Gretel and the Case of the Missing Frog Prints (4 page)

THREE

T
wo rattling nights and a juddering day of travel sorely tested Gretel's considerable reserves of endurance. Mercifully, the stagecoach was not full, so she and Hans were at least able to spread themselves a little, and make the most of their hastily assembled rations. Still the journey felt interminable. They stayed one night at a sour-smelling inn, with beds so uncomfortable and bug-ridden that it was a relief to fold themselves back into the coach the next morning. By the time they reached their destination Gretel craved a fragrant bath, fresh clothes, a hot meal, and a soft, clean bed with every fiber of her being. Hans seemed less travel worn and led her off through the broad city streets, confident he could find his
friend's building without help. Ordinarily, Gretel would not have left such an important task to him, but he had said the address was directly opposite the Grand Hotel in the main square and she was able to insist on a left turn here and there, using the cathedral spire in the center of the city to guide them.

Even in her weary state, Gretel acknowledged to herself that Nuremberg more than lived up to her expectations. They walked along smooth pavements, skirting wide avenues, flanked by buildings of as much elegance and good taste as a person could wish for. The deeper into the city they ventured, the more glamorous the people they passed. Carriages of the very latest styles, pulled by fine horses and driven by expensively liveried staff, sped hither and thither. Seductive aromas drifted out of coffee houses and restaurants. Street artists plied their trade displaying their artwork in an attractively Bohemian way. Young couples strolled arm in arm. It was a very long time since Gretel had been in the presence of so much fine tailoring and haute couture, and she felt her spirits lift on wings of sophistication.

“Ah-
ha
!” Hans gesticulated with no small amount of self-satisfaction at the mansion block in front of them. “Wolfie's place, if I am not mistaken. Which I'm pretty sure I am not. For once. And . . .” he turned and gesticulated again, this time taking in the opposite side of the square with a wave of a pudgy paw which still clutched a half-eaten slice of rye bread, “
that
is none other than the Grand Hotel.”

And indeed it was. Gretel's pulse quickened. Everything about the Grand, from its immaculately turned out doormen, through its imposing entrance, to its elegant proportions and understated grandeur, spoke of quality, with conversations about finesse, honorable mentions for charm, and several heartfelt words concerning glamour. She experienced a pang of regret that she would not be taking a room, but at least she would be able to gaze upon its splendor from across the square.

Hans pulled hard on the bell rope. After a short pause a slightly muffled voice responded using the ampliphone beside the name plate.

“Hello?” said the voice. “Who's there?” it wanted to know.

Hans cleared his throat. “I say, Wolfie, it's your old school chum, Hans, come to visit you.”

“Who?”

“Hans! From Gesternstadt, you remember?”

Gretel nudged him with the corner of her suitcase. “Ask him about the letter.”

“Oh yes, we wrote to you, Wolfie. Did you receive the letter?”

“What? No, no letter.”

“Oh,” Hans's early brightness was beginning to dim in the face of such a tepid welcome.

Gretel stepped forwards. “This is Gretel, Hans's sister. Am I addressing Herr Wolfie Pretzel?”

“No,” said the voice. “No Wolfie Pretzel here.”

Gretel glowered at Hans.

He shook his head. “It's the right address, I know it is. I clearly recall, number eight, Cathedral View Apartments, on the square. Look,” he pointed aloft, “that's his balcony, three floors up. I promise you, this is the place.”

She turned back to the device on the wall.

“My brother assures me this is the correct address. Have you recently moved in, perhaps? Might you know where the previous owner has gone? Hello?” she tried again a little louder, sensing that the owner of the mumbling voice had drifted away. “Hello, are you there?”

“No!” cried a burly man bounding through the front door of the building. “I am here! Hans, my dear friend!” he cried, throwing his arms around Hans in an embrace of startling force.

When he had breath to speak again Hans asked, “Wolfie, is it you?”

“But of course! Who else would it be! Ha-ha-
ha
!” The force of nature in checked shirt, wide yellow polka-dot braces, and velvet breeches, turned his beaming face on Gretel. Only then did she see the reason for his slightly fuzzy diction, for he sported the bushiest, fluffiest, widest, most abundant ginger moustache she had ever had the misfortune to have thrust in her direction. “Ah! Little Gretel, Hans's baby sister, how wonderful to meet you at last!” So saying he clasped her to him.

