The Burglar in the Rye

CHAPTER Twenty-three

I have to say the fresh air was welcome. Isis Gauthier’s room was larger than the one I’d had, and it was a help having the window open, but all the same it got a little close in there. A little cross-ventilation didn’t hurt a bit.

Even so, the room seemed to be holding its collective breath while the door was open. When it swung closed and clicked shut, the energy in the room picked up.

“Well,” Hilliard Moffett said, running a hand through his mop of curls. “I’m glad that’s out of the way.”

“You said it,” Lester Eddington said.

“It took long enough,” Victor Harkness said, “but it’s done, and the wretched woman’s gone, and we can get on with it.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “A very complicated series of events just got sorted out, and a murderer exposed and brought to justice. And you think that was just something to get out of the way?”

“It’s not why we’re here,” Moffett said.

“It’s why I summoned you all here,” I said. “In case you were wondering.”

“But it’s not why we’re here,” Lester Eddington said. “It’s why you’re here, and it may be why that woman-Erica?”

“Erica,” Carolyn said.

“It may be why she was here, and quite clearly it’s why the police were here. But several of us are here because of the letters.”

“Ah,” I said. “The letters.”

“From Gulliver Fairborn to his agent, Anthea Landau.”

“Those letters,” I said.

“The last we heard,” Moffett said, with a nod toward Alice, “she had them.”

“But not for long,” Alice said.

“Now whose fault was that? You called to tell me you’d shredded and burned the letters. They were gone, you assured me, and you’d already notified Fairborn, and he was relieved. And you were on your way home to Virginia. In fact you had to cut our conversation short so you could catch a plane.” I gave her my best sidelong look. “Another fib, Alice?”

“You’d already put yourself in jeopardy on my account,” she said, “getting arrested and having to spend the night in jail. And I didn’t want you to keep on looking for something you wouldn’t be able to find. So I told, yes, another white lie to put you at ease and keep you out of harm’s way.”

“That was considerate,” I said. “And I have to say it worked. I haven’t been locked up since.”

“But then you stole the letters from me,” she said. “Didn’t you?”

“I had a phone number for you,” I said, “even if you never seemed to be there to answer it. Ray came up with an address to go with it, and I packed up my picks and probes and did what I do best.”

“And you have them?” Moffett demanded.

“He must,” Alice said, “because I’m sure I don’t.” She shook her head sadly. “If I’d just had a chance to copy them,” she said, “I wouldn’t care what happened to them. I was planning to do that right away, but I decided there was no hurry, and I might as well take time and read them through first. Then I could have them copied, and after that I could destroy the originals.”

“My God,” Victor Harkness said. “That’s…that’s vandalism!”

“You wouldn’t have done that,” I said. “You’d have found a way to sell them to one of these gentlemen.”

She was about to protest, then shrugged instead. “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t have them anymore, so what difference does it make?”

“Let’s get down to it.” Moffett looked more like a bulldog than ever, and one sensed his bite was as bad as his bark. “Who gets them?”

“All I need are copies,” Lester Eddington said. “As long as I’m given the opportunity to purchase a set of photocopies at a reasonable price, I don’t care which of the other two gentlemen winds up with the originals.”

“And the same goes for me,” Alice said, and everyone turned to stare at her. “Well, I still have a book to write,” she said, “and a story to tell, and the letters aren’t indispensable, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have them. And I’d pay a reasonable fee, too, the same as Mr. Eddington. In fact there’s no reason we couldn’t each have a set, without harming the originals or lessening their value in any way.”

“That’s up to the owner,” Moffett said. “And after I’ve acquired the letters I’ll decide who may receive copies.”

“I must have missed something,” Isis said. “When did you get to be the owner?”

“As soon as this formality is concluded,” he told her, “that’s precisely what I’ll be. I’m in a position to outbid anyone else here, and that’s what I intend to do. You’re running this little auction, Mr. Rhodenbarr, so why don’t we get on with it?”

“Just a moment,” Victor Harkness said. “You may have deep pockets, sir, but Sotheby’s has legal standing. Title to these letters remains with Miss Anthea Landau, and becomes a part of her estate upon her death. Our agreement with her is binding upon her estate. While we’ll happily pay a substantial finder’s fee to expedite matters, we’ll certainly not stand idly by while someone with no right, title, or interest in the property seeks to transfer it to somebody else.”

