The Burglar in the Library

“Or even if you didn’t,” I said.

We broke off to get into conversation with Colonel Edward Blount-Buller, a florid-faced gentleman in moleskin trousers and a tweed Norfolk jacket. We’d been introduced to him in the bar before di

“It’s the horns, don’t you know.” We must have looked puzzled. “The horns, the horns,” he said. “The long graceful tapering horns. What would he be without them, eh?” He held up a finger, its knuckle knobby with arthritis. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “Be a bloody na

“I’d rather be a live na

“Ah,” he said. “Well, you’re a woman, eh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No slight intended, I assure you. But the gentler sex has a more practical nature, takes short views. Better to munch grass and give milk than to take a bullet, eh?”

“If those are the choices,” she said, “I wouldn’t have to spend a long time thinking it over.”

“Without his horns,” the colonel said, “our springbok would have gone on grazing until age made him easy prey to a lion or a dog pack. He’d have left his bones bleaching in the hot African sun. The world would have long since forgotten him.” He gestured at the mounted head. “Instead he lives on,” he a

“A springbok,” I said.

“And a fine one, sir, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’re sure it’s not an oryx?”

“Hardly that.”

“Or an ibex,” I suggested. “Or an okapi, or even a gnu.”

“Fine beasts, all of them,” he said. “But our friend here is a springbok. You have my assurance of that.”

In the Sitting Room, the walls were given over to framed Ape and Spy caricatures from the old Vanity Fair, with not a single stuffed head to be seen. There were books, though, filling a three-tiered set of glassed-in shelves and propped between a pair of sailing-ship bookends.

I had a quick look at the books while Carolyn leafed through a year-old copy of Town amp; Country. When I dropped into the chair next to hers she closed the magazine and looked at me.

“Better books,” I said. “Hardcover fiction, most of it between fifty and eighty years old. Some mysteries, all by authors that nobody reads nowadays. A lot of general fiction. James T. Farrell, one of the books in his Da

“Are they valuable, Bern?”

“They’re both important writers,” I said, “but they’re not very actively collected. And of course the dust jackets are long gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘long gone’? For all you know they were there until five minutes ago.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I jumped to a conclusion, based on the fact that all but two or three of the books in the case are missing their jackets.”

“Then it’s a good thing they’re inside, Bern. In this weather, they’d freeze their flyleaves off.” She pointed at the window. “Still coming down,” she said.

“So it is.”

“You hardly looked at those books, Bernie. You just sca

“Well, I’m in the business,” I said. “When you look at books day in and day out, you develop a knack.”

“Makes sense, Bern. I’m the same way with dogs.”

“And it’s easier,” I said, “when you know what you’re looking for. There’s just one book I’m looking for, so I don’t have to take a careful inventory of everything else. As soon as I know I’m not looking at Raymond Chandler, I can go on and look at something else.”

“Like a springbok,” she said. “If that’s what it was.”

“What else could it be?”

“You named a whole lot of other things, Bern. You didn’t want it to be a springbok. How’d you learn so much about African antelopes?”

“All I know about them I learned from crossword puzzles,” I said, “and that’s why I didn’t think it was a springbok. It’s nine letters long, for God’s sake. When’s the last time you saw a springbok in a crossword puzzle?”

“You should have pointed that out to the colonel. Don’t you love the way he talks? I guess that’s what you call a pukka sahib accent.”

“I guess so.”

“If he were any more English,” she said, “he couldn’t talk at all. This is great, Bern. It’s not just that Cuttleford House is something straight out of an English mystery. The guests could have stepped right out of the pages themselves. The colonel’s perfect in that respect. He could be Jane Marple’s neighbor, recently retired to St. Mary Mead after a career shooting people in India.”

“People and springboks,” I said.

“And those two women we met in the Sewing Room. Miss Dinmont and Miss Hardesty. The frail Miss Dinmont and the outgoing Miss Hardesty.”

“If you say so,” I said. “I couldn’t keep them straight.”

“Neither could God, Bern.”

“Huh?”

“Keep them straight.”

“Oh. You figure they’re gay?”

“If this were an English mystery,” she said, “instead of life itself, I’d go along with the pretense that Miss Dinmont is a wealthy invalid and Miss Hardesty is her companion, and that’s all there is to the relationship.” She frowned. “Of course, in the last chapter it would turn out that the wheelchair’s just a prop, and Miss Dinmont would be capable of leaping around like a gazelle, or one of those other animals you got from the crossword puzzle. That’s because in the books things are never quite what they appear to be. In real life, things tend to be exactly what they appear to be.”

“And they appear to be lesbians?”

“Well, it doesn’t take x-ray vision, does it? Hardesty’s your typical backslapping butch, and Dinmont’s one of those passive-aggressive femme numbers. If you want to remember which is which, incidentally, try alliteration. Dim little Miss Dinmont and hearty horsey Miss Hardesty. As a matter of fact-”

She broke off the sentence when a small force of nature burst into the room. We’d encountered her before in another room-don’t ask me which one-but then she’d been accompanied by her parents. Now she was all by herself.

“Hello,” she said. “Have we met? I saw you both before, but I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. I’m Millicent Savage.”

“I’m Bernie Rhodenbarr,” I said. “And this is Carolyn Kaiser.”

“It’s ever so nice to meet you. Are you married?”

“No,” Carolyn said. “Are you?”

“Of course not,” Millicent said. “I’m just a little girl. That’s why I can get away with asking impertinent questions. Guess how old I am.”

“Thirty-two,” Carolyn said.

“Seriously,” the child said.

“I hate guessing games,” Carolyn said. “You’re really going to make me guess? Oh, all right. Ten.”

“That’s your guess? Ten?” She turned to me. “How about you, Bernie?”

“Ten,” I said.

“She already guessed ten.”

“Well, it’s my guess, too. How old are you, Millicent?”

“Ten,” she said.

“Then we got it right,” Carolyn said.

“You got it right. He just tagged along.”

“You’re disappointed that we guessed your age, aren’t you?”

“Most people think I’m older.”

“That’s because you’re precocious. That probably makes them guess you’re twelve or thirteen, but if you were you wouldn’t be precocious, and you obviously are. So that would make you about ten, and that’s what I guessed, and I was right.”

She looked at Carolyn. She was a pretty child, with straight blond hair and Delft-blue eyes and a crescent-shaped half-inch scar on her chin. “Is that what you do?” she wanted to know. “Do you work in a carnival guessing people’s age?”

“It’d be a good sideline,” Carolyn said, “but it’s a tough business to break into. I’m a canine stylist.”