Eye of the Crow (7 page)

He walks into the darkness; soon the alley appears dimly to his left. He stands still for a moment. Then he turns down it.

Footsteps behind!

He swings around. No one. Silence.

He moves again, his boots sounding like cannons on the cobblestones. The bloodstain is somewhere near. The fog seems very heavy. He drops down on his hands and knees and edges forward, his eyes inches from the ground.

There it is.

His fingers are right on the stain. He casts his mind back again. He sees the crows once more at the scene. The picture appears in his mind in two dimensions, as clear as a stereographic view. There they are! One is on the stain, yes, but the other is a carriage length away, near a damp wall. It isn’t pecking like the one on the blood. Its dark head moves with a different motion. It is doing something with its beak …
digging!

Sherlock crawls forward. His eyes are becoming more accustomed to the darkness. He can see the spot where the bird was digging just ahead. He reaches it … a rubble of bricks, probably dumped here by a tradesman.

Something moves, right near his head. He sucks in his breath. It makes a scratching sound.

A black bird is an arm’s length from his face. It spreads out its torn, evil-looking feathers for an instant, as if to fly. Then it stops and stares at him. He can see the intelligence in its dark eyes. It tips its head, regards him once more, and lifts off.

It vanishes.

Sherlock turns back to the rubble and at that instant the fog lifts slightly in the alleyway, the moon shines through, and he sees something. It glitters in the stones.

Something shiny.
It is nearly buried. He moves a crumbling brick.

Then he shudders and almost falls face-first into the rubble.

It’s a body! And it’s buried under the bricks!

An eye is staring up at him … a human eye.

Steeling himself for the sight of a corpse, he takes a deep breath and works as fast as he can, moving more pieces. But the body’s head must be tilted sideways, because no matter how hard he digs, only one eye is evident.

Then he realizes
exactly
what he has found. It isn’t a corpse. It is
just
an eye. A single human eye is buried in the rubble a half dozen steps from the spot where the woman was murdered.

Then he realizes something else. It isn’t real. It is a glittering, glass eyeball. Sherlock stares at it. It stares back. Flecks of blood are splattered on the iris. He picks it up.

Footsteps again!

He is sure this time. Absolutely sure! And they are coming toward him. He closes his fingers over the eyeball, rises to his feet, and starts to run.

“Boy!” he hears a gruff voice shout.

Perched up above in the night, the crow lets out a scream.

Sherlock runs in the darkness. He hears violins … from another Rossini opera he and his mother have heard many times. They are the galloping, charging, fleeing, escaping violins of
The William Tell Overture.
Sherlock puts his head back, pumps his fists and lets his long legs take him. The music powers him: out the alleyway, past a dark, ghostly man with a gas lamp reaching out to grab him. But Sherlock eludes him and is gone in an instant, around the corner, past a parked black coach on Whitechapel, then
down the street and on the double toward the ancient stone arches of London Bridge.

“Boy!”

The cry fades as he flees. He barely notices the night people this time. His mind is fixed on home. He holds the eye tightly in his hand as he sprints off the bridge, through Southwark, away from the street, and onto the lane that leads to the back stairs of the family flat. When he gets there, he goes up three steps at a time.

Who was that? Who was standing in that alley where the woman was murdered?

His shaking hands open the door gently. Their home is dead quiet. He calms his breathing, locks the door, slips off his clothes and gets into bed. He tucks the eyeball under his mattress. Despite his excitement he is asleep in minutes. Exhaustion overtakes him.

Not long afterwards there is a thudding on the door.

He awakes with a start. At first he turns away, wraps the pillow over his head and tries to convince himself that he is dreaming. No one can be pounding on their door at this hour of the night.

But within seconds Wilber Holmes is on his feet and advancing toward the sound.

“Who’s there?” he asks, his voice sounding shaky.

Sherlock will never forget the response.

“Police!” comes a thundering voice. “Open up!”

His father’s answer is almost pleading.

“What do you want with us?”

“Open up or we will knock it down, sir!”

Wilber lets them in.

A plainclothes detective and two burly constables step heavily into the room. They have solemn looks on their faces, the policemen in helmets with black straps across their chins, long blue overcoats with wide belts around the middle, and thick black boots on their feet. One holds a “bull’s eye” gas lantern in his hand.

“My name is Inspector Lestrade,” states the man in the civilian clothes. He is an aging chap, perhaps nearly sixty, with a bushy mustache, and dressed in brown corduroy trousers, black waistcoat with a pocket watch on a chain, and dark brown coat; he is lean and ferret-like, but with a bulldog attitude. “Do you have a son?” he inquires.

“Why … why, yes.”

“We need to speak with him.”

Wilber turns and looks across the room at the little bed, terrified. He sees his son, sitting up, staring back at the police. There is a curious hardness in the boy’s face, a look of steel in his gray eyes.

The three men advance across the room and surround him, as if he might try to escape.

“What’s your name?”

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“Were you, or were you not at the location of the Whitechapel murder past midnight this day?”

The boy pauses.

“I was.”

Wilber is astonished.

“Sherlock? No. No! He couldn’t have been. He was right here. He and his mother went to the opera.”

“The opera?” inquires Lestrade, looking around at the poverty-stricken room. “Your wife attends the
opera?”

