The Manual of Detection

by Jedediah Berry

  At Central Terminal there was no line at the breakfast cart, but he did not need a cup of coffee. If someone asked him why he came to Central Terminal, he would tell the truth—that he was taking the first train out of town, all the way to the end of the line.

  The old schedule was still in his pocket. He checked it against the four-faced clock above the information booth. His train would board in just a few minutes.

  He dreamed he still had the ticket he purchased the morning he first saw the woman in the plaid coat, then dreamed he sat at the front of the train. As the conductor punched his ticket, he turned in his seat, fighting the feeling that someone was watching him. He was one of only a few passengers in the car, and everyone else was either reading a newspaper or napping.

  The train began to move. Unwin settled back in his seat as it emerged from the tunnels into a brightening morning. The city rose up on either side of the tracks, then gradually thinned. They passed under a bridge and veered north along the river. In the valley the leaves on all the trees had turned red and yellow. The colors reflected on the surface of the water made him dizzy. He closed his eyes against them and dozed.

  He took the train as far into the country as it would go. The terminal at the other end of the line was small and made of red brick, with a door painted green. Seeing it all reminded him again of that game he had played with the other children.

  Hide-and-seek: that is what the game was called. It had been somebody’s birthday, he thought.

  He walked north on the town’s one road. A gray cat moved between the slats of a picket fence, following him without looking like it was following him. Beyond the last mailbox, he found the dirt path leading into the woods. It was cool in the shade there, and he buttoned his jacket. The ground was soft but not too damp.

  Again the feeling that made him turn, expecting a pair of eyes in the shadow. There was no one there, just a small animal darting into the ferns. Two days as a detective and already he was suspicious of everything.

  He came to the pond, to the tire swing. Unwin followed the electric cord into the woods, to the clearing where Sivart had moved the narrow brass bed. The lamp was on, and some leaves had fallen onto the typewriter. Sivart was under the covers, his hat down over his eyes.

  Unwin stood at the foot of the bed and shook it. Sivart did not stir, not even a little. Back at the Cat & Tonic, the magician was still asleep, still keeping him prisoner. Unwin checked his watch. He had just a few minutes before the alarm would ring.

  “Move away, Mr. Unwin.”

  Arthur, still in his gray coveralls, appeared at the end of the path. He had a pistol in his hand. “I knew I’d have to take care of this myself eventually.”

  Unwin stepped aside. “You knew I’d come here.”

  “I didn’t know where ‘here’ was, but I knew you had nowhere left to go. And I understood the same thing Lamech did, when he promoted you. That if anyone knew where Sivart had gone, it was you.”

  The overseer walked up to the foot of the bed. A breeze stirred the leaves on the blanket and brought a few more down out of the trees. Unwin could just hear the creaking of the tire swing over the pond.

  Arthur said, “I was trying to tell you something yesterday morning, when I saw you on the eight train. I was trying to tell you that I got your memo. The one you sent to Lamech, knowing it would reach someone in charge. Your request is granted, Mr. Unwin. You’re not a detective anymore. Which means you don’t have to watch this.”

  “I’ll stay,” Unwin said.

  “Suit yourself.” Arthur raised the pistol and closed one eye to aim.

  “You’re going to miss,” Unwin said. “Are you sure it’s even loaded?”

  Arthur’s arm shook a little. He opened the cylinder to check and gave Unwin a weary look. Then he snapped it closed and readied himself.

  “You’re going to miss,” Unwin said again. “You aren’t even pointing the gun at Sivart. You’re pointing it at me.”

  “You’re an odd one, Mr. Unwin.” He let out his breath and dropped his arm. “Why is this gun so damn heavy?”

  “I don’t think it’s a gun,” Unwin said. “I think it’s your accordion. You must have grabbed the wrong thing on your way out of your office.”

  Arthur whistled through his teeth. “A total loon.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Unwin said. “It would be easy to mix them up while you were sleepwalking.”

