The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,72

ran, too, and by this time most everyone in the archive was watching them. Unwin could see the booth more clearly now. At its peak was a four-faced clock, nearly identical to the one at Central Terminal. Unwin checked his watch and saw that it matched to the very second the clock at the heart of the Agency archives. It was seventeen minutes after one o’clock in the afternoon. The underclerk drew up to the booth, pushing others aside to reach the front. There was a lot of jostling and grumbling, but the others went quiet as he began to speak to someone inside the booth. Then they all turned to watch Unwin’s approach. Some removed their hats and started fidgeting with the brims. They parted to let him through, and the one in the red cravat stood aside.

A woman was seated in the booth, surrounded by card catalogs. She was younger than Unwin, though older than Emily. She had straight brown hair and a wide, frowning mouth. She looked him over carefully, paying special attention to his hat.

“You’re not an underclerk,” she said.

“My apologies,” said Unwin. “It is not my intention to deceive. I am a clerk of the fourteenth floor.”

Now the underclerks began to chatter all at once. “Clerk!” they said, and, “Fourteenth floor!” They repeated the words until the woman hushed them with a wave of her hand.

“No,” Unwin said, shaking his head, “I was a clerk. I am hardly accustomed to the change myself. Just yesterday I was promoted to the rank of detective. In fact, I’m here on business of a detectorial nature.” He showed her his badge.

Again the underclerks started talking, their voices rising higher as they pushed and pulled at their hats, nearly tearing them in half. “Detective!” they said, and one among them wailed, “What’s a detective?”

“Quiet!” the woman shouted. She glared at Unwin. “This is highly irregular. You’d better come in.”

She opened a door to the side of her window and ushered Unwin into the booth; some of the underclerks made as though to follow, but the woman closed it before any could slip through. Then she closed green shutters over her window. Unwin could still hear the pleas of the underclerks outside: “What’s a detective?” they cried, and then, “What’s promoted?” The few near the window scratched at the shutters with their fingernails; one was brazen enough to tap his knuckles against the door.

Unwin now saw that the card catalogs replicated in miniature the archives themselves. Each stack of file drawers outside had a corresponding stack within the booth; even the columns were represented by eight freestanding pillars. This explained the lack of references to content or indexing in the archive proper. The only key was here.

The woman reached under her desk, took a silver flask from its hiding place, and set out two tin cups. She poured a little brown liquid into each and pressed one into Unwin’s hand. She drank. Unwin was unaccustomed to drinking whiskey straight, from a flask or otherwise. And though he did not find it altogether unpleasant, each sip was a keen surprise to his tongue.

The underclerks were silent now. They had either dispersed or agreed to stay quiet and listen in.

“You must forgive them,” the woman said. “They’ve had a very trying week. We all have.” She offered him her hand; her palm was cool and papery against his own. “Eleanor Benjamin,” she said, “Chief Clerk of Mysteries.”

“Charles Unwin, Detective.”

“And, I suppose, the reason I lost my best staffer to the fourteenth floor yesterday. To promote someone from one department to another is atypical. To promote two people at once is absurd. I’m afraid we’re all a little rattled down here.”

“The woman who has taken my place used to work for you?” Unwin asked.

“Yes,” said Miss Benjamin. “Only two months into the job and she was already the best underclerk I had.”

This was a surprise even sharper than the whiskey. The woman in the plaid coat, Cleo Greenwood’s daughter, had started working at the Agency long before the first time Unwin saw her at Central Terminal. She must have used the time to find and steal an unabridged copy of the Manual. But what else had she been up to?

“I hardly know what to do without her,” Miss Benjamin went on. “She went about her work so calmly that she kept everyone else calm, too. I’m certain one of these twittering old men will fall from his ladder someday. And they haven’t even