Gretel and the Case of the Missing Frog Prints Read online

  “It suits you so very well, Fraulein Gretel. Though of course, it could be a little higher . . . ?”

  “You think so?”

  “Some teasing and backcombing, a little lacquer, perhaps a string of tiny silver bells . . . ?”

  “Silver bells,” echoed Gretel wistfully. “Yes. Yes. But, I am short of time. I must leave for Nuremberg very soon.”

  “Do not concern yourself, the wig will be my priority, and will be ready for collection by the end of today. Nuremberg! How I envy you, Fraulein. You will be staying at the Grand Hotel, no doubt?”

  “No doubt. I mean, of course. Where else would one stay?”

  “There can be no other residence for a person of quality visiting the city.”

  “Quite so,” Gretel agreed. Indeed, the question of the Grand Hotel had occupied her mind in the small hours of the night. Herr Durer lived in a suite there, and it was, therefore, the scene of the crime she would be investigating. It made sense to take a room on the premises. But—and it was a big, fat, costly “but”—such luxury came at a price. As yet, no fees had been agreed on, no expenses listed, no contract of employment drawn up. Would Herr Durer really stump up sufficient funds to cover a stay at the Grand? Could she risk being out of pocket if the case came to naught? She feared she could not. Good sense told her to look for somewhere cheaper to stay. But, if she was to truly experience Nuremberg, if she was to wear the wig, and be seen wearing the wig, she would need to be in the right place, surrounded by the right sort of people . . .

  By the time she left the salon Gretel was still in something of a dither regarding possible accommodation. So much so, in fact, that she had almost forgotten about the irksome business of the dead messenger and the fact that Kapitan Strudel might use him to make trouble for her. The matter was brought back sharply into focus by what she saw as she rounded the corner into Uber Strasse. Herr Schwarz, the undertaker, was engaged in something of a tug of war involving a coffin and Kapitan Strudel. The cart on which the coffin sat had come to a halt, with Strudel clutching the bridle of the hairy horse that pulled it.

  “The body must go direct to Kingsman Headquarters!” Strudel insisted, his habitually sour face made even nastier by indignation. Indeed, the single characteristic that might have redeemed him in Gretel’s eyes was the honest grumpiness the man perpetually exuded, in contrast to the rest of Gesternstadt’s inhabitants. Might have, but did not quite. “This is a suspicious death,” he went on, “and as such the victim—for victim he is—comes under my jurisdiction.”

  The undertaker, who knew how quickly people could take their business elsewhere if they felt they could not entrust their departed loved ones into his care, was not about to start handing over bodies to irate kingsmen. He shook his head emphatically. “I was engaged to remove, house, and care for the deceased. He was handed over to me at the house of Fraulein Gretel, and thus is now in my custody. Until I receive instructions requesting otherwise, he will remain with Schwarz, Schwarz, and Schwarz.”

  “But I am instructing you otherwise. This is a suspicious death . . .”

  “So you keep saying, but I have a certificate from the apothecary confirming that this unfortunate Nuremberger died of natural causes. Nothing suspicious was mentioned.” The undertaker lifted the reins and urged the sleepy carthorse to plod on.

  Strudel was forced to step aside, but continued to rail against the wrongness of what was taking place. “Fraulein Gretel has no right to ignore my authority!” he yelled. “I will obtain a summons this very afternoon. The removal of a body from a potential crime scene is a serious business. She will answer to me for this, and you will be named as her accomplice, along with that simpleton brother of hers!”

  Gretel flattened herself, largely unsuccessfully, against the wall of the Kaffee Haus, but she need not have worried. Kapitan Strudel was so steamed up with fury he strode down the street looking neither to left nor right. As soon as he was out of sight she scurried home. It seemed her departure had become a matter of some urgency, and it was no small task to mobilize Hans into being of some use. It was a little alarming that she would need to rely upon his help at all, but needs must. The prospect of being shut up and interrogated by Strudel was, in the stark glare of the Bavarian sunshine, too dreadful to contemplate.

