Eye of the Crow

“The Arab didn’t do it,” offers Sherlock bravely.

“A reasonable guess,” replies Malefactor as he smoothes out his long black coat.

“Your world can’t be any safer with a murderer on the loose.”

“He isn’t on the loose,” says the thief without thinking.

“Oh?”

Malefactor looks like he’s let the cat out of the bag.

“Move along, Sherlock Holmes.” He glances over his shoulder toward his little thugs, nodding at Grimsby and Crew, who step forward. They love to beat on their victims, and both carry iron-hard hickory sticks for the purpose. Dark Grimsby likes to talk, blond Crew says little. They grin maliciously at the slender boy.

“If he turns and walks now, no hand shall strike him,” says Malefactor. The lieutenants’ shoulders sag.

Sherlock has noticed that the boss’s slight Irish accent grows stronger when he is irritated. The two eye each other. They are both tall boys: skinny with large heads, though the leader has nearly an inch on the half-breed truant, his forehead bulges where Holmes’ is flat, and his eyes are sunken while Sherlock’s peer out. They both have a way of constantly looking about, suspiciously turning their heads – Malefactor the reptile, Sherlock the hawk. Their hair, an identical coal-black, is combed as perfectly as they can manage.

Malefactor first saw the boy on the streets many months ago and picked him out as different, drawn to him as if he were something shiny. The thug couldn’t resist harassing him, but has yet to allow his followers to truly do him harm.

Sherlock turns and walks.

He is half a block away when a rotten tomato, fired like a bullet, catches him flush and splat on the back of his neck. His head turns like a falcon’s. But they are gone.

He stands still for a few seconds. “Curse you!” he finally blurts, frantically wiping the red slime from his coat. “I’ll never get this clean!”

“No ’and shall strike ’im!” echoes a voice from around a corner, trailing off, laughing maniacally as it fades into the London day.

He reads the papers again that morning. There is nothing new. The police have made up their minds. It strikes him that they think in straight lines and never have new ideas. He sits in the center of Trafalgar Square, among the tourists and the pigeons, stealing the odd chunk of bun from the fat gray birds. From time to time, he dips his necktie in one of the fountains and scours angrily at the red stain on his collar, until he nearly scrubs through the cloth.

The Irregulars don’t know who murdered the woman. He can tell. But they know something. At least Malefactor does. There is no one on the streets of London more cunning than that constantly calculating boy. His minions not only fear him, but accept him as their better. Sherlock doesn’t just imagine that Malefactor is of higher stock, he knows it. There’s an indisputable clue: that long black coat with tails. Though it is tattered and frayed, the gang leader wears it every day, as if he prizes it deeply, not as if he’s stolen it. His chimneypot hat, his walking stick: those he sets down in alleys without thinking twice. But Sherlock has seen him cleaning his coat and tails in a rain barrel when he thinks others aren’t looking, has watched him caress it and smooth it as he talks. Long ago, that coat belonged to someone of some social status. There are secrets within its folds.

Malefactor indeed has been blessed with more brainpower than the others. Nothing in London escapes his notice. He knows something about the Whitechapel murder.

But what? What else is there to know?

Sherlock casts his mind back to the scene from last night, his vivid imagination reproducing it almost perfectly. And as he does, he realizes something. The crows … they weren’t staying on the blood stain! They were moving around, as if they were looking for something, as if …

“Sherlock.”

Someone has spotted him, even though his head was down. It’s a warm woman’s voice, un recognizable for an instant, as he suddenly awakes from his thoughts and leaps to his feet.

“Sherlock, it’s just me,” Rose laughs. “Don’t be surprised. I knew I’d find you on this very spot. Remember, I was giving lessons in Mayfair today? It’s not far from here.” She motions to the west. She is wearing one of her best muslin dresses trimmed with lace, preserved as well as possible from her other life. It had once been ivory white.

“Mother … I …”

“This is your last day away from school, correct?”

The boy nods.

“I want us to walk out together tonight,” says Rose.

She sits down beside him and takes one of his long white hands in hers.

He knows what she means. She wants to go to the opera. They’ve gone many times before. She’s been taking him for as long as he can remember. He is sure she brought him there in her arms, around to the back of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, just a short walk from Trafalgar. They slip into the shadows and go to her spot, a place where a coal grate opens on to the street and they can crouch and hear the music as if they are right in the seats. As he listens, she tells him the story of each opera, slowly and clearly, with tears in her eyes.

They sit in the Square that late afternoon, talking. He can smell the beer on her breath.

His mother’s conversation is never about the past: always about what has happened that very day. Today, she begins with the big homes that she’s just been in.

“The first was in Belgravia and it belongs to a duke.”

She knows it will interest him and describes every inch of the ornate dwelling: its glittering front door, its glowing chandeliers, and the well-born lady who lives there … and never once deigned to say “Hello.”

“The other house was in Mayfair,” she continues.

The gentleman was home. He had a ruddy, red face, a long red goatee, and a rough way of talking. Everything he said was addressed to the servants. He never once spoke to his wife. He was so rude and ill- mannered, especially for a man whose spouse is related to the queen.

“He kept staring at me. Or at least I thought he did. He had the most peculiar eyes. One seemed so different from the other: some eyes are like that. Examine them, Sherlock, and you’ll see. One eye was alive … and the other looked dead.”

The sun is setting by the time they make their way up the Strand and then north toward Covent Garden. The market has closed for the day. Flower petals lie on the muddy ground, big torn baskets are scattered about, the shouts of costermongers and piemen have faded away. They cross the open area toward the back of the big opera house, a magnificent, white stone building.

Rose Holmes has a routine. She goes round to the front entrance, the part with the tall pillars that look out on Bow Street, then crosses the road and stands on the foot pavement, just south near the dim blue lights of the police station. She always takes Sherlock’s hand, even now when he is thirteen, and squeezes it unconsciously while she watches.

The carriages pull up, one after the other. The famous people, the rich folk, step down, top hats shining, diamond stickpins glittering, silk dresses flowing. The boy performs his mental exercise as he watches; he observes and deciphers the life stories of each gentleman and lady.

Bobbies stand by, observing too, but they never watch the upper classes. It’s the others who gain their attention. Sherlock catches their eyes several times and each time looks away.

Before the big doors are closed on the last grand couple, Rose yanks her son across the street. They steal down the north side of the Opera House and dart under a little wrought-iron staircase at the back of the massive building. It leads to a secret entrance, used by the singing stars. The little dark door is camouflaged with ivy, and the coal grate, hidden under the stairs, provides an opening into the building. They might as well be in the front row.

They huddle on the ground, Rose’s dress in the mud, but she doesn’t care. She puts an arm around Sherlock.

The music begins.

A cry escapes from her lips. It’s The Thieving Magpie. Now he knows why she wanted to come tonight.