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“So you didn’t have to go through the files.”
“No. I got in and out as quickly as I could.”
“And what did you do with the letters?”
“I took the purse back to my room,” he said, “where Karen was resting. I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what had happened. Who stabbed Miss Landau? I was sure she was alive the first time I saw her, and I know she was dead when I went back, and I swear to God it wasn’t me who stabbed her.” He stopped himself, frowned. “I,” he said. “It wasn’t I who stabbed her.”
“Well, it wasn’t me either,” Ray told him. “So keep talkin’.”
“You took the purse back to the room,” I said.
“Yes.”
“With the knife still in it.”
“Yes.”
“And the gun, of course. Landau’s gun.”
“Yes.”
“And what about the letters?”
“What about them?”
“What did you do with them? Because you couldn’t have given them to Kassenmeier or she’d have been out of there like a shot, mission accomplished. Where did you stash them, Carl?”
He sighed. “In the other room.”
“Which room? Room 303?”
“Yes. Karen was in my room, and I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t really have time to think.”
“And you stashed them there before you went back to your room.”
“Well, on my way. It wasn’t on my way, not literally, but…”
“I get the picture. I’ll be a son of a bitch. You must have been tucking them away while Isis and I were getting on a first-name basis in the sixth-floor corridor. You got the letters out of Landau’s room a few minutes before I let myself into it, and then you stashed them three floors below just before I came into that room off the fire escape. Why couldn’t you have put that envelope in the underwear drawer? Look what a lot of trouble you’d have saved me.”
“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 pla
“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?”
CHAPTER Twenty-two
“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.”