The Journey: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller) (21 page)

Together, we examined the stump. Black thread pulled the skin tightly over my knuckle; the flesh was swollen with a tortured red gleam. I held it up to my nose and sniffed. It smelled of freshly cut meat, blood, cotton thread, and yesterday’s iodine. Underlying all these odours was a hint of stuffy sweetness — wound infection.
 

‘It begins to smell,’ I noted and held out my healthy hand. Watson handed me the bottle. I poured a generous amount of iodine on a handkerchief, then dabbed the suture with it. He helped me wrap clean gauze around my hand.

I would watch this wound with eagle eyes. Should the infection spread, I would lose the whole hand. Getting used to the lack of a finger was one thing — writing, surgery, spreading pure cultures on solid media would need adaptation. But the loss of the right hand was… unimaginable.

‘Have you heard anything from Sherlock?’ I asked when Watson snapped his bag shut.

‘Unfortunately not. But I’m certain he is enjoying himself.’ He bent closer and patted my healthy hand. I smiled down at his hairy knuckles. Watson was far from being as blind as Sherlock perceived him to be.

‘I’ll leave these here.’ He tapped on the bottles with solutions of iodine and saline, and four rolls of fresh bandages.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘May I ask what you’ll be doing now?’

I huffed a laugh. ‘I’ll pack my belongings and disappear. I have no idea how Moran has found us or how—’

‘Holmes told me that Moran caught one of Holmes’s street arabs. That’s how Moran must have got the information.’
 

I snatched Watson’s hand. ‘Wiggins?

‘No. No, not Wiggins. Another one. I never knew his name. He was shot in the back.’ Watson shook his head, his moustache sagged.

‘The poor boy! And I’m worried about Sherlock,’ I said. ‘I wish I had poisoned Moran, too.’ But what
that
would have entailed! The thought was unbearable.

Watson looked a little confused. He didn’t know I had poisoned James and how I had accomplished it.

‘If you wish, I’ll ask my wife as soon as she’s better whether she’d like us to adopt your child.’

‘You are an honest man, Dr Watson. Tell me, am I doing it wrong? Planning to give my child away. Isn’t that… cruel?’

His gaze dropped to his hands that he now tucked in between his knees. ‘I believe that a mother should do what is best for her child. If you cannot love your child, you must find someone who can.’

‘Could you love my child?’ I whispered.

‘What is not to love about a newborn?’ He gifted me a warm smile and rose to his feet. ‘I have to go home and look after my wife. Holmes told me the two of you might be leaving tomorrow, perhaps even tonight. Will you be writing us, Dr Kronberg?’

I stood up. ‘Yes, I will. Thank you, Dr Watson.’

He nodded and took his leave.

When I walked about in my room to pack my belongings and change into a walking dress, a thought hit me so hard it made me stumble. Just before Sherlock had arrested the Club — that group of medical doctors who used cholera and tetanus to experiment on paupers — I had possibly made a grave mistake.
 

Their leader, Dr Bowden, didn’t trust me then, and I’d had to win at least some of his trust in order to gain enough information for an arrest of the entire group. So I’d demonstrated my ruthlessness by telling him an absurd lie: the Kaiser planned a war, and we could use deadly bacteria as weapons.
 

What if the Club’s initial goal had been to develop vaccines? James’s first wife and newborn child had died of tetanus, and that was motivation enough to find a cure for the disease. Had I changed the Club’s intentions for the worse? Was I to blame for all that had come after my lie — James abducting me and my father to force me into developing systematic bacterial weapons for germ warfare, James’s order to murder my father, Sherlock’s near death, my own suffering, the unborn and unwanted child, Moran running free and possibly distributing dangerous knowledge on biological weapons, and finally James’s death that I had actively brought upon him. What an avalanche of guilt that would be!

A knock at my door almost threw me off the armchair.

‘A telegram for you, Madam.’ A woman’s voice. Its timidity indicated that it was indeed one of the maids.

‘Just a minute,’ I called, snatched the revolver from the nightstand, cocked it, hid it behind my back, and opened the door. With a curtsy, the maid placed a wire in my bandaged hand; I thanked her and locked the door.

Tante Christa erwartet dich mit Sehnsucht. Beeil dich. Hans.
 

That was sooner than I had expected. I blinked. I had never heard him speak German and reading it now was most unusual. Aunt Christa is expecting me and I should hurry. How interesting! No instructions on where to go. Perhaps it didn’t matter.
 

I threw the rest of my clothes into the bag, paid the bill, left an envelope with twenty pounds for the scullery maid who had lost her occupation after helping me, and walked away from the hotel a mere fifteen minutes after the wire had reached me. By then, I was sweating and shivering simultaneously.

If danger was upon me, it most likely followed. I’d have to be quick, but I also needed information. Without it, I was as good as blind. Sherlock had deposited his notes and Moran’s journals at Mycroft’s, so that was where I went.

I rang the bell and was frowned upon by the servant. ‘This is a men’s club,’ he snivelled.

‘I’m aware of that. I need to speak with Mr Mycroft Holmes. It’s urgent. I’ll wait here,’ I said, pushing past him and settling in the parlour.
 

‘Madam, I must insist—’

‘I know you must,’ I interrupted him, and for a moment I considered using my revolver to convince the man. ‘And I must insist, too. Mister Holmes is in grave danger. If you please, go and find him for me.’

He eyed me with suspicion, but his position didn’t allow him to express his own judgment. He turned on his heels and climbed swiftly up the stairs, taking two steps at once. His coat tails bobbed with each jump.

