The Devil's Grin: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller Book 1) (11 page)

‘You can’t walk around here looking like that,’ he grumbled.

‘I surely can.’ I took a step away from him. He kept holding on to my hand and followed.

‘I’ll bring you home,’ he decided and walked with me, occasionally throwing a glance of puzzlement at my expensive dress. He didn’t speak another word until we stood at my front door.

‘Thank you, Garret.’ I squeezed his hand and looked up into his face.

‘What’re you doing tonight?’ His voice was thick, his forget-me-not eyes intense. Such contrast this gentle face of his was to the forceful rest of him, that bulk of a man with shoulders like a bull and sledgehammer fists. I’d always wondered how he could maintain that occupation of his. How could he fit through small windows or hide in narrow corners?

‘Don’t know yet,’ I answered.

He wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled me close. I hid my smile in his shirt and took a deep breath. He smelled of soap and fresh air.
 

‘You made plans for tonight?’ I asked through the gap between two buttonholes.

‘Think so,’ he said softly and pushed the door to the house open.

‘Garret, you just picked that lock with one hand while flirting with your lover!’

‘Hmm…’ he hummed into my hat.

We entered my room and, with his hand resting on the small of my back, he toed the door shut and took a step forward to push me against the wall. Despite his impatience, he was very gentle. After all, his weight was about twice mine and he could squish me like an insect. Most certainly, that thought had never touched his brain.

He helped me undo the countless buttons on my dress, inhaled a sigh when he peeled it off the satin corset. His fingers searched for the corset’s secret opening and I heard his heart thumping wildly as the silk ribbons whispered through the eyelets. Tense with anticipation, I listened to the rustling of hands on fabric and the staccato of his breath against my skin while my fingers shed his clothes — so much easier than shedding mine.

His eyes flared up when he lifted me without effort. I wrapped my legs around his waist, the soft hair of his chest against my breasts and stomach.
 

When he held me, I could forget about the complicated web of lies I had woven for myself. In his arms I was but a simple woman, loved by a simple man.

In the glass across the room, the reflection of his broad back glistened in the candlelight and both, man and light, moved rhythmically. To me, all about him was gentle and rough at the same time. Every so often, he, with his orange mane and his coarse tongue and paws, made me think of a lion.

The candle had almost burned down. Its flickering light painted golden sparks onto the curls on Garret’s chest. I rolled them around my index finger, lazily, again and again. His ribcage moved up and down — a slow and calming rhythm — and my thoughts began to gallop freely.

I imagined living a normal life. I knew these thoughts were a waste of my time. And yet, I needed to think them, as an experiment of
ifs
and
whys
that always brought me back to where I was now.
 

I had chosen a life in disguise because I wanted to practise medicine. I was the only female medical doctor in London. Not officially, though.

What a man had I become! I was so accomplished in speaking, walking, and behaving like a man that no one ever doubted my sex.
 

I had split my life in two: the male half, which I maintained during the day — Dr Anton Kronberg, renowned bacteriologist; and my female half at night — Anna Kronberg, nurse with a progressively short haircut. But as I lived in the slums where most people made a living with illegal activities, my hacked-off hair didn’t really qualify for gossip. My illicit relationship with Garret didn’t raise eyebrows, either.

Garret stirred and drew his hand over my back. His face turned towards me and his breath washed over my face. I kissed him and sat up.

‘Isn’t it time?’ I wondered.

‘Huh?’

‘Thieving activities, Garret. It’s almost midnight.’

‘Not tonight,’ he mumbled and his gaze fell on my abdomen. His hand followed. He traced the long scar with his fingers and frowned. ‘When will you tell me?’
 

I pushed his hand away and rose to my feet, ignoring the question.

‘Goddammit, Anna!’ he groaned. ‘You’re trusting me enough to fuck you and not break you, but anything else is locked up in that big head of yours!’

‘I hate it when you call it
fucking
.’

‘What is it then? You wouldn’t even consider marrying me.’

‘Aren’t you a hypocrite,’ I snarled at him. His quizzical expression told me he didn’t know what the word
hypocrite
meant. I didn’t bother explaining.
 

‘Do you suddenly worry about morals, Garret? Could it be? It is perfectly fine for you to burgle houses and hurt anyone who’s between you and the loot, but bedding me without us being husband and wife is wrong?’

He stared at me, not knowing what to say. It had taken him a while to accept that I did not care to be married. I knew I shouldn’t impose marriage on anyone; not with me as a wife. I couldn’t even bear children.

