The Burglar in the Library

CHAPTER Ten

I stayed where I was, under the watchful gaze of the presumptive oryx, and I sat and mused. Was this the sort of thing that went on in English country houses? I swear nothing like it had ever happened in any Agatha Christie novel I ever read. Iris Murdoch, maybe, but not Agatha Christie.

Mine had seemed like such a clear and simple program-or programme, as young Millicent Savage would no doubt prefer it. Step One, get the book. Step Two, go home. But now, with an encounter in the Great Library having led to an interlude in the East Parlour, some sort of reappraisal of the agenda seemed called for.

First off, did we really have to cut out of Cuttleford House first thing in the morning? I’d wanted to avoid an unpleasant confrontation with Lettice, but I’d had that confrontation in spite of myself, and, while any number of adjectives could be pressed into service to describe it, “unpleasant” seemed an unlikely choice. It had been unanticipated, certainly. It had been unsettling, to say the least. But unpleasant?

Hardly that.

My role in the incident was one I would normally have found uncomfortable. There are those who hold that adultery is to adults as infancy is to infants, but I’ve always felt that a wedding ring on her finger places a woman off-limits. I haven’t always walked the walk, and sometimes I have in fact found myself grazing on the wrong side of a Keep Off the Grass sign, but by and large I’ve limited myself to single women.

Otherwise I tend to feel guilty and uneasy, and even if something gets started it doesn’t last long. But now, as I matched the glassy-eyed stare of the oryx with one of my own, an examination of conscience revealed neither guilt nor unease.

I felt terrific.

It certainly didn’t hurt that I’d taken an instant dislike to Dakin Littlefield. I’d loathed him at a glance, and I felt sure that a deeper acquaintance would see the feeling blossom into genuine hatred. One look at him was enough to determine he was no good. He was a cad, a bounder, and a bad hat, and he had a cruel mouth.

I didn’t really feel that I was poaching on posted land. After all, I’d been there first, enjoying a perfectly pleasant affair with Lettice before the son of a bitch came along and married her. Technically, though, I had to admit I was cuckolding him, and I can’t say it bothered me a bit. If anything, it gave me a special satisfaction to fit him with a pair of horns that would have been the envy of the oryx, the ibex, the zebu, and every other four-letter ruminant quadruped that ever stumbled out of a Scrabble dictionary.

If a run-in with Lettice was no longer something I had to take pains to avoid, what was the rush to get out of Cuttleford House? I’d gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get us here, and now that we were here we might as well stick around and enjoy it. There was a lot to enjoy-the food, the company, and the grand house itself, not to mention the odd wee dram of Glen Drumnadrochit. Why miss out on it?

First, though, I had to do something about that book.

In some of the country-house mysteries I’ve read, the houses come equipped with mazes. Characters wander outside and wind up getting lost in the maze. I don’t know if there are many real English houses with mazes, and I don’t know if anybody ever really gets lost in them, but there was no need for a maze on the grounds of Cuttleford House. The interior was a maze all by itself.

I don’t know how many ways there were to get from the East Parlour to the Great Library. I was tracing one of them, or trying to, when a wheelchair rolled out of a hallway on my right and just missed a collision with my foot. I stepped back, startled, and Miss Dinmont, for whom a backward step was an impossibility, shrank against the back of her vehicle and looked quite alarmed.

“Oh, Mr. Rhodenbarr,” she said. “You startled me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to.”

“But it’s I who should be apologizing,” she said. “Surely the pedestrian has the right of way in these matters.”

“It’s my fault,” I insisted. “I keep looking the wrong way before I step off the curb. I’m American, you see, and I can’t seem to remember that you lot drive on the wrong side of the road.”

“Oh, now, Mr. Rhodenbarr,” she said, and smiled a weary smile, and laughed a weary laugh. She was, I noticed, a pretty woman, albeit an exhausted one. “I was preoccupied,” she said, “or I shouldn’t have come so close to running you down. Have you seen my friend, Miss Hardesty?”

“Not since I saw her with you, and that was hours ago.”

“I think she may have stepped outside,” she said. “She’s mad about the outdoors, you know. And she loves weather.”

“There’s a lot of it out there to love.”

“I know. All that snow, getting deeper every hour. But that wouldn’t bother her.” She sighed. “I was in our room, waiting for her. We’ve a room on the ground floor. Miss Postlethwaite’s Sewing Room, it’s called.” She thumped the arms of her wheelchair. “Because of this,” she said. “It’s not terribly handy on the stairs.”

“I don’t suppose it would be.”

“I can climb stairs if I have to,” she said, “but it takes me forever, and then someone has to bring the chair upstairs, and it’s heavy. It’s awful, being a burden.”

“I’m sure no one would call you that.”

“Perhaps not to my face, but it’s what I am, isn’t it? Do you know what’s the worst thing about my situation, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

I didn’t, but I had a feeling she would tell me.

“Self-pity,” she said. “I am constantly beset by self-pity.”

“That must be awful.”

“You have no idea, Mr. Rhodenbarr. I am altogether powerless against it. I’m quite certain I’m afflicted with the most severe case of self-pity in the history of the human race. It saps my energy and wastes my spirit, leaving me with nothing to do but wallow in it.”

