Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Library

“We can manage.”

“If you’re quite certain. I’d send Orris with you, but he seems to have slipped off somewhere.” His eyes narrowed. “I say, is that a cat in there?”

It would have been difficult to deny, the animal in question having just announced himself with a meow like chalk on a blackboard. “He’s a Manx,” I said. “His name is Raffles.”

“Of course it is,” he said. “And of course he’s a perfect gentleman about, ah, bathroom habits and that sort of thing.”

“Of course.”

“Then I’m sure he’ll be quite at home here,” he said smoothly, “and I’m sure we’ll be glad of his company.”

“It’s nice that the rooms all have names,” Carolyn said. “It’s so much cozier than having a room with a number.”

I was at the window, watching it snow. It seemed pretty serious about it.

“More challenging, too,” she went on. “If they’d put us in Room 28, we’d have known to look for it between Room 27 and Room 29. But how would anybody know to look for Aunt Augusta between Uncle Roger and Cousin Beatrice?”

“And directly across the hall from Vicar Andrews.”

“That sounds a little scandalous, if you ask me. Maybe there’s rhyme and reason to it, but you’d need a copy of the family tree to sort it all out. This is a great room, though, Bern. Nice, huh? Beamed ceiling, fireplace, big window looking out at-what does it look out at, Bern?”

“Snow,” I said. “Whatever happened to global warming?”

“You only get that in the summer. Anyway, I don’t care how much it snows now that we’re inside. I’d rather look at snow than a fire escape and a row of garbage cans, which is all you can see from my window on Arbor Court. You know, Bern, all this room needs is one more thing and it would be perfect.”

“What’s that?”

“A second bed.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, this is a real beauty, a four-poster with a chintz canopy and all, and it looks really comfy.” She hopped onto it, kicked her shoes off, stretched out. “It’s even better than it looks,” she reported, “and if you were a beautiful woman I’d like nothing better than to share it with you. They made a mistake, huh? You told them twin beds, didn’t you?”

“I must have.”

“‘I must have.’ That’s a no, right?”

“I meant to, Carolyn.”

“You meant to.”

I sighed. “When I made the reservation,” I said, “it was for me and Lettice, and I specified a double bed. As a matter of fact, I made a special point of specifying a double bed.”

“I bet you did.”

“And when I sent them a deposit, I put that in the note I enclosed along with the check.”

“And then Lettice decided to get married instead.”

“Right.”

“And you brought me in off the bench.”

“To save the game,” I said. “And I realized we would be happier with twin beds, and I started to make the call, and I felt like an idiot. ‘Hi, this is Bernie Rhodenbarr, that’s R-H-O, right, and I’ll be arriving as scheduled a week from Thursday, but I want twin beds instead of a double. Oh, and by the way, Ms. Runcible won’t be coming with me. But Ms. Kaiser will.’”

“I see what you mean.”

“I figured I’d wait until I could think of a graceful way to do it, and I’m still waiting. Look, we’ve been friends a long time, Carolyn. Neither of us is going to turn into a sex maniac in the middle of the night. We can share a bed platonically.”

“I just wonder if we’ll get any sleep. This bed’s comfy, but it sags in the middle. We may keep rolling into each other.”

“We’ll manage,” I insisted. “Anyway, we’ll probably be sleeping in shifts.”

“I brought pajamas.”

“I mean we’ll take turns. The middle of the night’s the best time for me to check out the library shelves.”

“Won’t that be suspicious, Bern?”

“Why? What else do you do when you have insomnia? You look for a good book to read.”

“Preferably a signed first edition. So you figure you’ll be up nights?”

“Most likely.”

“So I’ll be all alone in a haunted house.”

“What makes you think it’s haunted?”

“If you were a ghost, Bern, would you pass up a place like this? The walls tilt, the floorboards creak, the windowpanes rattle every time the wind blows. You might as well hang out a sign-‘Ghost wanted-ideal working conditions.’”

“Well, I didn’t see any sign like that.”

“Of course not. The position’s been filled. I’ll be lying here awake and you’ll be downstairs looking for The Big Sleep. Bern, look at Raffles, he’s pacing back and forth like an expectant father. Open the bathroom door for him, will you?”

I opened the door and looked straight at a batch of coat hangers.

“ Bern, don’t tell me.”

“It’s an old-fashioned authentic country house,” I said.

“Does that mean they don’t have bathrooms?”

“Of course they have bathrooms.”

“Where?”

“In the hall.”

“Gee,” she said, “I sure am glad we’re not in some impersonal modern resort, with numbered rooms and separate beds and level floors and rattle-free windows and private baths. I’m glad we don’t have to put up with that kind of soul-deadening experience.”

I opened the hall door and followed Raffles through it. I came back to report that the bathroom was just down the hall, between Uncle Edmund and Aunt Petra. “And Raffles doesn’t seem to mind that it’s a communal john,” I added. “He found it perfectly suitable.”

“How’s he going to get in there by himself, Bern? If the door’s closed, he won’t be able to turn the knob.”

“If the door’s closed,” I said, “that means somebody else is in there, and he’ll have to wait his turn. If the john’s not occupied, you leave the door ajar. That’s how it works with communal bathrooms.”

“What about this door?”

“Huh?”

“How’s he going to get out in the middle of the night,” she said, “if our door’s closed?”

“Hell,” I said. “We should have brought a cat box.”

“He’s trained to use the toilet, just like a person. You can’t go and untrain him.”

“You’re right. I guess we’ll just have to leave the door open a crack.”

“That’s great,” she said. “You’ll be downstairs, and ghosts’ll be dragging chains through the halls, and I’ll be lying in here in the dark with the door open, waiting for the young ’un to murder me in my bed. This gets better every minute.”

“‘The young ’un.’ Orris? Why would he murder you in your bed?”

“Because that’s where I’ll be,” she said, “unless I’m hiding under it.”

“But what makes you think he-”

“‘Better to have him plowing driveways than locked away his whole life.’ What do you figure he did that made them lock him away?”

“But that’s the point, Carolyn. They didn’t lock him away.”

“It evidently crossed their minds,” she said, “and they decided against it. What do you figure gave them the notion?”

“He’s evidently a little slow,” I said. “Maybe there was some sentiment in favor of institutionalizing him for that reason, but instead it was determined that he could lead a productive life outside.”

“Plowing driveways, for instance.”

“And being a general handyman.”

“And lurking,” she said. “And drooling. And slipping into Aunt Augusta’s Room with an ax.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “when people are cranky, it’s because they’re hungry.”

“And sometimes it’s because they need a drink, and sometimes it’s both.” She got out of bed, combed her hair with her fingertips, brushed some imaginary lint off her blazer. “C’mon,” she said. “What are we waiting for?”