The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,53
flexing her bad leg. “Murder?” she said.
“Samuel Pith. The Rooks shot him.”
She looked away. “That’s horrid. Don’t get me wrong. Sam was always a bit of a stuffed shirt. And he knew the risks. But he was an innocent, when it comes down to it. The rules must be changing.”
“There are rules?”
“The Agency isn’t the only organization requiring discipline, Detective Unwin. Now, tell me what else happened last night.”
“You sang a song or two,” Unwin said.
She stopped and turned, her face close to his under the umbrella. “You’re sounding like a detective,” she said. “Just when I was beginning to like you.”
Some of the remnants had followed and were lurking now at the edge of the hall of mirrors. There were a dozen of them, maybe, or just a few, accompanied by their distorted reflections. They stood with their arms crossed in front of them, watching.
“What do you want to know?” Unwin asked her.
“What you’re doing here, to begin with.”
“I want to see the Rooks.”
“No one wants to see the Rooks, Detective Unwin. They were sweet little boys when they came here with the carnival. But they were still attached then. After Enoch paid for the operation, they got to walk on their own, but it changed them in other ways, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“They lost something,” Miss Greenwood said. “I don’t know what to call it. ‘Conscience’ isn’t quite the word. Some people do cruel things, but the Rooks are cruelty itself, monsters under any moon. And they never sleep.”
“Never?”
“Not in seventeen years.”
Unwin thought that explained something, but he was not sure what. “You haven’t slept in a long time either,” he said.
“That’s a very different story. The Rooks are no more than their master’s hands. Now, I want you to tell me what happened last night.”
When he hesitated, she turned to signal to the men by the fun house. They took a few steps forward, their reflections multiplying. Sivart might have seen a way out of this, but Unwin did not.
“I’ll tell you what I saw,” he said, and she signaled again for the remnants to wait.
Unwin described the gambling tables, the alarm clocks, her own performance, which seemed somehow to draw the sleepwalkers to the party. He told her how the Rooks were overseeing the operation and how the custodian had played accordion while she sang.
All of it interested her, but he could tell she was after something else. “I want us to be honest with each other,” she said. “I must seem like a bully to you. The truth is, I only came back to the city because I’m trying to help someone. You were wrong when you accused me of showing your friend the truth about the Oldest Murdered Man. That must have been my daughter.”
Unwin did not have to think long about the Agency’s files on Cleopatra Greenwood to assure himself that there was nothing in them about a daughter. Either Miss Greenwood was lying to him or she was revealing something Sivart had failed to discover.
“I’m afraid she’s gotten herself into some kind of trouble,” Miss Greenwood went on. “She’s turned out too much like her mother, that’s the problem.”
“You think she’s wrapped up in Hoffmann’s plans.”
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the remnants could not hear, then said quietly, “I’ll help you stop him.”
“Miss Greenwood, I don’t want to stop Enoch Hoffmann.”
Her exhaustion was showing again. A strong, sea-smelling wind hurled rain from the direction of the bay, and she squinted against it. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that Travis might be dead by now?” she asked, her voice rising as the wind picked up. “Your only way out of this thing is to do what he failed to do.”
A sound like thunder caused them both to turn. It was the clattering rumble of a heavy vehicle on a pitted road. Unwin looked for it, but a row of ragged sideshow tents blocked his view. The remnants were coming toward them now. Even with their reflections left behind, there were still a lot of them.
“Sivart was too stupid to see he’d been beaten,” Miss Greenwood said. “Don’t make the same mistake.”
Unwin collapsed his umbrella and ran. In a moment the remnants were only a few strides behind him; they whooped into the rain, thrilling to the pursuit. Unwin headed for the nearest tent and slipped inside. The air smelled thickly of mold, and rainwater poured in through tears in the canvas. He ran to the back and swung his umbrella,