Once Upon a Crime (2 page)

Muttering curses at the cobbles that threatened injury with every step, Gretel made her way down Uber Strasse, across King's Plaza, past the monument erected in honor of the Grand Duke of Mittenwald (who was reputed to have slain several dragons, though proof was scant), on past the Kaffee Haus (resisting the seductive aroma of freshly baked Snurgentorter), beyond the Gesternstadt Inn (where Hans was no doubt propping up the bar), and into Kirschbaum Avenue. The last house on the left was the home of Frau Hapsburg. As she pushed open the little wooden gate to the front garden, her eye was caught by a pretty young girl hurrying down the street. It wasn't her prettiness that drew Gretel's attention, however. There was something about her demeanor, her expression,
the way she moved that suggested that beneath the attractive, neatly presented exterior lay barely contained distress. Gretel's detective senses pinged into life at the merest sniff of something-being-covered-up.

This girl, whoever she was, set off a veritable cacophony of pinging.

A whiff of an entirely different kind refocused Gretel's mind on the job at hand. Even before the door opened, Gretel's nostrils were twitching at the smell of cat. It had the instant effect of reawakening her headache.

“Come in, please. This way.” Frau Hapsburg disappeared down a narrow hall that seemed to be carpeted with the wretched creatures. Their beloved mistress walked, Moses-like, causing a fur-free path to open up before her. Gretel hurried along, fearing she would be swamped by the cats if left alone.

In the parlor the smell was no better. It wasn't just urine, it was cats' bodies, cats' fur, cats' feet, and heaven knew cats'-what-else. Frau Hapsburg sat down, dwarfed by an oversize winged chair. Several felines settled upon her and a thrum of purring filled the room. Gretel searched for a cat-free seat upon which to land but found none, so settled for perching on the arm of the sofa.

“If you'd just answer a few questions for me, and then I think it best if I take a look around,” she said, whipping out a small notebook with a view to taking down interesting details or beating off cats with it, whichever proved the more necessary. “Now then, do all the cats live in the house with you?”

“Of course. Where else would they live?”

“And exactly how many are there?”

“Twenty-three. Now.”

Gretel struggled to remain impassive. She wrote down the figure.

“And do they go out on their own? Into the garden, perhaps?” She paused to scratch a bothersome itch on her left calf.

“They have freedom to roam wherever they choose, but they never go beyond the garden fence. Why would they? They have everything they need right here.” She stroked a cat with each hand as she spoke. A large tabby climbed onto her shoulder and gently head-butted Frau Hapsburg's neat bun. Two more snuggled at her feet. A passing kitten ran up the already half-shredded curtains before letting go and flinging itself onto the mantelpiece. Ornaments (china cats to a man) wobbled. Frau Hapsburg beamed indulgently.

“Quite,” said Gretel. The itch had traveled farther up her leg. She stood up, balancing on one foot so as to rub at her calf with an exquisitely clad toe. “Can you give me a description of the missing—”

“Stolen!”

A small muscle beneath Gretel's left eye began to twitch. “—
stolen
cats?”

“Floribunda is six years old. She is tortoiseshell—such a pretty coat. Very shy and gentle. Lexxie is nine, a big ginger tom. And Mippin—” Frau Hapsburg began to sniff—“poor dear Mippin, just a baby. A silver tabby—the most beautiful stripes you've even seen.”

Gretel wrote quickly. The ammonia levels in the room were beginning to make her dizzy, and a surreptitious feel of her leg had revealed a series of small lumps that could only be flea bites. As if either of these torments weren't bad enough on its own, she was starting to hear bells. Tiny, tinny bells. Like the playing of a distant, celestial glockenspiel. She had to complete her questions and leave. But not before a little further business. She cleared her throat.

“It is rapidly becoming clear to me, Frau Hapsburg, that this case is far more complicated than I had been led to believe.
Three cats, all of different colors, chosen among so very many. So very, very many.” She felt herself becoming more lightheaded. The cats picked up on her vulnerability and became suddenly active, jumping from chair to chair, thrashing their snaky tails from side to side, dozens of eyes all focused on her. Soon she was completely surrounded and any purring had been replaced by low growling. The bells rang louder. Just as Gretel feared she might faint and be set upon by the vile creatures, she spotted the source of the music.

Every cat wore a velvet collar, suspended from which was a small brass bell.

“The taken cats—did they have collars like those? With the bells on?”

