Once Upon a Crime

by P. J. Brackston

  “One tries.”

  “He has suffered so. For me. And for his father.” The girl’s expression changed and Gretel was reminded of the sudden shift in mood and display of temper she had witnessed when talking to Roland. “That man . . .” she all but spat.

  “Herr Hund? A good fellow, by all accounts.”

  “Good? Huh! Is it good to break your own son’s heart? Is it good to bring about the ruin of your own family?” As soon as the words were out, her hand flew to her mouth. “Please, fraulein, take no notice. I have said too much. The silly chattering of a young girl with a tender heart, no more. Forgive me.”

  “Nothing to forgive,” Gretel assured her. She allowed Johanna to continue her work in silence. Certainly her reaction to the mention of Herr Hund seemed to confirm Hans’s theory that the older man’s gambling had got him into difficulties. Beyond that, it was hard to draw firm conclusions. Something else struck Gretel in that instant, distracting her from her investigative line of thought. Looking at the girl’s reflection in the mirror, she suddenly remembered why her face was familiar. Of course, that Johanna! Why had it taken her so long to place what had been such a well-known visage? She could clearly see the family resemblance now. Yes, it was coming back to her. When Jack, of Beanstalk fame, had been touring Bavaria a few years earlier, giving personal appearances and talks on his adventures, his little sister had accompanied him. Gretel recalled thinking how pretty she was then, too. Pretty, and pretty fed up, it had seemed to her, at being so overshadowed by her brother and his swift rise to fame. Johanna was never even mentioned in the stories of his planting the magic beans, ascending to the castle in the clouds, outwitting the giant, and making off with the golden goose. But what had happened after all the fuss died down? Gretel searched her aching brain. She remembered now that Jack had moved away, lured abroad by a warmer clime. She was fairly certain he had taken his mother with him, but what of his sister? If she had ever thought about it at all, Gretel had assumed the family had emigrated together, but that could not have been the case. If Johanna had indeed been Roland’s lover for some time, then she must have remained living nearby. But Gretel had not seen her once in the intervening years. With a sigh, she realized there were still too many pieces of the puzzle missing for her to assemble a clear picture of anything.

  Returning home scrubbed, polished, and perfumed, Gretel was greeted by the cheering sight of a splendid new front door. She went inside, calling for Hans, but he had not yet returned from the inn. The evening was sultry, a weighty sky threatening thunder that seemed not to want to start. She fixed herself a generous brandy with plenty of ice, and took it outside onto the small patio at the back of the house.

  Darkness was falling but it didn’t matter—the garden was not tended but left to run wild, so that it was at its best poorly lit. Shrubs had grown into shapeless leafy masses that afforded privacy and shade, which, as far as Gretel was concerned, was all she required them to do. Here and there a tangle of roses provided patches of color. Clusters of spring bulbs had successfully reproduced and multiplied unchecked into pleasing pools of lemon yellow or flame red. There was no lawn as such, but a swath of weeds and grasses that were home to several moles and a family of adders.

  Gretel left the French windows wide, dusted off an ancient deck chair, and lowered herself into it. She had not taken more than a sip of her drink when a loud hammering started up on the front door.

  “What now?” She waited, hoping whoever it was would give up and leave her in peace. She had had a difficult and draining few days. These were most definitely not business hours, she wasn’t expecting any callers, and surely nothing could be so urgent that it could not wait until the morning.

  The hammering began again.

  “Go away!” Gretel shouted through the house. “We’re closed.” Still more hammering.

  “Hell’s teeth!” said Gretel to herself, hunkering down in her chair and refusing to be moved.

  She waited. The silence grew longer. Had she persuaded them to leave? She listened, ears cocked for sounds of further assaults on her new door, but none came. Instead she heard footsteps hurrying around the side of the house and tracing the boundary. “Damn!” she berated herself in a stage whisper. “Whoever it is knows I’m out here.” She held her breath, steadying her glass lest the chinking of ice cubes pinpoint her position. From the other side of the jungle-thick hedge came sounds of gasping.

  Gasping and a struggle. Muffled cries followed. All at once there was a commotion and a crashing sound as a figure came barreling through the hedge, forcing its way between the hazels and beeches, charging through the brambles and nettles until it fell heavily at Gretel’s feet. She sprang up as quickly as her size and the protesting deck chair would allow. The man, for a man it was, groaned loudly as he rolled among the flora, before clutching at first his stomach and then his throat, letting out a piteous whine, and expiring.

  “Well, really!” said Gretel. She peered down, brandy still in hand, and gently nudged the body with a foot. She had seen enough corpses to know one when it appeared in her garden. She drained her drink, put down the glass, and reluctantly knelt beside the inert intruder. She checked for a pulse and was not surprised to find none. With grunt-making effort, she pushed at the dead man until he rolled over onto his back, his face revealed in the low light. Now it was Gretel’s turn to gasp. Although the light was dim, and the features still contorted with the agonies of death, there was no mistaking the face that stared lifelessly up at her. She found her own voice, hoarse with shock but still able to cry out in astonishment, “Good grief! Herr Peterson!”

