Eye of the Crow (14 page)

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

S
herlock 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.

His nervousness grows as he goes farther east. He tugs the cap down even tighter. He didn’t expect to be this frightened. All around him is another noisy London day – the crowded foot pavements, the great mixture of people, the shouts, and the smells. He yearns for the time, just a week or so ago, when he was nobody.

He sticks to busy places, staying in the swarms all the
way to the East End. Soon he is walking on Whitechapel Road.

“You!” cries a firm voice. “Been lookin’ for you everywhere in London!”

Sherlock nearly jumps out of his skin. A man is approaching him. The boy doesn’t lift his gaze.
Keep moving,
is all he can think.
Get into the crowd and vanish.
He attempts to edge past, but the man blocks his way. “Not partial to a partickler pie?” asks the street monger, ushering the boy toward his barrow of fish and fruit pastries.

Sherlock sighs and moves on, leaving the pieman to pursue another customer. In a few steps the boy is moving quickly along Whitechapel again, like the suspect he is, his head down, but his eyes rotating like an owl’s, noting every Bobbie, every person who looks back.

The crime scene is near. He turns from the main road onto narrow Old Yard Street. Then he sees the alley.
The
alley. It appears to his left, running west off the street just ahead. Fear courses through him again the instant it comes into view. It is hard to even think of what happened down this lane on that dark night.

Sherlock steels himself. The crowds were thick on Whitechapel Road and at this time of the day a mixture of people move along Old Yard Street too.
Blend in as best you can,
he tells himself. Not like the police, whom you can spot at a distance. He often wonders why they are so regular in their habits and so obvious in their appearance. Even the detectives in disguise can be picked out without much trouble.

He glances in both directions and then slips down the passage. It looks different during the early afternoon: deserted and not so spooky. He can see its dead end against the brick wall of another building. There are the old stable doors to his right. In this light, they look like they’ve been closed up for centuries.

The stain on the cobblestones is still visible. It is halfway down the passage, the rubble a bit farther. What sort of place is this for a murder? Is it a place where someone was taken … dragged … or is it a spot where two people agreed to meet? Did the murderer know the woman? Sherlock looks at the sheer expanse of the stain. There was anger in the deed. There was passion. This wasn’t done for money, not for a mere coin purse. But if that is true, why is the purse gone?

He shakes off those thoughts. Observe, he tells himself Deal with the evidence first. Find it.

A noise rings out and he starts. Turning back to the narrow street, he sees an old tinker walking toward Whitechapel, pushing his cart. Sherlock watches him limp past. In seconds there is movement out there again: a well-dressed gent, a lady on his arm. She glances at Sherlock, stares for a second with a hint of fear in her face, but then is guided forward and disappears. He imagines her perfume hanging in the air. Why would her gentleman bring her here? A shortcut, he guesses, toward a better street, or perhaps a charitable visit to a nearby workhouse?

He imagines the murdered young woman – beautiful, looking like his mother in her youth – entering this alley on
that terrible night. It would be nearly pitch black. He smells the perfume she wears as it wafts in the cold London darkness. Why did
she
come here? What sort of woman would be compelled to this place in the night? Who saw her … who smelled
her
perfume?

There is a flutter on top of the building that forms one of the alley’s walls.

Crows.

There are two of them. They observe him, their heads bobbing up and down as if saying hello to an old friend. One swoops to the ground, bold as brass. First it lands near the rubble where Sherlock found the eyeball. Very quickly it seems uninterested. Then it waddles down the passage, walking on a line toward the street. It seems to have little fear of the boy, though as it nears, it flaps a few feet high and passes by, moving almost all the way to the street. Then it turns back toward him and resumes its stroll, as if keeping one eye on him and the other on the ground, occasionally pecking and scratching.

The crow is looking for something.
Again.

Sherlock advances toward it. It suddenly rises into the air, as if it can see out the back of its head, and flies up and settles on top of the building again next to its mate. They peer down.