Gretel and the Case of the Missing Frog Prints (3 page)

“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 among 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 ticket
s
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.

“Hans? Is that you?” She hurried to the top of the stairs to find a rather out of breath Hans steadying himself on the newel post at the bottom. “You look puffed, brother dear, is anything wrong?”

Hans shook his head, panting his way through his words. “Not wrong . . . no . . . just . . . not entirely as right as . . . one might have liked.” He sat down heavily on the second stair. Gretel descended to sit next to him.

“Let's have it,” she said.

“I did as instructed,” he assured her, taking out a worryingly gray kerchief with which to dab the perspiration from his brow. “Posted the letter . . . proceeded to the offices of the stagecoach company . . .”

“At some speed, by the look of you.”

“At that point I was still moving at a . . . sensible pace. Didn't wish to attract unwanted attention, d'you see?”

“I can only applaud your thinking, Hans.”

“Feel free, applaud as much as you like.” He waved his hankie at her before stuffing it back in his pocket.

Gretel ignored this. “And then you bought the tickets?”

“We-
eeellll
. . .”

Gretel heard a sickly glugging noise and recognized it to be the sound of her heart sinking.

“You didn't take a short detour to the inn, by any chance?”

Hans looked convincingly shocked. “I am wounded that you might think such a thing! No, I reached my destination swift and sober.”

“Excellent.”

“Sadly, there were no tickets available on this evening's stage.”

“Not so excellent.”

“What there were, however, were tickets for this afternoon's departure.”

“Much more excellent!”

“Of course I told the clerk I didn't want them.”

“And there goes excellence, scuttling over the horizon with its tail between its legs . . .”

“No, seats on this
evening's
stage, that's what I wanted, not this
afternoon's
.”

“You're telling me you didn't buy them?”

“Hang it all, Gretel, I know how long it takes you to pack and powder your nose and whatnot. Can't expect a woman to be ready for the off in a few skinny hours, I understand that.”

“And do you also understand that if we do not leave Gesternstadt this very day Strudel will have me thrown in a smelly cell on a murder charge, which will be fitting, as I will have strangled you with my bare hands by then because you didn't buy the tickets?”

“Fortunately, I do,” Hans grinned, pulling two stagecoach tickets from his waistcoat and waving them under his sister's nose.

“I don't know whether to kiss you or kick you.”

“We don't have time for either.”

“What time does it leave?”

The cuckoo clock in the hall insisted it was four o'clock.

“In thirty minutes,” Hans told her, “which is why I'm in this state.”

Gretel leapt to her feet, hauling Hans upright. “To the kitchen. Grab whatever you can lay your hands on . . .”

“But, I haven't packed,” he wailed.

“You can borrow stuff from Wolfie. Go on, hurry, Hans, for pity's sake.”

With a great deal of puffing and muttering, Gretel succeeded in getting the pair of them, booted and spurred, to the stagecoach pick-up point on the western edge of the town with two minutes to spare. Hans had complained loudly that this was the furthest stop from the house they could have chosen. Gretel had explained that if she were to be spotted by a kingsman the game would be up. Fortuitously, this route also enabled them to call in at Madame Renoir's salon and collect the wig. And so it was that an hour later they were settled into the back of the swaying stage, Gretel clutching her precious wig box on her lap, Hans nursing the hastily assembled picnic, the fading afternoon light slowly snuffing out their view of Gesternstadt as they proceeded northwest toward Nuremberg.