Department

The Department is the police institution at the center of Commissioner Enderby’s attempt to control the investigation into Dr. Sarton’s murder. Its authority gave Enderby access to investigative decisions and personnel; in Baley’s account, that access helped him direct evidence toward Baley and conceal his own involvement.

Investigative Authority and Misuse

Baley says Enderby personally asked him to take the Sarton case rather than assigning it to a detective who outranked him. He presents the choice as calculated: Enderby relied on their history as college friends and on Baley’s loyalty to a respected superior, expecting that Baley would not suspect him of being a criminal. In Baley’s formulation, the murderer’s advantage was being in charge of the murder investigation.

Baley also says Enderby knew that Jessie was part of a Medievalist underground organization and expected that knowledge to provide leverage. If the investigation approached the truth, Enderby could maneuver Baley out of it or blackmail him into silence. Baley argues that the tactic was made safer by first encouraging distrust between him and R. Daneel Olivaw, so that the two investigators would work at cross-purposes rather than combine their efforts.

Resources and a Frame-Up

Baley accuses Enderby of using Departmental authority to arrange a chain of misleading discoveries. He claims Enderby went to the Williamsburg power plant, obtained the Alphasprayer, and gave it to R. Sammy, deliberately choosing the location to incriminate Baley. Baley further alleges that Enderby took advantage of Dr. Gerrigel’s return to the Department: Enderby invited him there and supplied a deliberately maladjusted guide rod that led him to the photographic supply room, where he could find R. Sammy’s remains and make the correct diagnosis.

The sequence, as Baley presents it, turns ordinary investigative procedures into instruments of deception. A Department visit, a guide rod, and an expert’s examination appear to advance the inquiry, but Baley says they were arranged to make the evidence point toward him. When challenged, he puts away his blaster and tells Enderby that Spacetown would not accept his arrest if he chose to order it.

Departmental Secrecy and the Medievalists

The Department also figures in the question of how the Medievalists learned that R. Daneel was a robot. Baley reasons that the shoe-counter incident was designed to display the City’s anti-robot feeling and shift suspicion away from particular individuals toward the population at large. Since Baley had not disclosed Daneel’s identity, and Daneel could not have been the source, Baley concludes that Enderby was the only other Earthman who knew and therefore the likely informer.

Enderby counters that the Medievalists could have spies throughout the Department, pointing out that Baley’s wife belonged to the organization. Baley rejects the appeal to unknown infiltrators as a distraction from what he calls the straightforward explanation: Enderby himself was the informer. The exchange presents the Department not only as a police workplace but as an institution vulnerable to the circulation of private information and to the use of investigative power for competing political purposes.

Significance

The Department’s role in the accusation is institutional rather than merely procedural. Its command structure lets Enderby choose the investigator, its facilities and personnel become part of the alleged frame-up, and its potential exposure to Medievalist spies becomes a defense against the charge that Enderby supplied information himself. Baley’s case turns on the contrast between an organization’s public function—investigating a murder—and the possibility that the person directing it has made that authority serve concealment instead.