The Devil's Grin - a Crime Novel Featuring Anna Kronberg and Sherlock Holmes (2 page)

‘
Did you move the body, Mr Hawthorne?’

‘
Well, I had to. He was floating face down in the trench and I pulled him out.’

‘
You used your hands?’

‘
What else would I use?’

Naturally, Mr Hathorne looked puzzled. While explaining that I wanted to disinfect his hands, I bent down and extracted the bottle of creosote and a large handkerchief from my bag. A little stunned, he let me proceed without protest.

‘
You kept your eyes open. I could see that as I came in. Can you tell me who else touched the man?’

With
shoulders squared and moustache bristled, he replied: ‘All the police officers and that other man over there.’ His furry chin pointed towards the ditch.

Surprised, I turn
ed around and spotted the man Hathorne had indicated. He was unusually tall and lean, and for a short moment I almost expected him being bent by the wind and sway back and forth in synchrony with the high grass surrounding him. He was making his way up to the river and then disappeared.

I
could hear Gibson’s footfall on the dry path and turned around.

‘
Dr Kronberg, finally!’ he barked.

‘
I took a hansom, I can't fly,’ I retorted acidly. He stopped and I held up my hand to make him wait.

‘
Mr Hathorne, did you turn off the pumps?’

‘
Course I did, but who knows how long the dead fella was floating in there!’

‘
Is it possible to reverse the direction of the water flow and flush it from the trench back into the Thames?’

He considered
my question, pulled his whiskers, and nodded.

‘
Can you exchange the entire volume three times?’

‘
I certainly can, and it won’t even take very long.’

‘
Very good, Mr Hathorne, thank you for your help. Inspector Gibson, I will examine the body now, if you please?’

Gibson flapped his hand like a fin and I followed him.

‘
I will take a quick look at the man,’ I told Gibson who stomped along in front of me. ‘If he is indeed a cholera victim, I need you to get me every man who touched his body.’

After a moment of consideration, I added: ‘Forget what I said. I want to disinfect the hands of every single man who entered the water works today.’

I
knew Gibson didn’t like to talk too much in my presence. He disliked me and my harsh replies. And I was having problems with him, too. I knew he was a liar. He pretended to be hard-working, smart, and dependable, while his constables backed him up repeatedly. Yet, he was still an Inspector at the Yard; and I was certain being the son of someone important had put him there.

We follow
ed a narrow path alongside a broad trench, which connected the river to the reservoir. I had seen it from the cab but now wondered about its purpose — why store water that flows past in great quantities every day? But I was not an engineer and dropped the issue.

The grass
was high; if I strayed off path, and I felt compelled to do so, it would tickle my chin. Large dragonflies whizzed past me, one almost colliding with my forehead. Obviously, they were not accustomed to human invasion here. I listened to the chaotic concert of water birds on the nearby reservoir. The nervous screeching of small sandpipers mingled with the trumpeting of swans and melancholic cries from a brace of cranes brought back memories of my life many years ago.

The pretty thoughts were wiped away instantly by a whiff of sickly sweet decomposition. The flies had noticed it, too, and all of us were approaching a small and discarded-looking pile of clothes containing a man’s bluish face. A first glance told me that the corpse had spent a considerable time floating face-down. Fish had already nibbled off the soft and protruding flesh; fingertips, lips, nose, and eyelids.

The wind tur
ned a little, and the smell hit me directly now. It invaded my nostrils and plastered itself all over my body, clothes, and hair.

‘
T
hree police officers are present. Why?’ I asked Gibson. ‘And who is the tall man who just darted off to the Thames? Is this a suspected crime?’

The Inspector
dropped his chin to reply as someone behind me cut across with a polite yet slightly bored voice: ‘Inspector Gibson thought the body must have been pushed into the trench. Obviously, a dead man could impossibly climb a fence.’

Surprised, I turn
ed around and almost had to crane my neck to face the man who had spoken. He was more than a head taller than I and wore a sharp and determined expression. He seemed to consider himself superior and exuded an amount of self-confidence that bordered on arrogance. His attire and demeanour spoke of a man who had most likely enjoyed a spoiled upper-class childhood.

K
een light grey eyes pierced mine for a moment, but his curiosity faded quickly. Apparently, nothing of interest had presented itself.

I
was getting curious. The contrast between the two men in front of me could not have been greater. Gibson was lacking facial muscles and possessed a lower lip which seemed to serve more the purpose of a rain gutter rather than a communication tool. Almost constantly, he worked his jaws, picked and chewed his nails, and perspired on the very top of his shiny red skull.

‘
Mr Holmes, this is Dr Anton Kronberg, epidemiologist from Guy's. And Dr Kronberg, this is Mr Sherlock Holmes.’

Gibson made
it sound as though I should know who Sherlock Holmes was.

‘
Has the victim has been shoved into the trench, Mr Holmes?’ Gibson squeaked.

‘
Unlikely,’
Mr Holmes answered.

