The Lion's Courtship: An Anna Kronberg Mystery

by Annelie Wendeberg

  He sees her wide-eyed stare and knows she analyses every word he says and every bit of information she suspects him to withhold.

  ‘Nate?’ she says with an audible clump in her airways. ‘Why is Mum called Mum?’

  ‘Because she opened the boarding house together with our daughter.’ He clears his throat. ‘I learned about the child only a few years later.’

  ‘Your…’ He sees her searching her memories for all the faces of women she’d treated, but she doesn’t seem to find one who looks remotely like Nate or Mum.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Our daughter? Long gone. Long gone.’ A tired mutter, one that opens all senses wide if one only knows how to listen.

  ‘Why do you keep this boarding house?’ she says hoarsely.

  ‘It’s all she has.’

  She wants to ask more questions, but all of them will hurt, so she keeps her mouth shut.

  ‘I told your friend to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘What friend?’ she asks, but already knows the answer.

  Butcher

  He stares down at his fingers. The nails need a trim. But at least they are clean. Eight years ago, if he remembers correctly, a perpetual brown rim stained his fingernails and the cracks surrounding to them. Brown were the fine furrows snaking around one another, forming weird pattern on the pads of his fingers. Brown was the base of each and every hair growing on the backs of his hands and his lower arms. He had been elbow-deep in blood and guts of swine and cattle, a whole of ten hours each day. He’d turned deaf for the screaming of animals, the buzzing of flies, the sounds of knifes and saws and hammers, but the blood on his skin, the colour of it, and the odour, all of which accompanied him wherever he went, had bothered him deeply.

  Now, it’s the grunts of satisfied men, or the grunts of unsatisfied ones, and the fake outcries of pleasure from the girls’ mouths he’s learned to ignore. When Mr Steward stuck his knife into the new girl’s face, he’d ignored her cry, too. Hadn’t expected anything else from a girl that young and inexperienced. They all needed breaking in, and he is glad he hadn’t done it on this one.

  Some pimps fancy doing it, but for Butcher’s taste, the sounds the girls make are often too close to the squealing of a butchered pig. Yet, not close enough to push the noise into the deaf corner of his mind. So he tries to stay away from the breaking-in business. Other than that, he doesn’t mind the girls’ favours in exchange for delaying the rental payments for a day or two.

  Butcher hears a heavy knock on the brothel’s front door, and he’s a bit puzzled. The afternoon is still so young; the whores have barely prepared their rooms. He opens the door and takes a step back. ‘Your prick must be itching badly,’ he grunts at Garret. ‘Rose isn’t ready. None of the—’

  ‘We need to talk,’ interrupts Garret and pushes into the corridor. ‘Is anyone in the kitchen?’

  ‘What do you want?’ Suspicion makes Butcher’s voice harsher than usual. He isn’t accustomed to anyone reaching eye level with him. He could deal with a tall stick of a man, but having to look up at a man of his own build and half an inch more height is more than irritating.

  ‘Poppy is dead. I want to talk with you about the man who cut her face. Now, get into the kitchen. I don’t want the whole neighbourhood to hear what I have to say.’

  Reluctantly, Butcher moves his feet towards the back of the house. He toes the kitchen door open, shoos two women out of the room as though they are a pair of sparrows, then positions himself behind the table, arms crossed, face stern. ‘How do you know the girl’s dead?’

  ‘Found her in a pile of cow shit. When have you last seen the man?’

  ‘Might have been a week ago.’

  ‘Was it a week ago or was it not a week ago?’

  Butcher watches Garret’s hands ball to fists and press onto the tabletop. Knuckles whiten, blood vessels bulge underneath yellow fuzz. ‘Pretty sure a week.’

  ‘Will he come back?’

  ‘Don’t know why he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Who’s serving him?’ Garret’s question come as quick and as sharp as gun fire.

  ‘Whoever has her monthly thing.’

  ‘Menstruation. It’s called menstruation. You work in a brothel and can’t even say menstruation. Can you say quim?’

  Now Butcher’s fists press onto the tabletop, too. The pair appears like two bulls getting ready for a furniture-shattering brawl.

