The Burglar in the Library

  I hadn’t known that, and still wasn’t sure it was true. But it didn’t matter.

  “It wasn’t an accident,” I said. “There were two ropes securing the bridge on this side of the creek, one on the left and one on the right. These were stout ropes, fully half an inch thick. There’s no reason why they would have snapped.”

  “They weren’t steel cables,” Miss Hardesty said. “Rope is rope. It’s strong, but it doesn’t last forever.”

  I started to say something, but there was a gasp from Lettice. “My God,” she said, and clutched her husband’s arm. “We were the last people on that bridge!”

  “We were the last to cross it,” he corrected her. “The guy down there was the last person on it.”

  “Dakin, we could have been killed!”

  “We could have been struck by lightning,” he said, “or swept away in a flash flood. But we weren’t. And we weren’t on the bridge when the ropes broke, either, which was lucky for us and not too lucky for that poor slob who was.”

  Calling Orris a slob, while perhaps unimpeachable on grounds of fact, seemed to me a clear case of speaking ill of the dead. But I let it go, figuring the lousy maid service the Littlefields could now expect to receive from the scowling Earlene Cobbett was answer enough.

  “One rope might break,” I said. “But not two, not both at once.”

  “I wonder,” the colonel said. “If one rope was frayed or weakened by the elements, wouldn’t its fellow be similarly stressed?”

  “To a degree,” I admitted. “But not to the point where they’d both go at the same instant.”

  “I see your point, Rhodenbarr. But say one rope gives way. Wouldn’t that place additional stress on the other? And wouldn’t that be enough to finish off an already weakened rope?”

  “There’d be a delay,” I said. “One rope would give way, and there’d be a few seconds while the fibers parted on the other one. Probably enough time for anyone on the bridge to get the hell off it.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “if he had his wits about him. Orris was by no means an imbecile, but none would call him quick-witted. He was unquestionably slow.”

  “And he crossed the bridge every day,” Nigel Eglantine put in. “He wouldn’t have been thinking about it while he crossed it, as those of us who are nervous on bridges might. His mind would have been occupied with thoughts of what he was going to do next—starting up the Jeep, plowing the drive.”

  “There you are,” the colonel said. “He’d scarcely have noticed when the first rope failed. He’d have registered the sound, and by the time he’d identified it, well…”

  “Bob’s your uncle,” Carolyn said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just an expression,” I said. “It seems to me it would take a lot longer than that for the second rope to give way, but it’s not a hypothesis we can test, so let’s let it go.”

  “Then there’s no reason to assume it was anything other than an accident,” Dakin Littlefield said.

  “But there is,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “The rope ends,” I said. “The fibers don’t look frayed to me. I’d say somebody cut them most of the way through. When Orris walked onto the bridge, it was literally hanging by a thread. Well, two threads, one on each side. And they did give way at once, and before he’d taken more than a step or two.”

  Someone asked how I knew that.

  “Look at the bridge,” I said, and pointed across the gorge, where the thing hung down from its two remaining ropes. “It was covered with snow,” I said, “like everything else in the county, and most of the snow’s spilled into the gorge now. But you can see footprints at one end, where Orris’s weight compacted the snow underfoot. He only got a chance to make two footprints.”

  This brought fresh sobs from Earlene Cobbett, whose freckled face was now awash with tears.

  “I’m not a forensics expert,” I said, with just the faintest sense of déjà vu. “The police will have someone who can examine those rope ends and determine for certain whether or not they were cut. But it certainly looks to me as though they were, and that just strengthens the argument for leaving Orris’s body where it is. I suppose someone could go down there to inspect him, just to make sure that he’s dead, but I don’t really think there’s much question of that, not with his head at that angle.”

  “I say,” the colonel said. “Whole thing’s a bit rum, eh? Someone right here at Cuttleford House set a trap for this man and murdered him.”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  “Not exactly? But you just said—”

  “Let’s get back to the house,” I said, “before we freeze to death, or somebody puts a foot wrong and winds up in the ditch with Orris. And then I’ll explain.”

