The Burglar in the Library (23 page)

“You got it. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” I said. “Gordon Wolpert never had any doubt what happened to Rathburn. He kept it to himself and bided his time before he made his pitch to you. What did he want? The same thing Rathburn was after?”

“If he was planning anything, he never followed through with it. There were a couple of times I noticed him giving me the eye, as if he wanted to tell me something, but he never got around to it. And then the next thing I knew he was out there on the third lawn chair this morning, dead as a doornail.”

I looked at my watch again. Where were they when you wanted them?

“I saw you,” Millicent Savage said suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Talking to Mr. Wolpert,” the little darling insisted. “And you said something about meeting him later. I heard you say it.”

“That’s crap,” he said, disgusted. “There was nobody within earshot.” He realized what he’d said, then made a face and shrugged and gave up. “Oh, the hell with it,” he said. “I could spin it out a little more, but what’s the point? I thought we could work something out, like you’d all go along with it for a share of the bonds, but there’s too many of you and somebody’d be sure to hold out. Anyway, why share? I don’t have to share.”

And he pulled out a gun.

Don’t ask me what kind of gun it was. Guns make me nervous—people keep them in drawers so that
they can shoot burglars with them, and I’m opposed to that—so I’ve never taken the trouble to learn anything much about them. I could tell that this one was an automatic, not a revolver, and that was about all I could tell. I could also tell that it was big (though probably not as big as it looked) and that it was pointed at me.

“Nobody move,” Littlefield said.

Nobody did.

“You’re right,” he said. “I killed them both, and I don’t know why you had to make a federal case out of it, because they both asked for it. Rathburn thought I was somebody else, and I couldn’t manage to stall the son of a bitch. I didn’t mean to kill him, not at first, but then when I switched a light on and saw him lying there I got a look at the library steps and saw how easy it would be to make it look like an accident. But that would only work if he was dead, so I picked up the pillow and put him out of my misery.”

“And Wolpert?”

“He knew I’d killed Rathburn. I don’t think he even knew what it was Rathburn wanted from the guy who never showed up, but he saw an opportunity to do himself some good by putting the squeeze on me. I tried fencing with him, but the little bastard was pretty slick. Before I knew it he’d managed to worm out of me that I had a briefcase full of stolen bonds, and he was all set to cut himself in.”

“Until you cut him out instead.”

“I lost my temper,” he said. “That’s the same thing that happened with Rathburn, when you come right down to it.”

“But you didn’t grab a camel this time around.”

“What I grabbed was his necktie,” he said. “Grabbed one end of it in each hand and pulled until his face got purple. I couldn’t figure out what to do with him, so I took him outside and parked him on a lawn chair and threw a sheet over him. I didn’t figure anyone would notice.”

“You didn’t figure anyone would notice?”

“Well, maybe I wasn’t thinking too clearly. It was late and I’d had a hell of a day, plus I’d helped myself to a couple of glasses of that Drum stuff. And I didn’t write it down in the book, either, Nigel. I’m afraid your honor system doesn’t work too well with guys like me.” He gestured sharply with the gun. “Hold it right there, Colonel. That’s as close as you get if you don’t want a bullet.”

I glanced at my watch again. Keep him talking, I thought. “Speaking of bullets,” I said, “I’m surprised you brought a gun along on your honeymoon. Your wife probably thought you were just glad to see her.”

“Funny,” he said. “The gun belonged to Wolpert. I took it off him when I dragged his body outside. He never got the chance to use it, but I’m in a different position.”

“You’re not wearing a necktie.”

“And I’ve got the gun in my fist already, and it’s got a full clip and a live round in the chamber. It’s a thirteen-shot clip, so you can do the math yourselves. If anybody makes a move I start shooting. I’ll shoot the men first, and if I run out of bullets toward the end I’ll finish the rest of you by hand. I never planned on killing anybody, but I already killed two people and if I have to knock off the rest
of you I’ll do it. What the hell are you looking at, Lettice?”

“My God,” she said, aghast. “I
married
you!”

“And we both know why,” he said, sneering. “You thought you were getting a rich husband, because I always had plenty of money to throw around. Well, this is how I get it. I steal it.”

“Are you going to kill me, too, Dakin?”

“I’m not going to kill anybody unless I have to,” he said. “What I want to do is figure out a way to get out of here with the bonds, and with enough lead time so that I’m in the clear before anybody can call the cops. The phone lines are out, so you can’t call anybody, but if I walk down to where I can ford the stream, somebody else can do the same thing after me, and it wouldn’t take you long to get to a phone that works.”

He paused, thinking it through, and I listened and heard something in the silence. At first I could just barely make it out, but then it got a little louder.

“I’ll need a hostage,” he said. “If I’ve got somebody with me, you’ll have to stay back, won’t you?”

“I’ll be your hostage,” the colonel said.

