The Lion's Courtship: An Anna Kronberg Mystery Read Free

acknowledgement, then tries one lockpick, then another, until he’s rewarded with two soft clicks.  
    Gently, he pushes the door. It budges a fraction, then stops. He had expected the bolt. Garret chooses a slender metal sheet from his collection of tools and pushes it between the door and its frame. With dozens of small movements, he slides the bolt aside, then steps into the dark entrance hall and shuts the door behind him.
    The silence from outside is replaced with muffled voices and dim light trickling down the stairwell. If not for the hunger, Garret would walk back out immediately.  
    No use in throwing a longing glance up the stairs. The jewellery will be in the lady’s bedroom, very close and yet unreachable now.  
    He creeps through the hall into the first room to the right, strikes a match, looks around, then retreats. The drawing room contains nothing of interest to him.  
    He takes a door to the left. Same procedure. Lighting of a match, taking in all details, and etching the important ones into his mind before the flame can scorch his fingers. Darkness falls.  
    The voices are now just above him, muttering. The male voice defiant, the female voice accusing. Garret moves swiftly. He knows the distance to the objects of his desire, having seen them for a moment in the small bubble of light.  
    He snatches two tiny statues. A letter opener and a crystal ashtray find a new home in his coat pockets, too, and he is ready to leave. Just then, he hears a cry of ‘No!’
    Garret presses against the wall behind the brocade curtains. Hasty steps clatter down the stairs, then a second pair of feet follows. A female, ‘Oh, my love, don’t leave me!’ quivering with despair. Both come to a halt, then move to meet at the middle of the stairs. A sigh and then another, before they make their way back up. Just as the bed begins to creak, Garret leaves his hiding spot.
    Down at the street he chuckles, slapping his healthy thigh. ‘Womenfolk!’ he groans and begins strolling towards St Giles. At the back door to the duffer, he steps in without knocking.  
    ‘What’ve ya got?’ the scrubby man enquires, barely tearing his eyes off a well-thumbed book, its binding greasy, pages dog-eared.  
    The man considers himself well read, although the reading of tuppence material with women in all kinds of positions, usually with at least one man attached to their orifices, doesn’t quite meet the classical definition of reading material.  
    The duffer remains sitting, not the least bothered by the Irishman’s presence. If he were to rise all the way to the tip of his toes, his nose might reach Garret’s shoulders.  
    ‘Only the best,’ Garret says with false conviction, then holds out his square palms.
    ‘I’ll be damned if it ain’t the ugliest fat little angels I’ve ever seen!’ The man stares down at the two tiny statues, raises an eyebrow at Garret, and knows this man is desperate. ‘Two pence each.’
    They haggle until the thief’s brow perspires. Angry, he leaves. A public house is precisely what he needs now, or that howling stomach of his will scare off everyone, including the rats that scamper across his path.  
    Three pies and two pints of ale later, an elbow — complete with buffed sleeve and a cloud of perfume — pokes his side.  
    ‘Oy, Thrulow,’ Garret says, ‘no gentlemen to flog today?’  
    Gloved hands flutter down upon his arm. Beneath her blue velvet dress, a corset shapes her body to a perfect hourglass. Thick blond curls pour from beneath the bonnet and course down her spine, cheekily pointing at her hindquarters. With her fine clothes, she almost looks like a lady, if not for that squeezed-up bosom. Birching some noble lord’s backside while a fricktrix was busy at the man’s front paid very well indeed.  
    She scowls at him. ‘Took a day’s vacation to see my mother.’
    ‘I see,’ says Garret, thinking that if she would abandon her calling for a single day only to see