Eye of the Crow tbsh-1 Read online

  “You are looking for an unexpected villain.”

  Sherlock doesn’t say much as he walks back to Montague Street with Irene and barely remembers to look out for anyone pursuing. Her fear is outweighed by her astonishment at what she has seen. It is as if she entered another world with Sherlock Holmes and is returning with someone else. She wants to talk about his disguise and Malefactor and his advice, about all of it. But the boy’s mind is far away.

  An unexpected villain?

  That could be anyone: a man, woman, or child – even Adalji. But the gang leader is absolutely right about the eyeball. Sherlock must get it back.

  There is only one way to do it. The police are looking for him; they know all about his parents and where they live. If they catch him, they may hang him. But somehow … he has to go home. He can’t speak with his mother and father. He must get in and out like a thief.

  HOME ROBBERY

  When he rises the next night he is ready to rob his own home. Irene has kept him fed all day, and steered the maid and the governess away from the back windows. In a few minutes, he expects to see her again. But when he comes out to the street, she is nowhere to be seen. She knows he has to do this alone.

  He pulls his cap down over his forehead and heads south. His charcoaled eyes look out from under the brim. On the way, he practices walking differently. He is a street person now. Malefactor was right about his mother. Fascinated by the operatic stage, she loves to talk about the art of playing roles.

  “You have to become a character when you are presenting a part. The audience has to believe that you are someone else.”

  The police have to believe he is from the streets. He walks slower, with a shorter step, imagining someone who has nowhere to go.

  It has been more than a week since he’s been to Trafalgar. He desperately wants to see it again: a leisurely stroll along Oxford Street and down to the Square. But those days are over. If the Bobbies know anything about his habits, they’ll know the places he frequents. The Force often uses detectives disguised in everyday clothes. He makes for the river in a direct line and crosses at Waterloo instead of Blackfriars. Before long he is over the bridge and back in Southwark.

  He sticks to the smaller streets, alert in the rookeries, ready to fight for his life in the dark Mint neighborhood. But it is an unusually cold, late spring night, the misty rain is uncomfortable in the fog, and fewer denizens are about. By the time he reaches the street next to his, his heart is pounding. He stays in the shadows, up against the buildings, in doorways. No one seems to be following.

  But now, two people are coming toward him in the distance. Indistinguishable at first in the drizzle, he soon sees that they are boys, wearing just shirts and trousers, their dirty caps soaked right through. He spies them before they spot him and drops behind a broken-down wooden barrow that’s been left to rot to the side of the footpath. He wonders why these two are out of doors at this hour; they are looking around as if searching for something, peering into alleys.

  “I’m tellin’ you, the Peelers is offerin’ a fiver for him,” says one, a lad named Crippen whom Sherlock despises. Crippen is a dustman’s son who likes to tease Holmes about his breed. The other is a doughy waterman’s boy, a follower. “Lor’, a fiver!” he cries, “I’d turn over me mam and bulldog for that, let alone Sherlock Holmes.”

  They near. Sherlock feels a piece of cobblestone by his foot. He picks it up and heaves it to the other side of the road. They cross to investigate. He rises and slips around the corner, onto his street and out of their sight.

  The dilapidated old hatter’s shop comes into view. He looks up and sees the floor above it – his parents’ little bedroom is there at the front. His mother … his father. A tear falls to his cheek. He wipes it in disgust and darts across to the alley at the back of the buildings. As far as he can tell, there’s no sign of anyone watching, police or civilians. Perhaps the Force doesn’t expect him to be this reckless.

  He goes over the crumbling wall like a snake. The first foot he places on the rickety stairs is set down gently. He places another and starts to climb, at a measured but steady pace. He stays as low as he can. Will his parents’ door be locked? Has his arrest put so much anxiety into their lives that they now fear the outside world much more than before? He reaches for the latch. It opens.

