The Devil's Grin: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller Book 1) (14 page)

‘How do you plan to get into the workhouses?’

Inviting, he raised an eyebrow and I replied, ‘Not as a pauper?’

‘Isn’t that the most obvious strategy?’ He seemed a little disappointed by my question.

‘It is; I am just having problems picturing you in rags.’

He twitched his eyebrows at me, then struck a match and looked at his watch. It was two o’clock and the night had gone chilly. Somewhere close by, the tawny owl hooted again. I unfolded my blanket, moved closer to him, and draped it over his legs and mine.

‘What happened in Broadmoor this morning?’ I enquired.

A hiss through his teeth. ‘Nicholson had been warned and had the whole of the night to clean up. It was as clear as the bright daylight, but Lestrade didn’t notice it, as usual.’

Images of Nicholson supervising the burning of corpses snuck back into my mind. I shuddered. ‘Who warned Nicholson?’

‘Gibson.’

‘What?’

‘He must have been in an exceptionally smart mood and wired the local police force, asking for reinforcement for the raid the following morning. As he did this against my instructions, he didn’t dare tell us before we left. The constable who received the wire is Nicholson’s nephew. Naturally, he warned his uncle.’

‘Balls! I mean…sorry!
Drat
is what I meant. My apologies, sometimes I’m a bucket.’

‘Excuse me, a what?’

‘Bucket,’ I said, tapping my skull with my index finger. ‘
Empty vessel
.’

He slapped his knees and gave a bark of a laugh, then muffled himself face down in his sleeve. I noticed that this was only the second time I had seen him laughing.
 

After a long moment, he said, ‘I believe your vessel is full to the brim.’

Abashed, I fell silent.

By now, we had drunk half the brandy and Holmes commented on the lack of his pipe. Light-headed, I extracted my tobacco pouch. He watched me roll a cigarette, pinching the paper tight around the brown plant clippings, sending my tongue’s tip across its edge, and picking excess tobacco from both ends. Without comment, he took the cigarette from my offering hand and I made myself one, too.

‘May I ask something personal?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Try.’ I tipped another brandy into my mouth in preparation for what may come.

‘How did you receive the long scar on your abdomen?’

My throat clenched like a fist.
 

‘My apologies, I shouldn’t have asked. Especially when considering the peculiar situation.’ He pointed at our legs stuck under the same blanket.
 

‘I believe visiting you every day for two or four weeks to cure your pneumonia might be even more peculiar.’

‘Probably.’

The light talk had helped me to breathe again. ‘Did it make you think of the Ripper?’

He tipped his head in agreement. ‘I was wondering for a while about your strong interest in the murders and why you formed your own — and very conceivable, I must say — theory. I assumed your interest was personal. And then I saw the scar tonight.’

‘Excellent reasoning,’ I croaked and gazed up into the tree. After a long moment, I began recounting the most terrible night of my life.
 

‘I had defended my thesis, and after we had celebrated, I walked home alone late at night. Three of my fellow students begrudged me the success. They had always had an eye on me and followed me through the streets that night. They cornered me in a dark alley and said that I needn’t be afraid; all they wanted was to check the size of my cock, which must be microscopic because I was such a wonk. Soon they noticed the non-existence of that organ. At first they were shocked, but then realised their luck — I would never tell on them. And they were right — why should I betray my own secret?’ I took a deep breath.

‘One of them wasn’t able to penetrate me, so he used a knife to leave his mark. Not to kill, just to replace one power he did not have with one he had. He wished to give me a souvenir that would always remind me of him and that one night. As if I needed that. How would anyone forget such a thing?’ I swallowed. ‘I will never bear children.’

Holmes had turned stiff during my narrative and I saw his knuckles turn white as his fingers dug into his knees.

‘It is in the past; they don’t haunt me any more.’

Confounded, he stared at me.

‘It is my life; I cannot live it when I’m full of hate.’

‘But they are free to rape again.’ There was accusation in his voice, but it did not offend me. I felt strangely balanced.

‘They are not. I’m making sure of that.’

‘London is rather far away from Berlin,’ he noted. ‘Should they still be living there.’

‘Oh, they do. A couple of friends keep me informed. They’ll let me know when it’s time to pay a visit.’

He looked doubtful.

‘You have never seen me angry.’

‘Have I not?’

‘No, you have not. Two weeks after the…
incident,
I sawed the barrel off my father’s shotgun, fit it under my coat, and visited them. The one who had used the knife gave me the most trouble; I had to shoot him in his right foot to leave any impression at all. He is still limping. The other two believed me at once when I said I would shoot off their testicles if I ever heard they touched a woman without her consent.’

Holmes raised his eyebrows.

‘Are you shocked?’ I asked quietly.

‘No.’

His answer had come too fast to be believable and he must have noticed that, too. He examined the night sky for a while and then muttered, ‘It is complicated.’

