Once Upon a Crime (6 page)

And then Bruder screamed. It was not, as she had half expected, a shrill wail of agony. Instead he managed to somehow form the one word that could have had any effect on Gretel.

“Mummy!” he cried into the still night air.

Now, Gretel knew herself pretty well, and if asked she would confidently have been able to state that had circumstances demanded it she could have sacrificed any and all to save her own bejowled neck. She had not, however, factored in the deep-seated and clearly unresolved issues she harbored regarding the idea of a mother. Any mother, for her, was problematic. Her own, because she had died giving birth to her. Her stepmother, for obvious and well-documented reasons. Herself, for not being one. There were probably further variations, but
these three were enough to make Gretel pause in her stride. It mattered not that the pungent farmer was old enough to be her own grandfather, or that she rarely if ever suffered the slightest twinge of a maternal instinct. A human being (give or take) was in extremis and was calling for his mummy. Something inside Gretel compelled her to act.

Summoning another shocking scream, she charged the monstrous lion. For a second she had the advantage of surprise. Evidently the animal was unused to having large, bedraggled women come at him with murder in their eyes. Gretel continued her charge, her battle cry fading as she realized she had no weapon and no idea what she was going to do. The gap between her and the beast was shrinking fast. She whipped off a shoe, holding it high in the most threatening manner she could manage.

The lion, provoked by such a sight, left off mauling Bruder and lunged toward Gretel. The old man saw his chance, scrambled to his feet, and started running. Gretel and the lion met. There was a tangle of fur and fine woolen tailoring as the two tumbled in an inappropriately cozy embrace. When they came to a stop, Gretel was beneath the creature. She rammed her shoe between its jaws, jamming them open, so that the lion could neither bite her nor close its mouth. It gave a roar of fury and swiped at Gretel. For a moment she thought it would pull her head from her shoulders, but as luck would have it, the big cat's claws had snagged her top hat, which it wrenched from her head. Gretel rolled over, sprang to her feet, casting off the remaining shoe, and fled. Behind her the lion leapt and raged as it attempted to shake the hat from its paw and spit out the shoe. Its noise had alerted the rest of the pride.

As Gretel ran she could sense rather than see lions closing in on all sides. Ahead of her, the farmer had just reached the base of the fence.

“Bruder!” Gretel shouted. “Help me, Bruder!” Bruder ignored her cries and started to climb.

Gretel had never been much of a runner. Walking was challenge enough, over any distance, and she disliked the sweaty, red-faced appearance exertion demanded of her. Through life she had found that there were ways of avoiding such undignified activities, and had never felt the need to demonstrate any sort of athletic aptitude.

Until now. Now, she knew, if she was to see the sun rise ever again, she must find reserves of physical strength and ability hitherto undiscovered. But the distance between herself and the fence seemed, as if in a dream, to get no smaller, however hard she ran, while the distance between herself and the nearest lion was diminishing with every bound the great animal made. Gretel did not want to die cursing a smelly peasant, so she marshaled her thoughts, struggling to elevate them into a suitable state for entering the hereafter. Just as she had convinced herself it was all up for Gretel (yes,
that
Gretel) from Gesternstadt, there came a swift whooshing noise as an arrow whistled past her nose and struck the nearest lion's chest. The creature fell silently, dead before it hit the ground. Gretel did not let the shock of what had just happened slow her pace, but flung herself at the fence. Where the arrow had come from or who had fired it, she neither knew nor cared. Above her, Bruder was still attempting to haul himself to the top when another lion sprang from the shadows and snatched him down. Gretel yanked herself onto the uppermost wooden rail. She could not see Bruder, but she could hear his shrieks. They didn't last long, but were quickly replaced with the stomach-turning sounds of powerful jaws crunching on bones. Gretel used her vantage point to scan the Schloss grounds, searching for the mystery archer, but there was no sign of anyone. She pivoted over the fence and let herself down, landing heavily on the
forest floor. She staggered to her feet and dusted herself off, and then, with the unforgettable sounds of the lions feasting on the farmer echoing through the trees, she trudged toward home.

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 features, 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

G
retel 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.