“Sue me,” Moffett suggested.

“We’re prepared to.”

“Or save us both some aggravation and come to terms with me here and now. There’s no reason I can’t write out two checks, one to Rhodenbarr and one to Sotheby’s. And when I say checks, it’s a manner of speaking. It could just as easily be cash, more than enough to cover the commission your firm could expect to make on the sale.”

“That’s most irregular. I don’t think my people would approve.”

“I won’t tell them if you don’t,” Moffett said. “In which case the cash could go wherever you wanted it to go, couldn’t it?”

Harkness managed to look shocked and attracted at the same time. It would have been interesting to see which way he jumped, but it had already been a long evening. I raised a hand and signaled, and I didn’t have to do it twice.

“I say,” Marty Gilmartin said, clearing his throat. “It’s not my place to say anything, as letters are out of my purview, but aren’t you fellows getting a little ahead of yourselves?”

Someone asked him what he meant.

“You’re fighting over some letters,” he said, “that may or may not exist, and may or may not be in our friend’s possession. Shouldn’t you check the hypothesis before leaping to the conclusion?”

“A good point,” Moffett said. “If you’ve got those letters with you, Rhodenbarr, now’s the time for you to give us a look at them.”

“And if you haven’t,” Harkness said, “this might be a good time to go get them.”

I reached into my breast pocket, drew out the sheet of purple paper I’d showed them earlier. This time I unfolded it and handed it to Marty. “I brought a sample,” I said. “Read this, why don’t you?”

He put on a pair of reading glasses and peered through them. “‘Dear Anthea,’” he read. “‘I still haven’t received the check for the sale of Italian rights. Tell them I was planning on stocking up on spaghetti, so the money’ll all come back to them. Meanwhile they’re sitting around playing bocce and sipping cappuccino with my money, and I don’t like it. In high dudgeon, Gully.’”

“Let me see that,” Moffett and Eddington said as one, and clustered around Marty.

“It’s his signature,” Moffett said. “I’d know it anywhere.”

“So would I,” said Eddington. “I should-I’ve seen it often enough. And I couldn’t swear to it, but that looks like the same Royal portable he was using during those years. The top of the small e is filled, and the g strikes a little high.”

“I’ll take that,” I said, and did.

“That’s a genuine letter,” Moffett said, “and I’m willing to believe you have the rest in a safe place. So let’s get down to cases. What do you want?”

“You’ve all told me what you want,” I said, “and now you want to know what I want.”

“Well?”

“What no one seems to care about,” I said, “is what Gulliver Fairborn might want.”

“He’s not here,” Moffett said, “so we can’t ask him. Get to the point, man.”

“In any event,” Harkness said, “he’s not an interested party.”

“Oh? It seems to me he’s the most interested party of all. He wrote the letters.”

“But they ceased belonging to him the minute he dropped them in the mail. He retains the copyright, but the actual letters are legally the property of the recipient.”

“I know.”

“Then what he wants or doesn’t want is immaterial.”

“Not to me,” I said. “I didn’t get into this mess for money. Believe me, there are easier ways to turn a dishonest dollar. I wanted to do something nice for a man who wrote a book that changed my life.”

“Get to the point, man.”

“All right,” I said. I had been moving closer to the fireplace. I looked up at Elvis, who looked back at me. It was silly, I know, but I got the feeling the King approved of what I was going to do.

So I reached over the top of the fire screen and slipped the letter on through. “There,” I said. “ Alice, you said you burned the letters. Well, let’s say you did. And let’s say that was the only one that escaped. Now it can join the others.”

They were a little slow off the mark, but once they got moving they didn’t waste time shoving me aside and yanking the screen out of the way. The letter they’d all just examined was on top of the dying fire, and as they watched it burst into flame.

It was a pretty sight, that sheet of purple paper burning brightly atop a heap of half-burned logs and glowing ashes. And as they stared at it they saw other scraps of purple paper, the charred remnants of all the other sheets that had been burning up while we’d been learning who killed their lawful owner.

“My God,” Victor Harkness said.

“An irreplaceable treasure,” Moffett said. “Unique material, and now it’s lost forever. You rotten son of a bitch.”

“You’ve just stolen something from future generations of scholars,” Lester Eddington said. “I hope you’re happy.”

