Gretel and the Case of the Missing Frog Prints (9 page)

A singularly bulbous cobble caught Gretel unawares so that she stumbled and was forced to stagger against the rough stone wall of the store house to steady herself.

A passing ostler leered at her openly. “I'd take more water with it at this hour if I was you, my love,” he scoffed.

Gretel was too taken aback to form a reply. The man seemed to be implying that she was in her cups, simply because she had lost her footing. And that lascivious look he had given her . . . what manner of people frequented this narrow street, she wondered. As if in answer to her question two women, brightly dressed, arm in arm, laughing raucously at some private joke, came into view. Their clothes, upon closer inspection, suggested they plied their ancient trade in the hours of darkness. There was a swagger to their hips, a harshness to their laughter, a flamboyance about them, that put together could only add up to their being women whom polite society shunned, even though most of their clientele were made up of it. Gretel kept herself still and quiet. As the pair reached the back of the Grand,
they stopped, and seemed to be pressing against the stone wall itself. Puzzled, Gretel waited. One of the women glanced over her shoulder, as if she did not wish to be spied and was checking for any who might be watching. Gretel could not be certain if she had noticed her, but if she did she paid no heed. Her companion pushed again at the stones and suddenly they seemed to give way. An opening appeared. A secret entrance. Judging by the angle at which the strumpets descended into it, there must, Gretel deduced, be steps down into some sort of passageway. Within seconds there was no trace of the women, nor of the doorway.

Gretel hurried, in her stuttering steps, across the street to the very spot. At first glance there was nothing to be seen but solid wall. She ran her hands over the stones, searching for some manner of handle or lever. Finding none she began to thump the slabs, the rough surface of the wall painfully hard and unyielding against her hands. She was at a loss to discover the mechanism that would open the hidden door, when there was a clunk and a scraping sound, and a section of the stonework swung open, as if on huge hinges. Gretel peered inside. She had no notion of what it was that had triggered the thing to open, and was concerned that it might just as quickly slam shut again. The opening led, as she had anticipated, onto a passageway that vanished beneath the body of the hotel. There was no light, and what daylight fell through the gap showed a low-ceilinged, dripping tunnel. As tunnels went, it was as unappealing and grim as any Gretel had seen. As that thought made itself known to her, however, she also acknowledged that this was an Important Discovery, and one that any detective worth her salt would follow up. Those prints had been taken from the Grand somehow, and this could very well be one possible how. Where exactly it led, and what was waiting at the other end of it, there was only one way to find out. With a deep breath that pressed her ribs against her corset, Gretel stepped into the darkness.

SIX

T
hree paces in, before she had even had time to muster up a nerve-steadying whistle, the door behind Gretel swung shut with a thud that sent a shudder reverberating down the tunnel and through her very bones. She stood still for a moment, quelling panic, and allowing her eyes to adjust to the light. Or the lack of it. She told herself that the ladies of the night who used this passageway did so apparently without fear. It must lead somewhere worth going, and it must not contain any of the terrifying things that were currently sprinting through her mind and wriggling up and down her spine. A cold sweat seeped from beneath her arms into the silk of her dress.

“Just darkness,” she told herself, her voice echoing bleakly into the nothingness ahead of her. “Just a lack of light. Nothing would linger here. I am merely walking from A to B. Couldn't be simpler.” As pep talks went it wasn't her best, but it did stir sufficient courage from somewhere deep within her to enable her to put one cautious foot in front of the other. The tunnel was, at the start, wide enough to pass along easily enough, the rough stones beneath her feet reasonably firm and dry, and the ceiling provided sufficient head height to accommodate an elaborate hairdo, possibly with ostrich plumes, if not a towering wig. At the start. After twenty yards or so, however, it began to narrow, and the roof to lower. By the time Gretel had been walking for two minutes her hair had been knocked flat on her head and her sleeves were brushing against the damp walls.

Resolving to significantly increase her fees for the case, and cursing the meanness of the construction, but refusing to give in to the churning fear in her stomach, Gretel pressed on. Soon she was having to squeeze. She was just entertaining the thought that she would shortly be stuck fast, when she spied a tiny glimmer of light. Abandoning her role as host to the notion of becoming jammed—rudely hurrying it out through her mental front door without so much as a glass of schnapps—she pushed on. Soon she could see that the light was falling through a tiny window at the end of the tunnel.