  TWO

  Gretel had intended to start packing the moment she arrived home, but the sight of her beloved daybed, coupled with the realization that if she left for Nuremberg at once she would miss the ball, brought her to a halt. She lay on the tapestry sofa, safe in the embrace of silk bolster and cushions, sipping on a brandy-laced hot chocolate. She had to acknowledge that she was seriously out of sorts. Normally a woman of action, the weight of worry about spending money she did not have on a venture that might yield no return, added to the thought that Strudel was out to cause trouble for her, mixed in with the disappointment at not being waltzed and polkaed by General Ferdinand had worn her down. She was in thrall to ennui. Enervation ruled her. Inertia had her by the throat. The physical pain induced by the thought of parting with such sums of money as would be demanded by the Grand Hotel for a week or two rendered her incapable of action. Hans only compounded her suffering by whining on about not being taken with her, though his attempts to win her over with tasty snacks provided some solace.

  “I still think it dashed stingy of you, Gretel. I mean to say, the Nuremberg Weisswurstfest is the envy of the sausage-eating world. It’s on the week after next—when will such a chance ever come my way again?”

  “Really, Hans, once you’ve seen one sausage, you’ve surely seen them all.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. This is the Uber Weisswurstfest, only happens once every seventeen years. There is to be an attempt to build the world’s biggest ever weisswurst. Show me the person who could fail to be impressed by that!”

  “You’re looking at her.”

  “You’ve grown cynical in your old age, sister mine.”

  “Calling me old will not help your case.” Seeing her brother’s lip begin to wobble Gretel charged on. “Look, it’s no good getting silly about it. As I said, this is business, not an opportunity for you to wander round the city spending fistfuls of money on chocolate cake, getting drunk in expensive city inns when there is a perfectly good cheap one here you have been successfully getting drunk in for years.”

  ‘But . . . the Uber wurstfest . . . ?” Hans raised his arms in a heartfelt appeal, before letting them drop to his sides as despair threatened. “The biggest ever . . .”

  “What is this obsession our country has with superlatives? Every town boasts something that is the tallest, the deepest, the oldest . . . nothing wrong with a bit of mediocrity if you ask me. And anyway, I shall need to take a room at the Grand, and the tariffs are eye-wateringly high. Ha,” she gave a mirthless laugh, “perhaps they were attempting to be the most expensive hotel, with the costliest room rate.”

  “The Grand! Now I know you’re being deliberately unkind. Wolfie’s flat is directly opposite. I could stay with him, and be just across the square from you, and then all I’d need is my stagecoach fare and a little bit of spending money.”

  “Wolfie?”

  “Wolfie Pretzel. From school. You remember.”

  “Directly opposite the Grand, you say?”

  “Directly. I recall going to visit him one Easter hols and sitting on his balcony and being able to look straight into the hotel dining room. Splendid menu they had. Don’t know if it’d be the same, mind you, it was a few years ago. A decade or two, most likely.”

  Gretel felt the soft breeze of hope start to fill her sails, hinting at fair winds at last come to rescue her from the doldrums.

  “Large apartment, is it, this place of Wolfie’s? Equipped with several bedrooms, perhaps?”

  “Oh, ample space. More rooms than you can shake a stick at. His parents were very well off. Both dead now, of course. Wolfie was an only child. Inherited the place. Been there years. Would be good to see him again, chew over old times.”

  Just as Gretel was about to make Hans’s day a thunderous hammering started up on the front door, accompanied by bossy shouting.

  “Open up! Kingsman’s business. Open the door!”

  Hans, accustomed to being barked at, moved toward the hallway.

  “Wait!” Gretel hissed at him in a stage whisper, propelling herself from her day bed to grab his arm. “Not yet. They’ll want to take me away for questioning. We have to think of something to say to stall them.”

  “Hang it all, Gretel, you know I’m no good at play acting.”

  “Open up!”

  “That’s not Strudel,” Gretel pointed out. “He’s sent an underling to fetch me. Tell him . . .”

  The hammering grew louder.

  “Tell him what? He’ll be through that door in a minute.”

