The Devil's Grin - a Crime Novel Featuring Anna Kronberg and Sherlock Holmes (4 page)

He did not answer and appeared genuinely interested and almost a little amused. What a most disagreeable person! Next time he wanted to see a curiosity he should go to a circus!

~~~

We arrive
d at Guy’s one hour of stale silence later. At the porter’s I asked for a nurse and a cart to help transport the body to the dissecting department, a small red brick building containing an antechamber well equipped with several slabs of marble. We had the place to ourselves as no anatomical lessons were given on Saturdays. That also meant I could disinfect the room with fumes of concentrated acid without having to discuss the issue with curious students.

Gibson took his leave after I had promised to report to him as soon as possible. Later, I would also prepare a report for the home office, stating, in essence, that there was no danger of cholera transmission through London’s drinking water supply.

I provide
d Mr Holmes and myself with an India rubber apron, gloves, and a mask. The latter was a simple device made of fine, double layered fabric I had invented for such occasions. With the mask covering nose and mouth, dangerous airborne germs could not infect the man conducting a dissection or surgery - or in my case, the woman. I felt nauseous at the thought that the man next to me knew my secret.

We undid the blanket and heaved the body onto the slab’s polished surface. I glanced sideways into Mr Holmes’s face; it did feel awkward working with him. He noticed my hesitation. ‘Dr Kronberg, I believe I must apol-‘

‘
This is not what worries me, Mr Holmes,’ I interrupted anxiously; ‘I’m seriously considering blackmailing you. Unfortunately, you are rather sharp and my chances to win such a game or even find a rancid spot to taint your reputation with are probably close to nil.’

Upon that he chuckled heartily. ‘I suppose your deceit is morally justifiable, although, if exposed, will cause a public outcry. Fortunately, we both have the right to private judgement. Trust me, Dr Kronberg, exposing you to the police appears utterly unattractive to me.’

I peer
ed over the edge of my mask and found his expression to be sincere enough. And yet, the stiffness of my spine would not leave me.

I push
ed my fear away and turned back to the matter at hand, fetched a pair of tweezers, and collected the fragments of flora and fauna, which had caught on the body’s clothes and hair, and placed them into a small bowl. Then I cut the man's coat off with a pair of large scissors.

His shirt buttons did not have the grease prints, nor did the buttons of his trousers. He had restraint marks not only on his wrists but also his ankles. I discovered needle punctures on the man's left elbow bend as I cut his shirt off. I pointed out the punctures. Mr Holmes nodded and scanned each new square inch of skin I revealed while undressing the man in front of us.

‘
The punctures look professionally done, not like the holes they punch into people in opium dens. He must have seen a medical doctor. Very unusual,’ I observed while picking up my largest knife.

I was not sure about Mr Holmes’s endurance when it came to slicing apart human beings, so I kept half an eye on him while cutting a large letter Y starting at the man’s collar bones and extending down to the pubic bone. Mr Holmes, though, seemed perfectly unmoved by my doings, so I proceed with sawing off the breast bone and part of the ribcage. The odour worsened significantly then. I never got used to the stench of death.

I dissect
ed the lungs, and the pressure exerted on them resulted in the expulsion of pink froth from the corpse’s nose and mouth. My physique was not ideal for a dissection, or rather - I did not have the figure of a butcher. Grunting, I worked the lungs out and into a bowl.

‘
As I suspected - the man didn’t drown,’ remarked Mr Holmes upon the fact that the lungs were not filled with water.

‘
They contain only a small amount of dust and soot, supporting your assumption the man spent most of his life in the countryside,’ I added. Had he been a Londoner, his lungs would have appeared grey.

The number and size of the coagula inside the man’s abdomen corroborated our assessment of the time of death.

That he had had cholera in the final stage was clear as bright daylight. Additional to the appearance of his skin, his liver was reduced and pale and the gastrointestinal tract empty. Only a small amount of dirty greenish liquid was left.

All organs went into separate bowls, leaving me panting and sweating. By now the apron had taken the function of a sauna and my hands felt like slippery fish inside the gloves.

Mr Holmes bent
down low over the corpse, while staring straight into the man's now half emptied abdomen. Obviously, dissections were a great entertainment for him.

I
examined the man’s mouth and eyes and saw that his tongue was swollen and impressions of his teeth showed along its edges. I pushed the remains of his eyelids apart and after a moment’s consideration turned to Mr Holmes. ‘What do you make of this?’

He gazed
into the milky blue eyes with one pupil as small as a pin prick, the other spanning almost the entire iris.

‘
Poison, o
r possibly a head trauma?’ he wondered aloud.

‘
Hmm…’ I answered and examined the man’s skull again, but still could not find any signs of violence.

I took up a smaller knife and made a cut along the hairline, and one from there to the top of his head and down on the back again. Then I pulled the skin to the side of the head and over his face. My hands worked with precision, but my brain revolted. Skinning a human face is another thing I would never get used to.

I
got a saw and opened the skull. Great skill was needed to cut only the bones and leave the nerve tissue untarnished.

The brain appeared normal.
I extracted the right hemisphere and cut it into slices. Then I took the magnifying glass from Mr Holmes's hand and bent down over the brain sections. Small liquid filled lesions presented themselves.