“A window in a door!” she announced to herself and all the scuttling things that scurried about her feet. She crept up to the gap in the stone and peered through.

Given that Gretel was on the trail of two trollops, she ought not to have been surprised by the sight that greeted her, but it was difficult to remain impassive to the scene of riotous debauchery that met her blinking eyes. There was a sumptuous room, abundantly draped in velvet swags and bows in myriad
shades of crimson and pink, with long, low sofas and love-seats aplenty, on which sprawled men and women in various states of
déshabillé
. Much laughter filled the room, prompted, it appeared, to no small extent by the liberal quantities of wine that were being pressed upon the patrons by a girl dressed as a serving wench, in as much as she wore a mop cap, a lacy apron, a willing smile, and nothing more. Gretel recognized the two women she had seen gain entry to the den via the tunnel. She noticed an older woman who appeared to be the bawd in charge. She was a hard-faced creature, skinny as a garden rake and every bit as spiky. She appeared sober and dour and if she had the ability to smile she let slip no sign of it. She was given to snapping her fingers, causing this girl or that to spring into action, either foisting their attentions upon a man sufficiently in his cups to part with money, or luring another away to who-knew-where to do who-knew-what.

Gretel was considering the fact that she did, in fact, know what, when she recognized one of the recumbent figures on a particularly garish chaise longue in the corner of the room.

“Dr. Phelps!” she gasped. Behind her a mouse squeaked, sharing her shock, causing Gretel to leap, as a reflex, upwards and forwards. Unfortunately there was no up nor any fore space to be had, so that her full weight barreled against the door. For one awful moment she feared it would give way and she would fall into the room. She held her breath. Nothing happened. The door did not move. Gingerly, her palms and knees already grazed by the unforgiving stone, she forced herself back onto her feet.

And the door was wrenched open.

In silhouette, framed by the door jamb, stood a man so solid, so corpulent, and so base-heavy it would not have surprised Gretel to learn he was constructed entirely of boiled ham. Or possibly an aged cheese of some sort. Definitely something
with a high fat content and the propensity for turning rancid, a theory supported by his sour body odor. He swiveled his meaty head to call back into the room, announcing his discovery, and the light bounced off his shiny, broad features. Ham, Gretel decided. Undoubtedly material that was pig-based.

“I's found a doxy as wants to join us party!” Pig-man declared.

There followed a deal of ribald responses and excitement. In quieter times to come, when Gretel had occasion to revisit those appalling moments in her mind, she would find it difficult to recall precisely the order of events, or say with any certainty what happened next. She would remember attempting to turn and run, and failing on both counts. There was not room enough to perform a
volte face
, and she was equipped with neither the shoes nor the feet for sprinting. She would be able to bring to mind the sensation of being wedged, of the breath being squeezed from her, of broiling panic surging through her, of ham hands taking hold of her, and of being dragged. Somewhere, however, between being drawn like a cork from the tunnel and landing on the floor of the bawdy house, the airlessness of the passage, the tightness of the squeeze, and the brutal constraints of her stays combined to cause Gretel to lose consciousness, and a blackness even deeper than that of the passage-way claimed her.

When she came to her senses once more she was supine upon sticky carpet, and dripping wet. She spluttered, and spat water. The madam's scratchy face blurred, then settled into view. Gretel saw that she was holding an empty pitcher, which explained the reviving rinse she had recently been treated to. The woman was afflicted with veins on her face that threaded her cheeks like the cross stitch attempts of a four year old, and a scrawniness about the throat that would have benefited, Gretel could not help thinking, from a broad scarf. Looking at
her dress she also concluded that the woman's choice of nipple pink for her gown was not a happy one.

“I's the one as found ‘er!” Pig-man loomed above Gretel, eyes bright with delight and wicked intent. “I should be the first ‘un to try ‘er out!”

The madam ignored him, pushing him out of the way to better scrutinize their find. Gretel fought with conflicting desires; to look her best (her instinct, after all), and to look as unappealing as possible. Given her drenching and the condition of her clothes after the tunnel, the latter seemed more likely, regardless of her own wishes.

