The Burglar in the Library by Lawrence Block

through the halls, and I’ll be lying in here in the dark with the door open, waiting for the young ’un to murder me in my bed. This gets better every minute.”
    “‘The young ’un.’ Orris? Why would he murder you in your bed?”
    “Because that’s where I’ll be,” she said, “unless I’m hiding under it.”
    “But what makes you think he—”
    “‘Better to have him plowing driveways than locked away his whole life.’ What do you figure he did that made them lock him away?”
    “But that’s the point, Carolyn. They didn’t lock him away.”
    “It evidently crossed their minds,” she said, “and they decided against it. What do you figure gave them the notion?”
    “He’s evidently a little slow,” I said. “Maybe there was some sentiment in favor of institutionalizing him for that reason, but instead it was determined that he could lead a productive life outside.”
    “Plowing driveways, for instance.”
    “And being a general handyman.”
    “And lurking,” she said. “And drooling. And slipping into Aunt Augusta’s Room with an ax.”
    “Sometimes,” I said, “when people are cranky, it’s because they’re hungry.”
    “And sometimes it’s because they need a drink, and sometimes it’s both.” She got out of bed, combed her hair with her fingertips, brushed someimaginary lint off her blazer. “C’mon,” she said. “What are we waiting for?”
     
    After all that, I was expecting dinner to be a disaster—translucent roast beef, say, and vegetables boiled into submission. The outlook improved, though, when we got to the bottom of the stairs and met a woman with feathery blond hair, plump chipmunk cheeks, and an air of radiant well-being. “The Rhodenbarrs,” she said, beaming, and who could presume to correct her? “I’m Cissy Eglantine, and I do hope you’re happy in Aunt Augusta’s Room. I think it’s quite the coziest, myself.”
    We assured her it was charming.
    “Oh, I’m so glad you like it,” she said. “Now we’re getting a late supper laid for you in the dining room, but I wonder if you might want to stop in the bar first? Nigel’s especially proud of his selection of single-malt Scotches, if you have any interest at all in that sort of thing.”
    We admitted to a sort of academic interest and hurried off to the bar. “The trouble with trying to compare different whiskies,” Carolyn said when we finally moved on to the dining room, “is that by the time you’re sipping the fourth one, it’s impossible to remember what the first one tasted like. So you have to go back and start over.”
    “And before long,” I said, “you have trouble remembering other things. Like your name.”
    “Well, nobody else remembers my name, so why should I? I just got here an hour ago and already I’ve been Ms. Runcible and Mrs. Rhodenbarr. I can’t wait to see what the future holds. What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing’s the matter,” I said. “Something smells terrific.”
    And so it was. A rich and savory soup, a salad of romaine and Boston lettuce with walnuts and dill, and a thick slab of prime rib flanked with crisp little roasted potatoes. The waitress, a skittish country girl who might have been Orris’s sister (or his wife, or both), brought us mugs of brown ale without asking, and filled them up when we emptied them.
    Dessert was some sort of fruit cobbler, topped with what Carolyn said had to be clotted cream. “Look at this,” she said. “You could float a scone on it. You could float the Stone of Scone on it. Bern, forget everything I said.”
    “Starting when?”
    “Starting when we got here. You want to know something? I don’t give a rat’s ass if the place is haunted. If the ghost’s got any sense he won’t come anywhere near our room, anyway. He’ll hang out in the kitchen. Bern, this is one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life.”
    “You know what they say. Hunger’s the best sauce.”
    “I was hungry enough to eat my