“Oh, yes. All my kitties wear them. Such a beautiful sound, don't you think?”

The itching had spread considerably farther up. At the thought of fleas burrowing about in her underwear, Gretel began to feel nauseous. So desperate was she to leave that she even forgot to pursue her planned demand for further funds.

“Excellent. I think I have all I need for now,” she said, backing hastily toward the hallway, dodging swiping paws and claws as she went. “I'll see myself out. I'll be in touch as soon as I have news.”

She bolted from the house, gasping for clean air. All thoughts of calling in at the Kaffee Haus vanished as she turned left down Kirschbaum Avenue, heading straight for the apothecary on the west side of town. She needed flea repellent and itch treatment and she needed them at once.

She covered the ground with surprising speed for one so large, particularly when taking into account her unsuitable shoes. Her route took her past the smoldering space that was all that remained of the carriage maker's workshop. She was just hurrying by, more than a little red in the face and out of
breath, when she noticed Kingsman Kapitan Strudel poking about in the rubble with his standard-issue regimental baton. A handful of his subordinates danced in attendance.

It had been three days since the blaze that razed Herr Hund's business to the ground had woken Gretel from her slumber. The roaring of the flames as they consumed the wooden building and the carriages within it had indeed roused most of the Gesternstadt inhabitants. A fire in a town constructed largely of wood was not a matter to be taken lightly. Rumor spread with the smoke: this had been no accident. But Herr Hund was a harmless pudding of a man with two clean-living sons and no known enemies. Why anyone would want to destroy his business was a mystery to everyone, not least the irascible Kingsman Kapitan Strudel. The sight of Gretel did nothing to improve his perma-scowl. She was all too well aware that he despised the way she pushed her nose into what he considered his business. This loathing was in no small part due to the fact that Strudel was a useless detective, and Gretel was, against all odds, a good one.

“Good afternoon to you, Kapitan. I'm pleased to see you so committed to your work. Three days and still sifting the ruins of Hund's livelihood for clues. Such dedication. It must be a great comfort to the unfortunate man to know he is in such capable hands.” The continuing itching in Gretel's nether regions forced her to stride about in an attempt to quell the irritation and stop herself tearing at her beautifully cut skirts. Strudel pulled himself up to his full height, which still left him six inches shorter than Gretel.

“You've no business being here,” he told her. “This is a crime scene.”

“Oh, I was just passing.”

Something on the ground caught Gretel's attention. At first she thought she must be mistaken, but no, her eyes were not
playing tricks. She crunched over the sooty debris for a better look, which, regrettably, meant moving closer to Strudel. She stopped, willing herself not to scratch. Part of her (a very large part, naturally) wanted to break into a run in the direction of the apothecary, ripping off her undergarments as she went. But the opportunity to humiliate the odious Kinsgman, even if he was the one man in the town who wore his true character plainly on his face for all to see, was too good to pass up.

“So, you haven't found anything, then?” she asked. “No clues?”

“That is kingsman's business, and information not in the public domain.”

“That'll be a no, then.”

“I am not at liberty to divulge . . .”

“Yes, yes, I know. Just wondered. You know, taking an interest in the well-being of my fellow townsfolk, etc., etc. Haven't turned up anything helpful, then? Nothing to point to a motive?”

“We have not yet concluded that the blaze was arson.”

“No clues as to the identity of a possible pyromaniac? Like that human hand you are currently standing on, perhaps?”

“What!” Strudel followed the line of Gretel's pointing finger to find that it was true; he was indeed standing on the charred remains of a human hand, which was, in point of fact, still attached to an arm, a shoulder, and, as a cautious probing with his baton revealed, an entire human corpse.

Inside Strudel a battle clearly raged between fury and excitement. Excitement won. Barely pausing to grind his teeth at Gretel, he rushed about, bellowing orders at his underlings to fetch a spade and an undertaker. All the ensuing commotion and activity gave Gretel the chance to further examine the body. It was impossible to tell if it had been a man or a woman, so thoroughly cooked were the remains, but two
things presented themselves as salient facts. The first was that the cadaver was missing the third finger of its right hand. Not in a burned-off sort of way, Gretel noted, but in a hacked-off sort of way. This struck her as odd. Had the deceased lost his digit years ago, perhaps, or had it been removed recently? Or had it—and the possibility prodded her investigative skills into high alert—been removed after his death? Could it be that he was dead before the fire even started? Questions crowded into Gretel's mind, but were allocated second place in importance by the other salient fact that had come to her notice. The outstretched, digitally challenged hand was clutching something.

