The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

  Inside, there was a gravel path that led us through the grounds, bleak in the moonlight, to a great ugly house, square and unyielding, that could never have been a lodge in anything more than name. “I cannot understand it,” said Sholto, somewhere between grumbling and whining. “Brother Bartholomew never goes to bed before four o’clock—and I specifically told him I should be coming this evening—but there is no light in his room.”

  Indeed, the entire house was dark, save for a chink of light escaping from a window beside the front door. Crow pointed this out, and Sholto said, “That is the housekeeper’s room. Mrs. Bernstone will know what’s going on. But if you wouldn’t mind…? I don’t want to overwhelm her, and my brother has as few visitors as I do.”

  We agreed, and in a surprisingly considerate gesture, Sholto handed Miss Morstan the lantern before he approached the house. She held it high to give him as much light as possible. The door opened in a sudden flood of lamplight, and we all heard a woman’s voice cry, “Oh, Mr. Thaddeus, thank God you’ve come,” before it closed again.

  “An unlikely savior,” I said, and Miss Morstan laughed.

  “He seems to be a good-hearted man,” she said. “But how strange that those same words, ‘the Sign of the Four,’ should be found both among my father’s things and on Major Sholto’s body. You did not mention the map, thus I did not, either, but I could not help thinking of it. Do you think it could be a map to the treasure’s original hiding place?”

  “I hardly think it could be anything else,” said Crow. “Miss Morstan, I don’t want to impugn your father’s memory, but is there any possibility he was involved with Major Sholto in this…” He hesitated.

  Miss Morstan did not. “Robbery,” said she. “It is nothing else and it is unconscionable. I cannot imagine my father taking part in such an unethical scheme. But at the same time, I cannot deny the existence of the map.”

  “Is it possible,” Crow said, “that your father found out about the treasure after Major Sholto left India and decided that he had to confront him face-to-face before he took any kind of action?”

  “That sounds like my father. He would hate the thought of going against a friend.”

  “And of course he would seek out Major Sholto the instant he arrived in London,” I said, half to Miss Morstan and half to Crow. “To get it over with.”

  “Of course,” said Miss Morstan. “Poor Father. He would have hated it. I only hope he did not know in his final moments that Major Sholto was about to kill him.”

  “You reject the story of the heart ailment?” said Crow.

  “Utterly,” said Miss Morstan. “My father was not a stupid man. He would never have kept such a thing secret from me. How could he, when I might inherit it?”

  “And it’s awfully convenient,” I said, “that the only person present when he died was the only person who knew of this alleged heart ailment.”

  “That is also true,” said Crow. He asked Miss Morstan, “Do you still intend to take a reading?”

  “More than ever. I want to know the truth, and I want to know where his body is.” She looked around and added, “He clearly wasn’t buried on the grounds.”

  “No,” I agreed. The grounds of Pondicherry Lodge looked as though a thousand moles had tunneled for a thousand days and then, unsatisfied, had tunneled for a thousand more.

  “He said they dug up the grounds,” Crow murmured. “And I deduce from this evidence that at least one of the Sholto brothers is an extremely methodical man.”

  “Brother Bartholomew, at a guess,” said I and caught the answering gleam of Crow’s smile.

  That was when we heard the shriek. It came from inside the house, and it was a terrible noise even at that distance, ripping the air apart like knives.

  I discovered Miss Morstan clutching my wrist, and I did something stupid. Instead of gently extracting myself, I turned my hand over and returned her grip. She had remarkable hand strength for a woman her size; I glanced at her face and saw she still looked perfectly calm.

  She caught my glance and said wryly, “Governesses must have nerves of steel.”

  “Should we go in, do you think?” said Crow, who was bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet.

  “We don’t know the house,” I said, “and no one except Mr. Sholto will know that we aren’t intruders.”

  “Point taken,” said Crow, and Thaddeus Sholto burst from the house, his eyes all but starting from their sockets, and his voice hoarse and cracking when he told us, “Brother Bartholomew is dead.”