‘I
never
lied to you!’ he protested.

I gazed at him until his eyes had lost the brutish glint, then I sat down on the bed and answered, ‘Did I ever lie to you? I never pretended I could give you more; I told you I wouldn’t be able to answer all your questions. You know there are things I cannot share.’

‘You never tell the reasons,’ he croaked.

‘No, I don’t,’ I whispered and touched his cheek with my fingertips. He closed his eyes.

‘Garret, you are my best friend. I give you all I can. Isn’t that enough?’

He picked up my hand and kissed my palm, contemplated for a moment, and then growled, ‘No, it isn’t.’

I was about to push myself away when he, all of a sudden, pulled me closer, wrapped his arms around me, and hoisted me back onto him. He moulded me onto his chest and fitted his mouth onto mine. His helplessness had made him desperate and hungry.

Half an hour later, the door clicked quietly and Garret tiptoed down the creaking stairs. As tense as a bow, I sat in my bed and could not bear the itch of the wordless peck he had left on my cheek.

With a groan, I rose and poured water into the washbowl, slapped it into my face, and then washed the rest of my body. I quenched my thirst with the water left in the jug, then pulled my nightgown over my head. The cotton felt pleasantly cool in the hot summer air.
 

With my tobacco pouch, a bottle of brandy, and a glass as companions, I settled down in my old armchair.

Garret would soon have had enough of me, I was certain. Our relationship had always been too unidentified for him — it was neither fish nor meat. He had called it
fucking
and that irked me. But why should it?
 

Yes, why should it?

I wiped the thought away.

The brandy burned itself down my throat and my mind wandered to Guy’s Hospital, where I worked since the day I had arrived in London four years ago.
 

I thought of Mary Higgins, a shy nurse no one seemed to notice. She worked one floor above my ward and had been quietly showing me affection for more than half a year. I had never encouraged her and believed she would give up soon. Instead, she had got desperate and, without me noticing, followed me down to my basement laboratory on a late evening. When I finally had heard her approach from behind, it was already too late. She was so close that, when I turned around, all she needed to do was lean in and place a wet kiss on my lips.

Startled, I had pushed her away, begging her to regain reason. After she had left and the initial shock subsided, I felt sorry for hurting her and wondered if that kiss could have landed her in gaol, too. Probably not, for she did not know I was a woman.

Living disguised as a man had given me a radically broader view on humanity.
Man
kind! I could observe men and women in their roles while adopting the one or the other disguise and entering either world of social restrictions and behaviours. Sometimes I felt the insane urge to tell them all to cross-dress. How would the world change? I wondered, and laughed at the silly thought.

I did wonder rather too much and had always asked too many questions. Maybe my motive for becoming a scientist was to find reason in all this chaos. After all, I had never felt I belonged to the human race.

I lit a second cigarette and poured another brandy. The night was growing chilly. I hugged my knees and gazed up at the ceiling. At the sight of the spots there, Holmes invaded my calm mind. How strange the man was, I thought, and snorted. Was it not I who was the oddity? I was a woman masquerading as a man. I was a scientist and a medical doctor who was occasionally consulted by Scotland Yard. And I was trying to solve a crime of which the Yard had no knowledge, and I was working on that same case with Sherlock Holmes while fucking a highly accomplished thief who believed I was a nurse. And I owned a penis on straps.

Unusual
did not even begin to describe it! I tipped the rest of the brandy into my mouth, flicked the cigarette into the cold fireplace, and wondered onto which shore life would puke me up some day.

— eight —

E
arly in the morning, a red-faced Wallace McFadin stormed into my ward, calling my name from afar. I threw my hands up in the air and signalled him to be quiet; one cannot run and shout in a room full of ill and half-asleep patients.

‘My apologies. Me and another student — Farley — we found something,’ he said, a little quieter once he had reached me, then rummaged in his pockets and extracted a small piece of paper.

‘You said we should observe everything to find out about the history. The man you dissected a week ago — Farley and I had his right lower arm and hand for today’s anatomy lesson. The others got the other parts and I saw his head and torso, so I knew it was him.’

McFadin was talking rather fast.

‘So, we started dissecting his hand. He still had it balled up into a fist, and then we found this!’

He waved the piece of paper in front of my nose. The sweet stink of decomposition combined with creosote was wafting off it. I took the note from him; one word was written on it in thick, smudgy letters: