The Manual of Detection

by Berry, Jedediah

  Unwin cautioned his assistant with a nod and set his briefcase down. The interloper was tapping the glass now, very lightly, as though to send a secret signal of his own. Unwin raised his umbrella saberwise over his head and threw the door open.

  The man on the other side toppled backward onto the floor. Black paint spilled from a bucket in his hand, splattering over his clothes, his chin, and the polished wood floor. He held his paintbrush over his head, to protect himself from the anticipated blow.

  Unwin lowered his umbrella and looked at the freshly painted words on his office window. DETECTIVE CHARLES UN, it read, and that was all it would ever read, because the painter stood, stabbed his brush into the bucket, and walked back toward the elevator, muttering.

  Detective Screed’s door opened. He saw the puddle of paint, saw the black boot prints that trailed down the hall. He yanked the handkerchief from his jacket pocket as though to begin cleaning the mess but put it to his forehead instead. He slammed his door closed again.

  “Emily,” Unwin said, “send a message to the custodian, please.”

  He stepped over the paint and went down the hall, his shoes squeaking. Other office doors opened, and other detectives peered out at him. Among them were the two he had seen in the elevator with Detective Screed. Peake was the name on one door, Crabtree the other. They shook their heads at him as he passed, and Peake—still scratching the rash at his collar—whistled in mock admiration.

  FIVE

  On Memory

  Imagine a desk covered with papers. That is everything

  you are thinking about. Now imagine a stack of file

  drawers behind it. That is everything you know. The trick

  is to keep the desk and the file drawers as close to one

  another as possible, and the papers stacked neatly.

  Unwin pedaled north along the dripping, shadowed expanse of City Park. There were fewer cars on the street now, but twice he had to ride up onto the sidewalk to pass horse-drawn carriages, and a peanut vendor swore at him as he swerved too close to his umbrella-topped stand. By the time Unwin arrived at the Municipal Museum, his socks were completely soaked again. He hopped off his bicycle and chained it to a lamppost, stepping away just in time to avoid the spray of filthy water raised by the tires of a passing bus.

  The fountains to either side of the museum entrance were shut off, but rainwater had overflowed the reservoirs and was pouring across the sidewalk to the gutter. The place had a cursed and weary look about it—built, Unwin imagined, not to welcome visitors but to keep secrets hidden from them. He fought the urge to turn around and go home. With every step he took, the report he would have to write explaining his actions grew in size. But if he were ever going to get his old job back, he would have to find Sivart, and this was where Sivart had gone.

  Unwin angled his umbrella against a fierce damp wind, climbed the broad steps, and passed alone through the revolving doors of the museum.

  Light from the windowed dome of the Great Hall shone dimly over the information booth, the ticket tables, the broad-leafed potted plants flanking each gallery entrance. He followed the sound of clinking flatware to the museum café.

  Three men were hunched over the lunch counter, eating in silence. All but one of the dozen or so tables in the room were unoccupied. Near the back of the room, a man with a pointed blond beard was working on a portable typewriter. He typed quickly, humming to himself whenever he had to stop and think.

  Unwin went to the counter and ordered a turkey and cheese on rye, his Wednesday sandwich. The three men remained intent on their lunches, eating their soup with care. When Unwin’s food came, he took it to a table near the man with the blond beard. He set his hat upside down next to his plate and put his briefcase on the floor.

  The man’s stiff beard bobbed while he worked—he was silently mouthing the words as he typed them. Unwin could see the top of the page curl upward, and he glimpsed the phrases eats lunch same time every day and rarely speaks to workfellows. Before Unwin could read more, the man glanced over his shoulder at him, righted the page, and frowned so that his beard stuck straight out from his face. Then he returned his attention to his typewriter.

  Despite all that Unwin had read of detective work, he had no idea how to proceed with this investigation. Whom had Sivart met with, and what had transpired between them? What good did it do to have come here now? The trail might already have “gone cold,” as Sivart would have put it.

  Unwin opened his briefcase. He had sworn not to read The Manual of Detection, but he knew he would at least have to skim it if he were going to play at being a detective. He told himself he would read only enough to help him along to the first break in the case. That would come soon, he thought, if he only knew how to begin.

  He turned the book over in his hands. The edges of the cloth were worn from use. It’s saved my life more than once, Pith had said to him. But Unwin had never even heard of the book, so he was sure the Agency did not wish for non-employees to learn of its existence. Instead of setting the book on the table, he opened it in his lap.

  THE MANUAL

  OF

  DETECTION

  A Compendium of Techniques and Advice

  for the Modern Detective,

  Representing Matters Procedural, Practical, and Methodological;

  Featuring

  True Accounts of Pertinent Cases

  With Helpful Illustrations and Diagrams;

  Including an Appendix of Exercises, Experiments,

  and Suggestions for Further Study.

  FOURTH EDITION

  He turned to the table of contents. Each chapter focused on one of the finer points of the investigative arts, from the common elements of case management to various surveillance techniques and methods of interrogation. But the range of topics was so broad that Unwin did not know what to read first.