  13

  The Truth About Captain Morstan

  For the next three-quarters of an hour, I was simply Dr. Doyle, reviving Mrs. Bernstone from the dead faint in which she lay across the threshold of the attic room where Bartholomew Sholto had died; making her and Thaddeus Sholto each take a slug of brandy for the shock; getting Miss Morstan to make tea, sweet and milky, and settling the two of them at the kitchen table to drink it, Miss Morstan there to remind Mrs. Bernstone at intervals that the tea was in front of her.

  Thaddeus Sholto talked the entire time in a thin, bewildered thread of a voice, explaining disjointedly and repeatedly how Mrs. Bernstone had told him Bartholomew had locked himself in the attic all day and refused to answer her; how he, Thaddeus, had told her to bring the master key; how they had gone up to the attic and he had knocked and called, but Bartholomew had not answered; how he had unlocked the door and found Bartholomew dead, his face in a hideous rictus, and no sign anywhere of what had killed him or of the treasure. He kept saying, “What do I do? What do I do?” like a man told he must thread a needle without the use of his hands.

  Finally, when there was some color in his face again and his hands had stopped chattering the teacup against the saucer, I said, “You must notify the police.”

  He was aghast. I said, “Your brother is dead by some means we do not know, at the hands of a person as yet unknown. At this point, if you don’t notify the police, you will only create more questions that will be even more difficult to answer.”

  I herded him outside, toward the side gate where his coachman was waiting, but as we reached it I was struck with an idea. I asked Sholto, “Did your brother own McMurdo or was he leasing it?”

  “Oh, he owned it,” said Sholto. “Brother Bartholomew was very particular.”

  “Therefore, you own it now?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Will you lend it to me?”

  “Lend it to you?”

  “If it has the tracking algorithm, it might be able to track your brother’s murderer.”

  “Yes, of course,” Sholto said. “That is, yes, I will be happy to lend the cerberus to you.”

  We had reached the gate. Sholto knocked to summon the cerberus, which appeared at once from its niche in the wall, heads up alertly and the tiny red sparks of its eyes bright.

  Sholto said, “Oh dear, oh dear. McMurdo, my brother is dead.”

  The cerberus’s eyes seemed to get brighter. It spat out:

  WHO

  “We don’t know,” I said. “Are you equipped with the tracking algorithm?”

  YES

  “Since my brother is dead,” Sholto said in a rush, “you belong to me now. I wish to lend you to Dr. Doyle to track the murderer.”

  There was a long pause. Finally, it spat out another length of ticker tape:

  MUST CONFIRM DEATH OF BARTHOLOMEW SHOLTO

  “Oh dear,” said Sholto, wringing his hands.

  “That’s not impossible,” I said, “but you need to go for the police. McMurdo, can you come with me?”

  Another long pause before the cerberus said:

  IF/THEN SEQUENCE VALID. I WILL COME.

  “All right,” I said. “Just a moment.”

  I got Sholto out the gate to where his coachman was waiting, reading a newspaper by moonlight, as werewolves do. I bundled Sholto into the carriage and gave the coachman the bare facts: Bartholomew Sholto was dead and it looked like murder. He nod
ded, his eyes wide, and I knew I could count on him to ensure that Sholto made it to a police station and did not simply run off into the night.

  The carriage rattled away. I swung the gate door closed, feeling the jar of it in my bones. By now, the house was wide awake, and the police would come in through the main gates. It occurred to me to wonder, as McMurdo bolted the door with a bar of wood about the size and weight of a railroad tie, why Bartholomew Sholto had a guard on this side gate at all, if it was true he had no guests. Why not just leave it bolted?

  McMurdo kept pace with me to the house and followed me up flight after damnable flight of stairs, each step creaking under its weight, to the attic, where Crow was contemplating Bartholomew Sholto’s body.

  “I found what killed him. Hello, McMurdo.”

  McMurdo nodded courteously.

  “McMurdo needs to confirm that Mr. Sholto is dead.”

  “Well, he’s not getting any less dead, so come look. Doyle, come see this—but whatever you do, don’t touch it. Unless you’ve a hankering for a quick and ugly death?”

