IanG

You wrote a tense buildup as she tried and failed to kill him. I wondered how she was going to get out of it.

'More thoroughly' didn't feel right in that context. 'More forcefully' or 'more severely' would've conveyed Mum's determination better. I hope this proves helpful.

The opening is good, it draws the reader in. The basic premise is promising.

You made a few mistakes with punctuation, there should be more commas and capital letters in some places. 'Its all right Emma, I'll come and get you' is one example; comma after Emma. One or two names start with lower case letters. Deal with that and this will be better still.

The crow family are highly intelligent birds, some species use twigs to extract grubs from tree bark. People living close to nature must've noticed that. I think that's why they were revered by pre-industrial peoples.

If you add some descriptive detail then people will relate to your character more strongly. She will be feeling sand grains on het hands and warm sun on her back. She may worry about the competition, she won't know immediately that she's going to win

There are some good descriptions and a good twist, but twists need to be foreshadowed. Perhaps a police officer could notice Miriam's house was neat and tidy for someone with dementia, but then assume she had a good home help. That drops a hint that Miriam isnt as ill as she seems without giving everything away.

If you broke it up into paragraphs it would be easier to follow. Some sentences, such as the final one, could be broken down into shorter ones. That said, formatting can be lost when publishing a story online. It happened to the latest one I published here, but I've edited and corrected that now.

The opening is good. Perhaps you could spend a little more time building suspense. The man could hear birdsong at the start but then it stops and he wonders why. Alternatively he could think that normally there are sheep where he's walking, but today there are none. He might find a dead sheep but assume a fox or a stray dog of flesh and blood killed it.

I hope this proves helpful.

I think Holmes would be assessing the potential spy in more detail. What about this for an inner monalogue.
I did not stare back as I wanted him to think I had not noticed him. Instead I looked out across the street several times, but never for long and always pretending something or someone else had caught my attention. How I hoped that he would move and give something about himself away. If he moved with the ease of a younger man that would indicate a disguise. Perhaps some other clue would emerge. To my frustration he did nothing that might give anything away.