“Jews,” murmurs one constable to the other.

“We didn’t actually attend,” says the boy in an even voice. “We just stood outside and listened.”

“Yes,” says Wilber, “Yes, that’s right. I misspoke myself.”

“Indeed,” responds Lestrade.

He eyes the boy again.

“You have been observed at the murder scene
twice,
on two consecutive days. What is your explanation?”

Wilbur is stunned. He tries to speak, but can’t.

“I have none,” says Sherlock.

“I see,” snaps Lestrade. “You were also observed, by this constable,” he motions to one of the policemen, “at the arraignment of Mohammad Adalji, the villain in this hideous affair. Not only were you observed there, but the accused spoke to you: only you. Did he not? Don’t deny it.”

“I won’t.”

Wilberforce Holmes stares, openmouthed, at his son.

“What did the Arab say?” Lestrade is twirling an end of his mustache.

“He said he didn’t do it.”

One of the constables barely hides a smirk.

“There is no question that he did it!” shouts Lestrade. “Are you involved with him?”

“No.”

The inspector studies the boy’s face for a while before he speaks again.

“Do you know something about this? Do you know something that we should know?”

Sherlock hesitates. He doesn’t want to withhold evidence from the police, but he can’t tell them about the glass eye, either. It might be the Arab’s only chance, the only clue to what really happened. He can’t just give it away, not to the very people who hold Adalji’s life in their hands.

“No, sir.”

“I’ll ask you again.”

“No need.”

“Why?” The detective thinks the boy may be ready to confess something.

“I know nothing.”

Lestrade’s face turns red.

“We have jailed one scoundrel, young sir. But a coin purse is missing. We know that because we found beadwork particular to such an item in the alley. We know you frequent the streets, consort with gangs.”

“My son does not con …” starts Wilber, but Sherlock cuts him off

“I know nothing about the purse.”

“Then you had better come with me,” barks Lestrade.

“WHERE?”

It is Rose. She has risen from her bed and entered the room to see two policemen and an inspector surrounding her son.

“We are arresting your boy on suspicion of withholding evidence.”

“Or on the possible involvement in a murder.” It is the constable with the gas lantern. He looks at Mrs. Holmes with cold eyes. He is a soldier against evil and it shows.

“But that’s absurd!” sputters Wilber Holmes and reaches out toward his son.

“Obstruct us and you will come too,” says the constable.

The detective nods at the boy. The policemen seize him. Rose Holmes cries out. She tries to pull her son away but Wilber takes her into his arms and holds her tightly. She beats her hands on his chest and then buries her face in his neck and sobs.

“Come quietly and there will be no difficulties,” intones Lestrade. “We don’t wish to cause anyone pain, but we must get to the bottom of this.”

Sherlock goes quietly, indeed. In fact, he banishes his mother’s cries and his father’s eyes from his mind; erases them. He can’t break down. Emotion won’t get him anywhere. He must be like steel. As of this second, he
has
to find a solution to this crime. It isn’t just the Arab who is in danger anymore.

Now … he has to save himself

MOHAMMAD’S STORY

I
n the morning he awakes to a prayer, uttered in a weeping voice, soft and frightened. He starts upright on his stone bed, shocked to find himself in a dark little holding cell in the Bow Street Police Station.

He had dreamt of eyes. Thousands of eyes had been in his bed at home staring at him, pleading for help. A bigger one had emerged from under his mattress. All the others had turned to it.

That was what had first roused him. Then, as his head cleared, he heard the prayer. He once came across it in a book about the Crusades and remembers it well: he can photograph things with his mind’s eye.

He swings his legs around and sits on the edge of the bed, listening. It is a call to Allah in a time of distress. Sound travels poorly in these cave-like rooms, but he can tell that the voice is coming from the cell next to his.

When it fades into silence, Sherlock sits, listening to his own breathing. Then he takes a chance.

“Mohammad?”

There is absolute stillness. Sherlock doesn’t breathe. No answer.

He sighs and stands up. The hard bed is the only piece of furniture in the damp, stone room. There are no windows, just a small square opening with three bars cut at the height of his eyes in the big iron door. There is no mirror either, which irritates the boy: his hair must be terribly messy.

Suddenly, a sound ends the silence.

“Yes?” The voice is clear and quiet.

Sherlock advances to the door. Peering out, he sees the high wall of a long stone hallway and two small, barred windows on it, up very high. Twisting his neck and looking to the right, he can just see the fingers of two brown hands clutching the bars in the door next to his.

“Are you Mohammad Adalji?”

“Yes. But I didn’t do it.” He sounds firm and earnest. There is a slight eastern accent to his words.

“I’m the boy you spoke to outside the courthouse.”

“You are?” A little hope creeps into Mohammad’s voice.

“My name is Holmes.”

“And you are in jail?”

Sherlock looks out the two small windows in the hallway where light is coming in. Finally, there is blue sky in London … and he’s in here.

“They think I know something … that I’m connected to the murder in some way.”

Mohammad says nothing for a moment and then speaks softly.

“I will tell them you were not involved.”

“Much obliged, but they won’t believe you.”

“Yes they will, because they want to think I acted alone. I am an Arab.”