The Journey: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller) (20 page)

‘Careful with that,’ snapped Moran, unplugging my mouth. I had almost inhaled the bile, the little my empty stomach was able to expel. Coughing, I fought for air.

He straightened up, wiped his bloody hands on my dress. ‘Parker, search the room!’

The journals! Where had I put them? My brain stuttered and stumbled between two singing ears, behind bleary eyes. I couldn’t think. I began to scream. A palm slapped down on my mouth and nose. My lungs contracted in vain.

Moran bent closer. ‘I’ll take a vacation. I trust that you and Mr Holmes will try to find me. Let me assure you that your efforts will be in vain. I, however, will find
you
…’

The room fell into blackness, decorated with blinking dots and the screeching music of blood loss.

A click. I blinked. Slowly, my eyes regained vision. The door must have just fallen into its lock. Utter relief. But only for a moment. The journals. I still couldn’t think where I had put them.

I moved the leftovers of my right hand to my face, running my sleeve across my mouth, chin, and cheeks to wipe the vomit off. With immediate danger gone, pain rushed in with overbearing speed and sharpness.

The room was spinning. I couldn’t see clearly. I pulled at my left arm, inching closer to the bound wrist. The knot looked overwhelmingly complicated. I inserted my right thumb into the knot’s various openings. So little control. Everything trembled, even the room, the bed, the knot. My hand, my whole right arm was aching so badly. I kept poking at the knot. Kept poking… until someone turned the lights off.

It dawned. How long had I been unconscious? My tongue was stuck to my palate. Metallic odour singed my nostrils. My head was hammering, my hand was about to rot off my wrist. I opened my eyes and inserted my thumb into the knot again, wiggling, pushing, until blood made the rope too slippery to move.
 

A knock. Then another. ‘Madam?’ It sounded far off. Echo-like. Then a scream. Who screamed? Who had reason to make such ruckus?

A pair of scissors approached, gnawing the rope in two. My wrist slipped out and onto the floor before I could move it. Prickling ran up the freed arm. I flexed my fingers to wake up the numb limb, rolled on my elbow, and pushed myself up.

‘Madam! Madam! I’ll cut you if you move too much.’

I froze. She kept her nerves. Most maids would have run away, screaming at the top of their lungs for male support.

The pressure around my ankles and knees disappeared. I began to move. ‘Could you help me up, please?’

Her arm slid beneath mine. She was delicate, but determined.
 

‘Sit on the bed, Madam,’ she whispered, as though she didn’t dare to give me orders.

‘Could you please call for Dr Watson?’ I said, staring at her and trying to recall the address. My eyes searched the room as though to find my composure. After a too-long time, I finally remembered. Before the maid left, she gave me a kerchief to staunch the bleeding.

I gazed at the stump, trying to look at it from a detached, medical viewpoint. Not my hand, I told myself. Not my hand. Blood was oozing; a lazy pulsing of red. The white of the bone was visible; splinters stuck out. The severed tendon would have retracted by now, hiding somewhere, now useless. A ragged cut, blurred by my trembling and my leaky eyes. I wiped my face. A mess of snot and tears and blood. More pain. I had forgotten about the angry door and Moran’s punches. I lay my hand on the kerchief and my aching head on the pillow. I needed to breathe for a moment.

Another knock and the maid entered, bringing a stranger with her.

‘What happened here?’ he demanded.

‘Where is Dr Watson?’ I asked. And where was Wiggins and his ragamuffins? I doubted Sherlock would employ a group of unreliable boys. Something must have happened to them.

‘The doctor will be here shortly,’ the maid assured me.

The man began pacing the room, stepping into the cut ropes and the spilled blood. ‘Are you the manager?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ His eyes searched the room, apparently to catalogue the damage done, calculating the resulting costs, and deciding that it was me who had to pay for it.

‘You walk through the evidence, sir. One could almost believe you wish to destroy it.’

Shocked, he froze where he stood and, like an oversized spider, he lifted one foot, stretched his leg as far as it would go, and stepped to the side. This he continued until he arrived at the wall.

The door flew open and revealed a ruffled Watson. His eyes took in the mess, my state, the state of my hand, all in barely two seconds. ‘I must ask you to leave. Should the police feel an urge to enter this room while I perform surgery on my patient, you can be assured I’ll lose my temper.’

I had never seen Watson angry. What a formidable friend he was. ‘I’m worried about Wiggins,’ I said once he and I were alone.

‘Don’t worry now. All is good. Explanations can wait.’ He sat down next to me and gingerly took my injured hand into his, examining the wound. ‘I’ll have to do a few stitches. Are you still unwilling to take opium?’

‘You’ll have to give me morphia,’ I said, pulling my knees up against my aching stomach. ‘I’m in labour.’
 

The drug would help to stall premature contractions.

Watson blinked, then nodded. ‘You wish to keep it.’

I sighed.
Keeping
the child? I certainly didn’t want to kill it. But keeping it was an entirely different thing.

