The Burglar in the Library

“Somehow I guessed as much.”

“It’s never going to happen, Bernie. You ruined it forever. Why? That’s what I want to know.”

“Well,” I said.

“Never mind,” she said. “Don’t tell me. I don’t really want to know. You won’t be seeing me again, Bernie. Goodbye.”

CHAPTER Twenty-nine

“She may not want to know,” Carolyn said, “but I do. What was that all about, Bern? Why’d you call her and make her come down here? And why schedule things so you got to play the scene in front of me? Not that I’m complaining, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but…”

“But why did I do it that way.”

“Right.”

I thought about it and took a bite of my sandwich. It had gone untouched since Lettice walked in, and an interlude like that can give you an appetite. I chewed and swallowed and drank some cream soda, and I said, “Raymond Chandler.”

“Huh?”

“It was a Raymond Chandler case,” I said. “Once I realized that, I went out and took action, instead of trying to put the pieces together like some English gentleman assembling a jigsaw puzzle in his drawing room. That’s why I did what I did that night while you were sleeping.”

“When did Philip Marlowe fake his own death and stab a dummy with a wavy knife, Bern? I must have missed that book.”

“Well, you know what I mean. And I certainly had Marlowe and Chandler in mind when I wrapped it all up in the library. The way I confronted Dakin Littlefield? Pure Philip Marlowe.”

“If you say so, Bern.”

I drank the last of the cream soda. “Maybe you can’t see it,” I said. “But the business just now with Lettice, that was Marlowe.”

“It was?”

“Uh-huh. I couldn’t let her think she got away with it.”

“You didn’t want to play the sap for her,” she said. “But that’s not Philip Marlowe, is it? It’s more like Sam Spade.”

“He wouldn’t play the sap for Bridget O’Shaughnessy,” I said, “but this wasn’t a matter of playing the sap. This was getting at the truth, no matter what it did to human relationships.”

“And the truth was that she cut the ropes.”

I nodded. “And there was no point bringing it up at the time, because it would just have confused the issue. I suppose she was guilty of something, whether it was malicious mischief or negligent homicide, because if she hadn’t whittled away at the ropes Orris wouldn’t have been killed. But how could you prove any of that anyway?”

“So you waited and brought it up now.”

“Right.”

“Why, Bern? Because you wanted an excuse to see her again?”

I shook my head. “Because I didn’t want to see her again. She tried to cut down a bridge. Well, I wanted to burn mine. You heard what she said, how she expected to wind up at my place listening to Mel Tormé. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.”

“Because you weren’t interested.”

“Because I was,” I said. “And I always would be, and there could never be any future in a relationship with someone like Lettice, or much of a present, either. So I wanted to fix things so that I’d never see her again. Now I can’t call her and she’ll never call me, and that’s the way it should be.”

She pursed her lips and let out a soundless whistle. “I think you did the right thing,” she said. “And I have to tell you, Bern, I’m impressed.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but don’t give me too much credit. I just asked myself what Philip Marlowe would have done, and then I went ahead and did it.”

“Raymond Chandler.”

It was an hour later, and I’d actually sold something in the interim, a nice set of Daniel Defoe. The customer was a lanky fellow who owned a batch of launderettes. He’d almost bought the set two weeks before, but I’d felt obliged to point out that it was missing a volume. Conscience may not make cowards of us all, but it can spoil a lot of sales.

He came back and carried the books to the counter. “I thought about it,” he said, “and it struck me that a complete set would cost a good deal more.”

“No question.”

“And if I ever locate the missing volume, I can probably pick it up for a couple of bucks, and then I’d be way ahead of the game.”

“You would indeed.”

“So I’ll have something to look for, and I’ll enjoy that. And if I never complete the set, well, who cares? They’ll look fine on the shelf the way they are, and as far as reading them is concerned, hey, who am I kidding? I had to read Moll Flanders in college, and I read the Cliff’s Notes instead. Aside from the Classic Comic of Robinson Crusoe, that’s as far as I ever got with Defoe.” He patted the stack of books. “I intend to have a go at these,” he said, “but I’ll wait until I’ve read all seven volumes before I start pissing and moaning because the eighth volume is missing.”

So I bagged the books and took his money, feeling for all the world like virtue rewarded, and a little later the door opened again, and a familiar voice said, “Raymond Chandler.” And I looked up and it was Carolyn.

“The book,” she said. “The reason we went to Cuttleford House in the first place.”

“The Big Sleep.”

“Right. We saw it on the shelf, and it was still there after Jonathan Rathburn was murdered, and then a little later it was missing. What happened to it?”

“I took it.”

“You took it?”

“For safekeeping,” I said. “And so I’d have something to read.”

“Something to read?”

“In Rathburn’s room. I knew I was going to hole up there, and I didn’t know what I’d find on the bookshelves, so I stowed The Big Sleep in the top drawer of his dresser. It’s a good thing I brought it, too. The only books in there were Victorian romance novels by women with hyphens in their names.”

“And you actually read the book?”

“What’s so remarkable about that? Chandler ’s still a good read.”

“I guess it wasn’t the Hammett copy, huh?”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well, you wouldn’t actually read it if it was, would you? A book worth so much money?”

I opened a drawer, withdrew a book, opened the cover. “Nowadays,” I said, “most authors use the title page for a simple signature, or the half-title page for a full inscription. But Chandler didn’t do this sort of thing often enough to care about the proper form. Here’s what he wrote on the flyleaf: ‘To Dashiell Hammett, who put homicide in the mean streets where it belongs. I trust you’ll give this little volume a place on the shelf next to your own. With appreciation and friendship, Raymond Chandler.’”

“Wow! Talk about literary history. Can I see, Bern? That’s what it says, all right. But what’s this?”

“Can you make it out?”

“It’s a real scrawl, isn’t it? Did Chandler write this, too? It doesn’t look like his handwriting.”

“It’s not.”

“‘What a pretentious bore. Let him take his book and shove it up his prissy hero’s ass. Come to think of it, they’d probably both enjoy it.’ It’s not signed, Bern.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Don’t tell me, Bern. Is it…”

“It’s Hammett’s handwriting,” I said. “More of a scrawl than usual, but that’s how he wrote when he was drunk, and he must have been pretty far gone to write something like that. He certainly didn’t like the book enough to take it home with him, and I guess somebody stuck it on a shelf.”

“Raymond Chandler’s first book,” she said, “in nice condition, with an intact dust jacket. Inscribed by the author to Dashiell Hammett, and counter-inscribed by Hammett. And what an inscription!”

“It’s something, all right.”

“I guess it must be the ultimate association copy in American literature.”

“Well, if you found a copy of Tamerlane inscribed by Poe to the young Abraham Lincoln, it’d probably put this volume in the shade. Barring that, I guess it’s way up there.”

“What’s it worth, Bern?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “A fortune, but how big a fortune? I couldn’t even guess. You’d need to hold an auction to answer the question. It would depend on who showed up and just how badly they wanted it.”