Four days later I was perched on a stool behind the counter at Barnegat Books, unwrapping a killer sandwich from the Russian deli around the corner. They use a particularly crinkly waxed paper, except I don’t suppose it’s actually waxed, I suppose it must be some sort of miracle polymer laminate designed to wreak havoc with generations yet unborn. Whatever it is, it’s noisier than the D train, and crumpling it never fails to get Raffles’s attention. He perked up, I feinted left and threw to the right, and he refused to be faked out, pouncing like a champion.
“I thought the layoff might hurt him,” I told Carolyn, “but he’s not the least bit rusty. I’ll tell you, though, he’s glad to be back.”
“He’s not the only one, Bern.”
“You said it. I suppose the country makes a nice change, but I’m a city boy at heart. I’d rather be on a bench in Bryant Park with life going on all around me. Give me the subway at rush hour, a couple of fire engines with their sirens wide open…”
“I know what you mean, Bern. The simple pleasures.”
“Well, you know what Sydney Smith said about the country. He said he thought of it as a sort of a healthy grave.”
“All that fresh air, Bern. If you’re not used to it…”
“Exactly. It was starting to get to me. But all I really needed was a couple of days at home and I’m my old self again. Working in the bookstore, playing with my cat.”
“Same here. Washing dogs all day, then going home and watching my cats wash themselves.” She grinned. “And going out at night for a few pops and the chance of an adventure.”
“An adventure?”
“Last night,” she said, “I got a heavy dose of spring fever, because that’s what it is, spring, even if they haven’t got the word yet up in the Berkshires. So I went for a walk, and where did I wind up but the Cubby Hole?”
“What a surprise.”
“Well, I got smart feet, Bern. They took me there all by themselves, and-” She broke it off at the tinkle of tiny bells over the door, announcing a visitor. “Later, Bern,” she said. “It’ll keep. Look who’s here.”
I looked up, and there she was, the Widow Littlefield. I hadn’t expected her to be wearing black, and she wasn’t, looking quite spiffy instead in a dove-gray suit with a nipped-in waist. Her blouse was white, and her bow tie, floppy and feminine, was the bright red of arterial blood.
“Bernie,” she said. “It’s so nice to see you. And there’s your sweet little cat.” She caught sight of Carolyn and her face darkened. “Perhaps this isn’t a good time.”
“It’s a perfectly fine time,” I said. “You’re looking well, Lettice.”
“Thank you, Bernie.”
“You remember Carolyn.”
“Your wife,” she said. “Except she’s not your wife. It’s very confusing. When you called, I thought you might want to come over to my apartment. Or that you’d invite me over to yours.”
“I thought it would be nice to meet here.”
“So you said. But I didn’t expect there would be three of us.”
“Four,” I said, “if you count the cat. And I can’t guarantee there won’t be more. You might find this hard to believe, but every once in a while I actually have a customer walk in here.”
“How nice for you.”
“But that probably won’t happen,” I said, “and until it does we can talk freely. I didn’t get much chance to talk to you after your husband ate his gun.”
She shuddered. “What an unpleasant expression,” she said. “And I wish you wouldn’t call him my husband.”
“You’re the one who married him,” I said. “I suppose you’ve got grounds for an annulment, but he saved you the hassle of getting one, the same as he saved the state the cost of a trial. You’re single again, and you’re in the clear as far as the cops are concerned. How about Mr. Sternhagen? Is he letting you come back to work?”
“He insisted I take the week off,” she said, “but of course he wants me back.”
“I guess he was happy enough just to get his bonds back.”
“He got them back before he even knew they were gone, Bernie. And he realized that I was as much Dakin’s victim as he was. It was indiscreet of me to give Dakin an opportunity to have a copy of my key made, but Mr. Sternhagen knows I’ll never let anything like that happen again.”
“I guess it must seem like a horrible dream,” I said.
“It does.”
“But your eyes are open now, and it’s all over.”