“You? Jesus, that’s just what I need is a fat old blimp with a stiff upper lip to drag around over hill and dale. If you didn’t drop dead from the exertion you’d be looking for a way to get the jump on me. No, the kid’ll be my hostage.”

“You son of a bitch,” Greg Savage said. He took a step forward, and Littlefield swung the gun in his direction.

“Not so fast,” he said. “I’m taking her with me,
whether I have to shoot you first or not. Listen to me, people. If you all cooperate, everybody gets out of this alive. All you have to do…What’s that noise?”

“Noise?” I said.

“Dammit, Rhodenbarr—”

“You mean that pocketa-pocketa-pocketa? Sounds like a helicopter to me.”

“A helicopter.”

“And it sounds as though it’s coming right here. I wonder who it could be.”

“How did—”

“It seems to be landing on the front lawn,” I said. Maybe it’s Mr. Pettisham, full of apologies for having been delayed. Maybe it’s Ed McMahon, Littlefield, to tell you you’ve won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. You’ll be a rich man even if you have to give the bonds back. My God, man, it’s your lucky day.”

He just stared at me. He didn’t say a word, and neither did anybody else. We were still silent when the front door opened and a group of men trooped through the hall and found their way to the library.

Their leader, the only one not wearing a uniform, was a big fellow in a gorgeous gray suit that looked as though it had been custom-tailored for someone else.

“Well, here we all are,” he said, casting his eyes around the room. “It’s Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s son Bernard, and it looks like you went and rounded up the usual suspects. You got the right to remain silent, all of youse, but I wouldn’t advise it, because the sooner we get this sorted out the sooner
we can all get home. And the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned, because I never seen so much snow in my life.”

“My God,” Carolyn said, “it’s Ray Kirschmann, and I’m actually glad to see him. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

But she had, and she’d live to see others, which was more than you could say for Dakin Littlefield. He gave a little cry of abject despair, then stuck the business end of the gun in his cruel mouth and pulled the trigger.

The big problem with automatics, or so they tell me, is that they’re apt to jam. This one didn’t.

F
our days later I was perched on a stool behind the counter at Barnegat Books, unwrapping a killer sandwich from the Russian deli around the corner. They use a particularly crinkly waxed paper, except I don’t suppose it’s actually waxed, I suppose it must be some sort of miracle polymer laminate designed to wreak havoc with generations yet unborn. Whatever it is, it’s noisier than the D train, and crumpling it never fails to get Raffles’s attention. He perked up, I feinted left and threw to the right, and he refused to be faked out, pouncing like a champion.

“I thought the layoff might hurt him,” I told Carolyn, “but he’s not the least bit rusty. I’ll tell you, though, he’s glad to be back.”

“He’s not the only one, Bern.”

“You said it. I suppose the country makes a nice change, but I’m a city boy at heart. I’d rather be on a bench in Bryant Park with life going on all around me. Give me the subway at rush hour,
a couple of fire engines with their sirens wide open…”

“I know what you mean, Bern. The simple pleasures.”

“Well, you know what Sydney Smith said about the country. He said he thought of it as a sort of a healthy grave.”

“All that fresh air, Bern. If you’re not used to it…”

“Exactly. It was starting to get to me. But all I really needed was a couple of days at home and I’m my old self again. Working in the bookstore, playing with my cat.”

“Same here. Washing dogs all day, then going home and watching my cats wash themselves.” She grinned. “And going out at night for a few pops and the chance of an adventure.”

“An adventure?”

“Last night,” she said, “I got a heavy dose of spring fever, because that’s what it is, spring, even if they haven’t got the word yet up in the Berkshires. So I went for a walk, and where did I wind up but the Cubby Hole?”

“What a surprise.”

“Well, I got smart feet, Bern. They took me there all by themselves, and—” She broke it off at the tinkle of tiny bells over the door, announcing a visitor. “Later, Bern,” she said. “It’ll keep. Look who’s here.”

I looked up, and there she was, the Widow Littlefield. I hadn’t expected her to be wearing black, and she wasn’t, looking quite spiffy instead in a dove-gray suit with a nipped-in waist. Her blouse was white, and her bow tie, floppy
and feminine, was the bright red of arterial blood.

“Bernie,” she said. “It’s so nice to see you. And there’s your sweet little cat.” She caught sight of Carolyn and her face darkened. “Perhaps this isn’t a good time.”

“It’s a perfectly fine time,” I said. “You’re looking well, Lettice.”

“Thank you, Bernie.”

“You remember Carolyn.”

“Your wife,” she said. “Except she’s not your wife. It’s very confusing. When you called, I thought you might want to come over to my apartment. Or that you’d invite me over to yours.”

“I thought it would be nice to meet here.”

“So you said. But I didn’t expect there would be three of us.”

