Eye of the Crow Read online

  To my mother,

  Susan Jane,

  who gave me a writers soul.

  “During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life … I had come to believe that he was an orphan with no relatives living; …”

  – Dr. Watson in The Greek Interpreter

  CONTENTS

  MAPS OF LONDON

  PREFACE

  1 THE UNUSUAL BOY

  2 A DARK PAST

  3 OMENS FROM THE SKY

  4 THE MURDERER

  5 VIOLIN LAND

  6 FIRST CLUE

  7 MOHAMMAD’S STORY

  8 THE UNUSUAL GIRL

  9 ESCAPE

  10 IN DISGUISE

  11 HOME ROBBERY

  12 ALL THAT GLITTERS

  13 SEEING EVIL

  14 LILLIE AND MR. LEAR

  15 A DANGEROUS MOVE

  16 THE DEVIL’S CARRIAGE

  17 NEW MORNING

  18 THE WILD SIDE

  19 THE EYES OF MAYFAIR

  20 CRIMINAL ACTS

  21 DEATH

  22 SHERLOCK HOLMES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PREFACE

  Murder came in darkness. It came in White-chapel, far from the gaslights of the main streets, to the east where the Jews were, where the poor starved, where the invisible people of the world’s greatest city lived like animals. It came in an instant, in a stab of brutality, unjust and violent.

  Hours later, south of the River Thames in Southwark, above a shabby shop in a narrow row near a slum, a boy reluctantly rose to meet another morning. Justice lived far from here too. But today would mark the beginning of a reckoning: for him, for that death, and for many crimes that would follow.

  No one had seen the Whitechapel murder.

  But in that night black eyes were watching.

  And in this morning … the Master was awakening.

  THE UNUSUAL BOY

  As the sun climbs, its rays spread light through the lifting yellow fog, filtering down upon a brown, flowing mass of people: on top hats and bonnets, heavy clothes and boots swarming on bridges and along cobblestone streets. Hooves strike the pavement, clip-clopping over the rumbling iron wheels, the drone of the crowds, and hawkers’ cries. The smell of horses, of refuse, of coal and gas, hangs in the air. Nearly everyone has somewhere to go on this late spring morning in the year of Our Lord, 1867.

  Among those moving over the dirty river from the south, is a tall, thin youth with skin the pallor of the pale margins in The Times of London. He is thirteen years old and should be in school. From a distance he appears elegant in his black frock coat and necktie with waistcoat and polished boots. Up close, he looks frayed. He seems sad, but his gray eyes are alert.

  His name is Sherlock Holmes.

  Last night’s crime in Whitechapel, one of many in London, though perhaps its most vicious, will change his life. In moments it will introduce itself to him. Within days it will envelop him.

  He comes to these loud, bustling streets to get away from his problems, to look for excitement, and to see the rich and famous, to wonder what makes them successful and appreciated. He has a nose for the scent of thrilling and desperate things, and all around these teeming arteries, he finds them.

  He gets here by the same route every day. At first he heads south from the family’s first-floor flat over the old hatter’s shop in grimy Southwark, and walks in the direction of his school. But when he is out of sight he always veers west, and then sneaks north and crosses the river with the crowds at Blackfriars Bridge, for the glorious center of the city.

  Londoners move past him in waves, each with a story. They all fascinate him.

  Sherlock Holmes is an observing machine; has been that way almost since birth. He can size up a man or a woman in an instant. He can tell where someone is from, what another does to make his living. In fact, he is known for it on his little street. If something is missing – a boot or an apron or a crusty doorstep of bread – he can look into faces, examine trousers, find telltale clues, and track the culprit, large or small.

  This man walking toward him has been in the army, you can tell by his bearing. He’s pulled the trigger of his rifle with the calloused index finger of his right hand. He’s served in India – notice the Hindu symbol on his left cuff link, like one the boy has seen in a book.

