The Manual of Detection

by Berry, Jedediah

  Her red-rimmed eyes were wide open. “Mr. Lamech,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to come in person.”

  “All part of the job,” Unwin said.

  She took his coat and hat, then closed the door behind him and went into the kitchenette. “I have some scotch, I think, and some soda water.”

  What had he read in the Manual, about poisons and their antidotes? Not enough to take any chances. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  Unwin glanced around the room. An unfastened suitcase lay on a chair, and her purse was on the table beside it. In Lamech’s office she had said she arrived in the city about three weeks ago—that much may have been true. But in a corner of the room, on a table of its own, was an electric phonograph. Had she brought this with her, too, or purchased it after she arrived? A number of records were stacked beside it.

  She came back with a drink in her hand and pointed to one of the two windows. Both offered dismal views of the building beside the hotel, an alley’s width away. “That’s the one that’s always open in the morning,” she said, “even though I lock it at night.”

  The window gave out onto the fire escape. Unwin examined the latch and found it sturdy. He wondered how long he could get away with this impersonation. Miss Greenwood might already have found him out and was only playing along. He would have to take risks while he still could.

  “Do you mind if I put something on the phonograph?”

  “I suppose not,” she said, nearly making it a question.

  Unwin took the record from his briefcase and slid it out of its cover. He set the pearly disk on the turntable, switched on the machine, and lowered the needle. At first there was only static, followed by a rhythmic shushing. Then a deeper sound, a burbling that was almost a man’s voice. The recording was distorted, though, and Unwin could not make out a word.

  “This is horrid,” she said. “Please shut it off.”

  Unwin leaned closer to the amplifier bell. The speechlike sound continued, stopped, started again. And then he heard it. It was the same thing he had heard on the telephone at the museum café, when he snatched the receiver from the man with the blond beard.

  A rustling sound, and the warbling of pigeons.

  Miss Greenwood set down her drink and came forward, nearly catching her foot on the rug. She lifted the needle from the record and gave Unwin an angry, questioning look. “I don’t see what this has to do with my case,” she said.

  He put the record back in its sleeve and returned it to his briefcase. “That sleepiness routine disguised your limp this morning,” he said.

  She flinched at the mention of her injury. “I read the late edition,” she said. “Edward Lamech is dead. You’re no watcher.”

  “And you’re no Vera Truesdale.”

  Something in her face changed then. The circles under her eyes were as dark as ever, but she did not look tired at all. She picked up her drink and sipped it. “I’ll call hotel security.”

  “Okay,” Unwin said, surprised at his own boldness. “But first I want to know why you came to Lamech’s office this morning. It wasn’t to hire Sivart. He went looking for you days ago.”

  That made her set her drink down. “Who are you?”

  “Detective Charles Unwin,” he said. “Edward Lamech was my watcher.” He showed her his badge.

  “You’re a detective without a watcher,” she said. “That’s a unique position to be in. I want to hire you.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. Detectives are assigned cases.”

  “Yes, by their watchers. And you don’t have one. So I wonder what you’re working on, exactly.”

  “I’m trying to find Detective Sivart. He went to the Municipal Museum, but you know that. Because it was you, wasn’t it, who showed that museum attendant the Oldest Murdered Man’s gold tooth?”

  She considered this with obvious interest but did not reply. “What time is it?” she said.

  He checked his watch. “Nine thirty.”

  “I want to show you something, Detective.” She led him back to the doorway but did not open it. She pointed to the peephole and said, “Look there.”

  Unwin leaned in to look, then thought better of turning his back on Cleopatra Greenwood. She took a few steps away and opened her hands, as though to show that she was unarmed. “I trusted you enough to let you in, didn’t I?”

  He hesitated.

  “Hurry,” she said, almost whispering. “You’ll miss it.”

  Unwin looked through the peephole. At first he had only a fish-eyed view of the door across the hall. Then a red-coated bellhop appeared with a covered tray in his hand. He set it on the floor in front of the opposite door, knocked twice, and went away. No one came for the food.

  “Keep watching,” Miss Greenwood said.

  The door opened slowly, and an old man wearing a tattered frock coat peered into the hall. He had an antique service revolver in his hand and was polishing it with a square of blue cloth. He looked each way, and when he was satisfied that the hall was empty, he slid the revolver into his pocket. Then he picked up the tray and went back inside.

  Miss Greenwood was grinning. “Do you know who that was?” she said.

  “No,” Unwin said, though the man did seem vaguely familiar. This game, whatever it was, was making him nervous.

  “Colonel Baker.”

  “Now you’re deliberately trying to rattle me,” Unwin said.

  “I’m trying to do good by you, Detective Unwin. You ought to realize by now that things are rather more complicated than you may have believed. Everyone knows that Colonel Baker is dead. Everyone knows that Sivart walked away victorious, case closed. Nonetheless, Colonel Baker is living across the hall from me. He orders room service every night. He likes a late dinner.”

