Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Library

“I just think it would be a good idea.”

She looked at me. “You think there’s going to be another murder,” she said, “but you won’t come right out and say so because you don’t want me to be scared. But if I’m not scared, I’ll want to go on staying in my own room.”

“It’s a poser,” I agreed.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “I think there’s going to be another killing. But I won’t be the victim.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I’m just a little kid,” she said. “Nobody’s going to bother killing me. You’re the one who should be scared.”

“Me?”

She nodded solemnly. “Somebody’s going to be murdered tonight,” she said, “and it might be you.”

An hour or so later I was in yet another sitting room. This one boasted no antelopes on the wall, just a couple of edged weapons. One of them had a wave-shaped blade about eight inches long, and I took it down from the wall to admire it. I couldn’t swear to it, but what it looked like to me was a Malayan kris, a frequent denizen of the very same crossword puzzles that welcomed the oryx and the zebu. I ran my thumb across the blade, decided it was sharp enough for headhunting, and hung it back on the wall.

I’d stopped at the bar first, where I’d poured myself a drink and made the appropriate notation in the book. I was making the drink last, just wetting my lips every few pages while I worked my way through Scoop, Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel of journalists in Africa. There’s a passage fairly early on in which a dour newspaperman reminisces about once having made and launched a dugout canoe, whereupon the thing sank like a stone. I was a little vague on the details, but I remembered that I’d laughed for ten minutes the first time I read the book. I didn’t know when I’d be likely to hit it, and I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be as funny this time, and that I’d wind up wondering why I’d ever thought it was funny in the first place.

Better to be anxious about that than to worry about being bridged and mushroomed and cameled and pillowed to death. While I couldn’t be sure how my favorite passage would hold up, so far the book was an excellent choice. There were, to be sure, hundreds if not thousands of books on the shelves that I hadn’t read, but this was a night to be reading something I could count on. I wanted to escape, but on familiar paths.

I’d passed Raffles earlier in the upstairs hall, and you’d have thought I’d done something to offend him; he paid me no attention at all, and he’d have sailed on by with his tail held high if he’d had one. He turned up again after I’d been reading for half an hour, having undergone a personality transplant in the interim. He came over, rubbed against my ankle, draped himself over my feet, and purred with such energy that I felt the vibrations clear to my knees.

He was still in place, still revving his motor, when I heard footsteps and looked up at Carolyn. “You know,” I said, “I’ve got a good book to read and good whisky to drink and a comfortable chair to sit in. I’ve got a cat who has the decency to act as though he loves me, even though we know how unlikely that is. It’s not a bad life. I hope I don’t get killed.”

She stared. “Why even say something like that?”

I told her what Millicent had said.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “She’s just a creepy little kid, Bern. It’s not like she’s holding down the first chair at the Psychic Friends Network.”

“I know that,” I said, “but it’s spooky all the same. It gives me a funny feeling.”

“Don’t say that, Bern.”

“Why not?”

“It sounds ominous, that’s all. And I’m feeling pretty spooked to begin with. I went upstairs just now and the door to our room was locked.”

“Well, sure,” I said. “That’s because neither of us was in it.”

“I know.”

“You’ve got a key, right? We’ve each got one. You didn’t lose yours, did you?”

“Of course not. But I was scared to use it.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid of what might be inside.”

“Like a dead body?”

“Or a live one, waiting to kill me. I don’t know what I was afraid of, Bern. I knocked, hoping nobody would open the door, and nobody did, and I came downstairs to look for you.”

“And here I am,” I said. “Let’s go upstairs. Maybe tomorrow’ll be better.”

“That’s what people are always saying,” she said, “and it never is. But this time it almost has to be. Maybe the cops’ll come and we can all go home. Except I love it here, or at least I did until everybody started getting killed.”

“Wait a minute, Bern.”

We were skirting the library on our way to the stairs when she tugged at my sleeve. I waited, and she darted inside. She came out with a facial expression I recognized from Japanese films-the samurai, moments before committing hara-kiri.

“ Bern,” she said through clenched teeth, “go in there!”

“Why? I’ve already got a book.”

“Just do it. And look at the shelf.”

“What shelf?”

“ The shelf.”

I went and looked, knowing what I’d see. The shelf held no surprises. And it didn’t hold The Big Sleep, either. Just a space where the book had been until someone snatched it away.

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “I don’t really want to talk about it, to tell you the truth, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“I don’t suppose it’s really very important, Bern. With people getting killed left and right, a rare book doesn’t seem all that significant. But the idea that it could just disappear like that…”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s not important.”

We were in our bedroom, and I didn’t want to talk about The Big Sleep, so I asked about Molly Cobbett. Carolyn’s expression turned wistful.

“She’s sweet,” she said, “and she’s full of stories about this part of the country, and about the Cobbetts clear back to Revolutionary War days. But I guess she’s more innocent than I thought, Bern.”

“You mean she’s only been sleeping with boy cousins?”

“That’s about it. Remember how I told you she was looking at me before? Well, I’m beginning to get the sense that she just stares that way at everybody. It’s what passes for manners in Cobbett country.”

“So I guess you won’t be sneaking off in the middle of the night to pay a visit the servants’ quarters.”

“Only in my dreams,” she said, and grinned. “And if tonight’s dream is half as good as last night’s, I won’t have anything to complain about.”

Getting ready for bed wasn’t all that much of a problem. Occasionally on a late night one of us stays over at the other’s apartment, and the business of changing to sleep-wear isn’t all that awkward, even in close quarters. It was being in the same bed together that was strange, and stranger still for my recollection of her dream of the night before.

I sat up and read, willing Evelyn Waugh to take my mind off pretty much everything it was on, and Carolyn sat beside me reading a book of her own, and I wondered who’d be first to switch off the bedside lamp. And then, of course, there was the sound of scratching at the door.

“Raffles,” she said.

“I’m afraid you’re right.”

“You want to let him in?”

“If we let him in,” I said, “we’ll just have to let him out.”

“Can’t we just leave the door open? That’s what we did last night.”

“Sure,” I said. “In a house where three people have been murdered so far.”

“You think a locked door could keep a murderer away?”