The Devil's Grin - a Crime Novel Featuring Anna Kronberg and Sherlock Holmes by Annelie Wendeberg

trousers, shirt, and underwear. I took off his shoes and placed everything next to the slab on the floor.
    ‘ What can we see now?’ I asked the group.
    ‘ He is naked!’ someone shouted and we all had to laugh.
    ‘ Excellent observation!’ I replied and added: ‘I should have asked my question a little differently: What can we not see?’
    That was always the hardest, detecting things that where off-pattern. As expected, no one answered.
    ‘ How do people contract tetanus, typically?’ I hinted.
    ‘ Through dirt in a deep wound,’ someone answered.
    ‘ Do you see any?’ I asked.
    The young men craned their necks and after a while they shook their heads.
    ‘ Shall we turn him?’ We did, but no deep wounds on his back either.
    ‘ How else could tetanus enter the body?’ No one answered, so I did. ‘You could eat an animal that had tetanus, for example.’
    Suddenly, I remembered the Hampton man. I looked at the man's wrists and ankles but found no restraint marks. Then I checked the bends of both his elbows - 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 and cut a large Y into his torso and abdomen. The first students pushed farther back.
    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 bent down to sniff; it stank. I couldn't explain to my students how tetanus had gotten to the man's heart. We were all mystified. I opened the cranium and sliced the hemispheres in sections. I saw the typical liquid filled lesions that only tetanus would produce and not strychnine. I straightened up and said loudly: ‘It appears that Scots do play bagpipes after all.’ McFadin grinned at me.
    After the lesson was over, I sent a wire to Holmes, packed the boots and the pile of 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 were loudly advertising their goods and a variety of odours wafted through the heavy summer evening air – fish, pastries, blood, urine, and stale sweat. I bought an eel pie and ate it while walking and juggling the package under my arm.
    The direct route home would be 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 - male and female. If anyone wanted to follow me from Guy’s to my home, they would have a hard time doing so.
    Often, I walked when the weather permitted me to do so ; on other days I took either an omnibus or a hansom to some place close to Bow Street.
    Today I went by foot. I crossed London Bridge, turned left into Upper Thames Street all the way to Blackfriars Bridge, crossed the river a second time, onto Stamford, crossed it again at Waterloo Bridge, passing The Strand - sometimes I took dinner here, but not today - walked along Charles Street and into Bow Street.
    At the back door of the cobbler’s, I climbed up a narrow staircase and went into a dark and low corridor just underneath the attic. I unlocked the small door at the far end and entered a tiny hole in the wall with a window the size of a stamp. Very conveniently, my landlady had poor eyesight, and I could make her believe 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