  CHAPTER

  Fifteen

  “Someone set a trap,” I said. “That much is true. The ropes supporting the bridge were cut through to the point where the slightest stress would finish them. But it wasn’t a trap for Orris.”

  We were back inside Cuttleford House, the whole lot of us crowded into the bar and spilling over into the room adjoining it. Nigel Eglantine was pouring drinks and the Cobbett cousins were handing round trays of them, offering us a choice of malt whisky or what we were assured was a fine nutty brown sherry. It wasn’t even noon yet, but nobody was saying no to a drink, and most of us were going straight for the hard stuff.

  Rufus Quilp was among us, I was pleased to note, and so was Miss Dinmont, her wheelchair now once again in the capable hands of Miss Hardesty. They had been the only members of the party who had not rushed out to the fallen bridge, and I had not been surprised at their absence. Neither Miss Dinmont’s wheelchair nor Mr. Quilp’s great bulk could have had easy passage through the deep snow. All the same, I was happy to see them again, comforted by the knowledge that neither of them had seized the moment to kill the other, nor had some third party knocked off both of them.

  “What do we know about the sabotage of the bridge?” I went on. “First, let’s set a time. We know the bridge was intact when the Littlefields arrived last night. That was around ten or ten-thirty. The snow continued to fall after their arrival, because by this morning their footprints were completely covered.” I paused significantly. “And so were the footprints of the person who sabotaged the bridge. Orris walked through two feet of virgin snow to get to that bridge. Whoever sabotaged it must have done so not long after the Littlefields crossed it.”

  “I told you,” Lettice said, gripping her husband’s arm. “We could have been killed.”

  “If you’d arrived later,” I said, “or if the killer had gone to the bridge sooner, you might have been on it when the ropes broke. But you weren’t his target, and I don’t think Orris was, either. Not specifically.”

  Someone wanted to know what I meant.

  “He couldn’t be sure who he’d get. Maybe someone else would arrive from outside. Maybe someone other than Orris would be the first to leave. The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to believe that the damage he did to the bridge wasn’t designed to kill anybody.”

  “Then what was the point of it?”

  “To prevent anyone from crossing the bridge. To keep us all here, and keep the rest of the world on the other side of Cuttlebone Creek.”

  The colonel was nodding in understanding. “A bridge too far,” he said thoughtfully. “He sabotaged the bridge—when would you say, Rhodenbarr? Before or after he struck down Rathburn?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hard to say until we know who he is and why he did it, eh? But if he just wanted the bridge out, why stop at cutting the ropes halfway through? Why not make a good job of it and drop the bridge into the gorge in one shot?”

  “He may have been concerned about how much noise it might make when it fell,” I said. “And worried that someone within earshot might catch him in the act. From what I saw of the rope ends, he didn’t leave a great deal uncut. He may have expected the bridge to
fall by itself in a couple of hours, from the weight of the snow that was continuing to fall. If that had happened, Orris would still be with us.”

  That last observation tore at the heart of Earlene Cobbett. The poor thing cried out and clutched her hand to her bosom, a task to which one hand was barely equal. The other hand, though, held a tray containing two glasses of sherry, and it wasn’t equal to the task, either; the tray tilted, the glasses tipped, and the sherry wound up spilling onto Gordon Wolpert.

  “A little while ago,” I said, “Orris fired up the snowblower. It didn’t start right away, but once he got it running he managed to clear a path ten or twelve feet long. I heard him trying to get it started, though I didn’t pay much attention. I heard it a lot more clearly when it cut out.”

  “It made an awful sound,” Miss Dinmont recalled. “As though everything inside was being ground up.”

  I turned to ask Nigel if that had ever happened before. He said it seemed to him that the snowblower, while occasionally difficult to start in cold weather (and of no use whatsoever in warm weather), had in all other respects performed perfectly the entire winter.

