Kronberg Crimes 01 - The Devils Grin

might think a boat could have dropped him off, but the fish wouldn’t have had time to eat all this before the body was discovered,’ he pointed to the corpse’s face. ‘Even if someone went through the troubles of dragging the corpse with a boat for one or two days before dumping him into the trench, we should see very different marks on his body and clothes from ropes or hooks that held him to the vessel.’
    ‘And if that someone would have wanted to poison half of London with cholera, he would have made sure that the body was fresh,’ I added.
    ‘Precisely,’ said Holmes.
    Then, a thought hit me. I almost slapped my forehead with my contaminated hands, quickly washed them, took my mask and apron off and said, ‘Wait here,’ before leaving in a rush.
    Mr Holmes had his eyebrows pulled up as I returned with a box of polished birch wood. I set it on one of the other slabs and extracted a stereo-microscope from it. I wiped its three lenses and both oculars with a silken handkerchief.
    ‘May I introduce the best microscope you will ever set your eyes upon? Or, rather, peer through,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I found this one in Boston, although it’s a German make. Its secret lies in the stacks of multiple lenses. I never came across a better one. And it cost me an arm and a leg,’ I explained while extracting liquid from the man’s vein.
    I placed a single drop of serum onto a glass slide, and tipped a cover slip as thin as paper onto the drop to flatten it to a thin film of liquid. Then I fastened the slide onto the holder just underneath the largest microscope lens and inserted a drop of immersion oil underneath. I aligned the small mirror at the bottom of the microscope towards the sun, peered through the oculars, and focused on the swirling particles.
    ‘What resolution does it have?’ asked Mr Holmes, sounding intrigued.
    ‘With an approximately one-thousand-fold magnification I can see anything as small as two micrometres.’
    ‘Exceptional!’ he cried out and pushed closer.
    And there, in the circular field-of-view of the microscope swam peculiar cells, shaped like minuscule tennis rackets of only five micrometres length — bacteria that could kill every warm-blooded vertebrate. I moved aside to let him take a look.
    ‘Germs!’ he said, intrigued.
    ‘Yes. It seems you were right again.’ I smiled up at him.
    ‘I never mentioned that possibility.’
    ‘You did. You mentioned poison.’ Upon his quizzical look, I added: ‘Germs produce toxins. That’s how they kill.’
    ‘But cholera is not found in the bloodstream.’
    ‘No,’ I said, ‘he didn’t die of cholera. Although he had had it in its final stage, I believe he was already recovering. The food in his stomach indicates that. The deadly blow must have come from tetanus. But I don’t know how he got infected. The needle punctures are only slightly inflamed, and don’t show the typical appearance of a tetanus entry wound.’
    Mr Holmes was silent for a long while, mulling things over with a furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. I was almost done cleaning up my dissection equipment when he muttered, ‘I need to take that bowl with me,’ indicating the collection of twigs, leaves and beetles I had picked from the man.
    ‘How good are you at identifying them?’
    ‘I dare say the best.’ He pulled off his gloves, apron and mask, and I showed him how to disinfect his hands and the contents of the bowl he wanted to take with him.
    ‘I suggest we meet Inspector Gibson at my residence tomorrow morning at eight.’
    ‘Hmm…’ I replied.
    ‘Would that be a problem?’
    ‘I will think about it. I might deliver my report directly to the Yard’s main quarters.’ I avoided looking at him.
    He turned to leave but then seemed to think otherwise. ‘I assume you wouldn’t tell me your real name?’
    Aghast, I shook my head. ‘Don’t try to go behind my back to find it out.’
    He looked slightly amused. The thought had probably crossed his mind.
    ‘Do you want me to find out your address behind your back? Just in case, I mean.’
    He slapped his hand against the door frame. ‘221B Baker Street.’

Chapter Three

    I stepped off the omnibus and just managed to avoid a pile of horse manure on the pavement. Turning around, my gaze fell on the street sweeper. He was leaning on his broom handle, chewing on something obviously ropy and picking his teeth with blackened fingers. Such archaeological excavations exceeded even