The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

  “And you carry it with you. Crow, that’s genius.”

  “Desperation, my dear Doyle.” He regarded the chunk of marble thoughtfully for a moment, then tucked it back in his pocket. “It doesn’t work if your habitation remains intact. And the timing is exceedingly dicey.”

  “But how was your habitation razed when it still had an angel?”

  “Bribery.” He saw my incomprehension, for he said, “The builders paid off the inspectors.”

  “But, my God, they took a terrible risk. By all rights, you should have Fallen.”

  He shook his head. “No British angel has Fallen since the Angel of the Great Fire in 1666. We’re all imbued with self-sacrifice. But even those of my … shall we call them colleagues? Even those of my colleagues who don’t think I’m Fallen think I should have gone back to the Nameless, which is what most London angels do when dishabited. You have to have a fairly large pool of Nameless for that to be possible, and it’s just as much death as dissolution, for the nature of the Nameless is such that it’s impossible for them to retain any memories. They’re not individuals in any meaningful sense—you truly never meet the same Nameless twice.”

  “But then how can they possibly run errands or, for example, look for one particular cabdriver in all of London?”

  “Oh dear,” he said. “This is rather complicated.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “No, I quite want to. And it’s not secret at all, just difficult to explain. When you give a Nameless a task, you are providing a brief taste of having a habitation. The task is something like my piece of marble. The Nameless carries it until the task is finished, and then it dissolves—I use the word advisedly—back into the hive. They have no more real individuality than worker bees.”

  “It sounds a horrid existence,” I said.

  He shrugged shoulders and wings together. “That’s a value judgment the Nameless can’t make. They all long for a name, but they don’t know why.” He gave me one of his sudden, blinding smiles. “It is a horrid existence. But the great blessing of it is that you don’t know that until you’ve received your habitation.”

  “Meaning that angels and Nameless are…”

  “Think of them as caterpillars,” Crow suggested. “They don’t spin cocoons, but they do undergo a metamorphosis. The butterfly—or moth—isn’t the same creature as the caterpillar, except that it is exactly the same creature, which you can prove with a very little exertion in natural history.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do follow you, but I’m not sure caterpillars are any better than bees.”

  “You have a great prejudice against the order Insecta,” he said. “What’s wrong with being a moth? Some of them are surpassingly lovely.”

  I noticed that he did not claim to be a butterfly.

  “Whoops!” he said before I could answer. “There’s Mrs. Climpson again. I told her you were under the weather—such a blessing, idioms are—and she’s insisting on making you tea.”

  “Oh God,” I said. “If I make it true, will you tell her I’m asleep?”

  “Too late,” said Crow.

  I wanted to growl at Mrs. Climpson’s knock, but I could not afford to alienate her any more than Crow could. I could not risk the gamble on finding another living situation so cheap or—despite some of Crow’s eccentricities—so congenial. Thus, I suffered Mrs. Climpson’s tray and tea and gimlet eyes. I could at least take comfort in the fact that I was decidedly “under the weather,” my leg howling like the Furies and the rest of my body aching with exhaustion, so that Crow’s little pas de deux with truth-telling was accurate after all. To tell the truth myself, the tea was welcome, and I managed to say “Thank you” and have it sound sincere.

  “You don’t take care of yourself, Dr. Doyle,” she said. “You need a wife.” She swept out in a great rustle of bombazine without waiting for an answer. Which was just as well, for my answer would have been unprintable.

  Crow looked puzzled. “What did she mean?”

  “In an ordinary household”—a thing he had never experienced—“the wife would do things like making sure her husband had something for tea that he liked or reminding him to wear galoshes.” Or endlessly nagging him, as my mother had nagged my father. “It’s why they talk about a wife being the angel of the house, just as your … colleagues are angels of public buildings.”

