The Devil's Grin: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller Book 1) (22 page)

Fighting for the appropriate amount of curiosity and ease in my voice, I asked, ‘Dundee, you say? That’s far away. Who prepared her for the transfer?’

Here, he stopped for a few moments, obviously pondering whether he was allowed to share this information, too. After a moment, he gave in. ‘A colleague from the Dundee School of Medicine.’

I made another metal note. The Club had a medical doctor working for them so far away from London. How much farther did they reach?

‘Did you take precautions?’ I enquired.

‘Of course we did!’ he cried indignantly. ‘She has no family; no one will miss her. The driver believes she will receive special treatment at our school.’ A smile played around his angler fish death trap. ‘Do not worry yourself, Dr Kronberg — no one will ever know.’ He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed it lightly.
 

How a man could exude so much hypocrisy and not drop dead of shame was a conundrum to me. ‘Excellent!’ I replied. ‘Has the cab been cleaned thoroughly?’ Focusing on avoiding the transmission of cholera and preventing the worst was my dangerously thin connection to sanity. My heart ached like a rotten tooth.

Dead bodies being removed during a cholera outbreak. Late 19
^th
century (21)

‘Certainly!’ exclaimed Stark, letting go of my shoulder to wave his hand. ‘Its interior was disinfected by your assistants. They also cleansed themselves and are now using your new invention — those masks — in addition to coats and gloves when they deal with the woman.’

I gave him an approving nod and walked over to the door. ‘I will have to extract the germs before or right after the subject dies,’ I said and grabbed my coat from the hanger. Stark did the same, and together we took a hansom to the medical school.

A few minutes later, we entered my laboratory. On the floor lay a soiled and frail-looking woman, half covered by a thin blanket. Although she was too weak to move, her hands were bound behind her back.

I felt myself falling apart. I knew I had to remain here, appearing calm and calculating. But all I wanted was to run away and scream. Quietly I inhaled and pulled myself back together. When we approached her, I knew she was already dying. Her breathing was so shallow, I barely heard it.

‘Leave me alone. You don’t want to watch this,’ I said. Stark appeared to have the exact same thought.

When I untied her hands, her ribcage began to heave convulsively. She opened her eyes in panic. Her unsteady gaze found me kneeling next to her. She opened her mouth, but was unable to speak. Her eyes were pleading. I ripped off my gloves and took her cold and shrivelled hands into mine, as though I could give her enough of my warmth and bring her back to life.

‘I am so sorry,’ I choked.
 

Her legs were twitching; the loss of fluids and minerals was causing her muscles to contract uncontrollably and painfully. And I sensed it then, and wished I could be the one to be taken away now. How ridiculous. No one could haggle with death.

I took both her hands into one of mine and stretched to take a bottle of ether from the shelf above me. I poured a large amount onto a handkerchief. She smelled it, and I gazed down at her, asking for permission. She smiled weakly and I pressed the stinking cloth against her mouth and caressed her soiled hair until long after her heart had given up fluttering.

I disinfected my hands, arms and face; put my gloves on, my mask, and rubber apron. Then I inserted a narrow tube into the woman’s rectum, connected the other end to a large syringe, and extracted about a quarter of an ounce of dirty greenish fluid.
 

Carefully, I spread drops of it onto fresh culture medium my assistants had prepared. Half of the Petri dishes were kept under the exclusion of oxygen; the other half with air contact. I wasn’t certain whether cholera germs grew under oxic conditions.

I poured the remaining fluid into a beaker and heated it to eighty degrees Celsius for twenty minutes. After it had cooled down, I fed it to half the mice and rabbits and marked them by shaving a bit of fur off their bellies. No one would notice, I hoped. With extraordinary luck, I might have a cholera vaccine ready in a few days
 
without the Club’s knowledge. Perhaps it could help save a few lives. Perhaps it could pay for what I’d done.

After I washed and disinfected my hands, I prepared a letter — a small piece of parchment in a cheap envelope — that would be mailed the next morning to Mr Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street:

Guilty of abduction, torture, and neglect of an unidentified female cholera victim, deceased today at London Medical School: Dr Gregory Stark, Dr Jarell Bowden, Assistant Mr Daniel Strowbridge, Assistant Mr Edison Bonsell, and an unknown medical doctor from the Dundee School of Medicine. Guilty of murder of the same woman: Dr Anton Kronberg.

