The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

  “Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” I said, saluting the indifferent bartender with my glass, and a voice behind me said incredulously, “Doyle? That’s never Johnny Doyle!”

  I swung around and cried, “Young Stamford!” in disbelieving delight. Stamford of course was not young—he had been middle-aged when we struggled through Human Anatomy together, and he had to be nearly sixty now—any more than my name was “Johnny.” But the sophomoric humor of medical students had bestowed fitting soubriquets: “Young” Stamford, who was old enough to be our father, and “Johnny” in retribution for my refusal to reveal more of my given names than my initials. And it could have been much worse.

  Stamford and I shook hands, and he said, “Good gracious, Doyle, what have you been doing with yourself?”

  “I am only recently returned from Afghanistan,” I said, “and I have been devoting my attention to the question of whether there is a man in London mad enough to share lodgings with me.”

  I meant it mostly as a joke, for Stamford had known me well enough to appreciate it, but instead of laughing, he got a very odd expression on his face and said, “Do you know, you’re the second person today to say that to me?”

  “Who was the first?”

  His expression became assessing. “I’m not at all sure … But then, you might just be cold-blooded enough to put up with him.”

  “But who is this paragon? One of those terrifying German lecturers?”

  “Nothing like that,” Stamford said cheerfully. He consulted his watch. “If you care to, you can come along and meet him, and it will spare me trying to explain.”

  “I have nothing better to do,” I said truthfully and gripped my cane in preparation to follow wherever Stamford might choose to lead.

  Outside the Criterion, he hailed a hansom and told the driver, “St. Bartholomew’s.”

  “Bart’s?” I said, when we were settled. “Are you teaching, then?”

  He gave me a wry smile. “The fate of any man who cannot afford a London practice and yet cannot bring himself to leave London. But it’s not so bad. I like to think that I’m doing my part to save lives by improving the pool of available doctors.”

  “I can almost guarantee you that you are,” I said, and I told him stories of some of the so-called doctors I’d met in Afghanistan until we reached Bart’s.

  Stamford led me to one of the chemistry laboratories. It was deserted except for a man hunched over a lab bench in the back of the room. As we came in, he straightened up, and my first, puzzled thought was, Why is he wearing an overcoat in here? But then, as he turned toward us, the overcoat flexed around him, spreading slightly before pulling back in, and I realized that it wasn’t an overcoat at all, but a pair of coal-black wings, crow’s wings, and the man wasn’t a man, but an angel.

  I looked at Stamford in confusion. “Is that the Angel of St. Bartholomew’s? I thought surely I remem—”

  “Him? Oh good Lord, no.” But before he could explain, the angel was striding toward us, his wings spreading and mantling around him. “Human blood!” he said. “I need a drop of human blood!”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Stamford said, putting his hands protectively behind his back. “If you’re turning vampire, I don’t want any part of it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the angel said and turned his attention to me. He was tall but slight-built, with an angel’s long, light bones. His complexion was marble-white, his hair white and as fine as a child’s, and his eyes so pale that they seemed transparent and lit from within—although nothing could have been farther from the terrible light of the Fallen’s eyes. He wore a subdued fog-gray suit.

  “Human blood,” he said again. He had a lovely voice, clear and measured, and perfect enunciation. “I only need a drop. I promise it isn’t for occult purposes of any kind.”

  “Then why do you want it?” I said.

  Stamford said, “Don’t get him started.”

  The angel hunched both shoulder and wing—which quite effectively created a barrier between Stamford and the two of us—and said, “It’s a question of stains, you see.”

  “Stains?” said I.

  “Yes! After a few days, the police have no means of determining whether a particular stain, say on a shirt cuff, is blood or rust or perhaps paint. And they can’t distinguish between human blood and animal blood at all. I’m working to find a reagent that will change color in the presence of hemoglobin, but not in the presence of other similarly colored substances. I think I’ve got it, but I can’t test it without a drop of human blood.” He looked at me beseechingly. I saw that despite the looming darkness of his wings, which made him look taller, we were very much of a height.