  ‘Quim,’ says Butcher.

  Garret can’t hold in a snicker, although he knows it might tip the other man over the edge.

  Butcher slams his knuckles onto the wood and barks a laugh. ‘The man’s name is Steward. Not his real name, mind you. But unusual enough for a customer. The others are all Smiths, Williams, Millers, and Whites.’ He waves at Garret, then grows solemn. ‘So you believe he killed that girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Butcher pulls back a chair and sits down. Garret does the same.

  ‘What is your plan?’

  Garret takes a deep breath and says calmly, ‘My business. All I want from you is to send a boy to my room when Mr Steward comes to visit.’

  Butcher chews a piece of callus off the side of his finger, spits it onto the floor, and nods. ‘He’s a cunning fella. Have you ever seen his face?’

  Garret shakes his head.

  ‘Did any of the others?’

  Garret’s stiff expression tells Butcher there are indeed other men involved.

  ‘What’s up with his face?’ asks Garret.

  ‘Nothing in particular. Just saying that he’ll know something’s up when he sees a familiar face on a man following him. Nate’s for example. Or mine.’

  ‘No worries,’ says Garret and pushes away from the table. He has the feeling he has said too much already.

  The Longest Knife

  She lets a handful of green coffee beans fall slowly into the pan. Clink clink clink they sing when they hit the heavy cast iron. The fire is hot and soon the beans begin to crackle and pop, releasing a sharp, yet mouth-watering aroma.

  She tosses the beans and swirls them in the pan until their colour reaches a brown so dark it’s dangerously close to black. She blows at the loose skins and they fly in all directions. With the coffee oil coating their outsides and the skins gone, the beans are shiny and clean and beckon to be touched and smelled. She bends down and inhales their rich scent, then pours them into the mill and sits down on her chair.

  The mill clamped between her knees, her legs wobble with each turn of the crank. The aroma intensifies and reaches a new high when she pulls out the small drawer at the bottom and holds the powder up to her nose.

  She pours the ground coffee into a pot, adds water, and sets it on the stove. Her eyes are transfixed by the murky liquid. It boils up once, is then taken off the stove for the foam to settle, and placed over the fire yet again. She does this three times, while her mind is empty save for the few thoughts on the procedure at hand.

  She lets the coffee settle in the pot, then she pours herself a cup, sits down at her table, takes a first sip, and lets her mind pick apart all that she’d learned.

  Nate gave her information today, but also withheld information. His intention was clear — to keep her away from the knife-man, surely to protect her.

  The few people who know she tried to find Poppy are Butcher, Rose, Sally, Barry, and Garret. The last time she mentioned the girl’s name is at least two weeks ago. What caused Nate to approach her today? Why didn’t he say a word when she performed the abortions at Mum’s?

  His reaction to this whole affair was most unusual. Rarely does he talk that much. He stated that someone told him she’d met the knife-man. But why would anyone find it noteworthy enough to tell him? Except, of course, if one of his girls had seen it. But how would he know she was looking for that man? A simple guess, perhaps?

  The only person who knew she was looking not only for Poppy, but also for the knife-man, was Garret. Would Garret tell Nate? And if so, why?

 
Garret had seen Rose and asked her questions on Poppy’s whereabouts. Ah! Garret had asked about the knife-man, too. But the women of Fat Annie’s didn’t talk much with the ones working at Mum’s, as far as Anna knew. Why would Rose tell anyone that Garret had inquired about the knife-man? Besides, back then, no one could have guessed a connection between Anna and Garret. Later, yes. Now, the two are seen walking together rather often.

  Anna frowns. Too many strands of possibilities are tangling her mind. She needs to take another step back.

  She stands, brushes back her hair with her fingers, inhales deeply, and walks up to the window.

  A simple guess, a suspicion, made Nate come out of his oyster shell, out of his I-speak-only-three-word-sentences routine. Is this likely?

  She shakes her head. Much likelier is that Nate knows what Garret knows. Wouldn’t it make sense then that Garret knows what Nate knows, too — that Poppy lived and disappeared at Drury Lane? Yet, Garret never mentioned it. Why?

