Dinner, it turned out, was the joint effort of Cissy Eglantine and the Cobbett cousins. There’d been some leftover ham in the refrigerator, and they’d combined it with mashed potatoes and boiled cabbage and diced carrots and bacon drippings in what Cissy called an old English recipe. It was evidently something of a staple in the Cobbett clan. “You takes what you has got left,” Earlene explained, “and you cooks it all together like. If your people be really hungry, they will eat it.”
It was actually rather tasty, once you sat down and tucked in, but it offered little in the way of eye appeal. A quaint name would have helped-dog’s breakfast, say, or Taffy-in-the-woodpile. As it was, guests would slip into the dining room, then reconsider and visit the bar first. Once in the bar, one tended to linger, counting on malt whisky to heighten the appetite for the evening meal.
Eventually, though, everyone got to table, and the main course turned out better than it looked or sounded. There wasn’t much of a market for second helpings, aside from Rufus Quilp, who’d probably have asked for seconds on death angel mushrooms. For everybody else, one portion was plenty. I kept an occasional eye on Gordon Wolpert, but as far as I could see he wasn’t any more picky an eater on this occasion than the rest of us.
There was good bread on the table, and some sort of custard for dessert. The coffee was weak.
We were in the library with fresh mugs of coffee when the colonel found us and announced he was going to make it an early night. “I shall return to Trevelyan,” he said, “and slip into a simpler world.”
I asked which door he’d be using to enter that world, Trevelyan’s one-volume History of England or the more specialized England Under the Stuarts.
“Neither, I’m afraid. I’m reading his three-volume history of England under Queen Anne. Halfway through the middle volume.”
“Ramillies and the Union with Scotland,” I said.
He looked startled. “Quite,” he said. “However do you happen to know that?”
“Just a lucky guess.”
“Hardly that. I gather you’re a student of English history.”
“Some college courses,” I said. “Years ago. And I never actually read the three volumes on Anne’s reign. I just remember the titles.”
“Marlborough and Prince Eugene,” he said. “The War of the Spanish Succession. The Battle of Blenheim.”
“A famous victory,” I said, echoing the Robert Southey poem.
“Famous once. Forgotten nowadays, I shouldn’t wonder. I don’t know what young people remember these days. Shouldn’t think they recall anything much earlier than the day before yesterday. It’s stirring stuff, Trevelyan’s history. You should read it sometime.”
“One of these days.”
“Well,” he said, setting his shoulders. “You’ll forgive me for breaking ranks, won’t you? I know we’re supposed to hold in squads of three, but I’m sure I’ll be all right in my quarters, and just as confident you two can see to each other’s safety. So, if you’ve no objection…”
I could hardly object. They’d all agreed readily enough to hang out in trios earlier, but that had gone by the boards as the day wore on, and by the time dinner was over it had ceased even to be honored in the breach. I’d overheard Millicent Savage whining about having to stay in Lucinda’s Room with her parents instead of being all by herself in Uncle Roger’s Room. So far Greg and Leona seemed to be holding out, but I had a feeling the child would have her own way in the end.
“Nobody’s taking it seriously,” I told Carolyn. “I don’t get it. There are three people dead and an unknown killer in our midst, and they’d rather grumble about dinner than make sure they’re still alive for breakfast. What’s wrong with these people?”
She thought about it. “I think they’re just good at adjusting,” she said.
“At adjusting?”
“I think so, Bern. They were all really spooked earlier, when we found the cook cooling off in the kitchen. There were bodies all over the place and nobody had a clue who was gonna be next.”
“There still are,” I said, “and they still don’t, but all of a sudden nobody gives a damn.”
“Right. They’ve adjusted. Rathburn and the cook are outside where nobody has to look at them, and Orris is way down at the bottom of the gully. You know what they say, Bern. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“The bodies are out of sight,” I said, “and the rest of us are out of our minds.”
“People adjust,” she said. “Take you and me. Last night the coffee was strong and full-bodied, and we enjoyed it. Tonight it’s weak, and we’re still enjoying it.”
“We didn’t adjust to it.”
“We most certainly did.”
“We put Scotch in it, Carolyn.”
“That’s how we adjusted,” she said, “and I’d have to say we made a good adjustment, Bern. It tastes a lot better this way. Somehow you don’t notice that it’s weak. You know, that might be a good way to stretch coffee, as a sort of economy move. Use less coffee and add whisky to taste.”
