But within seconds Wilber Holmes is on his feet and advancing toward the sound.
“Who’s there?” he asks, his voice sounding shaky.
Sherlock will never forget the response.
“Police!” comes a thundering voice. “Open up!”
His father’s answer is almost pleading.
“What do you want with us?”
“Open up or we will knock it down, sir!”
Wilber lets them in.
A plainclothes detective and two burly constables step heavily into the room. They have solemn looks on their faces, the policemen in helmets with black straps across their chins, long blue overcoats with wide belts around the middle, and thick black boots on their feet. One holds a “bull’s eye” gas lantern in his hand.
“My name is Inspector Lestrade,” states the man in the civilian clothes. He is an aging chap, perhaps nearly sixty, with a bushy mustache, and dressed in brown corduroy trousers, black waistcoat with a pocket watch on a chain, and dark brown coat; he is lean and ferret-like, but with a bulldog attitude. “Do you have a son?” he inquires.
“Why … why, yes.”
“We need to speak with him.”
Wilber turns and looks across the room at the little bed, terrified. He sees his son, sitting up, staring back at the police. There is a curious hardness in the boy’s face, a look of steel in his gray eyes.
The three men advance across the room and surround him, as if he might try to escape.
“What’s your name?”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
“Were you, or were you not at the location of the Whitechapel murder past midnight this day?”
The boy pauses.
“I was.”
Wilber is astonished.
“Sherlock? No. No! He couldn’t have been. He was right here. He and his mother went to the opera.”
“The opera?” inquires Lestrade, looking around at the poverty-stricken room. “Your wife attends the opera?”
“Jews,” murmurs one constable to the other.
“We didn’t actually attend,” says the boy in an even voice. “We just stood outside and listened.”
“Yes,” says Wilber, “Yes, that’s right. I misspoke myself.”
“Indeed,” responds Lestrade.
He eyes the boy again.
“You have been observed at the murder scene twice, on two consecutive days. What is your explanation?”
Wilbur is stunned. He tries to speak, but can’t.
“I have none,” says Sherlock.
“I see,” snaps Lestrade. “You were also observed, by this constable,” he motions to one of the policemen, “at the arraignment of Mohammad Adalji, the villain in this hideous affair. Not only were you observed there, but the accused spoke to you: only you. Did he not? Don’t deny it.”
“I won’t.”
Wilberforce Holmes stares, openmouthed, at his son.
“What did the Arab say?” Lestrade is twirling an end of his mustache.
“He said he didn’t do it.”
One of the constables barely hides a smirk.
“There is no question that he did it!” shouts Lestrade. “Are you involved with him?”
“No.”
The inspector studies the boy’s face for a while before he speaks again.
“Do you know something about this? Do you know something that we should know?”
Sherlock hesitates. He doesn’t want to withhold evidence from the police, but he can’t tell them about the glass eye, either. It might be the Arab’s only chance, the only clue to what really happened. He can’t just give it away, not to the very people who hold Adalji’s life in their hands.
“No, sir.”
“I’ll ask you again.”
“No need.”
“Why?” The detective thinks the boy may be ready to confess something.
“I know nothing.”
Lestrade’s face turns red.
“We have jailed one scoundrel, young sir. But a coin purse is missing. We know that because we found beadwork particular to such an item in the alley. We know you frequent the streets, consort with gangs.”
“My son does not con …” starts Wilber, but Sherlock cuts him off
“I know nothing about the purse.”
“Then you had better come with me,” barks Lestrade.
“WHERE?”
It is Rose. She has risen from her bed and entered the room to see two policemen and an inspector surrounding her son.
“We are arresting your boy on suspicion of withholding evidence.”
“Or on the possible involvement in a murder.” It is the constable with the gas lantern. He looks at Mrs. Holmes with cold eyes. He is a soldier against evil and it shows.
“But that’s absurd!” sputters Wilber Holmes and reaches out toward his son.
“Obstruct us and you will come too,” says the constable.
The detective nods at the boy. The policemen seize him. Rose Holmes cries out. She tries to pull her son away but Wilber takes her into his arms and holds her tightly. She beats her hands on his chest and then buries her face in his neck and sobs.
“Come quietly and there will be no difficulties,” intones Lestrade. “We don’t wish to cause anyone pain, but we must get to the bottom of this.”
Sherlock goes quietly, indeed. In fact, he banishes his mother’s cries and his father’s eyes from his mind; erases them. He can’t break down. Emotion won’t get him anywhere. He must be like steel. As of this second, he has to find a solution to this crime. It isn’t just the Arab who is in danger anymore.
Now … he has to save himself
MOHAMMAD’S STORY
In the morning he awakes to a prayer, uttered in a weeping voice, soft and frightened. He starts upright on his stone bed, shocked to find himself in a dark little holding cell in the Bow Street Police Station.
He had dreamt of eyes. Thousands of eyes had been in his bed at home staring at him, pleading for help. A bigger one had emerged from under his mattress. All the others had turned to it.
