The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

  I acquitted him of any malice—indeed of any awareness of the effect of his words—but it was still a stunning display of tactlessness. Miss Morstan paled but said resolutely, “I knew he had to be dead. How did he die? Were you there?”

  “No!” Sholto cried in something near panic. “No no no! I do have information, which I am happy to share”—that part, I believed—“but my knowledge is all secondhand.”

  “It is better than no knowledge at all,” Miss Morstan said. “Tell me everything you can.”

  Sholto was flustered now, tugging fretfully on the fringe of red hair around the bald dome of his head. “It is a complicated story,” he said, “and I must explain my part in it. I have done the best I could!”

  “I did not mean to accuse you of anything,” said Miss Morstan. “Please, tell me your story.”

  “Well,” said Sholto—then, “You must indulge me. My hookah calms me and helps me think.” He got the contraption going while we stood in a semicircle watching, like three cats with a timorous and exceptionally bald mouse. But finally he was settled and puffing, like Alice’s Caterpillar, and began his story: “As I’m sure you have guessed, I am one of the sons of Major John Sholto, your father’s close friend.”

  “Yes,” Miss Morstan said encouragingly, but Sholto had thought of something else: “You must promise me that what I say will go no further. No police or officials or”—he shuddered—“newspapers. We can settle it all quietly among ourselves.”

  “I promise,” said Miss Morstan, and Crow and I murmured assent.

  “Very good,” said Sholto. “Very good.” He puffed on his hookah, clearly steeling himself for his task. Then he said, “My father retired some eleven years ago and came to live at Pondicherry Lodge in Upper Norwood. He had prospered in India and brought back with him a considerable sum of money, a large collection of valuable curiosities—my father had quite the connoisseur’s eye, which I flatter myself I have inherited—and a staff of native servants. With these advantages, he bought a house and lived in great luxury. He had only myself and my twin brother, Bartholomew, as heirs, my mother having died long ago, and there being no other children.”

  I thought “prospered” was a nice choice of word, vague and agencyless and so much better than words like “despoiled” or “plundered.”

  “I remember vividly the sensation caused by the disappearance of Captain Morstan. We read the details in the papers, and, since we knew Father to have been his close friend, we discussed the case with him, and he joined in our speculations quite freely.”

  Another pause while he resorted to the hookah. I hoped it really did calm him, for he was a man in sore need of calming. He continued, “We never had the slightest idea that he alone of everyone on Earth knew the true fate of Captain Morstan.”

  Miss Morstan said, “Pray continue,” and sounded more than sincere.

  “We did know that Father had brought more back from India than just treasure. He was very nervous about going out alone—eventually ceasing to do so altogether—and he employed two werewolves as bodyguards. He hired a witch to hex the estate to drive away trespassers. He would never tell us what it was he feared—nor, indeed, discuss the matter at all—but he had a most marked aversion to men with wooden legs. He once actually fired his revolver at a wooden-legged man who turned out to be a harmless and respectable tradesman. By the greatest good fortune he missed, and we were able to hush the matter up, although it cost us a great deal of money. My brother and I used to think this was merely an eccentricity of my father’s, but events since have led us to change our opinion.”

  Another pause: the smoke from the hookah was starting to wreathe his head like fog.

  “Early in 1882, my father received a letter from India which was a great shock to him. He nearly fainted at the breakfast table when he opened it. What was in the letter, we could never discover—I believe he burned it that same day—but I was close enough to see that it was short and written in a scrawling hand. It was my father’s death sentence. Toward the end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope and that he wished to speak to us.”

  Sholto sighed, exhaling smoke. “He had been moved into a room on the ground floor. When we entered, he besought us to lock the door and come close. I cannot give you his exact words, but he told us that when in India, he and Captain Morstan had come into possession of a remarkable treasure. My father brought it to England, and when Captain Morstan arrived, he came straight to Pondicherry Lodge to claim his share. There was what my father called a difference of opinion over the division of the treasure, and Captain Morstan’s anger so exacerbated a weakness of his heart that he had a thunderclap coronary and died on the spot.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Mary Morstan.