Gretel was certain she detected a rustling movement deep within his facial hair, but put the thought aside. She gasped as he released her from his embrace. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Herr Pretzel.”

“Oh, no, please call me Wolfie, everyone does.”

“But,” Hans couldn't help himself, “you said it wasn't you . . . that you were not he . . . just now, on the whatsit . . .”

“Ach, take no notice, only my little joke, Hansie. You know me.”

Hans managed a small laugh. “A joke yes, of course. I know you. Good old Wolfie.”

“It is marvelous you are here, but such a pity you cannot stay,” he added, his face falling into a babyish pout, bottom lip just about managing to protrude beyond the overhang of moustache above it.

“Cannot stay?” Hans echoed.

“Alas, I have had a dreadful disease these past months, and have found myself confined to my apartment, isolated and alone, save for the mice of course.”

Gretel and Hans both took a step backwards. Wolfie advanced, full of solicitous regret.

“Oh, yes, a terrible sickness, with spots and rashes and such like . . .”

“Terrible sickness . . .” Hans repeated.

“The rooms have not yet been fumigated. I could not possibly risk inflicting such suffering on my good friends.”

“Such suffering . . .”

Since Hans's level of intelligence had apparently been reduced to that of a parrot—a small diminishment, but a diminishment still—Gretel stepped in.

“But, Wolfie, you look, if I may say so, exceptionally well for one so recently afflicted.”

“Ha-ha-
ha
!” Wolfie guffawed. “You are too clever for me, Hans's baby sister. Too clever for poor old Wolfie.”

Gretel felt a small muscle in her jaw begin to twitch. “You haven't really been ill, have you?”

“Oh, no! I am never ill. Not for a moment.” He fell to laughing loudly, his mouth open wide, his moustache flapping in and out as he hee'd and haw'd happily.

Hans did his best to keep up. “So, the spots and rashes . . . all cleared up, have they?”

“Oh, Hansie, you are so funny!” Wolfie settled to chuckling, and pushed open the door to the apartment block. “And I am such a bad host . . . You must be hungry after your long journey.”

Hans brightened immediately. “Well, now that you mention it, I could manage a bite of something,” he said.

At that moment a breathless post boy scurried up the steps and pressed a letter into Wolfie's hand. He opened it and scanned the contents. “Ah, so,” he nodded, “my good friend and his sister are coming to visit me and will be staying a week or two. They are due to arrive before lunchtime Friday.”

Hans's shoulders slumped. “Visitors! Hang it all, that's a shame. Now you won't be able to put us up. Some fellow bringing his sister, just like me. What are the chances, eh? Never mind, we'll see if we can find a room somewhere. Perhaps we could meet up for a drink later?”

Now it was Wolfie's turn to look confused. Gretel shoved Hans through the open door.

“Take no notice. Hans never makes any sense at all when he's hungry,” she explained, quelling her brother's protests as they made their way to the lift and up to the third floor.

Wolfie's apartment, whilst not opulent, was indeed spacious and comfortable, if a little gloomy. Hans cheerfully followed his friend to the kitchen. Gretel made straight for the floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the living room and folded open the shutters. Lifting the catch on the window, she stepped out onto the little balcony with its ornate ironwork and took in the view. In front of her, across the broad square, stood the Grand, its pale golden stonework gleaming in the late morning sunshine. It was six floors high and easily twenty windows across, so that it dominated the plaza. The far end of the square boasted the cathedral, from which ran a cloistered length of coffee shops and restaurants where people sat enjoying a snack, availing themselves of the perfect place to see and be seen in their daytime finery. The center of the square contained a modest but quite lovely fountain, involving somewhat ambiguous mythical beasts and a nymph or two. Water spouted and spurted prettily. Small birds dipped their beaks in the shallow pools. Children of the clean and well-behaved variety skipped and squealed. All was very pleasant indeed, Gretel decided.

Wolfie came bounding into the living room.

“Come along, Hans's baby sister, there is food on the table and your brother will eat it all if we do not join him straightaway.”