“Four,” I said, “if you count the cat. And I can’t guarantee there won’t be more. You might find this hard to believe, but every once in a while I actually have a customer walk in here.”

“How nice for you.”

“But that probably won’t happen,” I said, “and until it does we can talk freely. I didn’t get much chance to talk to you after your husband ate his gun.”

She shuddered. “What an unpleasant expression,” she said. “And I wish you wouldn’t call him my husband.”

“You’re the one who married him,” I said. “I suppose you’ve got grounds for an annulment, but he saved you the hassle of getting one, the same as he saved the state the cost of a trial. You’re single again, and you’re in the clear as far as the cops are
concerned. How about Mr. Sternhagen? Is he letting you come back to work?”

“He insisted I take the week off,” she said, “but of course he wants me back.”

“I guess he was happy enough just to get his bonds back.”

“He got them back before he even knew they were gone, Bernie. And he realized that I was as much Dakin’s victim as he was. It was indiscreet of me to give Dakin an opportunity to have a copy of my key made, but Mr. Sternhagen knows I’ll never let anything like that happen again.”

“I guess it must seem like a horrible dream,” I said.

“It does.”

“But your eyes are open now, and it’s all over.”

“That’s right, Bernie. It’s just a good thing the police got there when they did. I still can’t understand how they managed it.”

“They used a helicopter,” I said.

“I know that.”

“So the road conditions didn’t matter,” I said, “and the unplowed driveway didn’t stop them, or the lack of a bridge across the gully. They just flew right over everything.”

“I understand all that part. How did they know to come in the first place? And how did they know they would need a helicopter? And the man in charge—”

“Ray Kirschmann.”

“He was a New York police officer, and he seemed to know you.”

“I noticed that,” I said. “Curious, isn’t it?”

“But how did he…”

“Bernie called him,” Carolyn said. “After he faked his own death by lowering a dummy into the gully, he walked downstream until he found a place where he could wade across.”

“No wading required,” I said. “Cuttlebone Creek was frozen solid. The only wading I had to do was through snow, and I don’t think you call it wading when it’s snow. It’s either trudging or slogging, and it seems to me I did a fair amount of both.”

“Then he doubled back on the other side of the gully,” she went on, “until he got to the parking lot.”

“The parking lot?”

“Right on the other side of the bridge, where everybody left their cars. He figured somebody would have a cell phone, and he opened car doors until he found one.”

“Didn’t people lock their cars? I’m positive Dakin locked ours.”

“I guess I got lucky,” I said. I didn’t tell her that a locked car is not the most challenging obstacle you can place in a burglar’s path. “I found a phone, and I was going to call nine-one-one but I couldn’t figure out what to tell them. So I called Ray Kirschmann, and don’t ask me what I told him. Don’t ask him, either, because I woke him up in the middle of the night and he couldn’t make sense of what I was saying. But he got the important part right.”

“And arrived in the nick of time,” Carolyn said.

I crumpled a piece of paper and threw it for Raffles. “Ray didn’t have any jurisdiction up there,”
I went on, “but he got in touch with the state troopers, and they tried to reach Cuttleford House and confirmed that the phones were out. So they broke out a helicopter and brought Ray along for the ride. And the rest you know, because you were there for it.”

“Yes.”

“So I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you here,” I said. “Today, I mean. This afternoon.”

“I thought you just wanted to see me, Bernie.”

“Well, it’s always a pleasure, Lettice. But there was something I wanted to talk about.”

“Oh? What would that be?”

“It would be the bridge,” I said. “The one that spanned Cuttlebone Creek, until it didn’t anymore.”

“What about it, Bernie?”

“You remember how the bridge wound up in the gully, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Gordon Wolpert slashed the ropes.”

“Right. And the bridge went tumbling into the gully, silent as Berkeley’s tree. And then the next morning Orris walked right off the edge, not even noticing that the bridge was missing.”

“I remember,” she said. “You explained it all in the library, before Dakin pulled the gun.”

“I keep picturing Orris,” I said. “Stepping right off into space like that. It’s a pretty funny image, wouldn’t you say?”

“Funny? The man was killed.”

“I know, but it’s right smack on the border of tragedy and farce, isn’t it? And how could he do a
thing like that? I mean, if he’d been running, say. Pursued by a bear, that sort of thing. But he was just walking, making his way through the snow, and all of a sudden there wasn’t any snow, or any ground beneath his feet, either. He must have been surprised.”

“I’m sure he was. Bernie, do we have to talk about—”

“Too surprised to scream, you’d almost think, but he managed to get a scream out. Can you imagine walking off a cliff like that, Lettice? In broad daylight?”

“You explained that he could have been snowblind, Bernie.”

“True.”

“And that he was intellectually challenged.”

