Eye of the Crow (16 page)

The Whitechapel murder was
not
unobserved.

“
The crows saw it”
she gasps.

The grandfather clock in the hall ticks.

“And
we
have to find a way to see it too,” muses Sherlock.

He looks up and sees a frightened expression on her face. He can tell that she doesn’t want to see this horrible act, not even in her mind. She wants everything to be over: for him to be free, Mohammad to be released, that poor woman to have peace, the real culprit to be brought to justice. Sherlock is different. He wants to see it all, every bloody moment. And he wants vengeance, for everyone.

But at that instant something nearly as frightening as the image in his mind appears on the street outside the window.

“He’s here!” Irene cries.

Her father is approaching the front door. She’s been so engrossed in their conversation that she’s neglected her lookout duties.

“Out. Out!” she exclaims, rising to her feet.

Sherlock springs up and gallops out of the morning room, down the hallway, past the dining room, to the back door. He can hear Andrew Doyle opening the front entrance, taking off his hat, hanging up his umbrella.

“Irene?”

“Yes, father?”

She materializes in front of him like a spirit. Her voice is calm as she stands there in the doorway of the vestibule, blocking her father’s view of the hall. His walrus mustache smiles.

Sherlock opens the back door, closes it gently, and makes for his dirty dog kennel. He wriggles into it and lies still, pulling his legs up so his boots don’t show.

No sounds come from the house.

Sherlock finds it difficult to stay calm. His father has taught him that too much emotion is the enemy of the scientist. “Use cold, hard reason. Let it be your guide, my boy. Move slowly and accurately when you are seeking a solution.”
That is fine,
he thinks,
when you are dissecting a frog or roasting some chemical on a Bunsen lamp, but this is life and death.
He has his mother’s passion and can’t help it. He wants to stand up, rip the dog kennel apart, scream at the world that he is no criminal, that Mohammad isn’t guilty that life isn’t fair, that the real villain has to pay. Villains everywhere have to pay.

He wants to see the murder now!

He lets himself imagine. Black, oily feathers envelop him in the yellow fog of the wicked London night. He is perched on the edge of a building, but not on one in the alley. He is out on the street just off Whitechapel Road, on Old Yard. Down below, a woman comes hurrying along the street, the heels of her fancy laced boots smacking on the cobblestones as she looks around, desperate to get somewhere. She carries a small lantern that only dimly lights
the darkness. She is young and beautiful and her white neck, ear lobes, and perfect soft hands
all
have diamonds.

Those crows, he is sure, saw the woman long before she was murdered. To them, she glittered in the night. Why else would they have been drawn to the scene? Because of a scream? That would frighten them.

She turns down the passage. She stops. Someone meets her, just as planned. Only then do the crows land on the building in the alley, still eyeing the glitter on the pretty anxious woman. Then there are heated words. There is a horrible shriek and shining objects fly through the air….

Sherlock can’t see who did it … not yet.

What about the woman? He knows something about her now. She is wearing more than just a little jewelry. That may mean something soon.

It is time to move forward with their plan: have Irene check the city directories for every glass-eye manufacturer in London; find someone near the crime scene who heard something on that fatal night.

But his thoughts keep returning to the woman. Who was she? Why did she go there at that hour? Why would someone kill this particular person in cold blood on a dark East End street?

When Irene brings him food under her shawl at supper-time he asks if she can visit the Guildhall Library; and later, before odorous John Stuart Mill can be deposited
next to him again, he slips out the backyard and goes to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He finds Malefactor nearby in a little lane, sitting on a rusted-out, overturned rain barrel against the back of a building, his Irregulars scattered along the wall. His moth-eaten top hat is perched at that jaunty angle on his sweaty hair, his tail-coat folded neatly beside him. In his hand is a notebook, one Sherlock has often seen him scribbling in. The outlaw enjoys inventing numerical problems to see if he can solve them. Sometime in his mysterious past, he had learned this: studied mathematics and been a whiz. “It keeps the mind sharp” he often says. “Prepares one’s brain for the challenges of life.” Though long aware that Sherlock is approaching, he simply glances up when the tall, thin boy nears and then looks down at his numbers again. It was made perfectly clear that he would provide the fugitive with no more help. All he expects tonight is information.

Sherlock may hang if he doesn’t find the East End fiend, so he summons his courage and asks his question – carefully.

“I … need to know if anyone heard anything on the night of the murder. Could the Irregulars make enquiries in the East End?”

The brilliant young criminal gets to his feet and crosses his arms.

“Where’s the girl?” He doesn’t sound pleased.

“She couldn’t be with us this evening.”

The crime boss doesn’t find that funny. He studies Sherlock’s face.

“You should not be drawing her into this sort of trouble. I wouldn’t.”

“She wants to be involved.”

“Why?”

“She believes in justice.”

Malefactor laughs. “I doubt she’s a fool.”

“She’s a caring human being.”

The boy in the tall hat appears ready to deliver a punch. He stops himself by an obvious effort of will. He demands his report. Sherlock tells him what he’s learned, picking and choosing details to reveal, hoping it is enough to please. When he is done, Malefactor regards him like a king deciding if his life should be spared, if any of this information is worthwhile putting into the Irregulars’ vast mental log of underworld activities. Inquiries in the East End? It is
highly
irregular. But then the young crime lord thinks of the remarkable Irene Doyle and her plea for this wretched lad. If he turns down Holmes, she will know and think less of him. There is also an outside possibility that Holmes, if he doesn’t get himself killed, can actually tell him something more about this murder – it’s never a bad thing to be informed about such incidents. He looks away.

“I’ll do this one thing … for the girl.”

Sherlock stays out all night. He keeps pondering the murder victim. He has to know who she is and he has to know now. He needs to read his kind of papers.

He’s been thinking about how many days have passed and by his calculations this is a Sunday morning. That gives him an idea. Before the sun rises he carefully makes his way toward the vendors he knows near Trafalgar Square.

Most of the newsboys, whether young or ancient, consider him a nuisance. In the past, he’s attempted to steal papers when he couldn’t find what he wanted in a bin. They’d spot him trying and pretend to call the police. One, who owned a bull terrier with a dark circle around its eye, once set that vicious brute upon him.

But there is one seller who is different, a poor legless chap with a misshapen face named Dupin, who sits on a low stool behind a rough, homemade wooden kiosk to hawk his papers, pitifully trying to look as respectable as he can. His deeply-lined face has been twisted from birth, his mouth constantly shows its yellow teeth – it is often hard to tell if he is happy or sad. Sherlock has seen him many times going home after work, transporting himself on a dirty little wooden platform with small iron wheels, his torso and the tools of his trade strapped to the surface. Dupin propels himself with hands protected by filthy, fingerless gloves, appearing like half a man – a ragged suit, a tie, a face, and a crushed bowler hat. He and the boy have spoken many times.

“Master Sherlock ’olmes?” he says in surprise in his raspy way, somehow knowing to keep his voice down as he notices the boy coming out of the shadows and drawing near. The cripple focuses to make sure he isn’t being deceived. He is struggling to erect his big, torn umbrella over his crude
little table and can’t quite make it bloom. “You looks like a ’ellhound is after you, you do.”

“That’s about right,” says Sherlock.

The tall, thin boy grips the umbrella by the stem and shoves it open.

“’eard you was in jail.”

“You heard correctly.” Sherlock is glancing around, keeping his head down.

The cripple looks up at the gangly lad. As usual, there is sympathy in his eyes. Sherlock marvels at this man: how he can care about others despite his lot in life.

“I’m wagerin’ this ain’t no social visit.”

“I need a favor.”

“For a million crowns, you’ve got it, guvna.”

Dupin has a peculiar hobby. Most newsboys can’t wait to dump their extra papers the minute their day is over, but he keeps a copy of every issue he’s ever sold of both the glorious
Daily Telegraph
and his Sunday paper, the sensation-filled
News of the World.
In fact, he often keeps a few of each. He can recite from memory nearly every word in every paper going back several weeks at a time. Disraeli’s speech on India? Tuesday, page 7, columns one through five, running over three columns onto 8. He is a veritable living index. Rumor has it he keeps a book that contains a brief biography of every person he’s ever read about in the news.

A month’s collection of papers is always near his side at his barrow and when he isn’t shouting “
The Day-leeeeeeee! Tel-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-graph!!
” at passersby he rereads the recent news, committing it to memory.

Sherlock speaks quickly.

“I need what you have about the Whitechapel murder.”

“Need it?” The cripple’s expression narrows. “You mixed up in that someways?”

The boy shakes his head. “No. Others have mixed me into it.”

“That will be a million crowns,” says the little man quietly and moves to a stack of papers behind his cart:
The News of the World.
He runs his hand down their edges like a clerk consulting a file, expertly plucks out the perfect choice, last Sunday’s thick paper, and hands it over as secretly as a dormouse.

“Thank –”

“Be off with you, Master ’olmes.”

Sherlock walks quickly back to Montague Street, thinking about time and how little he has left. In less than two weeks Mohammad will be condemned. This paper
has
to tell him something.

John Stuart Mill’s bulging carcass is stretched across the back of the dog kennel when the boy sneaks into it again. The snores are almost deafening.
This is going to be a challenge
thinks Sherlock, as he rolls the dog over several times like a baker worrying his dough. He gets him out of the way and nearer the door. The canine doesn’t so much as stir. The boy props himself on the dog’s round belly positioning his newspaper in just the right way at the
entrance to gain enough sunlight to read and still keep his head from view. Anyone peering down from the Doyles’ windows will think they are simply seeing J.S. Mill in glorious repose.