Eye of the Crow (15 page)

The boy glances around. People continue passing on the street, but no one turns or stops at the alley – no one seems to be looking his way. He carefully follows the crow’s path, leaning over with his face close to the ground. No obvious clues have been left on the dirty cobblestones.
There are signs of footprints, but they are faint, just indistinct collections of the marks of footwear left by all sorts of people: the victim, her murderer, policemen, even his own broken-down boots. A cart’s tracks obscure them further.

Behind him, the crow drops down into the alleyway again. It begins crisscrossing the passage. Sherlock turns and watches it.

Two facts occur to him: first, it’s after something it finds attractive, something it can’t leave alone; second, it doesn’t know exactly where that thing is.

What would it find irresistible? Not the purse, surely. It doesn’t know about money. A purse wouldn’t be any more attractive to it than a glove or a hat.

Something
shiny
again: something just as interesting as that eyeball.

Jewelry.
Good jewelry – a piece that glows so seductively a crow can’t let it be.

He thinks for a moment about how the bird is searching the area. It has taken two approaches. First, it followed a path, like the one the woman and her murderer took down the passageway. Now, it is searching randomly.

Why randomly?

Instantly a piece of the puzzle falls into place.

In the violent struggle, an item of jewelry must have come loose and been thrown somewhere in the alley. Who did it belong to … the woman or the person who killed her?
Find it first,
he reminds himself.

He advances on the crow. It flies up again and lands
overhead. This time it and its mate mutter at him. Sherlock decides to try something reckless.

He looks toward the street: the odd person passing…. No one looking.

He regards the bloodstain once more and imagines where the woman might be standing: likely with her back to the dead end as she waits to meet someone. In a struggle, where would jewelry fly? He narrows it down to an area about eight feet by eight, closer to the dead end than the rubble of bricks. He takes out the magnifying glass, glances back at the street, then drops to all fours, the glass held close to his eyes.

Sherlock looks for a long time. Too long. His knees are getting sore, so he gets to his feet.

The crow screams.

The boy glances behind him.

His foot had knocked something ajar when he stood up. It is a heavy old horseshoe leaning against the wall and there beside it, partially underneath, something the size of a sovereign is glinting. He scrambles to pick it up. When he puts his hand on it, he realizes that there is more to it than he first thought. Some of it is jammed behind the horseshoe, stuck between it and the wall. He tugs and it slithers out, like a glittering snake. A bracelet. It looks delicate, like it would fit a pretty wrist, and it seems expensive, a luxury item. Diamonds and little silver charms hang from it. Sherlock examines them. One of them is an eye.

The crows are upset. They caw and squawk and look like they want to descend on Sherlock. Up the alleyway on
Old Yard Street, two tradesmen stop, look toward the black birds and then down at the boy with the dirty face. He instantly pockets the bracelet.

It is time to move.

He wants to run, but doesn’t. He takes on his street character and shamble. Wishing he could glance everywhere, he holds his gaze down and moves. Who are these onlookers? At the entrance to Old Yard Street he takes a hard right. The men don’t follow.

But then he sees another man, this one large and thick, dressed in the black livery of a coachman, two thin vertical slashes of red on his coat, standing still across the street, staring in his direction, then looking up at the shrieking crows as if startled by them. Sherlock can’t see his face because a shadow is cast across it. A
detective
? Would the police use that disguise?

He races toward Whitechapel, then turns onto it, desperate to disappear into its crowds. A hand grabs him from behind.

“Sherlock!”

It’s a higher-pitched voice than he feared … that smell of soap, the slender arms.

Irene.

She’s been waiting. She nods to someone who is walking with her, probably a servant who once worked for her father. The man pretends to not see the boy – a skill particular to experienced domestic help – and fades into the crowd.

“Did you find anything?” she asks.

Sherlock glances back toward Old Yard. His heart is racing. The big coachman in black livery seems to have vanished. Did Sherlock imagine him? Was he a ghost?

“I’ve … I’ve been here too long,” he says through clenched teeth. “Act like I’m begging and you’re giving me something. Reach into your purse. Hand me a penny!”

She does. He sweeps his cap from his head and bows.

“You didn’t answer me. Did you find something?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“We can’t talk here. We need to be where it might seem reasonable for you to be speaking with a street person … a big church.”

“St. Paul’s,” she answers immediately.

“I’ll meet you on the front steps where the crowds are.”

She takes the direct route and pretends she is with others. He swings south, toward the Thames, and approaches the cathedral from the river. As he walks, he realizes that he has put himself in even more danger. Now he is a black-faced street boy … with a lady’s diamond bracelet in his pocket.

“What did you find?” she asks the instant he arrives.

They are at the top of the big stone steps near the pillars and high wooden doors at the magnificent entrance. There are many street people nearby, some in bare feet, pleading for food and money. Gentlemen wearing tall hats and ladies in
long, silk crinoline dresses are pausing as they climb the stairs, handing coppers to children. Sherlock motions to Irene to move into the shadows under the columns. It feels cold here, even in the warmth of the day.

