Burglar Who Smelled Smoke

by Lawrence Block

  Crittenden knelt where I pointed, rubbed two fingers on the spot, brought them to his nose. "Scorched," he reported. "But just the least bit. Take a whole lot more than that to set off a sensor way up there."

  "I know. That was a test."

  "A test?"

  "Of the murder method. How do you raise the temperature of a room you can't enter? You can't unlock the door and you can't open the window. How can you get enough heat in to set off the gas?"

  "How?"

  I turned to Eva. "Tell him how you did it," I said.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "You must be crazy."

  "You wouldn't need a fire," I said. "You wouldn't even need a whole lot of heat. All you'd have to do is deliver enough heat directly to the sensor to trigger a response. If you could manage that in a highly localized fashion, you wouldn't even raise the overall room temperature appreciably."

  "Keep talking," Crittenden said.

  I picked up an ivory-handled magnifier, one of several placed strategi-cally around the room. "When I was a Boy Scout," I said, "they didn't really teach me how to open locks. But they were big on starting fires. Flint and steel, fire by friction-and that old standby, focusing the sun's rays though a magnifying glass and delivering a concentrated pinpoint of intense heat onto something with a low kindling point."

  "The window," Crittenden said.

  I nodded. "It faces north," I said, "so the sun never comes in on its own. But you can stand a few feet from the window and catch the sunlight with a mirror, and you can tilt the mirror so the light is reflected through your magnifying glass and on through the window. And you can beam it onto an object in the room."

  "The heat sensor, that'd be."

  "Eventually," I said. "First, though, you'd want to make sure it would work. You couldn't try it out ahead of time on the sensor, because you wouldn't know it was working until you set it off. Until then, you couldn't be sure the thickness of the window glass wasn't disrupting the process. So you'd want to test it."

  "That explains the scorched rug, doesn't it?" Crittenden stooped for another look at it, then glanced up at the window. "Soon as you saw a wisp of smoke or a trace of scorching, you'd know it was working. And you'd have an idea how long it would take to raise the temperature enough. If you could make it hot enough to scorch wool, you could set off a heat-sensitive alarm."

  "My God," Eva cried, adjusting quickly to new realities. "I thought you must be crazy, but now I can see how it was done. But who could have done such a thing?"

  "Oh, I don't know," I said. "I suppose it would have to be somebody who lived here, somebody who was familiar with the library and knew about the halon, somebody who stood to gain financially by Karl Bellermann's death. Somebody, say, who felt neglected by a husband who treated her like a housekeeper, somebody who might see poetic justice in killing him while he was locked away with his precious books."

  "You can't mean me, Bernie."

  "Well, now that you mention it..."

  "But I was with you! Karl was with us at lunch. Then he went into the library and I showed you to the guest room."

  "You showed me, all right."

  "And we were together," she said, lowering her eyes modestly. "It shames me to say it with my husband tragically dead, but we were in bed together until almost six o'clock, when we came down here to discover the body. You can testify to that, can't you, Bernie?"

  "I can swear we went to bed together," I said, "And I can swear that I was there until six, unless I went sleepwalking. But I was out cold, Eva."

  "So was I."

  "I don't think so," I said. "You stayed away from the coffee, saying how it kept you awake. Well, it sure didn't keep me awake. I think there was something in it to make me sleep, and that's why you didn't want any. I think there was more of the same in the pot you gave Karl to bring in here with him, so he'd be dozing peacefully while you set off the halon. You waited until I was asleep, went outside with a mirror and a magnifier, heated the sensor and set off the gas, and then came back to bed. The halon would do its work in minutes, and without warning even if Karl wasn't sleeping all that soundly. Halon's odorless and colorless, and the air-cleaning system would whisk it all away in less than an hour. But I think there'll be traces in his system, along with traces of the same sedative they'll find in the residue in both the coffee pots. And I think that'll be enough to put you away."

  Crittenden thought so, too.

  When I got back to the city there was a message on the machine to call Nizar Gulbenkian. It was late, but it sounded urgent.

  "Bad news," I told him. "I had the book just about sold. Then he locked himself in his library to commune with the ghosts of Rex Stout and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and next thing he knew they were all hanging out together."

  "You don't mean he died?"

  "His wife killed him," I said, and I went on to tell him the whole story. "So that's the bad news, though it's not as bad for us as it is for the Bellermanns. I've got the book back, and I'm sure I can find a customer for it."

  "Ah," he said. "Well, Bernie, I'm sorry about Bellermann. He was a true bookman."

  "He was that, all right."

  "But otherwise your bad news is good news."

  "It is?"

  "Yes. Because I changed my mind about the book."

  "You don't want to sell it?"

  "I can't sell it," he said. "It would be like tearing out my soul. And now, thank God, I don't have to sell it."

  "Oh?"

  "More good news," he said. "A business transaction, a long shot with a handsome return. I won't bore you with the details, but the outcome was very good indeed. If you'd been successful in selling the book, I'd now be begging you to buy it back."

  "I see."

  "Bernie," he said, I'm a collector, as passionate about the pursuit as poor Bellermann. I don't ever want to sell. I want to add to my holdings." He let out a sigh, clearly pleased at the prospect. "So I'll want the book back. But of course I'll pay you your commission all the same."

  "I couldn't accept it."

  "So you had all that work for nothing?"

  "Not exactly," I said.

  "Oh?"

  "I guess Bellermann's library will go on the auction block eventually," I said. "Eva can't inherit, but there'll be some niece or nephew to wind up with a nice piece of change. And there'll be some wonderful books in that sale."

  "There certainly will."

  "But a few of the most desirable items won't be included," I said, "because they somehow found their way into my briefcase, along with Fer-de-Lance."

  "You managed that, Bernie? With a dead body in the room, and a murderer in custody, and a cop right there on the scene?"

  "Bellermann had shown me his choicest treasures," I said, "so I knew just what to grab and where to find it. And Crittenden didn't care what I did with the books. I told him I needed something to read on the train and he waited patiently while I picked out eight or ten volumes. Well, it's a long train ride, and I guess he must think I'm a fast reader."

  "Bring them over," he said. "Now."

  "Nizar, I'm bushed," I said, "and you're all the way up in Riverdale. First thing in the morning, okay? And while I'm there you can teach me how to tell a Tabriz from an Isfahan."

  "They're not at all alike, Bernie. How could anyone confuse them?"

  "You'll clear it up for me tomorrow. Okay?"

  "Well, all right," he said. "But I hate to wait."

  Collectors! Don't you just love them?

  The End

 

 

 
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