Gretel followed him through a door to the dining room, and through another into the kitchen. It appeared the contents of the larder had been emptied onto the table, and Hans was tucking into some good Nuremberg weisswurst—never having had any truck with the midday curfew so many of his fellow Bavarians might put upon the thing—happy as a sand boy, if a little greasier.

“Sit, sit!” Wolfie pulled out a chair for Gretel and hurried to fetch tankards for beer.

Hans spoke through a mouthful of lunch, “This really is most decent of you, Wolfie.”

“Oh, not at all. It is a treat for me to have company.” He lowered his voice and glanced about him in an anxious fashion. “Particularly of the cheerful kind,” he added with a cryptic wink, which went entirely unnoticed by Hans, but which Gretel filed away for later examination.

After a mouthful or two of some sauerkraut and pickled eggs, she felt sufficiently restored to turn her mind to the case she had come to Nuremberg to solve.

“Tell me, Wolfie, have you ever heard of the Society of the Praying Hands?” she asked.

“Praying Hands?” Wolfie studied the ceiling for a moment as if he might find the answer, or indeed the society, somewhere above his head. “No,” he said at last. “I have not heard of them.”

Gretel shrugged. “No matter,” she said, sipping the rather fine ale on offer.

Wolfie's moustache fluttered in the gale of laughter that escaped from him. “Oh, Fraulein! Just my little joke . . .”

“Good old Wolfie!” Hans was joining in as a reflex by now.

“But of course I know of the Society of the Praying Hands!”

“You do?” Gretel moved her beer out of range of any orange hair that might be dislodged and blown her way in the course of such hilarity.

“Why yes! Indeed, I am a member myself.”

“Good show!” Hans enthused.

“You are?” Gretel thought this a stroke of luck almost too good to be true.

“No!” bellowed Wolfie. “Oh, no, Hans's baby sister. Ha-ha-
ha
! I never heard of them!” He slapped his thigh, determined to get the most out of his efforts at humor.

“Ha! Same old Wolfie!” Hans chortled.

It was then that Gretel recalled what else it was that she knew about her host. Information that had receded into the mists of time leapt out to startle her, clear and vivid. Hans had been twelve when he had come home from school with the tale of his new best friend's shenanigans.

Wolfie, whose real name was Peter, had gone hiking in the Alps with his family. They had stayed at a popular mountain village, and, so the story went, his parents had enjoyed the inns and restaurants so much that they had taken to spending most of their time in them, so that their only child became bored. And everyone knows that allowing a child to grow bored is an invitation to mischief. One evening, little Peter had sprung from his chalet bed and run screaming through the village, shouting that a wolf had jumped onto his balcony, climbed through the window, and chased him around the bedroom before he managed to shut himself in the wardrobe and it left. Everyone turned out, a search was mounted, hunters donned hats with earflaps and cocked their rifles. They scoured the vicinity all night, but no trace of the wolf could be found.

The following night the boy once again tore through the narrow streets, rousing everyone from their slumbers, declaring that two wolves had entered his room, slavering and panting, and that he had only outwitted them by hiding under the bed where they could not reach him. A second search was arranged, with every able-bodied man striding into the forest, flaming torch held high, while the women trembled and clutched their babes to their breasts.

On the third night, Peter, by now thoroughly hooked on the drama he had learned to create, was about to raise the alarm when he heard screams from his parents' bedroom. He opened the door to find three enormous wolves chasing his terrified mother around the bed, and already dragging his poor papa
away by his feet. The boy ran into the village, screaming that the wolves had come again, but this time all he got for his trouble were a few growled oaths and a chamber pot emptied over his head. No trace of his parents was ever found.

Gretel considered it the height of bad luck that such an experience, far from curing the child of ever again uttering an untruth, seemed to have rendered him incapable of getting through a half hour without fabricating some fantasy or other. She further considered that the room tariff at the Grand would soon come to seem very reasonable. Dabbing her fading smile with a damask napkin she feigned fatigue so that she might retire to her room and escape any further examples of Wolfie's predilection for mendacity. She reasoned the only way to survive a stay under the same roof as the man would be to limit her exposure to him to small doses, infrequently taken.