Once Upon a Crime (7 page)

“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, refraining 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.

As the town collectively shouted out its welcome to the gift of beer and the band struck up a suitably
oompah
-based tune, Gretel glimpsed a familiar figure standing on the other side of the square. She recognized him at once as the good-looking king's aide who had witnessed her humiliation at the Summer Schloss. The same one who had been charged with the duty of seeing her taken to the castle dungeons. The very same who had—and she was fairly certain she had not imagined it—given her a look of special Significance before she was led away to be locked up. Today he was dressed in a scarlet uniform, with just the right amount of gold braid and highly polished weaponry. Gretel thought she had never seen anyone quite so handsome, and decided that the uniform was raising his appeal to inflammatory levels. She glanced about, but could not detect a female companion. Perhaps he had been obliged to attend in some official capacity or other. Or perhaps he had been sent to find her. The notion made her both a little bit panicked and a little bit pleased. Rival impulses tussled inside her. Part of her—the part that was woman first and foremost, and that was on this occasion (unlike her first encounter with the man) looking somewhere near her best—wanted very much to thread her way through the crowd and effect a chance encounter. The rest of her—the part that was mostly concerned with saving her own neck and securing her continued liberty—wanted to hitch up her skirts and run in the opposite direction.

Fortune, in the scrawny shape of Kingsman Kapitan Strudel, intervened to save Gretel the bother of deciding how to act.

“Fraulein Gretel,” he said, offering her a stiff bow, “I am surprised to see you partaking of the delights of Starkbierfest.”

Gretel could have spent some time pressing Strudel for a satisfactory definition of “delights,” but she was too annoyed at having her view of the handsome soldier replaced by the kingsman's gaunt visage.

“I don't intend to go as far as partaking,” she told him, nodding at the brimming stein he was holding. “That stuff is dangerous.”

“Oh, come now, fraulein, where is your sense of adventure?” he asked, dipping his beak into the creamy foam.

Gretel realized with deepening glee that the man was already tipsy. She had never seen Strudel in his cups, and wasn't sure that she wanted to, but the fact that he was plainly out for a day's enjoyment reassured her that he had not been dispatched to search for errant kidnappers and haul them back to the Schloss. Emboldened, she pressed home her slender advantage.

“Got anywhere with the case of the burned body in Hund's yard yet?” she asked.

“That is kingsman's business.”

“Found any more little clues?”

“Our inquiries are moving forward in a manner appropriate to the situation.”

“Just as I thought.”

Strudel gulped down more Debilitator. He narrowed his eyes at Gretel which, given their habitual narrowness, caused them to all but disappear, and swayed very slowly, first to the left, then to the right, coming to a stop a little off the vertical.

“You don't like me, do you, fraulein?” It was more of a statement than a question. Gretel bit her bottom lip. Was honesty the best policy? Could she seize the opportunity to tell him precisely how little she thought of him, safe in the knowledge
that he would remember nothing of the day past his first sip of ale? Might she? Should she?

“Not much,” she said.

“I knew it. I knew it!” Strudel was daftly pleased to be right about this. Gretel put it down to his rarely being right about anything. “I can tell what a person is thinking,” he went on, tapping the side of his nose. “In my job you need to have a nose for these things.”

“Well, you certainly have that.”

He hiccupped and took another swig of beer. “Actually,” he said, pitching forward at a risky angle and beckoning Gretel, signaling to her to draw near. She leaned in an inch. Strudel dropped his voice to a whisper. “Actually,” he went on, “between you and me . . . I've always thought we would make a good team. You and me.”

“You and me!”

“You and me.” He nodded, then, noticing her consternation, added, “Detectivelywise . . . detetctive-ishly . . . that is, not . . . romanticistical . . . ly. Am I being clear? I want to be clear about this, fraulein. Am I being clear?”

“Clearer than the alpine spring waters of the Zugspitze itself.”

“S'good. S'good, 'cos I think you should think about that. You and me,” he said, still nodding, which seemed to be a side effect of the alcohol, rather than a conscious action.

Gretel fought revulsion at any manner of alliance with Strudel that could be categorized as “you and me.” She was on the point of eloquently and elaborately telling him this when the note of the crowd's shouts and cheers altered abruptly. Cries of alarm and warning sent people scattering. The sea of revelers parted to reveal the barrel, still half full, rolling down the hill from the top of the square, gathering speed with every rotation. Women snatched up their children and fled.
Self-preservation cut through drunken fug to force men to bound to safety. Gretel started to run, but Strudel stood rooted to the spot, still clutching his stein staring at certain death as it barreled toward him.