  The words were like a thunderclap themselves. Crow and I both startled, Crow’s wings flaring and resettling, and Sholto nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Sholto!” Miss Morstan said, reddening. “I didn’t mean that I think you are lying. But none of that sounds in the slightest like my father. He was the most even-tempered of men, and he had very strong opinions about the pillaging of India’s treasures. He wouldn’t have wanted a share in your father’s loot. And his heart was perfectly healthy.”

  Sholto looked intensely uncomfortable. “My father claimed that Captain Morstan’s heart trouble was a secret between the two of them, but I confess I have always had my doubts. My father was a man in whom the sin of avarice was particularly strong, and there was very little he would balk at in order to keep what he coveted. As an example, he had taken a pearl chaplet from the treasure to send to you, but he could never bring himself to do so. So that I suppose I would not be horrifically shocked to discover he had committed murder. But it must be true that your father came to see him, for by then my father, as I have said, never went out.”

  “They were friends,” Miss Morstan said sadly. “Or, at least, my father thought they were.”

  “My father sincerely regretted his death,” Sholto said anxiously. “And we cannot know the truth, as both of them are dead.”

  “We could know,” Miss Morstan contradicted him. “I am certified in clairvoyance.”

  “Clairvoyance?” said Sholto, looking more than ever like a frog.

  “They both died in your father’s house, didn’t they?” she said. “There’s nothing simpler.”

  “Wait!” shrieked Sholto. “I haven’t explained!”

  “What is there to explain?” Miss Morstan said. “And can you not explain on the way there?”

  “You’ve got me all muddled,” Sholto complained. “My father, you see, had hidden the treasure, and as he was about to tell us where it was, he let out a most dreadful yell: ‘Keep him out! For Christ’s sake keep him out!’ We both twisted round to stare at the window behind us, and we both, Bartholomew and I, saw a face looking in on us out of the darkness. We saw the whitening of the nose where it pressed against the glass. It was a bearded face with wild, cruel eyes and an expression of concentrated malevolence. I should know it again in an instant. We rushed toward the window, but the man vanished, and when we returned to my father’s bed, we found him lifeless. I suppose it is not really too much to say he was scared to death. We had the grounds searched immediately, but found no trace of him save only a single footprint in the flower bed beneath that particular window, and a cheap all-hex ward on the gravel just beyond the gate. It was melted all around the edges.”

  “No hex can actually stop someone who is determined enough,” Crow said.

  “It was certainly proof that my father had a determined enemy,” said Sholto. “And although he never said so, we both felt that this enemy was part of the secret of the treasure, or why in the world should he have hidden it?”

  “It’s not as if he had done anything prosecutable,” murmured Miss Morstan, who apparently shared her late father’s feelings on the despoliation of India.

  “Quite,” said Sholto with a nervous gi
ggle. “My brother and I spent weeks—months, years!—digging up the grounds and sounding the walls, all with no success.”

  “Why did you not hire a clairvoyant?” Miss Morstan said in perplexity.

  “No outsiders!” Sholto said so vehemently that he choked, and it was a moment before he could continue. “Finally Brother Bartholomew, who is a clever fellow, took measurements and did a horrific series of calculations and found that, when you had taken the width of the roof and the floors and all that into account, the house was four feet shorter on the inside than the outside, and that led us to a garret above the attic that neither of us had had any clue existed. Brother Bartholomew climbed up and found the treasure chest resting on two rafters. He and I lowered it down and there it sits. He says he cannot compute the value of the jewels.”

  “But what has this to do with me?” said Miss Morstan. “And why have you been sending me pearls?”

  “I knew I should get muddled,” Sholto muttered. “That was why Father wanted to talk to us. He felt that you were owed recompense.”

  “Blood money,” said Miss Morstan.

  “No no no no no!” Sholto cried. “He said he did not murder your father! But he said half of the treasure was rightfully your share, and he was most sincerely ashamed of the greed that had kept him from notifying you.”