  He walks on. A woman with a bonnet pulled down on her head and a shawl gripped around her shoulders brushes against him as she passes.

  “Watch your step, you,” she grumbles, glaring at him.

  An easy one, thinks the boy. She has recently lost in love, notice the stains around her eyes, the tight anger in her mouth, and the chocolate hidden in her hand. She is within a year of thirty, gaining a little weight, a resident of the Sussex countryside where its unique brown clay has marked the insteps of both her black boots.

  The boy feels like he needs to know everything. He needs advantages in a life that has given him few. A teacher at his school once told him he was brilliant. He’d scoffed at that. “Brilliant at what?” he had muttered to himself. “At being in the wrong life at the wrong time?”

  On Fleet Street, he reaches into a cast-iron dustbin and pulls out a handful of newspapers. The Times … toss it back. The Daily Telegraph … toss it back. The Illustrated Police News … ah, yes. Now there is a newspaper! Every sensation that London can create brought to life in big black-and-white pictures. He reads such scandal sheets every day, but this one, with a riveting tale of bloody violence and injustice, will reveal to him his destiny. He tucks it into his coat.

  At Trafalgar Square he looks up to find the crows. There are often a few in a row on the edge of Morley’s Hotel near majestic Northumberland House on the southeast side, a league from the fat pigeons and the crowds near the fountains. It makes him smile. One of the most prestigious hotels in all of London, crowned with crows. They’re Sherlock’s kind of birds.

  He weaves through traffic and crosses the square to a spot on the stone steps of the National Art Gallery. The black birds move too. Sometimes, he thinks that crows follow him. A couple swoop down and settle nearby.

  “Good morning, you two. Let’s see what’s in the news.”

  He unfolds the paper. The front page shouts at him.

  MURDER!

  Under the headline is a lurid drawing of a beautiful young woman lying on a London street, soaked in a pool of blood.

  The crows shriek and fly off. Sherlock reads on.

  It had happened east of the old part of the city in the dead of night. No one had seen it or even heard a scream. A long, sharp knife had been used.

  Sherlock turns the page. He devours the story: a lady of mysterious social status, no name revealed, no known enemies. He realizes with a start that she looks like his mother.

  The boy hears people talking as they walk by.

  “That poor woman.”

  “Must have been a street person, a foreigner.”

  “There’s that dreadful boy sitting there again. I wish he’d move on.”

  “Were they crows? That’s not a good sign.”

  “Dodgers they are. Nothing but gypsies, I say. Here they come! I’ll call the constables.”

  Sherlock glances up. It’s the Trafalgar Square Irregulars. He can almost smell them.

  “Master Sherlock Holmes, I perceive,” says a dark-haired, tough-looking boy at the head of a dirty gang who are smaller copies of their leader. He is dressed in a worn-out long black coat with tails, a dark stovepipe hat is perched at an angle on his head, and he carries a crude walking stick in his hand. “I think you’re sitting in our spot.”

  They’ve never sat here, nor will they today. They gather around and
loom over him.

  “My dear Malefactor …” replies Sherlock. He waves at the Irregulars, “… and friends.”

  “At least I have some.”

  “Quite.”

  “Move! Or we’ll beat on you again.”

  “’alf-breed Jew-boy!” snarls a nasty one named Grimsby, of whom Holmes is always wary. His yellow, sharp-pointed teeth look like a ferret’s, ready to bite.

  Sherlock gets to his feet and straightens his third-hand clothes. He hates Malefactor; hates him with the deepest admiration.

  “Seen this?” he asks, holding up The Illustrated Police News.

  “Slit ’er from stem to gudgeon, ’e did! Right steady job!” shouts Grimsby.

  The boys laugh.

  “It isn’t funny,” says Malefactor, silencing them. “It isn’t right.”

  “What’s the word?” asks Holmes, aware that the young swell mobsman and his gang know every rumor that creeps through the alleys of London.