Judicious nudging with her foot caused that something to drop from the clutches of the corpse and reveal itself to be a small, blackened but still recognizable, brass bell. Gretel let out a gasp. She glanced up to see Strudel on his way back. As nimbly as her rotundity would allow, she stooped down, snatched up the bell, and stuffed it into her bra, for once lamenting the lack of pockets in designer gowns.

“What are you doing?” Strudel demanded, leaning in to guard the body like a hyena protecting its carrion find.

“Nothing! Nothing at all,” said Gretel, moving swiftly away. “You clearly have important business to attend to. I shall leave you to it,” she called over her shoulder. She arrived back at her own house in a state of high dudgeon, clutching a tub of maddeningly costly ointment from Herr Pfinkle, the apothecary. As she climbed the steps to her porch, she wondered at how quickly her fortunes could change. One minute there was what promised to be a lengthy case to solve with a client willing to pay over the odds, the next it seemed the wretched cats had just been caught up in the fire. And that was that, game over, no more to be done except break the news to Frau Hapsburg that her precious pets were toast. On top of which, Gretel was covered in flea bites, had parted with ridiculous amounts of
money for treatment, and Strudel was the one with an interestingly suspicious death to solve. Dusk was falling over Gesternstadt, and the day seemed to have been pulled all out of shape. As if by way of confirmation, Gretel opened the front door to the smell of breakfast.

“Full English!” cried Hans from the kitchen. “Want some?”

Gretel did, and yet she did not. She did because she hadn't eaten all day and was fiercely hungry. She did not because the calorie fest Hans would present to her would do nothing to diminish her ever-widening girth. She did because the aroma of frying bacon was making her salivate and taking her mind off her headache and her itches. She did not because the part of her that kept her from walking off the top of a cliff, or stepping in front of a speeding carriage, was reminding her of the toxic levels of filth in which the repast had been prepared. Temperance spoke to greed. Greed shouted it down.

“Extra black pudding for me, Hans, and don't stint on the sausages,” she yelled. An hour later she was slumped on her daybed. She had changed back into her favorite house robe, fumigated her clothes, anointed her bites with balm, devoured Hans's splendid breakfast, and was picking contentedly at her teeth with a fork.

“What I don't understand,” said Hans, his words distorted by the stout stump of a cigar he was smoking, “is why a person who was setting fire to some-person-else's carriage workshop for some as yet unknown reason would be bothering himself with some-other-person-else's hitherto unconnected cats.”

Gretel frowned. “Darling brother, you have a way of cutting through the fatty tissue of a problem and—”

“Getting right to the bone?”

“I was going to say causing the patient to hemorrhage wildly, flooding the previously simple wound with so much blood no one has a hope in hell of fixing it.”

“And
that's
clear thinking, is it?”

“Compared to the solid opacity of yours, it is.”

“Can't answer me question, though, can you, eh?”

Gretel was too tired and too well fed to argue. Besides, it did no harm to let Hans believe he was capable of a clever thought from time to time. She understood, when she could be bothered to think about it, that his drinking problem was inextricably linked to his chronically low self-esteem. It had been thus for so many years. After all, who would want to be famous for getting his little sister lost and then having to be rescued by her? The minor celebrity status the pair had enjoyed since the case had become public knowledge had, for a time, brought freedom from poverty, but memories of those dark hours in the witch's cage still haunted Hans. As a teenager, enjoying a school every bit as posh and ridiculous as the one to which Gretel had been sent (also at the behest of the king), Hans had turned to food for solace, and the result had been a build of such proportions as to make his sister feel slender in his presence. And then, at twenty-one, he had discovered beer and schnapps, and the pattern of his adult life had been set. Get up; pancakes and coffee laced with brandy in the Kaffee Haus; home for a nap; cook a little lunch to have with beer; to the inn for cards and beer; a walk to the grocery store for provisions; home for more food to soak up more beer; back to the inn for schnapps. This routine could be interrupted, for instance, by Gretel demanding he cook her something, or her giving him an errand to run, so long as she used the word “run” figuratively. But such disturbances to the established rhythm of his days were only ever temporary hiccups. The natural order was born of many years of practice so that it had become both instinctive and entrenched.