The Burglar in the Library

CHAPTER Twelve

Any number of things can set a person screaming. A mouse, say, emerging suddenly from behind a piece of furniture, is apt to coax a cry from the lips of the right sort of woman. (In my experience, it’s altogether useless to point out to such a woman that the mouse is more afraid of her than she is of it. Few women seem to find this information comforting, and I’m not even sure it’s true. You rarely hear a mouse scream when a woman pops out from behind the sofa.)

By the same token, a scream might indicate that the screamer had just seen a ghost, or a potential assailant, or a winning number on his lottery ticket. “Scream bloody murder” is, after all, just an expression, and just because you’ve heard such a scream doesn’t mean you’re going to find a body in the library.

But we did.

I’d seen the dead man before, although we hadn’t met. He’d been in the Great Library the first time we visited that magnificent room. He was the one who had given Carolyn a bad moment when his gaze fixed on her. At the time he’d been seated on a fruitwood fiddleback chair in front of the little leather-topped writing desk, and he’d been writing letters, I’d assumed, scribbling away furiously, then pausing to cap his pen and gaze off into the middle distance, then uncapping the pen and scribbling anew.

Now he lay a few yards from the fireplace, and no farther than that from the shelf where I’d spotted The Big Sleep-and where I could see it still, I was pleased to note. He was dressed as he’d been the previous evening, wearing a camelhair blazer with leather buttons over a tattersall vest and dark brown corduroy slacks. His shoes were chukka boots, and one of the bootlaces had come untied.

He lay on his back, sprawled at the base of the library steps. His dark hair was still neatly combed, but blood had flowed from a scalp wound, staining the carpet beneath his head. His strong features were softened in death, and his dark eyes, which had gazed with such intensity in life, were as glassy as those in the stuffed oryx.

The oryx, of course, was nowhere to be seen, having remained on the wall of the East Parlour. This placed it in the minority, as almost every other resident of Cuttleford House had responded to the outcry the way automatic elevators respond to a fire in a high-rise office building. They rush right to it, mindless of the danger, and that was just what we had done.

The hour may have had something to do with it. It was the crack of dawn, and I don’t suppose Carolyn and I were the only ones who’d been sound asleep until the cry awakened us. If we’d been reading Jane Austen, say, or playing gin rummy, we might have responded in a more gradual fashion, instead of leaping out of bed, throwing on clothes, and plunging headlong down the stairs toward the source of the disturbance.

There were five folks in the library when we got there, not counting the dead man, and there were quite a few more by the time we’d caught our breath. The screamer, I learned, was a pretty little blonde named Molly Cobbett. She was the downstairs maid, and had come in to open the drapes and tidy the room, and had responded in traditional fashion when she suddenly came face to face with the late Jonathan Rathburn.

That, Nigel Eglantine informed us, was the name of the deceased. Eglantine had been in the library when Carolyn and I burst in, as had Molly Cobbett, of course, along with Colonel Edward Blount-Buller and the redoubtable Orris, whose eyes seemed to be set even closer together than I remembered them. Others were quick to join us-Millicent Savage, her parents, Gordon Wolpert, Cissy Eglantine. The cook stood off to one side, fussing with her apron and looking quite distraught, while a red-haired young thing with a complexion that was just one big freckle gaped at the fallen guest, at once appalled and delighted that life could be so like the tabloids. (She was the upstairs maid, I later learned, and a cousin of Molly’s, the daughter of Molly’s father’s brother Earl. Earlene Cobbett was her name.)

“Awful,” Nigel Eglantine was saying. “Hideous tragedy. Dreadful luck.”

“All of that,” the colonel said. “But not terribly difficult to reconstruct, eh? Easy to see what happened.” He cleared his throat. “Up late. Couldn’t sleep. Came down here, wanted something to read. Saw just the book he wanted but couldn’t reach it.” He laid a hand on the set of library steps. “Climbed these, didn’t he? Lost his balance. Took a tumble.” He pointed to the scalp wound. “Struck his head, didn’t he? Bled like a stuck pig, if the ladies will excuse the expression.”

The ladies looked as though they could handle it. One of them, the Hardesty woman, had entered the library during the colonel’s speech, pushing her companion’s wheelchair. Now she took up Blount-Buller’s account.

“No wonder he fell,” she said. “His shoelace had come undone. He must have tripped over it.”

“He should have tied it,” Miss Dinmont put in, “before climbing the steps. That was terribly careless of him.”

