Eye of the Crow

“The owner’s initials?”

“I doubt it.”

“The manufacturer’s?”

“Who makes false eyes in London?” He knows the answer.

“Glass blowers? Medical suppliers?”

“Or someone who does both,” he replies. “We need a city directory. They have them in the Guildhall Library and they list all the businesses in London.”

But Irene isn’t sure what this will ultimately accomplish.

“Even if we discover who made the eyeball,” she reasons, “we still haven’t solved anything, have we?”

Sherlock looks as if he were focusing on something far away and taps his fingers together.

“My father always says that if you think about the solution first when dealing with a scientific problem, you are doing things backwards. We need facts, Irene. Once we have a collection of clues, a trail that we can follow, then we can seek our solution. The letters on this eyeball are like pieces in our puzzle.”

Miss Stamford will be at the front door in minutes, so they agree to meet late in the afternoon. Irene imagines they will rendezvous at the house so she draws in her breath when he tells her where to find him … in broad daylight, about tea time.

“Go to the East End, the poor area in Whitechapel. Take someone with you: someone who won’t ask questions. Not your governess this time. Make yourself visible. I’ll see you…. Just walk near the crime scene.”

ALL THAT GLITTERS

Sherlock rises from the dog’s house in the early afternoon and heads for the East End. He has Andrew Doyle’s magnifying glass in his pocket. He’s charcoaled his eyes and made them dark, pulled the cap down over his brow, and affected the slow shamble of a homeless boy. He blinks in the sun like an animal not used to the light.

Murderers always return to the scene of the crime.

He read that once in The Illustrated Police News. He doesn’t know if it is true, but he hopes the Metropolitan Police and their detectives at Scotland Yard don’t believe it. They will be frustrated by now, perhaps intensifying their search. They know he won’t leave the city, that he doesn’t have the means. He needs to be as alert as a hunted fox.

His nervousness grows as he goes farther east. He tugs the cap down even tighter. He didn’t expect to be this frightened. All around him is another noisy London day – the crowded foot pavements, the great mixture of people, the shouts, and the smells. He yearns for the time, just a week or so ago, when he was nobody.

He sticks to busy places, staying in the swarms all the way to the East End. Soon he is walking on Whitechapel Road.

“You!” cries a firm voice. “Been lookin’ for you everywhere in London!”

Sherlock nearly jumps out of his skin. A man is approaching him. The boy doesn’t lift his gaze. Keep moving, is all he can think. Get into the crowd and vanish. He attempts to edge past, but the man blocks his way. “Not partial to a partickler pie?” asks the street monger, ushering the boy toward his barrow of fish and fruit pastries.

Sherlock sighs and moves on, leaving the pieman to pursue another customer. In a few steps the boy is moving quickly along Whitechapel again, like the suspect he is, his head down, but his eyes rotating like an owl’s, noting every Bobbie, every person who looks back.

The crime scene is near. He turns from the main road onto narrow Old Yard Street. Then he sees the alley. The alley. It appears to his left, running west off the street just ahead. Fear courses through him again the instant it comes into view. It is hard to even think of what happened down this lane on that dark night.

Sherlock steels himself. The crowds were thick on Whitechapel Road and at this time of the day a mixture of people move along Old Yard Street too. Blend in as best you can, he tells himself. Not like the police, whom you can spot at a distance. He often wonders why they are so regular in their habits and so obvious in their appearance. Even the detectives in disguise can be picked out without much trouble.

He glances in both directions and then slips down the passage. It looks different during the early afternoon: deserted and not so spooky. He can see its dead end against the brick wall of another building. There are the old stable doors to his right. In this light, they look like they’ve been closed up for centuries.

The stain on the cobblestones is still visible. It is halfway down the passage, the rubble a bit farther. What sort of place is this for a murder? Is it a place where someone was taken … dragged … or is it a spot where two people agreed to meet? Did the murderer know the woman? Sherlock looks at the sheer expanse of the stain. There was anger in the deed. There was passion. This wasn’t done for money, not for a mere coin purse. But if that is true, why is the purse gone?

He shakes off those thoughts. Observe, he tells himself Deal with the evidence first. Find it.

A noise rings out and he starts. Turning back to the narrow street, he sees an old tinker walking toward Whitechapel, pushing his cart. Sherlock watches him limp past. In seconds there is movement out there again: a well-dressed gent, a lady on his arm. She glances at Sherlock, stares for a second with a hint of fear in her face, but then is guided forward and disappears. He imagines her perfume hanging in the air. Why would her gentleman bring her here? A shortcut, he guesses, toward a better street, or perhaps a charitable visit to a nearby workhouse?

He imagines the murdered young woman – beautiful, looking like his mother in her youth – entering this alley on that terrible night. It would be nearly pitch black. He smells the perfume she wears as it wafts in the cold London darkness. Why did she come here? What sort of woman would be compelled to this place in the night? Who saw her … who smelled her perfume?

There is a flutter on top of the building that forms one of the alley’s walls.

Crows.

There are two of them. They observe him, their heads bobbing up and down as if saying hello to an old friend. One swoops to the ground, bold as brass. First it lands near the rubble where Sherlock found the eyeball. Very quickly it seems uninterested. Then it waddles down the passage, walking on a line toward the street. It seems to have little fear of the boy, though as it nears, it flaps a few feet high and passes by, moving almost all the way to the street. Then it turns back toward him and resumes its stroll, as if keeping one eye on him and the other on the ground, occasionally pecking and scratching.

The crow is looking for something. Again.

Sherlock advances toward it. It suddenly rises into the air, as if it can see out the back of its head, and flies up and settles on top of the building again next to its mate. They peer down.

The boy glances around. People continue passing on the street, but no one turns or stops at the alley – no one seems to be looking his way. He carefully follows the crow’s path, leaning over with his face close to the ground. No obvious clues have been left on the dirty cobblestones. There are signs of footprints, but they are faint, just indistinct collections of the marks of footwear left by all sorts of people: the victim, her murderer, policemen, even his own broken-down boots. A cart’s tracks obscure them further.

Behind him, the crow drops down into the alleyway again. It begins crisscrossing the passage. Sherlock turns and watches it.

Two facts occur to him: first, it’s after something it finds attractive, something it can’t leave alone; second, it doesn’t know exactly where that thing is.

What would it find irresistible? Not the purse, surely. It doesn’t know about money. A purse wouldn’t be any more attractive to it than a glove or a hat.

Something shiny again: something just as interesting as that eyeball.

Jewelry. Good jewelry – a piece that glows so seductively a crow can’t let it be.

He thinks for a moment about how the bird is searching the area. It has taken two approaches. First, it followed a path, like the one the woman and her murderer took down the passageway. Now, it is searching