Eye of the Crow (27 page)

They were wrapped in each other’s arms.

And there’s something else.

He hadn’t been able to make out the color of the iris on the false eye when he first saw it submerged in the water, but he’d noticed something else when it rolled. It had no initials. Mr. Lear’s do. That eyeball
must
have come from a different manufacturer than the murderer’s.

The gentleman in that second-last house is not his villain.

Whether Sherlock falls asleep or blacks out he doesn’t know, but within minutes his consciousness is gone.

“One left,” he murmurs, just before he fades away.

DEATH

H
e wakes in the morning with a searing pain in his leg. There were special physicians who tended to his mother’s family – he wishes he could go to one now. His father has told him about infection and that possibility worries him. It can kill. He pulls up his trouser leg and looks at the ugly wound, caked with blood. A message courses through his brain.
Survive.
Before long, he thinks of something that might help.

It starts to rain. He sets off through the streets, east-bound, aware that a noose is tightening around his neck: the injury may be growing worse and Mayfair is surely going on alert.

But he has to go back there, tonight. All he can hope is that the gentleman in that last house didn’t see him clearly and can’t tell the police that a tall, thin boy with dark hair, dressed like a chimney sweep, was in his very bedroom.

At Fetter Lane he notices that someone has dropped a newspaper against a red pillar box on a dirty footpath. He snatches it up and reads as he walks.

Crime pages.

Here it is …

Sherlock looks up to the sky for an instant, thankful. He reads on.

So, that’s the way it will be – he will have to enter that last house with a Bobbie on every Mayfair corner. The solution to the crime is within his grasp, but will his pursuers let him solve it?

He is sure that some of the bottles and flasks he noticed in the chemical laboratory at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital contain disinfectant, the new way of killing infection that his father has often spoken of – Wilber read about microscopic bacteria in the writings of the great French scientist Louis Pasteur, and scoffed at the idea that bad smells infected people and that fly maggots should be used to eat dying flesh
and save only parts of infected limbs. Science, Wilber knew, could do better.

Sherlock sneaks into St. Bart’s again, entering by the same arched back door. He knows where to find the lab and what he is looking for inside. But someone is there when he arrives, likely a medical student. He waits until the white-coated, thick-set, young man leaves. He slips in. It takes a long time to find what he needs, and his fear grows as the clock on the wall ticks. He searches label after label. Finally, he spots a small bottle containing a clear liquid identified as “Lister’s Carbolic Acid Solution,” drops it into a pocket, and makes off down the white corridors, passing the man in the white coat. He hobbles away as fast as he can, and when he gets to the streets, keeps moving. On an embankment down by the Thames he raises his bloodied pant leg and pours the potent elixir over the wound.

He cries out. He has to. The pain is unlike anything he has ever felt before, like someone is burning his flesh with a firebrand. His shriek goes out across the Thames and is swallowed up. The liquid bubbles on the injury, beginning to destroy the infection. He drops more onto his skewered hand.

Across the Thames … that’s where he wants to go before he returns to Mayfair … because he is faltering. It seems like suicide to attempt this last break-in, the odds are so highly stacked against him. Should he go home? Just briefly?

He needs to see Rose. What he hopes to gain, he isn’t sure. Perhaps she will convince him not to go. And that
would be a godsend. Or maybe she will give him the courage to do it? He wonders if he wants that.

Perhaps he just wants to see her for the last time.

The sky clears as he heads south.

It is amazing how easy it has become for him to enter a house unseen. Malefactor would be impressed. Sitting alone in their flat, which seems even smaller and more pitiable now that he has been inside the mansions of Mayfair, Sherlock realizes that he won’t see his father tonight. It’s a Friday – the day when Wilber stays late to clean the doves’ cages. What a job for a man once destined to be a professor of natural philosophy at the University College of London.

There are many injustices in the world, thinks the boy. But some are worse than others. You can hate someone because he’s poor, because of the clothes he wears, or for his political views. But a person can change that. If you hate someone for being a Jew or an Arab, he cannot rub off his skin. That sort of prejudice is the greatest injustice … next to taking someone’s life.

It has to be about six o’clock, he guesses. Rose should be here soon.

The sun glows into the flat, warming his face, bringing a slight smile to his lips.

He doesn’t bother to read his father’s books or drink from one of his mother’s two chipped teacups set on the
shelf above the fireplace. He just stares out the little back window where he saw the crows gather, waiting for her. As the sun starts to set, everything begins to darken.

So does his mood.

Something isn’t right. Time passes. Why would she be so late two nights in a row?

