The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

“You needn’t,” I said. “I did not act in order to earn your gratitude.” She was pretty enough (and no doubt wealthy enough) that this puzzled her for a moment,

It was a dreadful little room, even without the corpse,

Names, of course, are of the most desperate importance to angels; they don’t properly exist without them.

The corners of Crow’s mouth curved up. “I implied strongly that it was sacred and had already been profaned by being found on a murdered body. I think he thinks I’m going to pray over it all night.” “Is it sacred?” “Eh.”

I wasn’t all right, but I was alive, and that would have to do.

He raised his head sharply, and I got the full force of his stare. “You’re not all right.” I shook my head. “It’s nothing to worry about.” He looked profoundly unconvinced. “What you mean is that there’s nothing to be done.” I winced, rattling my teacup against the saucer. “I suppose that’s true. I warned you that my health was bad.” “I wasn’t complaining,” he said. “If there is something that can be done, will you tell me?”

“The papers would be very disappointed if they asked someone who knew that.” “That’s why they won’t ask anyone who does,” said Crow.

“Desperation, my dear Doyle.”

“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.

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

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

It is a matter of ethics.” “Yes, it most certainly is!” Crow said. “But you’ve confused ethics with legality.”

I had scarcely closed the street door behind me when Crow came barreling down the stairs and enveloped me in a hug that seemed like a combination of entanglement in a deck chair and assault by a pack of feather-dusters.

“Well, that’s a first,” Crow said, sounding hurt. “Usually they at least ask if I’m Fallen.” “If you were, of course, they would have had no chance to ask.” “This cold, machine-like logic will make you no friends, Dr. Doyle,” he said mock-loftily.

“I think you are making this complicated because you love complicated things,” said Lestrade — which was an accurate character assessment, if nothing else.

“I’m quite sure that there’s something the practitioner can do,” Crow said. “We will talk to Oksana Timofeyevna and see whom she recommends.” It was childish, but what made the difference was the word “we.”

The gentleman who belonged to the stick suited it, being also clearly once high-quality, but now shabby and covered in dog hair.

Most angels hear a great deal more than they listen to.

“All right,” he said, “but you realize that leaves us with the opium-eater.” “Better that than a jackass,” I said.

Teddy won’t bite, and he can’t stand a room he hasn’t investigated.”

Teddy the mongoose, is that a Rikki Tikki shout out?