“For economy,” I said.
“Well, if there was a major coffee shortage, say, or if we went to war with Brazil.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Why does anybody do anything?” She frowned. “Where was I?”
“You were drinking fortified coffee.”
“Fortified,” she said. “That’s a good word for it. I suppose it’s a crime against nature to put single-malt whisky in coffee, but that coffee was a crime against nature to begin with and I figure they cancel each other out. At least we didn’t use the Drumnadrochit.”
“God forbid.”
“I hope we get out of this place soon, Bern, but not before I get one more crack at the Drumnadrochit. Anyway, the answer to ‘Where was I?’ is I was talking about people adjusting.”
“To murder.”
“Uh-huh. They’re not really concerned anymore, Bern, not the way they were. Some of them are taking the tack that there weren’t any murders in the first place.”
“Then where did all those bodies come from?”
“Jonathan Rathburn fell off the ladder, Orris fell off the bridge, and the cook-”
“Fell into a deep and dreamless sleep,” I said, “and lo, she doth be sleeping still. That’s ridiculous, for God’s sake.”
“I know.”
“The cook could conceivably have had a stroke or a heart attack,” I said, “although it strikes me as unlikely. But Orris and Rathburn were murdered, pure and simple. And if their deaths were accidental, how do you explain the sugar in the snowblower’s gas tank and the severed phone wires? Acts of God?”
“They say He works in mysterious ways. I heard someone say that phone wires get disconnected all the time in bad weather. And somebody else was saying that the snowblower probably had a perfectly ordinary mechanical breakdown, and that nobody really smelled burnt sugar after all.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know, Bern.”
“I ought to siphon a cup of gasoline from the snowblower’s gas tank,” I said, “and make them all taste it.”
“We may want it tomorrow,” she said, “for dessert, if there’s no more custard. Look, not everybody thinks the deaths were accidental. The rest of them think the cycle’s complete.”
“The cycle?”
“Three deaths, Bern. Deaths are supposed to come in threes, remember? Now that the cook’s dead, everybody can relax.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. But what’s the difference, Bern? It’s not as though we’re going to solve the puzzle. You said so yourself, that all the bits and pieces we picked up interrogating people this afternoon wouldn’t do us any good at all.”
“I didn’t say they wouldn’t do any good. I just said we weren’t getting anywhere.”
“Close enough. So we’ll hang out here, and the colonel can read English history. Hey, you never went to college. How come you knew all that about Queen Anne?”
“I don’t know anything about Queen Anne,” I said. “I had a set of the books in the store. I was beginning to think I ought to have a look inside the covers, and then somebody came along and bought them.”
“Hey, it happens. She was gay, you know.”
“Queen Anne?”
“Uh-huh. Had a thing with Sarah Churchill, whose husband was the Duke of Marlborough that the colonel was just talking about. Why are you looking at me like that, Bern? It’s herstory.”
“Herstory?”
“History for girls. Anyway, you can read about Queen Anne, or about just about anything else, with all these books staring us in the face. And we can drink fortified coffee, and sooner or later the police will turn up and rescue us. And then they can do all those sophisticated tests, DNA and blood spatters and autopsies, and they can run background checks on all the guests, and-”
“And Bob’s your uncle,” I suggested.
“Well, something like that.” She sighed. “You know something, Bern? I never thought I’d sit around wishing the police would turn up, but that’s exactly what I’m doing. Because right this minute I’d actually be happy to see that door burst open and Ray Kirschmann come lumbering through it. I…”
“What’s the matter, Carolyn?”
“Huh?”
“You broke off what you were saying and started staring at something.”
“The door,” she said.
“What about it?”
“I was sure it was gonna fly open,” she said, “and I was sure he was gonna be there.”
“Who, Ray?”
She nodded. “Dumb idea, Bern. He doesn’t even know we’re here, does he?”
“I can’t see how he would even know we left town.”
“Still, it shows you the state I’m in. You know what it all means, Bernie?”
“No.”
“It means the day of the amateur sleuth is over. If ever a case looked made to order for amateur sleuthing, this would have to be it. A snowbound English country house with corpses piling up faster than the snow? And here we are, throwing up our hands.”
