Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Library

“And that’s why you talked him into coming to Cuttleford House instead.”

“That’s right. And then driving up I thought, well, I can leave first thing in the morning. I can grab the car keys when he’s not looking and get out of there. And when we walked across the bridge…”

“Yes?”

“I thought, well, if we’re snowed in for the weekend, and if I can’t get away, then maybe I’ll get over this case of the jitters and settle down and be a wife. But I wasn’t sure if it would snow enough to keep me there. And I thought, well, if something happened to the bridge-”

“You’d be forced to stay.”

“That’s right. And I thought I would just cut the ropes, just like that, but they were thick and tough, and the cold didn’t make it any easier. I had to give up because Dakin was coming back up the path to see what had happened to me, and if he saw me sawing away at the ropes-”

“He might have wondered.”

“God only knows what he would have thought. I was going to go outside later and finish the job. In fact, I did come downstairs after I, uh-”

“Consummated your marriage.”

“Yes. I was going to finish what I’d started, but I was also all flustered because you had turned up at Cuttleford House after all, you and uh-”

“Carolyn,” Carolyn said.

“Yes. And I looked around until I found you, Bernie, and then I uh-”

“Finished what you’d started.”

“So to speak, yes. And then I thought of going outside again, but I was so warm and cozy, and pretty sleepy, too, and the snow was still coming down out there. And I found myself wondering why I’d wanted to disable the bridge in the first place. I didn’t have to seal off my escape route to make it through the weekend. Married life wasn’t going to be so bad.”

“Married life,” I said.

“Well, I don’t suppose I was likely to be the traditional wife, Bernie, baking cookies and mending socks.”

“No,” I said, “I suppose not.”

“I never thought anybody would get killed. To tell you the truth, I thought it would take a chain saw to get through those ropes. I didn’t realize I’d weakened them enough so that the bridge would give way if anybody set foot on it.”

“And then Orris fell to his death.”

“Yes. And I knew it was my fault.”

“But you didn’t say anything.”

“No, of course not,” she said. “What about you, Bernie?”

“What about me?”

“Are you going to say anything?”

“I just did.”

“To anybody else, I mean. You didn’t say anything to the police. I guess you hadn’t figured it out by then.”

“Sure I had. I knew Wolpert would have slashed right through those ropes, and so would anybody else who’d gone out there for that express purpose. There were plenty of tools that would have done the job. The kitchen was full of long sharp knives, and if you didn’t want to go that far there were loads of exotic edged weapons on the walls, like the kris I wound up using to ruin my parka. So I figured the sabotage was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and that’s when it came to me. Little Lettice, sawing away with a teeny-weeny penknife. Well, it turned out to be mightier than the sword, didn’t it?”

“What are you going to do, Bernie?”

“Me? Sell books until six o’clock or so, then go home.”

“You know what I mean. What are you going to do about me? Are you going to tell anybody?”

I shook my head.

“You’re not?”

“I told you. That’s enough.”

“Why?”

“Why tell you?”

“Yes, why? When you called, Bernie, I thought I’d wind up coming over to your place, and you’d put on your Mel Tormé record and we’d enjoy ourselves in front of your phony Mondrian. But that’s not going to happen.”

“Somehow I guessed as much.”

“It’s never going to happen, Bernie. You ruined it forever. Why? That’s what I want to know.”

“Well,” I said.

“Never mind,” she said. “Don’t tell me. I don’t really want to know. You won’t be seeing me again, Bernie. Goodbye.”

“She may not want to know,” Carolyn said, “but I do. What was that all about, Bern? Why’d you call her and make her come down here? And why schedule things so you got to play the scene in front of me? Not that I’m complaining, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but…”

“But why did I do it that way.”

“Right.”

I thought about it and took a bite of my sandwich. It had gone untouched since Lettice walked in, and an interlude like that can give you an appetite. I chewed and swallowed and drank some cream soda, and I said, “Raymond Chandler.”

“Huh?”

“It was a Raymond Chandler case,” I said. “Once I realized that, I went out and took action, instead of trying to put the pieces together like some English gentleman assembling a jigsaw puzzle in his drawing room. That’s why I did what I did that night while you were sleeping.”

“When did Philip Marlowe fake his own death and stab a dummy with a wavy knife, Bern? I must have missed that book.”

“Well, you know what I mean. And I certainly had Marlowe and Chandler in mind when I wrapped it all up in the library. The way I confronted Dakin Littlefield? Pure Philip Marlowe.”

“If you say so, Bern.”

I drank the last of the cream soda. “Maybe you can’t see it,” I said. “But the business just now with Lettice, that was Marlowe.”

“It was?”

“Uh-huh. I couldn’t let her think she got away with it.”

“You didn’t want to play the sap for her,” she said. “But that’s not Philip Marlowe, is it? It’s more like Sam Spade.”

“He wouldn’t play the sap for Bridget O’Shaughnessy,” I said, “but this wasn’t a matter of playing the sap. This was getting at the truth, no matter what it did to human relationships.”

“And the truth was that she cut the ropes.”

I nodded. “And there was no point bringing it up at the time, because it would just have confused the issue. I suppose she was guilty of something, whether it was malicious mischief or negligent homicide, because if she hadn’t whittled away at the ropes Orris wouldn’t have been killed. But how could you prove any of that anyway?”

“So you waited and brought it up now.”

“Right.”

“Why, Bern? Because you wanted an excuse to see her again?”

I shook my head. “Because I didn’t want to see her again. She tried to cut down a bridge. Well, I wanted to burn mine. You heard what she said, how she expected to wind up at my place listening to Mel Tormé. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.”

“Because you weren’t interested.”

“Because I was,” I said. “And I always would be, and there could never be any future in a relationship with someone like Lettice, or much of a present, either. So I wanted to fix things so that I’d never see her again. Now I can’t call her and she’ll never call me, and that’s the way it should be.”

She pursed her lips and let out a soundless whistle. “I think you did the right thing,” she said. “And I have to tell you, Bern, I’m impressed.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but don’t give me too much credit. I just asked myself what Philip Marlowe would have done, and then I went ahead and did it.”

“Raymond Chandler.”

It was an hour later, and I’d actually sold something in the interim, a nice set of Daniel Defoe. The customer was a lanky fellow who owned a batch of launderettes. He’d almost bought the set two weeks before, but I’d felt obliged to point out that it was missing a volume. Conscience may not make cowards of us all, but it can spoil a lot of sales.