Kronberg Crimes 01 - The Devils Grin

But that was ridiculous. No one could haggle with death.
    I took both her hands into one of mine now and stretched to take a bottle of ether from the shelf above me. I poured a large amount onto a handkerchief. She smelled it then 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 on to plates of solid culturing medium my assistants had prepared. Half of the Petri dishes were kept under the exclusion of oxygen; the other half with air contact. I didn’t know yet whether cholera germs were strictly anaerobic or not.
    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, hopefully. If I was extraordinarily lucky, I could have a cholera vaccine ready in a few days without the Club’s knowledge. Maybe it could help save a few lives. Maybe it could pay for what I’d done.
    Then, I prepared a letter – a small piece of parchment in a cheap envelope – that I would mail the next morning to Mr Sherlock Holmes, Baker Street 221B:
    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.

Chapter Seventeen

    On the following evening at six o’clock, Dr Jarell Bowden called at my quarters.
    ‘You honour me with your visit, Dr Bowden,’ I said with a hint of a bow, while beckoning the old man in and offering the armchair. It used to be burgundy red, but time had turned it into a dull pink, except for the patches, which were almost white. Bowden took the tattered seat with reluctance.
    I made tea and stoked the fire, rarely taking my eyes off my guest. Bowden’s expression was controlled, but his eyes darted here and there, taking in the shabby room. He couldn’t hide a slight sneer.
    I placed a chair on the other side of the coffee table and sat down facing him. ‘How can I help you, Dr Bowden?’ I enquired friendly and respectfully, while wondering whether Bowden would address the issue directly.
    ‘I heard you have threatened four of my men,’ said Bowden, while taking his eyes off the room and gluing them onto my face. ‘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 upper body gave the slightest jerk backwards, his eyelids flickered once. ‘You do not defend yourself?’
    ‘I don’t think I need nor should do so. The four followed me to my home and it appeared, they did so without your orders. You must have a less conspicuous man tailing me, I assume? Regardless, the men let me know that they don’t trust me. It doesn’t bother me, though. 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.’
    At that, Bowden 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 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,’ responded Bowden 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 answered calmly, while trying hard to think only of the scarlet bull’s eye. I did not move; nor did I take my eyes off Bowden.
    After a long moment of consideration, Bowden said, ‘You strike me as rather