The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,53

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,