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 drink 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 be
d—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.
He sat beside her and, without thinking, drew The Manual of Detection from his briefcase and opened it on his lap. He found the section Detective Pith had recommended to him that morning at Central Terminal, on page ninety-six.
If the detective does not maintain secrets of his own—if he does not learn firsthand the discipline required to keep a thing hidden from everyone he knows, and pay the personal costs incurred by such an endeavor—then he will never succeed in learning the secrets of others, nor does he deserve to. It is a long road that stretches from what a person says to what a person hides by saying it. He who has not mapped the way for himself will be forever lost upon it.
Unwin could picture himself on that road: a narrow avenue between tall rows of tenements, just a few lights on in each building, and all the doors locked. In both directions the road went all the way down to the horizon.
Did Unwin have any secrets of his own? Only that he was not really a detective, that he had been making unofficial trips for unofficial reasons—that he had considered, for a moment long enough to buy the ticket, abandoning everything he knew. But those secrets were liabilities.
When he glanced from the book, he was startled to find Miss Greenwood sitting up in bed. She carefully smoothed the front of her dress with her hands.
“You’re awake,” he said.
She did not reply. Her eyes were open, but she did not seem to see him as she rose from the bed. She went across the room without speaking.
“Miss Greenwood,” he said, getting up again. He put the Manual back in his briefcase.
Ignoring him, she went to the window and unlatched it. Before he could reach her, she had thrown the window open. The chill autumn air pervaded the room immediately, and rain blew in from the alley, dampening everything.
EIGHT
On Surveillance
It is the most obvious of mandates, to keep one’s eyes
open, but the wakefulness required of the detective is not
of the common sort. He must see without seeming
to see, and watch even when he is looking away.
Miss Greenwood climbed out onto the fire escape and balanced on the toes of her high-heeled shoes as she descended the precipitous steps. Unwin was about to call her name again when he remembered something he had heard about the dangers of waking a sleepwalker. He imagined her eyes popping open, a moment of confusion, a foreshortened cry. . . .
He dreaded the thought of going back into the rain, but he gathered his things and followed her down two flights of steps, past the dark windows of other hotel rooms. At the bottom he found his bicycle chained to the base of the fire escape. He did not have time to unlock it and bring it with him—Miss Greenwood was already on her way out of the alley. He caught up with her on the sidewalk and opened his umbrella over both their heads.
Was this what she had in mind when she said she wanted to hire him? On the next block he followed her past the sweeping limestone facade of the Municipal Museum as the rain dampened the cuffs of his slacks and the wind wrestled with his umbrella. She turned right at the next corner and led them away from City Park, then headed north. On that block a man came out of an apartment building with a sack over his shoulder. He drew up alongside them, and Unwin saw he was dressed only in his bathrobe. His eyes, like Miss Greenwood’s, were unreadable. From within his sack—nothing more than a pillowcase—came the ticking of clocks, maybe a hundred of them.
Other sleepers joined them as they walked, women and men of varying ages in varying states of disarray, pajamaed, underdrawered, dripping. All bore sacks of alarm clocks over their shoulders, and all seemed to know where they were going.
Unwin felt he had stumbled into the mystery he was supposed to be solving, the one to which Lamech had planned to assign him. He suddenly hated that smug, silent corpse on the thirty-sixth floor. He wanted nothing to do with this mystery, but all he could do was allow himself to be dragged along by its current.
They walked ten, twelve, fifteen blocks. At the north end of town, they came to a part of the city that did not seem to belong to the city at all. Here a broad stone wall girded a wide, hilly expanse. A pair of iron gates, two stories tall, had been left open to allow the sleeping congregation through. The sycamores lining the drive beyond dropped samaras that spun in the rain as they fell.
At the top of the hill crouched a grand, high-gabled house. Lights shone in every window, illuminating stretches of wild gardens all around. The place seemed familiar to Unwin—had Sivart described it in one of his reports? Above the door was a sign depicting a fat black cat seated with the moon at his back, a cigar in one paw and a cocktail glass in the other. Written in an arc over the moon were the words CAT & TONIC. Unwin was sure he had never heard of it.
Beneath the portico a line of sleepers awaited admittance into the club. Unwin’s group joined the line, and others gathered behind them.