That was what had first roused him. Then, as his head cleared, he heard the prayer. He once came across it in a book about the Crusades and remembers it well: he can photograph things with his mind’s eye.
He swings his legs around and sits on the edge of the bed, listening. It is a call to Allah in a time of distress. Sound travels poorly in these cave-like rooms, but he can tell that the voice is coming from the cell next to his.
When it fades into silence, Sherlock sits, listening to his own breathing. Then he takes a chance.
“Mohammad?”
There is absolute stillness. Sherlock doesn’t breathe. No answer.
He sighs and stands up. The hard bed is the only piece of furniture in the damp, stone room. There are no windows, just a small square opening with three bars cut at the height of his eyes in the big iron door. There is no mirror either, which irritates the boy: his hair must be terribly messy.
Suddenly, a sound ends the silence.
“Yes?” The voice is clear and quiet.
Sherlock advances to the door. Peering out, he sees the high wall of a long stone hallway and two small, barred windows on it, up very high. Twisting his neck and looking to the right, he can just see the fingers of two brown hands clutching the bars in the door next to his.
“Are you Mohammad Adalji?”
“Yes. But I didn’t do it.” He sounds firm and earnest. There is a slight eastern accent to his words.
“I’m the boy you spoke to outside the courthouse.”
“You are?” A little hope creeps into Mohammad’s voice.
“My name is Holmes.”
“And you are in jail?”
Sherlock looks out the two small windows in the hallway where light is coming in. Finally, there is blue sky in London … and he’s in here.
“They think I know something … that I’m connected to the murder in some way.”
Mohammad says no
thing for a moment and then speaks softly.
“I will tell them you were not involved.”
“Much obliged, but they won’t believe you.”
“Yes they will, because they want to think I acted alone. I am an Arab.”
“And I’m a Jew, a poor one.”
“A Jew?” There is hesitation in the accused man’s voice.
“Lower half Jewish, upper half English … respected part disowned.”
“That is not good.”
“Precisely.”
Sherlock can hear the Arab sigh.
“Why do they suspect you?” he asks.
“Because you spoke to me.”
Sherlock hears another sigh.
“I am sorry.”
“And because I’ve been to the murder site … twice.”
“You have?”
“I followed the crows.” Sherlock pushes his face up tightly against the bars, trying to see more of his jailmate.
“Crows?”
“They landed right in the alley,” muses the boy, seeing the scene again.
“They’re …” murmurs the other, “they’re omens. I saw some circling above the Old Bailey.”
Sherlock is still remembering that last frightening trip to Whitechapel. “I went back a second time … because I pieced something together.”
“What do you mean?” A tiny tone of hope returns to Mohammad’s voice.
Sherlock doesn’t answer at first. But if his listener could have seen him, he would have noticed a pleased expression beginning to spread across his face.
“Say that again,” Sherlock demands.
“I merely asked a question.”
“No, before that, about the crows.”
“That I saw them.” It had seemed like an innocent remark.
“And you said where?”
“Above the Old Bailey.”
There is a long pause.
“Mr. Adalji, I don’t think you committed the murder. I believe you.” Sherlock’s voice is matter-of-fact.
There is a short burst of laughter. “You are a strange young man, Master Holmes.”
“I know.”
“You will have to explain.”
“Not until you do.”
They stand shoulder to shoulder on either side of the wall, looking at each other’s hands gripping the bars: dark ones and pale ones.
“I will tell anyone who will listen, Master Holmes.”
“I am listening,” responds Sherlock.
The brown hands tighten on the bars.
“I am a butcher’s apprentice. I came to England from Egypt with my parents when I was eight … for a better life. I am good with a knife.”
Sherlock gulps.
“But I use it just to slice and carve the meat. My boss is Muslim too, of course, and we work only with blessed, Halal cuts. He makes me work late into the night, and on the evening when the lady was killed, I had a delivery just after sunset. It was to a soup kitchen near where she was attacked. I push a heavy cart with big wooden wheels and it’s difficult to turn sharply sometimes. I tried a shorter route on my return and went down the wrong street. It’s easy to do in Whitechapel when night falls. I realized it halfway. So I turned around in that alley … the one where it happened. I had trouble with it, had to nose the cart back and forth several times. I remember I was in a rush. I built up a sweat, and then went as hard as I could go back home.
“Part of my job is cleaning up afterwards, after the butcher and the others are gone. He’s a taskmaster, he is. I’m often there past midnight. That night was no exception, and as I was cleaning everything up, I came to the knives. I always do them last. Well … one knife, the big one … it wasn’t there.”
Sherlock feels a shiver.
“I looked high and low, but it was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if I had mistakenly taken it with me on my delivery. So, I started retracing my steps in my head. There was only one place where I had done anything unusual: I’d turned around in tight quarters in that alley. It wasn’t far from the shop.
I ran out into the darkness. There are some strange folk out of doors at night in London, Master Holmes. I ran with all I had to the alley. It was pitch black like a tunnel. It gave me the frights. I inched my way down there, feeling around with my boots, hoping to find the knife. Then …”
Mohammad’s voice cracks. Next door the long, white fingers grip the bars.
