Eye of the Crow tbsh-1 Page 13

  But her son isn’t smiling back. His expression has grown serious. Their faces are close enough that she knows, even in the darkness, that he is anxious to tell her something.

  “Mother?” he asks in a faint voice.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “You have to help me.”

  His voice sounds so somber that she doesn’t respond.

  “Mayfair is a world unto itself,” he continues, as if he needs to explain this clearly. “Everyone is connected to everyone else there.”

  “I know,” says Rose, patting his hand.

  “The answer to all of this is inside that neighbor hood … where you give lessons.”

  She is beginning to understand what he wants.

  “Have you ever seen a man with a glass eye in a Mayfair home?”

  “No, though I doubt any gentleman would advertise the fact that he has a false eye, especially to the likes of me.” She smiles in an attempt to make light of her comment, showing an echo of the spirit she once had. Sherlock needs her old courage now.

  “Could you …” he begins.

  “Yes, I could,” she says, without flinching.

  “I can’t go there.”

  “I know.” She takes one of his hands into both of hers.

  Now that his mother has agreed, Sherlock wants to run away. He shouldn’t be doing this.

  “No,” he says decisively, getting to his feet, regretting that he came here. “You can’t be involved in this. It’s too dangerous.”

  She pulls him back down.

  “If you are in jail for much of your life, if they … hang you, Sherlock, I would never forgive myself for not trying to help. My life would be over anyway.”

  He pauses for a long time before speaking again.

  “Just observe. Look around carefully. That’s all. I don’t want you to ask anyone anything directly. You might be in the murderer’s home or a friend’s. We are expendable to people like that. He will be suspicious of any interest in his glass eye from an outside inquirer.”

  “I will be careful,” she assures him, squeezing his fingers.

  “You must be.”

  “But what if I ask a discreet question, something indirect? Perhaps of a servant who knows the neighborhood well, who wouldn’t normally talk to her master anyway, a scullery maid?”

  Sherlock hesitates. “Only if you are absolutely certain about her,” he says with emotion, a little louder than he intends.

  “What was that?” mutters his father as he comes awake. “Sherlock? What are you two talking about?”

  “The physics of flight in the yellow-bellied sapsucker, my dear,” smiles Rose.

  Humor is not Wilber’s strong suit and for a moment, before he laughs, he is a little mystified.

  No one has to call Sherlock “Judas” now. He’s heard the Christian Bible story of that reviled man’s betrayal many times in school, and as he works his way through the dark avenues back to Montague Street, he indeed feels like a traitor. Has he gone too far, put his mother in danger – into a situation that might turn her over to the villain? She will be a spy behind enemy lines. If spies are caught, they are executed.

  The sun is still a few hours from rising when Sherlock crosses back over the Thames. He doesn’t pay much attention to his surroundings, doesn’t even try to imitate the street-boy shamble he has perfected. He is too deep in thought. He moves down Montague, under the gaslights, beside the long pale exterior of the British Museum without even glancing behind. The Doyle home is still. He hopes that fleabag J.S. Mill will be indoors tonight. Sherlock slides down the passageway and into the backyard.

  A dark object is hanging from the kennel. He can’t tell what it is. He moves closer.

  It’s a bird … a large black bird. And it’s dead.

  It is attached to the boards just above the entrance. A long-bladed knife has pierced the crow through its breast, pinning it to the wood. Its beak is open as if in a scream. Written just above its shotgun-sprayed little head, in scarlet slashes of blood, are two words. His stomach feels sick as he brings his face within a few wingspans:

  Beware Jew!

  Sherlock almost cries out. Who, other than the police, could know that he is after the villain? Who is watching him? Why? As his eyes dart around the yard, a ghost-like figure comes to mind, one he thought he had imagined – the big coachman in black livery and red standing in the alley observing him and then looking up at the crows. There’s an instant connection in the boy’s thoughts between that phantom coachman in black … and a black coach racing west from the murder! Then he remembers a dark vehicle parked alone on Whitechapel too, on the night he ran from there in fear.

