Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Library

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to find something to read,” I said. “Some book from some room other than the library. God knows there are plenty of rooms, and plenty of books in them, and I ought to be able to find something I feel like reading. I’ll take it upstairs and crawl into bed with it, and if it puts me to sleep I won’t complain, either.”

“ Bern, that’s not what you have to do.”

“I didn’t say it was what I had to do, I said it was what I was going to do, and-”

“There’s something else you have to do.”

“What?”

“You have to solve the murder.”

I looked at her. She looked back at me. Conversations, pitched too low to be overheard, continued at the other tables. Outside, you could hear the sound of someone trying to get an engine to turn over. Orris, I thought, having a go at snowblowing.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

“Who else is going to solve it? Nigel Eglantine pours a good drink, but he couldn’t solve a jigsaw puzzle. The colonel’s used to being in charge, and that’s helpful, but he’s a straightforward military type. What does he know about the criminal mind?”

“Not much,” I said. “On the other hand, what do I know about the criminal mind?”

“Well, you’ve got one, Bern, and you’ve been using it for years. Come on, who else has a chance of trapping the killer?”

“How about the cops?”

“In the first place,” she said, “they’re going to be hick cops with a strong family resemblance to Orris. The folks who live around here have been marrying their cousins for centuries. They’ve been diving into the shallow end of the gene pool, and you can get hurt that way.”

“For all you know,” I said, “the county sheriff is a retired FBI agent with a law degree and a mind like a steel trap.”

“What if he is? And what kind of mind has a steel trap got, anyway? Anyhow, he’s not here, and he’s not likely to get here for a while, either. Bern, we’re snowed in, and that means he’s snowed out.”

“Hear that?”

“Hear what, Bern?”

I pointed. “The snowblower. He was having trouble getting it started, but it’s running now. Pretty soon he’ll have a path cleared to the bridge, and then he’ll be in the Jeep plowing the driveway clear to the highway. And before you know it this place’ll be crawling with cops.”

“Retarded cops.”

“Well-trained professional law enforcement officers,” I said, “led by an L.L.B. from Harvard Law.”

“If he’s got an L.L.B.,” she said, “the chances are he got it from L. L. Bean. But even if he’s good, Bern, even if he’s another Ray Kirschmann-”

“Bite your tongue,” I said.

“-we can’t afford to wait for him. Because by the time he gets here it’ll be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“Not what. Who.”

“Huh?”

“I mean whom. Too late for whom.”

“What are you talking about, Carolyn?”

She cocked her head. “That doesn’t sound right to me, Bern.”

“ Whom doesn’t sound right to you? It should, it’s the object of the preposition for. ‘Too late for whom.’ Sounds okay to me.”

“The engine,” she said. “The snowblower. It’s making a horrible noise.”

It was at that, cranking out an unpleasant metal-on-metal sound, a sort of mechanical death rattle.

“Maybe that’s the way they’re supposed to sound,” I offered.

“Fat chance, Bern.”

“How can you be sure? When did you ever hear a snowblower before? Anyway, it stopped. It’s quiet now.”

“Yeah,” she said, and looked around. She might have been sniffing the wind, like a cowboy in a celluloid western. “Too quiet,” she said ominously. “It’s too quiet, and it’s gonna be too late. Too late for…”

“Whom,” I said, feeling like a grammatical owl.

“For the next victim,” she said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s because I can’t believe I really heard you say that. ‘For the next victim’? What makes you think there’s going to be another victim?”

“There has to be.”

“Why?”

“Because there always is.”

“There always is?”

“You’ve read the books, Bern.”

“This isn’t a book, Carolyn.”

“It’s not? Well, it might as well be. It’s got all the ingredients. It’s not Raymond Chandler’s mean streets, not by a long shot. It’s the kind of setting he despised, where people commit murders with tropical fish.”

“How would you kill somebody with guppies?” I wondered.

“Maybe you’d use swordtails,” she said, “and run them through. I don’t know. All I really know is the killer’s already used a camel and a pillow, and you can’t make me believe he’s going to stop there. He’s sure to strike again unless we do something.”

“Do what?”

“Catch him,” she said. “Unmask him.”

“How?”

“Why are you asking me, Bern? You’re the expert.”

“The hell I am.”

“Of course you are. Look at all the times you’ve solved the mystery and caught the murderer.”

“Only because I had to. Every time it happened it was because I fumbled my way into a mess and so I had to fumble my way out of it.”

“Well?”

“I didn’t fumble my way here,” I said. “I came here on vacation.”

“And to steal a book, which you haven’t stolen yet. And to forget a woman, who’s going to be hard to forget the way things are shaping up. Bern, some people would call this fumbling.”

“I call it bad luck.”

“Call it anything you want. Bern, you know what always happens in the books? The detective hesitates. He’s figured things out but he won’t tell anybody because he wants to wait until he’s absolutely certain. And then, after the killer strikes again, he feels terrible.”

“They call that remorse.”

“Not the killer, for God’s sake. The detective’s the one who feels terrible. ‘Soccer blew,’ he says. ‘It is my fault. If only-’”

“Soccer blew?”

“You know, soccer blew. It’s just an expression. Poirot says it all the time.”

“ Sacre bleu, ” I said.

“That’s what I said, soccer blew. Don’t ask me what it’s supposed to mean. Bern, all I know is you better do something, or there’s gonna be another dead body in the library and you’re gonna be saying soccer blew all over the place. Why are you looking at me like that, Bern?”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.”

“You really think there’s going to be another murder.”

“I’d bet anything there is.”

“Unless I do something.”

She nodded. “But even if you do,” she said, “it’s probably too late.”

“Too late to keep the killer from striking a second time.”

“Right.”

“Who’s it going to be?”

“The second victim? How can I answer that, Bern? Only one person knows, and…God, you don’t suspect me, do you?”

“I don’t suspect anybody,” I said. “I just thought you might have a hunch, that’s all.”

She leaned forward, lowered her voice another notch. “It’ll be somebody who’s staying here,” she said. “Somebody who was in the library earlier while you were explaining why Rathburn’s death had to be murder. Somebody who probably had important information but didn’t say anything at the time. Bern, it could be somebody here in this room right now.”

Her first three speculations were on the money. But, as it turned out, the second victim wasn’t in the Breakfast Room when she spoke those words. He wasn’t even in the house.