The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,77
“Not until he told us it was murder. You don’t suppose…”
“No,” he said firmly. “No, darling. It was not a tramp all along.”
“Rhodenbarr did indeed identify Rathburn as a murder victim,” the colonel said, picking up the ball. “And he went so far as to spearhead the investigation, if our amateur efforts were worthy of the label. The bloody cheek of the man!”
More than a few eyes turned toward Wolpert, their owners having taken the colonel literally. But there was no blood to be seen upon the dead man’s cheek. There were ligature marks on his throat, however, and it appeared that he had been strangled.
“And now he’s gone,” Rufus Quilp said. “Vanished, into thin air.”
“Why?” Carolyn demanded.
“Why?”
“Yeah, why? If he’s this diabolical killer who’s knocking people off and pretending to investigate all at the same time, why would he cut out and run? Did anybody see him kill Wolpert?” No one had. “So none of us would have had any reason to suspect him. So why wouldn’t he stick around and keep on playing the game?”
Someone asked her what she was getting at.
“The truth,” she said. “Bernie’s here somewhere. He’s got to be. He wouldn’t kill anybody. And he wouldn’t have left, not without me.”
“If he’s still here,” Dakin Littlefield said, “maybe you’d like to point him out to us.”
“I thought that was him on the third lawn chair,” she said, “and so did everyone else. We were all surprised when it turned out to be Mr. Wolpert.”
“I was surprised,” Millicent piped up. “But I didn’t think it would be Bernie. I thought it would be Orris.”
Everyone looked at her. “Orris is dead,” her father said patiently.
“I know that.”
“He’s at the bottom of the gully,” her mother put in. “Did you think somebody would go to the trouble to move him?”
“I thought he walked,” Millicent said. “You know how people sometimes walk in their sleep? Well, maybe sometimes they walk in their death the same way. It happens a lot in the movies.”
“You’re not supposed to watch those pictures,” Greg said, but Carolyn was wide-eyed, gesturing wildly with her hands.
“Sleepwalking,” she said. “That’s it! Bernie must have walked in his sleep.”
“And while he was sleepwalking,” Rufus Quilp murmured, “he went in for a bit of sleep-strangling.”
“He must have thought he was going to get help,” Carolyn went on, “and he must have forgotten the bridge was out, and—this way, everybody! Hurry!”
And off she went, and off they went after her.
“Look!”
But they were already looking—at a crumpled form down at the bottom of the gully. It lay a few yards distant from another crumpled form, the snow-covered remains of Orris Cobbett. The new crumpled form had a light dusting of snow on it, but not enough to obscure it completely. You could see the pants, the jacket, the shoes.
“That’s his jacket,” Carolyn cried. “That’s his pants. Those are his shoes. Ohmigod, it’s him!”
There was a certain amount of discussion as to what ought to be done next. Someone suggested that Rhodenbarr might still be alive. While the same fall had broken Orris’s neck, the gully’s latest victim might have landed differently, merely breaking a dozen bones and knocking himself senseless. But would he have died of exposure since then? Or might he be still alive, and might quick action prevent his dying of exposure?
“Before you rescue him,” Earlene Cobbett said doggedly, “you has got to rescue Orris. Orris fell in first.”
“But Orris is dead,” someone pointed out.
“Don’t matter,” Earlene said. “Fair is fair.”
“Wait a minute,” Carolyn said, pointing. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“It looks like something poking out of his jacket. You see it? Sort of angling back?”
“Probably a stick,” someone said. “Probably a branch dislodged by his fall, so that it tumbled after him and landed on top of him.”
“It doesn’t look like a stick to me,” Carolyn said.
“It doesn’t,” the colonel agreed, and produced a small pair of field glasses from his jacket pocket. He peered through them, working the knob to adjust the focus. “I say,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Nigel,” he said, “have a look, why don’t you?” And he passed the binoculars to Eglantine.
“I say,” Nigel Eglantine said.
“Quite.”
“Isn’t that—”
“I believe it is, yes.”
“Bone handle fitted on a steel tang and wrapped with copper wire, it looks like to me.”
“It does, yes.”
“Tapering hilt with a slight flare.”
“A slight flare, yes.”
“And the blade. You can only see two inches of it, but wouldn’t you say it’s…”