  “Just say I’m out, but you’re certain I’ll be back in time for tea. He will find me in then. Go on!” She shoved him out of the sitting room and hurriedly hid herself behind the day bed. She heard Hans clear his throat before unbolting the door.

  “Ah, good afternoon, officer. No need for all this hammering. Not as fast on my feet as I once was, true to say, but here I am now, all yours. How can I help?”

  “I am here on the orders of Kapitan Strudel, and I have a summons for Fraulein Gretel. She must come with me to Kingsman Headquarters at once.”

  “Ah, could be difficult that.”

  “If she refuses or resists she will be arrested.”

  “Oh, no question of any refusing or resisting, gracious no. Nothing Gretel would like better than to assist Kapitan Strudel, I promise you. Firm friends they are, she and he. Very firm, in fact. Firmest of firm . . . you could say.”

  In her uncomfortable position amo
ng the dust and cobwebs Gretel winced and sent a silent message to her brother to shut up. Even without being able to see the expression on the Kingsman’s face she was fairly confident it would reveal him to be unconvinced and likely to get stroppy any minute now.

  “It’s just that she’s out.” Hans offered.

  “Out? Out where? She is required for questioning regarding a recent death in this house. If she has absconded . . .”

  Gretel had to bite her tongue to stop herself pointing out she could not be an absconder as she had not, yet, been charged with anything. It was too much to hope that Hans might put forward this reasoning.

  “She’s gone out for a brisk hike.”

  This statement was met by a curious sound as if someone were attempting to swallow a large toad. The stifled hilarity seemed for a moment as if it might overcome the kingsman. Gretel rolled her eyes. A brisk hike for pity’s sake. The last time she had broken out of her preferred amble she had been fleeing a lion. The idea that she might scamper about Gesternstadt of her own free will for fun was ludicrous, as anyone who had ever seen her would know.

  Fortunately, the kingsman was a well-brought up young man who knew better than to be seen enjoying a joke at the expense of somebody’s corpulent physique. “And when do you expect Fraulein Gretel to return from her . . . exercise?” he asked.

  “Oh, by tea time. Wouldn’t miss a feed. Brings on an appetite, all that hiking, d’you see? Yes, tea time will find her on her daybed, feet up, nibbling lebkuchen, shouldn’t wonder. A slim slice of Black Forest gâteau, maybe. A square or two of stollen. Very fond of stollen, my sister.”

  Gretel chewed her knuckles.

  The kingsman had evidently heard enough. “Here,” he said, shoving the summons into Hans’s hand, “see that she gets this. She must report to Kapitan Strudel the moment she returns, understand?”

  “Oh, absolutely, understand, yes.”

  “If she does not appear at Kingsman Headquarters by five o’clock today a warrant will be issued for her arrest,” he paused for effect and then leaned further through the door and added loudly, “. . . arrest for murder!”

  So saying he turned on his heel and marched away. Gretel’s calves were cramping up horribly as she struggled to emerge from her hiding place.

  Hans swung the door shut and turned to her, beaming.

  “Well, that went rather well, wouldn’t you say?”

  “A hike, Hans? A hike?”

  “Ah.”

  “Never mind, the notion seemed to stun him into cooperation. But we’ve only bought ourselves a couple of hours. There is action to be taken, Hans, there are plans to be set in motion.”

  “Any of those involve me stopping off at the inn for a stiffener?” Hans asked.

  “Certainly not. You will be far too busy buying tickets for the stage to Nuremberg.”

  “I will? Oh! Did you say tickets with an ‘s’—as in, one for you, one for me? Or perhaps you’re planning to take someone else. Didn’t hear you say I was going with you. Would have remembered that. So, you’re taking someone other? Hang it all, Gretel, I did ask first.”

  Gretel snatched up paper and quill from the chaos on the desk and beckoned to Hans. “Don’t talk nonsense,” she told him, “there simply isn’t time. Here, scratch out a letter to your good friend Wolfie Pretzel. Inform him we are coming to visit and should be there by Friday lunchtime at the latest.”

  “We are? We will?” Hans bent to his task, tongue out, forming each word with maddening slowness.