  “For the streets to know … and keep to themselves,” says Malefactor. “I don’t like the –”

  “I know,” sighs Sherlock, “I know … you don’t like the look of me.”

  There is something vaguely similar about the two boys, though the gang leader is a little older and speaks with a barely detectable Irish lilt. It goes beyond their dark looks. It is in their way of expressing themselves and the careful manner they dress in their tattered clothes. They both know it, but Malefactor doesn’t like it.

  “You’ll never be an Irregular. Not you, Sherlock Holmes.”

  “And yet, I’m as irregular as I can be.”

  A constable is coming, dressed in his coxcomb helmet and long blue overcoat with a neat vertical line of shining buttons. He carries a hard wooden truncheon in his hand. He is watching the carriages rolling past, looking for his opportunity to approach.

  “Irregulars!” hisses Malefactor. And in an instant they are gone.

  When five o’clock comes, Sherlock wants to stay in the square; never go home. Why should he go home to sadness, to hopelessness, to Rose and Wilber Holmes? Better to be here on the streets near the thrills and the successes, where he’s seen so many fascinating and frightening things. He saw Lewis Carroll, one day, carrying his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in his very hand; another time, Disraeli, the greatest politician in the land, strolling quietly through the Square; Anna Swan the Giantess with her head high above the crowd, the amazing high-rope star, Blondin, and the one and only Mr. Dickens, his black goatee streaked with gray, his eyes on fire. He’s seen the Square packed with protestors shouting at the government to change its ways, and filled with citizens roaring for the feats of the Empire. He’s seen the black-faced chimney sweeps, the deformed beggars, and the pick pockets of the streets. Why should he go home?

  But he always goes. When Big Ben, the clock tower at the Parliament Buildings, strikes 5:00, he flies, intent on getting back before his parents, so they will think he’s been to school. For many months now, he’s been truant. In his heart, he knows they more than suspect him: they see right through him. It can’t continue. If he doesn’t go to school, he will have to work. The family needs his contribution. He will have to accept his lot among the poor working classes of London.

  Dark clouds are gathering.

  Sherlock realizes that his heart is racing, that it’s been pumping faster since the moment he opened The Illustrated Police News. Something is burning inside him.

  He looks down at the newspaper: he crushes it tightly strangling the word murder in a fist.

  A DARK PAST

  Big Ben strikes 5:00. Sherlock starts to run, following the familiar route over the wide stone bridge, The Police News still in his hand.

  He has it timed. Two hundred sprinting strides across the bridge through the crowds take less than two minutes. East along the brown Thames, past ominous old Clink Prison to Borough High Street, is a thousand fast footfalls: eight minutes. Borough is a wide thoroughfare and as respectable as Southwark gets, but his home is off it, seven narrow streets farther south, near a terrible neighborhood known as The Mint.

  Dark, stone railway bridges loom here and there over the streets. The piercing screams of steam locomotives often cut through the air, making pedestrians jump out of their skins.

  Sherlock sticks to the warren of alleys and lanes along Boroughs west side, keeping up his speed so the urchins, the beggars, the thieves of the slums can’t knock him down and rob him.

  It starts to drizzle. A London day isn’t complete without a little rain.

  He always smells his neighborhood before he sees it: fish and vegetables being sold at the intersection near his street, sour odors wafting from the tanneries nearby hanging rabbit meat, pigs’ heads, or cold mutton at the local butcher shops. He hears familiar curses in the air.

  As he nears home, his fear of being recognized grows. If anyone sees him, slows him down, he won’t make it on time. He took too long reading about the murder, but he couldn’t stop himself

  Folks around here know he should be in school and will tell his parents if they spot him. He drops his chin down to his chest as he rushes on, wishing he could withdraw his head into his neck-tied collar like a turtle.

  “Sherlock!” a voice shouts.

