Eye of the Crow

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