A butler ushered them inside, welcoming each guest with a sleepy nod.
“What is this?” Unwin asked him, collapsing his umbrella. “What’s going on?”
The butler did not seem to understand the question. He blinked a few times, then squinted at Unwin as though from a great distance.
The crowd pushed forward, and Unwin was driven into the club. The entry hall was dominated by a wide staircase. Most of the guests proceeded into a room on the right. It was a gambling parlor, and attendants and players alike were sleeping. There were no chips. Instead the players pushed heaps of alarm clocks over the tables. When the house had won enough of the clocks, butlers carted them away in wheelbarrows.
Emily was here among the players, dressed in yellow pajamas. Her face looked smaller without her glasses, and the rain had turned her hair a dark copper color. She had her own sack of alarm clocks, and for the moment she seemed to be winning. She laughed aloud, revealing her small crooked teeth. Others in the room, after a delay, laughed with her. Unwin felt as though he were looking into an aquarium: everyone in it breathed the same water, but sound and sense moved slowly among them.
Emily rolled the dice, won again, and a shirtless man with thick eyebrows put his arm around her shoulder. Unwin went toward them, thinking to shake Emily awake if he had to, but Miss Greenwood was suddenly at his side, her arm linked with his. She drew him away, back into the entry hall and through a curtained doorway opposite the gaming room.
Here dozens of guests were seated at tables, some smoking, some muttering, some laughing, all of them asleep. Sleepwalking waiters went among them, bringing fresh drinks and cigars. On a tasseled stage was a quartet of washboard, jug, rubber-band bass, and accordion. Unwin recognized the accordion player. It was Arthur, the custodian he had seen that morning. He had been sleeping when Unwin and Detective Pith were with him at Central Terminal, and he was still sleeping, still dressed in his gray coveralls.
Miss Greenwood did not search for an empty seat; instead she went toward a door at the right of the stage. Guarding it were Jasper and Josiah Rook. The twins were not asleep. They stood with their hands in their pockets, scrutinizing the crowd with their trapdoor eyes. Unwin half closed his own eyes to blend in, and let go of Miss Greenwood’s arm.
Jasper (or was it Josiah?) opened the door for her, and Josiah ( Jasper?) greeted her by name. They went with her through the door and closed it behind them.
Unwin wandered back to the tables. The guests went on with their dream-party, and he was invisible to them. He looked for an empty seat, thinking he should conceal himself in case the Rooks returned.
Then he saw her. The woman in the plaid coat was seated alone at a table in the center of the room. Beneath her coat she wore a blue nightgown. She tapped her glass of milk and stared toward the stage with glassy gray eyes.
&nb
sp; What was she doing here? First she had taken his place on the fourteenth floor, and now she was ensnared by whatever madness had claimed Emily and Miss Greenwood. Could it be that the fault was Unwin’s, that his unofficial trips had embroiled her in this dilemma of his? Detective Pith must have seen him watching her at Central Terminal, must have thought she was a secret contact. Perhaps the Agency had hired her to keep her close, promoted him to keep him closer.
Unwin went toward her, thinking that he had to explain, had to apologize for all the trouble. Assure her that everything would be set right again, as soon as he found Sivart. He stood to her side and took off his hat. “Are you waiting for someone?” he asked.
She perked one ear, though she did not look at him. “Someone,” she said.
“Of course. I can’t imagine you’d be here alone.”
“Alone,” she echoed.
Unwin checked his watch. It was nearly two o’clock. On a normal day, in only a matter of hours, he would be at Central Terminal. She would be there, too, and he would watch her and say nothing.
“I still remember the first day I saw you,” he told her. “I got out of bed and took a bath, ate oatmeal with raisins. I put my shoes on in the hallway because they squeak if I wear them in the house and that bothers the neighbors. I don’t blame them, really.”
He could not tell if she understood what he was saying, but she did seem to hear. So he sat with her and laid his umbrella on his lap. “I ride my bicycle to work,” he said. “I’ve perfected a technique to keep my umbrella open while riding. The weather . . . well, you know how it is. Sometimes I think it will never stop. The rain will fill up the bay, and one day the city will be gone, just like that. The sea will take it.”