“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.”
CHAPTER Twenty-nine
“She may not want to know,” Carolyn said, “but I do. What was that all about, Bern? Why’d you call her and make her come down here? And why schedule things so you got to play the scene in front of me? Not that I’m complaining, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but…”
“But why did I do it that way.”
“Right.”
I thought about it and took a bite of my sandwich. It had gone untouched since Lettice walked in, and an interlude like that can give you an appetite. I chewed and swallowed and drank some cream soda, and I said, “Raymond Chandler.”
“Huh?”
“It was a Raymond Chandler case,” I said. “Once I realized that, I went out and took action, instead of trying to put the pieces together like some English gentleman assembling a jigsaw puzzle in his drawing room. That’s why I did what I did that night while you were sleeping.”