The Devil's Grin - a Crime Novel Featuring Anna Kronberg and Sherlock Holmes (13 page)

‘
Excuse me?
’

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

He slapped his knees and gave
a bark of a laugh before muffling himself face down in his sleeve. I noticed that this was the first time I had seen him laughing. After a long moment he said earnestly: ‘I think your vessel is full to the brim.’

Abashed, I
fell silent.

By now, we had emptied half the brandy and Holmes comme
nted on the lack of his pipe. Lightheaded, I extracted my tobacco pouch. He watched me rolling a cigarette, pinching the paper tight around the brown plant clippings, sending my tongue’s tip across its edges, and picking excess tobacco from both ends. Without comment he picked the cigarette from my offering hand, and I made myself one, too.

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

‘
Try,’ I answered, tipping 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
.

‘
I am sorry, and I shouldn’t have asked. Especially when considering the peculiar situation,’ he said, pointing at our legs stuck under the same blanket.

‘
I think coming to your home every day for two weeks to cure your pneumonia might be even more peculiar.’

‘
Probably.’

The light talk had enabled me to breathe again.

‘
Did it make you think of The Ripper?’ I asked him.

‘
Yes. 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.’

‘
Good deduction,’ I croaked, and gazed up into the tree. After a long moment I started recounting the most terrible night of my life.

‘
I had defended my thesis, we had a small party, and I walked home alone late at night. Three of my fellow students begrudged me my success. They had always had an eye on me and followed me through the streets that night to corner me in a dark alley. They told me that I needn’t be afraid; all they wanted was to check the size of my penis, which must be microscopic because I was such a nerd. Soon they noticed the nonexistence 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.

‘
They raped me in turns. One of them wasn’t able to penetrate me, so he used a knife to leave his mark. Not to kill, just to show the power he had over me and to always remind me of that night. As if I needed that,’ I swallowed. ‘How would anyone forget such a thing? I will never bear children.’

Holmes had turned stiff during my narrative and I saw his knuckles turn white as his hands held on to his knees.

‘
It is
in the past, they don’t haunt me anymore.’

He stared at me
, astonished.

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

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

‘
No. They know I come after them should they cross the line.’

‘
You live in London,’ he noted dryly.

‘
But I have friends. They will let me know when it’s time to pay a visit.’

He looked doubtful.

‘
You have never seen me angry,’ I hinted.

‘
Have
I not?’

I had to smile at his surprise and said
: ‘I got my father’s shot gun, sawed the barrel off to fit it under my coat, and followed them two weeks after the…
incident
. The man who 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 only got an imprint of the gun’s butt in their faces.’

Holmes raised his eyebrows.

‘
Are you shocked?’ I asked quietly.

‘
No.’

His answer had come too fast to be believable and he had 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 whispered, rose to my feet and packed my rucksack, left the blanket where it lay, and went back to the lake.

Chapter Nine

Two days ago on September the 10
^th
, an unidentified female torso had been 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, except for Holmes. Again, Bobbies where swarming Whitechapel and any 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 had now focused his energies on the to
rso case. Our two dead men were still unidentified. I, however, 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 m
onths. The prospect of seeing my father again 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 Barry opened my door. He stood in the door frame, a small boy of ten years, pale-faced underneath the grime, and his hands shaking. The whole boy was a picture of great agitation.

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

‘
Me mum,’ he croaked, ‘is very sick.’

I
nodded, snatched my doctor’s bag, and we were both out the door 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 was at the weather’s mercy all year round. Here in St Giles it was a house like all the 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 would earn a thousand pounds each month, I woul
dn’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 babies had a survival chance of thirty per cent at the most. Of these, another thirty per cent made it into adulthood, just to die of violence, disease, or undernourishment.

Barry and I approached the
static pile on the mattress.

‘
Mu
m? 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. I palpated her abdomen. Her spleen and liver were enlarged and she groaned as I pressed my fingers gently into the soft flesh. I lit a candle and moved the light closer to her. There were rose coloured patches on her lower chest.

I turned to Barry
. ‘Does she talk funny sometimes?’

He nodded.

‘
Barry, your mum has typhoid fever. Do you know what that is?’

He nodded again, his eyes wide in horror.

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 beg
ged, the winter wouldn’t retreat until three months later. Three months!

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 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 c
orner with clean blankets, several jugs of fresh water, and a bed pan. There was nothing else we could do but to give her a dry, clean, and warm place. I left Barry with some 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.

And I desperately
hoped my rooms would not be invaded by all the other thirty inhabitants of Barry’s house.

Chapter
Ten

I started my journey to the continent on September 30
^th
. On the ship to Hamburg I read Watson’s
‘
A study in Scarlet
’
. Half of London seemed to know Sherlock Holmes and I had the feeling this educational gap needed to be filled.

My reactions while reading the story drew the occasional glances from my fellow passengers. As I learned about Holmes flogging corpses in the morgue, I volunteered a very audible
‘No way!’