  Miss Morstan looked unconvinced, but said nothing.

  “He asked us to put that right for him, and I am afraid it is here that Brother Bartholomew and I began to disagree. He is too much like our father and resents any suggestion that the treasure should be divided. But I say we have plenty of money ourselves. I desire no more. We are your trustees—or, at least, that is my view—and I grew very angry at Brother Bartholomew. Our disagreement became so fundamental that I thought it best to remove myself from Pondicherry Lodge. But yesterday Brother Bartholomew summoned me to help him extract the treasure from its hiding place, and I notified you immediately. We need only drive out to Upper Norwood and demand our share.”

  Our share, I noted, not your share. He was not as indifferent to the treasure as he was trying to appear.

  “But why the pearls?” said Miss Morstan.

  “The chaplet that my father brought out and did not send. Brother Bartholomew did not want to send it, either, for much the same reasons. He said that sending you the chaplet might give rise to gossip, and that might lead to trouble. It was all I could do to persuade him to let me send you a single pearl once a year so that at least you might never feel destitute.”

  “It is exceedingly kind of you,” said Miss Morstan.

  Sholto waved her thanks away, but looked pleased. “I must confess that I share my brother’s paranoia,” he said, “and for this reason. The morning after my father’s death, the window of his room—that same window—was found open. His room had been ransacked and upon his chest had been affixed a scrap of paper with the words ‘THE SIGN OF THE FOUR’ scrawled across it. As far as we could judge, nothing had actually been stolen, though everything had been dragged out into the light. My brother and I assume that it was the work of the same man who scared my father to death and that it was connected to the fear that had haunted him, but it is still a complete mystery to us.”

  “Do the words ‘the sign of the four’ mean anything to you?” Crow asked. I tried not to look like every nerve was thrumming in anticipation.

  But Sholto said, “No. Brother Bartholomew and I racked our brains, but we could think of nothing.”

  “Did you ask the servants?” said Miss Morstan. Sholto looked baffled.

  “The servants?”

  “If they were with your father in India, they might have seen or heard something,” Miss Morstan said.

  Sholto rang the bell and the Indian servant appeared, brows raised inquiringly. Sholto released a flood of Punjabi, to which the servant—the khitmutgar, the house steward—listened with bafflement growing clearer and clearer on his face.

  At last he said, “No, sahib. Those words mean nothing to me. We all knew of your father’s fear of one-legged men, but none of us knew the reason for it, except perhaps Lal Chowdar, who is dead.”

  “It was a good idea,” Crow said to Miss Morstan.

  “Really, I just want to find out what happened to my father,” she said.

  “I think,” I said, “that we ought to start for Upper Norwood. It is only going to grow later.”

  “You are very practical,” Miss Morstan said, smiling at me. And I returned her smile even as I cursed myself as seventeen different kinds of fool.

  Sholto still seemed inclined to delay, for all that the entire undertaking was his idea, but the khitmutgar allied himself with us and got his master bundled into a heavy astrakhan-trimmed topcoat and a rabbitskin cap with hanging lappets that covered the ears. “My health is somewhat fragile,” Sholto said. “I am compelled to be exceedingly careful.”

  The werewolf coachman was waiting to assist Sholto into the carriage, and as soon as we were all inside, he set off, again at a tremendous clip.

  Thaddeus Sholto talked incessantly, his voice rising above the clatter of the wheels, and I realized he was still nervous nearly to the point of terror, although whether his fear was of his brother or of the mysterious—and, admittedly, alarming—one-legged man, I could not say. He was a hypochondriac of the first water, taking great and obvious pleasure in reciting his symptoms. He would periodically ask for my opinion; since I was not listening to him, my answers were rather hit or miss, but since he was not listening to me, being too enthralled with the saga of his own health, it hardly mattered. Sholto just kept talking. It was an inexpressible relief when the carriage pulled up and the coachman leapt down to open the door.