  If not for the revolver, Unwin might have gone over there to prove that what Miss Greenwood had said was a lie. The Three Deaths of Colonel Baker was one of Sivart’s most celebrated cases, and Unwin’s file was a composition of the first order—no clerk could deny it.

  Colonel Sherbrooke Baker, a decorated war hero, had become famous for the secret battlefield tactic that made him seem to be in two places at once. But in his later years, he was best known for his unparalleled collection of military memorabilia. In addition to several pieces of interest to historians of the ancient world, the collection contained numerous antique rifles and sidearms, some of which had belonged to the country’s founding fathers. Others, experts agreed, were the weapons that had fired the first shots of various wars, revolutionary, civil, and otherwise. Few were allowed to study or even view these extraordinary items, however, for Colonel Baker spoke of them with pride but guarded them with something very much like jealousy.

  In the colonel’s will, he left all of his possessions to his son Leopold. But there was a stipulation: the colonel’s precious collection was to remain in the family and remain whole.

  A businessman who was not very good with business, Sivart had written of Leopold Baker. When the colonel died, his son was happy to accept the considerable sum his father had left him. He was less happy to learn that he had inherited the collection as well. All too vivid in Leopold’s mind was the afternoon, as a boy of twelve, when he had interrupted his father’s polishing to ask him to play a game of catch. “This,” the colonel had told him, holding a long, thin blade before his eyes, “is the misericord. Medieval footmen slipped it between the plates of fallen knights’ armor, once the battle was over, to find out who was dead and who was only pretending. Think of that while you sleep tonight.”

  The will contained no consequence for disobeying the colonel’s wishes, so he was only three days in the grave when the auction commenced. Attendance was good, the hall filled with the many historians, museum curators, and military enthusiasts the colonel had spurned through the years. Once the bidding began, however, lot after lot was won by the same strange gentleman, seated at the back of the room with a black veil over his face. It was whispered through the hall that this was a r
epresentative of Enoch Hoffmann, whose taste for antiquities was by then well known. Leopold suspected it, too, but he was not displeased, for the stranger’s pockets seemed bottomless.

  At the end of the auction, the gentleman met with Leopold to settle their accounts. It was then that he pulled back his veil and revealed himself as Colonel Baker. The old man had not died, only faked his death to test his son’s loyalty. The colonel declared his will invalid—he was very much alive after all—and reclaimed all that Leopold had thought was his.

  That was when Sivart became involved. His report began: The assignment was on my desk first thing this morning. Truth is, I’d expected it. A man plays a trick like that and word gets around. Word gets around enough, someone gets into trouble. To wit, the body of the colonel was discovered on the floor of his library early in the a.m., stab wounds eight in number. The weapon was the misericord from the colonel’s own collection. The fallen pretender has been found out.

  My client? Leopold Baker, primary suspect.

  It was the first time Sivart had been tasked with proving someone’s innocence, and Unwin sensed that the job made him grumpy. Sivart took his time getting to the Baker estate, and his examination of the corpse was cursory.

  Yes, he wrote, dead.

  I told them to leave the body where it was and went for a walk. So many secrets in that place it gave me a headache. Through the trapdoor under the statue in the foyer, up a set of stairs behind a rack in the wine cellar, down the tunnel under the greenhouse. All this just to find a comfortable chair, probably the only one in the place.

  That was in the colonel’s study, which was where I found the whiskey, and also the first interesting thing about this case.

  In the desk Sivart discovered the colonel’s own writings about his military days. There the colonel revealed the secret behind the battlefield technique that had won him his glory. He seemed to appear in two places at once because he had a double, a brother named Reginald, whose identity was kept a secret from military command.

  What almost got them caught was the matter of which hand to use when firing their weapons: Sherbrooke was left-handed and Reginald right-handed. A general noticed the discrepancy once, and Sherbrooke said, “In the trenches, sir, I am ambidextrous. In the mess hall, I use a fork.” That made so little sense that it worked.

  I took the whiskey with me and finished it before I could get back to the library. They’d left the body like I’d asked, though the coroner was getting prickly. I became intensely earnest with him, a tactic that usually works with men of his disposition. Is it wrong of me, clerk, to imagine sometimes that I am living in a radio play?

  Detective: Here, on the victim’s right hand, between his thumb and forefinger. What do you see?

  Coroner: Why, those are ink stains. What of them? (Arm thumps against floor.)

  Detective: Colonel Sherbrooke Baker was left-handed. Sinister, if you will. Don’t you think it strange that a left-handed man would hold a pen with his right hand?

  Coroner: Well, I—

  Detective: And those wounds. The angle of the thrusts. Did your examination reveal whether the killer was left- or right-handed?

  (Papers leafed through.)

  Coroner: Let me see. Ah. Ah! The dagger was held in the left hand!

