Mayfair, Sherlock realizes that he won’t see his father tonight. It’s a Friday – the day when Wilber stays late to clean the doves’ cages. What a job for a man once destined to be a professor of natural philosophy at the University College of London.
There are many injustices in the world, thinks the boy. But some are worse than others. You can hate someone because he’s poor, because of the clothes he wears, or for his political views. But a person can change that. If you hate someone for being a Jew or an Arab, he cannot rub off his skin. That sort of prejudice is the greatest injustice … next to taking someone’s life.
It has to be about six o’clock, he guesses. Rose should be here soon.
The sun glows into the flat, warming his face, bringing a slight smile to his lips.
He doesn’t bother to read his father’s books or drink from one of his mother’s two chipped teacups set on the shelf above the fireplace. He just stares out the little back window where he saw the crows gather, waiting for her. As the sun starts to set, everything begins to darken.
So does his mood.
Something isn’t right. Time passes. Why would she be so late two nights in a row?
The room grows darker. He lights a candle. Where is she? Fear begins to grow inside him, spreading out from his stomach like a fire.
He gets up and paces, walking as silently as he can, disguised as a chimney sweep in his own home. It has become completely black outside.
There is a rustling at the door. Finally!
What if it isn’t her? He doesn’t care anymore. He rushes to the door and flings it open.
Again, he sees a look of terror in his mother’s face. Reaching out with both arms, he pulls her indoors and wraps her in his arms. But something isn’t right. She feels weak in his embrace, though her heart is racing.
“Are you all right, mother?”
“I’m fine, Sherlock. They kept me late. I must sit down.”
She staggers across the room and falls onto the couch. The burning inside him, which had subsided momentarily, rises again.
“It was very strange,” she mumbles.
Her speech is slurred, but he doesn’t smell ale.
“What was strange, mother?”
“Tea? … Do you have some tea you might give me, young man?”
“What was strange!?” he shouts, taking her face into his hands. The pupils in her eyes aren’t right.
“The gentleman … the gentleman of the house …”
“Yes?”
“Gave me tea … made tea himself … and served it to me … a strange brew … it made me …”
Her voice fades. Something falls from her hand: the same piece of paper he saw her carrying last night. He sees the address on it this time. The very house he intends to enter tonight. The house where the villain surely lives!
Rose tries to rally herself. “I didn’t want to tell you that it was one of the four houses.”
“Mother, the men in the others are
“I thought I might learn something…. I didn’t want you to go away…. The man gave me an awful smile when he showed me out … said Mayfair knows when outsiders ask inappropriate questions … that he’d noticed the other burgled houses belonged to his one-eyed friends … that he’d been speaking to all the servants …”
She collapses in his arms.
“MOTHER!”
As he holds her closely he can barely feel the beat of her heart. Lifting her in his arms, he is alarmed at how light she is … like a bird. When he sets her on her bed she is completely limp. Her eyes open briefly.
“You have much to do in life,” she says clearly.
Then her eyes close. Frantically he pulls the covers over her and takes her white hand in his. It has no life. He feels her wrist for a pulse.
There is none.
The beautiful, worry-wrinkled eyelids are still. The mouth is slightly open. Her lips are dry and her face flushed red. His father has taught him the properties of nearly every chemical mixture known to man, and their symptoms should they be ingested … especially the lethal ones.
“MOTHER!” he screams again and presses his forehead to hers. His chest heaves and his lungs fill and empty of air. He stays that way for a long while, holding her, waiting for her breathing to come back. But it won’t.
When he finally rises, his face looks like a devil’s mask. Hatred is carved into it. He seizes their table and throws it across the room with the strength of a demon. It crashes and splinters against the wall. The sound echoes in the little flat and out into the street.
He races to the window, smashes it through with his fist, and thrusts his head into the outside air.
“JUSTICE!!”
He howls it into the night, his head thrown back, his teeth like fangs, his eyes two glowing black coals. When he opens the door, he nearly rips it from its hinges. He swoops down the stairs.
Someone is coming up toward him.
If it isn’t his father, he will kill with his bare hands.
But he doesn’t. And it isn’t Wilber.
Irene is struggling up the steps.
“Sherlock!”
She has never seen a human being look like this before. It is as if his face, that dark, handsome young face, is lit from within. The eyes are all black – the gray irises gone.
He pauses for only a second. “Stay away from me!” he warns her.
He shoves her, wounded as she is, and nearly knocks her down the stairs. He doesn’t give her another thought. In minutes he is back across the Thames … and headed for Mayfair.
He has something to do on the way. Just below London Bridge on the north side, is Mohammad Adalji’s butcher shop. The old butcher likely doesn’t have a new boy yet. He’ll be cleaning the knives himself – just finishing up.
The Tower of London looms to his right but Sherlock doesn’t look at it tonight. His hands are clutched in fists, the knuckles white, and he is running, tears pouring down his face. Mohammad told him exactly how to find the shop.
The dim light is on when he arrives.
Sherlock tries the door. It’s unlocked. He opens it and deftly slips inside. The butcher has his back to him, cleaning and sharpening the knives. They lie on a thick wooden table, splattered with blood. The boy wipes his face dry.
He doesn’t bother hiding his presence. He knows what he wants – he
There are at least a dozen blades to choose from. Every one of them will do the job. The sharpened knives are to the old man’s right, the dirty ones to the left. It will be harder to grab a sharp weapon, but Sherlock doesn’t care – that’s what he needs.
He eyes a big blade, long and serrated, sharp as a barber’s razor, not too long to be concealed in his clothing.
The butcher is gripping another knife in his hand. He holds it up to examine it and when he does, he sees a boy behind him, reflected in the gleaming blade. It makes him start. The lad looks like he’s climbed up from hell that very evening.
Sherlock lunges forward and seizes the knife. The man gasps and draws back, holding his big blade in front of him. He expects the worst: to be butchered with one of his own tools by this tall child from Hades.
The boy pivots and flees.
By the time the butcher has recovered his senses, by the time he has stepped to the street and screamed
