Gretel and the Case of the Missing Frog Prints (23 page)

“Oh, Sugar Plum!” laughed Wolfie. “Could it be you are just the teensy weensiest bit jealous, hmm?” He finished off the ridiculous notion with a labored wink.

Gretel opened her mouth to remonstrate with him but shut it again quickly on spotting Kapitan Strudel. He was only twenty or so people away from her. And he had seen her. Immediately he began burrowing his way forward, his spindly frame insinuating itself between people with startling speed.

Gretel took hold of Hans's arm. “Where's this sausage of yours I've heard so much about?”

“What? The World's Biggest Weisswurst? You want to see it?”

“Love to.”

“Now?”

“When better? Get a sneak preview. See what the two of you have been working so hard on all this time.”

“We were just on our way there!” Hans explained gleefully. “This way, sister mine.”

Gretel attempted to steer him in the opposite direction to Strudel, but the square was still so packed it was like trying to force a boulder through a sieve. Fortunately, Hans was so delighted at his sister's interest that he was determined nothing—not even half the population of Nuremberg—would stand in their way.

“Come on, Wolfie, help me,” he said. They took an arm each and all but lifted Gretel off the ground. Whilst some might have thought the best way to slip through a crowd was to make oneself as slender and slight as possible, rather as Strudel was doing at that very second and with some success, Hans and Wolfie's preferred system had its foundations in a basic science. Hans's thinking, if such it could be called, was that if the irresistible force meets the unmovable object the latter will, in fact, ultimately move so long as the former meets it with sufficient enthusiasm. He and Wolfie were at one in this, so that together, with Gretel dangling between them, they formed a formidable trio. They swept all before them. Ignoring squeals of protest, oaths, and cries of alarm, they pressed on. Husbands dragged wives from their path. Mothers snatched up small children. The slower ones staggered away bruised. Hans all the while offered “
entschuldigungens
” and “excuse me's” left and right, as Wolfie sang out “here-we-go” and “to-the-butcher's it is!” It was all Gretel could do to keep up, fearing that if she fell they would simply drag her onward regardless. She wondered, briefly, at the power of an overgrown sausage to so inspire and indeed galvanize two of the most indolent men she knew.

Soon, incredibly, they had left the square and rounded the Grand, so that they were quickly in the cobbled street to its rear. Gretel glanced anxiously at the hidden entrance to the underground brothel, but there was no one entering or leaving it at the moment they passed. They proceeded along the street until they came to a heavy wooden door, above which hung
a sign depicting a misguidedly happy pig. The hog was shown grinning merrily and wearing a napkin around its neck whilst holding a knife and fork in its trotters. There was something unsettling in the misplaced relish on the animal's face. Was it not aware of the fate that awaited it? Did it first expect to feast on the butchered, cured, and cooked remains of its brethren? What manner of mind had thought such a sign fitting for a butcher, she wondered. Suddenly the prospect of entering the domain of the sausage makers, the place where heaven knew how many men had spent heaven knew how many hours dicing and chopping and peeling and mincing and grinding and stuffing, all with the record-breaking wurst ever to the forefront of their minds, was more than a little daunting. What might such an activity do to a person?

The butcher's shop itself was clean, neat, and workaday. It appeared to be the sort of establishment any good cook or diligent housewife might happily frequent, certain of attentive service and high quality meat. Hans led the way through a door at the back of the shop. They passed down a narrow corridor. Signs indicated an icehouse off to the left, and a storeroom off to the right. At the end of the narrow passageway a further door stood firmly closed against them. Hans knocked, paused, then knocked again, carefully counting each rap as if he were annunciating some manner of code. A gruff voice from the other side demanded he identify himself, which he duly did, also stating whom he had with him. There was a moment's hesitation after which Hans was obliged to further vouch for his sister. At last came the sounds of bolts being drawn back and the door creaked open, allowing the trio to enter.