  Nothing in the index seemed entirely appropriate to his situation, except perhaps one entry: “Mystery, First Tidings of.” He turned to the corresponding page and began to read.

  The inexperienced agent, when presented with a few promising leads, will likely feel the urge to follow them as directly as possible. But a mystery is a dark room, and anything could be waiting inside. At this stage of the case, your enemies know more than you know—that is what makes them your enemies. Therefore it is paramount that you proceed slantwise, especially when beginning your work. To do anything else is to turn your pockets inside out, light a lamp over your head, and paste a target on your shirtfront.

  The iciness that had settled in Unwin’s wet socks climbed up his legs and began melting into his stomach. How many blunders had he already committed? He read the next few pages quickly, then skimmed the beginnings of those chapters that dealt with the foundations of the investigative process. Every paragraph of The Manual of Detection read like an admonishment tailored specifically for him. He should have developed an alternate identity, come in disguise or through a back door, planned an escape route. Certainly he should have remained armed. In one case file after another he had seen these techniques used, but detectives employed them without any apparent forethought. Was Sivart really so deliberate? Everything he did—whether throwing someone off his trail or throwing a punch—he did as though the possibility had only just occurred to him.

  Unwin closed the book and set it on the table, set his hands on top of it, and took a few deep breaths. The man with the blond beard was working quickly now. Unwin saw the phrase habits suggesting a dull but potentially dangerous personality, empty or clouded over, and then, just as he typed it, if he is in contact with the absentee agent, he does not know it.

  Maybe he had stumbled into a lucky spot after all. Unwin got the man’s attention with a wave of his hand.

  The man turned in his seat, his beard a pointed accusation.

  “Begging your pardon,” Unwin said, “but are you the person who met here with Detective Sivart recently?”

  The typist’s frown deepened, his eyebrow
s drooping even as his beard rose an inch higher. He ground his teeth and said nothing, then plucked the page from his typewriter, stuffed it into his jacket, and rose from the table with his fists clenched. Unwin straightened, almost expecting the man to come at him, but he walked past Unwin’s table and stomped off to the very back of the room, where a pay phone was mounted to the wall. He lifted the transceiver, spoke a number to the operator, and dropped a dime into the slot.

  The three men at the lunch counter had turned from their bowls of soup. They looked on with tired expressions. Unwin could not tell if they were suspicious of him or thankful for the reprieve from the man’s typing. Unwin nodded at them, and they swiveled back to their lunches without a word.

  He took up the Manual again. His hands were shaking. He fanned the pages, breathing in the scent of old paper, and caught a whiff of what might have been gunpowder. He could begin to count the things he had done wrong, was perhaps even now adding to the list, but he still did not know where to begin.

  “He still does not know where to begin,” said the man on the telephone.

  Unwin turned. Had he heard correctly? The man with the blond beard stood with his back to the room, one arm resting on top of the telephone, his head bent low. He spoke quietly, then listened and nodded.

  Unwin took a deep breath. This was his first hour in the field, and already his nerves were getting to him. He turned back to his book and tried to focus.

  “He is trying to focus,” said the man at the telephone.

  Unwin set down the Manual and rose from his seat. He had not misheard: somehow the man with the blond beard was speaking Unwin’s thoughts aloud. His hands shook at the thought; he had begun to sweat. The three men at the lunch counter swiveled again to watch Unwin walk to the back of the room and tap the man on the shoulder.

  The man with the blond beard looked up, his eyes bulging with violence. “Find another phone,” he hissed. “I was here first.”

  “Were you speaking about me just then?” Unwin asked.

  The man said into the receiver, “He wants to know if I was speaking about him just then.” He listened and nodded some more, then said to Unwin, “No, I wasn’t speaking about you.”

  Unwin was seized by a terrible panic. He wanted to run back to his seat or, better yet, back to his apartment, forget everything he had read in the Manual, everything that had happened that day. Instead, without thinking, he snatched the telephone out of the man’s hand and put it to his own face. He was still shaking, but his voice was steady as he said, “Now, listen here. I don’t know who you are, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep to your own affairs. What business is it of yours what I’m doing?”

  No response came. Unwin held the receiver to his ear, and he heard something, a sound so quiet he could barely tell it from the prickle of static on the line. It was the rustling of dry leaves, or sheets of paper, maybe, blown by a mild wind. And there was something else, too—a sad warbling that came and went as he listened. The cooing, he thought, of many pigeons.

  He set the telephone back in its cradle. The man with the blond beard stared at him. His jaw was moving up and down, but he made no sound. Unwin met his eyes for a moment, then returned to his table, sat, and hurriedly began to eat his sandwich.

  One of the men at the lunch counter got off his stool. He wore the plain gray uniform of a museum attendant. His white hair was thin and uncombed, and his dark eyes were set deep in his pale face. He shambled toward Unwin, breathing through his whiskers while crumpling a paper napkin in his right hand. He stood in front of the table and dropped the napkin into Unwin’s hat. “Sorry,” he said. “I mistook your hat for a wastepaper basket.”

