Read The Lion's Courtship: An Anna Kronberg Mystery for Free Online Page B

books on either side — from its place, opens it, and whispers, ‘Hello, Mary,’ then slips it into his shirt and proceeds with his primary goal.
    Strongboxes — or rather, their preferred hiding places — infected Garret with a love for stories. Often, he had to search the library, or the sitting room, if it wasn’t a too-well situated household he burgled, to find the strongbox hidden behind books. Sometimes, when he was lucky, a larger strongbox was concealed by a panel of fake spines.  
    Once he followed a whim and picked up a slender book that was beautifully bound in fine leather with golden letters crawling across it. He was far from wanting to read it. To him, it looked valuable.  
    And valuable it was. When he arrived at his room and stashed away his loot, he thought it couldn’t cause any harm to see if the pretty book contained anything entertaining. He’d never heard of Walt Whitman. But the following morning he awoke with his nose and cheek pressed flat against “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Drool had smudged the ink, giving him a somewhat reasonable excuse to not sell Mr Whitman to the duffer.
    Now, Garret makes to pry open the strongbox before him. This particular specimen had been hiding at the very top of the shelf, behind a disorderly stack of encyclopaedia, papers, and magazines. He’d had to climb a chair to find it, and the combined weight of burglar and strongbox make the furniture underneath him creak.
    He places the box on the rug, squats down, and inserts one of his slender cast-iron tools into the first lock. He listens intently. Not only for noises that would indicate the house’s inhabitants are awake and possibly aware of his presence; he’s also listening for the soft clicking and scraping of lockpicks against levers. He works with fingertips and ears, his eyes half-closed, his head tipped as though to place a kiss on a lover’s brow.
    It doesn’t take long and Garret moves on to the second lock. How stupid , he thinks. If he would ever have cause to protect his valuables in a strongbox equipped with two locks, he would not use identical ones and certainly not use locks that had two levers only.  
    In less than three minutes, Garrets cracks the thing and opens the lid. He strikes another match. A smile flits across his face when light is reflected by sapphires and gold. He’ll have to hide the jewellery for at least six months, until the police have given up searching for it. He takes it all — it’s not much, fitting snugly into his large palm — then wraps it into strips of cloth together with his cracksman equipment and rises to his feet to leave.
    It always gives him a stomach ache when he places valuable loot together with his tools. In his whole career as a cracksman, he had to drop the package twice, and only once was he able to retrieve it from the muck of the Thames. But it would have cost him his freedom, perhaps even his life, had he not rid himself of evidence.
    Tonight, no one disturbs him. He exits the villa through the back door and walks home as though he is taking a casual stroll. His heart is thumping a little faster than normal. Partially with the excitement the adventure brings, partially with hope. The jewellery will allow him an above-average lifestyle for months, perhaps even a year. Above St Giles average, to be specific, once he has turned gems and gold into money.
    Rarely a day passes without him dreading the hovels he once called home. He had been fourteen or fifteen years old, had just fled to London, and lived with several other inhabitants in a too-small room. The place reeked, and not even a wide open window could reduce the stink to a bearable level. Rotten food was squeezed in between the floorboards’ cracks — floorboards so dirty that one must think they'd never seen a brush in their entire life.  
    Twelve pallets with mouldy straw mattresses atop were stuffed into the limited space. He had to climb over sleeping bodies to reach