  Perhaps he can take a chance: wake them and talk with them, assure them that he’s well. They will know he’s escaped. The police will have been here and …

  A thought rushes into his mind. What if a detective is inside waiting for him? What if they’ve stationed a Bobbie there? Once he’d made the landing, he’d considered himself home free.

  He opens the door carefully and lowers himself to the floor.

  All is silent.

  He can smell the cold fire, his mother’s cooking, their clothing, and Wilber’s pipe.

  If there is a Peeler in the flat, maybe Sherlock can smell him too. He sniffs like a bloodhound. He listens. He can hear people sleeping. It sounds like two, just two – Wilber’s snore in the bedroom and Rose’s gentle breathing – but he can’t be sure. In the dark flat he might as well be blind.

  Sherlock wants to go to the little bedroom first, find his parents, likely sleeping in their clothes on this cold night, snuggle in between them on their little bed, forget all the evil in the world, speak with them in whispers, show them that …

  “You need that eyeball.” Malefactor had said. “You must go and get it whatever the danger.” The gang leader is right. This trip is about getting in and out of the house as quickly as possible, unseen by the police and even his parents. The less his mother and father know, the less danger for everyone.

  He crawls across the floor on his belly, stopping every few yards. His bed is at the far side of this main room that functions as their kitchen, parlor, dining room … and his bedroom. It won’t take long. He prays that his mother hasn’t found the eye. Maybe she’s thrown it out with the slop pot. Or even worse, maybe the police have discovered it.

  He feels a leg: the front leg of his bed near the wall. He is at the right end. The eyeball was left near where his head usually lies, which should be immediately above him. His fingers walk up the leg and feel for the worn pillow. They walk under the flat straw mattress.

  There it is!

  The eye is in his hand. He jerks it out quickly.

  But someone stirs.

  On his pillow.

  He freezes and instantly knows who it is. He doesn’t need a bloodhound’s nose … it is her perfume … the faint scent of beer. Rose Holmes is lying in his bed.

  He holds the eyeball close and slides under the frame. He hears her rise. Her bare feet come down in front of his face.

  “Sherlock?” she asks. She sits for a long time listening to the stillness. Then she sighs.

  “Stupid cow.”

  This time he can’t stop the tear. It rolls out an eye, along his upper cheekbone and splashes to the floor.

  “Stupid cow … he’s gone.”

  She falls back into bed.

  He lies there for what seems like an hour, hearing her sobbing, and then tossing and turning. Finally, she seems to settle and drift off. He counts to five hundred before sliding out. It is time to make for the door. But he can’t resist. He gets to his knees and looks at his mother. She is indeed asleep, thank God. Her eyes aren’t moving under her lids.

  She has no dreams anymore.

  He kneels in front of her for a long time, just looking at her. She is so near him. He could just reach out and kiss her on the cheek.

  No. He can’t.

  He swivels and moves across the floor on all fours like a rat. Then he notices something. In the darkness, he can just make out his father’s record book on their little table. Wilber uses it to keep track of his legions of Crystal Palace birds. His square pencil is lying beside it.

  Sherlock takes the pencil in his hand … and carefully draws a crow on the table.

  Seconds later he is
out the door and down the steps. It takes no time at all to leave his neighborhood, rush through the winding streets, run over Waterloo Bridge, and move up through the city to Montague Street, back to his dog kennel.

  The only thing that makes him pause on the way is a copy of the Daily News, which he retrieves from a dustbin. But the crime appears to have left the London papers. They have their victim, their murderer, and prosecution is certain. They are saving their ink for the hanging. And it will come soon.

  There’s an unwelcome greeting at Montague Street, in the form of John Stuart Mill. He’s lying on his back in his little house with his legs in the air, snoring, smelling worse than the Thames. The Corgi has decided to sleep out tonight and Irene obviously hasn’t been able to convince him to do otherwise. Sherlock sighs and then snuggles in beside the fat little beast, finding that the only way to sleep is to take this foul canine into his arms. They barely fit inside their cramped quarters and Sherlock’s long legs are twisted like the seaweed he’s seen wrapped around Ratfinch’s eels. One of his legs actually sticks out the door. J.S. Mill isn’t a polite bedfellow either. Rude noises come from him in the night. Sherlock is appalled. Isn’t it enough that he has to wear such filthy, inelegant garments? Now he has to sleep with this gas bag.