“I’m glad that’s all we’re throwing up,” I said. “When I got my first look at dinner tonight my heart sank. Does that dish have a name, do you figure? Something like Cobbett surprise?”
“Oh, that reminds me,” she said, getting to her feet. “I promised I’d help.”
“Help what?”
“In the kitchen.”
“That’s not what,” I said. “It’s where.”
“I said I’d help with the cleanup.”
“You?”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing,” I said, “it’s not your job. For another, you happen to hate helping in the kitchen.”
“It’s an emergency,” she said. “They’re shorthanded, what with the cook being dead and all.”
“And all,” I said.
“So I thought I’d help.”
I noticed the way she was avoiding my eye, and light dawned. I asked who she’d be helping.
“Whoever’s in there,” she said. “Look, I’ll just-”
“Molly Cobbett,” I said.
“She’s probably in there, yeah. So?”
“And her cousin Earlene?”
“She’s probably got other jobs to do.”
“So Molly’s alone in the kitchen.”
“She probably is,” she said, “and now that you mention it, that’s probably not safe. So that’s all the more reason for me to go keep her company.”
“Maybe I should come too,” I said.
“No need, Bern.”
“Two’s dangerous, remember? Suppose Molly turns out to be the killer?”
“Very funny.”
“Or suppose you turn out to be the killer.”
“Even funnier, Bern.”
“I just don’t want to see you make the wrong move,” I said. “I know you dreamed about her, but-”
“It was some dream, Bern. You have no idea.”
Oh, no? “She’s a country girl,” I went on, “from a sheltered background, and she probably doesn’t know the first thing about lesbians.”
“You didn’t see the way she was looking at me.”
“Well, you’re exotic,” I said. “Hip and urban and-”
“And gay,” she said. “And she’s a Cobbett, which means there’s probably not a whole lot she hasn’t done. The only thing that makes me exotic is that I’m not a blood relative. Listen, I’m not looking to put the moves on her. I just want to go keep her company in the kitchen.”
I couldn’t think of anyone else I wanted to keep company with, in the kitchen or elsewhere. The only object of my affections in the neighborhood was Lettice Littlefield, and I wasn’t too sure how affectionately I felt toward her just now. Anyway, they were on their honeymoon and there was a killer on the premises, so her sneering husband was likely to be keeping her on a short leash.
What I really wanted to do was escape, and there’s one tried-and-true way to manage that feat without actually going anywhere. I remembered Emily Dickinson’s words on the subject: There is no frigate like a book. “Frigate,” I said, more or less, and went into the library.
I looked up at Raymond Chandler, looked over at the library steps, looked at the camel and the throw pillow. I wondered if a person could actually sit down and work out a murder scheme involving a camel and a pillow. It had to have been improvised, I decided, or else the whole thing had an impossibly Monty Python tone to it.
It was a pity, I thought, that I hadn’t heard any of the conversation that had been murmured in this very room while I lurked in the doorway. One of the participants had almost certainly been Jonathan Rathburn, the other the person who cameled and pillowed him to death. Had I crept in a little way I might have found out what they were going on about, and might have learned the identity of the other party. Conversely, if I’d just blundered in noisily, switching on lights and begging pardon for the intrusion, I might have prevented a murder. And, if that first killing hadn’t taken place, perhaps the others would have been nipped in the bud as well.
I could have saved them all, I thought. If only I’d been a little more furtive, or a little more oafish. Either extreme might well have done the trick. It was this middle-of-the-road crap that caused all the trouble.
Well, as Emily D. would say, frigate. High time I sailed away from all this. I went over to the shelves and started looking at the books.
I stayed there in the library, reading, then went upstairs to Aunt Augusta’s Room and ran into Millicent Savage in the hallway. She’d won, she told me triumphantly. She was going to be allowed to remain in Uncle Roger’s Room. I told her I thought she should stay with her parents.
“Why?” she demanded. “So you can burglarize Uncle Roger?”
“What’s he got to steal besides a pipe and slippers?”
“And the pipe’s smelly,” she said, getting into the spirit of things. “And the slippers have holes in them.”
“Poor old Uncle Roger.”
“No, it’s Poor Miss McTavish! Gross old Uncle Roger.”
“I still think you should stay in your parents’ room,” I said.
“Why?”
“I just think it would be a good idea.”