  It sounds like someone his age: maybe a schoolmate. He keeps running. But a little farther on, he slows when he sees a group of boys he knows, playing skittles in a lot where a building was recently knocked down, in preparation for another new rail line. The boys are using an old human skull for a ball, bowling it into bones they have set up as pins, all unearthed from a pauper’s gravesite, and …

  Suddenly Sherlock crashes headlong into something and goes sprawling off the foot pavement onto the street. He glances up.

  It’s Ratfinch.

  He’s the neighborhood fishmonger, and today he’s carrying two barrels full of eels on his cart. They are tasty when fried over the fire with drippings, but they’re slimy now, wriggling around on the boy as he lies on his back, stunned. His coat is drenched.

  “Master ’olmes? … What in the …? Ain’t you supposed to be …?” Ratfinch has a huge scar on his left cheek, made by a fishing hook. The wound cuts all the way across his face in a deep groove.

  Sherlock springs to his feet, grasping at the eels, trying to grip the big slippery worms and drop them back into the monger’s barrels – a passerby rights the containers on the street. The boy is growing frantic. Now he’s very late. He mumbles an apology and escapes, wiping his coat with his hands as he scrambles away, praying the old material will dry quickly.

  “Holmes!” yells one of the boys from the skittles game, rushing toward him. Sherlock lowers his head and runs.

  Their home is just off the main thoroughfare, in a row of shops that line the road leading to the frightening lanes of The Mint. Almost everything is made of brick or stone here, but these buildings, built in the late 1600s, are all made of wood: the ground floor shops with bulging, latticed windows, the first floor flats above, with small, decaying insides.

  He approaches their lodgings at a desperate sprint and slips down the little alley that turns off their street and goes along the back of the shops. It is barely wider than his scrawny shoulders. He whips past the back of the butcher’s, the baker’s, and then his own building, the old hatter’s smells drifting out. He climbs over the crumbling brick wall at the rear. There is a rickety staircase a few steps away that rises to the only entrance to their flat. He ascends on the fly. At the top, on a sort of tiny landing, barely wide enough for a man to stand on, Sherlock can see back down the alley in the direction he has come. What he glimpses when he looks turns his face whiter than its usual hue: his parents, hand in hand, entering the passageway. They often meet on Borough and come home together. He is just seconds ahead!

  The family door is never locked. No one would steal anything they have. His long white fingers fumble at the latch as his parents come closer. He presses his thumb down on the metal, lifting the
little bar inside to release the catch. But he is too anxious, lets go too soon, and it catches again. He leans on the wooden door, but it won’t open. He hears them talking, getting closer. He struggles with the latch once more. His hands are shaking. He calms himself, presses the latch down slowly, gently pushes the door open, and slips inside. The flat is a small room with a smaller one leading off to his right. The boards squeak as he rushes across the main room, throws himself on his little frame straw bed against the wall, and seizes one of his father’s books from the shelf above him. He is still breathing hard.

  The latch gently lifts. The door creaks open and closes.

  “Sherlock? Are you home?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Hello, son.”

  “Father.”

  Wilberforce Holmes – tall, lean and dark – examines him closely. His powers of observation are at least as acute as his son’s: his gift to him. But he doesn’t need to be a detective to sense what is amiss about the boy today.

  “What do I smell?” he asks suspiciously. “Fish?”

  “Ratfinch is nearby” says Sherlock nonchalantly get ting up so he can put his back to his father. “I just passed him.” The boy grimaces to himself, realizing that this doesn’t make much sense. The fishmonger’s smells, mixed with all the other odors outside, wouldn’t penetrate these walls.

  His father observes him. “Are you out of breath?”

  “No.”

  How long can he keep his back turned? His coat is still wet in front from the eels, but only in front. Will they believe it’s the rain? How often does it rain on just one side of your clothes?

  “How was school?” continues his father.

  “Instructive.”

  His parents don’t smile. There is silence as they look at each other, still holding hands.

  “So … what did you study today?” asks his mother, forcing a happier tone.

  “Same old things.”

  Mr. Holmes has had enough. “Should I ask your headmaster?”