  When Irene wakes him in the morning, he is still snuggling the dog, the eyeball in one pocket, his hand clamped firmly over it from the outside. J.S. Mill is fast asleep.

  She takes Sherlock indoors. He desperately wants to wash, but knows he shouldn’t. He has to stay in disguise.

  It is a lesson day for her, but still early. She has time to talk before her governess arrives. Her father has been gone for more than an hour.

  Irene feels a thrill growing inside her. Sherlock actually has the glass eye. She can see it bulging in his pocket. And she can tell that a plan is growing in his mind: the look in his eyes is calculating.

  They sit at the dining room table again, the chandelier above, the silver candelabra on the laced cloth atop the varnished table’s surface, little Blondin in his cage nearby. They must make some progress, and keep their eyes on the front door.

  “My father says that you need to have logic as your first principle in everything you do,” begins the boy, sitting gingerly, aware that his clothes might soil the beautiful French chair. “My weapon against my apparent fate, and Mohammad’s, is my brain.”

  Irene almost giggles, aware of his discomfort at being unclean and amused by his very grown-up way of speaking.

  His observational skills don’t include noticing subtle reactions in the opposite sex, so he continues without pausing.

  “First things first,” he intones. “We simply need more evidence. And we must find it by thinking before acting. Searching for it is one thing, but we have to search intelligently. Then, if we can gain more clues or know more about the clues we already have, we can begin to put together a theory. In the end, we have to prove that theory beyond any doubt.”

  Irene leans forward, “We need to eliminate the things that couldn’t possibly have happened and work on the things that are most likely.”

  Sherlock smiles. He has never met a girl quite like this. The ones he knows are much rougher, much more apt to laugh at him. Irene has gone to the heart of the problem instantly. Her appetite for the sort of thing that interests him is obvious. He arrests his smile before it grows too evident. She lowers her eyes and adjusts the ribbon at the back of her head.

  He thinks he’ll startle her with something … impress her. “So,” he proclaims airily, “Mohammad can’t possibly have done it. That’s our starting point.”

  His statement has the desired effect.

  “But, why couldn’t he have done it?”

  “Because I’m guilty if he did … and because of the crows.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He has to be innocent in order for me to be innocent. If he killed that woman and the purse isn’t recovered, then the police are going to include me in the crime. That’s how they are looking at things, with blinkers on: it was a street crime committed for money. I fit a whole profile, but more importantly, they saw him talking to me at the Old Bailey – only me, in a crowd of hundreds. In their minds, we are connected. Street people …” his voice grows angry, “low-lifes like Mohammad Adalji and Sherlock Holmes, killed her.”

  She starts to reach her hand across the table to him, but stops herself and adjusts the candelabra.

  “But if Mohammad didn’t do it,” he continues, “I am very unlikely to be included. We have to prove that someone other than the Arab did this. Then we have to find that person.”

  “And the crows? What do they have to do with Mohammad’s innocence?”

  “You will have to be patient with me about that, Irene. I’ll explain when I have more evidence.”

  She knows not to press him and goes on.

  “Isn’t the coin purse really the key anyway? Don’t we need to find it, above everything else?”

  “Correct.” Sherlock smiles again. “But I have a feeling we won’t find it, at least not until the solution is at hand.”

  “So, what is our plan?” asks Irene.

  “Three things to begin: first, we have to go back to the murder scene and examine the area thoroughly.”

  Irene raises her eyebrows.

  “Secondly, we have to make enquiries in that neighborhood. I doubt the police have done any questioning of consequence. They think they have their man. And thirdly …” He pauses. “Do you have a magnifying glass?”

