The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,86
who was the latest victim?
All I had to do was go out and have a look. But I could already hear them on their way back to the house, all talking at once, their voices a discordant blur. By the time I got out the door and ran over to the chairs and had a look—
No time.
I raced for the stairs.
Back in Young George’s Room, which I found myself regarding less and less as Jonathan Rathburn’s and more and more as my own, I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to figure out what to do next. I had a pad of paper in front of me and I had drawn a rough diagram, with a lot of circles and X’s and arrows. It was supposed to represent how the sequence of killings had taken place, and a look at my handiwork suggested that the killer must have been a geometry teacher. No one else could have made sense of it.
When I wasn’t looking at the diagram or off into space, I was checking my watch. Sooner or later I was going to have to leave my comfy little hiding place and show my face in the world, or at least in the more populated regions of Cuttleford House. I’d bought some time by faking my own death, and I’d spent some of it to good effect in my room-by-room tour of the place. Now I had all the data I was likely to get, and I had things figured out.
Well, almost figured out.
Sort of.
And now it seemed to me that timing was critical. I didn’t want to make my move too early, nor did I want to leave it too late. After breakfast, say, but before they’d all scattered to different parts of the house. And certainly before anyone could take it into his head to leave.
Tricky.
So I kept glancing at my watch, and an ineffectual gesture it was, since I couldn’t have told you what time I was waiting for it to be. And then, just sitting there like that, it became evident to me that I wasn’t going to be able to allow myself the relative luxury of waiting until it was time to leave.
I needed to go to the bathroom.
Well, it happens, for God’s sake. It never happens in Agatha Christie’s books, and I can’t recall it ever posing a problem for an earthy guy like Philip Marlowe, either, but that’s not a whole lot of consolation when the necessity arises.
It had arisen before, you’re probably thinking, and I dealt with it, if not elegantly, at least effectively. Couldn’t I just do again as I did before? And, preferably, without talking about it?
Believe me, I’d just as soon not talk about it. And, not to put too fine a point on it, let me just state that the function I needed to perform was different in kind from the previous instance, and that the shoe-and-window number simply would not do at all.
I’ve thought about this since, and it seems to me that one’s behavior in such a situation varies with the direness of one’s circumstances. If I’d been hiding from the Nazis in war-torn Belgium, say, I’d have fouled my nest and learned to live with it. But I just wasn’t that desperate. I didn’t know who might be lurking in the hallway outside my door, but I could be fairly sure it wasn’t the Gestapo.
I eased the door open a crack and took a look-see. I couldn’t spot anybody, and the only sounds of human activity I could make out were a floor away. I opened the door a little farther and scanned the long hall. I caught a trace of movement out of the corner of my eye, and that might have inspired more in the way of reconnaissance at a less urgent moment, but I couldn’t wait. I rushed down the hall to the bathroom, darted inside, and, well, let’s for God’s sake draw the curtain on the next several moments, shall we?
Thanks. I feel better already.
I’d closed the bedroom door when I left it, but of course I hadn’t wasted time locking it, so I didn’t have to waste time unlocking it on my return. I slipped inside, heaved a great sigh, and slid the bolt across. Then I sat down once again on the edge of the bed and tried to remember what I’d been thinking about before Nature had called.