Eye of the Crow

were watching the murder transpire from the top of one of the buildings, watching with the eye of a crow.

Irene walks about half a football pitch in front of him, occasionally glancing back to make sure he is following. Up they go from St. Paul’s through bustling central London and back into her quiet neighborhood. Sherlock stops well down the street as she steps through the squeaky, wrought-iron gate and moves up the stone stairs to the front door. If it is unlocked, her father is home.

She tries the door. Locked. Feeling for the key in her purse, she looks down the street toward Sherlock and motions. A few minutes later they are sitting on the settee in the small morning room on the ground floor with John Stuart Mill stretched flat nearby. Irene is positioned in a big window to see both ways on the street. Sherlock is hidden from view by a scarlet curtain.

Andrew Doyle will be home any minute. But she has to know.

He starts talking as soon as they sit.

“The first thing I realized when I got there was how wide the bloodstain was … which likely means the murderer knew his victim, because it wasn’t the quick kill-and-get-away job of a thief. It was a crime of passion – an angry one.”

Irene adjusts her position and her long woolen dress on the cushioned settee. She has asked for this, wanted to get out from under the restrictions of her home and be with this boy pursuing justice. But now she is beginning to face the stark reality of it all.

Sherlock stops talking. His mind is drifting off again, trying to see the murder. Irene brings him back.

“But how do you know the crows saw it happen? Maybe when the sun came up the next morning and shone into the alley, they happened by and noticed part of the eyeball and even the bracelet glittering in the ground. Or maybe they were there that night, nearby anyway, but simply heard the woman scream, or saw some commotion and were drawn to the alley. Then they noticed the woman lying there, bits of glitter on the ground near her. They flew off in fear, but kept coming back to find their prizes and were always spooked whenever people appeared. It’s impossible to know how much they saw. Impossible. You had to have been there.”

“I know what they saw” murmurs Sherlock. His long white fingers are entwined. He squeezes them tightly together.

“How do you know?” She asks intently.

“There was a crow on one of the buildings when I got there. I watched him. He did three things. He checked the rubble where I found the eyeball, he walked up and down the passage toward the street and back, and he moved around randomly on the side of the alley opposite from the stain.”

Sherlock peeks around the curtain and looks outside, then leans closer to Irene.

“The crow didn’t spend long where the eyeball had been because he could see it was gone. Then he started searching for something else … something that interested him, something that glittered. The fact that he looked near the spot where I found the bracelet was an indication that he saw the murder…. He knew that it was flung away during the struggle.”

“But still,” protests Irene, “couldn’t he have just noticed the bracelet glittering in the cobblestones the way I suggested? Couldn’t he have seen it lying there after the murder? Maybe he moved about randomly because he simply wasn’t certain where it was?”

“I thought that too … for a while,” says Sherlock. “And you’re right. What I’ve said only tells us that the crow may have seen something flung across the alley … it isn’t proof.”

“So … what is?”

“The crow walked up and down the alley …” he leans so close to Irene that their noses almost touch, “… on a direct line from the bloodstain to the street.”

Irene shudders. Sherlock is right. The crow must have seen the victim or the killer or both enter the alleyway from the street and walk a direct line toward the murder scene … or, at the very least, it saw the villain rush back to the street after completing his horrible deed. It knows where they walked.

The Whitechapel murder was not unobserved.

“The crows saw it” she gasps.

The grandfather clock in the hall ticks.

“And we have to find a way to see it too,” muses Sherlock.

He looks up and sees a frightened expression on her face. He can tell that she doesn’t want to see this horrible act, not even in her mind. She wants everything to be over: for him to be free, Mohammad to be released, that poor woman to have peace, the real culprit to be brought to justice. Sherlock is different. He wants to see it all, every bloody moment. And he wants vengeance, for everyone.

But at that instant something nearly as frightening as the image in his mind appears on the street outside the window.

“He’s here!” Irene cries.

Her father is approaching the front door. She’s been so engrossed in their conversation that she’s neglected her lookout duties.

“Out. Out!” she exclaims, rising to her feet.

Sherlock springs up and gallops out of the morning room, down the hallway, past the dining room, to the back door. He can hear Andrew Doyle opening the front entrance, taking off his hat, hanging up his umbrella.

“Irene?”

“Yes, father?”

She materializes in front of him like a spirit. Her voice is calm as she stands there in the doorway of the vestibule, blocking her father’s view of the hall. His walrus mustache smiles.

Sherlock opens the back door, closes it gently, and makes for his dirty dog kennel. He wriggles into it and lies still, pulling his legs up so his boots don’t show.

No sounds come from the house.

Sherlock finds it difficult to stay calm. His father has taught him that too much emotion is the enemy of the scientist. “Use cold, hard reason. Let it be your guide, my boy. Move slowly and accurately when you are seeking a solution.” That is fine, he thinks, when you are dissecting a frog or roasting some chemical on a Bunsen lamp, but this is life and death. He has his mother’s passion and can’t help it. He wants to stand up, rip the dog kennel apart, scream at the world that he is no criminal, that Mohammad isn’t guilty that life isn’t fair, that the real villain has to pay. Villains everywhere have to pay.

He wants to see the murder now!

He lets himself imagine. Black, oily feathers envelop him in the yellow fog of the wicked London night. He is perched on the edge of a building, but not on one in the alley. He is out on the street just off Whitechapel Road, on Old Yard. Down below, a woman comes hurrying along the street, the heels of her fancy laced boots smacking on the cobblestones as she looks around, desperate to get somewhere. She carries a small lantern that only dimly lights the darkness. She is young and beautiful and her white neck, ear lobes, and perfect soft hands all have diamonds.

Those crows, he is sure, saw the woman long before she was murdered. To them, she glittered in the night. Why else would they have been drawn to the scene? Because of a scream? That would frighten them.

She turns down the passage. She stops. Someone meets her, just as planned. Only then do the crows land on the building in the alley, still eyeing the glitter on the pretty anxious woman. Then there are heated words. There is a horrible shriek and shining objects fly through the air….

Sherlock can’t see who did it … not yet.

What about the woman? He knows something about her now. She is wearing more than just a little jewelry. That may mean something soon.

It is time to move forward with their plan: have Irene check the city directories for every glass-eye manufacturer in London; find someone near the crime scene who heard something on that fatal night.

But his thoughts keep returning to the woman. Who was she? Why did she go there at that hour? Why would someone kill this particular person in cold blood on a dark East End street?

When Irene brings him food under her shawl at supper-time he asks if she can visit the Guildhall Library; and later, before odorous John Stuart Mill can be deposited next to him again, he slips out the backyard and goes to