  It was a bizarre request, but not an unreasonable one, even if it did seem oddly personal, and no matter what the metaphysicum morbi had done to me, I was still human. “All right,” I said. “But I want to watch this test of yours.”

  His smile made his rather beaky face quite beautiful. “Of course! Here, I have a clean bodkin just over here—” He did not actually grab my hand to drag me across the laboratory, but it was obviously a very near-run thing. “Here, a beaker and a liter of distilled water. Here, your finger and the bodkin. Just a drop, really, I was being accurate. And I’ve got a bit of sticking plaster ready.” His enthusiasm was weirdly touching—and more than a little contagious. I pricked my finger and pressed a drop of blood into his beaker, then applied the sticking plaster and watched as he stirred the water vigorously until the blood was invisible.

  “There!” he said. “Undetectable! But now if we just…” He picked up a small phial from the bench; its contents were equally colorless, and when he tipped a drop into the beaker, it looked at first as if he had simply added water to water. “Come on,” he muttered, stirring vigorously once again.

  Then the liquid clouded up, and as we watched, a bluish-green sediment began to precipitate at the bottom of the beaker.

  “Blood!” the angel shrieked in delight, and behind us, where I had forgotten about him, Stamford laughed.

  The angel turned to scowl at Stamford; then he blinked, his wings rustling like those of a startled bird, and turned back to stare at me. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I don’t know you at all, do I?”

  “Crow,” said Stamford, “this is Dr. J. H. Doyle. It’s no good asking what the J or the H stand for—he won’t tell you. Doyle, this is the angel Crow, who is looking for someone to go halves on a flat in Baker Street.”

  “But … how?” I said weakly.

  The angel—Crow? Truly?—made that shoulder/wing hunching gesture again and said, “It’s unimportant. I’m very pleased to meet you. Have you been back from Afghanistan long?”

  “Only a few months,” I said on reflex, but then realized with a jolt—“Wait. How did you know I’d been in Afghanistan?”

  The angel giggled, and I could feel myself trying to decide if it was worth the effort of taking offense. It was a very peculiar feeling, and one I did not care for, showing as it did how weak and exhausted I still was. Thus, I was doubly grateful when Stamford said, “No, no, it’s his parlor trick. Crow can guess everything about you just by looking at you.”

  “I never guess,” Crow said stiffly. “If I were to guess, I would say that Dr. Doyle returned to London four months ago. But it might be as many as six, depending upon frugality.”

  My jaw dropped open. “That’s astonishing!” I said.

  “It’s nothing,” the angel said, although he looked pleased. “A parlor trick, as Dr. Stamford says.”

  “But truly. How did you know I had been in Afghanistan at all?”

  He gave me an odd, sidelong look, halfway between coquetry and apprehension, then said, “It was really not very difficult. You came in with Dr. Stamford. You were clearly comfortable in a laboratory and familiar with St. Bartholomew’s, indicating that you were a doctor yourself. Your manner toward him and his toward you indicated that you were his colleague rather than either patron or patient.
But I had never met you before—and you had clearly never heard of me. Given my notoriety in St. Bartholomew’s and other hospitals, that means you cannot have lived in London, or even come to London regularly, for several years at least. You have been in the tropics, as the contrasting color of your face and wrists shows. You have been recently and grievously wounded, as the stiffness and hesitancy with which you move demonstrates. All of that indicates an Armed Forces doctor serving in the endless conflict in Afghanistan. You were wounded by a blow from one of the Fallen, for the miasma lingers about you—I could have known where you had been from that alone, of course. I include the other details so that you can see I wasn’t cheating. But really, as Dr. Stamford says, it’s just a parlor trick.”

  “Then I have been spending my time in entirely the wrong parlors,” I said, “for I have never encountered anything so remarkable in my life.”