  Anna takes a good long sip from her coffee and looks down onto the dark street. Shadows of people are moving about. The silence, she thinks. The silence speaks the loudest.

  She sets the cup down. Nate told her about his past, he even talked about his lost daughter. Not once did she hear him give anyone the smallest bit of personal information. Every word he’d told her said only one thing — do not get near the knife-man! This allowed only one conclusion — Nate is terrified.

  But what scares him so? What happened at Drury Lane? Garret and Nate seem to know details that shock both enough to try to shield her. Garret had been worried about her before. But so far, he had not tried to stop her. He had even helped obtain information. All there is now, is a wall of silence, and something must be brewing behind it.

  ‘Very well, then,’ she says aloud and decides to pay Poppy’s attic at Drury Lane a visit, but not before observing Fat Annie’s for a little while to see if Butcher was involved somehow. After all, he didn’t intervene when Poppy was injured. She hopes he has a hand in this, for it will surely be easier to press information from a man as dull as him. The overprotective Garret and the extra-wise Nate have obviously decided that she’s too delicate to know a thing.

  Anna locks the door to her room. Her knees feel a little softer than usual, her heart rumbles faster, her hands are clammy. The long knife she keeps in her kitchen drawer is now tied to her thigh and reachable through a cut in her skirts. She has practiced slipping her hand through the opening she made and extracting the weapon without its handle catching on the fabric. In and out, out and in; it took approximately half a second from lowering her hand to pulling the knife through the slit.

  Her teeth find her cheek and she bites down on the soft flesh to stop herself from trembling. Then she steps out onto the street and turns towards Clark’s Mews.

  When she’s passing Fat Annie’s, Butcher gifts her a friendly smile. As suspected, she thinks, crinkling her brow. A few more steps, then she reaches her destination and slips into the shadows.

  It’s the same corridor she was pushed into. The same creaky door, the same scrunching underneath her soles. Only the odours of expensive soap, wool, and silk are lacking. Fat Annie’s — just across the street — is in full view. Anna opens her senses wide.

  She doesn’t have to wait long. Her breath hurts in her throat when she sees Garret stepping out of the brothel.

  She tells herself to stay put. She tells herself that he is not why she had come here. And yet, the mix of anxiety that he might get hurt and frustration that he didn’t think her trustworthy enough makes her jaw clench.

  All of a sudden, Butcher is pointing in her direction, and Garret is racing faster than she’d ever expect of a man his build. She takes a step back, pushing farther into the dark just before the rotten door slams against the corridor wall.

  ‘Come out at once so I can give ya a good spankin’!’

  She doesn’t reply, so he steps through the door and grabs her arm.

  ‘Sod off, Garret!’ She kicks at his shin.

  ‘What’s that? A fly fart?’

  He doesn’t let go of her arm, so she kicks again and again, making him more furious yet. He wraps an arm around her and hoists her onto his shoulder.

  ‘What the blazes? Put me down! Put me down, for Christ’s sake!’ Her knees push against his chest without effect, her fists pummelling his back seem to leave him untroubled.

  ‘Wha’ the dickens’s tha’?’ he exclaims when something sharp pokes the bend of his elbow. He fumbles through the layers of her skirt, perfectly aware of how inappropriate that is, and extracts a long knife. Shock holds his tongue for a moment, then he chucks the weapon towards Butcher and calls, ‘Keep that for me, will ya?’

  He stomps along Church Lane, muttering, ‘Dammit, woman!’ and not listening to her protests at all. When she grows silents, he asks, ‘Are you alright?’

  She doesn’t answer.

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Is alright if ya hate me, as long as ya don’t get yerself killed.’

  ‘Put me down, Garret,’ she says hoarsely.

  The resigned tone makes him stumble. He has never heard her speak like this. ‘I’ll bring you home first, so you can’t run away before I get to say my part.’

  She hides her face in her hand, for she doesn’t want to see the giggling and pointing neighbours. They must all believe that Garret is finally taking his pigheaded girlfriend to bed.