“That’s right, Bernie. It’s just a good thing the police got there when they did. I still can’t understand how they managed it.”
“They used a helicopter,” I said.
“I know that.”
“So the road conditions didn’t matter,” I said, “and the unplowed driveway didn’t stop them, or the lack of a bridge across the gully. They just flew right over everything.”
“I understand all that part. How did they know to come in the first place? And how did they know they would need a helicopter? And the man in charge-”
“Ray Kirschmann.”
“He was a New York police officer, and he seemed to know you.”
“I noticed that,” I said. “Curious, isn’t it?”
“But how did he…”
“Bernie called him,” Carolyn said. “After he faked his own death by lowering a dummy into the gully, he walked downstream until he found a place where he could wade across.”
“No wading required,” I said. “Cuttlebone Creek was frozen solid. The only wading I had to do was through snow, and I don’t think you call it wading when it’s snow. It’s either trudging or slogging, and it seems to me I did a fair amount of both.”
“Then he doubled back on the other side of the gully,” she went on, “until he got to the parking lot.”
“The parking lot?”
“Right on the other side of the bridge, where everybody left their cars. He figured somebody would have a cell phone, and he opened car doors until he found one.”
“Didn’t people lock their cars? I’m positive Dakin locked ours.”
“I guess I got lucky,” I said. I didn’t tell her that a locked car is not the most challenging obstacle you can place in a burglar’s path. “I found a phone, and I was going to call nine-one-one but I couldn’t figure out what to tell them. So I called Ray Kirschmann, and don’t ask me what I told him. Don’t ask him, either, because I woke him up in the middle of the night and he couldn’t make sense of what I was saying. But he got the important part right.”
“And arrived in the nick of time,” Carolyn said.
I crumpled a piece of paper and threw it for Raffles. “Ray didn’t have any jurisdiction up there,” I went on, “but he got in touch with the state troopers, and they tried to reach Cuttleford House and confirmed that the phones were out. So they broke out a helicopter and brought Ray along for the ride. And the rest you know, because you were there for it.”
“Yes.”
“So I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you here,” I said. “Today, I mean. This afternoon.”
“I thought you just wanted to see me, Bernie.”
“Well, it’s always a pleasure, Lettice. But there was something I wanted to talk about.”
“Oh? What would that be?”
“It would be the bridge,” I said. “The one that spanned Cuttlebone Creek, until it didn’t anymore.”
“What about it, Bernie?”
“You remember how the bridge wound up in the gully, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Gordon Wolpert slashed the ropes.”
“Right. And the bridge went tumbling into the gully, silent as Berkeley ’s tree. And then the next morning Orris walked right off the edge, not even noticing that the bridge was missing.”
“I remember,” she said. “You explained it all in the library, before Dakin pulled the gun.”
“I keep picturing Orris,” I said. “Stepping right off into space like that. It’s a pretty funny image, wouldn’t you say?”
“Funny? The man was killed.”
“I know, but it’s right smack on the border of tragedy and farce, isn’t it? And how could he do a thing like that? I mean, if he’d been running, say. Pursued by a bear, that sort of thing. But he was just walking, making his way through the snow, and all of a sudden there wasn’t any snow, or any ground beneath his feet, either. He must have been surprised.”
“I’m sure he was. Bernie, do we have to talk about-”
“Too surprised to scream, you’d almost think, but he managed to get a scream out. Can you imagine walking off a cliff like that, Lettice? In broad daylight?”
“You explained that he could have been snowblind, Bernie.”
“True.”
“And that he was intellectually challenged.”
“Also true. The nearest thing to dead between the ears, you might say. Still, he had the inbred cunning of the Cobbetts, didn’t he? You wouldn’t think he’d try to walk through the air. You want to know what I think, Lettice?”
“What?”
“I think he stepped on the bridge and started walking across, and the ropes had been cut partway through, and they snapped, and that’s how he fell.”