  “That never has made sense to me. But—should I be doing those things for you? Is that—”

  “Good God, no!” I said. “Number one, I don’t need anyone to look after me. I’m an adult and can look after myself. Number two, you are in no sense my angel and I would be wrong to ask that of you, even if I wanted to. Number three, you are an angel of the res publica and shouldn’t be anything else. And number four, I do not want a wife.”

  “I like that,” Crow said. “An angel of the res publica. That practically sounds respectable. I shan’t worry about your galoshes, then.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and I meant it from the bottom of my heart.

  PART FOUR

  THE MYSTERY OF CAPTAIN MORSTAN

  11

  A Second Appeal for Help

  My brother died on the fifteenth of September. I did not attend the funeral. I would not have been welcome; his wife had never approved of me, and the angel of their church would have recognized the miasma of the Fallen that still lingered about me, even if she did not denounce me as a hell-hound forthwith. I expected the telegram notifying me of his death to be the end of it. I certainly wasn’t expecting to receive a small, flattish parcel through the post from Edinburgh. I opened it, more than a little unnerved, and found my brother’s watch, which had been our father’s and was the only truly valuable piece of jewelry my brother had owned. There was a note, in my sister-in-law’s handwriting, that said only, He wanted you to have this.

  Crow had watched with avid curiosity, and I said, “Here. What do you make of this?” and handed him my brother’s watch. I was curious to see just how much the power of deduction could do.

  Crow examined the watch closely, the case, the dial, the works, both with his unaided eyes, which were still far sharper than human eyes, and even with a magnifying lens. He snapped the case shut and returned it to me.

  “There are hardly any data,” he said plaintively. “The watch has been cleaned recently, which robs me of all sorts of useful facts. But I could make some deductions. First, that you had an elder brother, who has recently died.”

  “Correct,” I said.

  “He inherited the watch from your father, who—I further deduce—was either a towering egotist or…”

  “Yes,” I said. “But how…”

  “I’m cheating a little,” said he, with a flash of a smile, “for I know a bit about your father from your conversation. But! The initials H.D.D. on the watch. They’re as old as the watch itself, which I judge to be some fifty years old, much too old for any sibling of yours. Therefore they are your father’s. And I note from the wrapping”—he nodded toward the brown paper in a wad beside my chair—“that your brother’s widow is Mrs. H. D. Doyle. Therefore, your brother’s initials were the same as your father’s. And it is not an unreasonable step to assume that he was the eldest son and named for your father. That’s not unusual. However, I further note that your middle initial is H, and thus I speculate—perhaps unwisely—that you also bear his name, or some variation on it.”

  “His name was Henry,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “Well, your brother seems to have been a rather untidy man, careless in his habits. The case is dented and marked—he kept this fifty-guinea watch in the same pocket as his keys.”

  I hesitated.

  “What?” said Crow. “Am I wrong?”

  His almost childlike anxiety made me smile. “No, it’s quite true. Henry was chronically untidy. He was a Latin master at a crammer’s school in Edinburgh, and if the watch hadn’t been cleaned—no doubt my sister-in-law’s doing—I daresay you would have found
a good deal of chalk dust as well. But I have always wondered about the way he’d jumble his keys in with his watch.”

  “What did you wonder?”

  “We both hated our father,” I said. “When he died, he could have done Henry a great deal of good by leaving him some of his rental properties. But all he left him was the watch, with a remark in the will about the eldest son’s share.”

  “That seems…”

  “Insulting? Yes. Father felt Henry had squandered his potential. He meant Henry to be a barrister, but Henry couldn’t stick law school at any price. Thus, Father left Henry the watch and my younger brother got all the property.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, I was disinherited years ago,” I said lightly. “But I have always wondered if that was why he was so careless with the watch.”

  “Then was leaving it to you also an insult?”

  “To Father,” I said. “Flouting his dictates one last time.”

  “Oh,” Crow said, his face clearing. “Yes. I understand.”

  “And he would have thrown it off the Dean Bridge before he let our brother have it. James is a barrister and is very much like a second edition of our father. But what else does the watch tell you?”