  The man with the blond beard was on the telephone again. “He mistook his hat for a wastepaper basket,” he said. But as the museum attendant left the café, he knocked into the table where the man with the blond beard had been sitting. A glass tipped and spilled water on the papers stacked beside the typewriter. The man with the blond beard dropped the receiver and came running over, cursing under his breath.

  Unwin took the napkin out of his hat; something was written on it in blue ink. He uncrumpled the paper and read the hastily scrawled message. Not safe here. Follow while he’s distracted. He stuffed the napkin into his pocket, gathered up his things, and left. The man with the blond beard was too busy shaking wet pages to notice him go.

  THE MUSEUM ATTENDANT GRABBED Unwin by the arm and directed him north into the first of the museum galleries. The name on his pin was Edwin Moore. He leaned close and spoke into Unwin’s ear. “We must choose our words carefully. You especially. Everything you say to me I must spend precious minutes unremembering before I sleep. I apologize for waiting as long as I did to intercede. Until I heard you speak, I thought you were one of them.”

  “One of whom?”

  Moore breathed worry through his whiskers. “I cannot say. Either I never knew or I have purposefully forgotten.”

  Their route took them through the halls of warfare, where empty suits of mail straddled horse’s armor empty of horses. Gold and silver weapons gleamed in their cases, and Unwin knew them each, knew the slim-bladed misericord, the graceful rapier, the double-barreled wheel lock pistol. They were all in the Agency’s index of weapons, though the pages dedicated to such antiquated devices were less useful than those covering the more popular implements of the day: the pistol, the garrote, the cast-iron skillet.

  Moore looked in Unwin’s direction as he spoke but would not meet his eyes. “I have been an employee of the Municipal Museum for thirteen years, eleven months, and some-odd days,” he said. “I always follow the same path through these corridors, altering my course only when necessary, as when a lost child begs my assistance. I like to keep moving. Not to see the paintings, of course. After all this time, I no longer see the paintings. They may as well be blank canvases or windows onto white sky.”

  A dull but potentially dangerous personality, the man with the blond beard had typed, empty or clouded over. Was it Moore he had been describing? What sort of man worked to forget everything he knew? Doubtless he was a little mad. Unwin, mindful of the commandment to choose his words carefully, chose none for now.

  Soon they came to a broad, circular chamber. Unwin knew the place. Light entered through a small window at the top of the domed ceiling, entombing in gray light the coffin of glass on a pedestal below. The Oldest Murdered Man was surrounded by schoolchildren, out on a field trip. The more brave and curious among them stood close, and some even pressed their faces to the glass. Unwin and Moore waited until their chaperone, a stooped young man in a tweed coat, counted the children and shepherded them away. Once the patter of their feet had receded, the only sound was that of the rain on the window high above.

  They went closer, the squeaking of Unwin’s shoes echoing in the vast room. A plaque set in the floor at the base of the pedestal declared, TO DETECTIVE TRAVIS T. SIVART, WHO RETURNED THIS TREASURE TO ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE OF REST, THE TRUSTEES OF THE MUNICIPAL MUSEUM EXPRESS THEIR UNDYING GRATITUDE.

  The Oldest Murdered Man lay curled on his side, his arms folded over his chest. His flesh was yellow and sunken but intact, preserved by the bog into which he had been thrown, all those thousands of years ago. Had he been a hunter, a farmer, a warrior, a chieftain? His eyes were not quite closed, his black lips drawn back over his teeth in an expression that suggested merriment rather than terror. The hempen cord with which he had been strangled was still twisted around his neck.

  “I always found the name imprecise,” Unwin said. “He may be the first victim of murder we’ve discovered, but surely he wasn’t the first man to be killed by another. He may even have been a murderer himself. Still, he is our oldest mystery, and an unsolved one at that. We have the weapon, but not the motive.”

  Edwin Moore was not listening. He looked at the ceiling while Unwin spoke. “I hope there is enough light,” Moore said.

  “For what?”

  The sun, though partly obscured by
clouds, crested the window at the top of the dome, and the room suddenly brightened.

  “There we are,” Moore said. “Did I tell you that I always keep to the same route when making my rounds? That is why I reach this room at the same time every afternoon. There was a woman, I think. She wanted to draw my attention to something, to this. Who was she? Did I only dream of her? I try not to notice things, Detective. I know a story or two. I know the days of the week. That is enough to help eclipse the rest. But look, look there. Can you fault me for noticing that?”

  Moore pointed at the glass coffin, at the dead man’s parted lips. Unwin saw nothing at first, just the grim visage that Sivart had described, in his reports, as a sad sorry face, laughing because it has to—a face you’d like to buy a drink. Then he noticed a glinting at the back of the man’s mouth, like that of the gold lettering on The Manual of Detection. He knelt, using his umbrella for balance, and drew as close to the corpse as he could bear. He and the mummy peered at one another through the glass. Then the light shifted, and the dead man gave up his secret.