The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,42
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?”