The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,100

decided you liked the idea.”

“I saw how much it meant to you.”

“It didn’t mean that much to me. I thought it would be a lark, that’s all. And I said since we already had reservations in Aruba maybe we should go, and you said—”

“Jesus,” he said, “I just wanted to make you happy.”

“You thought you could hide out better here than you could in Aruba,” I cut in. “Especially if you didn’t bother to cancel the reservations. By the time the authorities figured out that you never boarded the plane, you’d have had a chance to cover your tracks pretty thoroughly. You’d stay here a few days until the trail got cold, and then you’d head on out. It wasn’t a bad idea, but you picked the wrong place to come to.”

“We all did,” he said with feeling. “Why anyone would want to stay at this pesthole is beyond me.”

There was a cry from Cissie Eglantine, hardly the sort of utterance one had come to expect from Earlene, but expressive all the same.

“I liked the place just fine myself,” I said, “until people started dropping like flies. But the minute you got here, everything went haywire.”

“Why?” the colonel wondered. “I’m not surprised this chap’s a thief. I thought him a bad hat and supposed he lived off women. He has that air about him.”

“Thanks a lot,” Littlefield said.

“But what was the connection between him and the other two, Rathburn and Wolpert? Why should his arrival put the match to the powder keg?”

“They must have all three been in on it,” Miss Dinmont said. “Conspiring together, thick as thieves.”

“That’s crap,” Littlefield said. “I never met either of those birds before in my life.”

The colonel cleared his throat. “And we’re to take your word for that, eh, sir?”

“I’ll take his word,” I said. “Whatever his plans might have been for after he left Cuttleford House, Littlefield came here planning nothing more than a quiet honeymoon weekend. But he walked right into the kind of coincidence that’s evidently damn near inescapable in English country houses.”

I glanced at Lettice. “Coming here was Mrs. Littlefield’s idea. She’d heard that there had been a late cancellation. She called, and she learned that there had indeed been a party who’d called to cancel, and she got the room.”

“So?”

“But I hadn’t canceled,” I said.

“You?”

“There was a point where I thought I would have to cancel,” I said, “but things worked out after all. I mentioned something to somebody, and word got to Mrs. Littlefield through the grapevine. You know how things get around.”

I hurried on, before it occurred to them to wonder how a bit of news could find its way from my lips to Lettice’s ears. “Here’s the point—someone else did call up to cancel, just in time for the Littlefields to get his room.”

“Cousin Beatrice’s Room,” Cissie said. “And a gentleman did call. I don’t know why I can’t remember his name.”

“Pettisham.”

“That’s it,” she said. “I remember he had an accent, and I thought that was odd, because the name is very English, isn’t it? Or at least it sounds English, although I don’t know that I’ve ever actually known anyone named Pettisham. Petty, certainly, and Pettibone, but not Pettisham.”

“Pettibone’s definitely an English name, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I would say so,” Nigel told me. “An old name, too. I’d guess there was a Pettibone came over with the Conqueror.”

“That would figure,” I said, “because the name’s an anglicization of the French. It combines two French words, petit and bon.”

“Small and good,” Mrs. Colibri translated. “Do you suppose the implication is that good things come in small packages?”

I glanced at Carolyn, who beamed at the very notion. “Pettisham’s been anglicized, too,” I said, “although I don’t know that there were any Pettishams among William’s troops at Hastings.”

“It would be possible to find out,” the colonel offered.

I told him I didn’t think we had to go back that far. “My guess is that it’s a much more recent name,” I said, “and that the two words it combines are petit and champ.”

“Small champion,” Carolyn said.

“Small plot of land,” Mrs. Colibri corrected. “Or, you know, like a field or meadow.”

“Sounds like the name of a smallholder or yeoman,” the colonel said. “And thus not terribly likely to have been one of the Conqueror’s Norman knights.”

“That’s some coincidence,” Littlefield said. “Not only did we call for a reservation, but the guy who canceled didn’t cross the Channel with the bastard king of England. What do you figure the odds would be