The Manual of Detection Read Online Free PDF Page B

with Lamech’s corpse. If someone were going to leap out and kill him, he would have done it by now.
    A second knock at the door, louder this time. He should have left as soon as he saw the corpse, should have cried out, or even run into the hall and fainted. That would have made his role in the matter obvious: he was the unlucky discoverer of a horrendous crime. But what would they think when he answered the door and said, “Please, come right in. And look, there’s a dead man at the desk. Strange, isn’t it?”
    He could squeeze himself behind the end of the bookshelf, but that would make for a poor hiding place. When he was found cowering there, the suspicion against him would only increase. If he waited a little longer, maybe, the person at the door would give up and go away.
    Unwin waited. There was no more knocking, but he heard the sound of a woman’s voice. “Mr. Lamech?”
    The body, then. He would have to do something with the body. He went to stand behind Lamech’s chair and gazed down at the broad, blank scalp. From this angle it looked as though there was nothing wrong with the man. He was only very tired, had eased back into his chair for a brief nap. He did not even smell as Unwin imagined a corpse would smell. He smelled like aftershave.
    Still, Unwin could not bring himself to touch the dead man. He took hold of the chair and rolled it slowly backward. Lamech’s big hands drifted apart as they slid over the surface of the desk, but his fingers stayed rigid. Then the arms dropped suddenly, and the upper half of the body fell forward. Unwin had to yank the chair back to keep the man’s head from striking the edge of the desk. The chair creaked under the slumped weight of the corpse.
    The woman knocked again, so loudly this time that everyone on the floor must have heard.
    “One moment!” Unwin shouted, and the woman let out a little oh! as though she had not really expected an answer.
    With his foot on one leg of the chair to keep it in place, Unwin heaved against the body with both hands. It bowed deeper and the spine emitted a series of popping sounds that made him recoil. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and pushed again. This time the body slid off the chair and tumbled soundlessly into the dark beneath the desk.
    In the most commanding tone he could muster, Unwin called for Lamech’s visitor to enter.
    The woman wore a black dress with white lace around the collar and cuffs. The dress was very fine, but of a style Unwin had not seen worn in the city for ten years or more. In her hands she clutched a small purse, also strangely old-fashioned. Her hair was bound up in a black lace cap, still damp from the rain. She was perhaps ten years older than Unwin, and very beautiful— a real stunner, Sivart might have written. She was also the most tired-looking woman Unwin had ever seen. She gazed warily into the room, the shadows beneath her eyes so dark that Unwin mistook them at first for an exotic sort of makeup.
    “Please come in,” he said.
    She came forward with dreamlike hesitancy, always about to stumble, somehow remaining miraculously on her feet.
    “Mr. Lamech,” she said.
    He sat down, relieved that she did not know the watcher by sight, but the tip of his left shoe made contact with the body under the desk, and he had to cough to conceal his alarm.
    “I know this isn’t how things are done here,” she said.
    Unwin’s stomach tightened. Had he given himself away so quickly?
    “I know I’m supposed to request an appointment,” the woman went on, “and then someone informs me who will be handling my case. But I couldn’t wait, and I couldn’t see just anyone. I had to see you.”
    So it was she who had broken the rules. Unwin cleared his throat and gave her a stern look. Then, to demonstrate his generosity, he gestured for her to sit.
    She gazed at the thick cushion, her eyelids drooping. “I mustn’t,” she said. “I would fall asleep in an instant.” Just the thought of