The Devil's Grin - a Crime Novel Featuring Anna Kronberg and Sherlock Holmes by Annelie Wendeberg Page A
Authors: Annelie Wendeberg
Tags: Romance, Murder, Victorian, Abduction, sherlock holmes, women in medicine, 19th century london, history of medicine
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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!’
As he tried to
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!’
As he tried to
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