  Detective: Precisely right, because Sherbrooke Baker is the killer, not the victim. This body is that of Reginald, his brother.

  (Cue the strings.)

  Reginald had learned of his brother’s death and came to claim his rightful share of the loot, only to find the colonel still alive. The two men had not spoken in years, and neither was happy to see the other. Their estrangement, necessitated by the deception committed in their youth, was lodged deeply. Sherbrooke had reaped the majority of the benefits from their scheme, but this did not make him generous. The misericord was one of his favorite pieces, and he had always wanted an excuse to use it.

  Sivart tracked the colonel to a hideout in an old fort in City Park.

  He was half mad when we found him, and his retreat was quick. We lost his trail in the woods east of the fort. Then, an hour later, we got the report about the man in military uniform standing on the bridge over the East River. He’d jumped by the time I arrived.

  The final report in the case, a few days hence, was the shortest in the series.

  A jacket washed up today, though with so many medals pinned to it, it’s a wonder it didn’t sink to the bottom and stay there. No doubt about whose it was. The Colonel had to die three times before it would stick. Leo’s name is cleared, and I’m told that he’s paid the Agency in full. Not a word of thanks from him, though, and my paycheck, I see, is in the same amount as usual.

  “THE BODY WAS NEVER recovered,” Unwin admitted, “but no conclusion could be drawn, other than the death of Colonel Baker. The case file is seamless, every clue set down in perfect detail. . . .” He trailed off, and saw in his mind the glint of gold in the mouth of the Oldest Murdered Man. He and Sivart had been wrong once; could they have been wrong again?

  Miss Greenwood was watching him.

  “The Oldest Murdered Man a fake,” he said. “Colonel Baker alive despite three deaths. Is that what you’re telling me, Miss Greenwood? And what about Sivart’s other cases? You cannot dispute his success on The Man Who Stole November Twelfth.”

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” she said. “I did come to the Agency for help, but I knew what sort of reception I would receive if I used my real name. Please sit with me, Detective.”

  Unwin disliked the way she used his title. It sounded like encouragement. Still, he followed her back into the room. She moved her suitcase off the chair for him and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I did look for Sivart when I first arrived in town,” she said. “I needed his help. But by the time I saw him, about a week ago, he was shabby and a bit out of his head. It was here, in the lobby of the hotel. He said he couldn’t stay. He said he’d seen something he couldn’t believe.”

  “The gold filling,” Unwin said. “I saw it, too. And Zlatari told me Sivart was at the Forty Winks about a week ago. He was reading something.” Unwin heard in his mind a warning like a typewriter bell and stopped himself. He was giving information he did not have to give.

  But Miss Greenwood only shrugged. “Probably his copy of the Manual. He was getting desperate.”

  “You’re familiar with The Manual of Detection?”

  “Know thy enemy,” she said.

  Unwin looked at his lap. Miss Greenwood was his enemy, of course. But now that they were speaking plainly, he found himself wishing it could be otherwise. Was this how Sivart had felt, each time he got her wrong?

  She said, “I went to Lamech because I thought he would know what had happened to Sivart. I was concerned. Naturally, I was surprised when I found you sitting there.”

  “You hid it very well.”

  “Old habits,” she said.

  The telephone rang. It gleamed black against the stark white sheet and seemed louder for the contrast.

  Miss Greenwood looked suddenly tired again. “Too soon,” she said.

  “If you have to answer it—”

  “No!” she said. “Don’t you answer it either.”

  So they sat staring at the telephone, waiting for the ringing to stop. Miss Greenwood swayed a little and breathed deeply, as though fighting off nausea. Unwin counted eleven rings before the caller gave up.

  Miss Greenwood’s eyes fluttered closed, and she fell back onto the bed. The quiet of the room was total. He could not hear the movements of the other hotel guests, could not hear their voices. Where was the noise of automobile traffic? He wished idly for any sound at all, for even a cat to call out from the alleyway.

  Unwin rose from his chair and said Miss Greenwood’s name, but she did not stir. He shook her shoulder—no response.

  At a time like this, he thought, Sivart would take the opportunity to investigate. Perhaps he ought to do the same. He lifted Miss Greenwood’s drin
k and sniffed it, but for what, he was not sure. The ice had nearly melted—that was all he could deduce. With his foot he raised the lid on her suitcase and saw that the clothes inside were neatly folded.

  He brought the glass into the kitchenette, left it in the sink. Was Miss Greenwood, like his assistant, the victim of some sleeping sickness? Nothing of the kind had ever been mentioned in Sivart’s reports. Perhaps her exhaustion had simply overtaken her. But what could have made her so tired?

  He watched her lying on the bed—her breaths came slowly, as though her sleep were a deep one. He wondered whether he should cover her with the sheet or remove her shoes. Miss Greenwood had seemed, for a moment, generous with him. He would have to wait for her to wake up, and hope she would still be willing to talk.