‘
How can you tell?’ I enquire
d.

‘
There are no marks on either side of the Thames’s water edge…’

Mr Holmes trailed off and I made a mental note to go and check the Thames’s flow to ascertain that a body could indeed float into the trench without help.

Then I notice
d Mr Holmes staring at me with narrowed eyes. His gaze flew from my slender hands to my small feet, swept over my slim figure and my not very masculine face. Then his attention got stuck on my flat chest for a second. A last look to my throat and his eyes lit up in surprise. A slight smile flickered across his face while his head produced an almost imperceptible nod.

Suddenly, my clothes felt too small, my hands too clammy, my neck too tense, and the rest of my body too hot. I forced myself to keep breathing. The man had discovered my best kept secret within a minute. Others had been fooled for years. I was standing among a bunch of policemen and my fate seemed sealed. I would lose my occupation, my degree, and my residency to spend a few years in jail. When finally released, I would do what? Embroider doilies?

Pushing past the two men, I made for the Thames to get away before doing something reckless and stupid. I would have to deal with Mr Holmes when he was alone. The notion of blackmailing suddenly appeared very attractive to me. I flicked the thought away for now and forced myself to focus on the business at hand.

First I need
ed to know how the body could have possibly got into that trench. The grass was intact; no blades were bent except for where I had seen Mr Holmes walk along. I looked around on the ground, Mr Holmes observing my movements.

Only one set of footprints was visible, which must be Mr Holmes’s. I picked up a few dry branches, broke them into pieces of roughly arm’s length and cast them into the Thames. Eight out of ten branches made it into the trench and drifted towards me. A sand bank was producing vortexes just at the mouth, causing my floats to enter the trench instead of being carried away by the much greater force of the Thames. The chance was high that it was only the water that had pushed the body in here.

‘
You were right, Mr Holmes,’ I noted while passing him. He did not look bored anymore. As I walked back to the corpse, my stomach felt as if I had eaten a brick.

I extract
ed the rubber gloves from my bag and pulled them over my hands. Mr Holmes squatted down next to me, too close to the corpse for my taste.

‘
Don’t touch it, please,’ I cautioned.

He
did not hear me, or else simply ignored my remark; his gaze was already sweeping over the dead man.

The exposed face and hands of the corpse told me he had been in the water for approximately thirty-six hours.

Following a whim, I turn
ed to Mr Holmes. ‘Do you happen to know how fast the Thames flows here?’

He did not even look up and only muttered in reply. ‘Thirty miles from here at the most.’

‘
Considering which duration of exposure?’ I asked.

‘
Twenty-four to thirty-six hours.’

‘
Interesting,’ I was surprised at his apparent medical background, as he correctly assessed the time the man had spent in the water. He had also calculated the maximum distance the corpse could have travelled downstream.

I cast a sideways glance at Mr Holmes and got the impression that this man vibrated with intellectual energy wanting to be utilized.

‘
You are an odd version of a private detective? One the police call in? I never heard of their doing so before,’ I wondered aloud.

‘
I prefer the term ‘consulting detective’.’

‘
Ah…
’ I replied absentmindedly as my attention was pulled back to the body. He was extremely emaciated; the skin with the typical blue tinge looked paper thin, most definitely cholera in the final stage. I was about to examine his clothes for any signs of violence when Mr Holmes barked ‘stop!’

Before I
could protest, he pushed me aside, pulled a magnifying glass from his waist coat pocket, and hovered over the corpse. The fact that his nose almost touched the large buttons of the man's coat was rather unsettling.

‘
What is it?’

‘
He has been dressed by someone else,’ he noted.

‘
Show me!’

Looking a
little puzzled, he handed me his magnifying glass and I took it after pulling my gloves off. The thick rubber hindered my work and made me feel like a butcher. I could disinfect my hands later.

Mr Holmes started
to talk fast. ‘The man was obviously right handed - that hand having more calluses on the palms. Yet you will observe greasy thumbprints on the left-hand side of his coat buttons.’

I
spotted the prints and put my nose as close as possible and sniffed - corpse smell, Thames water, and possibly the faintest hint of petroleum.

‘
I smell petroleum; maybe from an oil lamp,’ I remarked quietly.

Upon examining his hands, I found superficial scratches, swelling, and bruises on the knuckles of the right hand. Probably from a fist fight only a day or two before his death - odd, given his weakness. His hands seemed to have been strong and rough once, but he had not been doing hard work with them for a while now as the calluses had started to peel off. His fingernails had multiple discolorations, showing he had been undernourished and sick for weeks before contracting cholera. He must have been very poor during his last few months, and I wondered where he had come from. His clothes looked worn and too big now, and a lot of debris from the river had collected in them. I examined his sleeves, turned his hands around and found a pale red banding pattern around his wrists.

‘
Restraint marks,’
said Mr Holmes. Then he added: ‘The man used to be a farm worker but lost his occupation three to four months ago.’