‘But why the mice and the frogs?’ Frau Mettler asked, peering at the gaps in the chocolate animal display. ‘Why not the white chocolate rabbits and marmots? Why not the dark chocolate ibex and bears?’
‘Ja! Ja!’ cried Herr Mettler, peering down into the glass counter. ‘And why steal all the caramel chocolate bars but not the nougat or the strawberry mousse or the coconut deluxe? And why take the nutty almond blocks but not the nutty peanut blocks?’
‘Nein!’ gasped Frau Mettler, now frowning so deeply that her eyebrows looked like they might crumble. ‘And why would they take all the chocolate bark with the glacé fruit and the nuts but leave the chocolate bark with the shards of brittle toffee scattered on top? The brittle toffee bark is what we are famous for!’
Herr Mettler shook his head and, for a moment, looked as though he might burst into tears. He seemed more upset that his signature chocolate bark had been rejected than by the fact that a thief had broken into his café in the middle of the night and stolen a whole sack of his beautiful chocolate creations. Creations that had taken great patience and skill, many hours of work and many francs’ worth of fine chocolate.
Freja tugged at her ear. She thought about the chocolate bark they had seen scattered along the street. Its light brown milk chocolate had looked smooth and creamy and delicious, even in the dim light of the street lamps. Her mouth watered and something tickled at the back of her mind.
Freja walked to the open window, patted the topmost knot on the sheet-rope and looked down into the street. She did a memory walk past all of the chocolates that had fallen from the hole in the sack. Chocolate bark with glacé fruit and nuts . . . Blocks of chocolate bursting with roasted almonds . . . Chocolate bars with little streams of caramel oozing out of the cracks that had formed when they had fallen to the ground . . . Chocolate mice and frogs . . .
‘Oh!’ cried Freja, spinning back around. ‘The chocolate! All the chocolate that was stolen — I can see it now! There is a pattern.’
‘Nein!’ said Frau Mettler. ‘There were animals and bars and blocks and bark. The thief took a little of everything.’
‘No,’ said Freja. ‘I mean, yes, they were different shapes and fillings and toppings. But . . .’
She grabbed Tobias by the hand and dragged him along the shelves, pointing out the dark chocolate and white chocolate creations that remained.
‘Yes!’ cried Tobias, chuckling. ‘Well done, old chap.’
‘Si! Si!’ shouted Vivi. ‘You are so clever, Freja.’
‘What?’ cried Herr Mettler. ‘What do you mean?’
Freja turned to the Mettlers. ‘Everything that was stolen was made of milk chocolate.’
Frau Mettler gasped and pressed her hand to her chest.
Herr Mettler blinked three times, then stared, his eyes as wide as two mixing bowls. ‘Ja! Ja! The girl is right. Nothing made from the dark chocolate or the white chocolate has been taken. It is all here. The thief took only the milk chocolate.’
‘Milk chocolate,’ echoed Frau Mettler.
‘Ridiculous!’ snapped a policeman.
‘But true,’ whispered Freja.
It was one o’clock in the morning when Freja finally climbed into bed. Finnegan jumped up beside her, then lay on top of her, his breath warm and comforting — although a little bit stinky — in her face.
Freja wrapped her arms around his shaggy grey neck and rubbed her face against his. ‘Strange evening, wasn’t it, puppy?’
‘Boof!’ said the dog, and he poked his tongue down her earhole. This might have been his way of agreeing that, yes, indeed, it had been a strange evening full of weird and wonderful happenings — including the fact that he had caught his own tail for the first time ever and found it to be not nearly as satisfying as he’d thought it would be! But it might also have been the dog’s way of saying, ‘Thank you for the cuddle and I love you very much, Freja. So much, in fact, that I am going to clean your ears to save you the trouble of doing it yourself.’
The grooming done, Finnegan finally settled down, his body stretched the full length of the bed, and fell asleep. He snuggled and snored and, occasionally, licked the girl’s cheek in his sleep.
‘Beautiful puppy,’ whispered Freja, and she closed her own eyes. But she could not settle.