“This,” says Sherlock, glancing around, then drawing the long glittering bracelet from his pocket.

Irene gasps, bringing her hand to her mouth. “It’s beautiful.”

“There’s an eye on it.”

Irene takes it into her hand for a moment. Her face seems to glow in its reflection.

“What do you think it tells us?” she asks.

“It might mean she was rich, or it might not. She might have simply owned this single, expensive thing…. Or maybe it belonged to the person who killed her….”

Irene’s face turns pale. “A woman?”

“It connects the two of them,” says Sherlock.

Irene wonders exactly how. But she doesn’t ask him to explain. She knows this isn’t the right time. She also knows she shouldn’t try to comprehend this remarkable boy, that that is the way to be his friend. One understands him by not understanding, by trusting his mind. When they’re home, he’ll tell her more.

Sherlock is actually feeling pleased. Not just because he is beginning to see things about this murder – see a possible path through the labyrinth he has to get through to find a solution – but because he knows he has a friend standing beside him, a true friend for the first time in his life.

Then another light comes on in his brain like the beam on a locomotive. It frightens him to his boots.

“
They saw it,”
he mumbles.

His whole face has changed: a look of horror has come over it.

“What?” she asks, unsettled by his expression.

“They saw it,” he says again.

“Who?”

“The crows.”

“Saw what?” She knows the answer but wants him to go on.

“I’ve been guessing that the crows were there when it happened.” He pauses, staring down the elegant white steps. “Now … I
know
they were. They saw the
whole
thing.”

Sherlock’s eyes turn to hers. His black pupils are huge.

“They watched this person … murder her.”

SEEING EVIL

S
herlock won’t explain until they get back to Montague Street. He seems petrified. He stares ahead as if he were watching the murder transpire from the top of one of the buildings, watching with the eye of a crow.

Irene walks about half a football pitch in front of him, occasionally glancing back to make sure he is following. Up they go from St. Paul’s through bustling central London and back into her quiet neighborhood. Sherlock stops well down the street as she steps through the squeaky, wrought-iron gate and moves up the stone stairs to the front door. If it is unlocked, her father is home.

She tries the door. Locked. Feeling for the key in her purse, she looks down the street toward Sherlock and motions. A few minutes later they are sitting on the settee in the small morning room on the ground floor with John Stuart Mill stretched flat nearby. Irene is positioned in a big window to see both ways on the street. Sherlock is hidden from view by a scarlet curtain.

Andrew Doyle will be home any minute. But she has to know.

He starts talking as soon as they sit.

“The first thing I realized when I got there was how wide the bloodstain was … which likely means the murderer knew his victim, because it wasn’t the quick kill-and-get-away job of a thief. It was a crime of passion – an angry one.”

Irene adjusts her position and her long woolen dress on the cushioned settee. She has asked for this, wanted to get out from under the restrictions of her home and be with this boy pursuing justice. But now she is beginning to face the stark reality of it all.

Sherlock stops talking. His mind is drifting off again, trying to see the murder. Irene brings him back.

“But how do you know the crows saw it happen? Maybe when the sun came up the next morning and shone into the alley, they happened by and noticed part of the eyeball and even the bracelet glittering in the ground. Or maybe they
were
there that night, nearby anyway, but simply heard the woman scream, or saw some commotion and were drawn to the alley. Then they noticed the woman lying there, bits of glitter on the ground near her. They flew off in fear, but kept coming back to find their prizes and were always spooked whenever people appeared. It’s impossible to know how much they saw. Impossible. You had to have been there.”

“I know what they saw”
murmurs Sherlock. His long white fingers are entwined. He squeezes them tightly together.

“How
do you know?” She asks intently.

“There was a crow on one of the buildings when I got there. I watched him. He did three things. He checked the rubble where I found the eyeball, he walked up and down the passage toward the street and back, and he moved around randomly on the side of the alley opposite from the stain.”

Sherlock peeks around the curtain and looks outside, then leans closer to Irene.

“The crow didn’t spend long where the eyeball had been because he could see it was gone. Then he started searching for something else … something that interested him, something that glittered. The fact that he looked near the spot where I found the bracelet was an indication that he saw the murder…. He knew that it was flung away during the struggle.”

“But still,” protests Irene, “couldn’t he have just noticed the bracelet glittering in the cobblestones the way I suggested? Couldn’t he have seen it lying there after the murder? Maybe he moved about randomly because he simply wasn’t certain where it was?”

“I thought that too … for a while,” says Sherlock. “And you’re right. What I’ve said only tells us that the crow
may
have seen something flung across the alley … it isn’t proof.”

“So … what is?”

“The crow walked up and down the alley …” he leans so close to Irene that their noses almost touch, “… on a
direct line
from the bloodstain to the street.”

Irene shudders. Sherlock is right. The crow
must
have seen the victim or the killer or both enter the alleyway from
the street and walk a direct line toward the murder scene … or, at the very least, it saw the villain rush back to the street after completing his horrible deed. It
knows
where they walked.