“You’ve broken the law,” Harkness said. “We could press charges, you know, on behalf of the Landau estate. Criminal mischief, wanton destruction of property…”

“Laws were made to be broken,” I said, “and you might have trouble making those charges stick. But what choice did I have? How much choice did any of us have?”

Isis asked me what I meant.

“Well, we’re all obsessed, aren’t we? Alice is obsessed with her book, and Eddington’s obsessed with his studies. Moffett is obsessed with his collection. Harkness is obsessed with doing his job. And look at Erica Darby. She was obsessed with revenge. Look where that led.”

“And you, Bern?”

I looked at Carolyn, then at everybody else. “I may be a criminal,” I said, “but that doesn’t make me a bad person. It sounds corny, but I was obsessed with doing the right thing.”

Silence greeted this remark, a profound and all-embracing silence, and it held until I took the fireplace poker and stirred the ashes. Little scraps of purple paper that had managed to be incompletely consumed came into contact with glowing embers and at once were burning brightly, if briefly. The sight brought a gasp to some of the people watching. The scraps were too small to be worth saving, but it was still somehow shocking to see them disappear altogether.

“That’s it,” I said. “The party’s over. Unless you fellows want to stick around. How’s the room service here? Carl, can we call downstairs and order drinks?”

He shook his head.

“Then that’s it,” I said. “Thanks for coming, everybody. You’re free to go now.”

The three wise men, Harkness and Moffett and Eddington, left in a body; they’d been opponents a few minutes ago, but now they were drawn together for the moment by their mutual hatred of me. Carl Pillsbury hung around for a few minutes, trying to figure out some way to save his job. If he lost that, he demanded, what would he do for a place to live? Isis told him he could go someplace else and start over.

“And let your hair go gray,” she advised him. “You’d look terribly distingué.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Oh, there’s no question,” she said. “You’re an attractive man, but with gray hair you’d be irresistible.”

I guess he believed her. He was, after all, an actor. He brightened considerably, said goodbye to everybody, and went out the door.

Alice was next, pausing just long enough to assure me that I was a son of a bitch, no question about it, but she had to admire my dedication to my principles. “So that makes you a principled son of a bitch,” she said. “And who knows? Maybe you’ll wind up in my memoirs.”

She swept out with a flourish, and when she was gone I took the jewelry case out of my trouser pocket and lifted the top. Isis picked up the necklace, opened the catch, and refastened it around her throat. She got a compact from her purse and checked her reflection in the mirror, then called Carolyn over to show her.

“Beautiful,” Carolyn said.

“But you know,” Isis said, “I’m not sure I’d ever feel quite the same wearing them. Two women were killed, not over these jewels exactly, but around them. Do you know what I mean?”

“I guess so,” Carolyn said.

“So,” she said, and took the necklace off and returned it to the case. I closed the case, and she took it from me and handed it to Marty. “I hope Cynthia Considine enjoys them.”

“She’ll never look as lovely as you,” Marty said. “With or without rubies, my dear.”

“That’s sweet,” Isis said, waiting.

He didn’t keep her waiting long. He opened the jewelry case to see the rubies for himself-and who could blame him, after everything that had gone on already that evening? Then he put it in a pocket, and from another pocket he drew out a thick envelope and held it out to Isis.

She said, “Twenty?”

“Twenty-five,” he said. “I persuaded John to be a little more generous.”

“That’s so sweet,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, then took the envelope and put it in her purse. “Diamonds are allegedly a girl’s best friend, and I suppose you could make a similar case for rubies, but in the uncertain life of an actress they both take a backseat to cash. One has to be practical, doesn’t one?”

“Absolutely.”

“But you’re not practical, Bernie. You’re a burglar, so you have a dark side, but your dark side has a light side of its own, doesn’t it? I suspected as much when I heard you took a bear to your room. A burglar with a teddy bear!”

“Well,” I said.

“And then you gave up a small fortune to do a favor for a man you never even met. You stole my rubies and gave them back, and you’re not making a dime on the deal, are you?”

“I’m not a very good businessman,” I admitted. “I don’t do all that well at the bookshop, either.”

“I think you do just fine,” she said warmly. “You’re quite the fellow, Bernie Rhodenbarr. Quite the fellow.”

And she shook my hand, and held it a little longer than you might have expected.