— seventeen —

T
he following evening at six o’clock, Dr Jarell Bowden called at my quarters.

‘You honour me with your visit, Dr Bowden.’ I gifted him a hint of a bow, beckoning the old man in and offering my only armchair. It used to be burgundy red, but time had turned it into a dull pink, except for the patches, which were almost white now. Bowden took the tattered seat with reluctance.

I poured tea and moved a chair to the other side of the coffee table, rarely taking my eyes off my guest. Bowden’s expression was controlled, but his eyes darted here and there, taking in the shabby furniture, the cheap wallpaper, the limited space. He couldn’t hide a sneer.

‘How can I help you, Dr Bowden?’ I sat down, wondering whether he would address the issue directly.

‘I heard you have threatened four of my men,’ he answered, taking his eyes off the room and focussing at me. ‘How do you defend yourself, Dr Kronberg?’

Good, there was still hope as long as Bowden was openly confronting me.

‘I don’t,’ I replied, ‘I did threaten them.’

Bowden’s body gave the slightest jerk backwards, his eyelids flickered once. ‘You do not defend yourself?’

‘I feel no need to do so. The four followed me to my home, apparently without your orders. You must have a less conspicuous man tailing me, I assume? Regardless, the four men let me know that they don’t trust me — hardly surprising. I couldn’t care less about their feelings; none of them is of importance to my work.’

Bowden showed no reaction to the depreciative statement and I continued. ‘One of them was about to reveal a secret that was not for me to know.’

He raised his eyebrows, but managed to pull them down soon enough. Was he aware of my scrutinising gaze?

‘The behaviour they showed was uncontrolled and their action not thought through.’ I placed my cup on the saucer. The soft
clink
was followed by Bowden clearing his throat. Before he could speak, I said, ‘They followed a hunch and put belief above knowledge. I found them to be most unreliable. So I threatened them that I would shove them into the Thames if anything like that were to ever happen again.’

‘They told me a different story,’ he responded lightly, leaning back and obviously looking forward to a devastating effect of his words.

‘Well, then, it remains for you to decide whom you choose to believe.’ I forced my mind to think only of the scarlet bull’s eye. I did not move, nor did I take my eyes off my guest.

After a long moment of consideration, he said, ‘You strike me as rather odd. Any other man would have tried to convince me of his innocence and would have fought to gain my trust. Why don’t you?’

Goosebumps crawled over my skin and my knees were trembling slightly. ‘It is because I do not put words above actions. If I were in your position, I would not trust that new man, either. And you don’t, which makes you a safe leader. To be absolutely certain, I would put a tail on the man, as you did, too. I would ask his former colleagues what kind of person he is, as you did, too. At some point, though, I would have to make a decision. Either I can or cannot trust him. At some point, I would have to take a risk. It’s either in or out. As the leader, you have to make that decision. Only you can know whether these four men have always been trustworthy to the highest degree, have never lied to you, have never done anything that could have jeopardised your goals. I am in no position to recommend which action is the one you should take, Dr Bowden.’

I silently gazed into Bowden’s wide-open eyes. After a long moment, he pouted his lips and produced a scant nod. ‘You are a remarkable man, Dr Kronberg. I have never met anyone who speaks so openly. Yet, I cannot trust you. I will think about our problem and will, as you have noticed already, keep you under surveillance for the time being.’

With that, he took his leave. After the door had closed, I pressed my aching head into my hands and sat on the chair for a very long time, all the while thinking of my dead body floating face down in the river.

The woman from Dundee walked into my room. She looked at me. I was lying in my bed, unable to move. She lifted my blanket and crawled in next to me. ‘Sleep, Anna,’ she said softly, placing her skeletal hand, which was neither warm nor cold, onto my chest. She smiled. Her hand was heavy, like a rock crushing my lungs. I couldn’t neither. I couldn’t move. She was smiling still, while I was dying.