  “Here’s what I think,” I said. “My guess is it was deliberately sabotaged. I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but when we all rushed out of the house there was a faint smell in the air.”

  “Gasoline,” Millicent Savage said. “From when Orris was running the snowblower.”

  “I noticed it while we were working on the snowman,” her father confirmed. “What about it?”

  “There was more to the smell than gasoline.”

  He thought about it. “You’re right,” he said. “There was another element to the odor, but I can’t tell you what it was.” And his nose wrinkled, as if to pursue the scent through the corridors of memory. “Millicent,” he asked his daughter, “what was the smell like?”

  “When I had the toy stove,” she said. “With the light bulb for heat? And you could bake your own cookies?”

  “Not very good cookies,” he remembered.

  “Not like Mummy’s,” she said, winning a smile from Leona. “But they weren’t as bad as when I tried to make candy. That’s what it smelled like.”

  “Made a mess, too,” Greg Savage said. “Jesus!” He looked at me. “Burnt sugar,” he said.

  “That’s what I smelled,” I said.

  “Sugar in the gas tank?”

  I nodded.

  “An old standby,” Colonel Blount-Buller said. “Readily available to any local wog bent on mischief or any malcontent in the ranks. Engine starts up, runs for a bit, then ruins itself entirely. If it’s been sugared, Eglantine, you’ll never get that snowblower working again, not without replacing the engine.”

  Nigel just stared. Cissy, who had just come back with a cloth to sponge off Gordon Wolpert, wanted to know why anyone would want to ruin their snowblower. “It does make a racket,” she said, “but it’s ever so useful when it snows.”

  “Someone wanted to prevent Orris from clearing the path to the bridge,” I said. “Perhaps they thought that would keep us from setting foot on the bridge, or at least delay our doing so until the bridge had fallen of its own weight.”

  “But why?”

  “To keep us here,” I said.

  “And why keep us here?” It was Dakin Littlefield, holding out his glass to be refilled. “I suppose we can take it for granted that the person who sugared the snowblower and cut the ropes on the bridge was the same nut who killed the poor sap in the library.”

  Heads nodded in assent.

  “What’s the stiff’s name, Rathburn? He kills Rathburn, he bundles up warm, he goes out and saws the ropes halfway through and sugars the gas tank. Then he slips back inside and goes to bed. Why, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Maybe he did what he did to the bridge and the snowblower before he killed Mr. Rathburn,” Carolyn suggested.

  “That seems even wackier,” Littlefield said, “but even if he did, same question: Why? I know, I know, to keep us here, but why keep us here? Unless he didn’t come back to the house but got the hell out, and the business with the snowblower and the bridge was to keep us from following him.”

  “The bridge supports were cut through on this side,” the colonel reminded him. “He’d have been burning his bridge before he crossed it, so to speak.”

  “Then I don’t get it. I don’t know anything about Rathburn, so I won’t even try to guess why somebody would want to kill him. But I suppose there’s always a reason. Once Rathburn’s dead, though, wouldn’t the killer just want to get away from here and back to his life as quickly as possible? Instead he’s stuck here with the rest of us. Or did I miss something?”

  “No,” I said. “Whoever he is, he’s still here.”

  “Well, where’s the sense in that? By keeping us stuck here, he keeps himself stuck here, too. Why?”

  “Maybe he wanted to keep the police away,” Leona Savage said.

  “The police,” Nigel said. “I ought to call them.”

  “But the phone—”

  “They may have restored service by now,” he said, and went off to find out.

  While he was gone, we batted around theories and arguments. Keeping the police away didn’t make sense, someone said, because they’d still get here before anybody here could get away. So what was gained? I let them talk it through, sustaining myself with small sips of malt whisky. It wasn’t Glen Drumnadrochit, but it wasn’t bad.