  “Your brother was chronically short of money, but with periods of prosperity.” He raised his eyebrows at me.

  “He only got paid when school was in session, and he had his wife and two little girls to support. He got private tutoring jobs when he could, but my understanding is that those weren’t a dependable source of income. How did you know?”

  “Easy,” said Crow. “The pawnbroker’s ticket numbers scratched on the inside of the case. Better than a label, since the number can’t be lost. I count four such numbers on the inside of this case. Therefore his finances were frequently in a desperate state. But he had bursts of prosperity—doubtless at the beginning of term—which enabled him to redeem the pledge. He must also have been a proud man, to redeem a watch he hated.”

  “Yes.”

  “Finally, the keyhole is surrounded by scratches where the key has slipped repeatedly. I infer that your brother was a drunkard. He wound the watch at night, thus scratching the plate. These marks are hardly the tracks left by a sober man.”

  I cleared my throat. “The disease which killed my brother palsied his hands.” I watched Crow’s face fall.

  “Oh dear,” he said. “That is embarrassing.”

  “You misstepped,” I said, without any feeling of triumph at having caught him out. My childhood nurse would have said Crow lived too much on the outside of his skin. He was too easy to wound.

  “In any event, I apologize for calling your brother a drunkard.” Angels cannot blush, but his wings had crept up and around, as if to shield him.

  “Apology accepted,” said I. “Tell me the latest from Scotland Yard.”

  “Nothing!” Crow said. “Nothing, nothing, and more nothing! They’ve no more leads on the man in Whitechapel and no leads at all on the fellow with the sense of humor.”

  “I suppose if you disjoint dead bodies as a pastime, that is the sort of thing your sense of humor would run to.”

  “There’s no other reason for him to bury her body—well, parts of her body—under Scotland Yard. Not when he had all of London to choose from. And almost anywhere would have been easier. No, that was a joke on Scotland Yard. I should like to think that he will be caught by his own cleverness. But I do not believe it’s going to happen. And the poor woman is still as nameless as a cobblestone. It all adds up to a giant nought. Really, we might as well be playing noughts and crosses for all the good we’re doing.” He sighed dejectedly. “Which brings us back to our theme at, nothing.”

  I was opening my mouth to reply to this tirade, when heralded by a crisp knock, our landlady came in, bearing a visiting card on a salver.

  “A young lady for you, Mr. Crow,” she said.

  Crow picked up the card. “Miss Mary Morstan. Not a name I recognize.” By which he meant that no one of that name had been convicted of murder in London for the last fifteen years, perhaps longer. “Well, show her in. Don’t go, Doyle,” he added as I prepared to haul myself out of my chair. “I should much prefer you to stay.”

  “Of course,” I said, but rose to my feet anyway, so as not to be either uncivil or unbearably slow when the young lady entered the room.

  Miss Morstan was a delicate blonde, no more than five feet and two inches in height. Her features were undistinguished, her clothing in exquisite taste, but with the simplicity of cut and materials that generally betokens a lack of funds. Her eyes, her one remarkable feature, were luminously blue and held an expression of great kindness.

  She looked from me to Crow and blinked hard, but she had clearly been warned, for she came forward and extended her hand gamely. “Mr. Crow? I am Mary Morstan. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Not at all,” Crow said, shaking hands with her. “This is my colleague, Dr. Doyle.”

  “How d’you do?” she murmured, and we shook hands. Her hand was very small, but her grip was firm. Her gloves were kidskin, and I felt a mended place on one finger. Not a young lady of means.

  We sat down, and Crow said, “Tell me what brings you here.”

  Miss Morstan folded her hands together carefully in her lap. “You once solved a problem for my employer, Mrs. Cecil Forrester.”

  “Did I?” said Crow. “Oh, yes. But it was quite simple, barely a problem at all.”