  “Not at the moment,” said I.

  Bartholomew Sholto’s body was huddled in a wooden armchair, the limbs twisted and the head dropped to the right shoulder with a dreadful teeth-bared grin on its face. The resemblance to Thaddeus Sholto was exact, so much so that I had to remind myself that Thaddeus had gone for the police and could not be sitting here dead and cold.

  McMurdo began a solemn examination of the corpse, much as it had examined us when we had arrived. I came to Crow’s side and locked my hands together behind my back.

  “Here,” said Crow. He pointed, careful himself not to touch, although I wasn’t sure that poison would have any effect on him.

  “It looks like a thorn,” I said.

  “It is,” said Crow. “Whoever killed him used a blowpipe.”

  McMurdo straightened. It looked from me to Crow and said:

  DEATH OF BARTHOLOMEW SHOLTO CONFIRMED. GIVE ME A HALFPENNY

  “I haven’t any,” said Crow. “Doyle? McMurdo needs a token before it can do anything.”

  “And a halfpenny will do?” I said, digging through my pockets for loose change.

  “It’s symbolic. Any coin, really.”

  “Well, I have a penny, and McMurdo’s services this evening are certainly worth that much.” I gave the penny to McMurdo, who inspected it gravely, nodded in confirmation, and ate it.

  READY

  it said.

  WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS

  “Crow can give you instructions, too,” I said.

  Crow said promptly, “Examine the room for signs of an intruder. We already know he took something. But I don’t know how he got in and out. It wasn’t by the door.”

  What he had taken, of course, was the treasure, and I remembered Thaddeus Sholto’s reiterated dismay. His claim to be disinterested had gone up like flash paper; he seemed almost more grieved by the loss of the treasure than by his brother’s death.

  Grief could take strange forms—and I was aware of my brother’s watch ticking in my waistcoat pocket—but I wondered about the avarice Sholto had described as riding both his father and his brother.

  Crow was concerned with more practical matters. He said, “It’s clear so far as it goes. But then it isn’t clear at all. Bartholomew Sholto was killed by a poison dart. And he was killed either by a one-legged man or by someone with a one-legged man.”

  “How do you make that out?”

  “By the footprints. Look. Here’s a boot, a heavy one, nothing like Bartholomew Sholto’s slippers. And here, about a pace away, is an ever-so-slightly irregular circle. Clearly the underpinnings of the same man—and proof also of Thaddeus Sholto’s story, in case we were wondering.”

  “We might have been,” I said.

  Crow laughed. “No, the one-legged man was definitely here. What puzzles me is how he got in. The door was locked from the inside. The window is closed and locked. And there’s a sixty-foot climb up a blank wall on the other side. Where did he come from?”

  McMurdo whirred, like clearing its throat, and said:

  THERE WERE TWO

  “You’re sure?” said Crow. “No, never mind, you wouldn’t have said it if you weren’t. That explains the rope, in any event.”

  “The rope?” I said.

  He nodded toward the corner by the window, where a coil of rope lay in untidy loops. “The one-legged man could climb a rope let down by a companion—and he could lower the treasure the same way, before climbing back down himself. But, while excellent in and of itself, that merely backs the question up a step. How did the companion get in and out?”

  “There’s only one other point of egress,” I said and quoted back to him something he was fond of saying: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains…”

  Crow frowned up at the ragged hole in the plaster. “Yes, but that leads to a sort of oubliette, which by definition is a dead end—a hiding place isn’t much good if your enemies can get to it from the outside.”

  “You should at least look,” I said. “I would, but I can’t get up there, and neither can McMurdo.”

  “You’ll have to give me a leg up,” Crow said. “I confess, I wouldn’t have waited for you if I could have reached the hole unaided.”

  “I can do that much,” I said and set my cane down so that I could lace my fingers into a stirrup.

  Crow was absurdly light and really only needed a foot or so of boost. “Could’ve used your wings,” I said, mostly joking.

