Did he slip into the library and discover Rathburn’s corpse? Possibly, but I don’t think so. I think he cut the bridge ropes
before
A murdered Rathburn.”

“Why would he do that?” Leona Savage wondered.

“Because, even before A murdered Rathburn, B realized the stage was set. All the players had arrived at Cuttleford House. Once Lettice and Dakin Littlefield had made it across the bridge, it was time for the bridge to come down.”

Littlefield had been leaning against a bookcase. Now he snapped to attention. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What the hell did our arrival have to do with B and the bridge?”

“Once you were here,” I said, “he wanted to make sure you stayed.”

“Well, it worked,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to haul ass since the moment I got to this godforsaken hellhole.”

“Oh, dear,” Cissie Eglantine said. “We try so to make Cuttleford House a pleasant place for all our guests.”

“There, there,” Nigel said, and patted her hand.

“But he called it a godforsaken hellhole,” she protested. “It’s not, is it?”

“Of course not,” the colonel assured her. “Would I spend half the year in a hellhole? The man’s upset, Cecilia.”

“I know the food’s not all it might be,” Cissie said, “because of what happened to Cook, and the snow’s made things difficult for everyone, and what with poor Orris gone—”

The inevitable cry came from Earlene Cobbett.

“Excuse me,” Rufus Quilp said. The fat man was sitting in an overstuffed armchair, and I’d thought he’d been dozing. But he hadn’t missed a thing. “This is getting interesting,” he said. “A killed Mr. Rathburn. B dropped the bridge in the gully, either shortly before or shortly after Mr. Rathburn’s murder. If after, he may not have known it had taken place.”

“That’s correct.”

“And if before, did he know it was likely to take place? Did B expect A would murder Rathburn?”

“Probably not. He knew the Littlefields had arrived, and he didn’t want anyone else coming or going.”

Littlefield sighed, exasperated, but Rufus Quilp persevered. “So he slipped outside,” he said, “and
cut the bridge supports. And, I suppose, made assurance doubly sure by sugaring the snowblower.”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t do that, and why should he? It wouldn’t prevent anyone from coming or going. Anyone else could do as Orris did, and indeed what B had done himself to reach the bridge. It might be slow going, especially as the snow continued to fall, but it wouldn’t be impassable for any of us. Except Miss Dinmont, of course. You’d need a clear path for a wheelchair.”

This upset Miss Dinmont, who required immediate reassurance that the snowblower had not been sabotaged as a deliberate attempt to inconvenience or imperil her. When Miss Dinmont calmed down, Mrs. Colibri wanted to know who’d sugared the snowblower.