  He wipes the scarlet words from the kennel with a quivering hand, leaving a smear of blood. He looks left, right, up above, toward the house, down the passageway. He spots no dark figure. His whole body is shaking. He pulls the blade from the crow’s chest, allowing the bird to fall to the ground, then kicks it into the rose bushes and flings the bloody knife after it.

  He darts into the passageway and starts to run. But halfway down Montague Street he turns around, sprints back and slips down the passage into the yard. He checks the back door … locked. He rushes around to the front and tests it … locked. Thank God.

  Then he disappears into the wicked London night.

  THE DEVIL’S CARRIAGE

  Sherlock lies on cold, hard cobblestones in a lane behind a pile of rotting vegetables north of the University College of London for several dark hours. He knows he must retreat to an area he doesn’t frequent. When the rain pours down, he presses as close to the building as he can get.

  Who is that coachman? What has he seen and what does he know? Was he at the Haymarket Theatre too, the glass maker’s shop in Soho, following him from the moment he visited the crime scene? Only the murderer or someone who works for him would do this. It is obvious. The villain is on to Sherlock … and in a murderous mood.

  After the sun rises, he makes his way back toward Irene’s house, not because he needs food – he’ll beg or steal it now – but because he has to see her, warn her, tell her that their meetings will have to be rare, if they take place at all.

  He finds a place on the grounds of the British Museum, against the east side of the building inside the wrought-iron fence, where he can see the house and not be detected. He waits. He is frantic. His hands are clammy, his eyes shift in his head, and he holds his spine tightly against the wall. Finally, Andrew Doyle emerges and marches down the street, walking stick in hand.

  Sherlock slips across the road and floats down the passageway. Irene is standing in front of the empty dog kennel in a long white dress, staring at the smear of blood, sobbing.

  She turns when he comes close. “You’re alive!”

  Her reddened eyes look big and he thinks she is going to hug him. She advances but stops before they touch.

  “When I saw the blood and the empty kennel, I …”

  “It’s crow’s blood.”

  “Crow’s?”

  “We are in trouble, Irene, enormous trouble,” his voice is cracking. “When I got here early this morning, there was a dead crow on the kennel, fastened to it with a knife.” He says nothing about the scarlet message.

  Irene looks like she might faint. He reaches out and grips her forearm.

  “Someone knows what we are doing, someone who will do anything to stop us. Everything has changed. You cannot be part of this now.”

  “Yes I can,” she says, wiping a tear from her cheek. Her face is defiant and her eyes challenge his.

  He pauses. He knew it would be like this with Irene Doyle. He’ll have to compromise.

  “I can’t stay here, that’s certain,” he insists. “And your role has to be different. I need to think about how you … might still help. In the meantime, stay indoors with the locks bolted when you are alone, keep your eyes open, and you’ll hear from me.”

  Sherlock turns and walks down the passageway.

  “Where are
you going?” she asks.

  A desperate fiend is trying to scare them off. A killer. Sherlock has been thinking about whom else might be attacked. And it terrifies him.

  “Where are you going?” she repeats.

  “To warn my parents,” he murmurs and walks faster.

  This time he makes a beeline for Blackfriar’s Bridge. At busy High Holborn he swings east, mixing in with the crowds on their way to work. Everyone is under suspicion now, every man who passes: everyone in front and behind. It is a horrible feeling. A shadow is after him … perhaps in other clothing now, watching his movements this very moment. Even the poor little crossing sweepers, who, for pennies, sweep grime and dust from the paths of their betters, appear to be spying. Every look seems to interrogate him, every unusual noise makes him jump. He wishes he could fly above it all and spot his enemies from the air like an eagle. Up Holborn Hill he goes to the teeming place where Gray’s Inn Road meets the main street. The crowds are even thicker here. Signs over shops and billboards and posted bills on walls are bigger and more colorful. The traffic of horses and carriages is loud and foul. Sherlock listens to that famous London clamor, then begins to cross the street, moving carefully through the flow.