  “Doesn’t work like that,” he said, as he pushed and I lifted. “Besides—” And then his hands caught the rafters and he scrambled up, disappearing entirely for a moment and then reappearing as a face, disembodied in the blackness.

  “Besides what?” I said.

  “What? Hand me the lantern, please.” He reached down, and I stretched up as best I could. He caught the lantern handle and disappeared again.

  After no more than a few seconds, his voice drifted down to McMurdo and me. “Well, that answers one question. It isn’t an oubliette at all. This stretches the entire length of the house. Hold on a minute.”

  We waited. In the silence, I could hear McMurdo ticking. Then Crow came back and said, “Yes, a little further along there’s a trapdoor to the roof and a plastered-over space where I think there must have been a trapdoor to the rest of the house. I guess Major Sholto didn’t think he had to worry about his enemies coming from above. Which only goes to show that really you can never be too careful.”

  “He probably wasn’t expecting his sons to go hacking great holes in the ceiling,” I said. “And certainly not on the same night his one-legged friend came calling … Isn’t that timing a little suspicious?”

  “Someone must have talked,” Crow said. “The interesting question is who they talked to.”

  “Does someone in this house possibly know who the one-legged man is, do you mean?”

  “Someone might,” said Crow. “I’m coming down.”

  McMurdo and I stepped back and Crow descended, not gracefully, in a flurry of feathers. “I certainly think it’s worth asking.”

  * * *

  I found Miss Morstan, Mrs. Bernstone, and a planchette in the dining room. Miss Morstan seemed embarrassed by the planchette. “It is not my usual method, but Mrs. Bernstone was so kind as to volunteer her help, and the planchette is the tool she is most comfortable with.”

  “Have you had any luck?”

  “Depends on what you mean by luck,” Miss Morstan said and made a face. “I cannot catch even a hint of my father.”

  “Don’t be discouraged, dear,” said Mrs. Bernstone. “It takes time for the planchette to warm up to a new sitter.”

  Mrs. Bernstone was seated at an angle that meant she could not see my face, so that I allowed my expression to reflect my incredulity.

  Miss Morstan smiled. “Do you need me for something?”

  “Yes, if you have a minute.”

  She looked inq
uiringly at Mrs. Bernstone, who said, “I think a break is a good idea. Let things settle.”

  “Then pray excuse me for a moment,” said Miss Morstan and followed me out of the room.

  When we were out of earshot, she said, “I would never teach my pupils such nonsense, but she so kindly offered to help, and it can provide a focus. But what about your investigations?”

  “We’ve discovered some things,” I said. “Crow and McMurdo are out in the grounds, trying to find the murderer’s trail. I came to ask if you could scry for him.”

  “Yes, of course. All I need is a bowl of water and a focus. Something belonging to the murderer, or something you know he’s touched.”

  I had anticipated this request. “As long as you don’t open the phial,” I said. “We aren’t sure if the poison is only on the tip.” I had had a small stoppered phial and a pair of forceps in my bag, and had very gingerly removed the thorn from Bartholomew Sholto’s neck.

  “Is that…?”

  “Yes. But I’m quite sure the murderer touched it.”

  “Yes,” she said faintly, and it occurred to me that the scrying she was accustomed to was probably on the order of finding lost gloves. But she rallied gamely and said, “Just let me ask Mrs. Bernstone for a bowl.”

  We ended up back at the kitchen table, the planchette and its papers pushed to one side. Mrs. Bernstone watched as Miss Morstan set the bowl on the table, the phial right beside it.

  “This may take a minute,” she said. “I’m not as tranquil as I should be.”

  “I cannot imagine why,” I said and got another smile.

  Mrs. Bernstone came across to me and murmured, “She’s very talented.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You must be very proud of her,” she said, and I realized in horror that she thought Miss Morstan was my intended. In the split second before I refuted this idea, I realized with even more horror that without this belief, Mrs. Bernstone might take a very different view of Miss Morstan being out so late with a party of men. An angel was generally considered an impeccable chaperone, but Crow was different, and Mrs. Bernstone had been alarmed by him—which was why Crow had gone with McMurdo and I had come to find Miss Morstan.