Eye of the Crow

Whitechapel too, on the night he ran from there in fear.

He wipes the scarlet words from the kennel with a quivering hand, leaving a smear of blood. He looks left, right, up above, toward the house, down the passageway. He spots no dark figure. His whole body is shaking. He pulls the blade from the crow’s chest, allowing the bird to fall to the ground, then kicks it into the rose bushes and flings the bloody knife after it.

He darts into the passageway and starts to run. But halfway down Montague Street he turns around, sprints back and slips down the passage into the yard. He checks the back door … locked. He rushes around to the front and tests it … locked. Thank God.

Then he disappears into the wicked London night.

THE DEVIL’S CARRIAGE

Sherlock lies on cold, hard cobblestones in a lane behind a pile of rotting vegetables north of the University College of London for several dark hours. He knows he must retreat to an area he doesn’t frequent. When the rain pours down, he presses as close to the building as he can get.

Who is that coachman? What has he seen and what does he know? Was he at the Haymarket Theatre too, the glass maker’s shop in Soho, following him from the moment he visited the crime scene? Only the murderer or someone who works for him would do this. It is obvious. The villain is on to Sherlock … and in a murderous mood.

After the sun rises, he makes his way back toward Irene’s house, not because he needs food – he’ll beg or steal it now – but because he has to see her, warn her, tell her that their meetings will have to be rare, if they take place at all.

He finds a place on the grounds of the British Museum, against the east side of the building inside the wrought-iron fence, where he can see the house and not be detected. He waits. He is frantic. His hands are clammy, his eyes shift in his head, and he holds his spine tightly against the wall. Finally, Andrew Doyle emerges and marches down the street, walking stick in hand.

Sherlock slips across the road and floats down the passageway. Irene is standing in front of the empty dog kennel in a long white dress, staring at the smear of blood, sobbing.

She turns when he comes close. “You’re alive!”

Her reddened eyes look big and he thinks she is going to hug him. She advances but stops before they touch.

“When I saw the blood and the empty kennel, I …”

“It’s crow’s blood.”

“Crow’s?”

“We are in trouble, Irene, enormous trouble,” his voice is cracking. “When I got here early this morning, there was a dead crow on the kennel, fastened to it with a knife.” He says nothing about the scarlet message.

Irene looks like she might faint. He reaches out and grips her forearm.

“Someone knows what we are doing, someone who will do anything to stop us. Everything has changed. You cannot be part of this now.”

“Yes I can,” she says, wiping a tear from her cheek. Her face is defiant and her eyes challenge his.

He pauses. He knew it would be like this with Irene Doyle. He’ll have to compromise.

“I can’t stay here, that’s certain,” he insists. “And your role has to be different. I need to think about how you … might still help. In the meantime, stay indoors with the locks bolted when you are alone, keep your eyes open, and you’ll hear from me.”

Sherlock turns and walks down the passageway.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

A desperate fiend is trying to scare them off. A killer. Sherlock has been thinking about whom else might be attacked. And it terrifies him.

“Where are you going?” she repeats.

“To warn my parents,” he murmurs and walks faster.

This time he makes a beeline for Blackfriar’s Bridge. At busy High Holborn he swings east, mixing in with the crowds on their way to work. Everyone is under suspicion now, every man who passes: everyone in front and behind. It is a horrible feeling. A shadow is after him … perhaps in other clothing now, watching his movements this very moment. Even the poor little crossing sweepers, who, for pennies, sweep grime and dust from the paths of their betters, appear to be spying. Every look seems to interrogate him, every unusual noise makes him jump. He wishes he could fly above it all and spot his enemies from the air like an eagle. Up Holborn Hill he goes to the teeming place where Gray’s Inn Road meets the main street. The crowds are even thicker here. Signs over shops and billboards and posted bills on walls are bigger and more colorful. The traffic of horses and carriages is loud and foul. Sherlock listens to that famous London clamor, then begins to cross the street, moving carefully through the flow.

Something makes him turn.

It is the crack of a whip, the “Hee-ah!” of a carriage driver inciting a team of horses. The vehicle bursts out of the traffic as if its pulling beasts are runaways. It comes in Sherlock’s direction, right at him.

That is when he sees Irene.

She is crossing the street too, but behind him: between him and the oncoming carriage. She’d been on the footpath when the driver cracked his whip, too close to the noise of the pedestrians to distinguish the sound of the onrushing coach in the din, and not as alert as she should have been. There had been a brief gap in the traffic: she had darted out, moving as fast as she could in her white dress, her blonde hair shining in the spring sun, her brown eyes watching Sherlock, intent on catching up to him.

“IRENE!” he cries.

Everyone near him seems to turn, like a crowd coming to a halt in a scene from an opera.

The dark coach is bearing down on her, the horses foaming at the mouth as they feel the sharp snaps of the whip. The driver is a big man, leaning forward in his seat, clutching the reins, shoulders as wide as a rugby player’s, a black hat pulled down on his forehead, face hidden in a scarf, dressed in black livery with red stripes… riding a black vehicle with red fittings. This is no ghost.

“IRENE!” Sherlock shouts again and runs toward her.

Her mind isn’t on the sounds behind her. At first she smiles at the boy as if she were giving in to being spotted. But sensing the panic in his voice, she turns and looks back. The coach is almost on top of her. She screams and holds out her arms.

Sherlock’s long legs take him down the street as if he were flying. He moves like a falcon, directly toward the carriage, sailing right into it. Irene cringes in horror between the boy and the vehicle.

He can almost feel the hot breath of the thundering horses as he extends a hand and seizes the back of her dress between the shoulder blades. He careers to the side, dragging her with him … and the coach shoots past.

Saved!

But not quite: her long, white dress flows behind as he snatches her. Fluttering there as if suspended in time, it catches in the spokes of a rear wheel!

Suddenly she is snapped from his grip, pulled like a rag doll back into the street, sucked under the iron wheel, dragged along the hard pavement, and devoured by the machine. Her scream rings in his ears. Blood splatters across the white fabric.

The coach shoots through the traffic and disappears. Everything stops. Sherlock stands still in that moment, his mouth wide open, his eyes cast down the street where the vehicle has spit her out, where she lies in a heap as still as death.

At first he walks slowly. He can’t run, doesn’t have strength left in his limbs. It is as if this is one of those nightmares in which he can’t get to where he is going, and what he is after fades as he struggles to reach it.