  Angels lack the wherewithal to blush, but he was clearly both pleased and flustered. “The rest is easily deduced from the fact that Dr. Stamford brought you to meet me. It was only this morning that I was asking him if I had any hope of finding someone with whom to share lodgings. Therefore, you are trying to live in London on an inadequate pension and have come to the conclusion that you cannot do so alone. Four months probably, but certainly not more than six. Really, it’s quite obvious.”

  “Four and a half,” I said.

  “There,” said Crow, and his wings shook into place as if smoothing literally ruffled feathers. “And you’re interested in the flat?”

  “Definitely,” I said and could not even bring myself to frown at Stamford when he gave me an irritating and supercilious smirk, as one who would be congratulating himself loudly on this success every time I ran into him for the rest of our natural lives.

  There were reasons I had never been particularly close to him.

  3

  The Flat in Baker Street

  I worried, of course, about what else Crow might have observed about me. I was encouraged by the fact that, whatever he had seen, he had held his tongue—except for that ambiguous hint about miasma—and felt no hesitation in keeping my appointment with him the following evening.

  The house was narrow but high-ceilinged, and the flat was actually the top two floors: sitting room, bedroom, lavatory, and even a tiny W.C. on the first floor, and a finished bedroom on the second floor with a half-sized door leading to the attic. It was a splendid amount of space for its location, and the rent, when split between two persons, was within my financial grasp.

  The landlady’s name was Climpson, and she was one of those women born to give meaning to the word “respectable.” I wasn’t at all sure why she was willing to rent to an angel, but the look in her pale blue, exophthalmic eyes told me not to ask. Crow himself provided no hints, although he was clearly anxious for this venture to succeed, saying things like, “You should definitely have the first-floor bedroom. The second flight of stairs is practically a ladder. And you’ll be nearer what I believe are called the ‘usual offices,’ which I of course don’t need.”

  Angels did not eat, nor did they excrete. I had never come across a clear answer on whether they slept or not; I might now find out.

  “They’re lovely rooms,” I said, “but before I make any decisions, there is a question I must ask.”

  Crow did not roll his eyes, but his wings hunched and flared, and his voice was full of disdain when he said, “No, I am not Fallen.”

  “Yes, I can see that you are not,” I said, but this was far too important to allow myself to be deflected, and I continued obstinately, “but I need to know that that isn’t liable to change. How can you be an angel, and have a name, and yet not be bound to a dominion?”

  “London is my dominion,” he said with grand melodrama.

  “That doesn’t exactly answer my question,” I said dryly.

  Crow gave me a sharp, unmelodramatic look. “You don’t believe me.” He didn’t sound angry or hurt; he sounded intrigued.

  “I don’t know enough about angels to say, but I’ve never heard of one having a dominion as large as London—and do you mean all of London, or just the City? In which we are currently not standing, I might add. And how do you decide which suburbs are in and which are out? Woolwich? Streatham? What about Balham?”

  Now he was trying to look hurt, but his laugh bubbled over. “All right! All right! It is not a well-thought-out answer, although I maintain it to be a true one. I do consider London—and all its suburbs, thank you, Dr. Doyle—my dominion, but not in the sense you mean.” He hesitated, looking at me with visible uncertainty. “I can provide a … a character reference. The Angel of Whitehall can assure you that I have existed as I am for many years—and that my position is in no way precarious.” And he looked so delighted at his own pun that I could feel my caution melting.

  I was starting to say, “All right,” when he interrupted me with a great rustle of feathers.

  “But listen—we should know the worst of each other if we’re going to share these rooms. I don’t sleep, which I’ve been told is very annoying. I sometimes don’t speak to anyone for a day or two. It won’t be anything you’ve done, and I’ll come ’round before long. I dislike music.”

  “Music?” I said weakly. “I thought angels sang to each other through the aether.”

  “Exactly,” he said, showing his teeth in something that might not have been a smile. “Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all,” I said, for I was not musical in the slightest. “I, ah, I’m still in a good deal of pain with my leg, and it makes me abominably short-tempered. At present, I have no stamina and spend most of my time asleep—and you needn’t worry, I sleep like the dead. Except for the nightmares.”