“You poor thing, Miss Dinmont.”

“Yes,” she said solemnly. “I am a poor thing indeed, am I not? I do wish I could find Miss Hardesty. There’s no one like her for jollying me out of a bad mood.”

“I can imagine.”

“But where can she have gotten to?” She gripped the arms of her chair. “Maybe she’s back at our room. She could have returned by one route while I went off on another in search of her. The layout’s confusing here, isn’t it?”

“Especially now, with the lights turned down.”

“And especially when one is in a wheelchair,” she said. “That makes everything just that much more difficult.” She managed a brave little smile. “But please don’t feel sorry for me, Mr. Rhodenbarr. That’s the one thing I’m quite capable of doing for myself.”

Maybe the conversation with Miss Dinmont had disoriented me, or maybe I was sufficiently addled to begin with. Whatever the cause, I took a wrong turn and wound up in the kitchen. I got out of there as soon as I realized where I was, and I’d walked through a couple of other rooms before it occurred to me that I’d missed a golden opportunity to raid the refrigerator. I was seriously considering retracing my steps when a small person darted around the corner in front of me and I had my second near-collision of the evening.

“Oh, hi!” this one said brightly, and I blinked in the dimness and recognized Millicent Savage. “It’s Bernie, isn’t it? What are you doing up so late?” She gaped, and put her hand over her mouth. “Don’t tell me,” she said.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You’re a burglar,” she said, “and these are your working hours, aren’t they? You’re about to break into Cuttleford House.”

“Why would I do that? I’m already inside.”

“That’s right, you’re staying here, aren’t you? I just met your cat again. He’s prowling the halls the same as you.”

“It’s a family tradition,” I said. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, Millicent?”

“Way past it,” she agreed. “I went to bed hours ago, and I was just falling asleep when I woke up, and after that I wasn’t tired at all. That happens to me a lot here at Cuttleford House.”

“Maybe it’s jet lag,” I suggested. “After all, England ’s five time zones away.”

“You’re silly, Bernie.”

“Everybody tells me that.”

“It’s probably the ghost,” she said. “Cuttleford House is haunted, you know.”

“It is?”

She nodded. “The man who built it,” she said. “His name was Frederick Cuttleford, and do you know what happened to him?”

“If he’s a ghost now,” I said, “then he must have died.”

“He didn’t just die. He was murdered!”

“He was not.”

“Are you sure, Bernie?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. “If I remember correctly, he had an apoplectic fit. And he was nowhere near Cuttleford House at the time. He had four or five other homes, and I guess he was at one of them when it happened, but I’m certain he wasn’t here.”

“Oh.”

“And his name wasn’t Frederick Cuttleford in the first place. His name was Ferdinand Cathcart.”

“Then what happened to Mr. Cuttleford?”

“There never was a Mr. Cuttleford,” I said. “The place was named after the creek. It’s called Cuttlebone Creek, and the name ‘Cuttleford’ must come from a spot around here where you can wade across the creek. It’s not where we came in, though, because you have to walk across a suspension bridge instead.”

“I know. Don’t you love the way it sways?”

“No,” I said. “But there’s still never been a Mr. Cuttleford, bridge or no bridge, and…what are you laughing about?”

“I made it all up!”

“You did?”

“Oh, not about the ghost,” she said. “I know there’s a ghost, but nobody knows who it is or what he’s doing here. I made up all that part.”

“You got the initials right. Frederick Cuttleford and Ferdinand Cathcart.”

“I got that from Carolyn.”

“Huh?”

“I met her in the hall earlier,” she said, “and I guess she’s scared of ghosts, so I told her the ghost at this house was a friendly ghost.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t say his name was Casper.”

“I said his name was Colin,” she said, “because I like the name, and it goes nicely with Cuttleford, don’t you think? And she said she thought the man who built Cuttleford House was named Frederick, so when I told you the story-”

“You improved it.”

“Just to make it a better story. Anyway, that’s why I’m awake. How about you?”

“I was reading,” I said, “and I lost track of the time.”

“I bet you were looking for something to steal.”

Time to nip this in the bud. “You know,” I said, “it made a nice joke, Millicent, but it’s beginning to get a little tiresome. I was just kidding about being a burglar.”

“You were?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What are you really?”

“Well, I’m out of work at the moment,” I said. “I’m hoping something will turn up soon. In the meantime, I’ve sort of been helping Carolyn out at the Poodle Factory. What’s so funny?”

She had both hands over her mouth, smothering a laugh. “The Poodle Factory,” she sputtered. “A factory where they make poodles!”

“It’s just the name of her salon.”

“And you work there.”

“That’s right.”

“Just to help her out.”

Kids. Why on earth do people have them? “And to pass the time,” I said.

“And you’re not really a burglar.”

“Of course not.”

“And you don’t break into houses and steal things.”

“Gosh, no,” I said. “I’d be scared, for one thing. And it wouldn’t be right to take things that didn’t belong to me.”

She thought this over. Then she said, “You know how I made up the part about Frederick Cuttleford? Well, I think you made that up.”

“About being a burglar.”

“About not being a burglar,” she said. “You know what? I don’t believe you. I think you’re a burglar after all, no matter what you say.” And she flashed me a demonic smile and darted around the corner.