It was a little before dawn when Gretel reached the safety of her own sitting room. She had been capable only of babbling incoherently at Hans, who was still up after a late-night poker game at the inn, but he had recognized the seriousness of her condition, not least, he later told her, because she wasn’t wearing her precious shoes. So it was that within the hour Gretel was sitting on her daybed in her nightclothes, taking alternate sips of soup and brandy, her feet soaking in a bowl of hot lavender water. The sun had indeed risen and its soothing rays drifted through the dusty windows.
Gretel thought a morning had never looked so beautiful, and was surprised to find herself fighting back a tear for poor, feckless Bruder, who would never see the sunshine again. She tried to sort the events of the night in her mind, but there were mystifying parts that she simply could not fathom. For a start, why had Princess Charlotte been skulking about in the woods with a stranger, and why had she accused Gretel and the old farmer of kidnapping? And who had fired the arrow that had killed the lion, which had, beyond any doubt, saved her life? And there were still the snatched cats to be dealt with. She was already seriously out of pocket, and no doubt the guard would appear in a few days to collect the second half of his bribe. On top of which, if the princess continued to insist she had been kidnapped, the king might well come after Gretel. At least, given his fragile state of mind, there was a fair chance he would fail to do anything further about it. He did not give the impression of a person fully in command of his senses. Even so, a lawyer seemed like a good idea, and lawyers were expensive. Now she would never get the chance to quiz Bruder about the cat collar on his wrist. She recalled Agnes telling her that a troll held information on the whereabouts of the felines. If she could find him, extract some details, and report progress back to Frau Hapsburg, she could legitimately demand some more money. Besides, she reasoned, a few days away might be a good idea, just in case the king sent his troops looking for her. Or, worse still, employed the odious Kingsman Strudel to arrest her. Gretel would walk a long way to avoid giving him that satisfaction. A very long way indeed. She also remembered Agnes’s promise of a tall, dark, handsome stranger. A clear image of the good-looking attendant at the Schloss came back to her. She shook her head to clear it of such nonsense.
“Hans!” She put aside her soup bowl. “Where are the maps?”
“What maps?”
“Whatever maps we have. I need to locate a troll. He lives near a big lake, under a bridge, so there must be a river, too. And a place beginning ‘Per . . . ’”
Hans could be heard rooting in the dining room for some time before he appeared with an armful of badly folded papers.
“This is the lot,” he said. “Can’t promise you a troll, but there are plenty of lakes and rivers.”
“Here, help me spread them out on the floor.”
“It’s not much to go on, is it?”
“We’ll just have to make a start.” Gretel peered at the expanse of lines and symbols that now carpeted the room. “Where are you, Mr. Troll? Where are you?”
“There are lakes everywhere. And rivers.”
“It can’t be very many leagues’ distance. I mean, why would anyone more than a day from Gesternstadt even know about Frau Hapsburg’s cats?”
“You may have a point.” Hans knelt solidly beside her on the floor and gesticulated with his smoldering cigar. “What about there? Look, Lake Lipstein—looks lovely, all those little villages about the place. Alpine meadows. Quite fancy a holiday there myself.”
“My idea of a holiday does not include trolls.”
“Or how about there—Bad am Zee. Oh yes, a spa.”
“Do trolls use spas?”
“No, but you do, given the chance.”
“This is a business trip,” she reminded him.
“Maybe so, but . . .”
Gretel stopped squinting at squiggles on the map and refocused on her brother. It had been many years since they had holidayed together, and she couldn’t help noticing the wistful tone in his voice. There was no denying he could do with a break from his inn-home-inn routine. A spa did sound devilishly tempting. And the “Zee” upon whose shores the spa was built was a very large lake, after all.
“Bad am Zee it is, then,” she said, making a poor job of folding up the maps. “You get yourself off to the stagecoach office and purchase a couple of tickets, and then see if you can’t dig the suitcases out of the attic.”
“And what will you be doing all this time?”
“I shall be at Madame Renoir’s Beauty Parlor.”
