The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,82

one roof, it was unlikely that there was ever a moment when not a creature was stirring. If that created the possibility that I might run into somebody on my way back to Mr. Rathburn’s room, it also meant I could put a foot wrong and step on a creaking board myself without raising suspicion. It didn’t matter greatly if people heard me moving about, just so nobody had a clear view of me.

So I kept to the shadows and scouted out each room before I entered it. The staircase and the upstairs hallway were dangerous areas, open and exposed, and I intended to spend no more time traversing them than I absolutely had to.

I was two-thirds of the way up the stairs when it hit me. Three lawn chairs?

I kept going.

I’d left Rathburn’s door unlocked in the interest of saving time going and coming, and for a change no one had happened along to alter the status quo. I let myself in, closed the door, and concentrated on picking the lock shut, which is essentially the same process as unlocking it, though understandably less exciting. It gave me something to think about, which kept me from having to consider the implications of the third lawn chair. But it didn’t take very long, and it took no time at all to work the little sliding bolt, and there I was, tucked safely away in Rathburn’s room, with plenty of time to wonder what that third lawn chair was doing there and just whose mortal remains might be weighing it down.

How, I wondered, could I have failed to notice the three chairs? Well, I told myself, I’d had a long day and a busy night, and it was fair to say I was exhausted. Nor was it entirely accurate to say I’d failed to notice the chairs. Obviously I’d noticed them, or I wouldn’t be agonizing over them now. What I’d done was fail to register the fact that there was one more corpse-laden chair than there ought to have been.

What did it mean?

Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all. Maybe there’d always been three chairs there, two of them pressed into service to hold the bodies of Rathburn and the cook, and one holding something completely uninteresting. Lawn and garden supplies, say. Perhaps all three chairs had been so encumbered originally. Then the clutter on two of the chairs had been transferred to the third, and the bodies shifted, and all three draped with sheets.

Possible, I decided, but not probable. It was far more likely that the third chair, like its fellows, had a corpse on it.

But whose?

The answer would have to wait. For all I knew it could be just about anybody. The only person I could rule out with any real certainty was Bernie Rhodenbarr. Last I saw of him, poor devil, he was at the bottom of the gully.

What I needed was an hour of sleep.

Well, no. What I needed was more like eight hours, but that was out of the question. Failing that, an hour or so would give me a chance of functioning with some semblance of efficiency. It wouldn’t set me up so that I’d be operating at the top of my game, but that was all right. After all, I wasn’t planning to drive or operate machinery. I just wanted to solve a few murders and go home.

Rathburn’s effects didn’t seem to include a travel alarm clock, and Cuttleford House wasn’t the sort of establishment where you could ring the desk and leave a wake-up call. I thought maybe I could just lie down with my eyes closed and rest rather than sleep, but I saw right away that wasn’t going to work.

So I just gave up and let go. I’m usually a fairly light sleeper, and I figured I’d wake up when Carolyn raised the alarm. If not, well, I’d hear them banging on the door. The bolt would keep them on the outside, and they wouldn’t figure it was bolted, they’d figure their key wasn’t working, and when that happened…

I don’t know what I thought would happen after that. Because by the time I’d got that far in my thoughts I was asleep.

I slept for an hour and a half, and nothing in particular woke me. There were sounds to be heard—people walking around, stairs creaking, old plumbing making the sounds old plumbing makes—but none of them sufficiently intrusive to wake a person up. But they say everybody has a personal