Carolyn looked at me and rolled her eyes. “I bet he learned his lesson,” she said dryly. “ Bern -”

“A terrible accident,” Nigel Eglantine said, taking up the reconstruction. “I suppose the fall rendered the poor man unconscious. Then he must have expired from loss of blood, or perhaps the skull fracture killed him. If another person had been in the room, the tragedy could very likely have been averted.”

“Or if he’d tied his shoes,” Miss Dinmont said. For someone who didn’t walk much, she had a lot to say on the subject.

“They might not have been untied to start with,” Greg Savage offered. Interestingly enough, he himself was wearing loafers. “He might have stepped on the end of one shoelace while he was adjusting his position on the steps,” he explained, “and then when he raised the other foot it would have untied the lace and tripped him up, all at the same time.”

“Exactly why I double-knot my own laces,” Miss Hardesty said.

“It could still happen,” Savage told her. “The lace wouldn’t come untied, but you could still step on the end and trip yourself up.”

Hardesty wasn’t having any. “When you double-knot the laces,” she said, “it shortens them. So the end’s not long enough to be stepped on.”

Savage admitted he hadn’t thought of that. Colonel Blount-Buller said it was all barn doors and stolen horses, wasn’t it, because no amount of double-knotted shoelaces would undo the harm that had befallen the poor chap. Mrs. Colibri, the older woman who’d been reading Trollope on the sofa while Mr. Rathburn was laboring at the writing desk, asked if the police had been called. No one answered right away, and then Nigel Eglantine said that they hadn’t, and that he supposed that would have to be done, wouldn’t it?

“Although one hates to bother them,” he added, “on a day like this. I suspect they have their hands full, what with better than two feet of snow on the ground.” He gestured at the wall of windows. “I couldn’t guess what state the roads will be in, and I know there’ll be no end of weather-related emergencies. I’m afraid an accidental death will be assigned rather a low priority.”

I glanced around. Rufus Quilp, the fat man who’d been reading or dozing the other times I’d seen him, had come in and was not only awake but on his feet. Even as I noted this, he eased his bulk onto a sofa. Off to the side, Lettice Littlefield stood next to her husband, her hand clasped in his. I smiled at her, then curled my lip at him. I don’t think either of them noticed.

The colonel was saying something about an unfortunate incident that had happened some years ago in Sarawak. I waited until he slowed down for a semicolon, then said, “Excuse me.”

The room went still.

“I’m afraid you ought to call the police right away,” I said. “I think they’ll want to get here just as soon as they can, no matter how deep the snow is.”

“What are you saying, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

I turned to Molly Cobbett. “When you came in here this morning,” I said pleasantly, “just what did you do?”

“I never touched him, sir! I swear to God!”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” I said. “I believe you said you opened the drapes.”

“Sure I did, sir. I’m always to draw them open in the daytime, so as to let the light in.”

“And was the room dark before you drew them?”

“It was, sir. Not full dark, as some light came in through the open door, from the other room, like.”

“But there were no lights on in this room,” I said.

“No, sir.”

“No lamps lit.”

“No, sir.”

“And there was a little light from the open door,” I said, “because dawn was breaking. But earlier, when Mr. Rathburn had his tragic accident, it would have been full dark, wouldn’t it?”

She looked at me. “I wasn’t here, sir.”

“Of course you weren’t,” I agreed. “But if you had been, and it wasn’t dawn yet and there were no lamps turned on and the drapes were drawn shut, you’d have found the room dark, don’t you suppose?”

Molly stood openmouthed, thinking about it. Nigel Eglantine frowned in thought, looking reluctant to take the thought the next step down the trail. His wife said, “Why yes, of course. It would have been pitch dark in here when Mr. Rathburn fell.”

“That might explain his stepping on his shoelace,” I said. “He wouldn’t have seen it had come untied. But what it doesn’t explain is why he’d be up on the steps in the first place. It would have been far too dark in here for him to find the steps, let alone pick out a book to read.”

Blount-Buller cleared his throat. “What are you saying, Rhodenbarr?”

“I’m saying it’s more complicated than it looks. Jonathan Rathburn would not have had an accident of this sort in a dark room. Either a light was on when he fell or what took place was rather different from your reconstruction of it.”

Cissy Eglantine said, “Molly, are you sure you didn’t turn off a lamp?”

“I don’t remember,” the girl wailed. “I don’t think I did, but-”

“It doesn’t seem likely,” I said. “The room was dark when she entered it. If there had been a light burning, she’d have noticed it. If she didn’t notice it, how would she happen to turn it off?”

“We don’t know what step he was standing on,” Gordon Wolpert observed. “But suppose he was mounted on one of the top steps. That would be quite a tumble, enough to give him that cut on his head and knock him cold. Might he not have landed with sufficient impact to extinguish a lamp?”