“But nobody heard the bridge fall.”
“Ah,” I said. “Nobody heard it in the middle of the night, either. Maybe there’s not that much noise involved. Maybe the shout Orris gave drowned it out, or merged with it so that no one noticed it. Remember, there was snow covering everything. That could muffle sounds. No, I think the bridge fell into the gully the very same time Orris did.”
“That’s what you thought originally,” Carolyn said. “Remember, Bern? When you first told everybody the ropes had been cut?”
“That’s right,” I said. “That’s how it looked to me, just from a quick examination of the ends of the rope. On one of them, it was easy to see where some of the fibers had been cut cleanly, and others looked as though they’d been stretched until they tore.”
“I don’t understand,” Lettice said. “What difference does it make? Maybe Wolpert didn’t want to risk making a lot of noise, so he just stopped cutting before the ropes parted. Or maybe what you said in the library was right, and Orris was in too much of a hurry to look where he was putting his feet. Either way he’s dead, and either way Wolpert was responsible.”
“You’re probably right,” I admitted. “Wolpert’s answering to a higher authority, so it’s academic whether he was purposely setting a lethal trap or just trying to keep anybody from getting across the bridge. And I don’t suppose there’s any real point in trying to salvage Orris’s reputation for quick thinking.”
I picked up a sheet of paper, but Raffles looked too comfortable. I didn’t have the heart to disturb him, nor did I want to risk throwing the crumpled paper and having him ignore it. I always feel like a jerk when that happens.
“So I’ll just let it go,” I continued. “The police have it all wrapped up, and they’re happy, so why confuse them?” I looked at the guileless face above the blood-red bow tie. “But I wouldn’t want you to think you got away with it,” I said.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“You know,” I said, “I’d have been willing to bet those would be the words out of your mouth, and what nonsense. Of course you understand.”
“But…”
There’s three dots instead of a dash after that but because I didn’t chime in and interrupt. I just let the word hang in the air, wondering if it would wind up falling into the gully.
Then I said, “You cut the ropes, Lettice. You and Dakin were the last people over the bridge. He got into the house before you did. You either lagged behind or pretended to drop something and went back for it, but it gave you time to get a knife out of your purse and start sawing through the ropes supporting the bridge.”
“Why would I do a thing like that?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “I’d be setting a trap for a person I’d never even met. You and I have been…close, Bernie. How could you possibly think me capable of such a thing?”
“You weren’t setting a trap.”
“But you just said-”
“If you’d had your way,” I said, “you’d have sliced right through those ropes in a New York minute. But minutes take a lot longer up in the faux-English countryside. And you didn’t have the right tools for the job.”
Carolyn asked me what I meant. Lettice just stared at me.
I pointed at her purse. “If I took that bag away from you and dumped it out on the countertop,” I said, “I bet I’d find a cute little penknife with a blade shorter than your pinky. It’s a useful little accessory, handy for slitting an envelope or paring a fingernail or cutting a piece of thread. And you can even cut through a stout rope with the thing, but it’s not easy. You have to sort of saw your way through, and it takes time.”
She was silent for a moment, her arm pressing her handbag protectively against her side. Then she said, “Lots of women have knives in their bags.”
“I know. Some of them carry Mace these days, and some tote guns around with them. Small guns, though, not like the cannon Dakin took off Wolpert’s corpse. Little ladylike guns, same as yours is a little ladylike knife.”
“If I had a knife like that,” she said, “it wouldn’t prove anything.”
“It might if there were rope fibers in the casing. And if they matched the ropes on Cuttleford Bridge.”
She looked long and hard at me, then lowered her eyes. After a moment she said, “I never meant for anyone to get killed. I hope you believe me, Bernie.”
“I do.”
“‘I do.’ That’s what I said, standing up next to Dakin in front of the city clerk. That’s what started the whole thing.”
