The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,51

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