The Burglar in the Library

CHAPTER Twenty-five

They were all in the library.

I don’t know how she managed it, but somehow she’d rounded them all up. They perched on chairs and sofas, stood propped against walls and bookshelves, or huddled in twos and threes to talk, probably wondering why she’d summoned them all there.

Which could have been my opening line. “I suppose you’re wondering why she summoned you all here,” I might very well have said.

But I didn’t. I just walked across the threshold and took note of their reactions.

And they damn well reacted. Their eyes widened, their jaws dropped, and a few of them went a shade or two paler. Miss Dinmont’s hands tightened their grip on the arms of her wheelchair, Mrs. Colibri clutched at a bookcase for support, and Colonel Blount-Buller’s upper lip lost a little of its stiffness. There was a fair amount of gasping, but no one actually said anything, until Lettice Littlefield cried out, “Bernie! Is it really you?”

“In the flesh,” I said, and pinched myself. “See? You’re not dreaming, and I’m not a ghost.”

“But you were-”

“Down at the bottom of the gully, creased with a kris,” I said. “Except I wasn’t, not really. And one reason I burst in on you like this was to see which dog didn’t bark.”

That got some stares of incomprehension. “‘Silver Blaze,’” I explained. “What Holmes found significant was that the dog didn’t bark. Well, if somebody didn’t twitch or gape or go pale at my appearance, it meant he wasn’t surprised. And who would be unsurprised to find me still alive? The person who knew I wasn’t dead. And who would know that better than the man who didn’t kill me?”

“Well said,” the colonel allowed, and a couple of heads nodded their approval of my logic.

Then Leona Savage said, “I didn’t kill you.”

“Huh? No, of course you didn’t, and-”

“I didn’t kill you,” she insisted, “but I was surprised to see you here, because I saw what I took to be you at the bottom of the gully and consequently thought you were dead. I’m not the man who didn’t kill you, but I’m certainly one of the persons who didn’t kill you, and I was surprised nonetheless. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a heart attack.”

“An excellent thing,” I agreed, “and I’m sorry to have shocked you, but-”

“In fact,” she pressed on, “nobody here killed you, because you’re still very much alive. So I don’t see-”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Leona,” Greg Savage said. “You always do that.”

“I always do what?”

“That,” he said, with feeling if not with precision. “You know what he means, or you ought to. Somebody in this room is a killer. He killed Rathburn and Orris and the cook, and most recently he killed Gordon Wolpert. And the rest of us all assumed he’d killed Rhodenbarr here as well. But the killer, whoever he is, knew he hadn’t killed Rhodenbarr.”

“Because it’s the sort of thing a person would remember,” Bettina Colibri said softly.

“And consequently he wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “But I got a look at all your faces, and you all looked surprised.”

“I knew it,” Cissie Eglantine said, her countenance transformed. “We’re i

Nigel sighed, and I don’t suppose he was the only one.

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “For one thing, even if the killer knew I was alive, he wouldn’t necessarily expect me to turn up as abruptly as I did. Carolyn knew I was alive, because I’d told her what I was pla

“Well, you startled me, Bern.”

“I startled everybody,” I said. “That’s fair enough, because I was startled myself when I found out about Gordon Wolpert a few minutes ago. And I’m afraid I’m not done startling you.”

Miss Dinmont said she hoped there wasn’t going to be more in the way of excitement. Dakin Littlefield rolled his eyes and muttered something unintelligible to his bride. Muttering seemed to be the order of the day, until Carolyn called out, “Quiet, everybody! He knows who did it. Don’t you, Bern?”

“Did I? I wanted to hedge, to equivocate, to waffle.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I know who did it.”

There was a long silence. Then Nigel said, “I say,” and I realized they were all staring at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “It just seemed so decisive, putting it that way. You know what’s been wrong with this whole bloody business from the start? It’s too English.”

“Too English?”

“Too polite, too soft-spoken, too cozy for words. Of course Cissie keeps wanting the murderer to turn out to be a passing tramp. The alternative is to believe one of us did the dirty deed, and we’re all such jolly decent people it’s quite inconceivable. And I’ve been investigating the murders in the same decent earnest English ma

“And it’s not?”

“No, because this isn’t a cozy little English murder case at all. It’s tough and hardboiled, and it’s not going to be solved by pussyfooting around like Miss Jane Marple or Lord Peter Wimsey. This is Philip Marlowe’s kind of caper.”

“Philip Marlowe?” the colonel said. “Don’t believe I know the name.”

“He was Raymond Chandler’s detective,” I said, “and he knew about mean streets, and that’s what we’ve got here in this house once you peel the veneer away. We may be miles away from any streets, mean or otherwise, but it all amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Bern,” Carolyn said. “Look at the murder weapons-a camel and a pillow to start with, and sugar in a gas tank and a dagger with a wavy blade. In Philip Marlowe’s cases they mostly just shot each other, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but-”

“And he’d get hit over the head and fall down a flight of stairs. Nobody’s been shot, and nobody fell down a flight of stairs unless you count the library steps. The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next person to die gets murdered with tropical fish, and you know what Chandler had to say about that.”

“That’s all peripheral,” I said. “When you get to what really happened, it’s straightforward and it’s brutal. And there’s not a single tropical fish in it.”

“Jonathan Rathburn,” I said. “He came here by himself, took up residence in Young George’s Room, and began behaving like a man with something on his mind. He scribbled away in a notebook and sat around writing letters that nobody ever saw. And he stared at people. Someone mentioned noticing him staring oddly at Leona Savage, but it wasn’t because they were long-lost lovers or twins separated at birth. Rathburn stared probingly at just about everybody, at one time or another.”

“I just assumed he was interested in people,” Cissie Eglantine said.

“There was another guest who was interested in people, too,” I said. “Gordon Wolpert. He was very different from Rathburn, tweedy and mousy where Rathburn was brooding and flamboyant. But he too came here alone, and he was a keen observer of his fellow guests, and he liked a bit of gossip, too.”

“That’s true,” Miss Hardesty recalled. “He had a lot of questions about everybody, and he’d make dry comments.”

“Pleasant enough fellow, though,” the colonel put in. “Seemed a decent chap.”

“But he was a picky eater,” I said. “Isn’t that so, Mr. Quilp?”

“He picked at his food,” Rufus Quilp agreed. “Pushed it around on his plate.”

I looked to Molly Cobbett for confirmation. “He never ate much,” she said. “He would always say the food was good, but his plate would be half full when I brought it back to the kitchen. It bothered Cook some.”

“It bothered me,” Quilp said. “I never trust a picky eater.”

“Well, the man’s dead,” Greg Savage said, “so I think we can forgive him his lack of appetite. Maybe he was just watching his weight.”