  “I didn’t sleepwalk,” Arthur said. “I waited for you outside your apartment building. I was hiding in the bakery across the street. I followed you those few blocks to Central Terminal. I bought a ticket and rode one car behind you, all the way to the last stop. I’ve been awake the entire time.”

  “But I’m still asleep, sir, so you are, too. That’s the way it works, isn’t it? Door’s locked. You don’t wake up until I do.”

  Arthur leveled the gun. “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “Actually, I got the idea from something Lamech said, in his last dream. The one he was having when you killed him.”

  Arthur moved his jaw while he thought about that. “Oh, yeah? What did he say that gave you this idea of yours?”

  “He said that once, during an investigation, his subject dreamed she woke up, and Lamech thought she really had. He went about his day for a long time before he figured out he was still asleep, still in the dream he had infiltrated.”

  “What makes you think I’d fall for a thing like that?”

  “I’m a meticulous dreamer, sir. Always have been. I took a train out of town last night, and Miss Greenwood came with me. I made note of everything I saw on the way. I knew I’d have to dream it later, make it perfect. I came out here and found Sivart asleep in this bed, in the moonlight with that lamp on. I dragged him out and took his place.

  “Miss Greenwood helped me sleep. I dreamed that I was home, that I woke up there. I dreamed that I went down to the street and smelled the bread baking, and that’s when you started following me. I went to Central Terminal and took the first train into the country. I dreamed it well enough for you to follow me. You’ve been asleep for so long, I think you don’t remember what it feels like to be awake. I’m still asleep. You’re asleep, too. And I’m pretty sure that’s just your accordion in your hand. With your eyes closed, you must have taken the wrong thing off the wall. Still, I wish you’d stop pointing it at me.”

  Arthur had grown more agitated while he listened, and his whole body was shaking now. “I don’t believe any of this,” he said.

  “I saw you murder Lamech,” Unwin said. “Miss Palsgrave recorded the dream—she knows you killed him, too. Do you think she’ll stay loyal to you after this? Do you think any of your watchers will?”

  With a growl Arthur pulled the trigger, and the gun leapt in his hand. The shot shook the bed, shook more leaves out of the trees. It was so loud it woke Unwin and Arthur both.

  Unwin sat up and felt his chest—no wound, only wet leaves. He brushed them away and checked his watch: it was just after six o’clock. Back at the Cat & Tonic, the alarm clock he left had woken Enoch Hoffmann.

  Woken Sivart, too. The detective was standing beside the bed, hat low over his brow, his gun aimed at the overseer. Arthur looked down at his accordion. He was holding it by the bass strap with the bellows unlatched and dangling, so that the other end nearly touched the ground.

  “I don’t know any songs for this,” Arthur said.

  Sivart rubbed the back of his neck. “I am so tender. Charlie, couldn’t you at least have given me a pillow?”

  Miss Greenwood stepped into the clearing, limping badly on her bad leg. She went to stand next to Sivart. Her exhaustion had developed into something else, something hard and cracked. The look in her shadowed eyes, when she saw Arthur, was full of a strange fire.

  Unwin leaned over the edge of the bed and started putting on his shoes.

  “Idiots,” Arthur said. “You know what that madman’s doing to my city. To our city. You need me.” />
  “Like hell,” Sivart said.

  “Mr. Unwin, you saw the third archive. What the Agency always needed was an honest-to-goodness record, not just of our work but of the city’s work. Its secrets, its thoughts, its dreams—good and bad. They’re down there in our basement, the whole shebang. It’s only because of Hoffmann that any of it’s necessary. He’ll twist the world out of whack if we don’t keep a watch on things.”

  For a moment Unwin found himself wanting to be convinced. It would be safer for everyone, he thought, to keep those records, to make more of them, to document everything they could see, to possess forever the solutions to those mysteries for which each person was treasury, keeper, and key.

  But if everything is knowable, then nothing is safe, and the sentinels are unwelcome guests, mere trespassers. Not an antidote to the enemy—only his mirror.

  “Hoffmann’s taken care of,” Unwin said. “Screed has him by now.”