Freja turned on the light and grabbed her scrapbook. It was old and tattered, the pages bulging with treasures from her travels with Clementine and, later, with Tobias — feathers, ferns, seeds, pressed flowers, ferry tickets, food labels, lists of words from other languages, photos and maps. Freja turned to a fresh double page and began to draw a map of Lucerne, filling in the places she now knew — the River Reuss, Leckerbissen, the clinic, the Spreuer Bridge, the Chapel Bridge and the outdoor café, Hotel Schloss der Freude, the funicular railway, Berna Schokolade and, way off to one side, Mount Pilatus and the marmots. Finally, she drew Café Schokolade-Schokolade surrounded by a scattering of tiny chocolate frogs and mice.
‘So strange,’ she murmured. ‘A rope made from Hotel Schloss der Freude’s sheets and a sack from Hotel Schloss der Freude’s laundry. It’s very suspicious.’ She closed the scrapbook and tugged at her left ear. ‘And then there’s the actual theft. Chocolate, but nothing else. No money. No antiques. No secret recipes that might be sold for large amounts of cash. Just chocolate.’
Finnegan snorted, licked his nose and stuck his head beneath the pillow.
‘Of course, chocolate is important . . . and terribly tasty . . . but at the end of the day, it’s just chocolate.’ She paused, then added, ‘Milk chocolate.’
And suddenly, from out of nowhere, an image of a log floated through Freja’s mind.
A chocolate-coated log in the middle of a forest.
A milk chocolate-coated log in the middle of a forest.
‘Weird!’ whispered Freja.
CHAPTER 19
Melted chocolate in bed and a bed of chocolate to melt in
Freja awoke at ten o’clock the next morning, surrounded by coloured pencils, patty papers, gold foil, small dollops of melted chocolate and the chewed remains of a squashed pink box. All that puzzling over chocolate in the middle of the night had made her hungry and, at four o’clock in the morning, she’d eaten the chocolate cupcakes and all of the chocolate-coated caramel squares they’d bought for Clementine. Well, not all of them. Finnegan had helped out with some of the chewy caramel squares once Freja had licked and sucked the chocolate off. Dogs might not be allowed to eat chocolate, but they seemed rather happy to gobble chewy caramel . . . and gnaw at pink cardboard . . . and lick the melted chocolate from the corner of one’s mouth. Anyway, the fact remained that all the treats were gone and now she had nothing to take to the clinic when they visited Clementine this afternoon. And Clementine needed chocolate — to make her strong and happy and clear of vision and rosy of cheek.
Climbing out of bed, Freja brushed the cake crumbs off the front of her pyjamas and wandered into the sitting room. Finnegan lay on the Persian rug, chewing at his beloved stick and the edge of the rug by turns. There was a note taped to the door, written in Tobias’ large and loopy, ink-splattered letters:
Morning, old chap.
Hope you caught up on some snooze.
Your breakfast is beneath the silver dome on my desk. I’m afraid Finnegan has gobbled all the jam, but there is still plenty of Bircher muesli and holey cheese, and there’s a bread roll hidden in the desk drawer.
I’ve gone for a walk in the forest to identify mushrooms and see how easily I can find Frau Isch. The dear woman has run ahead to hide in a pile of leaf litter, just as Count Ferdinand’s footman will in the next scene in my novel. It’s terribly kind of her to help me with my research, isn’t it?
I will be home by midday — unless Frau Isch is very good at hiding.
Tobby
XXX
PS So sorry, but when I opened the drawer to retrieve my little book on mushrooms, Finnegan spotted the bread roll and gobbled it all up. You will have to
settle for muesli and juice this morning.
Giggling, Freja walked to the desk and lifted the silver dome. The Bircher muesli looked wholesome and fresh, but all she could think about was chocolate.
She looked out the window and was surprised to see fog swirling across the balcony. Lucerne was barely visible. The church spires, the pretty rooflines and the tower on the Chapel Bridge stood out, but otherwise, everything was a white and wispy haze. The forest, too, would be thick with fog. Frau Isch might not be found for hours.
‘Hmmm,’ Freja murmured. ‘I could catch the funicular train down the hill, walk to Leckerbissen, buy some more chocolate for Clementine and be home long before Tobby returns. He won’t even know I’ve been gone. Not that it would matter anyway. Because it is just an innocent little trip to the chocolate shop. And Finnegan will be with me all the way.’
