Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

“I…”

“Where did you put them, anyway?”

“On a shelf in the closet.”

“And then you went back and told Karen where you’d put them.”

“Uh…”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“Not exactly.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That Miss Landau was dead. I didn’t mention the knife, though, so I guess she assumed she’d died from getting hit with the Scotch tape dispenser.”

“Hell of a way to go,” Carolyn said.

“So she thought she’d killed her.”

“I suppose she did, but then when the story came out on the TV news, she knew Miss Landau had been stabbed.”

“And then she must have thought you did it.”

“I told her I didn’t, that whoever got the letters must have found her knife at the same time, and used it on Miss Landau. I don’t know if she believed me.”

“So you didn’t tell her where you’d hidden the letters.”

“No. I thought she might find them when she went back to her room, but she didn’t. What she did find was that her rubies were missing.”

“My rubies,” Isis said.

“Well, yes, but by this time Karen thought of them as her rubies, and they were gone. I didn’t know what to think when she told me that. Was she lying, so that she wouldn’t have to share the proceeds with me? And if not, what had happened to them?”

“In the meantime,” I said, “I’d been arrested. And you knew I was a burglar.”

“But what would you be doing in Room 303? I decided it must have been the same person who stabbed Miss Landau.”

“Well, a person who’d stick a knife in a little old lady probably wouldn’t draw the line at jewel theft,” I said. “But let’s focus on that person and forget the rubies for a minute. Who do you figure it was?”

“I have no idea.”

“You know,” I said, “that’s hard for me to believe. I think you have a pretty good idea.”

He lowered his eyes. “I’ve thought about it,” he admitted.

“No kidding.”

“And I honestly don’t know.”

“But you honestly do have an idea.”

“No, I-”

“That person’s the reason you didn’t bring the letters back to your own room,” I said. “It’s the reason you didn’t tell your old buddy Karen that the envelope she swiped was on a shelf in her own closet. You were working an angle of your own, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t double-crossing Karen,” he said. “I was planning on giving her the letters.”

“When?”

“In another day or two. After I’d had a chance to-”

“To have copies made,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Because a certain person wanted copies,” I said, “and made you an offer for them you really didn’t want to refuse.”

“I never even met this man,” Lester Eddington asserted. “I need copies of all of Gulliver Fairborn’s correspondence, but I’m in no position to offer very much money, and I certainly wouldn’t be a party to a felony.”

“Relax,” I said. “It wasn’t you.”

“But who else would want copies? Moffett here is a collector. He wanted the originals, and anyway he was the one who brought in Karen Kassenmeier in the first place. Sotheby’s already had the right to auction the letters.”

“And I just wanted to give them back to the poor guy who wrote them,” I said. “But there was somebody else, somebody who wanted to write a book of her own. That’s why she recruited me, but she didn’t want to leave anything to chance, and she redoubled her efforts after I tried for the letters and came up empty. Well, Carl? Is she the one you think killed Anthea Landau?”

Carl didn’t say anything.

“Cat’s got his tongue,” I said, and turned to look long and hard at Alice Cottrell. “Well? Did you kill her?”

“Bernie,” she said, as if she’d just been stabbed in the heart herself, and by someone as dear to her as Brutus was to Caesar. “Bernie, I can’t believe you think I’m capable of murder.”

“You’ve been capable of enough other things,” I said. “You got me into this mess in the first place, making up a story about wanting to retrieve the letters for Gulliver Fairborn out of kindness. That way you’d get the letters without laying out a cent.”

“But that’s the truth,” she said. “That’s why I wanted them.”

“Because Fairborn wrote to you at your home in Charlottesville.”

“I may have told a few fibs.”

“Fibs?”

“White lies, then. I don’t live in Charlottesville and Gully didn’t write to me. But I knew how upset he must be, and I knew what a favor it would be to him if those letters could cease to exist. And I had passed your bookstore several times, and knew that its proprietor had a sideline career as a burglar-”

“What he is, he’s a burglar,” Ray put in, “with a sideline sellin’ books.”

“-so I thought I could persuade you to do something nice for a great writer.”

“And a mediocre one, too.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I get Publishers Weekly at the shop,” I said. “I don’t usually have time to read it, and there’s not much in there for a used-book dealer, but I finally got around to going through some back issues, and guess who’s got a proposal making the rounds? I forget who your agent is, but it’s not Anthea Landau. You’re going to be writing a memoir, aren’t you? All about your affair with Gulliver Fairborn.”

“That’s not all it’s about,” she said. “I’ve led an interesting life, and people will be interested in reading about me.”

“But just in case they aren’t, a little dirt on Fairborn wouldn’t hurt. You gave me a sample of what you were going to be writing, telling me more than I really wanted to know about one of my literary heroes. As it turned out, it was more than you knew.”

“I’m a fiction writer,” she said. “I suppose it’s natural for me to improve on the truth a little.”

“You weren’t going to return his letters, were you?”

“Eventually I might have. Or I might have destroyed them. Or I might have sold them to you, Mr. Moffett, or passed them on to you, Mr. Harkness. And I might have even run off an extra set of copies for you, Mr. Eddington. But what does it matter what I might have done? I didn’t get the letters.”

“You really wanted them, though. Even before I went into the Paddington, you got close to Carl and made him a similar offer. But instead of appealing to his better nature and making it sound like an act of charity, you put your body on the line.”

“That’s not a nice way to put it.”

“You didn’t have much to offer in the way of money,” I said, “but you’re sexy, and Carl was vulnerable. And you made it clear it wouldn’t cost him anything to get the letters for you. You’d copy them and return the originals, and he could do as he pleased with them.”

“Carl gets around,” Carolyn said. “He’s sleeping with Karen, and he still can’t resist Alice.”

“Karen and I were never lovers,” Carl said.

“Just good friends,” Isis said. “You got her to sleep in your own bed and you weren’t even tempted?”

“I always figured Carl was a little light on his feet,” Ray said. “But then why would he go for Alice here?”

Carl rolled his eyes. “If a man has manners,” he said, “or a bearing that’s in any way theatrical, people jump to the conclusion that he’s gay. It so happens I’m not. But some of my best friends are, and Karen was one of them. Not a best friend, exactly, but a gay woman.”

“So you weren’t interested in her sexually.”

“No.”

“But you were interested in Alice.”