The Burglar in the Library

“No need to apologize,” the colonel said. “It could happen to a bishop.”

“It seems to me I had a walk round the downstairs,” Nigel said, “to see the house was settled in for the night. Cissy was already in bed when I returned to our room, and I joined her and, well, I must have dropped off right away. Next thing I knew it was morning.”

He’d been awake and dressed when Molly Cobbett discovered the body, he said, but hadn’t yet left the bedroom quarters. “We’ve our own en-suite bathroom,” he explained. “I say, I hope you won’t need to mention that to the others? All of the guests have to share, and they might resent it.”

“It’s your house, Nigel,” the colonel said. “You’re in it twelve months a year. I don’t imagine anyone would begrudge you a bog of your own. Was Cissy there when you awoke?”

“She woke up before me. But she was in our quarters, yes.”

“And neither of you left your quarters during the night?” I asked.

“Well, we wouldn’t have had occasion to, would we? Having the bath en suite and all.”

Cissy was next. She’d had hardly any contact with Rathburn beyond taking the imprint of his credit card when he checked in. She was quick to assure us, though, that he had seemed like a very nice man. All of the guests were nice people, she added, which was what made things so impossibly difficult.

“I know you’re all quite certain it couldn’t be a tramp,” she said wistfully, “and I do understand, believe me. But it would be ever so much nicer if it were. You can see that, can’t you?”

We agreed that we could.

“Because all of us here at Cuttleford House, guests and staff alike, are unassailably nice, don’t you see? And this is just not the sort of thing nice people do.”

I thought about this, while Carolyn and the colonel asked various logistical questions in an attempt to determine who was where when various acts occurred. I found myself contemplating various murderers over the years, trying to determine if any of them had been what you could legitimately call “nice.” Murder itself was not nice, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed to me that it was occasionally committed by nice people, or at least by people who appeared unequivocally nice on the surface.

Such was the case in my own experience, and such was most definitely the case in what I’d read, especially when English country houses came into the picture. A good part of the appeal of books set in English country houses, it seemed to me, lay in the fact that one wasn’t forced to read about the sort of person with whom one wouldn’t care to associate in real life. All of the characters were just as nice as you could hope, and yet you always seemed to wind up with dead bodies all over the place.

“Mrs. Eglantine,” I said. “Or should I call you Cecilia?”

“Or Cissy,” she said. “Everyone calls me that.”

“Cissy,” I said, “I’m sure you’re an observant woman. You’d have to be, ru

“One has to keep one’s eyes open,” she agreed.

“So I’m sure you’ve noticed some unusual behavior.”

“Unusual behavior?”

“Perhaps some of the guests are not quite what they seem.”

“Not quite…”

“Or a little more than appears on the surface.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” she said.

“Some of the others have noticed things,” I said. “Inconsistencies, odd behavior.”

“They have?”

“And reported them to us.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, frowning. “But you’ve only just spoken with Nigel, haven’t you?”

“There were some other informal discussions earlier. With some of the others.”

“I see.”

“And I can’t violate a confidence, but-”

“No, of course not.”

“But if everyone adds a little piece to the puzzle, soon the whole picture may emerge.”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” she said. “And there is something.”

“I thought there might be.”

“Except it’s really nothing, you see.”

“Well, of course it would seem like nothing.”

“It would?”

“It always does.”

“Ah,” she said. “I see. It always seems like nothing.”

“Always.”

“Well,” she said, “it was a look.”

“A look?”

“A glance, really. One person glanced at another.”

“And who did the glancing?”

“Mr. Rathburn. Poor Mr. Rathburn.”

“And he glanced at-”

“Mrs. Savage.”

“Leona Savage.”

“Yes. Millicent’s mother.”

“And Greg’s wife,” I said. “And Mr. Rathburn glanced at her?”

“He did.”

The colonel cleared his throat. “Men do glance at women,” he said, “although with every passing year I find it a little more difficult to remember why. But they do, and Mrs. Savage is an attractive young woman, and Mr. Rathburn is a vigorous young man. Or was, that is to say. So if Mr. Rathburn glanced at Mrs. Savage the way a man glances at a woman-”

“I’m sure that’s all it was,” Cissy Eglantine said.

“No,” Carolyn said, “you’re not. Are you?”

Cissy sighed, set her shoulders. “No,” she admitted. “I’m not. It wasn’t that sort of glance at all.”

“It couldn’t have been, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it. What sort of glance was it?”

“It was just a glance,” Cissy said, “and perfectly i

“Yes?”

“-was that they knew each other, and that they weren’t keen that anyone else should know this. But I’m sure there was nothing to it. I’m sure there was just something about her that reminded him of someone he’d known years ago, but only from a certain angle. And then when she turned her head the resemblance was gone. That happens all the time, doesn’t it? You think you recognize someone, but once you take a second glance you realize there’s really no resemblance at all.”

“That fellow Wolpert,” Rufus Quilp said. “He talks like a lawyer. You may have noticed.”

“Everyone talks like a lawyer,” Carolyn said. “I think Court TV’s what did it, that and the OJ trial.”

“Perhaps that’s all it is,” Quilp said with a sigh, settling his clasped hands upon his ample stomach. “He can’t actually be an attorney, can he? Because they’re all terribly busy, and Wolpert has the time to come here for a lengthy holiday.”

“He was talking about extending his stay,” I remembered.

“We’re all extending our stay now, aren’t we? Like it or not. No TV to be watched, either, Court or otherwise, so perhaps our Mr. Wolpert will lose his lawyerly aspect. If that’s where he got it.” He sniffed. “He certainly doesn’t dress like a lawyer. No Brooks Brothers suits in his closet. Tweed jackets with elbow patches, that’s more his line. Knows a lot about poisons, did you notice?”

“About mushrooms, anyway.”

“About everything. Could be a professor. Dresses like a professor, wouldn’t you say? Ought to be fiddling about with a pipe, forever taking it apart and cleaning it. Fit the image to a T.”

“You don’t like him,” Carolyn said.

“Don’t dislike him, either,” Quilp said. “No need to feel one way or the other about him, actually. Wouldn’t have said boo about him, but you did ask about little suspicions and observations.” He leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what it is. I’ve watched him eat.”

“You have?”

“I have. He picks at his food. I never trust a man who picks at his food.”

“Miss Dinmont can walk,” Millicent Savage reported.

“I think she said as much,” I said. “She was telling me that she has a first-floor room because of the wheelchair. She can manage stairs if she absolutely has to, but then somebody has to carry the wheelchair upstairs. If she can get up a flight of stairs, I suppose she can walk.”

“She was dancing,” the child said.

“Dancing?”

“In her room. She was all by herself, too, in her room with the door locked and the curtain drawn.”

“If the door was locked and the curtain drawn,” said the colonel, “then how could you possibly have seen her?”