“If he fell on the lamp,” I said, “then it would certainly be possible. Or even if he didn’t, assuming he landed so hard that a floor lamp was overturned, or a table lamp sent crashing to the floor.” Another possibility occurred to me. “Bulbs burn out,” I said. “Of their own accord. It’s not inconceivable that a bulb was lit when he had his accident and burned out before Molly found him.”

“That must be what happened,” Nigel Eglantine said.

“In that case,” I said, “it’s still burned out, because I think we can all agree that Molly hasn’t had a chance to replace it yet. Could we try all the lamps and light fixtures?”

“All of them?”

“All of them. A burned-out bulb won’t prove the theory, but the lack of one will rule it out.”

As indeed it did. Every bulb worked, and once we’d established as much I had them switch the lights off again. We didn’t need them; with the whole world outside snow-covered, more than enough light was reflected through the wall of windows.

“Well,” I said.

It was a choice moment. They were all looking my way, waiting for me to say something, and the phrase that came unbidden to my lips was I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you all here. It’s a sentence I’ve had occasion to utter in the past, and the words have never failed to set my own pulse racing with the thrill of the hunt. But this time they weren’t really appropriate. I hadn’t summoned anyone, nor had they cause to wonder why they were here.

I was stuck for le mot juste. Cissy Eglantine helped me out.

“There must be an explanation,” she said.

“I can think of one,” I allowed. “Rathburn had a light on when he climbed the library steps and had his accident. He fell like Bishop Berkeley’s tree, without making a sound, so no one came running. But sometime afterward someone else passed the room and saw the light on. He or she realized the light shouldn’t be on, not in the middle of the night, and came in to turn it out. If it was this lamp, say, or that one, he or she couldn’t have missed seeing Rathburn’s body, because it would have been right in his or her line of sight. Damn it all, anyway.”

“What’s the matter, Bern?”

“He or she,” I said. “His or her. If nobody objects, I’m just going to use the masculine pronouns from here on.” Nobody objected. “Good,” I said. “The point is, there are other lamps that could have been lit that a passerby could have turned off without ever coming into line of sight of Jonathan Rathburn’s body. He could have walked in, turned off the light, and left the room without the slightest idea there was a corpse on the floor.”

A murmur approved this line of thought. Even as it died down, Gordon Wolpert cleared his throat. “I wonder,” he said. “Would you turn out a light in the library without taking a look to make sure there was nobody curled up in a chair with a good book? I should think simple manners would demand it.”

“Good point,” I said.

“And when you looked round, you’d almost certainly see Rathburn.”

“If you actually looked,” Carolyn said. “But you might just call out, ‘I say, anybody here?’ And, unless Rathburn managed to say something, you’d figure you had the room all to yourself.”

Wolpert thought that made sense, and no one else offered any objection. “Fine,” I said. “So there’s only one question left to answer. Who turned off the light?”

No answer.

“It would have to have been one of us,” I said, “and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing we’d be likely to forget having done. Did anybody here come in late last night or early this morning and switch a light out? Any of you?”

They looked at me, they looked at each other, they looked at the floor. Leona Savage whispered discreetly to her daughter, and Millicent piped up to deny that she’d even been to the library at the time in question, let alone turned out any lights. Her father supported her claim, pointing out that the child had never voluntarily turned out a light in her life.

“It seems no one turned off the light,” Colonel Blount-Buller said. “So it would appear we’re left with two possibilities. Rathburn climbed the stairs in the dark or the light went out of its own accord.”

“Neither of which makes any sense,” I said. “Here’s another-someone did turn off the light, but he can’t admit to it because he can’t let us know he was anywhere near this room last night. Because he murdered Rathburn, and he turned off the light to delay discovery of the body, never considering how suspicious it would look for Rathburn to be found in a darkened room.”

“But that’s plainly impossible,” Nigel Eglantine said.

“Why?”

“Because it would mean…”

“Yes?”

“That someone in this house committed murder,” he said.

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

“But none of us…”

“Not one of us,” Cissy Eglantine said stoutly. “If anyone actually did harm poor Mr. Rathburn, there’s no way on earth it could have been one of us.”

“Who else could have done it?” Miss Dinmont wanted to know.

“It must have been someone passing through the neighborhood,” Cissy said. “A tramp or vagrant of some sort.”

“In this weather?”

Everyone looked at the window. Outside, the snow lay sufficiently deep and crisp and even to gladden the heart of King Wenceslaus, and of almost nobody else.