  Something makes him turn.

  It is the crack of a whip, the “Hee-ah!” of a carriage driver inciting a team of horses. The vehicle bursts out of the traffic as if its pulling beasts are runaways. It comes in Sherlock’s direction, right at him.

  That is when he sees Irene.

  She is crossing the street too, but behind him: between him and the oncoming carriage. She’d been on the footpath when the driver cracked his whip, too close to the noise of the pedestrians to distinguish the sound of the onrushing coach in the din, and not as alert as she should have been. There had been a brief gap in the traffic: she had darted out, moving as fast as she could in her white dress, her blonde hair shining in the spring sun, her brown eyes watching Sherlock, intent on catching up to him.

  “IRENE!” he cries.

  Everyone near him seems to turn, like a crowd coming to a halt in a scene from an opera.

  The dark coach is bearing down on her, the horses foaming at the mouth as they feel the sharp snaps of the whip. The driver is a big man, leaning forward in his seat, clutching the reins, shoulders as wide as a rugby player’s, a black hat pulled down on his forehead, face hidden in a scarf, dressed in black livery with red stripes… riding a black vehicle with red fittings. This is no ghost.

  “IRENE!” Sherlock shouts again and runs toward her.

  Her mind isn’t on the sounds behind her. At first she smiles at the boy as if she were giving in to being spotted. But sensing the panic in his voice, she turns and looks back. The coach is almost on top of her. She screams and holds out her arms.

  Sherlock’s long legs take him down the street as if he were flying. He moves like a falcon, directly toward the carriage, sailing right into it. Irene cringes in horror between the boy and the vehicle.

  He can almost feel the hot breath of the thundering horses as he extends a hand and seizes the back of her dress between the shoulder blades. He careers to the side, dragging her with him … and the coach shoots past.

  Saved!

  But not quite: her long, white dress flows behind as he snatches her. Fluttering there as if suspended in time, it catches in the spokes of a rear wheel!

  Suddenly she is snapped from his grip, pulled like a rag doll back into the street, sucked under the iron wheel, dragged along the hard pavement, and devoured by the machine. Her scream rings in his ears. Blood splatters across the white fabric.

  The coach shoots through the traffic and disappears. Everything stops. Sherlock stands still in that moment, his mouth wide open, his eyes cast down the street where the vehicle has spit her out, where she lies in a heap as still as death.

  At first he walks slowly. He can’t run, doesn’t have strength left in his limbs. It is as if this is one of those nightmares in which he can’t get to where he is going, and what he is after fades as he struggles to reach it.

  Then everything comes back. The sound returns in a rush, time speeds up and he is running, crying out to Irene, his only friend.

  But just as he nears her, he sees the first policeman, then another, then another, rushing to the scene. Sherlock halts as if a door has been slammed in his face. He turns and slips into the crowd.

  Minutes later he is behind the pillars of an old bank a few streets away, standing in the shadows, ashamed and distraught, crying like he has never cried before.

  NEW MORNING

  He has nowhere to go. Nothing he can do. He can’t even speak with his parents. The extreme danger involved in his being anywhere near them now is obvious. He slips away to last night’s hiding place in that little lane near the rotting vegetables. Later he moves a few alleys farther north, props himself up against the gray stone wall of a building behind a broken-down horse trough and just sits there. All day he stares off into space, his eyes red and his brain numb. He can’t think anymore.

  A sharp pain in his side wakes him in the morning. Malefactor is standing over him, instructing Grimsby

  “Kick him again!” comes the order.

  The little thug winds up for another boot to the ribs. Sherlock sees this one coming, but doesn’t flinch. Why should he? What is there to live or die for? He doesn’t care if Malefactor has him beaten to death right where he lies.