  Gretel couldn’t watch. “Post that on your way to buying the tickets,” she said, extracting a slim roll of notes from her corset and handing it to him. “You’ll need this. Now, just to make quite sure we are planning the same trip, what are you going to do? To whom? With what? And when?”

  “Oh good, a quiz! I like quizzes. Let me see, now. I’m writing to Wolfie to tell him we are coming to stay—he’ll be thrilled skinny, you know, loves company does good old Wolfie. Not that many people bother with him, can’t think why . . .”

  “And then . . .” Gretel prodded.

  “And then I’m posting the letter when I go out to buy two tickets to Nuremberg on the evening stage.”

  ‘Very good, Hans. And . . .”

  “. . . and then I’m . . .” he hesitated. His eyes darted back and forth and finally crossed as he tried to recall his instructions. He shook his head. “No, it’s no good, it’s gone. What am I doing next?”

  “What I always tell you to do when you’ve bought tickets, remember? You come straight home. Got that?”

  “Ha! Of course. I come straight home.”

  “Right. I’ll pack.” Gretel headed toward the stairs. She had not got half way up when Hans’s plaintive question reached her.

  “So I don’t stop off at the inn for a fortifying glass of something, just to set me up for the journey and whatnot? Do I not?”

  “Hans!” Gretel snapped. “Post letter. Buy tickets. Return home! Do not stray from the path!”

  “But . . .”

  “I’m relying on you, Hans. You have to get back in time to pack provisions for travelling—black bread, bratwurst, glühwein. You know I’d make a mess of it. We don’t want to be hungry on that stagecoach now, do we? It’s a long way to Nuremberg.”

  Hans brightened. “If there’s a snack to be packed, I’m your man! There is an art to it, you know. Can’t just throw together any old thing at the last minute. Recipe for hunger and disappointment, that is.”

  “Hans, please . . .”

  “Right you are. Letter. Tickets. Home. Snack!”

  Gretel watched him pluck his hat from the hall stand and leave through the front door with something of a spring in his step. There was still an outside chance that an hour from now she’d be hauling him out of the public bar of the inn, but if anything could lure him home it was the whiff of a sausage picnic.

  Packing for Gretel was a form of exquisite torture. Opening the wardrobe doors and breathing in the scent of silk and velvet and satin was as pleasurable an activity as she had ever known. Selecting only one or two of her favorite gowns and ensembles presented her with hard decisions. There was no time to fill a trunk, and the cost of taking such a thing on the coach would be scandalous. No, she must choose carefully, and choose quickly. She let her fingers glide down the gossamer skirts of the ball gown she had intended to wear on Friday night. It was not to be. The delight of feeling Ferdinand’s strong arms about her as they whirled across the dance floor would have to wait. He would have to accept that she was a detective first, and a woman second. These were the facts, and in times of doubt or trouble, Gretel always went back to the facts. She did not wish to leave, but leave she must. If the general was genuine in his apparent interest in her, it could be rekindled upon her return.

  In the meantime, she would have to turn her attention to the new case. There was a client to woo, a crime to solve, and money to be made. Sighing like a schoolgirl over a shapely pair of legs and a handsome smile was a luxury she could not yet afford. So far, she had scant information upon which to work. Albrecht Durer the Much Much Younger was clearly a man of means, living as he did in a suite at the Grand, adorning his walls with priceless works of art. Moreover, though he might be somewhat enfeebled if his handwriting was anything to go by, he was evidently a man of good sense, in as much as he had seen fit to send for Gretel. She allowed herself to enjoy, for just a moment, the warm glow of professional pride. Why wouldn’t he choose her? Her reputation as Private Detective Gretel (yes, that Gretel) of Gesternstadt, clearly reached far and wide. Her cases were varied in scale and importance, but her success rate was exemplary. What she lacked in knowledge of art and the art world she would more than make up for in skills of deduction, logic, and investigation. If the pictures had been stolen, someone had stolen them, and that someone would have left a trail of clues, however tiny, that could be found, and find them Gretel would.

  She had just wrestled the lid of her medium-sized valise shut and was fastening the buckles when she heard the front door slam.