“Then … I crouched down and felt around on the ground at about the spot where I figured I’d turned, where the knife was most apt to be. My hands were soon in a puddle … but it hadn’t rained that night, Master Holmes. And the liquid … I thought it was water at first … was thick.”
Mohammad pauses again.
“I felt her hair first … then her face … her open mouth…. I knew she was dead … I knew it was blood…. I stood up. And when I did, my shoe hit something. It clinked on the stones. I leaned over and felt for it. I knew what it was … it was my knife.”
Sherlock’s eyes widen.
“I know now it was stupid, but I picked it up. I figured, I just figured that if anyone found my butcher’s knife next to a dead woman … a knife belonging to an Arab … they’d hang me without asking one question. So I grabbed it and ran.”
“Bloody footsteps all the way to the butcher’s,” says Sherlock without emotion.
“Yes. I was too scared to think straight. I just locked all the doors and slept in the little room the boss keeps for me, the knife in a rag under my coat, not thinking that I’d made a path to my door. The constables on the scene the next morning followed the trail right to me … and the knife.”
Sherlock lets the story sink in. He is trying to fit it into what he knows.
“I didn’t do it,” repeats Mohammad, his voice cracking.
“I know.”
“But you think I will hang.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you must think it. How could anyone think anything else?” His despair is deepening. “There’ll be no barrister to defend me. They have me! They have all the evidence and it is all against me. I have less than three weeks to live.”
“I may have a clue,” says the boy, lowering his voice as a jailer walks by. He pauses. “Something that may explain what really happened.”
“In the name of Allah, tell me.”
“Back home under the mattress on my bed …” Sherlock speaks under his breath again and looks around his cell as if worried that the very walls are listening, “… I have an eyeball.”
“An eyeball?” asks Mohammad.
THE UNUSUAL GIRL
Sherlock won’t say anything more. He doesn’t think it wise. It is dawning on him that there is something suspicious about the fact that he’s been placed in this cell right next to Mohammad Adalji. When he mentioned the eye he spoke quietly and cautioned his new friend to lower his voice and say nothing more.
The police are listening. He is sure. He hopes he hasn’t said too much already. He examines his cell in more detail: there are tiny holes in the ceiling; little cracks in the wall; he is imprisoned near the door that leads right to the office.
The boy spends the day lying on his stone bed trying to understand his situation. It is difficult to concentrate. He is frightened. The Arab is indeed going to die. And here he is, helpless: associated with an open-and-shut murder case. What are they going to do to him? What can they do to someone held on suspicion of withholding evidence? They’ve imprisoned him, haven’t they? And they aren’t letting him go. But what if it’s even worse? What if they think he and Mohammad killed that woman together? He feels his stomach burn.
Oh, God. As the day wears on, his spirit sinks as low as the new London sewers. The Arab’s desperate prayers fill the cells.
Every time Sherlock thinks of his mother and father he looks to the door hoping to see them. He wants them here, to hug him and tell him it is all a dream. He thinks of how desperately upset they must be. But the jail begins to grow dark and
they don’t appear. It doesn’t make sense. Why aren’t they coming?
“Jailer!” he finally shouts, rising to his feet.
The stern-looking turnkey moves slowly toward him.
“Why aren’t my mother and father …?”
“Perhaps they’re busy,” the man growls.
It’s obvious … his parents aren’t allowed to visit. He explodes.
“You can’t keep them from me! You can’t keep me here!”
The jailer walks away.
Sherlock falls onto the bed, shaking. Control yourself, he thinks. He must reason this through. Do they really believe we killed her together? He slows his breathing. They charged Mohammad with murder, not him. Why are they trying to break him down and why spy on him? Don’t they already have what they need to hang Adalji?
And then it dawns on him. He puts the facts together … how the police are treating him, their focus on the purse when they questioned him, all of it. Everything becomes clear.
He mumbles to himself as he lies on the bed, knees drawn to his chest.
“They think they know exactly what happened.”
He can see it now.
“I wasn’t really arrested for withholding evidence. I’m not being held in jail for that, or for murder. They think I’m guilty of something else.”
He knows their theory.
“We’re thieves and work together…. The Arab is bigger and good with a knife, he was simply meant to scare her with it … I was young, fast, and street-wise, meant to snatch the treasure and make off with it … the Jew’s job. But our robbery went badly. She struggled and the Arab killed her. I fled with the purse. I hid it somewhere in a hurry and I keep going back to the area to get it, but haven’t retrieved it yet. That’s what they think! That’s why they’re holding me in jail without visitors and why they placed us beside each other. They want to see if I’ll let something slip about the purse to Mohammad, or better still, confess…. Then they will have the Arab, the half-breed, and the money.”
Strangely, for an instant this discovery actually makes him feel a little better. Now he has two clues: the glass eye and an understanding of the authorities’ motives. He isn’t entirely helpless anymore. He has lit a small candle, however dim, at the entrance to the tunnel of this mystery.
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