The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,15
think she’d like the room if she ever saw it, and I hope you’ll be happy there yourselves. It’s Cissy’s particular favorite.”
“Cissy?”
“My wife. Christened Cecilia, but there’s nothing quite so enduring as a childhood nickname, is there? Your room’s up that staircase and along to the left, and you just keep going until you get to it. Will you want a hand with your luggage?”
“We can manage.”
“If you’re quite certain. I’d send Orris with you, but he seems to have slipped off somewhere.” His eyes narrowed. “I say, is that a cat in there?”
It would have been difficult to deny, the animal in question having just announced himself with a meow like chalk on a blackboard. “He’s a Manx,” I said. “His name is Raffles.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “And of course he’s a perfect gentleman about, ah, bathroom habits and that sort of thing.”
“Of course.”
“Then I’m sure he’ll be quite at home here,” he said smoothly, “and I’m sure we’ll be glad of his company.”
“It’s nice that the rooms all have names,” Carolyn said. “It’s so much cozier than having a room with a number.”
I was at the window, watching it snow. It seemed pretty serious about it.
“More challenging, too,” she went on. “If they’d put us in Room 28, we’d have known to look for it between Room 27 and Room 29. But how would anybody know to look for Aunt Augusta between Uncle Roger and Cousin Beatrice?”
“And directly across the hall from Vicar Andrews.”
“That sounds a little scandalous, if you ask me. Maybe there’s rhyme and reason to it, but you’d need a copy of the family tree to sort it all out. This is a great room, though, Bern. Nice, huh? Beamed ceiling, fireplace, big window looking out at—what does it look out at, Bern?”
“Snow,” I said. “Whatever happened to global warming?”
“You only get that in the summer. Anyway, I don’t care how much it snows now that we’re inside. I’d rather look at snow than a fire escape and a row of garbage cans, which is all you can see from my window on Arbor Court. You know, Bern, all this room needs is one more thing and it would be perfect.”
“What’s that?”
“A second bed.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, this is a real beauty, a four-poster with a chintz canopy and all, and it looks really comfy.” She hopped onto it, kicked her shoes off, stretched out. “It’s even better than it looks,” she reported, “and if you were a beautiful woman I’d like nothing better than to share it with you. They made a mistake, huh? You told them twin beds, didn’t you?”
“I must have.”
“‘I must have.’ That’s a no, right?”
“I meant to, Carolyn.”
“You meant to.”
I sighed. “When I made the reservation,” I said, “it was for me and Lettice, and I specified a double bed. As a matter of fact, I made a special point of specifying a double bed.”
“I bet you did.”
“And when I sent them a deposit, I put that in the note I enclosed along with the check.”
“And then Lettice decided to get married instead.”
“Right.”
“And you brought me in off the bench.”
“To save the game,” I said. “And I realized we would be happier with twin beds, and I started to make the call, and I felt like an idiot. ‘Hi, this is Bernie Rhodenbarr, that’s R-H-O, right, and I’ll be arriving as scheduled a week from Thursday, but I want twin beds instead of a double. Oh, and by the way, Ms. Runcible won’t be coming with me. But Ms. Kaiser will.’”
“I see what you mean.”
“I figured I’d wait until I could think of a graceful way to do it, and I’m still waiting. Look, we’ve been friends a long time, Carolyn. Neither of us is going to turn into a sex maniac in the middle of the night. We can share a bed platonically.”
“I just wonder if we’ll get any sleep. This bed’s comfy, but it sags in the middle. We may keep rolling into each other.”
“We’ll manage,” I insisted. “Anyway, we’ll probably be sleeping in shifts.”
“I brought pajamas.”
“I mean we’ll take turns. The middle of the night’s the best time for me to check out the library shelves.”
“Won’t that be suspicious, Bern?”
“Why? What else do you do when you have insomnia? You look for a good book to read.”
“Preferably a signed first edition. So you figure you’ll be up nights?”