“He’d want shelter,” Cissy said. “He couldn’t sleep outside on a night like this. And so he broke in, and-”

“And wanted something to read,” Mrs. Colibri suggested.

“And was drawn into this room by the light-”

“Like a moth,” Earlene Cobbett said, and then looked quite startled at having spoken the thought aloud, and clapped a freckled hand to her little mouth.

“And found poor Mr. Rathburn,” Cissy went on, “who had already died in an accidental fall. And then the tramp, fearing he’d be suspected of involvement in the death, turned off the light and left.” She heaved a sigh. “There, Mr. Rhodenbarr! None of us were involved, and it’s not a murder after all!”

“Darling,” Nigel Eglantine said. “Darling, that was so well said that I only wish it weren’t ridiculous.”

“Is it ridiculous, Nigel?”

“I’m afraid so, darling.”

“Oh. But-”

“There’s something else,” I said, and stepped closer to the fallen Jonathan Rathburn and pointed down at his eyes, which continued to stare vacantly up at us. I bent down, clucked knowingly, and got to my feet. “If you look closely,” I said, “you’ll see evidence of pinpoint hemorrhages in both eyes.”

No one went over for a closer look. Most of them stared instead at me.

“I don’t think he died of loss of blood,” I said. “He did bleed quite a bit, and it is possible to bleed to death from a scalp wound, but he didn’t lose that much blood. And it’s possible to strike your head and die of the effects of the blow, but I don’t think that’s what happened here. The kind of fall that could have caused that much damage would have been a noisy affair, yet nobody here seems to have heard a thing. I don’t think Rathburn fell from the library steps. I don’t think he mounted them in the first place. I think he was sitting down when his killer struck him.”

Greg Savage wanted to know what gave me that idea. I crouched down beside the corpse and pointed to the source of the bleeding, a gash high on the left temple, the area around it showing a lot of discoloration. “If the killer was standing over him,” I said, “and if he was right-handed and struck downward, well, that’s a logical place for the blow to land.”

The colonel wanted to know if a fall couldn’t inflict a similar injury. I said I supposed it was possible, but he would have had to bang his head on something-the bottom step, say, or the sharp corner of a table. In that case we ought to see blood on the surface he struck.

“But we don’t,” I said. “We don’t see the proverbial blunt instrument lying about, either, probably because the killer carried it off, but that’s very likely what was employed. A bookend, say, or a glass ashtray, or a bronze knickknack like that camel over there. In fact…”

The colonel followed me over to the revolving bookcase, and I caught his hand as he was reaching for the camel. “Best not to touch,” I said, “although I’ll be surprised if it hasn’t been wiped clean of prints. There’ll probably be microscopic evidence, though. It looks to me as though there’s blood on the base of it, but you’d have to run tests to establish that conclusively.”

“My God,” Cissy Eglantine said. “You can’t be saying he was killed with our camel.”

“I think he was struck down with it,” I said. “But not killed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the blow knocked him down,” I said, “and drew blood, and may well have rendered him unconscious. It might have eventually proved fatal-it’ll take an autopsy to determine that-but it didn’t kill Rathburn right away, and the killer didn’t want to sit around and wait. He knew better than to strike a second blow and try to pass it off as the result of a fall. So he used something else.”

“What?”

I pointed to the couch. “That throw pillow,” I said. “No, don’t pick it up, but have a look at it. I think the fabric’s stained, and my guess is the stain’ll turn out to be blood, and the blood’ll turn out to be Rathburn’s.”

Rufus Quilp blinked rapidly. He was sitting on the couch within reach of the pillow in question, and drew away from it now. “I was following you up to that point,” he said slowly, his voice thick as if with sleep. I don’t think I’d heard him speak before, and had barely seen him awake. “But now you’ve lost me. Are you suggesting that, having struck the man once with a bronze camel, your killer finished the job by swatting him with a pillow?”

If you’ll swallow a camel, I thought, why strain at a pillow? But I couldn’t say that, and before I could come up with something else to say, Millicent Savage said, “He didn’t hit him with the pillow, silly. He smothered him with it!”

“Millicent,” her mother said, “you mustn’t interrupt.”

“It may have been an interruption,” I said, “but she got it right. That would explain the pinpoint hemorrhaging. It’s a telltale sign in mercy killings, when a nurse or a relative hurries things along for a terminal patient by holding a pillow over his face.”

“If that is blood on the pillow,” the colonel said, “it would be damning evidence, eh? Couldn’t have got there if Rathburn was alone when he fell.” His eyes went to Mrs. Eglantine. “Hate to say it, Cecilia, but it rather knocks your theory of a tramp into a cocked hat.”