  It is a favorite tool of his. His father has one and taught him the subtleties of its use. In fact, his neighborhood fame as a sort of young Bow Street Runner investigator was sealed the day he found the butcher’s mute bull terrier by using such a glass. The canine had somehow locked itself inside a seldom-used back room in the old hatter’s shop, the size of a penny-post stamp. The next day Sherlock noticed a strange white hair on a hat, ran upstairs for the magnifying glass, and followed a trail of nearly invisible dog hairs to the room. The Holmes family had an incomparable Sunday dinner that week: meat on their table.

  Andrew Doyle’s study is above them on the first floor off the drawing room. Irene is back with the lens in a minute. While she is gone, Sherlock pulls the eyeball from his pocket and sets it on the table. Irene gasps as she sits down. There in front of her is the clue she has heard so much about. It makes her shudder. She can see the specks of blood on the glittering white surface. She hands the magnifying glass to Sherlock.

  “Thirdly, we have to examine this.” He begins turning the eyeball around, looking at every blood splat – his first chance to observe it closely. “If this eye could see … it would save my life.”

  “It’s a strange color,” says Irene.

  “It is?” he responds and sets it down on the table. In his haste to look for details, he hasn’t noticed the most obvious thing about it. The iris is brown, but a large fleck of startling violet knifes into it at the top, about a fifth of the entire ring.

  “You’re right.” He scrutinizes it.

  “The owner’s other eye is like that,” says Irene softly.

  “Three key facts about our clue then,” states Sherlock. “It was found near the crime, blood splattered, and has a brown iris with a violet fleck.”

  He trains the lens on the eyeball again, turning it, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He sees something.

  At the back, opposite from the iris, he notices a little scratch. At least he thinks it’s a scratch. He goes on examining the rest of the surface, but then comes back to it…. It’s two scratches.

  “Letters,” he says out loud.

  “What?” She can’t see what he is looking at and moves closer to him.

  He brings the eye up to the magnifying glass and moves it back and forth, trying to focus the scratches.

  “There are two letters on the back of the eyeball.”

  Irene waits.

  “L … E.”

  He sets the
lens down. “What do you make of it?”

  “The owner’s initials?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “The manufacturer’s?”

  “Who makes false eyes in London?” He knows the answer.

  “Glass blowers? Medical suppliers?”

  “Or someone who does both,” he replies. “We need a city directory. They have them in the Guildhall Library and they list all the businesses in London.”

  But Irene isn’t sure what this will ultimately accomplish.

  “Even if we discover who made the eyeball,” she reasons, “we still haven’t solved anything, have we?”

  Sherlock looks as if he were focusing on something far away and taps his fingers together.

  “My father always says that if you think about the solution first when dealing with a scientific problem, you are doing things backwards. We need facts, Irene. Once we have a collection of clues, a trail that we can follow, then we can seek our solution. The letters on this eyeball are like pieces in our puzzle.”

  Miss Stamford will be at the front door in minutes, so they agree to meet late in the afternoon. Irene imagines they will rendezvous at the house so she draws in her breath when he tells her where to find him … in broad daylight, about tea time.

  “Go to the East End, the poor area in Whitechapel. Take someone with you: someone who won’t ask questions. Not your governess this time. Make yourself visible. I’ll see you…. Just walk near the crime scene.”

  ALL THAT GLITTERS

  Sherlock rises from the dog’s house in the early afternoon and heads for the East End. He has Andrew Doyle’s magnifying glass in his pocket. He’s charcoaled his eyes and made them dark, pulled the cap down over his brow, and affected the slow shamble of a homeless boy. He blinks in the sun like an animal not used to the light.

  Murderers always return to the scene of the crime.

  He read that once in The Illustrated Police News. He doesn’t know if it is true, but he hopes the Metropolitan Police and their detectives at Scotland Yard don’t believe it. They will be frustrated by now, perhaps intensifying their search. They know he won’t leave the city, that he doesn’t have the means. He needs to be as alert as a hunted fox.