Gretel and the Case of the Missing Frog Prints (20 page)

Wolfie was so shocked by the sight that greeted him, his mouth gaped wordlessly, his ginger mustache sucked tight to his lips as he gasped. Hans, being already familiar with his sister's costume, was instead appalled by the condition of it.

“Hell's teeth, Gretel! Have you been attacked? What manner of being could inflict such damage . . . ?”

“Sugar Plum!” Wolfie managed at last in one breathy exhalation.

“Calm down, both of you, do,” Gretel waved the scissors. “I am merely trying to escape this vile garment. Which of you is the more sober? No, wait, I'll phrase that in more realistic terms, which of you is the less inebriated?”

The fact that they each pointed at the other did not inspire confidence. There was a deal of jostling and slurred discussion before it was decided they would both help. Gretel braced herself against the kitchen table whilst Hans operated the scissors, with Wolfie nominally steadying his hand. Through twenty minutes of struggle, during which Gretel either held her breath or barked admonishment, the trio battled with the leather. At last, Gretel stood free, beyond worrying about her modesty in Wolfie's presence.

Holding the shreds of the outfit to her person she turned for her room. “Hans,” she called over her shoulder, “do not so much as think of retiring. I need to test out theories upon someone, and fortune has seen fit to provide me only with you and Wolfie. Make coffee—good and strong, and plenty of it. I shall return presently more comfortably covered. In the interval, would you both please shake yourselves up and attempt to clear your minds as best you can.”

Back in her room once again, Gretel was faced with the expectant visage of Gottfried, who sat, tapping his paw and scrutinizing his front claws.

“Ah, Fraulein Gretel . . .”

“Ah, Gottfried. I had, for a few moments, forgotten about you.” She stepped behind the tapestry screen in the corner of the room and pulled on her nightgown and house robe. It occurred to her that yet another outfit, albeit only her traveling clothes, had been sacrificed to Herr Durer's case. His bill would have to be adjusted accordingly. “Right,” she said, tightening the sash around her middle and stuffing her tired feet into her friendly brocade slippers, “let us complete our transaction. I am eager to get back to my work.”

“At Mistress Crane's house?”

“Certainly not! My detective work.” She took the wig from its box and gave it one last, lingering, longing, lustful look. She
made herself a silent promise, then and there, that once the case was solved and she had been paid in full, she would go to the very best wigmaker the city could offer and purchase a replacement of such beauty that the pain of parting with this one would be expunged.

“Where do you want it?” she asked.

“Follow me.” Gottfried leapt lightly down from the dressing table and raced over to the floorboards on the far side of the bed. “Here,” he pointed down, “you can lift this one; it has already been loosened.”

“The wig won't fit under that.”

“It does not need to. Please, raise the board, and all will become clear.”

With a sigh, Gretel did as he requested. The floorboard was indeed easy to raise. She set it to one side and saw that where it had joined the wall at one end there was a roomy gap.

“Slip your hand under the wood paneling,” Gottfried instructed. “You will find you are able to slide it up a little and then to the side.”

Gretel crawled forward a little, her knees complaining at the unyielding boards. Gingerly, she slipped her hand into the darkness beneath the panel. It was on runners that were evidently well-maintained, so that she had no difficulty in pushing it to the left. Only once she had slid it fully open did she properly look at what had been revealed. Her stomach heaved, and it was all she could do not to let out a cry. There, but inches away from where she had been sleeping these past nights, was a complex system of runs and nests and openings and storerooms and slides and ladders, all making up a hidden mouse city of sorts, among the streets of which scampered myriad rodents.

“My home,” Gottfried said proudly. He pointed to a space in the center. “There,” he told her, “there is where our new residence will sit!”

“You were very sure of success, Herr Mouse. I see the area is cleared and ready to receive my wig. Were you waiting only for the opportunity to bargain with me? What would you have done, I wonder, had such an occasion not presented itself?”

“Happily, Fraulein, we do not have to dwell on such an eventuality. You are free, and my dear wife will be happy. Such a satisfactory outcome for all concerned, do you not agree?”

