Kronberg Crimes 01 - The Devils Grin

the gain and loss of someone precious.
    I rubbed my eyes and gave the two horses another good flick. I needed wind in my face.
    After we had gone far out of the cabby’s vision, he climbed up and sat down next to me.
    ‘Where did you learn to drive a horse carriage?’ he demanded, wearing a gruff expression.
    ‘We had two horses at home. Besides, it’s not that complicated, really,’ I answered with a thin voice, not at all eager to engage in distractive small talk.
    ‘That was far from appropriate for a woman of your social standing,’ he noted dryly.
    ‘Beg your pardon? You are the last person I would expect to care for social standards. Besides, I never pretended to be a woman of the higher classes, and you seem to ignore the fact that, as a woman, I have no social standing whatsoever. By kissing you, all I may have rattled is your composure. But you already seem to be getting yourself back together without much effort. In one day you are your old self, Mr Holmes !’
    ‘Needless to say,’ he muttered to himself.
    ‘If you’d wanted an ordinary woman, you would have been married for years and father of numerous annoying little children,’ I replied acidly.
    It was a useless conversation and we both knew it. For about twenty minutes we drove silently until I had steered the cab into Tottenham Court Road. I stopped and climbed down. The moment my feet touched the cobblestone street, he flicked the whip across the horses’ hindquarters and drove away without a glance back.
    Nonplussed, I stood on the pavement. How the deuce could I have let him take my heart away?

    ~~~

    End of Book One

Preview of The Fall, Kronberg Crimes #2

    __________________
    TWO MEN

    And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army. Gabrielle De’ Mussi, 1348, on the Siege of Caffa

    For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob. Virginia Woolf

    Wednesday Night, October 22nd, 1890
    Something cold pushed my head into the straw mattress. Two sharp clicks and the smell of metal sent my heart slamming against my chest. The gun’s mouth was pressed flat against my temple. If fired, the bullet would rip straight through my brain, driving blood and nerve tissue through the mattress down onto the floor. If the gun were tipped a little, the bullet would circle inside my skull, leaving a furrow in the bone and pulp in its wake.
    ‘Dr Kronberg,’ a voice echoed through the dark. ‘Get up slowly, if you please.’
    I opened my eyes.
    ‘Sit over there,’ he rasped, waving a lantern towards the table. I obeyed and the small chair gave its usual quiet squeak. A match was struck. Sulphur stung my nostrils. A candle cast the room into unsteady light.
    A man of approximately fifty years sat across from me. A face chiselled in hardwood, cracked by tension and ageing, his demeanour commanding strict obedience.
    ‘You are good at hiding,’ said he. Waves of goosebumps rolled over my skin. He looked at me, waiting for a reply that did not come. What could I possibly say? Obviously, I hadn’t been hiding well enough. My tongue glued itself to my palate. The wrong word might end my life in an instant.
    Suddenly, my ears picked up a sound. The floorboards had produced a lone pop, raising the hair on my neck as though to assess the danger lurking behind me.
    ‘Last spring, a group of medical doctors were captured by the police and led to trial. Only one month later, they found their end at the gallows,’ he said.
    I remembered that day—sitting on the very same chair I had read about the hanging of sixteen medical doctors along with the superintendent of Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum and four of his guards. What a spectacle that must have been for the Londoners! Details about their deeds, however, the abductions, murders, and medical experiments on paupers, had not been reported.
    The tiny hairs on my neck ached, pricked by a noise so low I almost missed it—calm breathing, just behind me and far up.
    ‘All but one,’ the man interrupted.
    Shock had broadened and sharpened my senses in the most exhilarating fashion. My first assumption was that the man behind me was a backup, someone to break my neck, if needed. I coughed, flicked my gaze towards the window and back again. For a