The Lion's Courtship: An Anna Kronberg Mystery (11 page)

She climbs the stairs to her room, grasping the banister tighter than usual.

Wrong Turn

A
ngry with himself, Garret kicks at the mushy cabbage that lies abandoned on the pavement. The poor vegetable reacts by disintegrating further and sending bits into all directions. If only he had a better education, more money, and less bulk, then perhaps Anna would like him.

The only thing he might be able do anything about is his budget. The education part is a lost case. And the bulk… Well, there is absolutely nothing he can change about his size or his build. The latter might even get worse with age. He snorts at the thought of squeezing himself into a nice suit. And yet, if this was what she wanted, he would do it.

Determination grips him. He’ll be a better man. If nothing else, he’ll increase his meagre riches and buy her a ring, or a dress, or whatever women fancy.
 

He stumbles over his own feet. What precisely does she fancy? Did she ever mention the things she’s missing or would like to buy if she had more money?
 

Garret nods to himself and walks on. He’ll find out what it is that makes her happy, and he’ll acquire the necessary funds. The jewellery he had stolen last time he burgled a house is enough to feed and clothe him for months, once he can turn it into money. But a home and security for a family is an entirely different thing. He comes to a halt. Does she even want children of her own? What a stupid thought! Of course she does. The way she treats Barry — as though he’s her own.

Never one of the greedy kind before, the Irish thief has a grand plan now. He has waited long enough, he tells himself. This one place he once had his eyes on, the one too risky to burgle because of the dogs patrolling the premises, might make him wealthy enough. But not before he makes an investment.

He gives himself two days for reconsidering and inspecting his plans from all angles. Then, he pays a visit to the butcher and one to the nearest opium den. All he needs now is a cup of tea, a sandwich and a good nap.

By noon, Garret is snoring on his mattress. By eight o’clock in the evening, he begins his methodological preparations: examining the lockpicks for any rusty spots, followed by polishing and oiling of his tools, testing the functionality of the glass knife and the wood cutter.

After all that is done, he slices the pig liver in two and sticks his knife into each of the pieces. He pries crumbs off the opium cake and stuffs them deep into the pockets he has cut, then wraps the bloody mess into wax paper and washes his hands.
 

He combs his hair and dresses in clean attire. No one needs to know that he comes straight out of London’s worst rookery.

Just past midnight, Garret locks the door to his room. He steers towards Drury Lane, then up to High Holborn. Just when he passes the British Museum, he hears a shrill police whistle and the cry, ‘Thief! Stop him!’

Garret has to control himself to not dash into the nearest alley and up the gutters, or into back doors of random buildings. This call isn’t for him, and running away will only prove him guilty.

Approaching clatter of boots on cobblestones. His neck tingles with anticipation. Soon, the thief must run past him. But no such thing happens.

‘Stop right there,’ a voice commands. The naked walls echo the clicks of a revolver being cocked.

Obstructions

A
nna uses forceps to pick her obstetrician’s utensils out of the pot with boiling water. She lets them dry on an impeccably clean kerchief, wraps them up, and packs the bundle into her doctor’s bag. The clinking of metal reminds her of the first time she performed an abortion. The woman almost fainted from the pain.
 

‘Are you coming?’ asks Barry, waiting cross-armed and hungry at the door.
 

She nods at him and snaps her bag shut.

They pass the pieman and pick up their supper, then walk into Clark’s Mews.
 

Mum is sitting just outside her brothel, a stool underneath her buttocks, a spinning wheel in front of her knees.
 

Anna regards the madam with a curt nod and receives one in return before she walks through the corridor and into the kitchen. Two young women sit at the table. Nate, a greying man, is standing at the stove, clonking a spoon against the rim of a cast iron-pan. He serves as some kind of scarecrow and, at times, as a cook. When he sees Barry, he scoops stew into a bowl and plops it onto the tabletop. ‘Sit,’ he says to the boy. ‘Now or later?’ he asks Anna.

‘Later, thank you.’ She looks at the two women. The older she recognises, the younger avoids her gaze, picking at her nails.
 

‘I’m Anna,’ she says and reaches out her hand.

‘Patty,’ says the other, slams a fist onto the polished wood, and pushes herself up to her feet.

Anna drops her hand and curls it around the handle of her doctor’s bag.

The two women climb the stairs and enter a small room that smells of dust, wet plaster, and chlorine. The sheets appear to be freshly laundered and bleached for the occasion.

‘Sit for a moment, please.’ Anna waves at the bed. Patty obeys, her hands in her lap are gripping one another for support. ‘I noticed the clean sheets. Excellent! You have to keep yourself clean as well. No customers, no douches either. Nothing goes into that vagina for at least a week, else you might die from an infection.’ Upon an affirmative nod, Anna continues. ‘Have you got the money?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Patty extracts a half-sovereign from between her bosom. Anna takes it and slips it into one of her shoes.

‘I can give you laudanum, if you wish.’

Patty shakes her head; it doesn’t surprise Anna.

