Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Library

“The cook? She slashed the ropes supporting the bridge, and killed herself out of remorse at having caused Orris’s death?”

“I suppose now and then somebody commits suicide out of remorse,” I said, “but it sounds as though we’ve got an epidemic of it here. I’m sure the cook had a kitchen knife that could have sliced right through those ropes, but the only way she tried to keep everybody here was by cooking wonderful meals. She wasn’t B.”

“Then it must have been Mr. Rathburn,” Mrs. Colibri said. “You said the ropes might have been cut before the murder, so I suppose Mr. Rathburn might have cut them. He must have gone outside, and then when he came back Mr. Wolpert was waiting for him in the library.”

“Perfect,” Littlefield said. “All the perpetrators are dead and there’s nobody here but us chickens. Can we go home now?”

I said, “It wasn’t Rathburn.”

“That leaves Wolpert,” Rufus Quilp said, folding his hands on his stomach. “But how can he be B when he’s already A? He can’t be both letters, can he?”

“There’s twenty-six letters in the alphabet,” Millicent said. “Enough for everybody to have two.”

“But Wolpert only gets one,” I said. “He’s B, because he was the one who cut the bridge supports to seal off Cuttleford House. He’d been keeping an eye on things for days, waiting to see how the hand played out, and once everybody was here he wanted to make sure nobody left. But he didn’t kill anybody. He didn’t murder Jonathan Rathburn and he didn’t kill himself.”

“Then who did, Bern?”

“Someone who’s right in this room now,” I said, “and maybe he’d like to accept Colonel Blount-Buller’s invitation and identify himself. No? Well, in that case I’ll identify him. It’s Dakin Littlefield.”

“That’s it,” Littlefield said. “Lettice, grab your coat. We’re out of here.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t, eh, Rhodenbarr? Well, what do I care what you think? I don’t know who picked you to be the head wallaby in this kangaroo court, but I don’t have to listen to any more of it. The cook’s dead, our room’s drafty, and I’m not having a good time. And I don’t particularly appreciate being tagged as a murderer. The only crime I’ve ever committed was ignoring a couple of overdue parking tickets. Oh, and I jaywalked a few times, and years ago I tore off that little tag on the mattress that you’re not supposed to remove, though I’ve never been able to figure out why. But aside from that-”

“What about the bearer bonds?”

That stopped him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he managed, sounding about as convincing as if he’d said he never inhaled.

“You’ve got an envelope full of them in your suitcase,” I said. “I didn’t have time to count them carefully, but the total runs to a few million dollars. It’s a nice little nest egg to start married life.”

Lettice looked horror-struck. “Bearer bonds,” she said. “What bearer bonds? Where did they come from?”

She may have meant the question for her husband, but I answered when he didn’t. “From your employer,” I said. “I’m afraid that’s why Dakin came along looking to sweep you off your feet. You provided him with access to the back rooms of the brokerage house you worked for, and it didn’t take him long to find something to steal.”

“But that’s crazy,” she said. “I know what bonds you’re talking about. They were in the safe in Mr. Sternhagen’s office. If they turn up missing right after I go away on my honeymoon, I’m the first person the police would look for.” She turned to her husband. “How could you do it?” she asked him. “What made you think you could get away with it?”

“You were planning a honeymoon in Aruba,” I said. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Yes, but-”

“I think you were supposed to have an accident in Aruba,” I told her. “A mishap while swimming or boating, say. And your bereaved husband, traveling under a different name and carrying a different passport, would have returned to the States alone, perhaps stopping off in the Caymans to deposit funds in an offshore account. The authorities would be looking for you, all right, but you’d be dead and your husband would have ceased to exist.”

“That’s absolutely crazy,” Littlefield said. “You know how I feel about you, Lettice.”

“Do I?”

“Of course you do. The bonds were to give us a good start in our life together, and-”

“A good start! Eight million dollars is more than a good start.”

“Call it a start and a retirement fund all in one,” he said. “It would be a cinch for us to change identities in Aruba and go someplace together where they’d never find us. And it’ll still be easy, once we get out of here.”

“When were you planning on telling her, Littlefield?”

“When we got to Aruba.” He turned to her. “I wanted to make it easy for you to act natural on the plane. As soon as we got there, I was planning to tell you everything.”

“But you didn’t go to Aruba,” I said. “You let her talk you into coming here.”

“Yeah,” he said, “and don’t ask me why. There’s people knocking each other off left and right, and I’m the one who winds up getting accused of murder.”

“You didn’t want to come here when I first mentioned it,” Lettice remembered, “and then you decided you liked the idea.”

“I saw how much it meant to you.”

“It didn’t mean that much to me. I thought it would be a lark, that’s all. And I said since we already had reservations in Aruba maybe we should go, and you said-”

“Jesus,” he said, “I just wanted to make you happy.”

“You thought you could hide out better here than you could in Aruba,” I cut in. “Especially if you didn’t bother to cancel the reservations. By the time the authorities figured out that you never boarded the plane, you’d have had a chance to cover your tracks pretty thoroughly. You’d stay here a few days until the trail got cold, and then you’d head on out. It wasn’t a bad idea, but you picked the wrong place to come to.”

“We all did,” he said with feeling. “Why anyone would want to stay at this pesthole is beyond me.”

There was a cry from Cissie Eglantine, hardly the sort of utterance one had come to expect from Earlene, but expressive all the same.

“I liked the place just fine myself,” I said, “until people started dropping like flies. But the minute you got here, everything went haywire.”

“Why?” the colonel wondered. “I’m not surprised this chap’s a thief. I thought him a bad hat and supposed he lived off women. He has that air about him.”

“Thanks a lot,” Littlefield said.

“But what was the connection between him and the other two, Rathburn and Wolpert? Why should his arrival put the match to the powder keg?”

“They must have all three been in on it,” Miss Dinmont said. “Conspiring together, thick as thieves.”

“That’s crap,” Littlefield said. “I never met either of those birds before in my life.”

The colonel cleared his throat. “And we’re to take your word for that, eh, sir?”

“I’ll take his word,” I said. “Whatever his plans might have been for after he left Cuttleford House, Littlefield came here planning nothing more than a quiet honeymoon weekend. But he walked right into the kind of coincidence that’s evidently damn near inescapable in English country houses.”

I glanced at Lettice. “Coming here was Mrs. Littlefield’s idea. She’d heard that there had been a late cancellation. She called, and she learned that there had indeed been a party who’d called to cancel, and she got the room.”