Outside, Freja was glad for her warm woollen pinafore — which was really one of Tobias’ vests she had pulled on over her shirt and tights. It was olive green and misshapen. Her wild golden curls were tucked up into her red knitted beanie — the one Clementine had made for her tenth birthday. Finnegan wore the matching red scarf around his neck and carried his stick in his mouth.
Five other hotel guests boarded the funicular with the girl and the dog, and Freja wondered if one of them could be the chocolate burglar from last night. She sat at the back of the little carriage so she could watch and listen and learn. She imagined how each passenger might look when dressed in puffy ski gear and goggles. She listened for conversations that might revolve around chocolate. She looked for shifty eyes, nervous blushes or furtive chocolate nibbling. She even sniffed a little, hoping to smell chocolate or caramel . . . or guilt. But all she could smell was Finnegan’s damp doggy odour. Everyone else seemed rather ordinary — not at all the types to have stolen Herr Basil’s sheet-rope, then burgled a chocolate store in the middle of the night. In fact, three of the passengers looked far too old to be climbing out of third-storey windows on home-made ropes. Then again, Madame Belmont, who was seventy, had surprised them all by shimmying up the chimney onto the roof.
Freja shuddered. Could Madame Belmont be the chocolate burglar? Small, quiet, comic-reading Madame who carried a teacup poodle in her pocket?
People weren’t always what they seemed, were they? Like Jane, Lady P’s secretary, who’d seemed like a friend but had turned out to be a foe. And Manfred, who’d appeared quite formal and stern, but had turned out to be kind and fun and rather adventurous. Which brought her thoughts back once more to Herr Basil the banker. He looked innocent and honest enough, but . . .
Freja stuck her hand up inside her beanie and tugged at her ear.
A bell rang, signalling their arrival at the bottom of the hill. Freja and Finnegan followed the other passengers out of the little red carriage into the station. They walked down to the river and onto the Spreuer Bridge, where the fog was so thick that it formed droplets on Freja’s eyelashes and Finnegan’s whiskers. Freja smiled, blinked the droplets away, then carried on through the cobbled streets, the Weinmarkt and the Kornmarkt, until they arrived at the front of Leckerbissen.
‘Guten Tag!’ Frau Niederhauser called down from where she sat on the upper rung of a ladder. ‘Guten Tag, Freja Sweet-tea! Guten Tag, huge and hairy Hund! See what we are doing here today.’ She flashed a chocolatey smile and waved an almost-empty box of chocolates at three carpenters. ‘We are attaching wooden shutters to the front door, the back door and both windows of the chocolate shop. We even have a sturdy metal grid being placed over the vent from the oven that comes out of the roof — just in case!’
Finnegan laid his stick at one of the carpenter’s feet and took up a chisel instead. The carpenter nodded his approval as though the dog had chosen the best tool for the job at hand.
Freja scrunched her nose. The shutters were made of raw timber and were being attached with heavy iron hinges and bolts. They looked coarse and clumsy against the pretty painted façade of the shop.
‘There was a break-in at Schokoladen-Fantasie two nights ago,’ said Frau Niederhauser. ‘And, as you know, another at Café Schokolade-Schokolade last night. François-Louis, Daniel and I are worried that Leckerbissen might be next.’ She stuffed the last two chocolates into her mouth, licked her fingers clean and climbed down the ladder to join Freja at street level. ‘These shutters will be locked every evening at closing time, and not even the king’s army with its ramming rod would be able to get inside and steal our precious chocolate.’
Freja giggled. Now, apparently, even kings were wanting to steal chocolate. It was all too silly.
‘But where are my manners?’ gasped Frau Niederhauser, pushing open the front door to Leckerbissen. ‘Willkommen! Willkommen! Come inside, Freja Sweet-tea, and see the marvellous thing François-Louis has created to replace the cow with the broken bottom.’
Finnegan was happily occupied, now gobbling his way through the contents of the carpenter’s lunchbox, so Freja stepped inside. The door had barely closed behind her when she froze and gasped. ‘Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . .’