“Isn’t that a bit like cleaning the house before you get the cleaners in?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, Hans, being a man, but if I am to bare my carcass to strangers for all manner of intimate and stimulating treatments, there is work to be done. I’ll give you the money for the fares but do not, I repeat, do not, call in at the inn before you’ve bought them. Get the tickets and come straight home. Have you got that?”
“Tickets. Home.” He attempted a boyish and winsome look. “And then inn?”
Gretel grimaced. “If it’ll stop you making that deeply disturbing face at me, yes.”
Madame Renoir’s Beauty Parlor was a relatively recently established business in Gesternstadt, and one that Gretel had been delighted to patronize from the first day it opened its fragrant doors. It was as if a tiny speck of Paris sophistication had alighted upon the town, and the place was immeasurably improved by it. Gretel had always found routine maintenance of her womanly physique a chore, but had long ago realized that, if she were to present a professional and polished front to the world, effort had to be expended. She was, therefore, pleased beyond measure that she could place herself in the capable, manicured hands of Madame Renoir and her staff, and let the effort be all theirs.
She was soon reclining in a purpose-built chair beneath an unsympathetic gaslight while the proprietor deftly plucked at her eyebrows.
“Mon dieu, Fraulein Gretel, your appointment has not come a moment too soon.”
Gretel spoke through gritted teeth as the tweezers did their work. “I have been extremely busy of late.”
“Ah, another of your interesting cases to solve, per’aps?”
“Ouch! Quite so.”
“Alors! What an exciting life you lead. Hold still, please.”
“Ouch!” Gretel was as fond of a bit of showing off as the next person and felt that escaping lions must carry some worth as an anecdote, but the memory of Bruder’s death rattle was too fresh in her mind for her to talk about it comfortably.
“Oh, you know. Ouch! One rises to the challenge. Good grief!”
“Eh donc! Now you are perfect.”
“I doubt it.”
“Well, your eyebrows, at least.”
Gretel dabbed tears from her eyes. As she sat up, she noticed a particularly pretty girl tidying up the towels. She recognized her as the same girl she had spotted on her visit to Frau Hapsburg.
“I see you have a keen new employee,” she said.
Madame Renoir tutted loudly. “New she may be, keen she most decidedly is not,” she said.
“Oh?”
“She came with good references, and does her work well enough, but, mon dieu, her humor! Never have I encountered such a morose creature.”
Gretel looked again at the girl and could see now that her eyes were puffy and red from crying, and there was indeed a sadness emanating from her.
“When clients come to our establishment,” Madame Renoir went on, “they do not wish to find a person who is moping and sniveling.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Je ne sais pas. She will not say. But I suspect a man.”
“Ah.”
“Whatever it is, if she continues in this manner, I will be forced to ask her to leave. I would be sorry to add to her troubles, mais, voilà.”
Gretel thought there was something familiar about the girl, and yet she could not place her. The face, the fea
tures, seemed to ring some distant bell, more distant than a few days ago. Once again her brain began whirring, sifting through dusty files of memory, attempting to ascertain what it was about the girl that was intriguing.
“What did you say her name was?” she asked.
“Johanna. I really know nothing more about her, save for her work references. She is not from this town. Now, fraulein, if you would step into the cubicle, I have the hot wax ready for you.”
“Oh good,” said Gretel, her mind for once not fully taken up with the torture to come, but busy trying to place the mysterious weeping girl. It was only as she lifted herself from her chair and looked properly about her that she noticed every seat in the house was taken. “You are unusually busy for a work a day Thursday, Madame Renoir.”
“Why, fraulein, can you have forgotten? Tomorrow is no ordinary day. Tomorrow is Starkbierfest!”
FOUR
Gretel had forgotten. Indeed, she had been doing her utmost to forget the existence of Starkbierfest ever since Hans had succeeded in talking her into taking part in the wretched event. Ordinarily, the wildest of wild horses would not induce her to set foot outside her own front door while the rest of the inhabitants of Gesternstadt abandoned any pretense of being intelligent human beings and gave themselves over to the raucous and rowdy celebration of the tradition of the Lenten beer. Ordinarily, those same wild horses would certainly have had to call upon far wilder and stronger distant cousins to get her to actually attend the festival. Hans, in Gretel’s opinion, had not played fair. He had been determined that he should, just this once, have his much-beloved sister—his description, not one Gretel would have chosen, but there it was—there to witness the occasion when he took his place beside the revered beer barrel, and before the assembled townsfolk, had the honor of tapping the thing.
