The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,101
lit from within and shining like a magic lantern. Now Unwin saw its sickly old face, its slumping porches and teetering balconies, its broken windowpanes and gapped shingles. He dismounted and walked his bicycle the rest of the way up the hill, left it leaning against a column of the portico.
The front door was unlocked. He went into the foyer, his clothes dripping on the hardwood. In the room where Miss Greenwood had performed the night before, highball glasses crusted with milk lay strewn over the tables and ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts and stubbed cigars. The floors were covered with muddy footprints, most from bare feet.
He took to the stairs, and the creaking of the steps was the only sound in the place, aside from the rain pattering on the roof. He went down the hall to Hoffmann’s room and opened the door.
The hearth was cold. A draft from the chimney played with the ashes, tracing small spirals over the floor. Hoffmann was still in his chair, asleep. Someone had left him with a blanket, but it had fallen off him and lay twisted around his ankles. He mumbled and shook, his hands trembling in his lap. He looked like nothing more than a harmless old man in blue pajamas.
Penelope had given up on Sivart, but Unwin could not. You’re the best chance I’ve got, the detective had told him in the dream Unwin twice dreamed, first in his own bed and then in the third archive. Try this time, would you? And so he would try. It was possible that Penelope had underestimated Sivart’s stubbornness.
Unwin took the alarm clock from his briefcase, wound it, and turned the hands to match those on his wristwatch. It was six o’clock exactly. He set the alarm as far in advance as he could and carefully placed the clock on the table, next to the near-empty bottle of brandy.
Eleven hours, fifty-nine minutes: that was how long he had to set everything in place. It was just a matter of timing now. If his plan worked, it would be like Miss Greenwood’s story about all those spindles, and the one the king had missed. Only in this version of the story, instead of someone falling asleep, someone was going to wake up. A few people, actually.
A shadow moved over the floor. Unwin turned to see Cleo Greenwood standing by the window, her red raincoat dripping on the rug. She had been watching from a corner of the room—had come in, maybe, through one of Colonel Baker’s old secret passages. The pistol in her hand was steady in spite of her exhaustion. It was another one of Baker’s antiques; she had taken it from the wall.
“You’re standing in my way,” she said.
Unwin stood straight and kept himself in front of the magician. “Hoffmann is already spoken for, Miss Greenwood. And anyway, he’s only half of the problem. If you’ll give me the chance, I can deliver the overseer to you.” Unwin was making bold promises again. He knew that it was more likely he would soon find the overseer’s fingers at his own throat the next time he slept—if he ever slept again. But he went on talking.
“Those eyes at the back of your skull,” he said. “You’ve had to work hard to keep your secret hidden from them. I understand now why you don’t want him to know about your daughter. He would torment her as he’s tormented you. And if she were turned to his side, nothing would be safe from the Agency’s eye. Arthur thinks he’s close to breaking you.”
“He is,” she said.
“Then let me help you.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“Sivart. My old job back, maybe.”
She held still a moment, then covered her face with her free hand. “You’re a clerk,” she said, her shoulders shaking. “Oh, God, you were his clerk.”
“Not a very good one,” Unwin said. “My files are full of errors. I’m just trying to make corrections now.”
Hoffmann mumbled in his sleep again. On the table beside the magician, Unwin’s alarm clock ticked faintly.
“All those years you played the magician’s assistant,” Unwin said. “I know how you tricked Colonel Baker out of his fortune. And you were there that night on The Wonderly, to make sure Sivart took the wrong corpse back to the museum.” He gestured toward the display case at the back of the room. “There’s the real Oldest Murdered Man there. And it’s Caligari’s corpse in the museum, isn’t it?”