“We’ve got a tough one,” the little man said. He had a painstakingly corrected Cockney accent—a man who would never misplace an H, but who would never sound like he belonged anywhere but the East End. “And Gregson and all them are in Whitechapel.”
“Of course,” Crow muttered. “What can you tell me, then, Inspector?”
“Inspector?” I asked.
“This is Inspector Lestrade,” Crow said. “Inspector, this is Dr. Doyle.”
“Wait,” I said. “Wait. Am I correct in understanding that there is an officer of the Metropolitan Police standing in our sitting room and apparently asking for your help?”
“Of course,” Crow said. “It’s what I do.”
“It’s what?”
His wings flared and mantled. “I’m a consulting detective, the only one in the world. I told you London is my dominion.”
“You work for the police?”
“No!” he said, clearly insulted by the mere idea. “I work for anyone who has an interesting problem. My clients merely happen to include police officers.”
It was not the most complimentary way to phrase the matter; I could not help glancing at the police officer still standing in our doorway, and he understood, for he said, “Not to worry, Dr. Doyle. I know what he’s like.”
“When you say you’ve got a tough one…” I said.
“Murder,” Lestrade said. “Don’t know who the fellow is or how he died, but me and my sergeant—my sergeant and I—we can’t believe that anyone would commit suicide that way. So we agreed it was best to ask Mr. Crow.”
Crow snorted and resettled his wings.
“Then you really don’t want me along,” I said regretfully, for I could use a puzzle to get other things out of my head. “I’m sure the last thing you need is more members of the public gawking.”
“I’d be greatly obliged if you would come, Dr. Doyle,” said Lestrade. “Our divisional surgeon’s tied up in Whitechapel, too, and we could use a doctor to look at this fellow.”
“Then of course I’ll come,” I said.
“Oh, splendid!” said Crow. He was clearly sincere, his wings half spreading before he caught himself, and although I knew his enthusiasm was more likely for my expertise than my companionship, I could not help being warmed.
After a night spent sleeping in a closet, any scrap of comfort would do.
Lestrade gave us the address, and I once again had the tremendous pleasure of watching Crow fold himself—like a conjuring trick—into a hansom cab.
I climbed in after Crow—I was learning rapidly not to be squeamish about feathers, and Crow was actually a good deal less fragile than a bird. His wing-feathers behaved like feathers, but they were made of the same stuff as he was himself. When he molted, what he actually shed was not his own material, but the accretion of the world: not the dust and dirt and plaster that he groomed assiduously out of his feathers, but the residue of this plane of existence. He had not been satisfied with that explanation when he gave it, and periodically would interrupt whatever I was doing to try to improve it, but thus far had not succeeded.
On the way to No. 3, Lauriston Gardens, he chattered so brightly about the investigation in Whitechapel that I finally said, “You don’t seem very exercised about this dead man.”
“There’s no point in discussing him until we’ve actually seen him,” Crow said. “If I let myself, I’ll come up with all sorts of theories. And they’ll all be wrong. It wastes a shocking amount of time. I will bet you a buttered scone Lestrade has been theorizing away like a mad thing.”
“He seems sincerely perplexed.”
“Oh, he is,” Crow said. “He always is, when he comes to me. And it’s because he made up a theory instead of looking at the facts in front of him. I cannot seem to get it through his skull that he’s going about it backward.”
“Do you work often with Scotland Yard?”
“Not often enough. They’d save themselves a good deal of time and embarrassment if they’d just let me investigate for them.”
I did not laugh, although it was a struggle. Crow’s vanity was sometimes endearing and sometimes exasperating, but it seemed deeply ingrained in him. I’d found myself speculating—theory in front of facts, Crow would chide me if I were to tell him—about whether all angels were hiding this o’erweening self-esteem behind their demure faces or if it was perhaps part of the reason he could survive without a habitation where no other angel could.
It certainly made me more aware of angels, this new curiosity: the silent throngs of the Nameless, the Angel of Victoria’s Needle (a very young angel, as these things went, a delicate female with shining golden hair, like an angel doll for the top of a Christmas tree; but she had the astonishing wings of an albatross), the Angels of St. Pancras and Waterloo, starling-winged both of them, dark and iridescent and grimy. I hadn’t realized how few people looked at angels’ faces until I started doing so myself, how few people bothered to speak to them.
I always said “thank you” to the Angel of the Baker Street Station when he extended his wings (sparrow wings, brown and barred) to clear me a path; the shock on his face was worth the irritation of his help.
6
No. 3, Lauriston Gardens
No. 3, Lauriston Gardens, off the Brixton Road, was one of a series of small, drab, yellow-gray brick houses—it would have been drearily respectable when new and now, clearly abandoned, was merely wretched.
A crowd of gawkers had inevitably gathered, errand boys and unemployed men and a few women of questionable virtue. They were thronging the constable who stood in front of the house, pelting him with their curiosity, but they all turned at the sound of the hansom, and I could see the brightness in their faces. Not malice, although it could become that in an eyeblink, but eagerness—eagerness for anything that might disrupt the endless anxious sameness of their lives.
I exited the cab first and paid the cabbie. Money baffled Crow, although he listened earnestly to my explanations time and again, and I had learned that, since he would either forget to pay or hand over all the money in his pockets, it was better if I took care of payment. Crow had begun simply giving me all the money he made, currency and cheques alike, with a sort of indifferent trust that made my blood run cold. I had not asked him how he earned the money; I wondered now if he had wanted me to.
I heard the crowd gasp and knew Crow had just stepped down from the hansom.
In general, people assumed he was Nameless, and in general, he let them; it was so much simpler than embarking on any kind of explanation. It wasn’t unheard of for a prosperous medical man to hire the services of a Nameless, and I had my cane, which suggested a simple reason for Crow to be dogging my footsteps—and he was, in fact, carrying my medical bag. Probably none of the gawkers had ever heard of a Nameless using a hansom cab—indeed, neither had I—but the truth was so much more improbable that I felt sure it would never occur to them.
Not that we necessarily had anything to fear if it did, but I knew how quickly a crowd’s mood could change. Moreover, the first thing anyone thought when they realized Crow was not Nameless was that he was Fallen, and that was something I most certainly did not want to deal with in this shabby-genteel street with only a young, florid-faced constable to help.