‘
Odd!’ I straightened up and tossed my tools aside. His magnifying glass produced a loud clonk on the slab.

As I leaned
with both hands on the marble slab my brain emptied and my eyes flew over the corpse. I wondered what I had missed. After a while I stripped off my gloves and pressed my fingers into the bend of the elbow. The punctures felt a little stiffer than the surrounding tissue. I cut through them and pulled the skin apart. The vein appeared slightly infected.

‘
It
seems as if the man had had a needle inserted and then left there for a longer time,’ I told Mr Holmes, intrigued.

‘
That would make restraints necessary,’ he concluded.

The
man’s stomach lay in a bowl next to me. I open the organ and another surprise presented itself: half digested bread and smoked fish, probably eel, swam merrily out of the opening.

‘
The man had eaten, although he
shouldn’t have had an appetite at all during the final stage of cholera. And yet, he ate a substantial amount! I can see no signs of force feeding in his mouth or oesophagus. Peculiarly, his stomach had cramped shut for probably two or three hours before his death. Although half digested, none of the food made it into the small intestines. Why is that?’ My fingers hammered onto the slab; then I ripped my mask off and my apron, and disinfected myself. ‘Wait here,’ I said before leaving with haste.

Mr Holmes had his eyebrows pulled up as I returned with a box of polished birch wood. I set it on one of the other slabs and extracted a stereomicroscope from it. I wiped its three lenses and both oculars with a silken handkerchief.

‘
M
ay I introduce the best microscope you will ever set your eyes upon. Or rather, peer through,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I found this one in Boston, although it’s a German make. Its secret lies in the stacks of multiple lenses. I never came across a better one. And it had cost me an arm and a leg,’ I explained while extracting liquid from the man’s vein.

I place
d a single drop of serum onto a glass slide; tipped a cover slip as thin as a piece of paper onto the drop to flatten it to a thin film of liquid. Then, I fastened the slide onto the holder just underneath the largest microscope lens and inserted a drop of immersion oil underneath. I aligned the small mirror at the bottom of the microscope towards the sun, peered through the oculars, and focussed on the swirling particles.

‘
What resolution does it have?’ asked Mr Holmes.

‘
With an approximately one-thousand-fold magnification I can see anything as small as two micrometers.’

‘
Exceptional!’ he cried out, and I had to smile at the small cells, which had the resemblance of miniscule tennis rackets - ones that were five micrometers long, swam fast, and could kill every warm-blooded vertebrate. I beckoned to him to take a look.

‘
Germs!’ he said, intrigued.

‘
Yes. It seems you were right, Mr Holmes.’

‘
I never mentioned that possibility!’ he protested.

‘
Unknowingly, you did. You mentioned poison.’ Upon his quizzical look I added: ‘Germs produce toxins. That’s how they kill.’

‘
But cholera is not-‘

‘
No,’ I interrupted, ‘he didn’t die of cholera. Although he had it in its final stage, I believe he was already recovering. The food in his stomach indicates that. The deadly blow must have come from tetanus. But I don’t know how he got infected. The needle punctures are only slightly inflamed, and don’t show the typical appearance of a tetanus entry wound.’

Mr Holmes was standing next to me mulling things over silently. I was almost done cleaning up my dissection equipment when he muttered: ‘I need to take that bowl with me,’ indicating the collection of twigs, leaves, and beetles I had picked from the man.

‘
How good are you at identifying them?’

‘
I dare say the best.’

I could have guessed that much.

He pulled off his gloves, apron, and mask and I showed him how to disinfect himself and the contents of the bowl he wanted to take with him.

‘
I suggest we meet Inspector Gibson at my residence tomorrow morning at eight.’

‘
Hm...’ I replied.

‘
Would that be a problem?’

‘
I’ll think about it. I may go to the main quarters directly.’ I avoided looking at him. He turned to leave but then seemed to think otherwise. ‘I assume you wouldn’t tell me your real name?’

Aghast, I
shook my head. ‘Don’t try to find it out behind my back, please.’

He looked slightly amused then.

‘
Do you want me to find out your address behind your back? Just in case, I mean.’

He sla
pped his hand against the door frame, ‘221B Baker Street.’

Chapter Three

I step
ped off the omnibus and just managed to avoid a pile of horse manure on the pavement. Turning around, I spotted the street sweeper. He was leaning onto his broom handle, chewing on something obviously ropy, which he repeatedly picked from the gaps of missing teeth to suck the findings of his archaeological excavation off his fingers. There were a few things that did excel dissections in being unappetising.

I tipped my hat at him, entered the eastern end of Regents Park, and turned north. The bustling of the street behind me gradually dimmed to be replaced by the quiet chatter of couples walking arm in arm and sparrows’ grating chirps.

After a few minutes I reach
ed 221B Baker Street. As its neighbours, the three story house was built of red bricks with its base looking as if it had been dipped into cream. It had large white-framed windows and a smoked oak door. As my hand closed around the cold brass knocker I wondered how much Holmes earned with that odd occupation of his. After a knock and a short moment of waiting, the stout landlady beckoned me in.