Gretel gasped at the sight that greeted her. It was impossible not to be impressed, if only by the scale of everything. The area was huge, a great barn of a place two floors high, open to the rafters. Everything looked spotlessly clean. Marble slabs
ran the length of one side of the space, and fresh sawdust covered the scrubbed flagstones of the floor. The area in the middle—which was comfortably large enough, Gretel decided, to house at least three royal carriages—was given over entirely to the monster sausage itself. Hans and Wolfie stood back, faces aglow with pride, as Gretel walked slowly around the incredible creation. She estimated the sausage was more than two yards in girth, but could not begin to guess its length, for the thing was coiled around in a seemingly endless spiral. The whole was suspended by wide strips of muslin cloth from the beams above, so that it hung at approximately shoulder height. Beneath it were a dozen or so enormous metal baths containing ice, presumably to best preserve the meat until it was ready for cooking. The baths were on large trivets, below which fire pits dug into the ground were already laid with wood, awaiting that moment.

Wolfie whispered in Gretel's ear. “The wurst will be steamed. It must be done gently, or the skin will split, causing a rupture.” He shook his head. “This must not happen.”

“I'll say,” agreed Hans. “It must be cooked through, but remain flexible enough that we can uncoil it and carry it to the stage in the square without damage. Only then will it be officially measured and declared indisputably the biggest ever seen! And, do you know, I was allowed to assist in the recipe? Yes, I have added my own special ingredient,” he told her breathlessly.

As they watched, three men in butcher's aprons set to the task of sweeping any stray sawdust from the edges of the fire pits.

“Look!” Hans cried. “They are about to light the fires.”

The butchers and their helpers stepped forward with tapering spills, each taking up position next to a pit. Another man appeared with a lamp and walked in a circle so that each spill
could be lit. At last the signal was given and the flames set to the kindling. To begin with there was a deal of smoke and spitting of soft wood, but soon the fires were properly alight. A section of tiles had been removed from the roof, and slowly the majority of the smoke began to find its way upward and outward. The attendants stepped back, and there was a fair amount of backslapping and handshaking—the last stage of the process was now underway.

“Come on,” Hans guided Gretel to the far end of the barn. Here were trestle tables spread with crisp white cloths and pewter tableware. “Time for supper. It will be an hour or so before there's any amount of steam. Then the fires will have to be tended and the suspension strips periodically eased along so that the cooking is slow and even. For now, all we have to do is wait, so the Worshipful Company of Butchers and Charcutiers have put on a bit of a spread. I'm sure they wouldn't mind you eating with us.”

And so it was that Gretel joined the feast. She was the only woman among twenty burly meat workers, but she felt wonderfully at ease. She was surrounded by people whose love for, and understanding of, food was unsurpassed. It was their collective
raison d'être
. And tonight was the pinnacle of months of planning and weeks of hard work. They would nurse the wurst through its final transformation, and in the morning they would carry it aloft and present it to the city, for the honor of sausage makers everywhere. For the honor of Nuremberg.

Junior butchers scurried about fetching a fine selection of cold meats and warm bread and pickles, along with quantities of ale. Gretel found, to her surprise, that despite her recent lavish sampling of the local cakes at the Toasted Almond, her appetite returned at the sight of such familiar delights. Soon she was tucking in, Hans on her left treating her to a blow by blow account of the making of the sausage, Wolfie on her right
recounting an occasion in a fantasy world in which he had been a talented opera singer and the darling of Vienna. As she began to relax, to lose her anxiety about Strudel, to allow her disappointment in Ferdinand to fade a little, and to shed her irritation at being delayed in returning to the apartment, Gretel's mind started to function smoothly and without effort, so that she was able to turn it to the matter of the missing frog prints calmly and confidently once more. She was close to solving the case now, and that knowledge gave her a delicious tingle the length of her body. Success was well within her grasp, and grasp it she would. She needed to go back to the apartment, for she was sure that it was there the final piece of the puzzle would slot effortlessly into place.

Hans passed her a plate of cherries and she sat nibbling, a pleasant drowsiness overcoming her. No doubt Strudel would still be hunting her, and the square would still be impassable. There was no point in attempting to go anywhere just yet. She could relax for a short while, digest her meal, and be all the readier to bring the case to its conclusion in an hour or two. A brief nap was in order. With no daybed to hand, she would have to make do with where she sat. Leaning back in her chair Gretel closed her eyes, allowing the good humored murmuring of the men around her to lull her to sleep.

