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

man steps out of the front door, burps, and tips his cloth cap at her.
    She steers towards home, and tiredness settles heavily on her shoulders. Onlookers have long closed their windows, but have taken a minute to empty their chamberpots one last time before retiring for the night. Urine is still trickling down the walls and a fresh wave of sewage begins to crawl along the street. Anna wishes for rain and that her feet wouldn’t feel so numb.  
    She crosses Broad Street onto Endell, passing dark shop windows and a group of what she believes are young thieves getting ready for the night. They greet her with a grin and a nod, hands deep in their trouser pockets. Otherwise, the streets are empty. Vendors will come back tomorrow around five in the morning to begin a day like any other. Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, while the whores and the thieves are sleeping.
    A few more steps, and Anna comes to a halt and sits down. Her ribcage is clenching, her eyes burning. She knows precisely why she’s doing this to herself, why she cannot rent a room in a nice house, one that has a housekeeper with manners instead of a gin problem, one that is clean and even warm in winter. One without death, disease, and violence surrounding her. ‘No use to ask yourself that same damned question again,’ she growls at herself.
    Two large boots come to a halt in front of her. Without looking up she says, ‘What do you want, Garret?’
    He clears his throat. ‘Saw you sitting here and thought you might be needing something.’
    ‘Do you have a cigarette?’
    ‘Hum…’ He grunts, one foot tapping indecisively. ‘In a minute, for sure.’ He dashes off and Anna considers running the other way. But she’s too tired, and she’d have to bump into him another day and possibly explain herself. Hoping he won’t start a brawl with someone who looks funny, she remains sitting.
    A few moments later, Garret returns. His chest is heaving from the run. He fumbles with tobacco and paper, then holds out a cigarette to her.
    The fine golden down on the back of his hand looks cleaner than the day he had stumbled into her room. He has looked cleaner ever since. She squints at him. Does he wash regularly?
    ‘Thank you,’ she says, moving to the side a little so he can sit if he likes to.
    The doorsteps are a little too narrow for both of them, but he squeezes in nonetheless.
    ‘You look tired,’ he says.
    She leans her chin onto her palm and watches the fog rise. ‘Look.’ She points, and Garret watches the everyday spectacle as though he has never seen it before. Tendrils waft into the street, covering puddles with delicate frosting, then grow thicker until a breeze pushes them back to where they came from.
    ‘You have shit on your shoes,’ he observes.
    ‘I have been at Clark’s Mews.’ She bends down and unlaces her boot, pulls it off, and whacks it against the wall. ‘Dammit,’ she mumbles.
    ‘Let me try.’
    She gives her shoe to Garret, and he whacks and whacks until the last bit dislodges. ‘Thank you,’ she says, putting her boot back on.
    Tobacco smoke mingles with rising fog and the stink of the Thames. Anna sees herself with the eyes of her colleagues — a cigarette touching her lips without a tip separating the unwomanly thing from her skin, her hands are gloveless, her hair short, her shoes stink of excrement. None of the good doctors would recognise her, should they ever dare place their lacquered boots in this part of London.  
    ‘Want me to bring you home?’ he asks.
    ‘If you are in need of a woman, go this way.’ She points to where she has just come from. Her tone, devoid of emotion, cuts him deeper than fury.
    ‘That’s not what I meant!’ His orange hair sticks out in all directions as though indignation has shot lightning through his skull.
    ‘What do you mean, then? You want me to believe we accidentally run into each other every so often? I’d never seen your face until the day you fell into my rooms, bleeding all