Kronberg Crimes 01 - The Devils Grin

nothing. The students looked at me enquiringly.
    ‘What else could produce these symptoms?’
    Silence. Well, most of them hadn’t had toxicology yet, so I answered my own question again. ‘The alkaloid of the strychnos tree, commonly known as strychnine, killed Alexander the Great, for example.’
    Murmur filled the room and I waited for silence before I continued. ‘To be able to distinguish between the two, we have to open the man.’
    I moved the table with my utensils closer to the slab. As expected, the new students pushed farther back the moment I took my largest knife and ran it through the corpse’s skin.
    I could not find any infected areas in his gastrointestinal tract, but his heart had a swollen and dark, almost black area. I cut it open and held it to my nose — it stank. I couldn’t explain to my students how tetanus had got into the man’s heart. We were all mystified. I opened the cranium, sliced the hemispheres in sections, and found the typical liquid-filled lesions that only tetanus would produce and not strychnine. I straightened up then and said, ‘It appears that Scots do play the bagpipes after all.’ McFadin grinned back at me.
    After the lesson was over, I sent a wire to Holmes, wrapped the boots and clothes in wax paper, and left for home.

Chapter Six

    I walked along the buzzing streets, trying to avoid collision with other pedestrians. Street vendors advertised their goods and a variety of odours wafted through the heavy summer evening air — fish, pastries, smoke, blood, urine and stale sweat. I bought an eel pie and ate it while walking, the package for Holmes clamped under my arm.
    The direct way home was a three-mile journey, which I usually did not take. I also avoided walking or riding the same route on two consecutive days. It was my way to disconnect my two different lives – the male and the female. If anyone wanted to follow me from Guy’s to my home, they would have a hard time doing so.
    When the weather permitted, I chose to walk, on other days I took either an omnibus or a hansom to some place close to Bow Street.
    Today was dry and sunny, a good day for a stroll. I passed over London Bridge, turned left into Upper Thames Street all the way to Blackfriars Bridge, crossed the river a second time, on to Stamford, crossed it again at Waterloo Bridge, passing The Strand — sometimes I took my supper here, but not today — walked along Charles Street and into Bow Street.
    At the back door of the cobbler’s, I made my way up a narrow staircase, careful not to bump into the ceiling at the very top, and then turned into a dark corridor just underneath the attic.
    I unlocked the small door at the far end and entered a tiny windowless room. Very conveniently, my landlady had poor eyesight and it was easy to make her believe that I used the room as a storage place for costumes. I had told her that, at odd times, I or customers of mine would enter, pick a dress of their liking, and leave again. And as these few possessions of mine represented my entire riches and I could not afford to lose them, I had persuaded her to allow me the installation of an extra lock at the door, to which only I had a key. It was an unusual arrangement, but she needed the extra shilling I paid her each week.
    Once inside, I bolted the door to my secret dressing chamber, ready to start my daily ritual. I lighted the two oil lamps standing on either side of a locked wardrobe, slipped the key in and turned. The door creaked open and the looking glass fixed to its inside revealed a view of Dr Anton Kronberg, respectable member of the medical establishment, dressed in a sand-coloured cotton shirt, cotton trousers of a darker shade, and patent leather shoes. His hair was slicked back into his neck with Makassar oil. Well educated, distinguished, and attractive in a peculiarly delicate way — he was a magnet to half the nurses at Guy’s. What a waste.
    I unbuttoned the shirt, took it off, and draped it over a hanger, then pulled off my shoes, trousers and stockings. My fingers probed inside the wrappings around my chest, until one end of the bandages was found and I could free my compressed bosom. While rolling the cotton strip into a ball, the red stripes on my breasts slowly paled. Pulling off my underpants, I grinned at the absurd appendage that stuck out between my legs. After four years, I still haven’t got used to my penis — fastened to a harness and made of finest calf leather. It looked