“Also true. The nearest thing to dead between the ears, you might say. Still, he had the inbred cunning of the Cobbetts, didn’t he? You wouldn’t think he’d try to walk through the air. You want to know what I think, Lettice?”

“What?”

“I think he stepped on the bridge and started walking across, and the ropes had been cut partway through, and they snapped, and
that’s
how he fell.”

“But nobody heard the bridge fall.”

“Ah,” I said. “Nobody heard it in the middle of the night, either. Maybe there’s not that much noise involved. Maybe the shout Orris gave drowned it out, or merged with it so that no one noticed it. Remember, there was snow covering everything. That could muffle sounds. No, I think the bridge fell into the gully the very same time Orris did.”

“That’s what you thought originally,” Carolyn said. “Remember, Bern? When you first told everybody the ropes had been cut?”

“That’s right,” I said. “That’s how it looked to me, just from a quick examination of the ends of the rope. On one of them, it was easy to see where some of the fibers had been cut cleanly, and others looked as though they’d been stretched until they tore.”

“I don’t understand,” Lettice said. “What difference does it make? Maybe Wolpert didn’t want to risk making a lot of noise, so he just stopped cutting before the ropes parted. Or maybe what you said in the library was right, and Orris was in too much of a hurry to look where he was putting his feet. Either way he’s dead, and either way Wolpert was responsible.”

“You’re probably right,” I admitted. “Wolpert’s answering to a higher authority, so it’s academic whether he was purposely setting a lethal trap or just trying to keep anybody from getting across the bridge. And I don’t suppose there’s any real point in trying to salvage Orris’s reputation for quick thinking.”

I picked up a sheet of paper, but Raffles looked too comfortable. I didn’t have the heart to disturb him, nor did I want to risk throwing the crumpled paper and having him ignore it. I always feel like a jerk when that happens.

“So I’ll just let it go,” I continued. “The police have it all wrapped up, and they’re happy, so why confuse them?” I looked at the guileless face above the blood-red bow tie. “But I wouldn’t want you to think you got away with it,” I said.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“You know,” I said, “I’d have been willing to bet those would be the words out of your mouth, and what nonsense. Of course you understand.”

“But…”

There’s three dots instead of a dash after that
but
because I didn’t chime in and interrupt. I just let the word hang in the air, wondering if it would wind up falling into the gully.

Then I said, “You cut the ropes, Lettice. You and Dakin were the last people over the bridge. He got into the house before you did. You either lagged behind or pretended to drop something and went back for it, but it gave you time to get a knife out of your purse and start sawing through the ropes supporting the bridge.”

“Why would I do a thing like that?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “I’d be setting a trap for a person I’d never even met. You and I have been…
close,
Bernie. How could you possibly think me capable of such a thing?”

“You weren’t setting a trap.”

“But you just said—”

“If you’d had your way,” I said, “you’d have sliced right through those ropes in a New York minute. But minutes take a lot longer up in the faux-English countryside. And you didn’t have the right tools for the job.”

Carolyn asked me what I meant. Lettice just stared at me.

I pointed at her purse. “If I took that bag away from you and dumped it out on the countertop,”
I said, “I bet I’d find a cute little penknife with a blade shorter than your pinky. It’s a useful little accessory, handy for slitting an envelope or paring a fingernail or cutting a piece of thread. And you can even cut through a stout rope with the thing, but it’s not easy. You have to sort of saw your way through, and it takes time.”

She was silent for a moment, her arm pressing her handbag protectively against her side. Then she said, “Lots of women have knives in their bags.”

“I know. Some of them carry Mace these days, and some tote guns around with them. Small guns, though, not like the cannon Dakin took off Wolpert’s corpse. Little ladylike guns, same as yours is a little ladylike knife.”

“If I had a knife like that,” she said, “it wouldn’t prove anything.”

“It might if there were rope fibers in the casing. And if they matched the ropes on Cuttleford Bridge.”

She looked long and hard at me, then lowered her eyes. After a moment she said, “I never meant for anyone to get killed. I hope you believe me, Bernie.”

“I do.”

“‘I do.’ That’s what I said, standing up next to Dakin in front of the city clerk. That’s what started the whole thing.”

“What happened, Lettice?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Somehow I knew I’d made a mistake. I knew it days before the ceremony, Bernie. I suppose it was intuition, little hints I picked up. I knew I shouldn’t marry him.”

“But you did.”

“I almost got married a few years ago,” she said, “to a perfectly nice young man, and I got cold feet and backed out at the last minute. So I thought I was just doing the same thing all over again, and I told myself I had to go through with it this time. I was afraid to go to Aruba, Bernie. I think I knew something would happen to me there.”

“And that’s why you talked him into coming to Cuttleford House instead.”

“That’s right. And then driving up I thought, well, I can leave first thing in the morning. I can grab the car keys when he’s not looking and get out of there. And when we walked across the bridge…”