She looked at me. “You think there’s going to be another murder,” she said, “but you won’t come right out and say so because you don’t want me to be scared. But if I’m not scared, I’ll want to go on staying in my own room.”
“It’s a poser,” I agreed.
“I think you’re right,” she said. “I think there’s going to be another killing. But I won’t be the victim.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I’m just a little kid,” she said. “Nobody’s going to bother killing me. You’re the one who should be scared.”
“Me?”
She nodded solemnly. “Somebody’s going to be murdered tonight,” she said, “and it might be you.”
An hour or so later I was in yet another sitting room. This one boasted no antelopes on the wall, just a couple of edged weapons. One of them had a wave-shaped blade about eight inches long, and I took it down from the wall to admire it. I couldn’t swear to it, but what it looked like to me was a Malayan kris, a frequent denizen of the very same crossword puzzles that welcomed the oryx and the zebu. I ran my thumb across the blade, decided it was sharp enough for headhunting, and hung it back on the wall.
I’d stopped at the bar first, where I’d poured myself a drink and made the appropriate notation in the book. I was making the drink last, just wetting my lips every few pages while I worked my way through Scoop, Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel of journalists in Africa. There’s a passage fairly early on in which a dour newspaperman reminisces about once having made and launched a dugout canoe, whereupon the thing sank like a stone. I was a little vague on the details, but I remembered that I’d laughed for ten minutes the first time I read the book. I didn’t know when I’d be likely to hit it, and I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be as funny this time, and that I’d wind up wondering why I’d ever thought it was funny in the first place.
Better to be anxious about that than to worry about being bridged and mushroomed and cameled and pillowed to death. While I couldn’t be sure how my favorite passage would hold up, so far the book was an excellent choice. There were, to be sure, hundreds if not thousands of books on the shelves that I hadn’t read, but this was a night to be reading something I could count on. I wanted to escape, but on familiar paths.
I’d passed Raffles earlier in the upstairs hall, and you’d have thought I’d done something to offend him; he paid me no attention at all, and he’d have sailed on by with his tail held high if he’d had one. He turned up again after I’d been reading for half an hour, having undergone a personality transplant in the interim. He came over, rubbed against my ankle, draped himself over my feet, and purred with such energy that I felt the vibrations clear to my knees.
He was still in place, still revving his motor, when I heard footsteps and looked up at Carolyn. “You know,” I said, “I’ve got a good book to read and good whisky to drink and a comfortable chair to sit in. I’ve got a cat who has the decency to act as though he loves me, even though we know how unlikely that is. It’s not a bad life. I hope I don’t get killed.”
She stared. “Why even say something like that?”
I told her what Millicent had said.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “She’s just a creepy little kid, Bern. It’s not like she’s holding down the first chair at the Psychic Friends Network.”
“I know that,” I said, “but it’s spooky all the same. It gives me a funny feeling.”
“Don’t say that, Bern.”
“Why not?”
“It sounds ominous, that’s all. And I’m feeling pretty spooked to begin with. I went upstairs just now and the door to our room was locked.”
“Well, sure,” I said. “That’s because neither of us was in it.”
“I know.”
“You’ve got a key, right? We’ve each got one. You didn’t lose yours, did you?”
“Of course not. But I was scared to use it.”
“Why?”
“I was afraid of what might be inside.”
“Like a dead body?”
“Or a live one, waiting to kill me. I don’t know what I was afraid of, Bern. I knocked, hoping nobody would open the door, and nobody did, and I came downstairs to look for you.”
“And here I am,” I said. “Let’s go upstairs. Maybe tomorrow’ll be better.”
“That’s what people are always saying,” she said, “and it never is. But this time it almost has to be. Maybe the cops’ll come and we can all go home. Except I love it here, or at least I did until everybody started getting killed.”
“Wait a minute, Bern.”
We were skirting the library on our way to the stairs when she tugged at my sleeve. I waited, and she darted inside. She came out with a facial expression I recognized from Japanese films-the samurai, moments before committing hara-kiri.
“ Bern,” she said through clenched teeth, “go in there!”
“Why? I’ve already got a book.”
“Just do it. And look at the shelf.”
“What shelf?”
“The shelf.”
I went and looked, knowing what I’d see. The shelf held no surprises. And it didn’t hold The Big Sleep, either. Just a space where the book had been until someone snatched it away.