“Who are you? And what were you doing snooping, eh? Speak up, floosie!” instructed the old bawd.

“I might say pots and kettles to you, madam,” she said.

“Don't ‘madam' me, wench. I'm Mistress Crane to you or anybody else, see?”

“Indeed. If I might be permitted to stand . . . ?”

Mistress Crane frowned, then nodded to Pig-man, who grabbed Gretel by the wrists and hauled her to her feet. She felt an unpleasant clamminess remain even after he had taken his hands off her. His rank body odor also seemed to linger on her skin. She brushed herself down, saddened by the state of her poor ruby silk. The lace at the elbows no longer frothed cheerfully, but hung in soggy clumps. Indeed, at that moment, Gretel felt her whole self to be one large, bruised, soggy clump. She took a breath and squared her shoulders. She was a detective. A professional. A woman with a case to solve and money to make, and a houseful of cats and toms was not about to stop her.

“Out with it then, bobtail,” Mistress Crane grew impatient. Several of her clients had drifted off with their chosen companions, and it was evident the old bawd did not want a sodden interloper stifling people's appetites. Gretel could see her
presence might not be good for business, and hoped to effect a speedy release. However, before she could open her mouth to start spinning a story, Mistress Crane spoke again. “I don't like sneaks, and you was sneaking about. Spying. What's your game, eh? Thought you might turn your hand to blackmail, is that it?”

“No, no, I assure you . . .”

“Thought you'd see some faces, take some names, and make some visits in the morning, asking payment for your silence, was that your thinking, strumpet?”

“I . . .” Gretel had been about to protest further, and felt honor bound to refute the charge of strumpet-hood. She was about to deny ever having considered either blackmail or prostitution as a career when she saw the way forward. She cleared her throat. “I'm looking for . . . work.”

“Ah-ha!” cried Mistress Crane as if she had known this all along.

Pig-man began to bounce on the spot. “I gets to try ‘er out. I found ‘er, I gets to try ‘er out!”

Mistress Crane ignored her henchman. “I knew you was a working girl, moment I set eyes on yer. Could tell by the way you was dressed. That red silk—pah!”

“Well,
really
!” was all Gretel managed.

“I could tell by the way she
smelled
,” Pig-man claimed.

This was too much for Gretel.

“Now, look here,” she said, “in the first place, I'll have you know this dress was cut after a Parisian design, is perfectly respectable for daywear, and the silk is of the very finest quality. In the second place, tell Bacon Bob here that I'm surprised he can smell anything at all above his own stink.”

There was a collective intake of breath, and then Mistress Crane let forth a screech of laughter so violent and so sharp that several men in the room were put entirely off their game.

“She's got you there, Klaus, you reeking windbag! Ha! Well then, my toffee-nosed doxy, say you was looking for work, and say I was looking for a new girl . . .” She let the sentence hang.

Gretel tried to glean some small speck of comfort from being called a girl, but the compliment wouldn't take. “Yes,” she said, playing for time, “let us say I was and you . . . was . . . then . . . well, what?”

“Then might be I could offer you an interesting position.” She paused to shriek with glee at her own joke, then added. “You work here tonight, and I'll see if I think you are what you say you are. What do you think to that, Fraulein cut-after-Paris smell-under-me-nose?”

“I's ‘un who found ‘er, I gets first tastin,'” leered Pig-man.

Several things occurred to Gretel simultaneously. The first, though not necessarily the most important, was that she had to have a name if she was not to be given one to live down to by Mistress Crane. The second was that in order to maintain her cover she would be required to prove her worth as a “working girl,” as the old bawd had so succinctly put it, and this would call for some quick thinking and nifty footwork if her honor were not to be irredeemably compromised. The third, and the point she was clearest on, was that whatever might be asked of her was going to at least double Herr Durer's bill—actions above and beyond the call of duty, etc., etc. The fourth was that discretion was paramount. A secret brothel, a point of ingress and egress to and from the hotel, and the presence of Dr. Phelps all meant something. And that something had to be investigated without anyone realizing that it was being investigated. The fifth, and the point most urgently in need of addressing, was that no matter what, she would not ever, no never, be suffering the pungent affections of Bacon Bob. Ever. Not. Never.