“Why do you even want to do it?” Gretel had asked him, “Let alone drag me into the whole sorry business.”
“To be chosen to tap the Lenten beer barrel? It is an honor! The highest privilege the brewery can bestow upon a person!” he had insisted, puffing out his chest—or, more accurately, his stomach—until his waistcoat buttons were under dangerous strain, and Gretel feared if she didn’t move she might lose an eye to one.
She did her best to deflate him.
“I always thought the task of tapping the thing was given to some random town official, so that everybody got the chance to get their own back on him by ridiculing the poor sap. A tax man, perhaps. Or a kingsman. That’s a point, why hasn’t Strudel ever been asked to do it? I’d pay good money to watch him being paraded through the streets backward on a goat.”
“There will be no parading on goats, backward or otherwise,” Hans had tetchily assured her. “The ceremony will be dignified and good-natured. A celebration of a fine town, a fine beer, and a fine, well . . .” He cast about for a suitable description of himself.
Gretel waited, arms folded, eyebrows raised.
Hans scowled and went on. “. . . A fine gentleman drinker of the area!” he finished, grinning, clearly pleased with this definition.
Gretel had opened her mouth to argue, but what was the point? Clearly Hans had no recollection of Starkbierfest past. This was not surprising. After all, the point of tapping said keg was to drink its contents. By the time the good people of Gesternstadt had spent the day guzzling gallons of the famously strong ale, few could recall anything beyond the initial opening. Gretel had always preferred to stay away and let them all get on with it, so that she might occupy a blissfully smug, hangover-free position the following day. Ordinarily. But, due to this questionable honor being bestowed upon her brother, and due to his playing the whole you-are-my-only-living-kin and no-person-else-on-this-planet-cares-if-I-live-or-die card, and probably due to a particularly fine meal being prepared to soften her up in the first place, she had agreed to attend. So attend she must.
She was engaged in what she feared would be the single enjoyable part of the day—choosing an outfit—when Hans came bounding through her bedroom door like an under-exercised puppy. Albeit a very large one. And one wearing the most wince-inducing traditional costume Gretel had seen for quite some time.
“Well?” Hans twirled wobbily before her, arms akimbo. “What d’you think?”
“Amazing,” said Gretel, omitting to confirm whether she meant amazingly wonderful or amazingly awful. He was her brother, after all.
“Isn’t it, though! Got the hat from man called Schnell at the inn. Won it in a game of blackjack, as it happens. Sore loser, I remember. One can understand why though, losing such a hat . . .”
“Indeed.”
“And the shorts are an excellent fit, see? I had Frau Pfinkle let them out for me. Just a smidge.”
Hans had certainly gone the whole hog with his Tracht. Nothing had been overlooked. From the softly creaking lederhosen, complete with dangling whistles and keys, to the green alpine hat with obligatory goat toggle, every detail gleamed with the Bavarian love of tradition and fun. And by goodness, every last man, woman, and child would have fun today if it killed them.
Hans gestured at Gretel’s state of undress.
“Better get a move on, sister mine. Don’t want to be late. Got your dirndl sorted?”
“Hans, I have agreed to attend, agreed to stand by you in what you consider to be your moment of glory, but I will not, repeat not, be seen out in dirndl. Not even for you.” Seeing his lower lip begin to tremble she held up a hand. “Don’t,” she warned. “Just do not.”
Hans knew her well enough to know when he was beaten and turned on a wooden heel, muttering about at least being on time and making some sort of effort.
Gretel ground her teeth and plunged into her wardrobe. Her eye fell upon the comforting velvet of one of her most flatteringly tailored gowns. Flattering as in roomily cut. The designer had fought against the fashion for tightened corsets and opted instead for flowing lines, allowing the weight of the fabric to cause it to settle softly upon the natural curves and dips of a womanly figure. The result was remarkably comfortable, if a little unstructured. For once, given the provincial nature of the occasion, Gretel decided comfort had a place. And anyway, she had always felt the warm terra-cotta shade of the gown lent her a healthy glow.