At length, into her dreams there came the hissing of giant serpents, which writhed and twisted about her. Alarmed, Gretel awoke with a start and a shout, for an instant unable to recall where she was. The trestle tables had been cleared and were nothing more than empty boards now. All the chairs, save her own, were vacant. Turning in her seat, she found the barn transformed. Gone was the clean and calm place she remembered entering but a few short hours earlier. Now her eyes took in a scene evidently depicting Dante's third circle of hell. Smoke from the fires swirled and merged
with steam from the kettle-baths, and mingled with fumes from the cooking sausage to produce an air that must be chewed as much as breathed. The heat was such that all the men had stripped to the waist, so that their brawny torsos—hairy-chested and bulbous of stomach to a man—glistened with sweat and water vapor. They labored lovingly over their creation, stoking the fires, topping up the baths, minutely adjusting the muslin slings, basting the steaming meat, their exertions adding to their discomfort and rendering their faces unbecoming shades of puce.

Gretel struggled to her feet, beating at her skirts in an effort to remove some of the creases. There were disturbing stains gained when she had knelt on the carpet where Phelps met his brutal end. Further inspection revealed honey blobs on her bodice, a squashed plum or two, a sliver of pickled cabbage settled in her cleavage, and upon her sleeves several sticky areas of indiscernible provenance. She put a hand to her hair and discovered it to be largely free of its pins and combs, so that hanks of it hung limply about her neck. The temperature of the room was beginning to make her feel dizzy. She knew she must leave quickly and hope that the crowds had thinned sufficiently for her to be able to return home.

Wolfie waved at her from atop a ladder where he was tenderly ladling melted herb butter onto the wurst. That his body was as ginger and hirsute as his face should not have come as a surprise to Gretel, but still the sight was startling enough to cause her to blanch. Hans emerged from behind a butt of butter and escorted her to the front door of the butcher's shop. He, mercifully, sported a vest of cotton that went some way to sparing the casual observer from experiencing the sight of the wobbling expanses of his stomach. Sadly, the undergarment was so wetted with steam and perspiration that it clung to his corpulent form in an unhelpfully revealing way.

Outside night had fallen and the air was blessedly fresh and pork-free. They stood a moment upon the threshold, sucking in great reviving gulps of it. Steam began to whisk off Hans's bare arms.

“What a night, sister mine,” he said. “Tomorrow we will unveil the great sausage for all to enjoy.”

“Will they actually get to eat the thing?”

“Oh yes. After it has been displayed and measured and recorded it will be sliced and handed out to all the festival goers. The remainder will be on sale here at Herr Gluck's shop.”

“For some time to come, I should imagine.”

“It will be snapped up, mark my words.”

Gretel was already beginning to feel that she herself had seen enough of the thing. She turned to go but was stopped by the sight of a small, shadowy figure emerging from the secret doorway to the underground brothel. She shoved Hans back inside the doorway.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Shhhh. Over there. A hobgoblin.”

“Really? Are you certain? I haven't set eyes on one of those for years,” he told her in a stage whisper that Gretel was certain carried some distance through the thin night air. “There was one at my old school, of course, but since then, oh . . . at the inn, there used to be one. Or was that a gremlin? Hard to tell the difference, I find.”

“Ordinarily not,” Gretel corrected him. “Most hobgoblins are happy and cheerful, while gremlins are more prickly creatures altogether. That hobgoblin you see there is typical. He inhabits Mistress Crane's establishment.”

“You don't say! Oh, look—there's a second one. Highly unusual, to see two at once, is it not?”

“Yes. And that one is . . .” she hesitated, lifting her lorgnettes to her eyes. “Wait, I thought the first one was from the brothel,
but now I see the second one is he. The first one . . . I recognize his little brass buttons. Yes, I'm quite certain that is Wolfie's hobgoblin.”