I waited a long time, but he did not elaborate further on the matter. Strangely, my upset heart wouldn’t calm itself. It galloped like a foal. I grew aware of the man next to me and noticed the complete lack of distance, both physical and emotional.

‘I’m shocked, too.’ I rose to my feet and packed my rucksack, left the blanket where it lay, and walked back to the lake.

— ten —

T
wo days ago, on September 10th, an unidentified female torso was found under a railway arch in Pinchin Street. No other body parts were found in the vicinity. The papers were full of it and all of London suspected Jack the Ripper, only Holmes did not. Again, bobbies were swarming Whitechapel and every other slum in London, making it exceedingly difficult for me to change from Anna into Anton and back again.
 

During the last weeks, Holmes had spent considerable time disguised as a pauper, but now focused his energies on the torso case. Our two dead men were still unidentified. But I had other things demanding my attention as well.

The government had awarded me with a substantial grant for the isolation of tetanus germs. A visit at Robert Koch’s laboratory in Berlin was included in the funding. In two weeks’ time, I would leave London for the whole of three months. The prospect of seeing my father made me feel rather fluttery in my chest.
 

Despite the exciting news, my stomach wouldn’t stop aching — I was certain the word had spread and the men behind the Broadmoor experiments had their eyes on me already.

I was at home when an urgent knock interrupted my kitchen scrubbing.

‘Yes?’ I called and the door creaked open. Barry stood in the door frame, a small boy of ten years, pale-faced underneath the grime, his hands shaking. The whole child was a picture of great agitation.

‘What is it?’ I said, dropping the rag in the bucket.

‘My mum,’ he croaked, ‘is very sick.’

I snatched my doctor’s bag and we were both out of the room in less than a minute.
 

He lived just around the corner in a two-storey house, of which the mould had taken hostage many years ago. The privy was overflowing, as it had to accommodate for the thirty or so inhabitants, all in various stages of utmost poverty. Without a single window or door intact, the house and whoever lived inside were at the weather’s mercy all year round. Here in St Giles, it was a house like many others.

We climbed the crooked stairs to the second floor. It was dark and I stumbled several times. The missing windowpanes had been replaced with mildewed cardboard or potato sacks filled with garbage. Milky-white daylight fingered through the shadows and painted the decline in even harsher colours.

We passed a narrow corridor and entered a room that smelled like fermenting excrements. I stopped in the door frame and squinted, waiting for my eyes to adapt to the poor light. The heaps on the floor were children. They lifted their heads and greeted me with weak smiles, showing wreckages of yellowed and blackened teeth. In the corner lay a straw mattress that seemed to have been clubbed to death.

Even if I earned a thousand pounds each month, I wouldn’t be able to turn life in St Giles into something acceptable. Several thousand people lived here under the worst conditions. Women gave birth on filthy stairways or down in the streets. Their newborns had a survival rate of thirty per cent at the most. Of these, only another thirty per cent made it into adulthood, only to die of violence, disease, or undernourishment.

Life of the poor. London, 1850. (16)

Barry and I approached the static pile on the mattress.
 

‘Mum? She’s here,’ whispered the boy.

The blanket moved and a pair of blue eyes peered up into mine, losing focus soon thereafter.

‘Sally, what happened?’ I asked.

She mumbled something unintelligible.

I touched her forehead — it was scorching hot — then pulled the blanket down to her waist and unbuttoned her dress to palpate her abdomen. Both spleen and liver were enlarged and she groaned as I pressed my fingers into the soft flesh. I took a candle from my bag, lit it, and moved the light closer to her. There were rose-coloured patches on her lower chest.
 

‘Barry, does she talk funny sometimes?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

He had never called me
ma’am
before. Startled, I turned towards him. ‘Barry, your mum has typhoid fever. Do you know what that is?’

He nodded, his eyes wide in shock.

I looked around in the room. There was a hole in the wall which must have been a functional fireplace once. The thought of the approaching winter and my imminent journey to the continent left an astringent taste of urgency in my mouth.

They couldn’t even make a fire here to at least warm the winter up a little. The biting cold would penetrate the missing windows and doors and the rotten walls to turn anyone who wasn’t up to it into a frozen corpse. And no matter how loud you begged, the winter wouldn’t retreat until five months later.

I turned back to the boy. ‘Barry, I’m leaving London in a week. You will be her nurse; I will instruct you. We will move her into my quarters tomorrow and you’ll take care of her there. Do you think you can do that?’

His eyes lit up and he nodded again, this time vigorously.

The following day, we carried Sally into my flat. A swarm of children helped to hold up the makeshift bunk on which she lay. I had set up a sleeping corner with clean blankets, several jugs of fresh water, and a bed pan. There was nothing else we could do but give her a dry, clean, and warm place. I left the boy with money for wood, coal, and food and instructed him where to get clean water. He would sleep here with his mother until she either felt healthy enough or until my return at the end of December.