  Sivart looked furious when he heard that. He came over to Unwin and said, “Ben Screed? That jokester? It isn’t his case, Charlie, never was. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Arthur seemed to have given up on them and was watching Miss Greenwood attentively. He righted his accordion and held it with both hands. “How’s that one go, darling?” he said, running his fingers over the keys. “The one we used to play when it was almost time to go?”

  She drew a gun from the pocket of her red raincoat. It was the antique pistol she had taken from Hoffmann’s trophy room. “Almost time to go,” she said.

  Arthur filled the bellows and played a few chords. “Wait, wait,” he said. “I’ve almost got it.”

  He and the others turned at the sound of another person coming up the path. Something glinted in the shade—a pair of eyeglasses, Emily Doppel’s. She must have followed the sleepwalking overseer, maybe even sat next to him on the train. She had Unwin’s pistol in one hand and her lunch box in the other.

  She took a long look at everyone in the clearing. Unwin wondered whether she could have created the same scenario with those figurines in her lunch box. Investigator, suspect, informant, criminal: there were only so many ways to arrange them.

  Unwin stood and went to her. “We did it, Emily. We found Sivart.”

  “Did we?” she said, her voice flat. “And what now?”

  “Now—well, I was thinking about it. I was thinking we should keep working together. I don’t know what the rules are, exactly, but what’s to stop us from solving more mysteries together? I think I’m getting the hang of this. And I think I can’t do it without you.”

  She met his gaze, but only for a moment. “You know, Detective Unwin, I applied three times to work at the Agency. I was twelve the first time. I wanted to be a messenger, but I fell asleep in the middle of the interview. A year later I tried again, but they remembered who I was and they didn’t even ask me to come in. The last time was about a year ago. I thought maybe I’d ask for a spot at a clerk’s desk. But I changed my mind at the last minute and told them I wanted to be a detective, that I wouldn’t be happy with anything less. They still remembered me. And they knew, somehow, what I had in my lunch box. ‘Little girl,’ they said, ‘why don’t you just go home and play with your toys.’

  “I was so mad I almost went down to the carnival, to see if the remnants would take me in. But before I could, Arthur visited me in my sleep.” She was looking at the overseer now. “He gave me a chance when nobody else would. He said, ‘Come and be my assistant. I’ll teach you everything.’ I thought maybe it was just a delusion, something I’d invented to make myself feel better. But it wasn’t. Every time I drifted off, I was back in his office. And cases I heard about there would show up in the papers a few days later. It was real. And the head of the Agency was teaching me everything.”

  Emily’s gaze had settled on Cleo. “Miss Greenwood,” she said, “you have to drop that gun now.”

  Arthur wheezed until his wheezing became laughter. “Attagirl,” he said, still teasing a tune from the bellows. “I knew I could count on you.”

  Miss Greenwood showed no indication that she had heard any of this, and Emily took a step closer to her.

  “Lady,” Sivart said to Emily, “put the gun down.”

  Emily pointed the gun at Miss Greenwood as Sivart took aim at Emily. Did the Manual contain a name for this, for what was happening? These three could stand that way forever, no one making a move, because there was no good move to make. Miss Greenwood shook her head—barely conscious, it seemed, of what was going on around her. She knew the gun, knew the man at whom she aimed. That was all, maybe.

  The overseer was still wheezing. He looked at Emily and said, “What are you waiting for?”

  She ignored him and said to Unwin, “I convinced Arthur to assign me to you, after your promotion. The plan was to keep an eye on you. Make sure you stayed on track. Make sure you found Sivart for us.”

  Unwin felt cold as he recalled one of the first assignments he had given his assistant—to contact the Agency’s custodian and ask him to clean the paint spilled in the hall. But they had discussed more than spilled paint—as they must have every time she fell asleep.

  “You did a good job of it, then,” Unwin said.

  “Not good enough,” she said. She was shaking her lunch box as she spoke, rattling the tin figurines inside. “It shouldn’t be like this. . . .”

  Arthur had stopped laughing. “That’s right, Emily,” he said. “There are protocols.”

