“Because it’s the sort of thing a person would remember,” Bettina Colibri said softly.
“And consequently he wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “But I got a look at all your faces, and you all looked surprised.”
“I knew it,” Cissie Eglantine said, her countenance transformed. “We’re innocent, each and every one of us. It was some nasty old tramp after all.”
Nigel sighed, and I don’t suppose he was the only one.
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “For one thing, even if the killer knew I was alive, he wouldn’t necessarily expect me to turn up as abruptly as I did. Carolyn knew I was alive, because I’d told her what I was planning. But I got a look at her face a minute ago, and she looked almost as surprised as the rest of you.”
“Well, you startled me, Bern.”
“I startled everybody,” I said. “That’s fair enough, because I was startled myself when I found out about Gordon Wolpert a few minutes ago. And I’m afraid I’m not done startling you.”
Miss Dinmont said she hoped there wasn’t going to be more in the way of excitement. Dakin Littlefield rolled his eyes and muttered something unintelligible to his bride. Muttering seemed to be the order of the day, until Carolyn called out, “Quiet, everybody! He knows who did it. Don’t you, Bern?”
“Did I? I wanted to hedge, to equivocate, to waffle.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I know who did it.”
There was a long silence. Then Nigel said, “I say,” and I realized they were all staring at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “It just seemed so decisive, putting it that way. You know what’s been wrong with this whole bloody business from the start? It’s too English.”
“Too English?”
“Too polite, too soft-spoken, too cozy for words. Of course Cissie keeps wanting the murderer to turn out to be a passing tramp. The alternative is to believe one of us did the dirty deed, and we’re all such jolly decent people it’s quite inconceivable. And I’ve been investigating the murders in the same decent earnest English manner, first trying to play Poirot and then turning amateur sleuth, asking dopey questions and looking for motives and probing alibis as if that’s going to tell me anything.”
“And it’s not?”
“No, because this isn’t a cozy little English murder case at all. It’s tough and hardboiled, and it’s not going to be solved by pussyfooting around like Miss Jane Marple or Lord Peter Wimsey. This is Philip Marlowe’s kind of caper.”
“Philip Marlowe?” the colonel said. “Don’t believe I know the name.”
“He was Raymond Chandler’s detective,” I said, “and he knew about mean streets, and that’s what we’ve got here in this house once you peel the veneer away. We may be miles away from any streets, mean or otherwise, but it all amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Bern,” Carolyn said. “Look at the murder weapons-a camel and a pillow to start with, and sugar in a gas tank and a dagger with a wavy blade. In Philip Marlowe’s cases they mostly just shot each other, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but-”
“And he’d get hit over the head and fall down a flight of stairs. Nobody’s been shot, and nobody fell down a flight of stairs unless you count the library steps. The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next person to die gets murdered with tropical fish, and you know what Chandler had to say about that.”
“That’s all peripheral,” I said. “When you get to what really happened, it’s straightforward and it’s brutal. And there’s not a single tropical fish in it.”
“Jonathan Rathburn,” I said. “He came here by himself, took up residence in Young George’s Room, and began behaving like a man with something on his mind. He scribbled away in a notebook and sat around writing letters that nobody ever saw. And he stared at people. Someone mentioned noticing him staring oddly at Leona Savage, but it wasn’t because they were long-lost lovers or twins separated at birth. Rathburn stared probingly at just about everybody, at one time or another.”
“I just assumed he was interested in people,” Cissie Eglantine said.
“There was another guest who was interested in people, too,” I said. “Gordon Wolpert. He was very different from Rathburn, tweedy and mousy where Rathburn was brooding and flamboyant. But he too came here alone, and he was a keen observer of his fellow guests, and he liked a bit of gossip, too.”
“That’s true,” Miss Hardesty recalled. “He had a lot of questions about everybody, and he’d make dry comments.”
“Pleasant enough fellow, though,” the colonel put in. “Seemed a decent chap.”
“But he was a picky eater,” I said. “Isn’t that so, Mr. Quilp?”
“He picked at his food,” Rufus Quilp agreed. “Pushed it around on his plate.”
I looked to Molly Cobbett for confirmation. “He never ate much,” she said. “He would always say the food was good, but his plate would be half full when I brought it back to the kitchen. It bothered Cook some.”
“It bothered me,” Quilp said. “I never trust a picky eater.”
“Well, the man’s dead,” Greg Savage said, “so I think we can forgive him his lack of appetite. Maybe he was just watching his weight.”
“But he was slender,” Leona said.
“Well, honey, maybe that’s how he stayed slender. By resisting the temptation to eat like a horse.”
“He wasn’t resisting temptation,” Quilp insisted. “He wasn’t tempted. The man simply did not care about food.”
“Maybe there’s something intrinsically suspicious about a lack of appetite,” I said, “and maybe there isn’t. I couldn’t tell you one way or the other. What got my attention wasn’t that Gordon Wolpert would never qualify for the Clean Plate Club. I was more interested in the fact that he lied about it.”
“What do you mean, Bern?”
“You were there,” I told Carolyn. “I think it was the first conversation we had with him. Wolpert said he’d extended his stay at Cuttleford House and might extend it again, because the food was so good. He even patted his stomach and made some remark about his waistline.”
“Maybe he was anorexic,” Millicent suggested. “I saw a program about that. These girls were starving themselves, but they thought they were fat.”
“Somehow,” I said, “I don’t think he fits the profile. Anorexia’s pretty scarce in middle-aged males. No, I think there’s a basic principle involved. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but whenever a politician answers a question that you haven’t asked, he’s lying. Gordon Wolpert was doing essentially the same thing. He was staying on longer than he’d planned at Cuttleford House, and he was offering an explanation when none was required. And the explanation was untrue-the food wasn’t what was keeping him here. That meant something else was, and it was something he wanted to conceal.”
“Brilliant,” Dakin Littlefield said dryly. “Only it’s a shame you didn’t ask him for an explanation before somebody tied a knot in his neck.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I told him. “I did what amateur sleuths always do-I waited until I could be absolutely certain. I suppose it has to be that way in the books, or otherwise they’d end on page seventy-eight. What I should have done was shoulder my way in and ask impertinent questions. But I didn’t, and somebody strangled him.”
The colonel cleared his throat. “So it was Wolpert who aroused your suspicions,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “I knew someone was sitting right here in this room with Jonathan Rathburn. I was on my way to bed and they were in here.”
“You never mentioned that,” Nigel said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“And you saw them in here?” Lettice said. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, Bernie. Who was it?”
“The lights were out,” I said, “and it was pitch dark inside, so I didn’t see anybody. I could hear that there was a conversation going on, but it was too low-pitched to identify the speakers, and of course I didn’t want to eavesdrop.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to resist,” Lettice admitted. “Didn’t you hear even a tiny bit, Bernie?”