Part 7 (1/2)

”I suppose not,” she said, nearly making it a question.

Unwin took the record from his briefcase and slid it out of its cover. He set the pearly disk on the turntable, switched on the machine, and lowered the needle. At first there was only static, followed by a rhythmic shus.h.i.+ng. Then a deeper sound, a burbling that was almost a man's voice. The recording was distorted, though, and Unwin could not make out a word.

”This is horrid,” she said. ”Please shut it off.”

Unwin leaned closer to the amplifier bell. The speechlike sound continued, stopped, started again. And then he heard it. It was the same thing he had heard on the telephone at the museum cafe, when he s.n.a.t.c.hed the receiver from the man with the blond beard.

A rustling sound, and the warbling of pigeons.

Miss Greenwood set down her drink and came forward, nearly catching her foot on the rug. She lifted the needle from the record and gave Unwin an angry, questioning look. ”I don't see what this has to do with my case,” she said.

He put the record back in its sleeve and returned it to his briefcase. ”That sleepiness routine disguised your limp this morning,” he said.

She flinched at the mention of her injury. ”I read the late edition,” she said. ”Edward Lamech is dead. You're no watcher.”

”And you're no Vera Truesdale.”

Something in her face changed then. The circles under her eyes were as dark as ever, but she did not look tired at all. She picked up her drink and sipped it. ”I'll call hotel security.”

”Okay,” Unwin said, surprised at his own boldness. ”But first I want to know why you came to Lamech's office this morning. It wasn't to hire Sivart. He went looking for you days ago.”

That made her set her drink down. ”Who are you?”

”Detective Charles Unwin,” he said. ”Edward Lamech was my watcher.” He showed her his badge.

”You're a detective without a watcher,” she said. ”That's a unique position to be in. I want to hire you.”

”It doesn't work that way. Detectives are a.s.signed cases.”

”Yes, by their watchers. And you don't have one. So I wonder what you're working on, exactly.”

”I'm trying to find Detective Sivart. He went to the Munic.i.p.al Museum, but you know that. Because it was you, wasn't it, who showed that museum attendant the Oldest Murdered Man's gold tooth?”

She considered this with obvious interest but did not reply. ”What time is it?” she said.

He checked his watch. ”Nine thirty.”

”I want to show you something, Detective.” She led him back to the doorway but did not open it. She pointed to the peephole and said, ”Look there.”

Unwin leaned in to look, then thought better of turning his back on Cleopatra Greenwood. She took a few steps away and opened her hands, as though to show that she was unarmed. ”I trusted you enough to let you in, didn't I?”

He hesitated.

”Hurry,” she said, almost whispering. ”You'll miss it.”

Unwin looked through the peephole. At first he had only a fish-eyed view of the door across the hall. Then a red-coated bellhop appeared with a covered tray in his hand. He set it on the floor in front of the opposite door, knocked twice, and went away. No one came for the food.

”Keep watching,” Miss Greenwood said.

The door opened slowly, and an old man wearing a tattered frock coat peered into the hall. He had an antique service revolver in his hand and was polis.h.i.+ng it with a square of blue cloth. He looked each way, and when he was satisfied that the hall was empty, he slid the revolver into his pocket. Then he picked up the tray and went back inside.

Miss Greenwood was grinning. ”Do you know who that was?” she said.

”No,” Unwin said, though the man did seem vaguely familiar. This game, whatever it was, was making him nervous.

”Colonel Baker.”

”Now you're deliberately trying to rattle me,” Unwin said.

”I'm trying to do good by you, Detective Unwin. You ought to realize by now that things are rather more complicated than you may have believed. Everyone knows that Colonel Baker is dead. Everyone knows that Sivart walked away victorious, case closed. Nonetheless, Colonel Baker is living across the hall from me. He orders room service every night. He likes a late dinner.”

If not for the revolver, Unwin might have gone over there to prove that what Miss Greenwood had said was a lie. The Three Deaths of Colonel Baker was one of Sivart's most celebrated cases, and Unwin's file was a composition of the first order-no clerk could deny it.

Colonel Sherbrooke Baker, a decorated war hero, had become famous for the secret battlefield tactic that made him seem to be in two places at once. But in his later years, he was best known for his unparalleled collection of military memorabilia. In addition to several pieces of interest to historians of the ancient world, the collection contained numerous antique rifles and sidearms, some of which had belonged to the country's founding fathers. Others, experts agreed, were the weapons that had fired the first shots of various wars, revolutionary, civil, and otherwise. Few were allowed to study or even view these extraordinary items, however, for Colonel Baker spoke of them with pride but guarded them with something very much like jealousy.

In the colonel's will, he left all of his possessions to his son Leopold. But there was a stipulation: the colonel's precious collection was to remain in the family and remain whole.

A businessman who was not very good with business, Sivart had written of Leopold Baker. When the colonel died, his son was happy to accept the considerable sum his father had left him. He was less happy to learn that he had inherited the collection as well. All too vivid in Leopold's mind was the afternoon, as a boy of twelve, when he had interrupted his father's polis.h.i.+ng to ask him to play a game of catch. ”This,” the colonel had told him, holding a long, thin blade before his eyes, ”is the misericord. Medieval footmen slipped it between the plates of fallen knights' armor, once the battle was over, to find out who was dead and who was only pretending. Think of that while you sleep tonight.” Sivart had written of Leopold Baker. When the colonel died, his son was happy to accept the considerable sum his father had left him. He was less happy to learn that he had inherited the collection as well. All too vivid in Leopold's mind was the afternoon, as a boy of twelve, when he had interrupted his father's polis.h.i.+ng to ask him to play a game of catch. ”This,” the colonel had told him, holding a long, thin blade before his eyes, ”is the misericord. Medieval footmen slipped it between the plates of fallen knights' armor, once the battle was over, to find out who was dead and who was only pretending. Think of that while you sleep tonight.”

The will contained no consequence for disobeying the colonel's wishes, so he was only three days in the grave when the auction commenced. Attendance was good, the hall filled with the many historians, museum curators, and military enthusiasts the colonel had spurned through the years. Once the bidding began, however, lot after lot was won by the same strange gentleman, seated at the back of the room with a black veil over his face. It was whispered through the hall that this was a representative of Enoch Hoffmann, whose taste for antiquities was by then well known. Leopold suspected it, too, but he was not displeased, for the stranger's pockets seemed bottomless.

At the end of the auction, the gentleman met with Leopold to settle their accounts. It was then that he pulled back his veil and revealed himself as Colonel Baker. The old man had not died, only faked his death to test his son's loyalty. The colonel declared his will invalid-he was very much alive after all-and reclaimed all that Leopold had thought was his.

That was when Sivart became involved. His report began: The a.s.signment 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. The a.s.signment 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, he wrote, dead. 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 ident.i.ty 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 p.r.i.c.kly. 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?