On hearing of the imminence of the Starkbierfest, Gretel had submitted to Madame Renoir’s skills as a hairdresser, so that she now had only to secure a witty little pillbox to her coiffure and she was as ready as she would ever be to face her unappreciative public.
The sun evidently understood the mood of the day and shone brightly. As Gretel made her way toward King’s Plaza, she did her best to quell her mounting grumpiness. Starkbierfest had necessitated the changing of the stagecoach tickets that Hans had, against all expectation, managed to buy, and putting off the planned trip to Bad am Zee by twenty-four hours. While not a long delay, Gretel was keen to leave. Her escape would no doubt have been noticed, and it was safe to assume that at some point some soldier or kingsman might well come looking for her. For once the fact that justice in rural Bavaria could be easily outpaced by a lame tortoise was working in her favor. And at least she could rest easy in the knowledge that royals did not attend Starkbierfest. Indeed, it was considered very bad form for anyone with so much as a drop of regal blood in their veins to be found anywhere near such peasant entertainment. Even so, Gretel would be on her guard.
The townsfolk had shown a gleeful enthusiasm in decorating Gesternstadt for the festival. Window boxes, floriferous on a normal day, overflowed with blousy blooms. Bunting bobbed in the spring breeze. Flags flapped. Gretel found herself the only person not wearing some sort of traditional clothing, a fact for which she refused to feel sorry. The streets seethed with cheerful people. Women gave out ribbons and flowers. Men clutched brightly painted ceramic steins in anticipation of the free beer to come. Children skipped and frolicked, having been either beaten or bribed into behaving as picturesquely as possible. Even the town dogs trotted about attractively, refrainin
g from indulging in their usual embarrassing pastimes of defecation or fornication. The whole effect, in Gretel’s uncharitable opinion, was one of tweeness taken to toxic levels.
“Good morning, Fraulein Gretel!” a cheery voice hailed her as she emerged from the cobbled Klein Street into King’s Plaza, or the market square, as it should more properly have been called. She turned to see Herr and Frau Pfinkle, the apothecary and his seamstress wife, smiling at her. They strolled arm-in-arm, presenting a picture of married bliss, even though it was widely known that Herr Pfinkle was a serial philanderer.
“Yes, good morning,” Gretel replied flatly.
“Beautiful morning, fraulein!” called the voluptuous schoolmistress, Lena Lange, waving a beribboned hand with such apparent joie de vivre you would never in a million years guess she had had her heart broken three times and been rescued from the river twice because of it.
A sham, thought Gretel, all of it a façade. For she believed that, just as the prettily painted, flower-strewn housefronts concealed the secrets of the households within, so all the dressing-up and forced jocularity hid the far more mundane realities of the family lives of the townspeople.
Gretel sighted her beaming brother taking his position beneath the statue of the Grand Duke of Mittenwald. The giant barrel had already been rolled into place, and about it milled and thronged an eager crowd. For a fleeting moment, Gretel envied Hans. Envied his ability to truly enjoy such simple, shallow pleasures as were on offer. Not for him the questioning, the probing and challenging, that she herself felt compelled to engage in. It was a pretty day, he was surrounded by pretty people, and by lunchtime he would be pretty drunk. The best of all possible worlds. There was no need to subject life to closer scrutiny.
The man from the brewery gave a rousing speech, extolling the virtues of the fiendishly strong Lenten beer within the cask. He was, of course, preaching to the choir, which cheered loudly every time he paused to draw breath. He informed them that, in the tradition of naming the ale in the manner of the original Salvator produced by the monks centuries ago, last year’s Gesternstadt Inebriator had been improved upon to produce this year’s brew: the Gesternstadt Debilitator! A hearty roar greeted this information. Hans was introduced, though due to the racket, Gretel missed whether or not he was described as a “gentleman drinker of the area.” He raised his hammer high, waited with admirable showmanship for the crowd to squeal in anticipatory delight, and then struck a deft blow in the exact spot required to open the barrel.
Once Upon a Crime Page 5