The Burglar in the Library by Lawrence Block Page B

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.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    “And we never slipped into the East Parlour together, and had this conversation.” She perched on the arm of my chair, her face inches from mine, and treated me to a whiff of her perfume. “Oh, Bernie,” she said. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”
    “You do?”
    She leaned in and kissed me, and without thinking about it I kissed back. She was always a good kisser, and she hadn’t lost a step in the week and a half since I’d seen her. I put my arms around her, and she put a hand on my knee for balance.
    I guess it didn’t work, though, because the next thing I knew she was in my lap.
    “My goodness,” she said, squirming around, and sort of rubbing her body against me like a cat. It was, though, a good deal more interesting than it is when a cat does it.
    She moved her hand, then gasped in mock alarm. “Oh, my! Bernie, what have we here?”
    “Uh…”
    “I should speak sternly to you,” she said, “and tell you to take that upstairs to your wifey. Are you absolutely certain you’re not married, Bernie?”
    “You’ve been to my apartment,” I reminded her.
    “And made love beneath the fake Mondrian. I’ll never forget that, Bernie.”
    “Did it seem like the home of a married man?”
    “Hardly. But whether you’re married or not, it’s clear you and your little friend are more than just friends.” Her hand did something artful. “You’re planning on sharing a bed with her this weekend, aren’t you?”
    “Well, technically, yes. But—”
    “And she’s waiting for you, and you’re down here with me.” She was purring with excitement and delight. “She’s lying awake, and Dakin’s sound asleep, and we’re together, aren’t we?” She sort of flowed from my lap to the floor, as if she were a liquid drawn there by gravity. And she put her hands in my lap, and she put her head in my lap.
    I reached to switch off the lamp.
     
    “Poor Dakin,” she said a while later, getting to her feet. “I swore I’d be a faithful wife, and in less than half a day I’ve gone and committed adultery. Or have I?”
    “Can’t you remember?”
    She ran the tip of her tongue across her upper lip. “I shouldn’t think I’m in great danger of forgetting the act,” she said. “I was just wondering if it qualifies. In terms of adultery, that is. Does what we just did count?”
    “Well, what’s adultery? Extramarital sex, right? This was certainly extramarital, and it seems to me it was sexual.”
    “Quite,” she said.
    “So I guess that makes it adultery.”
    “Sitting in your lap was sexual,” she said. “Kissing you was definitely sexual. Rubbing up against you was deliciously sexual. You wouldn’t label any of those acts adulterous, would you?”
    “No.”
    “It seems to me,” she said, “that anything short of the main event, so to speak, is not exactly adultery.”
    “I see, Lettice. In other words, you figure you ought to get off on a technicality.”
    “Is it a technicality? Perhaps it is.” She grinned. “In any event,” she said, “you’re the one who got off. I just hope your sweet little nonwife won’t be too disappointed.”
    “She’ll get over it,” I said.
    “Oh, I do hope so,” she said, and flashed a wicked grin, and blew me a kiss, and left.

CHAPTER
Ten
    I stayed where I was, under the watchful gaze of the presumptive oryx, and I sat and mused. Was this the sort of thing that went on in English country houses? I swear nothing like it had ever happened in any Agatha Christie novel I ever read. Iris Murdoch, maybe, but not Agatha Christie.
    Mine had seemed like such a clear and simple program—or programme, as young Millicent Savage would no doubt prefer it. Step