  I didn’t want to take too much of it, though. Even if Nigel got through to them, it would be a while before the police could reach us. A plow would have to precede them down the long driveway from the road to the bridge, and then they’d pretty much have to throw up a new bridge. The distance wasn’t that great, so maybe they could heave a rope across the gap. Once we’d secured it, they could make their way hand-over-hand.

  Of course they’d have to be young cops, in good condition, and either brave or stupid enough to try it. I thought of the cops I knew back in New York and tried to picture any of them dangling above a rock-strewn gorge. I had gotten so far as to put Ray Kirschmann in that unlikely picture, and the resulting image had me working hard to keep from giggling. It wouldn’t have been terribly appropriate, not with Rathburn and Orris dead and the rest of us marooned here, but it was hard to keep a straight face.

  I had help when Nigel came back. His own expression was not merely grave but troubled.

  “Still no phone service,” he said.

  “You were gone a long time,” Gordon Wolpert said.

  “Yes.”

  “Longer than you might think it would take to lift a telephone receiver and listen for a dial tone. Of course it would be natural to jiggle the receiver and poke the disconnect button a couple of times, but even so it seems to me you were gone quite a while.”

  “Quite a while,” Nigel agreed.

  “I realize there’s no television here,” Greg Savage said, “but someone must have a radio. Maybe one of the local stations will have something to say about when telephone service is likely to be restored.”

  “The cook has a radio,” Cissy Eglantine said. “But it only gets one station, and it doesn’t come in very clearly. We mostly play tapes on it.”

  “Still, if you could bring in that station—”

  “There won’t be anything about the resumption of phone service,” I said. “Or if there is it won’t apply to us.”

  “Why do you say that, Rhodenbarr?”

  I glanced over at Nigel. “Better tell them,” I said.

  “I don’t know what made me check,” he said. “‘You’re being silly,’ I told myself, but I couldn’t dismiss the thought, so I pulled on my boots and put a jacket on and went outside. That’s what took me so long. It was slow going, you see, because it’s all the way round the back of the house, and you’ve already seen how deep the snow is.”

  Rufus Quilp wanted to know what it was that was all the way in back of the house.

  “That’s where the telephon
e lines come in,” I guessed.

  “Quite right,” Nigel said. He sighed heavily and his shoulders sagged. “Someone’s gone and cut them,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  Sixteen

  There were no screams or gasps in response to Nigel’s revelation. The general reaction was not so much one of panic and alarm as it was a sinking feeling, a bottomless dread. A couple of the guests voiced the thought that they just did not understand what was happening to us or why, but that sounded like denial to me. We all knew what was going on.

  Carolyn spelled it out. “It’s all straight out of Agatha Christie, sort of a combination of The Mousetrap and And Then There Were None. We’re isolated, all of us. We can’t get out of here and nobody can turn up to rescue us. And it’s that way because that’s how the killer wants it.”

  “He couldn’t have arranged the snow,” Gordon Wolpert pointed out.

  “No,” she said, “but he could have picked a weekend when a heavy snowfall was forecast. Or maybe he decided to take advantage of the snow once it fell. Outside of the snow, it was all his doing. He clubbed Rathburn and smothered him, he cut the phone wires, he fixed the snowblower so it would be ruined and the bridge so it would fall if anybody set foot on it. It’s pretty obvious why he wants us stranded here. He’s not through.”

  There was a sort of general intake of breath at this announcement. I don’t think it was a new thought for most of the people there, but no one had put words to the tune until now.

  Colonel Blount-Buller looked at the drink in his hand as if wondering what it was, then set it aside and cleared his throat. “There will be more killings,” he said. “That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it, Mrs. Rhodenbarr?”

  “Well, why else would he seal us off like this?”

  “You’re assuming he’s still here, and he wasn’t merely seeking to discourage pursuit.”

  “Pursuit?” She spread her hands. “What pursuit? Who’s gonna pursue him? If this guy wants to get away from here, that’s fine with me. I’ll pay for his cab.”