He pressed my healthy hand and bent down to extract a syringe, a tourniquet, and a small bottle from his bag. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

Soon, wonderful warmth entered my bloodstream, spread from my arm to my shoulder into my chest and abdomen. Eyelids quivered. I wafted away. A bed of clouds. My right hand puckered a little. There, where my index finger used to be. That ghost of a limb tied me to reality for a flutter of time, until a soft
pling
cut me off altogether. I rose…

From: A manual on the Operations of Surgery, by Dr Joseph Bell (A.C. Doyle’s mentor, and inspiration for Sherlock Holmes), 1883 (11)

— eighteen —

H
eaviness lay itself upon me when consciousness dawned. A glass of water on the nightstand reflected the evening sun. Watson sat in a chair next to the bed. His eyes were shut, his head lolling to the side.

I examined my hand. A thick bandage hid the stump all the way past my wrist. The ache was extending to my shoulder. I could feel the thread pulling at the severed skin. My other hand slid under the blanket, pressing down on my stomach. The uterus was soft. The contractions had subsided.

A snore issued from the armchair, then a cough. ‘Hello, Dr Watson,’ I said. ‘It must be exhausting to have to stitch me back together again and again.’

‘Ha! Indeed.’ He laughed. ‘You look much better already. Here, drink that.’ He reached out and gave me the water.
 

I quenched my thirst and pushed myself up.
 

‘Careful,’ he said, lending me his arm. ‘Blood loss and morphia weakened you. Not to speak of the shock.’

‘Was Sherlock here? And the police?’ I pointed to the floor; the ropes and the bloody carpet had been taken away.

‘Yes,’ said Watson. ‘Holmes was here shortly before the police. He is now hunting Moran. I have never seen him so furious.’ He cleared his throat and added in a crestfallen voice, ‘I had to remove the fractured proximal phalanx.’

‘I wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway.’
 

That last bit of index finger was gone now, too. As sharp as that end had been, it would have made wound healing impossible. He must have also needed the skin of the last phalanx to pull over the knuckle and make a suture.
 

‘You are an excellent surgeon. Thank you, Dr Watson.’

He bobbed his head. I noticed a whiff of acid. Vomit was stuck to my hair. ‘You look tired, Dr Watson. Are you alright?’ I noticed his stubbly chin and cheeks, his tilted cravat. ‘Is your wife alright?’

He cleared his throat. ‘She is ill. But nothing serious.’

‘Go home,’ I said softly. ‘I’m fine.’

‘The police want to talk to you. They’ll call tomorrow in the morning.’ He rose and pressed my hand. ‘I’ll be back after breakfast and change your bandages. Call for me should you need me earlier,’ he said. ‘Oh! I almost forgot to tell you that Holmes wants to let you know the journals are at his brother’s. I take it you know what he means by that?’

Relieved, I smiled and nodded. Sherlock must have taken them to discuss their contents with Mycroft. I hoped the two had found something of interest.

After he had left, I rang the bell and asked the maid if she knew who had helped me earlier. She blushed and tipped her head. ‘It was my sister, Madam. She wasn’t allowed up here.’

‘Why?’

‘She works in the scullery. Scrubbing pans and pots. She just wanted to see the nice rooms where I work. She just… She was new here.’

Could it be possible that the girl had lost her occupation so quickly?

‘Oh. I see,’ I said. ‘Hmm… Could you tell the manager that the eccentric lady who lost a finger wishes to see the maid who saved her?’

Her hands clasped in front of her apron, fingers entwining.
 

‘Alternatively, you could simply tell him that I wish to see him,’ I added. She was visibly relieved. ‘But before I can receive such distinguished guest, I need to wash and dress.’ I sat up slowly, holding on to the bed frame for support should my feeble blood circulation betray me. And it did indeed.

‘Would you like me to help you, Madam?’ she asked, seeing me swoon.

‘Thank you, but I think I’ll be fine. I’ll simply take my time.’

With a
very well, Madam,
and a curtsy, she left.

I sat for a while, then stood for a little while longer before moving. With my healthy hand sliding along the wall, I made for the bathroom. Nothing but fury propelled me forward.

No sign of Sherlock the following morning. The police had interviewed me and promised to arrest Moran and Parker. I had my doubts.

My hand puckered. Blood was seeping through the bandage and I needed to change it at once to avoid infection. Unwilling to wait for Watson any longer, I began unwrapping the gauze and soon noticed that it stuck to the stump. Tearing it off and opening the wound was out of the question. Watson had left bandages, but neither sterile saline solution nor disinfectant were at my disposal. He probably believed I still had my doctor’s bag with me. Or he didn’t think much at all. Perhaps his wife was more ill than he had admitted.

Were there any other sterile liquids I could use? I considered asking the maid to boil salt water or milk for me, but I assumed the scullery to be a rather greasy place and I didn’t want any of the countless kitchen germs in my wound. That left me with only one thing: fresh urine.

I took a pair of scissors and clipped off the bandage, leaving only the patch stuck to the stump. Just when I left my room to go to the lavatory, Watson walked up the corridor. ‘My apologies for being late. I forgot to give you these,’ he huffed, holding out two brown bottles.
 

Once back in my room, he poured sterile saline solution onto the last bit of gauze until it peeled off all by itself. I was glad he had come — urinating on a fresh wound would have been rather painful.