“I did so want it to be a tramp,” Cissy said.

“Because the alternative is insupportable,” the colonel said, “but I fear the insupportable in this instance is true. Nigel, there’s nothing for it. You’ll want to call the police immediately.”

Nigel Eglantine drew a breath, swallowed whatever it was he’d been about to say, and left the room. Dakin Littlefield came over for a look at the pillow, the camel, and the fallen Jonathan Rathburn. “I don’t get it,” he said. “If this killer went to so much trouble to stage an accident, why would he leave a bloodstain on the pillow and blood specks on the camel? He was inches away from a perfect crime and suddenly turned sloppy. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“I just said it didn’t,” he reminded me. “But I’m sure you’ve got an explanation.”

And I’m sure you’ve got an alibi was on the tip of my tongue, but I bit it back. “My guess is the accident was staged after the fact,” I said. “The assault must have been hasty, even impulsive. Afterward the killer was in a hurry to get back to…well, whatever it was he had to get back to. He didn’t want to linger there where anyone could walk in and discover him standing over his victim’s body. He took a minute to position Rathburn at the foot of the library steps, let him bleed a little into the carpet, then finished him off with the pillow. He gave the camel a quick wipe and put it back on top of the revolving bookstand. He probably didn’t see that the pillow was stained. Who knows if there was even a light burning when the murder took place? Rathburn wouldn’t have been looking at bookshelves in the dark, but he might have had a quiet talk in a dimly lit room, and how much light do you need to kill a man by?”

“Why not just carry the pillow away?” Littlefield wanted to know. “Why leave it around?”

“Where would he put it? In his luggage? Or on the chair in his room?”

“I don’t know, but-”

“It would draw attention anywhere else,” I said. “It would be least conspicuous in its usual position, on the couch where he’d found it. Even if he knew there was blood on it, he was better off leaving it there. His hope was that no one would be looking for blood, that the death would get a cursory inspection by the police, that the autopsy would be perfunctory and incomplete, and that Rathburn’s death would go into the books as an accident.

“If that happened,” I went on, “he was home free. If not, there’d be more of Rathburn’s blood to contend with than a stain on the pillow and a drop or two on the camel. A good forensic investigation would turn up blood drops all over the place, probably enough to establish just where Rathburn was sitting when the blow was struck.”

Some of the women seemed to draw in their shoulders, as if to avoid contact with all this blood that was allegedly all around them.

“In fact,” I said, “we probably ought to leave the room and seal it until the police get here. No one’s touching anything, and that’s good, but we shouldn’t even be here. This is a crime scene.”

“Quite right,” Colonel Blount-Buller said, “although I don’t know that the local police will treat a crime scene quite as Scotland Yard might. But you’re correct all the same, sir. Experienced in these matters, are you? Served with the police, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Not a private detective, I don’t suppose?”

I shook my head. “I’m a big reader,” I said, “and I read a lot of mysteries. And I watch a lot of TV. You know, locked-room cases? Impossible crimes? English-country-house murders?”

“Poirot and all that,” the colonel said.

“That’s the idea.”

“Never would have guessed it was quite so instructive,” he said. “Blood spatters, pinpoint hemorrhages, direction the blow was struck-you certainly seem to know what you’re about, Rhodenbarr.”

I was preening a little, I have to admit. It’s hard to avoid when someone with that kind of accent gives you that kind of compliment. I was busy enjoying the feeling when the good colonel went on to ask me just what it was I did for a living.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I’m out of work at the moment. My job was eliminated. Corporate downsizing, at least that’s what they call it. Getting more work out of fewer people is what it amounts to, and it’s a hell of a thing when you’re the victim of it.”

“Had some of that in the British army,” he said, “after we lost India.” His face darkened. “Might have put a better face on it if they’d called it downsizing. What did you do for the ungrateful swine before they cut you loose?”

“He’s a burglar,” Millicent Savage said.

All conversation stopped. I managed a laugh, and what a hollow ring it had in that huge room. “I was joking with the child last night,” I said. “I’m afraid she’s taken it seriously.”

“You say it’s a joke,” said the little horror, “but I think it’s true. I think you really are a burglar, Bernie.”

“Millicent,” Leona Savage said, “go to your room.”

“But Mommy, I-”

“Millicent!”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm. At any rate there’s no harm done, and-”

I stopped. Nigel Eglantine had come back to the room, a frown darkening his brow.

“I’m sure it’s the snow,” he said.

We looked at him.

“The phone,” he explained. “The line is dead. I’m sure it must be the snow.”