  “She had not found it so. She was most impressed by your kindness and skill, and she suggested that you might be able to help me, for certainly nobody else can.” Her folded hands were now gripping each other tightly.

  “I shall certainly endeavor to do so,” Crow said. “Please, tell me your problem.”

  She nodded and said, “Briefly, the facts are these. I was born in India, where my father was an officer in an Indian regiment. My mother died when I was very young, and my father sent me home to Scotland, where I was educated at a very respectable boarding establishment until I was seventeen. In 1878, my father obtained twelve months’ leave and came home. He telegraphed me from London that he had arrived safely and that I should come down and meet him at the Langham Hotel. I reached the hotel, which is werewolf-run, clean, and respectable, only to be told that Captain Morstan had gone out the evening before and had not come back. All of his belongings were at the hotel.” She swallowed hard. “I contacted the police; I advertised in the papers. The Langhams, who naturally did not like having a guest vanish, had their pack do a block hunt around the hotel, but they found nothing. And nothing it has been ever since. My unfortunate father has disappeared as if the earth simply opened beneath his feet and swallowed him.”

  “The date?” said Crow.

  “The third of December, 1878—almost ten years ago.”

  “You said his luggage remained at the hotel. What did it contain?”

  “Nothing to suggest a clue. Some clothes, some books. He had been one of the officers in charge of the convict guard at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, and lived a very Spartan life.”

  “Had he any friends in town?”

  “Only one that I know of—Major Sholto, of his own regiment, the Thirty-fourth Bombay Infantry. Major Sholto had retired some years previously and lived in Upper Norwood. But when I wrote to him, he wrote back, expressing considerable dismay. He said he hadn’t even known my father was in England.”

  “Most singular,” murmured Crow.

  “Now,” she said, with a quick—almost furtive—but lovely smile, “we come to the truly singular part. Six years ago, on the fourth of May, 1882, an advertisement appeared in The Times, asking for the address of Miss Mary Morstan, daughter of Captain Morstan, late of the Thirty-fourth Bombay, and stating that it would be to her advantage to come forward. There was no name or address appended. I had just entered Mrs. Cecil Forrester’s household as governess, and I have no family. I consulted with her, and we agreed that it might be word of my father’s whe
reabouts, and I could not afford not to answer, for the mystery was eating at me, as it does still.” Another furtive, nervous smile. “With her kind permission, I placed a reply in The Times, giving her address. The same day there arrived through the post a small cardboard box addressed to me, which contained a very large, very lustrous pearl. There was no note, no address, not a scrap of information. Only the pearl. Every year since then, upon that same date, I have received another pearl in precisely the same fashion. I have consulted an expert, who said they are of a rare variety and quite valuable. You can see for yourselves that they are very handsome.”

  She produced a flat box from her reticule as she spoke and opened it, showing us six unusually beautiful and perfectly matched pearls.

  “Gracious,” said Crow. “Has anything else happened to you?”

  “Yes, today. And that is why I have come to you. This morning I received this letter.” She gave it to Crow, who read it quickly and gave it to me. The letter was written in a small, tight, looping cursive. I read: Be at the third pillar from the left outside the Lyceum Theatre tonight at seven o’clock. If you are distrustful, bring two friends. You are a wronged woman and shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do, all will be in vain. Your unknown friend.

  “Do you still have the envelope?” Crow asked Miss Morstan. She gave it to him, and he assessed it quickly: “Postmark, London S.W. Date, September 20. Same handwriting as the letter. Good print of a thumb on the corner. Probably the postman. Best-quality paper, envelopes at sixpence a packet, no letterhead or address. A very particular man in his stationery. This is a very pretty little mystery you have brought us, Miss Morstan. What do you intend to do?”

  “That is what I have come to ask you about,” she said.

  “But surely you know what my answer will be,” said Crow. “Of course you must make this rendezvous, and Dr. Doyle and I will go with you.”

  “Will you?” said Miss Morstan, her face lighting up in a way that made my mouth go dry.