  “The Fallen bring bad dreams,” Crow said, with a mixture of sympathy and puzzlement, for, of course, dreams were a phenomenon he could not experience.

  “In any event, just ignore any noises you hear coming from my room at night.” And as long as I could remember to keep my mouth shut, that should keep my secret safe.

  “Indeed,” said Crow, and again I felt a moment of unease about what he had guessed—or inferred—about me from his observations. I might have challenged him, but Mrs. Climpson came click-clacking back up the stairs, and after all, whatever Crow knew or didn’t know, he showed no hesitation about sharing lodgings with me.

  We made arrangements that I should move in that very evening, and Crow followed over the next several days, accompanied sometimes by medical students lugging crates, sometimes by men who looked like dockyard brawlers carrying tea chests and steamer trunks. Crow had apparently bargained with Mrs. Climpson for the attic space as well. He demonstrated boundless energy, racing in and out at all hours, taking the stairs two or three at a time. I became resigned to the fact that he made no noise, no matter how vigorously he plunged in and out; only the brush of his wings against the walls or the furniture—or once, catastrophically, the tea tray—betrayed his movements.

  For my part, I moved stiffly and haltingly from bed to armchair and back again, trying to stay out of the way, and sleeping more, and more heavily, than I had since I left Dr. Sylvester’s care. Mrs. Climpson and her cook and her shy little Scottish maid-of-all-work focused on feeding me as if they had somehow to make up for not feeding Crow, and although I still did not eat much, my appetite did begin to improve. It helped that the cook, who seemed never to emerge from her basement den, like the ogre in a fairy tale, was uncommonly good at her job.

  On the morning of August seventh, I emerged from my room, so late as to very nearly not be able to call it “morning” at all, to find Crow kneeling on the hearth rug in a drifted mound of newspapers.

  He was a fanatical reader and collector of London newspapers, subscribing to both dailies and weeklies in a bewildering array and clipping articles from them with patient fervor; anything connected to crime caught his eye, but it was murder he was after, and the gorier the better.

  He did not look up at my approach, bu
t said, “Doyle, this is fantastic!”

  “What’s fantastic?” I said cautiously.

  “They’ve found a murdered woman in Whitechapel. She was stabbed at least twenty-four times!”

  “Not fantastic,” I said. “Try fascinating, since you are clearly fascinated.”

  “Fantastic as in outré?” he offered.

  “I’ll give you that,” I said, amused despite myself. “Twenty-four times?”

  “At least. The newspaper reports are not very clear. And nobody knows who she is.”

  “That’s not terribly unusual for murdered women in Whitechapel.” I rang the bell for Jennie and sat down at the table.

  Crow hunched his wings at me irritably. “And it’s Elliston’s case. Well, he won’t let me in.”

  “Let you in?”

  “To George Yard Buildings. It’s idiotic—he wasn’t the detective in Emma Smith’s case. He won’t have the least idea of what to look for.”

  “I must be very stupid this morning,” I said. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

  “The murder!”

  “Yes, I did grasp that.” Jennie came in, soft-footed and apologetic, and I asked her for toast and a fresh pot of tea. “Chandler could do you a poached egg, Dr. Doyle. If you wanted.”

  “Not this morning,” I said.

  She nodded humbly and slipped out. I knew she’d only asked because Mrs. Chandler or Mrs. Climpson had told her to. (Being respectable women of a certain age, both cook and landlady rated the “Mrs.,” even though I had seen no evidence that either Mr. Chandler or Mr. Climpson existed—or ever had.)

  “Emma Smith,” Crow said in precise, thin irritation, “was murdered on the third of April, also in Whitechapel, also with an excessive degree of violence. They have not caught her murderers. It is not unreasonable to ask if the two cases may have some connection—which one might also ask about the Millwood and Turner assaults. And that’s not even counting the dismembered woman they found in the Thames last year. But no one will, because the police of London are idiots.”