Eye of the Crow

To my mother,

Susan Jane,

who gave me a writers soul.

“During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life … I had come to believe that he was an orphan with no relatives living; …”

– Dr. Watson in The Greek Interpreter

CONTENTS

MAPS OF LONDON

PREFACE

PREFACE

Murder came in darkness. It came in White-chapel, far from the gaslights of the main streets, to the east where the Jews were, where the poor starved, where the invisible people of the world’s greatest city lived like animals. It came in an instant, in a stab of brutality, unjust and violent.

Hours later, south of the River Thames in Southwark, above a shabby shop in a narrow row near a slum, a boy reluctantly rose to meet another morning. Justice lived far from here too. But today would mark the beginning of a reckoning: for him, for that death, and for many crimes that would follow.

No one had seen the Whitechapel murder.

But in that night black eyes were watching.

And in this morning … the Master was awakening.

THE UNUSUAL BOY

As the sun climbs, its rays spread light through the lifting yellow fog, filtering down upon a brown, flowing mass of people: on top hats and bonnets, heavy clothes and boots swarming on bridges and along cobblestone streets. Hooves strike the pavement, clip-clopping over the rumbling iron wheels, the drone of the crowds, and hawkers’ cries. The smell of horses, of refuse, of coal and gas, hangs in the air. Nearly everyone has somewhere to go on this late spring morning in the year of Our Lord, 1867.

Among those moving over the dirty river from the south, is a tall, thin youth with skin the pallor of the pale margins in The Times of London. He is thirteen years old and should be in school. From a distance he appears elegant in his black frock coat and necktie with waistcoat and polished boots. Up close, he looks frayed. He seems sad, but his gray eyes are alert.

His name is Sherlock Holmes.

Last night’s crime in Whitechapel, one of many in London, though perhaps its most vicious, will change his life. In moments it will introduce itself to him. Within days it will envelop him.

He comes to these loud, bustling streets to get away from his problems, to look for excitement, and to see the rich and famous, to wonder what makes them successful and appreciated. He has a nose for the scent of thrilling and desperate things, and all around these teeming arteries, he finds them.

He gets here by the same route every day. At first he heads south from the family’s first-floor flat over the old hatter’s shop in grimy Southwark, and walks in the direction of his school. But when he is out of sight he always veers west, and then sneaks north and crosses the river with the crowds at Blackfriars Bridge, for the glorious center of the city.

Londoners move past him in waves, each with a story. They all fascinate him.

Sherlock Holmes is an observing machine; has been that way almost since birth. He can size up a man or a woman in an instant. He can tell where someone is from, what another does to make his living. In fact, he is known for it on his little street. If something is missing – a boot or an apron or a crusty doorstep of bread – he can look into faces, examine trousers, find telltale clues, and track the culprit, large or small.

This man walking toward him has been in the army, you can tell by his bearing. He’s pulled the trigger of his rifle with the calloused index finger of his right hand. He’s served in India – notice the Hindu symbol on his left cuff link, like one the boy has seen in a book.

He walks on. A woman with a bonnet pulled down on her head and a shawl gripped around her shoulders brushes against him as she passes.

“Watch your step, you,” she grumbles, glaring at him.

An easy one, thinks the boy. She has recently lost in love, notice the stains around her eyes, the tight anger in her mouth, and the chocolate hidden in her hand. She is within a year of thirty, gaining a little weight, a resident of the Sussex countryside where its unique brown clay has marked the insteps of both her black boots.

The boy feels like he needs to know everything. He needs advantages in a life that has given him few. A teacher at his school once told him he was brilliant. He’d scoffed at that. “Brilliant at what?” he had muttered to himself. “At being in the wrong life at the wrong time?”

On Fleet Street, he reaches into a cast-iron dustbin and pulls out a handful of newspapers. The Times … toss it back. The Daily Telegraph … toss it back. The Illustrated Police News … ah, yes. Now there is a newspaper! Every sensation that London can create brought to life in big black-and-white pictures. He reads such scandal sheets every day, but this one, with a riveting tale of bloody violence and injustice, will reveal to him his destiny. He tucks it into his coat.

At Trafalgar Square he looks up to find the crows. There are often a few in a row on the edge of Morley’s Hotel near majestic Northumberland House on the southeast side, a league from the fat pigeons and the crowds near the fountains. It makes him smile. One of the most prestigious hotels in all of London, crowned with crows. They’re Sherlock’s kind of birds.

He weaves through traffic and crosses the square to a spot on the stone steps of the National Art Gallery. The black birds move too. Sometimes, he thinks that crows follow him. A couple swoop down and settle nearby.