  “This, Miss Morstan,” said Sholto as he handed her out, “is Pondicherry Lodge.”

  All we could actually see of it was the high exterior wall, topped with shards of glass that gleamed ominously in the moonlight. There was a single narrow door in this wall; iron-clamped and notably Gothic in appearance, and on this Sholto knocked with a peculiar sharp rhythm, a rhythm which was explained when the door opened and a cerberus bounded out, the moonlight showing its rivets but leaving its eyes as hollows of darkness with only the faintest, dullest gleam of red in their depths.

  Some cerberus automata were actually built in the shape of dogs. This one was in human form, save for the three mastiff heads, which its body was built broad and squat to accommodate. It was two-thirds my height and probably that much broader.

  “It knows me,” Sholto said, “but it will want to examine the three of you. Brother Bartholomew is becoming more and more paranoid.”

  The cerberus inspected first me, then Miss Morstan, with polite thoroughness, but it was sorely baffled by Crow. It circled him twice, examining him first with one head, then with another. But finally it stopped solidly in front of him. The whir was very clear in the silence, and a ticker tape emerged from a slot in its chest. The cerberus tore it off and handed it to Crow.

  “Oh dear,” said Crow as he read it, then handed it to me. I read:

  NAMELESS? FALLEN? WHAT?

  Crow said to the cerberus, “I am not Nameless and I am not Fallen.”

  The cerberus cocked its heads, and although the whine it made came from the ball joints in its three-in-one neck, it sounded exactly like a puzzled dog.

  “There isn’t a word for it,” Crow said.

  “I vouch for all three of these persons,” said Sholto; he sounded pleased with himself, as if he was relishing the opportunity to be someone who could vouch for others.

  The cerberus spat out another ticker tape and handed it to Sholto. He said, “Really, McMurdo,” and to us, “He won’t let us in until he’s sure Mr. Crow isn’t Fallen.”

  “If Crow were Fallen,” I said, “we would already be inside and the house would be on fire.”

  The ticker tape this time read:

  I MUST DO MY DUTY

  “No one’s saying you shouldn’t do your duty,” Sholto said impatientl
y.

  “I don’t know a way to prove I’m not Fallen,” Crow said, “aside from continuing not to wreak destruction on Upper Norwood.”

  “That’s certainly a good start,” I said, and Crow giggled.

  “McMurdo, this is ridiculous,” said Sholto. “You’re asking us to prove a negative.”

  The cerberus made its baffled whine again.

  “I need to see Mr. Bartholomew,” said Sholto, “and I need these three people to come with me.”

  “You can recognize Crow is not Fallen,” I said slowly. “There is no scent of burning and nothing is catching fire. The Fallen carry fire with them wherever they go. And you can recognize that he is not Fallen by his eyes. The Fallen’s eyes glow red. You can see them from a hundred yards away.”

  “You sound as if you’ve seen the Fallen in person, Dr. Doyle,” said Miss Morstan.

  “I have,” I said. “That’s what happened to my leg. If this cerberus were one of the occult models, it would be able to detect the Fallen’s miasma. Which would solve our problem nicely, since Crow wouldn’t have it, and not being an angel, I can’t Fall.”

  “It’s being ridiculous and insubordinate,” said Sholto. “McMurdo, I vouch for them. He isn’t Fallen.”

  The cerberus seemed to consider for a moment; then it turned to Miss Morstan, heads cocked inquiringly.

  She looked alarmed. “What does it want from me?”

  “A third confirmation,” said Crow. “That will allow it to accept the hypothesis—that I am not Fallen—as true. It’s a built-in failsafe for situations like this where it’s gotten hung up on something that can’t be proved directly. I didn’t think it’d work for this, but plainly McMurdo thinks it will. Just tell it I’m not Fallen—assuming you believe I’m not.”

  “Mr. Crow is not Fallen,” Miss Morstan said firmly to the cerberus.

  The whine of the dubious ball joints again, and then the cerberus nodded its middle head and stepped aside.