Lawrence Block: The Burglar in the Library

“I suppose so.”

“And you’d make a name for yourself. You’d be the man who discovered the Hammett copy of The Big Sleep. ”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the matter, Bern?”

“I’d be the man who let the world know that one great American writer scribbled an inscription full of fawning praise for another great American writer, who didn’t care enough about the book to take it home with him. Instead he scrawled a nasty little addendum to the inscription and left the book behind. Oh, I’d make a name for myself, all right. I’d be the man who smeared muck on two of his favorite writers.”

“They’re the ones who smeared the muck, Bern.”

“Well, I don’t have to be the one who points it out to the world.” I sighed. “I could make a few dollars,” I said. “I could sell the book privately and hope that word of the sale never found its way back to Cuttleford House. I could smuggle it back in the way I smuggled it out, make a big show of discovering it, and cut myself in for a percentage of what it would bring. But you know what I’m going to do?”

“If you tell me you’re going to burn it,” she said, “I swear I’m going to scream louder than Earlene Cobbett.”

“Burn it? Are you out of your mind?”

“No, but-”

“I’m going to keep it,” I said. “For God’s sake, Carolyn, this is the book Chandler took along to give to George Harmon Coxe. He wound up giving it to Hammett instead, complete with flowery inscription, and Hammett…well, we know what he did with it.”

“Right.”

“I don’t really think Edgar Allan Poe ever inscribed a copy of Tamerlane and Other Poems for a young Illinois lawyer, and even if he did I’m never going to have a chance to hold it in my hand, let alone own it. But I can own this book, Carolyn. No one will ever know it’s mine, but I’ll know.”

“Like the Mondrian hanging in your apartment.”

I nodded. “Exactly like the Mondrian,” I said.

“Lettice thinks it’s a fake, because how would you come to have a real Mondrian? You got it the old-fashioned way. You stole it.”

“I really enjoy owning that painting,” I said, “and the fact that it’s stolen doesn’t lessen the enjoyment a bit. So what if I can’t ever sell it? And so what if I can’t sell The Big Sleep ? I’ll get as much or more satisfaction out of sitting in my chair and looking up from my book at my painting. Then I’ll have another small sip of Glen Drumnadrochit, and then I’ll read some more Chandler and look some more at Mondrian.”

“Where did the Drumnadrochit come from?”

“ Scotland, originally. By way of Cuttleford House, because I stuck two bottles of it in my bag on my way out the door.”

“That’s a terrible thing to do, Bern. Two bottles?”

“Uh-huh. One’s for you.”

“Oh,” she said, and thought about it. “Maybe it’s not so terrible.”

I was reading Raymond Chandler and sipping Glen Drumnadrochit when the phone rang.

“It’s me,” she said. “ Bern, what about the cook?”

“The cook?”

“At Cuttleford House. Who killed her and why?”

“Beats me,” I said.

“But-”

“According to Ray,” I said, “they can’t determine the cause of death, beyond saying it was cardiac arrest. In other words her heart stopped beating, and it’s a rare case of death when that doesn’t happen. They couldn’t find any trace of poison, though it’s hard to say how thorough a toxicological scan they did. It’s possible she had a heart attack, or a brain aneurysm, or a stroke. On the other hand, when people are getting killed left and right, it’s hard to believe that a death like hers could be completely accidental.”

“She could have heard something on the radio,” she said. “A news flash, and it shed some light on what was going on, and somebody knew that she knew, and killed her.”

“It’s possible.”

“Or she could have witnessed something, or overheard something.”

“She could have,” I agreed.

“Or somebody else had it in for her,” she said, “for reasons that had nothing to do with Rathburn or Wolpert or Dakin Littlefield. And whoever it was just seized the opportunity.”

“Maybe that’s how it happened.”

“But which is it, Bern?”

I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see it over the phone. “We’ll never know,” I said.

“But-”

“It’s perfect,” I said. “It’s so Raymond Chandler. You know the story of when they were filming The Big Sleep? They were going over the script, and somebody wanted to know who killed the chauffeur. And nobody could figure it out, so somebody thought of calling Chandler, since after all he was the one who wrote the book. So they called him and asked him.”

“And?”

“He said he didn’t know. Isn’t that great? Just because he wrote the book didn’t mean he knew who killed the chauffeur. And we’ll never know who killed the cook. Just like Raymond Chandler.”

There was a long silence. “I don’t know,” she said at length. “The English mysteries may be a lot less realistic, what with people getting killed with tropical fish and all, but there’s something awfully satisfying in the way it all works out in the end. If a cook dies, by the end of the book you always know who killed her.”

“And it’s generally the butler,” I said, “whereas the real world is a lot less certain, and there are things you never do find out. I realize it’s frustrating, but you can live with it, can’t you?”

“What the hell,” she said. “I guess I’ll have to.”

The author is pleased to acknowledge the contribution of the Ragdale Foundation, of Lake Forest, Illinois, where this book was begun, and of John B. Keane's public house in Listowel, County Kerry, where it was exhaustively contemplated.

A Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, LAWRENCE BLOCK is a four-time winner of the Edgar ®and Shamus awards, as well as a recipient of prizes in France, Germany, and Japan. He also received the British Crime Writers’ Association’s prestigious Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in crime writing. The author of more than fifty books and numerous short stories, he is a devout New Yorker and enthusiastic world traveler. Readers can visit his website at www. lawrenceblock.com.

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