  EIGHT

  An hour later Gretel’s garden was host to a macabre little party. Herr Peterson, cold and pale, lay where he had fallen. Kapitan Strudel strode about importantly, giving orders and making notes. Several minor kingsmen took measurements of this and that, two disturbed the adders’ nest, causing ten minutes of panic and mayhem, and one impaled himself on a gargantuan bramble and had to be rescued and dabbed with iodine. Hans was standing staring at the body through a protective cloud of cigar smoke, declaring himself repulsed by the sight, but unable to tear himself away.

  Gretel was sitting in her deck chair once again, a second even more generous brandy clasped tightly in her hand, her nonchalant expression masking a certain nervousness. She was aware of the kapitan’s antipathy toward her, and knew he would relish the opportunity to make trouble for her if at all possible. Having a fresh corpse in her garden, and the victim being not only someone she knew but someone who connected her to another dead body in another place was a gift for the weaselly little man. She was thankful, at least, that Hans had been out when Herr Peterson had seen fit to use his last breath to haul himself into their garden. She had taken the chance to consider the situation, weigh up her options, and act decisively and swiftly before raising the alarm. What she was now hoping was that no one would choose to play up her connection with the deceased, nor focus on the curious nature of his injuries.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Hans, swaying a little, as was his custom at this point in the evenings, “is why Herr Peterson should choose our back garden to die in. I mean to say, it’s not as if we knew him all that well. We weren’t friends or anything—just met on our way to the hotel where poor old Bechstein came to such a messy end. There was a lot I didn’t understand about that, too, like why the local kingsman insisted that dreadful knife we found sticking out of him was Gretel’s. Went on and on about that, he did. Like he had some point to make.”

  He drew a tobacco-filled breath.

  Gretel ground her teeth, not taking her eyes off Kapitan Strudel, who had turned to listen attentively to what was being said.

  “And what else I don’t understand,” Hans plowed on, “is why poor Peterson here was so determined to see Gretel about something or other that he dragged himself through our sizeable hedge to expire at her very feet, when there was absolutely no one else about.” He puffed again.


  Gretel felt a muscle in her jaw begin to jump. Kapitan Strudel scribbled furiously in his notebook.

  “And I’ll tell you something else I don’t understand—is why, when the unfortunate fellow apparently died of poisoning, judging by the way his hands are still clutching his throat, his eyes are all bulgy and staring like that, and his skin is turning a revolting shade of eau de nil, he appears to have lost two of his fingers.”

  There was a noisy silence filled with the sound of worrying conclusions being drawn and connections being made.

  Gretel swirled the ice in her glass, focusing intently on the melting cubes, struggling to maintain an inscrutable countenance.

  Strudel leaned closer to the body for a better look. Hans had not yet finished making a bad situation worse.

  “Looks to me,” he said, “like those are fresh wounds. As if he’d only just lost the fingers when he came blundering in here. Which makes you think they might be in the garden somewhere, doesn’t it? I say, Gretel, doesn’t it make you think that, eh?” Gretel was thinking many things at the moment, and all of them involved painful cruelties being inflicted upon her brother.

  “What? Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, a smidge too casually. “Could be he lost them ages ago. Could be all that struggling through the hedge reopened old wounds. Could be . . . all sorts of things,” she finished lamely.

  Strudel’s eyes were beginning to glint horribly. Gretel decided attack might be the best form of defense.

  “If I recall,” she said slowly, “the unfortunate corpse in Hund’s yard was missing a finger. Got to the bottom of that yet, have you, Herr Kapitan?”

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

  “As I thought. No progress made in that regard, then. Pity. Might have shed some light on the curious nature of poor Herr Peterson’s demise.” She gesticulated at the body in question.

  “Aha,” said Strudel, a sneer rearranging his features but offering no improvement to the general ratlike appearance with which fortune had blessed him.

  “Your remark is a reminder that you are merely an amateur detective, not a kingsman, not employed by our revered monarch and trained in the ways of detection.”

  “Your point being?”

  “You don’t know everything, fraulein. And you know what they say: ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’”

  “Have you considered taking that phrase up as your motto?”

  “You are too quick to jump to conclusions,” he told her. “This”—here he pointed dramatically at the corpse—“is not Herr Peterson.”

  “’Course it is,” put in Hans. “Met the fellow myself. That’s Peterson, all right. Stake my house on it.”

  “He may have called himself Peterson when he met you,” said Strudel, “but that is not who he really is.”

  “Not?” Hans queried.

  “Not?” echoed Gretel.

  “Not!” declared Strudel, satisfaction at, for once, knowing something Gretel did not giving his cheeks a rosy glow.

  Hans ground his cigar stub under his foot. “So who the devil is he, then?”

  “That is kingsmen’s information and not in the public domain.”

  “This is not the public domain,” Gretel pointed out. “This is my garden, and that man, whoever he called himself, is in my garden, ruining my evening. I demand to know who he is.” She stood up.

  Strudel hesitated.

  “Come on, man,” said Gretel, “spill the beans.”

