Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Library

“I just assumed he was interested in people,” Cissie Eglantine said.

“There was another guest who was interested in people, too,” I said. “Gordon Wolpert. He was very different from Rathburn, tweedy and mousy where Rathburn was brooding and flamboyant. But he too came here alone, and he was a keen observer of his fellow guests, and he liked a bit of gossip, too.”

“That’s true,” Miss Hardesty recalled. “He had a lot of questions about everybody, and he’d make dry comments.”

“Pleasant enough fellow, though,” the colonel put in. “Seemed a decent chap.”

“But he was a picky eater,” I said. “Isn’t that so, Mr. Quilp?”

“He picked at his food,” Rufus Quilp agreed. “Pushed it around on his plate.”

I looked to Molly Cobbett for confirmation. “He never ate much,” she said. “He would always say the food was good, but his plate would be half full when I brought it back to the kitchen. It bothered Cook some.”

“It bothered me,” Quilp said. “I never trust a picky eater.”

“Well, the man’s dead,” Greg Savage said, “so I think we can forgive him his lack of appetite. Maybe he was just watching his weight.”

“But he was slender,” Leona said.

“Well, honey, maybe that’s how he stayed slender. By resisting the temptation to eat like a horse.”

“He wasn’t resisting temptation,” Quilp insisted. “He wasn’t tempted. The man simply did not care about food.”

“Maybe there’s something intrinsically suspicious about a lack of appetite,” I said, “and maybe there isn’t. I couldn’t tell you one way or the other. What got my attention wasn’t that Gordon Wolpert would never qualify for the Clean Plate Club. I was more interested in the fact that he lied about it.”

“What do you mean, Bern?”

“You were there,” I told Carolyn. “I think it was the first conversation we had with him. Wolpert said he’d extended his stay at Cuttleford House and might extend it again, because the food was so good. He even patted his stomach and made some remark about his waistline.”

“Maybe he was anorexic,” Millicent suggested. “I saw a program about that. These girls were starving themselves, but they thought they were fat.”

“Somehow,” I said, “I don’t think he fits the profile. Anorexia’s pretty scarce in middle-aged males. No, I think there’s a basic principle involved. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but whenever a politician answers a question that you haven’t asked, he’s lying. Gordon Wolpert was doing essentially the same thing. He was staying on longer than he’d planned at Cuttleford House, and he was offering an explanation when none was required. And the explanation was untrue-the food wasn’t what was keeping him here. That meant something else was, and it was something he wanted to conceal.”

“Brilliant,” Dakin Littlefield said dryly. “Only it’s a shame you didn’t ask him for an explanation before somebody tied a knot in his neck.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I told him. “I did what amateur sleuths always do-I waited until I could be absolutely certain. I suppose it has to be that way in the books, or otherwise they’d end on page seventy-eight. What I should have done was shoulder my way in and ask impertinent questions. But I didn’t, and somebody strangled him.”

The colonel cleared his throat. “So it was Wolpert who aroused your suspicions,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “I knew someone was sitting right here in this room with Jonathan Rathburn. I was on my way to bed and they were in here.”

“You never mentioned that,” Nigel said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“And you saw them in here?” Lettice said. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, Bernie. Who was it?”

“The lights were out,” I said, “and it was pitch dark inside, so I didn’t see anybody. I could hear that there was a conversation going on, but it was too low-pitched to identify the speakers, and of course I didn’t want to eavesdrop.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to resist,” Lettice admitted. “Didn’t you hear even a tiny bit, Bernie?”

“Not a word, and I didn’t hang around long. I was tired, and I’d had that wee dram of the Drumnadrochit. Besides, I was being well-bred and English, and it wouldn’t have been the proper thing to do. But it’s a pity I didn’t listen a little more closely, or just waltz right in and turn on a light. I might have prevented a murder.”

“Or watched it take place,” Miss Dinmont said with a little gasp. “If you’d walked in just as the murderer was swinging the camel-”

She broke off, all atremble at the horror of the idea.

“It would have been awkward,” I agreed, “but it never happened, and what did happen here at Cuttleford House this weekend has been awkward enough. What did we start out with? A perfectly delightful English country house-”

“It’s nice of you to say so,” Cissie murmured.

“-with a full complement of congenial if slightly dotty guests.”

This brought a harrumph from the colonel.

“Two men seemed out of place,” I went on. “Rathburn, with his penetrating stares and his furious bouts of scribbling, and Wolpert, at once praising the food and pushing it around on his plate. A picky eater, as Mr. Quilp has labeled him, and not to be trusted. My first thought was that one of them killed the other.”

“Mr. Wolpert killed Mr. Rathburn,” Cissie said.

“Well, it could hardly have been the other way around,” her husband pointed out.

“That was my thought,” I said, “but I couldn’t be sure. I knew how Rathburn was killed-the camel and the pillow-and I knew why, but-”

“Why?” Carolyn demanded.

“To keep him quiet,” I said. “He came here looking for somebody and he knew something, and he was a threat to somebody with a secret. I figured Wolpert had a secret, or why would he be disguising his reason for lingering here? So it seemed logical to guess that Rathburn had stumbled on the secret, or ferreted it out, and Wolpert killed him to keep his secret safe.”

“You know,” Dakin Littlefield said, “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’ve got to hand it to you. It sounds to me as though you’ve got it cracked. Wolpert’s the killer.”

“But Wolpert’s been killed himself,” Leona Savage objected.

“But was it murder?”

“What else could it have been?”

“Suicide,” Littlefield said. “Are you with me in this, Rhodenbarr? Wolpert kills Rathburn to keep his mouth shut-and incidentally, did you happen to find out what secret Rathburn had picked up on? I assume there was more to it than Wolpert’s lack of appetite.”

“I assume so too,” I said, “and I thought I might find a hint in Rathburn’s room. After all, he spent all his waking hours writing notes and letters. But either he found a great hiding place for them or the killer scooped them up before I got there.”

“So the secret died with Rathburn,” Littlefield said. “Well, what difference does it make, anyway? Rathburn knew something and Wolpert wanted to keep it dark, so he killed the fellow. In the ordinary course of things he’d have checked out the next morning and gone on home, but the bridge was out and he couldn’t get away. Eventually remorse overtook him, and he probably realized he’d be caught sooner or later. Who knows what goes on inside a man’s mind?”

“Who indeed?”

“So he did himself in,” he said. “Took the easy way out and did the Dutch act.”

“But there were marks on his neck,” somebody pointed out. “A sign that he’d been strangled.”

“Or tried to hang himself,” Littlefield said. “You know how people who slash their wrists have hesitation marks, little cuts they make while they’re getting up their nerve? It seems to me you’d have the same thing if you were trying to work up the courage to hang yourself. Say you stood on a chair with a rope around your neck, and before you kicked the chair away you bent your knees, just to get an idea of what it was going to feel like. The noose tightens, you realize this isn’t gonna be much fun, so you decide it’s simpler to live. But by that time you’ve already got rope burns on your neck, or strangulation marks, or whatever you want to call it.”