Kronberg Crimes 01 - The Devils Grin

though, seemed perfectly unmoved by the procedure, so I continued with sawing off the sternum and removing part of the thorax. The odour worsened significantly and reminded me once more that I would never get used to the stench of death.
    While removing the lungs, the pressure I exerted on them resulted in an expulsion of pink froth from the corpse’s nose and mouth. My physique was not ideal for a dissection, or rather, I did not have the figure of a butcher. Grunting, I lifted the lungs into a bowl and cut them open.
    ‘As I suspected — the man didn’t drown,’ remarked Mr Holmes upon the fact that the lungs were not filled with water.
    ‘They contain only a small amount of dust and soot, supporting your assumption that the man spent most of his life in the countryside,’ I added. Had he been a Londoner, his lungs would have appeared grey.
    The number and size of the coagula inside the man’s abdomen corroborated our assessment of the time of death.
    That he had had cholera in the final stage was as clear as bright daylight. In addition to the appearance of his skin, his liver was reduced and pale. His guts were empty for but a small amount of dirty greenish liquid.
    All organs went into separate bowls, leaving me panting and sweating. By now my apron had taken the function of a hothouse and my hands felt like slippery fish inside my gloves.
    Mr Holmes bent down low over the corpse and stared straight into the man’s half emptied abdomen. Perhaps he found dissections entertaining.
    Upon examining the man’s mouth and eyes, I saw that his tongue was swollen and impressions of his teeth showed along its edges. I pushed the remains of his eyelids apart. After a moment’s consideration, I turned to Mr Holmes. ‘What do you make of this?’
    He gazed into the milky blue eyes with one pupil as small as a pin prick, the other spanning almost the entire iris.
    ‘Poison, or possibly a head trauma?’ he suggested.
    ‘Hmm…’ I answered, checking the man’s skull again. But I could still not find any signs of violence.
    I took up a smaller knife and made a cut along the hairline, and one from there to the top of his head and down on the back again. Then I pulled the skin to the side of the head and over his face. My hands worked with precision, but my brain revolted. Skinning a human face is another thing I would never get used to.
    I picked up a saw and cut into the skull, then used a delicate chisel and a hammer to crack the bone along the grooves I had made. Great skill and caution were needed to cut only the bones and leave the nerve tissue untarnished.
    The upper half of the skull came off like the top of a breakfast egg, revealing the brain that at first glance appeared normal. I extracted the right hemisphere and cut it into slices, took the magnifying glass from Mr Holmes’s hand and bent down over the brain sections. Small, liquid-filled lesions presented themselves.
    ‘Odd!’ I straightened up, tossing my tools aside. His magnifying glass produced a loud clonk on the slab. ‘My apologies,’ I muttered.
    Leaning with my hands on the marble slab, I pushed all thoughts aside and let my gaze fly over the corpse, putting bits of information back into my mind, hoping a picture would form. What had I missed?
    Impatiently, I yanked my gloves off and pressed my fingers into the bend of the man’s elbow. The punctures felt stiffer than the surrounding tissue. I cut through them and pulled the skin apart. The vein appeared slightly infected.
    ‘It seems as though the man had a needle inserted, which was then left there for some time,’ I said, rather baffled.
    ‘That would make restraints necessary,’ he concluded.
    The man’s stomach lay in a bowl next to me. I opened the organ and another surprise presented itself: half-digested bread and smoked fish, probably eel, swam merrily out of the opening.
    ‘The man had eaten, although he shouldn’t have had an appetite at all during the final stage of cholera. And yet, he ate a substantial amount! I can see no signs of force-feeding in his mouth or oesophagus. Peculiarly, his stomach cramped shut for probably two or three hours before his death. Although half digested, none of the food made it into the small intestines. Why is that?’
    My hands squeezed the slab hard as though a clue could be forced out that way. ‘Mr Holmes, could it be possible after all that the man had been pushed into the water works’ trench?’
    ‘I don’t believe so. One