The Devil's Grin: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller Book 1) Read Free

itching all over and forced myself to keep breathing. The man had discovered my best-kept secret within minutes, while others had been fooled for years. I was standing among a bunch of policemen and my fate seemed sealed. I would lose my occupation, my degree, and my residency to spend a few years in jail. When finally released, I would do what? Embroider doilies?
    Pushing past the two men, I made for the Thames to get away before doing something reckless and stupid. I would have to deal with Holmes when he was alone. The notion of throwing him into the river appeared very attractive, but I flicked the silly thought away and forced myself to focus on the business at hand.  
    First I needed to know how the body could have possibly got into that trench. The grass was intact; no blades were bent except for where I had seen Mr Holmes walk along. I looked around on the ground, Mr Holmes observing my movements.  
    Only one set of footprints was visible, which must have been Mr Holmes’s. I picked up a few rotten branches and dry twigs, broke them into pieces of roughly arm’s length, and cast them into the Thames. Most of them made it into the trench and drifted towards me. A sand bank was producing vortexes just at the mouth, causing my floats to enter the trench instead of being carried away by the much greater force of the river. The chance was high that it was only the water that had pushed the body in here.
    ‘It seems you were correct, Mr Holmes,’ I noted while passing him. He didn’t appear bored anymore. When I walked back to the corpse, my stomach felt as if I had eaten a brick.  
    I extracted a pair of India rubber gloves from my bag and put them on. Mr Holmes squatted down next to me, too close to the corpse for my taste.  
    ‘Don’t touch it, please,’ I cautioned.
    He didn’t hear me, or else simply ignored my remark; his gaze was already sweeping over the dead man.  
    The exposed face and hands of the corpse told me he had been in the water for approximately thirty-six hours.
    Thinking that attack is always better than premature retreat, I turned to Mr Holmes. ‘Do you happen to know how fast the Thames flows here?’  
    He did not even look up, only muttered, ‘Thirty miles from here at the most.’  
    ‘Considering which duration of exposure?’
    ‘Twenty-four to thirty-six hours.’  
    ‘Interesting.’ I was surprised at his apparent medical background; he had correctly assessed the time the man had spent in the water. He had also calculated the maximum distance the corpse could have travelled downstream.  
    I cast a sideways glance at the man and got the impression that he vibrated with intellectual energy wanting to be utilised.  
    ‘You are an odd version of a private detective. One the police call in? I never heard of their doing so before,’ I wondered aloud.
    ‘I prefer the term consulting detective .’  
    ‘Ah…’ I replied absent-mindedly while my attention was pulled back to the body. He was extremely emaciated; the skin with the typical blue tinge looked paper thin — most definitely cholera in the final stage. I was about to examine his clothes for signs of violence when Mr Holmes barked, ‘Stop!’
    Before I could protest, he pushed me aside, pulled a magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket, and hovered over the corpse. The fact that his nose almost touched the man’s coat was rather unsettling.  
    ‘What is it?’  
    ‘He has been dressed by someone else,’ he noted.  
    ‘Show me!’  
    Looking a little irritated, he handed me his magnifying glass and I took it after pulling my gloves off. The thick rubber hindered my work and made me feel like a butcher. I could disinfect my hands later.
    Mr Holmes started to talk rather fast then. ‘The man was obviously right-handed — that hand having more calluses on the palms. Yet you will observe greasy thumbprints pushing in from the left-hand side of his coat buttons.’  
    I spotted the prints, put my nose as