The Burglar in the Library

“That’s great,” Carolyn said. “The two of you can run off and make a Dakin-and-Lettice sandwich. Meanwhile the killer sees who he can knock off next.”

That brought everybody up short. Miss Hardesty wondered how long we could expect the killing to go on. Miss Dinmont admitted she was frightened, and asked if anyone could furnish her with a pistol for her own protection, as she could neither fight off nor flee from an attacker. Mr. Quilp, who had appeared to have dozed off, straightened up in his seat and demanded to know what we were to do.

Someone suggested that we had to defend ourselves. That got the colonel’s attention. “Have to do more than that,” he said. “Best defense is a good offense, wot? Can’t just wait for the cavalry to arrive. Have to meet them halfway, don’t we? Find the damned murderer ourselves.”

“How?”

“Smoke him out,” he said. “Trap him, chase him into a corner, harry him until he drops. Attack him on the right, attack him on the left, attack him in the center. Cut off his escape route, sever his supply lines. Then crush him.”

It was quite a performance. You could almost hear a ti

“Good thinking,” the colonel said. “Daresay you’ve put on a uniform yourself, eh, Rhodenbarr?”

That made me stop and think. I knew what he meant, and the answer was no, I’d never been in the military. But had I ever worn a uniform? I went to prison once, I blush to admit, and they did dress us all alike, and not very stylishly, either. But would you call those prison grays a uniform?

Then I remembered my Boy Scout uniform.

“It’s been a few years,” I said.

“There’s a way of thinking that once learned is never forgotten, Rhodenbarr. Defense and offense, that’s the ticket. You have a plan in mind? An approach?”

“In a ma

“Good man. Let’s hear it.”

“First of all,” I said, “we have to make sure there are no more murders, and we’ll do that by sticking together.”

“You mean like this, Bern? All of us hanging out together in one room?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “That won’t always be convenient. But what each of us can do is make sure we’re never completely alone. If I always have somebody with me, then the killer can’t cut me out of the herd and do away with me.”

“Suppose the person you pick for company turns out to be the killer?”

It was Gordon Wolpert who offered this objection, and it was a good one. Others elaborated on the theme. If one of us was the killer, and if everybody was paired off with another person, that meant somebody would be buddied up with the killer.

“No problem,” Dakin Littlefield drawled. “Everybody pick a buddy and stick with that person. Then, next time somebody turns up dead, we’ll know it’s the person’s buddy who did all the killing.”

“That’s appalling,” Mrs. Colibri said. “But it’s not a great deal more appalling than the notion of being tethered night and day to another person. It’s all well and good for those of you who are married”-she glanced significantly at me and Carolyn-“or intimately allied, if unmarried. But what about those of us who are here alone?”

Someone said something about Greta Garbo.

“I don’t mean that I want to be alone,” Mrs. Colibri said icily. “But I’d as soon not share my bed with anyone, thank you very much, and I’m afraid I’m old-fashioned enough to prefer privacy in the bath. Add in the virtual certainty that one of us would be paired with the murderer, and you begin to see the dimensions of the problem.”

“Threesomes,” I said.

“I beg your pardon!”

“Not at night,” I said hastily. “During waking hours. If we divide into groups of three, that means two people will be buddied up with the murderer.”

“Safety in numbers,” the colonel murmured.

“Just that,” I said. “If A and B are buddies, and A’s the killer, he can wait for a quiet moment and knock off B. But if C’s part of the party, then he can’t.”

“What about bedtime?” Miss Hardesty wondered.

“That’s more complicated,” I admitted. “Millicent, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go back to sleeping in your parents’ room. Sleeping arrangements for the rest of us will need a little more thought. I think, though, that Mrs. Colibri’s concerns about bathroom privacy are satisfied by this approach.”

“If I don’t want one person in the bath with me,” Mrs. Colibri said, “what on earth makes you think I’d be happier with two?”

“Because they’d be waiting outside,” I said, “keeping an eye on the door, and on each other. I’m sure there will be lots of details that need work, but I’m equally certain we can work them all out. We’re well motivated, and that’s a help.”

“That’s good sense,” the colonel said. “Carry on, Rhodenbarr.”

“Well,” I said, and put my glass down, wanting a clear head. “I guess the first thing to do is make sure we’re all here. I can’t think of anyone who’s missing, but I don’t have a list of all of us.” I patted my pockets. “Or anything to make a list with, either.”

“One moment,” Nigel said. He ducked out of the room and came back minutes later with a clipboard holding a yellow legal pad. The top sheet was blank, but a skilled investigator could have rubbed the side of a pencil point very gently over its surface to raise an impression of what had been written on the sheet above. Why anyone would want to do so, however, was quite beyond me.

“Thanks,” I said, and clicked the cap of my ballpoint pen a couple of times, and tested it with a quick squiggle in the margin. “This will do perfectly. But I should have stopped you.” He looked at me. “You went off by yourself,” I explained. “And that’s something none of us ought to do. Until we’ve got ourselves organized, can we agree that no one will leave the immediate area without a companion?”

“Two companions,” Lettice said. “Threesomes, remember?”

Threesomes indeed. Somehow the word had a special flavor coming from Mrs. Littlefield’s lips, and it threw me offstride for a moment. “Two companions,” I agreed. “Although one companion might be enough on a brief errand of the sort Nigel just ran. Just so no one goes off on his own.” Or her own? Or their own? The hell with it.

“Now,” I said, clicking my pen again. “Let’s start with the staff. Nigel Eglantine. Cissy Eglantine. Present and accounted for.” I wrote down both their names.

“And the two serving wenches,” Dakin Littlefield said.

“The upstairs maid,” I corrected, “Earlene Cobbett, and the downstairs maid, Molly Cobbett. Both here, I see.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” I said, and jotted down their names. “And Orris, of course, who is accounted for but not present. How do you spell his name?”

Cissy Eglantine spelled it. “Like the root,” she said.

“And his last name?”

“Cobbett,” Cissy said, and Earlene Cobbett let out a desperate sob. She seemed utterly undone by Orris’s death, and I’d wondered what they’d been to each other. The news that they shared a surname failed to clear up the nature of their relationship. Were they brother and sister? Husband and wife? All of the above?

My confusion must have shown, for Nigel Eglantine moved to clear it up. “There are a lot of Cobbetts in the region,” he said. “Molly and Earlene are cousins, and they’re both Cobbetts. And Orris was a cousin of both of them. Have I got that right, Molly?”

“Orris was cousin to Earlene, sir,” she said. “And cousin and uncle both to me, cousin on my father’s side and uncle on my mother’s.”