Gretel frowned and forced herself not to comment further. A deal was a deal, and, after all, she planned to stay in the apartment a while yet. It would no doubt be sensible to keep Gottfried on side, however warily she might view him from this point on. With some squishing and tugging, all to the accompaniment of the jingling of tiny silver bells, the wig was installed. Frau Gottfried and children too numerous and active to count appeared to survey their new home. It gave Gretel some consolation to see the delight written on the face of Gottfried's wife. At least the precious wig would not go unloved. Curiosity overcame her, so that she leaned forward and peered deeper into the hidden complex of nests and runs.

“How far does this extend? Do you inhabit every wall in the building?”

“My family is large. As are those of my workers. We take up the larger part of the apartment, yes. Though, of course, we are required to share it with some . . . others.”

“Ah, Herr Hobgoblin, I suppose. A morose neighbor indeed.”

“He has his own area some way removed from my own. In Herr Leibniz's perfect world I would not be forced to accommodate such a creature, but,” he gave another shrug, this time one of reluctant resignation, “as you and I are already agreed, there are flaws in my namesake's philosophy.”

“Aren't there just?” she concurred, taking one last, longing look at her wig.

In the kitchen she found Hans and Wolfie on their second cups of coffee, their eyes noticeably more open and more focused than before. Gretel took a seat at the table and poured herself a cupful, the fumes alone strong enough to give a fillip to fatigued minds.

“Here we are,” Hans attempted to sit up straight in his chair, “ready, willing, and able . . . well, ready . . . or perhaps, willing . . . I don't know. How about you, Wolfie? Are you up for a spot of deducing and such?”

“Oh, yes, Hansie.” Wolfie took another swig of his coffee, his pupils dilating alarmingly, giving him a somewhat maniacal appearance. “I was once engaged by the Nuremberg Kingsmen, you know.”

“You were?” Hans was intrigued.

“The case of the missing grandmama. It was very famous. You will have heard of it, yes, Sugar Plum?”

Gretel narrowed her eyes and gulped coffee. “Possibly,” she allowed.

“Everyone was mystified. The greatest minds of the greatest detectives in the city had been brought to bear, but no one could discover what had happened to the old lady. She had been waiting for a visit from her granddaughter when tragedy struck.”

“Dashed bad luck,” Hans shook his head. “What's the world coming to, eh? When a grannie can't wait safely for her granddaughter . . . “

“When the poor girl arrived she found nothing. Only her grannie's spectacles and mop cap.”

Gretel sighed. “To save precious minutes of our lives which we will never see again, the wolf did it. There. Case solved.”

Wolfie laughed loudly. “Oh, Gretsie! You are too clever for me.”

Hans shook his head in disbelief. “That's amazing, how did you know that? Must be all the years of investigating, detecting
stuff and what not. Still, very impressive. Isn't she amazing, my sister, Wolfie, don't you think?”

Wolfie continued to chortle into his coffee cup. Steam was forming brown droplets on his whiskers.

Gretel topped up her own cup.

“Pin back your ears, listen to what I have to say, then give me your honest opinions.” Hans opened his mouth to speak but Gretel held up a hand. “No interruptions, thank you, Hans. Just listen.”

The two men adopted expressions of alert interest, or at least, the closest they could manage. Once Gretel was certain they were as attentive as ever they were going to get, she began.

“Consider, if you will, the indubitable facts as they present themselves. We have two missing depictions of viridian amphibians; one bereft centenarian owner; an avaricious youth; a fiscally inept hotel proprietor; and a covetous art collector with a predilection for questionable bedroom activities.” She paused to allow this information to be taken in, but could see at once by the blank faces that stared back at her that it was proving incomprehensible. She tried again. “Who d'you think stole the pictures of the frogs, the nephew, the bankrupt hotelier, or the perverted man in the green hat?”

“Oh, green hat, every time,” said Hans. “After all, the fellow who died in our hallway had a green hat.”

“Your reasoning being?”

“Well, clearly not good news. I mean to say. One green-hat-wearer turns up dead and gets you into all sorts of trouble, then you find another green-hat-wearer and he's up to all manner of no good . . . plain as the nose on one's face.”

“Wolfie, your thoughts?”

By now Wolfie's whole body was thrumming with the effects of the coffee. Unfortunately, having at first shaken him from his drunken state, the remedy had now moved him beyond
sense into a vacant, buzzing, place where cogent thinking did not thrive. He opened his mouth. His moustache quivered. His eyes bulged even further. He took a breath and at last managed, “So, yes. Yes. I think . . . yes.”

