The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,70

notified of Unwin’s fugitive status. But the white-haired little man only hummed to himself as the car descended, seemingly oblivious to his passengers.

Emily drew close to Unwin and whispered, “Do you really know who killed Lamech?”

“No,” he said. “But if I don’t find out soon, I think it won’t matter anyway.”

Emily looked at her shoes. “I haven’t been a very good assistant,” she said.

They both were quiet, and the only sounds in the car were the elevator attendant’s tuneless humming and the grating of the machinery above. Unwin knew that it was he, not Emily, who had failed. She had saved him from Detective Screed, had chosen the secret signal that saved him a second time. But outside the Gilbert Hotel, when she asked him what would happen to her once they found Sivart, he had failed to give her an answer.

Maybe he should have told her that he would remain a detective, that she would still be his assistant. Better yet, they could act as partners: the meticulous dreamer and his somnolent sidekick. Together they would untangle the knots Enoch Hoffmann and his villainous cohorts had tied in the city, in its dreams. Their suspects would be disarmed by his clerkly demeanor; she would ask the tough questions and do most of the driving. They would track down every error Sivart had committed, re-solve all the great cases, set the record straight. Their reports would be precise, complete, and timely: the envy of every clerk on the fourteenth floor.

But he had not even cleared his name yet, and Emily now would also be hunted.

She was still looking at her shoes when Unwin put a hand on her shoulder. “You are the finest assistant a detective could wish for,” he said.

With a swift movement, as though the floor had tilted or the elevator slipped its cable, Emily fell fully into him and laid her head against his chest, wrapping her arms around his middle. Unwin stifled a gasp at the sudden and complete materialization of this young woman in his arms. He could smell her lavender perfume again, and beneath that the sharpness of her sweat.

Emily raised her lips close to his ear and said, “It’s really something, don’t you think? We have so much work to do, but we can’t trust anyone. And when you get right down to it, we can barely trust each other. But it’s better that way, I suppose. It keeps us thinking, keeps us guessing. Just a couple of shadows, that’s what we are. Turn the light on and that’s the end of us.”

The elevator attendant had stopped humming, and Unwin caught himself wondering about bylaws again.

“Emily,” he said, “do you remember anything of the dream you were having earlier?”

She moved back an inch and adjusted her glasses. “I remember birds, lots of them. Pigeons, I think. And a breeze. Open windows. There were papers everywhere.”

The elevator attendant cleared his throat. “Floor twenty-nine,” he said.

Emily slowly let go of Unwin, then stepped out onto the polished wood floor. The custodian had cleaned it to a shine—not a trace of black paint remained.

“Emily?” Unwin said.

“Sir?”

“Do try to stay awake.”

The attendant closed the door, and Unwin told him to take him to the archives. Clerks, and even detectives, were technically prohibited from entering, but the little man made no protest. He threw the lever and sat on his stool. “The archives,” he said. “The long-term memory of our esteemed organization. Without it we are nothing but a jumble of trivialities, delusions, and windblown stratagems.”

A bulb on the attendant’s panel lit yellow, and he brought the car to a halt. Unwin found himself looking into the broad office of the fourteenth floor. His overclerk, Mr. Duden, stood in front of him. The round-faced man took a step back when he saw Unwin. “I’ll get the next one,” he said.

THAT ONLY UNDERCLERKS were permitted access to the Agency archives had instilled in Unwin a simmering resentment of his inferiors. He sometimes daydreamed about catching one of the affable little men on his way to lunch and accompanying him to the booth of a local eatery. There he would buy the man a sandwich, pickles, a glass of what-have-you, and gradually turn the conversation to the topic of their work—forbidden, of course, between employees of different departments. In time the underclerk’s caginess would give way to happy disclosure; he was as proud of his work as Unwin was of his, after all. And so Unwin would come to learn