  “Cease!” cries the gang leader, holding his walking stick high. The hard boot stops in midair. Grimsby looks disappointed and so does his general. A beating isn’t worthwhile if Holmes won’t resist.

  “Don’t you have the self-respect to fight back?” asks Malefactor.

  Sherlock merely sits up against the wall, rubbing his ribs. Malefactor kneels down and brings his face up close.

  “You did not protect her!” he shouts, his yellow teeth flashing. He looks angrier than Sherlock has ever seen him. “You nearly killed my –” he stops himself, “an angel!”

  Nearly?

  Sherlock bounces to his feet.

  “She’s alive?” he cries, returning Malefactor’s gaze.

  “In the St. Bart’s ’ospital, she is, but …” pipes up a small Irregular.

  Malefactor swings around and whacks the little boy across the mouth with his walking stick. The lad howls and shrinks away. The leader whirls back on Holmes.

  “That is not the point! Your guardianship of Miss Irene Doyle was irresponsible and inadequate. I do not …”

  But Sherlock is gone. Grimsby and Crew find themselves on the ground, knocked backwards, as the tall, thin boy darts through the encircled gang and flies away.

  “Come back here!” bellows Malefactor. “Irregulars! Seize him!” But it is too late. The race is won before it begins.

  St. Bartholomew’s is the oldest hospital in London, there in one form or another for more than seven hundred years. Sherlock runs until he is out of breath, until the sprawling ancient brick building comes into view beside the Smithfield Market. It is gathered around several blocks, with courtyards in the middle. There are many entrances. Sherlock goes past the main ones and selects a small door in a dark medieval archway. He doesn’t need to summon the courage to be here in plain view. He has to see Irene.

  He has never been in a hospital before. They are mostly for the working classes, but not for the very poor, not for street people. Perhaps the nurses will throw him out. He’s splashed some water from a public pump over his face and rubbed the black off, tried to comb his torn hair with his hands, taken off his cap, stood up as straight as he can. But he is worried he won’t be allowed in the building for long.

  Irene’s stay here will be brief. She was brought to a hospital because she was alone and unconscious; because it was a sudden and severe accident. Otherwise, she would have been taken back to Montague Street. People like Irene Doyle usually convalesce at home with physicians attending them around the clock.

  Where will she be in the big building? H
e enters and rushes past the open door of a cavernous outpatient room with distraught folks sitting on wooden benches under an arched ceiling. Then he slips up a wide, stone stairway. He passes rooms for hospital matrons, others for students, chemical laboratories, physicians’ offices, and dun-colored doors with “Sister This-and-That” painted in clear letters. He tries to look like he has a purpose for being in these high, wide halls with the whitewashed walls. Everything smells clean. But he’s heard hospitals breed disease.

  Maids move past him carrying mops, and nurses come by in uniforms bearing bottles of medicines. A few summon slight smiles, others questioning looks. Sweeping by big rooms, Sherlock sees rows of patients in beds, some lying still, others moaning. Outright cries of pain echo from other floors.

  It suddenly occurs to him that he might be acting rashly. All Malefactor had said was that Irene was alive. Maybe she is unconscious, clinging to life? Maybe she is disfigured, crippled, unable to walk.

  ACCIDENT WARD reads a sign over the big double doors of a wing. He enters, and from the hall, sees her in the third room. She isn’t moving, her blonde hair spread out around her on the pillow. There are flowers beside her, evidence that her father has been to visit and will soon be back. He has to act quickly.

  He tiptoes into the big room, feeling afraid. The other patients appear to be asleep.

  “Irene?” he whispers, without expecting a response. But one comes.

  “Sherlock?” she asks in a faint voice, her half-open eyes searching for him.

  His heart leaps. But what he sees almost makes him turn away. Both her eyes are blackened, there are cuts and bumps on her face, gauze on her lip, and her left arm, resting across her stomach, is heavily bandaged.