  Emily did not seem to hear him. “I stole Lamech’s copy of The Manual of Detection,” she said.

  The accordion sagged in Arthur’s hands, emitting a dissonant sigh. “Emily,” he said quietly.

  “At first I just wanted it for myself,” she said. “But once I’d read the whole thing, I saw what it could do, what it could . . . incite a person to do. So I left it in Sivart’s office, where he was sure to find it. I couldn’t stand the waiting anymore. I wanted someone to make a move, a real one. I wanted Hoffmann back, and the Agency ready to fight him.”

  Unwin took a step away from her, closing his eyes as he considered his mistake. Penelope Greenwood was not the thief of the unexpurgated copy of The Manual of Detection. Though in revealing the gold tooth of the Oldest Murdered Man, she had worked in concert with Emily, and toward the same end. The two of them, without apparent knowledge of one another, had together rekindled the old war between the Agency and the carnival.

  The leaves, when the breeze took them, rustled like paper. Emily looked at the ground, shaking her head. “What a mess I’ve made. I could have done a better job.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Sivart said.

  She half closed her eyes, then recited, “ ‘To the modern detective, truth is rarely its own reward; usually it is its own punishment. And if you cannot track mystery to the back of its ugly cave, then be content to stand at the edge of the dark and call it by name.’ ”

  She looked at Arthur as she lowered her gun.

  The overseer, as though a spring in him were suddenly loosed, leaned into his accordion and began to play. The bellows strained and crumpled between his hands, and his big fingernails danced over the keys. “That’s how it goes, isn’t it, darling?” he said.

  Miss Greenwood went closer to him. “Stop calling me that,” she said.

  Arthur’s song was the opposite of a lullaby, thunderous and brash. “Sure,” he said, stamping the time with his foot. “That’s it. What are the words? ‘Between you and me, All the way to the sea, In my dream of your dream—’ ”

  Miss Greenwood’s shot sent him tumbling backward. He tripped over the roots of the old oak and fell cradled against its trunk. His arms were still moving as he lay there, but the air went in and out through the two holes the bullet had made in the bellows, and the notes were just ragged whispers now.

  Detective Sivart took his hat off and sat on the edge of the bed. He looked at the ground and waited until it was quiet again. Then he switched off the light.
>
  THE DINING TABLE was big for the cottage, and Unwin had to walk with his back against the wall to reach his seat. He looked around while Sivart fussed in the kitchen. There were shelves of old books and photographs on the walls. The pictures were hung with their frames nearly touching, so that the wallpaper—a faded pattern of carts and hay-stacks—was all but obscured. In one yellowing image, the giantess Hildegard sat on a tree stump, boxes of fireworks open all around her. Aloof and queenly on her bower throne, she regarded the camera with her chin raised and her eyes downturned.

  In another picture a young Miss Greenwood was seated at a dime-store counter, straw in her soda glass. Her smile was careful. A little girl sat on the stool beside her, legs dangling with her ankles crossed. Penelope, her hair tied back in a braid, gazed mistrustfully at the camera.

  “Be there in a minute,” Sivart called from the kitchen.

  Unwin realized he had been drumming his fingers against the table and stopped himself. Through the window he had a view of the pond at the bottom of the hill. Emily and Miss Greenwood were walking around the water together, talking.

  Sivart came into the room with a blue dish towel draped over his shoulder. He had taken off his jacket and shirt, leaving his black suspenders strapped over his undershirt. “Hope you’re hungry,” he said. He set down a tray covered with strips of bacon and fried eggs, most of the yolks broken. He went away and came back with plates and forks, a pile of toast, pancakes, a bowl of blackberries, butter.

  The detective looked at everything, frowning. He left again and came back with a pot of coffee and a creamer. “Haven’t eaten in days,” he said, tucking a napkin into his collar.

  Unwin was hungry, too. He helped himself to pancakes and a handful of blackberries. Sivart forked a stack of bacon onto his plate and said, “It took you long enough to figure out where I was.”