Mycroft arrived only two minutes later. Just like Watson the day before, he swept his gaze over my face and injured hand. He bade me to follow him to a room in the back.

‘I don’t know where my brother is,’ he said once he had closed the door behind him. ‘But he asked me to return Moran’s journals to you.’

I tipped my chin. ‘Mr Holmes, I also need Sherlock’s notes on our last case. Everything that could give me a clue as to what James had planned. I assume you made notes on your interview with Whitman?’

Mycroft folded his hands, narrowed eyes piercing mine. ‘You are aware that this is sensitive information?’

‘In that case, I should go home at once and take up needlework.’

He held up a hand, warding off my acidic comment. ‘Very well,’ he said and made to leave. ‘Am I correct to assume that you haven’t had breakfast?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘You’ll be my guest.’ He held out a hand.

‘I thought women weren’t allowed in the club.’

‘It’s my club. I make the rules.’ He marched me one floor up. Since none of the club’s members were allowed to speak, I could hear only puffs and gasps as we passed various smoking rooms and libraries. ‘Mayer, a hearty breakfast for my guest,’ he called down the corridor before we entered his office.
 

Library of a men’s club at Pall Mall. London, 1896 (12)

Despite my short stay, I had already caused the violation of two of the club’s major rules. I tried to not look too delighted.

‘Sit, please.’ His hand waved me to a chaise longue. Then he slid behind his desk, opened a drawer and retrieved a familiar-looking stack. ‘These were of help, Dr Kronberg. I was able to validate a number of Whitman’s statements. My brother told me about your hornet bomb. What a pity you have no wish to be in my employ.’ He waited for a reply I didn’t give, then he turned to a shelf and began sorting loose pieces of notes onto one pile.

I lay down and let my blood circulation return to a state that didn’t make the world tip back and forth. Soon, breakfast arrived.
 

Mycroft was still sorting papers after I had finished eating.

‘I believe these are all the documents.’ He dabbed a handkerchief at his brow. ‘I’ll bind them for you.’ He punched holes with a small knife, then pulled a thick string through, tying individual leafs into one big volume.

‘They are my brother’s. Treat them accordingly.’ With a thud, the makeshift book landed next to my plate. The tea in my cup rippled. Moran’s journals followed, but with less force.

‘Whitman provided you with useful information?’ I asked.

Mycroft sat down, nodding. ‘Yes, he did so reluctantly. I will not bore you with the details, but my conclusion is this: Moriarty appeared solely concerned about Germany. I cannot fathom why that was. It is true that since Bismarck’s dismissal in March of last year, Salisbury has seen himself unable to align British policy with that of Germany. But to see Germany as a threat?’ He inspected his folded hands, his manicured fingernails.
 

‘And yet… With the strength of the German industry growing, with rumours about the enlargement of her navy and military, and with her scientists at the forefront of medicine, physics, and chemistry, and with an alarmingly unstable leader, it should be logical for our government to grow concerned. But we don’t, for we believe ourselves invincible. Hence, we do nothing.

‘This utterly naive policy of a splendid isolation!’ He slapped a palm on his desk. The pen rattled in its holder. ‘Nothing but arrogance. We don’t even have a functional intelligence service! If we were to invade another European country — hypothetically speaking, of course — we wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre through that country without having to first secretly acquire maps from the same. All because Britons are unwilling to invest a considerable budget, or even effort, in espionage. It’s not gentleman-like; ha! Moriarty was justified in gathering his own espionage organisation. However, it doesn’t explain why he wanted to develop weapons for germ warfare, as there simply is no impending conflict.’

I swallowed my scrambled eggs. The knowledge that it was I who pointed James towards Germany weighed heavy on my shoulders.

‘May I ask where you plan to go?’ Mycroft said.

I cleared my throat. ‘Brussels might be a good place to start. As far as I know, James attempted to change the Brussels Convention on the Laws and Customs of War.’
 

I felt like an idiot. I had no clue whether going to Brussels was a good idea, whether anything at all could be learned there. I didn’t even know where to start searching for information other than in the stack that lay next to my plate.

He lowered his head, brow crinkled. ‘Visit this man.’ He wrote a name and an address on a piece of paper he had torn from a notepad. ‘I’ll let him know you are coming. You can trust him to answer your questions truthfully, but don’t trust him with your safety.’ Seeing my puzzlement, he added, ‘Don’t tell him where you go or what you plan to do.’

‘I…’ I was about to say that I had never done anything like this. ‘Mr Holmes, I assume writing wires or letters to you is out of the question. How can we communicate? And how can I get information to your brother?’

Unspeaking, he stared at me. It took a long moment before he cleared his throat. ‘Sherlock and I are using book ciphers. Each letter is coded as a series of four digits, each identifying a page, a line, a word, and a letter. We need identical books, identical editions, otherwise the cipher will not work.’

‘Would you like to use a different one with me than you use with your brother?’

‘Of course I do.’ He picked up the pencil again and wrote a second note. ‘You’ll find this one almost everywhere.’

I took the paper from his hand. ‘The Bible?’

‘Let us be specific, Dr Kronberg. Rheims’ New Testament, Pocket Edition, published by Burns and Oates in 1888. Easy to remember.’

‘Do you believe in God?’ I asked. He snorted in reply. ‘Me neither. Thank you, Mr Holmes. For everything, including the delicious breakfast.’
 

I rose and offered my left hand in farewell. He pressed it and wished me luck. Whatever that meant.