There were no words to describe the sight that met her eyes. For standing on a table in the middle of the shop where the cow had once been was the most beautiful chocolate doll’s house that Freja had ever seen. And everything, absolutely everything inside was made from chocolate.
There were five storeys, each containing two rooms, and a grand staircase that ran up the centre of the house. In the kitchen, larder shelves were heavy with cakes and jellies, roast turkeys and hams, rounds of cheese and jars of preserved fruit. In the dining room, a chocolate father and three chocolate children sat around the table supping on a breakfast of bread rolls and cold meats. Upstairs in the lounge room, the fire flickered with gold-painted chocolate flames while a fluffy, dark chocolate cat stretched out on one of the sumptuous sofas. Floor-to-ceiling curtains matched the upholstery of the sofas. Across the hall, the library was lined with hundreds and hundreds of chocolate books, the titles of which could be read if one leaned in close enough and squinted. On the next floor was a music room with grand piano, cello and harp, and the master bedroom complete with wardrobe, dressing table and chocolate four-poster bed. Freja smiled and wondered if such a bed would melt beneath her as she slept through the night. On the fourth floor was another bedroom and a bathroom. The bath, filled with white chocolate bubbles, was occupied by a chocolate woman. Her chocolate bathrobe hung from a hook at the back of the door.
At the top of the house, the attic was filled with the collected treasures and junk that a family might gather over two or three generations — prams, dolls, tennis rackets, skis, a toboggan, board games, a broken bicycle, a treadle sewing machine and a big old chest complete with padlock. There was even a white chocolate mouse poking its head out of a hole in the wall as though looking about for something warm and chocolatey to line its nest.
‘It is good, ja?’ asked Frau Niederhauser, beaming with pride.
‘Good and splendid and absolutely wonderful,’ whispered Freja, ‘and the most incredible chocolate creation I’ve ever seen. Probably the most incredible chocolate creation anyone has ever seen!’
Vivi slipped out of the kitchen and into the shop. She placed her hand lightly on Freja’s shoulder. ‘François-Louis has been working on this all year,’ she explained. ‘In between making chocolate cows and chocolate churches and chocolate train sets. He thought now was a good time to put it on display — something fun to cheer us all up after the nasty chocolate thefts.’
‘It’s wonderfully cheering,’ Freja agreed. She smiled and sighed and licked her lips, poring over every exquisite detail, noticing something new each time she returned to one of the rooms — a chocolate chandelier hanging from the ceiling, a chocolate sewing basket on the floor by a sofa, a chocolate book of music on a chocolate stand by the harp, a chocolate toothbrush and a chocolate tube of toothpaste resting on the chocolate bathroom sink. And she might have stayed there all day long had a voice from behind n
ot cut through her joy and made every nerve in her body stand on end.
‘Guten Tag! Hello. Hello. I would like to buy some chocolate. But not just any chocolate. I would like some milk chocolate. Margrit Milk to be precise.’
Freja knew whose voice it was before she even turned around. She stood up straight, clenched her fists by her sides, took a deep, fortifying breath and turned around. ‘Guten Tag,’ she said, willing her voice and smile to relax. ‘Guten Tag, Herr Basil. It is lovely to see you this morning.’
CHAPTER 20
Mugged
Herr Basil bought an enormous quantity of milk chocolate. Not enough to fill a laundry sack, but enough to fill three pink cardboard boxes. Vivi named the items out loud as she arranged them in their beds of tissue paper and wrote them down on the bill: ‘Ten Margrit Milk pencils . . . One large, praline-centred heart . . . Five Lake Lucerne chocolate pebbles of assorted size . . . And two dozen giant milk truffles. You are taking every last one of the truffles, Herr Basil. They must be your favourites! And I can understand why. They are as big as hens’ eggs and yet they melt in the mouth and slip into the belly like sugared air fluffed with clouds of cocoa and wisps of joy.’
Herr Basil chuckled and rubbed his hands while Vivi put the lid on the boxes and tied them up with a cream satin ribbon.
The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Lucerne (The Girl, the Dog and the Writer, #3) Page 12