  He forces the lock of the door to her house, then the one to her room. Once inside, he sets her onto her feet. ‘Sit,’ he commands and points to a chair.

  She walks to the window instead and leans her forehead against the glass.

  ‘Anna,’ he pleads, pushing the door shut. ‘Look at me.’

  She rubs the moisture from her eyes and turns to face him.

  ‘What did you plan to do?’ he asks.

  ‘What happened at Drury Lane? What do you, Butcher, and Nate know?’

  ‘Why the knife?’ It takes Garret a moment to realise that she knows more than she should.

  ‘Just in case…’

  ‘Just in case?’ Garret’s eyebrows reach a mocking angle, but he calls them to order soon enough. ‘I simply grabbed you, Anna. You didn’t reach for your knife, because you wouldn’t stab me. But I swear, your kicks and punches did nothing to me. You’ll need more force to run a knife through a grown man. I thought you, with all that medical knowledge, should know this. That fella might be smaller than me, but he can surely hurt you bad. Either he does it in some dark alley where no one can see you and no one can help you, or he simply walks into your room. The lock here…’ He points behind him. ‘…is so weak I only leaned against it to open it! It didn’t even make much noise. The same crap is installed down there.’ He waves towards the entrance door to the house.

  Her jaws are working and she knows that he’s correct. ‘There is one thing that hurts more than anything else,’ she whispers. ‘Helplessness. I feel like dying when I’m helpless.’ She looks up at him. ‘Never do this again.’

  She sees his face gaining the colour of a very ripe tomato. ‘I know you helped me, Garret. I know you want to protect me. By tomorrow, I’ll forget how it felt to be dragged away against my will, because you did it not for yourself, but for me. But this man…If I don’t do anything, I’m helpless.’

  ‘And what am I then? An idiot? Are you the only one who cares? Don’t you think it’s insulting? Do not treat me like a bystander. I do have my pride.’

  She sees the bulging blood vessels on his temples and decides to be quiet for a moment.

  ‘I talked with Butcher and Fat Annie tonight,’ he says. ‘That man will never again enter St Giles.’

  ‘What are you planning?’

  He snorts and crosses his arms over his chest. ‘You have so many secrets, Anna. This one will be mine.’

  She frowns, and Garret’s patience fails him yet again. ‘Should I see you at Clark’s before I tell you it’s safe to go there, I’ll drag you away just as I did
today. And this time, I will give you a spanking!’

  He rubs his scalp and his lightning-struck mop of orange hair is sticking out every which way. She suppresses a smile, knowing he’d never even hurt a fly.

  ‘I promise I’ll stay away,’ she says, and means it. There are other ways to obtain information.

  The Lion

  He paces along the wall, past the window and back, again and again. His eyes don’t register what’s on the other side of his pupils. A decomposing body is burned on his retinae. When a knock disturbs his restlessness walking, his heart stumbles. He opens the door and looks down at a boy of probably eight years of age.

  ‘Sixpence first, information second,’ the boy says and holds out his left palm.

  ‘Butcher gave it to you already,’ Garret grumbles in warning.

  The small hand hides in a patched-up trouser’s pocket. ‘Balls,’ mutters the boy. ‘Butcher said it’s time. He didn’t say what time, though. But the church bells—’

  ‘Nothing to do with that time, Will,’ interrupts Garret and fetches a bundle from the mattress. ‘You go home now. Oh! Wait. You can earn another sixpence.’

  The boy, Will, grins and holds out his hand once more. Garret fumbles through his pockets and extracts a coin. ‘Keep an eye on the nurse for me tonight. And that boy she’s dragging around. Barry is his name. Make sure they stay far away from Clark’s, and take care they doesn’t spot you.’

  ‘Done,’ Will says, hides the coin in his fist, and dashes off.

  Garret waits, protected by darkness and a sheet of rain. He feels as though his rage makes him glow bright scarlet. His hand begins to hurt, so he slackens his iron grip on the mallet. Deep breath in, deep breath out. It won’t help to lose reason before the time has come.