The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,98

and walked to the bridge—”

“It was already out.”

“And he kept walking?”

“It bothered me,” I said, “that nobody actually heard the bridge fall. Greg, you and Millicent were outside when Orris had his accident. You both heard him cry out. But did you hear the bridge crash into the gully?”

“I might have,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

“All I remember,” Millicent said, “is Orris screaming.”

You’d have thought this would bring some sort of outcry from Earlene Cobbett, but it didn’t.

“It’s not as clear-cut as the dog that didn’t bark,” I told them, “and there’s no way to run an experiment, but I’d have to guess that the bridge made a lot of noise when it fell. But if it fell during the night, when most of us were sleeping and all of us were inside the house with the windows shut, and the snow was coming down thick and fast, well, I’d say it would have fallen as silently as Bishop Berkeley’s tree.”

Millicent looked baffled by the reference. “It was a tree that fell in the forest,” her mother told her, “and it didn’t make a sound because there was no human ear there to hear it.”

“But it would still make a sound,” Millicent said. “Anyway, Orris made a sound, and both my ears were there to hear it. Bernie, if the bridge was out already, why didn’t Orris turn around and come back to the house?”

“Ah,” I said. “That’s a delicate point.”

“But I’m sure you have the answer,” Littlefield said dryly.

“I didn’t know Orris terribly well,” I said, “but my sense of him was that his SATs weren’t quite high enough to get him into Harvard.”

“He was a hard worker,” Nigel said, “and a stout-hearted lad.”

“A good man in a tight spot,” the colonel put in.

“But not, uh, terribly quick in an intellectual sense.”

“I think we get the point,” Littlefield said. “Old Orris was dumb as the rocks he landed on. Where are you going with this, Rhodenbarr? You saying he didn’t notice the bridge was missing until he was standing in the middle of the air?”

“He was very likely snowblind,” I said in Orris’s defense. “He was frustrated, too, from trying to get the snowblower to work, and worn out from slogging through deep snow. And how many times had Orris walked that path and crossed that bridge? Hundreds, surely. It was automatic for him. He didn’t have to think about it.”

“He must have been even dumber than I thought,” Littlefield said. “Even now, after lying in the snow all night, I’ll bet his body temperature’s still ten points higher than his IQ.”

“It was a mistake anyone could have made,” I said, with more conviction than I felt. “But the point is that B wasn’t trying to kill Orris or anyone else. He slashed the ropes clear through.”

“All the more reason why he should identify himself,” said the colonel, returning to his earlier argument. “He’s not a murderer, and his testimony could help us.”

“That’s true,” I said, “but we’re not going to hear it.”

“Why not? All he needs to do is speak up. After all, he’s right here in this room.”

That brought it home. They looked at each other, trying to guess which one of them had slashed the ropes and unwittingly sent Orris to the bottom of Cuttlebone Creek. I let them dart questioning glances back and forth.

Then I said, “No.”

“No?”

“No, he’s not in the room.”

“But—”

“B’s in a lawn chair,” I said.

The colonel stared. “You’re saying he’s dead.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“There are three dead bodies in lawn chairs, Rhodenbarr. Unless you’re saying—”

“No,” I said, “we haven’t lost anybody else. Three bodies, and one of them’s B.”

“The cook? She slashed the ropes supporting the bridge, and killed herself out of remorse at having caused Orris’s death?”

“I suppose now and then somebody commits suicide out of remorse,” I said, “but it sounds as though we’ve got an epidemic of it here. I’m sure the cook had a kitchen knife that could have sliced right through those ropes, but the only way she tried to keep everybody here was by cooking wonderful meals. She wasn’t B.”

“Then it must have been Mr. Rathburn,” Mrs. Colibri said. “You said the ropes might have been cut before the murder, so I suppose Mr. Rathburn might have cut them. He must have gone outside, and then when he came back Mr. Wolpert was waiting for him in the library.”

“Perfect,” Littlefield said. “All the perpetrators are dead and there’s nobody here but us chickens. Can we go home