  The temptation to show off his knowledge was too great for the kapitan to resist. “His name is Muller. Dieter Muller. He is known to us.”

  “In what context?” Gretel asked.

  “In the context of being a criminal.”

  “Well, obviously. But what sort of criminal?”

  “A very successful one. Up until now. We’ve been after Muller for years, but he always covered his tracks, always produced an alibi, always slipped through the net.”

  “Yes, yes, well, it wouldn’t take a master criminal to do that, would it?” said Gretel.

  Strudel scowled at her and folded his arms in a that’s-all-you’re-getting-out-of-me fashion.

  “What I meant was,” she tried again, “when he wasn’t doing all that covering, producing, and slipping to evade the considerable wit and resources of our wonderful kingsmen, what sort of crimes did he commit?”

  “He was a con man. A very good one. Pulled off a number of scams in the area.”

  “And you couldn’t prove he was behind any of them?”

  “As I said, he was good at what he did. Always one step ahead of us. Always knew when it was time to stop, to move on to the next plan.”

  Hans gave a snort. “He won’t be moving on to anything much now.”

  A thought occurred to Gretel.

  “What about Inge?”

  “Who?”

  “Inge Peterson. Herr Peterson’s wife. The two were besotted with each other. They were on their second honeymoon when we first encountered them.”

  “That’s right.” Hans nodded. “All over each other they were. It was quite revolting.”

  “It would be.” It was Strudel’s turn to snort. “His wife’s been dead at least five years.”

  “What?” Hans gasped. “You mean, that woman, Inge, she was some sort of ghoul? One of the living dead? A vampire perhaps? A zombie!”

  “Hans!” Gretel shut him up. “Do calm down. Clearly that wasn’t Frau Muller.”

  “I know it wasn’t. It was Frau Peterson.”

  “There is no Frau Peterson,” said Strudel.

  Hans rolled his eyes. “Well not anymore, no. Not if she’s dead.”

  “There never was a Frau Peterson,” Strudel insisted.

  “’Course there was,” said Hans. “Met her myself. Told you that. Not very good at remembering facts, are you? Shouldn’t you be writing these things down?”

  Gretel could feel a headache coming on, but it was almost worth it to see Strudel’s brain beginning to implode.

  “Wife or not,” Gretel said, “Inge was clearly up to no good with Peterson. I mean Muller. If they were posing as a loving couple and were not one, and pretending to be Petersons and were not that either, then they most certainly weren’t on a second honeymoon. So, that leads me to ask myself, why the cover? What were they up to in Bad am Zee that required them to do it incognito? Whatever it was must have been for pretty high stakes.” She inclined her head toward Peterson-Muller.

  “And whatever it was involved more than just the two of them,” offered Strudel. “We know that Muller was connected to the deceased found in Hund’s yard.”

  “Oh, because of the fingers, d’you mean?” asked Hans.

  “More than that,” said Strudel. “You see, we know who the dead man was.” He paused, entirely for dramatic effect.

  Gretel had to chomp up her remaining ice cube to prevent herself losing her temper with the kingsman.

  “His name,” Strudel said, drawing the thing out to infuriating lengths, “was Muller.” Gretel swallowed her ice cube.

  Hans raised his arms and then let them drop hopelessly against his sides. “Really, Herr Kapitan,” he tutted, “I do think you could pay attention. Aren’t you supposed to be in charge here? Look, it’s quite simple. I’ll go slowly. That is Muller, there, at your very feet. Looks a lot like a fellow named Peterson, but don’t let that confuse you.

  “The body in Hund’s yard, well, it’s anybody’s guess. One thing we know for sure is it’s not Inge Peterson, because she’s been dead years, so there’d be nothing of her left. ’Course it could be Frau Muller, I suppose. But, no, that wouldn’t work, else how would we have seen her in Bad am Zee?”

  “Herr Kapitan,” Gretel spoke gently, “can I offer you something to drink? A small brandy, perhaps?”

  “I don’t normally drink on duty.”

  “I don’t think this counts as ‘normal,’ do you?”

  “Maybe just a very small one,” he said in a voice betraying
the fragile state of his nerves.

  “Ooh, drinkies, is it?” Hans rubbed his hands together and headed for kitchen. “I’ll fetch them. Everyone want ice in theirs?”

  “No!” Gretel shouted, then quickly recovered herself. “It’s good brandy, Hans, let’s not water it down with ice this time.”

  Hans frowned, shrugged, and then went inside. Gretel stepped a little nearer Strudel. “Please forgive my brother, Herr Kapitan. His mind is not as clear as it might be. His experiences as a child, you know . . .” She raised her brows, leaving the implication hanging.

  Strudel nodded sagely. “Ah, yes, of course. And the facts of the case are confusing, after all,” he admitted.

  “Indeed.”

  He shook his head. “It is not enough that we have identified the corpse at the scene of the fire. We still have nothing to indicate that it was he who started the blaze.”

  “You say he was a Muller, too. A brother, perhaps?”

  “Yes. Erich. Every bit as much a scoundrel as his sibling. They would often work together to cheat and defraud people out of their hard-earned incomes. