Eye of the Crow (22 page)

Mohammad Adalji has similar prayers. In his cell on Bow Street he thinks of his mother and father, who both went back to Egypt last year. They don’t even know he is in jail. At night when he dreams, it is of hot Cairo skies and the happy games he played with his friends. But he sleeps lightly and awakens at the slightest sound … clutching at his neck whenever a door slams. He knows it is inevitable now … his death is fast approaching. There’s one week left.

Sherlock needs to keep himself fed. He must have better food than he can get from stealing little crusts of bread from the pigeons at Trafalgar. But he has to do it without making a scene. He has to be sly and invisible, use his magical skills of observation.

The best place to perform his wizardry is at the Smithfield. The city is full of markets but this one has two advantages. It is well placed, close to where he wants to be, but not too close, and it is big and always massed with people.

At first he survives on rotting food plucked after hours from near-empty carts. All the while he cases the market
with attention to detail and resists doing more. The meat that is sold inside the new, glass-covered, brick building that stretches for several blocks, doesn’t interest him. What can he do with cuts of cow cheeks and ox hearts, or skinned rabbits hanging from hooks? His target is the busy outdoor market where shoppers move shoulder-to-shoulder in pursuit of deals. Food stalls line both sides of artificial avenues, fed by hordes of loaded barrows: two-wheeled carts filled with vegetables, fruit, and eggs. It is as if the food is waiting for Sherlock, laid out but guarded by barrow boys.

Holmes examines the customers who frequent the market, observes the habits of the vendors, and watches anyone who might be watching him, observing like a hovering crow.

Within two days he has picked out a menu of potential victims and then whittled it down to a few. His attention is trained on the servants of wealthy families (from whom he can steal without feeling guilty). He can tell the relative fortunes of their employees by their clothing and the softness of their hands – by their bearing. He soon observes that many have habits. Buyers like to muse over the items for sale, choose them and set them down in their baskets while they pay. Many place the food in front of them; others rest the produce on the pavement, wedging it between their feet and the stall, keeping it safe.

But one woman does it differently. Sherlock picks her out and watches closely. He can tell she is new to this. She moves up and down the avenues past the stalls many times before she chooses her food. She has a certain self-satisfied
look that few lowly servants given the job of buying food at a market assume. This is a higher-paid employee, perhaps the cook herself, selecting provisions for a few days, while a lesser servant is ill, or has been dismissed.

The boy watches everything she does. For two consecutive days she picks out her food and sets her baskets down on the cobblestones in front of the stalls – off to her side, neither foot near it. Then she fumbles in her big pockets for her coins and takes a long time to complete the transaction. Sherlock checks the position of the sun to calculate the time she appears both days.

He sees many other opportunities the third day, but waits for her. He notices a tall Bobbie strolling through the crowds. The boy will have to do this perfectly.

She arrives, right on time. One particular stall has become her favorite. She struggles through the crowd toward it, peeved about being jostled, her head tilted slightly back, looking down her nose at others. Sherlock moves stealthily toward the same stall, following a different route. He has to time it right. He has to get there just as she is putting her goods into her baskets. The Bobbie appears to have headed the other way, though every now and then he looks back.

The woman moves up to the stall. There: half a dozen apples, five or six big potatoes, a few fistfuls of carrots, some watercress, and a plump turnip. Into her two baskets they go. There: she sets them down … looks up.

Sherlock checks the Bobbie … facing the other way. He swoops. Rushing in, bent over and out of the vendor’s sightline, he snatches both brimming baskets.

But another hand, just as low to the ground, reaches out too! Sherlock’s heart almost stops. There is no turning back. He either gets away or everything is lost. He shoots into the thick masses like an arrow, rising up as he flies. No one shouts. No one seems to follow. Everything and everyone is swallowed up in the throngs. Glancing back, he glimpses a lad eyeing him while moving like lightning from the stall, but not pursuing. Sherlock remembers now that the hand had been smallish: dirty too, and tipped with mangled fingernails.

He knows the rascal … one of the smallest Irregulars, the one Malefactor had cracked in the face with his stick. The boy had let Sherlock go, but not because he had any feelings for him. In this world of deceit and sleight-of-hand, victory is given without complaint to the swiftest and the cleverest of the streets. Malefactor will likely never even hear of it. The boy won’t want to upset his general, and losing a prize to Sherlock Holmes would most certainly cause the gang leader to internally combust.

Sherlock has enough to last him a week, but that isn’t what pleases him most. He knows he has done things very well indeed – he identified and pursued the same victim as an Irregular … and beat a trained thief to the prize.

His brain never stops humming. Sometimes he wishes he could pull a lever and turn it off, but it just keeps spinning.
Walking the streets that week, or even trying to go to sleep at night, he finds himself calculating and imagining. He wonders, for example, about blood.

It must be true that everyone’s blood is different. And if so, shouldn’t there be some way of identifying strains of blood in a chemical laboratory? Not just blood types, but
individual
blood. Might humanity not make that discovery some day? Couldn’t samples of blood, like those splattered on the glass eyeball hidden in J.S. Mill’s dog kennel be examined, so that detectives could know to whom it belongs? That blood might not all be Lillie’s … perhaps some belongs to the villain.

Crouching within his black, oily feathers at the side of the building in the alley near Whitechapel Road, Sherlock sees, in more detail now, the struggle below. Malefactor said there were
two
screams: a woman’s
and
a man’s … and the man ran from the scene,
clutching his face.
Sherlock sees Lillie’s mouth contort, hears her scream, sees her rake her attacker’s cheek in a dying thrash, plunge a finger into his eye – gauge it from its socket!

There are times when Sherlock despises his own mind, cursed as it is with an imagination as vivid as Mr. Dickens’.

He is ever-vigilant for the dark coachman, but grows more careless about the police, becoming bolder and more curious about their plans as he travels the streets alone. He wonders how aggressively they are pursuing him
now. Before long, he is actually following Peelers, eaves dropping when two or more gather in a group, listening to their conversations.

The day before he is supposed to see his mother, he goes too far.

He decides to return to Trafalgar. It is particularly crowded there and he thinks he can take a chance. He expertly trails a Bobbie through the mass of people across the Square toward another constable, and sits down within earshot. As he leans against the base of Nelson’s Column they stand in front of him watching the passersby He is listening intently when he sees both policemen stiffen.

“Sir!” they both say together.

Sherlock turns to see Inspector Lestrade approaching. His head instantly drops to his chest.

“Good day.”

“Gentlemen,” says a higher voice. It sounds like it comes from a boy. Sherlock peers out from under his cap. It is a lad indeed, the spitting image of Lestrade, except for the mustache. He looks a little older than Sherlock and wears a brown tweed suit.

“This is my son, constables: Lestrade the Second.”

They all laugh. But the inspector’s boy doesn’t.

“Helping Father, are we?” says one of the Peelers once the laughter subsides.

“Yes,” comes the dead-serious response. “I intend to follow in his footsteps.”

“A detective, no less. And what are you on the lookout for today?”

“A boy whom we once had in custody pertaining to the Whitechapel murder. We know he is about, and know he has a friend who was nearly killed in a traffic accident recently. Eyewitnesses claimed she had a boy with her, but he vanished.”

Sherlock’s pulse quickens.

“Sherlock Holmes,” says the elder Lestrade. “We have our main villain. But there is still the question of the purse.”

“Precisely,” says the junior detective. “So we shall jail Master Holmes again if we find him, and proceed with prosecution. If you see him, let us know.” The policemen nod solemnly. “His friend, this girl, is at home now. She wasn’t forthcoming when questioned, but they may try to meet.”

Sherlock is petrified. He doesn’t dare move. But as the Lestrades turn to go, the younger one walks directly his way! He curls up into a ball.

“Boy,” says young Lestrade firmly, reaching into his pocket. In horror, Sherlock realizes that it is he who is being addressed.

“Boy!”

“Yes?” Sherlock offers.

“Do you want this or not?” There is a farthing in his hand.

“It’s me eyes, sir …” mumbles the beggar. “I’m blind … I don’t like to look up.”

The coin clatters on the pavement in front of him.

“God bless you, sir,” says Sherlock Holmes.

Having escaped such a close call, it would make sense to lie low for a while. But the news about Irene is too much to resist. He doesn’t want to speak with her, doesn’t want her to see him, but maybe, just maybe,
he
might see
her.

He makes his way up to Montague Street that night, finds his spot in the shadows outside the British Museum and watches the Doyle house. The lights are still on. He can see figures moving inside. It looks warm in there. There is Mr. Doyle … and there is Irene. She passes by quickly … too quickly. Then she passes again. He waits. Soon she comes to the window and looks out. She seems to be searching the streets. Her left arm is in a sling. It is hard not to stare at her. She is everything that is right about the world in a world that has so much wrong.