So much for that. Now all I had to do was wait for Carolyn to wake up, and hope she hadn’t forgotten what she was supposed to do. We’re none of us at our best first thing in the morning, and Carolyn had had the odd wee dram of malt the night before. I could picture her wondering where I’d disappeared to and dismissing the question with a shrug as she tucked into a hearty breakfast of fly-in-the-oatmeal or some such traditional British treat.
“And wherever is your uh husband, Mrs. Rhodenbarr?”
“You mean Bernie? Gee, I dunno… Omigod, we’ve got to find him! He’s disappeared!”
She’d get it right, I assured myself. And until she did, all I could do was wait.
No problem. I had something to read.
No problem at all, as it turned out. Carolyn did wake up, and did remember her lines, and did succeed in communicating her feigned panic to the rest of the household. My door (or Rathburn’s, if you prefer, or Young George’s) was unbolted but still locked when they got to it, and the lock yielded readily enough to the master key.
“No one here,” Nigel Eglantine announced, and the horde gathered itself and prepared to head elsewhere. I distinguished various voices in the throng-Carolyn sounding on the brink of panic, Leona Savage murmuring reassurance-and then Dakin Littlefield’s voice rang out like a cracked bell.
“Not so fast,” he said. “Nobody checked the closet.”
“Why bother?” Carolyn said quickly. “He’s not here. What would he be doing in the closet?”
“Dropping down to room temperature,” Littlefield said. “If he’s dead somebody must have stowed him somewhere, and the closet’s as good a place as any. If it was worth looking in this room, it’s worth looking in the closet.”
“Let me,” Carolyn said. “Bernie? Bernie, are you in there?”
“If he’s dead,” Littlefield told her, “you’ll be a long time waiting for an answer. Open the door, why don’t you?”
“It’s stuck. This is ridiculous, he’s not in here, and we’re wasting time when we could be-”
“Stuck?” Littlefield did a lot with the one syllable, making it clear somehow that an inability to open the closet door indicated not only physical but mental and moral weakness. “Let’s just see how stuck it is,” he said, and flung the thing open.
CHAPTER Twenty-three
There was a sound that may have been Carolyn catching her breath, then a snort of disappointment from Littlefield. “Zilch,” he announced. “Just poor Rathburn’s clothes. He bought cheap crap, didn’t he?” He sniffed. “Smells a little funky in here, like somebody took a leak in one of his shoes. Probably that damned cat.”
“Raffles is toilet trained,” Carolyn said.
“Good for him. Anyway, it’d smell a lot worse if there was a body turning sour in here. We’re wasting time.”
And off they went. The last person out closed the door, remarkably enough, and nobody bothered to lock it, which would save me a minute or two, and spare that much wear on my burglar’s tools.
I waited another minute, just to make sure nobody came back for a last look, and crawled out from under the bed.
See, you had nothing to worry about. You were not fooled. You already knew they were still looking for me when they spotted the dummy at the bottom of the ravine. So your heart didn’t threaten to seize when Littlefield opened the closet.
Carolyn’s did. She was sure I was in Rathburn’s room, because I’d said that was where I’d probably be. They might very well pass up searching the room altogether, I’d told her, but if they looked they wouldn’t find me, because I’d be tucked away somewhere, probably in the closet.
I don’t know what made me dive under the bed instead. Maybe I was reluctant to share close quarters with Rathburn’s shoes. More likely I remembered all the closets I’d stowed away in over the years and figured I’d be pushing my luck to try that old trick yet again. I’d been under Rathburn’s bed earlier, looking for the chamber pot that wasn’t there, so I knew I’d fit, albeit snugly. So that’s where I was, and a good thing, too.
If I’d thought of it, I’d have left the closet door wide open. They wouldn’t have had to cross the threshold to see that the room was empty, and after a glance or two they’d have been on their way. But I’d left the door closed-Rathburn’s shoes may have had something to do with it-and that was enough to catch Littlefield’s interest. Carolyn was certain I was in the closet, and thus tried to keep the door closed. For my part, I wished they would open the damn thing and be done with it, before someone else got the bright idea to look under the bed.
Later, when they uncovered the corpses on the three lawn chairs, Carolyn didn’t have to work at it to look frightened. Because if I wasn’t in Rathburn’s closet she didn’t know where I was, so it was entirely possible that was me on one of those lawn chairs.
Once they were done checking the bedrooms and had begun the process of searching for me on the ground floor, it was my turn to return the favor and give their rooms a toss. I’d gone door-to-door in much the same fashion many years ago, when a fellow named Louis Lewis sold me a passkey that would open every room in the old Taft Hotel. I’d considered spacing my visits over a week or two, hitting a half-dozen rooms each time, but this was a while ago, and the fires of youth burned in my blood. I was impatient. I wanted instant gratification, and I didn’t want to wait for it, either.
So I booked a room at the Taft under a name selected for the occasion and let a bellhop bring my two large suitcases to my room. I checked in at three in the afternoon and checked out at seven the following morning, and by the time I left I’d been in more rooms than the Gideon Bible. The Taft was a huge hotel, and there was no way to hit every room, but I did my best. I’d go up to a door, knock gently, wait a moment, knock again, and then let myself in. It doesn’t take long to search a hotel room-the occupants haven’t been there long enough to build up an accumulation of clutter-so it’s just a matter of checking the drawers and closet, going through the luggage, and dipping into the pockets of clothes in the closet.
More often than not there was nothing to take. But here and there I found jewelry, some of it worth lifting, and here and there I found cash. During the early-evening hours most of the rooms I hit were empty, but as the night wore on guests came back to the hotel and turned in for the night. Some growled at my knock, or came to the door; a simple apology sent them back to bed. Others didn’t hear me knocking, nor did they hear me open their doors and pad softly around their carpeted floors. My visits were briefer when the occupants were in, but they were also more profitable, because if they were home so were their purses and wallets. I didn’t have to look hard to find them, either.
Then back to my room to stow my prizes. Then off, passkey in hand, eager as a kid on Christmas morning, wondering what the next pretty package would hold.
Ah, youth! When I left the next morning I’d jettisoned the phone books that had given my suitcases a feeling of respectable substance, and I’d filled both bags with well-gotten gains. I don’t know how I wound up after I’d tallied the cash and fenced the rest of the swag, and I’m sure it didn’t add up to what I’d expect to net nowadays from a single halfway decent stamp or coin collection, but it was a decent night’s work all the same. And I felt like a hero, a veritable superman of burglars. I’d pulled not one job but dozens of jobs, one right after the other.
Of course, it’s not all that tricky when you’ve got a key.
I didn’t have a key this time, and it would have speeded things up, no question about it. No matter how quick you are with your picks and probes, a key makes it quicker. Still, a couple of guests had leveled the playing fields for me a bit by neglecting to lock their doors. I was grateful, if a touch bemused. It’s nice, I suppose, to go about assuming one’s fellow guests are as honest as oneself, but doesn’t the illusion get harder to maintain when people are getting bumped off left and right? I suppose a properly brought up murderer will still draw the line at entering another person’s private quarters, but even so…