The room grows darker. He lights a candle. Where is she? Fear begins to grow inside him, spreading out from his stomach like a fire.

Where is she?

He gets up and paces, walking as silently as he can, disguised as a chimney sweep in his own home. It has become completely black outside.

There is a rustling at the door. Finally!

What if it isn’t her? He doesn’t care anymore. He rushes to the door and flings it open.

Again, he sees a look of terror in his mother’s face. Reaching out with both arms, he pulls her indoors and wraps her in his arms. But something isn’t right. She feels weak in his embrace, though her heart is racing.

“Are you all right, mother?”

“I’m fine, Sherlock. They kept me late. I must sit down.”

She staggers across the room and falls onto the couch. The burning inside him, which had subsided momentarily, rises again.

“It was very strange,” she mumbles.

Her speech is slurred, but he doesn’t smell ale.

“What was strange, mother?”

“Tea? … Do you have some tea you might give me, young man?”

“What was strange!?” he shouts, taking her face into his hands. The pupils in her eyes aren’t right.
Oh, God!

“The gentleman … the gentleman of the house …”

“Yes?”

“Gave me tea … made tea himself … and served it to me … a strange brew … it made me …”

Her voice fades. Something falls from her hand: the same piece of paper he saw her carrying last night. He sees the address on it this time. The very house he intends to enter tonight. The house where the villain surely lives!

Rose tries to rally herself. “I didn’t want to tell you that it was one of the four houses.”

“Mother, the men in the others are
innocent!”

“I thought I might learn something…. I didn’t want you to go away…. The man gave me an awful smile when he showed me out … said Mayfair knows when outsiders ask inappropriate questions … that he’d noticed the other burgled houses belonged to his one-eyed friends … that he’d been speaking to all the servants …”

She collapses in his arms.

“MOTHER!”

As he holds her closely he can barely feel the beat of her heart. Lifting her in his arms, he is alarmed at how light she is … like a bird. When he sets her on her bed she is completely limp. Her eyes open briefly.

“You have much to do in life,” she says clearly.

Then her eyes close. Frantically he pulls the covers over her and takes her white hand in his. It has no life. He feels her wrist for a pulse.

There is none.

The beautiful, worry-wrinkled eyelids are still. The mouth is slightly open. Her lips are dry and her face flushed red. His father has taught him the properties of nearly every chemical mixture known to man, and their symptoms should they be ingested … especially the lethal ones.

Poison! Deadly nightshade!

“MOTHER!” he screams again and presses his forehead to hers. His chest heaves and his lungs fill and empty of air. He stays that way for a long while, holding her, waiting for her breathing to come back. But it won’t.

When he finally rises, his face looks like a devil’s mask. Hatred is carved into it. He seizes their table and throws it across the room with the strength of a demon. It crashes and splinters against the wall. The sound echoes in the little flat and out into the street.

He races to the window, smashes it through with his fist, and thrusts his head into the outside air.

“JUSTICE!!”

He howls it into the night, his head thrown back, his teeth like fangs, his eyes two glowing black coals. When he opens the door, he nearly rips it from its hinges. He swoops down the stairs.

Someone is coming up toward him.

If it isn’t his father, he will kill with his bare hands.

But he doesn’t. And it isn’t Wilber.

Irene is struggling up the steps.

“Sherlock!”

She has never seen a human being look like this before. It is as if his face, that dark, handsome young face, is lit from within. The eyes are all black – the gray irises gone.

He pauses for only a second. “Stay away from me!” he warns her.

He shoves her, wounded as she is, and nearly knocks her down the stairs. He doesn’t give her another thought. In minutes he is back across the Thames … and headed for Mayfair.

He has something to do on the way. Just below London Bridge on the north side, is Mohammad Adalji’s butcher shop. The old butcher likely doesn’t have a new boy yet. He’ll be cleaning the knives himself – just finishing up.

The Tower of London looms to his right but Sherlock doesn’t look at it tonight. His hands are clutched in fists, the knuckles white, and he is running, tears pouring down his face. Mohammad told him exactly how to find the shop.

The dim light is on when he arrives.

Sherlock tries the door. It’s unlocked. He opens it and deftly slips inside. The butcher has his back to him, cleaning and sharpening the knives. They lie on a thick wooden table, splattered with blood. The boy wipes his face dry.

He doesn’t bother hiding his presence. He knows what he wants – he
has
to have it – and he is certain he can outrun the old man.

There are at least a dozen blades to choose from. Every one of them will do the job. The sharpened knives are to the old man’s right, the dirty ones to the left. It will be harder to grab a sharp weapon, but Sherlock doesn’t care – that’s what he needs.