“Bernie!”
It was Lettice, of course, Lettice Runcible Littlefield. I didn’t have to turn around and look at her to establish as much, but I did anyway, and there she was.
I should have waited. My plan, if you want to dignify it with that name, was simplicity itself. Step One-get the book. Step Two-go home. As long as I performed those two tasks in that particular order, things ought to work out. I wanted to undertake Step Two as soon after breakfast as was decently possible, which gave me something like eight hours to execute Step One and scoop up Chandler.
I thought of sleeping first and going after Chandler at the last minute, virtually on the way out the door. I thought of napping for a few hours, giving the rest of the house time to settle in for a good night’s sleep, and then paying a visit to the library in the hour of the wolf. But I didn’t want to rush, nor did I want to risk appearing furtive to a fellow insomniac. Best to get the book now, I’d thought, and tuck it under my pillow for the night, and make off with it first thing in the morning.
There were guests in the library when I got there. Rufus Quilp, the very stout gentleman who’d been reading and dozing earlier, was still at it, breathing heavily if not quite snoring. A copy of Dombey and Son, part of a broken half-leather set of Dickens whose volumes I’d spotted here and there around the house, lay open on his lap. Greg Savage, unaccompanied by wife or child, looked up at my approach to flash the apologetic smile frequently found on the lips of the parents of precocious children, then returned to his book, a Philip Friedman courtroom novel. It was the author’s latest, and, from the looks of it, his longest; if I’d borrowed Savage’s copy and stood on top of it I might not have needed the library steps.
I did a little reading myself, hoping Quilp and Savage would decide to call it a night, and before long Savage did, slipping away quietly so as not to disturb us. Quilp’s eyes were closed, and what did it matter if he saw me climb the steps and reach for a book? That’s what the steps were there for, and what the books were there for. And, by God, it was what I was there for.
Then Lettice called my name.
“What the hell are you doing here, Bernie?”
I was already on my way down the steps. I touched a finger to my lips, then pointed across the room to the chair where Rufus Quilp sat in a Dickensian doze.
“All right, then,” she said. “Let’s go where we can talk.” She spun on her heel and stalked out of the library, and I followed in her wake.
We wound up in the East Parlour, beneath the gaze of the putative springbok. I turned on a lamp. Lettice told me not to bother, we wouldn’t be here that long. I said we might as well be comfortable. “Besides,” I said, “how will it look if somebody sees us sitting together in the dark?”
“If it’s dark,” she said, “how will they see us?”
“Sit down,” I said. “You’re looking well. Marriage agrees with you.”
“What are you doing here, Bernie?”
“What am I doing here? I’m spending a traditional weekend in a traditional English country house, with more than the traditional amount of snow. I don’t know where you get off being surprised to see me. I told you I had a reservation here.”
“You also told me you were going to take me.”
“Well, you had a prior engagement.”
“So you brought your wife.” She treated me to a sidelong glance. “You never told me you were married, Bernie.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh, really? Is little Mrs. Rhodenbarr your mother?”
“Her name is Carolyn Kaiser,” I said, “and she’s not Mrs. Rhodenbarr. That seems to be an honorary designation a woman receives here when she arrives in the company of a man.”
“So you’re just good friends.”
“That’s exactly what we are, as a matter of fact. Not that it’s any of your business. Now it’s my turn to ask a question. What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were getting married today.”
“Dakin and I were married this afternoon.”
“What a coincidence. He surprised you by taking you to the same place I’d picked.”
“No, of course not.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I suggested it,” she said. “You made it sound so wonderful I couldn’t think of anything else. We had reservations in Aruba, but I managed to convince Dakin that we’d have ever so much more fun coming here. And luckily they had a room available.”
“Not with twin beds, by any chance?”
“With a double bed, of course. Dakin’s in it now, sleeping like a lamb.”
“I’m surprised you’re not with him.”
“I was,” she said, lowering her eyes. “You know what they say about lovemaking, that it puts men to sleep and wakes women up.”
“As opposed to the idea of lovemaking,” I said, “which wakes men up and gives women a headache.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she went on, “and I knew I had to find you and talk to you. You can’t imagine what a shock it was to run into you.”
“Oh, yes I can.”
“You know, I rather assumed it was your room they’d given us, that you’d canceled your reservation after our conversation. I never dreamed you’d come after all.”
“Well, I never figured you’d show up. I thought this was the last place on earth I’d run into you.”
“You seemed so devastated the last time we were together. I was afraid of what you might do.”
“Like what? Stick my head in the oven? Take holy orders?”
“Nothing that extreme. But I thought you might be in something of a funk for a while. I certainly didn’t think you’d appear all coupled up with another woman. How do I know you haven’t been married all along?”
“At this point,” I said, “why on earth would you care?”
“Because I never date married men, for one thing.”
“Neither do I,” I said, “or married women, either, so maybe you ought to scoot back upstairs where you belong.”
“Why, Bernie!”
“I’m serious, Lettice. You’re a married woman now. We shouldn’t be sitting here in the dark together.”
“If it were any brighter in here,” she said, “I’d need to put on sunscreen. Bernie, you’re furious with me, aren’t you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“For one thing, you’re glaring at me. You and that animal.”
Had Raffles joined us? I looked around for him.
“On the wall,” she said. “That poor creature that someone shot and stuffed.”
“He’s immortal,” I said. “He’s supposed to be a springbok, but he sure looks like an oryx to me. You can’t really blame him for looking disgruntled. Someone shot him. But why should I be furious?”
“Because you really cared for me, and you truly were devastated when I told you I was getting married. And of course you’re furious, you’re positively seething. Bernie, that’s so sweet!”
“It is?”
She nodded. “And you came here this weekend to prove to yourself that you don’t care, but of course it proves just the opposite, doesn’t it?”
“It does?”
“You know it does.” She leaned toward me and laid her cool hand against my cheek. “Bernie,” she said earnestly, “I’m not saying that we can never ever be together again. But this weekend is out of the question. You must understand that.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve been married for less than twelve hours,” she said. “I’m on my honeymoon. For God’s sake, I just left my husband’s bed. You can’t expect me to-”
“To what?”
“Oh, Bernie,” she said. “When we’re both back in the city, when some of these powerful emotions become a little easier to deal with, who knows what might happen?”
“Not me,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”
“But while we’re here,” she went on, “we’ll have to be on our best behavior. We’ll be friendly but distant, reserved. As far as anyone else has to know, we met for the first time this evening in the bar. We never knew each other before.”