Eye of the Crow

murder was long forgotten. But Sherlock is betting the villain didn’t search the purse thoroughly, had no reason to, and didn’t know this letter was hidden inside. If it contains anything incriminating, it will be Lillie’s vengeance from the grave.

Sherlock unfolds the sheet. But he can’t read it. It is too dark. He walks over to the window, an arm’s length from the head of the bed. The man is snoring, his eyelids moving rapidly.

Sherlock reads in the slashes of moonlight.

Lillie,

I implore you to read this carefully. If you do not desist from these evil plans of yours, I shall not be responsible for my actions. I have position and I will protect it, believe me. Blackmail is blackmail, whether perpetrated by a criminal or the belle of the ball. You cannot tell my wife of our affairs, I will not pay you for your silence, and you and I cannot continue together. That is simply our situation. We must go our separate ways. We were meant to enjoy one another, but never more than that. My world is not yours and never shall be.

Yes, I will meet you one more time. Tomorrow. There is a little lane off Old Yard Street in Whitechapel, west side, absolutely secluded. Be there at the stroke of two in the morning. I won’t meet you anywhere else. I know you will come, and I know you are familiar with those streets.

Tell no one of this. Those who interfere with me, do so at their peril.

J.T.R.

Sherlock crams the letter back into the purse. He shoves it all into his pocket.

He looks at the man in the bed. He hates him. It is absolute and pure hatred.

And it is time for this beast to die.

Rose Holmes might be nobody, Sherlock and Mohammad might be too, but this villain is going to pay, just as if they were all equals. There will be justice tonight. He will make things right with the violent plunge of his big butcher’s blade. He will carve up this man like the pig he has proven himself to be.

The boy reaches into his coat and pulls out the knife. It gleams in the moonlight. He steps up to the edge of the bed and raises it high over his victim. The man is lying on his back. The blade will go straight into the heart. Sherlock imagines the man’s gasp.

This is for all the injustice he has suffered; for all the hate everywhere in the world … and for Rose Sherrinford Holmes.

Justice!

His eyes are black stars. But something makes him pause.

Something deep inside him, borne of the scientific wisdom of his decent father and the love of his beautiful mother, murmurs that this will not be justice. It will be murder. And he, Sherlock Holmes, will be as bad as the man he kills. His mother will have died in vain. Irene will have been wounded for nothing.

Should he do what is right? He glares down at the man. Or wrong? He slowly lowers the blade, and hides it in his clothes.

He has the glass eye, the bracelet, the coachman, the freshly painted carriage, the blood-splattered coin purse, and even the letter. This man will swing. He will pay the price. Sherlock has him.

But he isn’t satisfied. He wants one more thing. One thing that will say to anyone, absolutely beyond any doubt, that this is the villain.

He thinks of the eyeball in the dirt in the dog kennel on Montague Street. He thinks of that day, not long ago, when Irene identified its color, its unique brown iris with the violet fleck knifing into it. Only one man has eyes like that.

He turns to the sleeping body. He thinks for a moment and then smiles. He raises his left hand high over his head and brings it down with a resounding smack across the sleeping face, slapping the man with every ounce of strength he has.

The head jerks back and the lids snap open in terror. One socket is empty. An eye stares back from the other.

Brown … with flecks of violet.

Sherlock leaves the house by the front door. He walks down the stairs and out the main entrance. No one follows him. On the street, he flies away. When the man in the bedroom finally regains his senses, by the time his servants rise and come to him, the boy has vanished into the night.

SHERLOCK HOLMES

Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard finds a most curious collection of items on his desk the following morning, the day of Mohammad’s trial. There is a glittering bracelet, a glass eye splattered with blood, and a stained purse with a letter inside. Delivered to the night sergeant by an errand boy with his cap pulled down over his eyes, it is crudely wrapped in a newspaper. Across the sheet torn from The Illustrated Police News, written with the sharp end of something dipped in watered-down soot, is a detailed explanation of what happened on the night of the Whitechapel murder. It answers every question anyone could possibly have, tells of the sacrifice of brave Rose Sherrinford Holmes, and identifies the murderer and where he can be found.

Propped against the stone fence in a deserted Trafalgar Square in the pale and foggy dawn, Sherlock is seeing it now: the entire murder. Swooping down from the black sky, he lands on the edge of the building on Old Yard Street off Whitechapel. Settling his oily feathers, he turns when he hears her rushing toward him down below, the sound echoing in the street. He cocks his head and trains his sharp eye on the scene. Observe. The beautiful woman, Lillie Irving, is running, her jewelry glowing, anxious to impress someone. Shining. It makes him mutter, his dark tongue poised in his beak. She hastens into an alley and turns to wait, her chest heaving, pretty hands nervously clutching a purse. He lifts off and lands above her, cocking his head again. Something else is glowing in the moonlight on the filthy ground not far from her … a knife.

A street away a black coach comes to a halt and a large, middle-aged man steps down onto the pavement, the carriage bouncing as his weight leaves it. He is rushing too, and soon has entered the alley. Sherlock’s heart beats faster in his black breast.

She reaches out tenderly for the man when he nears. He grabs her wrist and something glittery flies off. Her other arm reaches out. He pushes her back. She begins to cry. Then she grows angry. She is threatening him. He is warning her. She rears and slaps his face and then shoves him. He staggers and steps on something. He picks it up.

Up above, Sherlock cries out as he sees what it is…. Mohammad’s blade.

Down it comes. Once. She screams. A pretty white hand comes up like a cat’s paw, nails out, and grips the man’s face, a finger digging into the eye, gouging. He screams. The knife comes up in the moonlight again.

Twice.

Three times.

Four.

Five.

She falls, gasps, and is still.

The man looks skyward for a second. A crow gazes back. It’s him – the man in the bed in Mayfair!

The murderer looks down at the knife. Drops it. Hesitates. Snatches up the purse. Runs. Around the corner, holding his face, making for the coach. He enters it on the fly, shouting something to his black-liveried coachman, and they race away at full speed.

The murder done, the crow drops down. Time to search for those shiny things.

Sherlock can see them in the dawn. As always, they are gathered on Morley’s Hotel and atop palatial Northumberland House, on its golden lion across the square. They are watching, preening their black feathers, sticking close to each other, their brains alert. The boy smiles weakly.