The nearest case contained a lone eagle, set into a noble pose. Its wooden backdrop had been painted to represent a cloudless blue sky and distant mountains.
Sherlock moved further into the room. He heard something moving – the scrape of a shoe against the floor. Someone was obviously in the room with him, although he couldn’t hear any voices. Maybe it was a lone visitor.
He passed several cases containing owls of various types. They were sitting on branches – possibly real, possibly made of plaster of Paris; Sherlock couldn’t tell. Their claws encircled the branches: sharp killing weapons wrapped in scaled skin, designed to punch into the body of their prey and lift it up so the birds could fly away to their nests and feast.
As he went by, he thought he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He quickly turned to look. The birds were all staring at him. Hadn’t their heads been turned towards the door when he entered? Now they were facing into the centre of the room. Or was it something about owls that made it difficult to tell which way they were looking?
Something fluttered across the other side of the room. Was there a bird, a real bird, trapped in the room? A sparrow, or a pigeon, or something?
The next few cases contained an assortment of birds of prey. Sherlock spotted hawks, falcons, ospreys and several types of bird that he didn’t even recognize.
Even though they were dead and stuffed, there was something eerie about the birds, more so than the small mammals or the larger animals. Maybe feathers just looked more realistic than fur when what was underneath was stuffing rather than flesh and bone. Or maybe there was something about the shape of their skulls and the lack of body fat that meant the process of taxidermy left them looking as if they might at any moment just twist their heads and start preening, or stretch their wings to get the kinks out of their muscles. Even though their eyes were made of glass beads too, Sherlock thought he could detect a coldness in them, a dangerousness. The mice and the voles looked at passers-by as predators; the birds in this room looked at passers-by as prey.
He was imagining things again. It wasn’t helping. They’re just stuffed birds! he told himself. They aren’t real. They can’t move.
He heard another sudden movement in the far reaches of the room. Footsteps, perhaps. Cloth brushing against the wooden edge of a display case. It didn’t matter: he was bound to come across other visitors at some stage.
And then he was startled by a loud boom! For a moment he was shocked, wondering what it was, and then it occurred to him that the door at the far end of the room had slammed shut. Perhaps it had been caught in a draught.
Sherlock moved around a case that was blocking his way. Ahead of him, a larger case contained a vulture – its head bereft of feathers, its beak cruelly curved down at the end; its wings stretched out as if to bar his progress.
He looked up. There was another bird: a falcon, he thought. This one wasn’t behind glass, though. It was poised on top of the case as if it had just landed there.
A mournful whistle of three musical notes floated through the air.
As Sherlock watched, the falcon turned its head so that it could see him clearly and leaned forward as if it was about to launch itself off the case and dive towards his face.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A gleam of light caught Sherlock’s gaze. Something had been attached to the falcon’s legs: metal blades that stuck out like extra claws. As the falcon shifted on the cabinet Sherlock could see the varnished wood splintering as the metal bit into it.
Abruptly, the bird dropped towards Sherlock, propelled by a single flap of its outstretched wings. Its legs were held out stiffly beneath it, the metal claws spread wide. Sherlock jumped back, but his feet got tangled and he fell. It was as if he was toppling backwards in slow motion. He saw the falcon zooming over him, claws reaching for his eyes. It seemed as though he could see each individual feather covering its underside. Air blew across his face as the bird flapped its wings and soared past. Time stretched out, leaving him wondering if he had paused in mid-fall, suspended in mid-air, but the sudden impact as his shoulders hit the floor knocked the breath from his body in an explosive whoosh! and sent stars spinning through his head.
He rolled over, squeezing into the corner where the wooden base of a glass case met the floor, and scrabbled forward, expecting at any second to feel the bird’s claws bite into the flesh of his neck. The muscles in his back spasmed in pain. From the corner of his eye he caught sight of a blur of brown feathers, and he jerked sideways, but when nothing moved he looked more closely and saw that it was a stuffed kestrel behind the glass. He was so close that he could see the stitches around its neck and the dust on its black glass eyes.
Cautiously, he raised his head and looked up.
There was no sign of the falcon.
Sherlock stood and glanced around, eyes scanning every shadowed corner, every darkened recess. Nothing. The falcon had gone.
Somewhere in the distance he heard a flapping of wings, but the sound echoed from the bare walls of the room and he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Sherlock pressed his back against the glass of the cabinet. He could feel its coolness through his jacket and shirt.
What was his best course of action? He could go forward, but he would be heading into unfamiliar territory. Perhaps he should retreat, back to the entrance hall. He could wait there for Amyus Crowe, or follow him into the section for amphibians and reptiles.
That thought led to another one: Amyus Crowe fighting for his life with a crocodile, or some kind of large lizard like the ones that he, Matty and Virginia had encountered in America, just as Sherlock was fighting with a bird in the stuffed birds section. The thought was patently stupid – there was no reason to think that the stuffed animals were coming to life and leaving their cases – but that started his mind racing. What was a live falcon doing in a museum? What was a falcon even doing in London? And why were its claws covered with razor-sharp metal sheathes?
All the questions had the same answer – the bird obviously belonged to someone, the person with the whistle, and that person was using it to injure or kill Sherlock. Maybe they had followed him and Amyus Crowe to the museum or, more likely, they were using the museum as a base of operations and had spotted the two of them entering.
As if in confirmation of his hypothesis, a short whistle cut through the heavy silence again – three blasts, a signal to the falcon. Immediately Sherlock heard wings flapping. A shadow flickered against the ceiling, cast by the sun shining through a skylight and reflecting off the glass of a display case, and interrupted by the bird flying past.
And then silence again.
Sherlock moved as quietly as he could towards the door he had entered through. His gaze flickered in all directions, trying to work out which one an attack was going to come from.
Dust tickled his nostrils. He felt a sneeze coming on. He pinched the top of his nose hard, squeezing until the urge subsided. The last thing he wanted to do was attract the falcon’s attention.
Glancing around, he realized that he wasn’t sure where he was. He didn’t recognize the birds in the cases. He thought they were eagles, but their feathers were mainly white and they had ruffs round their necks.
Sherlock hadn’t come past these exhibits on his way in. There must have been another path that he had missed.
Go on or go back?
He decided to go on. If he was lucky then he would find another exit.
If he was unlucky, the falcon would find him. Or its owner would.
He scanned the cases around him as he moved. The one immediately to his left contained a brown bird of prey with a sharp beak. He passed by, gaze moving on, but something in the back of his mind was trying to raise a warning flag. He thought it was just the similarity between the bird in the case and the falcon that had almost clawed his eyes out, but then the bird in the case turned its head to look at him, and he realized that it wasn’t in the case at all, that the case was empty – he was looking through the case and the bird was perched on a ledge behind it.