Gretel slumped back in her chair.

“Were we helpful, sister mine?” Hans asked, panting for praise.

“I couldn't have managed without you,” Gretel confirmed. “Phelps it is, no question of it. Phelps is our man.” That this was the conclusion she had already come to of her own accord she saw no need to tell her brother. And, unlikely as it had first seemed, she realized that Hans might actually have a point about the green hats. She needed to find out more about the Society of the Praying Hands. Who was in charge, she wondered? Herr Durer seemed to tolerate Phelps, and yet Schoenberg had told her the doctor had been refused admission to his suite just before the prints went missing, so there had to be discord of sorts. No, there was no getting away from the fact, at every turn, wherever her investigations took her, there was Phelps. He had to remain her number one suspect.

Gretel flopped into bed, her mind still over-active from the coffee and the testing events of the night. Visions played themselves out on the back of her weary eyelids in a frantic phantasmagoria. There was Strudel, eel-like in black leather. And there Bacon Bob, snout twitching. And here Ferdinand. Ferdinand. She had never thought to find him in such a place. It pained her to believe that he was capable of frequenting a house of ill repute. The disappointment she felt was like a leaden lump of unleavened dough, heavy and indigestible in the pit of her stomach. He was not, after all, the man she had believed him to be. And her wig had gone from her. Life was fast filling with woes, and she was no nearer fathoming how whoever stole the wretched prints had succeeded in entering
and leaving the hotel suite, taking the pictures with him still in their frames and glass.

A new image drifted through Gretel's troubled mind. Unbidden and unexpected, she clearly saw her beloved tapestry daybed, bolsters plumped and enticing, and a ferocious pang of homesickness gripped her. Tutting at herself for such flimsy thoughts, she turned on her side, thwacking her pillow into submission, before quickly falling into a restless sleep.

It seemed as if minutes rather than hours had passed when she was awoken by a persistent hammering on the front door of the apartment. Evidently the pounding was insufficient to rouse either Wolfie or Hans, so that Gretel was forced to get up and attend to the caller herself. She stumbled through the shadows of the new day, the sun itself not yet properly awake.

“All right, I'm coming. Cease your thumping,” she said. On opening the door she found a boy dressed in the livery of the Grand Hotel.

“A message for Fraulein Gretel, from Herr Durer,” he explained.

She took it from him. The boy waited, pointedly.

“If Herr Durer sent you on this errand I can be certain you have already been amply paid for your time,” she said, slamming the door shut once again.

She unfurled the note. It was brief, scratched out in Durer's shaky hand. Gretel read it twice, then read it aloud, just to force herself to take in its meaning.

“Come at once,” it ran, “Dr. Phelps has been murdered.”

TWELVE

T
he scene that greeted Gretel in Herr Durer's suite was one of violence and high drama. Phelps, in his recently quietened state, lay still and heavy upon the floor, poignantly positioned directly beneath the raw gap where the missing pictures once hung. Someone had thought to drape a tablecloth over his head to obscure the ghastly truth of his demise, but the enshrouded shape was disturbingly concave, nonetheless, and the quantity of blood which had flowed and splattered about the place indicated a brutal method of dispatch. There was also, Gretel noticed, an all-pervading odor in the place. It was sour and rank and the air was full of it. She could only suppose it was emanating from the corpse.

Herr Durer sat some way off, weeping copiously and silently, his whole fragile frame shuddering with sobs. Gretel was certain he alone would shed tears for the deceased. Everyone else who knew the man seemed united in their loathing for him, but Albrecht was a sensitive and compassionate creature, keen to find the good in all, however well-hidden and small that good might be. Valeri stood behind her employer's chair, pale but dry of eye. Herr Schoenberg stalked the room wringing his hands and telling any who would listen that such an occurrence could signal the end of the Grand, once and for all. Three local kingsmen scribbled notes and measured things. Two porters and a maid waited with mop and buckets, shaking their heads in unison at the state of the carpet. A pair of stretcher bearers arrived on Gretel's heels and were given permission to remove the body. As they passed, she lifted the cover and in one expert glance took in the extent and manner of Phelp's injuries.