“What happened, Lettice?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Somehow I knew I’d made a mistake. I knew it days before the ceremony, Bernie. I suppose it was intuition, little hints I picked up. I knew I shouldn’t marry him.”
“But you did.”
“I almost got married a few years ago,” she said, “to a perfectly nice young man, and I got cold feet and backed out at the last minute. So I thought I was just doing the same thing all over again, and I told myself I had to go through with it this time. I was afraid to go to Aruba, Bernie. I think I knew something would happen to me there.”
“And that’s why you talked him into coming to Cuttleford House instead.”
“That’s right. And then driving up I thought, well, I can leave first thing in the morning. I can grab the car keys when he’s not looking and get out of there. And when we walked across the bridge…”
“Yes?”
“I thought, well, if we’re snowed in for the weekend, and if I can’t get away, then maybe I’ll get over this case of the jitters and settle down and be a wife. But I wasn’t sure if it would snow enough to keep me there. And I thought, well, if something happened to the bridge-”
“You’d be forced to stay.”
“That’s right. And I thought I would just cut the ropes, just like that, but they were thick and tough, and the cold didn’t make it any easier. I had to give up because Dakin was coming back up the path to see what had happened to me, and if he saw me sawing away at the ropes-”
“He might have wondered.”
“God only knows what he would have thought. I was going to go outside later and finish the job. In fact, I did come downstairs after I, uh-”
“Consummated your marriage.”
“Yes. I was going to finish what I’d started, but I was also all flustered because you had turned up at Cuttleford House after all, you and uh-”
“Carolyn,” Carolyn said.
“Yes. And I looked around until I found you, Bernie, and then I uh-”
“Finished what you’d started.”
“So to speak, yes. And then I thought of going outside again, but I was so warm and cozy, and pretty sleepy, too, and the snow was still coming down out there. And I found myself wondering why I’d wanted to disable the bridge in the first place. I didn’t have to seal off my escape route to make it through the weekend. Married life wasn’t going to be so bad.”
“Married life,” I said.
“Well, I don’t suppose I was likely to be the traditional wife, Bernie, baking cookies and mending socks.”
“No,” I said, “I suppose not.”
“I never thought anybody would get killed. To tell you the truth, I thought it would take a chain saw to get through those ropes. I didn’t realize I’d weakened them enough so that the bridge would give way if anybody set foot on it.”
“And then Orris fell to his death.”
“Yes. And I knew it was my fault.”
“But you didn’t say anything.”
“No, of course not,” she said. “What about you, Bernie?”
“What about me?”
“Are you going to say anything?”
“I just did.”
“To anybody else, I mean. You didn’t say anything to the police. I guess you hadn’t figured it out by then.”
“Sure I had. I knew Wolpert would have slashed right through those ropes, and so would anybody else who’d gone out there for that express purpose. There were plenty of tools that would have done the job. The kitchen was full of long sharp knives, and if you didn’t want to go that far there were loads of exotic edged weapons on the walls, like the kris I wound up using to ruin my parka. So I figured the sabotage was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and that’s when it came to me. Little Lettice, sawing away with a teeny-weeny penknife. Well, it turned out to be mightier than the sword, didn’t it?”
“What are you going to do, Bernie?”
“Me? Sell books until six o’clock or so, then go home.”
“You know what I mean. What are you going to do about me? Are you going to tell anybody?”
I shook my head.
“You’re not?”
“I told you. That’s enough.”
“Why?”
“Why tell you?”
“Yes, why? When you called, Bernie, I thought I’d wind up coming over to your place, and you’d put on your Mel Tormé record and we’d enjoy ourselves in front of your phony Mondrian. But that’s not going to happen.”
“Somehow I guessed as much.”
“It’s never going to happen, Bernie. You ruined it forever. Why? That’s what I want to know.”
“Well,” I said.
“Never mind,” she said. “Don’t tell me. I don’t really want to know. You won’t be seeing me again, Bernie. Goodbye.”