‘When did you have your last customer?’

‘’Bout an hour ago.’

Anna nods. ‘Wash, please, then douche with this.’ She hands her a small bottle with dilute iodine solution. ‘I’ll prepare my instruments in the meantime.’

While she disinfects her hands and places her tools on a clean kerchief, she listens to Patty hiking up her skirts, squatting over a bowl, and washing her privates. Anna has her back turned to her. Privacy is a fragile thing.

The mattress sags a fraction when Patty sits down. ‘On my back?’ she asks.

‘Yes. And please take off your dress and undergarments. Cover your upper body so you do not grow cold.’
 

Awkwardly, Patty does as she’s told, then settles down on the bed, her gaze directed at the ceiling. Anna knows that expression — the woman’s focus is drifting to a far-away place, a place she visits when she’s in bed with a customer. Anna has stopped wondering why men don’t notice. But perhaps they do. Do they fancy this emptiness, or do they confuse it with quiet obedience?

Anna shakes off the thought and rubs her hands until they are warm, so as not to startle the woman when she touches her. ‘Please move closer to the bed’s edge and prop your feet up. Yes, like this.’ She guides Patty’s legs to where she needs them.

‘I’ll examine you first,’ Anna says, then presses the fingers of her one hand onto the woman’s lower abdomen and inserts two fingers of the other hand into her vagina. Gentle shifting and probing tells Anna that the pregnancy isn’t far advanced. End of the third month at the most.

She wipes her hand on a kerchief. ‘I’ll insert the speculum now. It helps me to see what I’m doing. This will not hurt.’ Slowly, she pushes the beak-like instrument into Patty, opens it, and sets its position with two screws. Her gaze flicks from her hands to the nervous tension in her patient’s thighs, the bleakness of her expression, and back to her work.

Both women know that once the unwanted child is gone, the cycle will start anew, and there is little to be done about it. For Anna, this is hard to accept. She kills miniature children, knowing that she’ll never have one of her own. Every time she holds one in her hand and sees the bloody mess of tiny limbs sliced off the small body, she looks up from between the legs of her patient and sees a woman whom nature simply hadn’t considered. Not only are prostitutes at the bottom of society’s cesspit, evolution has no regard for them, either. Without the ability to switch off conception when copulation is used to avoid starvation and the survival of the species is of no concern, prostitutes are left at a social and biological dead end.

‘I’ll insert the cervical dilators now. I’ll be as gentle as I can, but it will not feel nice, Patty. Tell me when you want me to take it easier on you.’

There is no nod or any other reaction, so Anna inserts the smallest dilator through the speculum and slowly pushes it into the cervix. Patty’s thigh muscles snap to attention. Anna picks up a larger and then an even larger dilator, increasing the pin-prick opening of the cervix to about half an inch.

Patty’s face is grey with agony; beads of sweat are forming on her brow. ‘I’m almost done,’ Anna says softly. ‘I’ll use the curette now and terminate your pregnancy.’

She inserts the long metal instrument with a narrow and serrated spoon on its end, then she begins scraping at the uterine walls, feeling precisely where this child must be, and how the sharp edge of her tool gnaws it apart.
Murderer
, whispers her mind.
Oversimplifying idiot
, she whispers back.

Patty’s legs are trembling; her hands are white-knuckled fists while Anna pulls out blood and flesh with her curette, again and again.
 

Then she says, ‘It is over,’ and wipes off the mess, pushes a towel between Patty’s thighs, and covers her with the blanket.

An hour and another abortion later, Anna walks down the stairs, past an ascending couple of whore and customer.
 

Barry’s voice issues from the kitchen; the boy sounds well-fed and tired. She steers herself there and plops down on one of the chairs. A bowl of stew appears in front of her, and a slice of bread with butter follows.

The kitchen is empty save for Barry and Nate. The women are all gone, waiting on the street or working up in their rooms.

‘Where’s Mum?’ Anna asks.
 

Nate jerks his chin toward the corridor. ‘Still outside.’ He scrubs the now-empty pan, dunks it into a bucket with greasy water, then dries it with his apron and hangs it over the stove.
Clonk clonk
, it says when rubbing on the other two cast-iron pans.

Anna wipes her bowl clean with a piece of bread, takes a sip of tea, and rises to her feet. ‘Thanks, Nate.’

The man takes the dish from her, the fingers of his right hand gnarled from age, hard work, and war; the left ones from constantly gripping the handle of his stick. She’d assisted him once, when the old wound had ached so much he could barely walk. But there wasn’t much she could do. ‘Rest that leg,’ she’d said, and Nate had only chuckled.

Barry follows her when she walks through the corridor. The door stands ajar and Mum is still busy with her spinning wheel. Anna holds out the two half-sovereigns. The old woman compresses her lips and pockets the coins. ‘So much mistrust,’ she mutters. ‘Sit for a moment, child.’

Barry plops down on the pavement, his legs crossed, his hands searching his pockets. He finds a half-smoked cigarette and lights it.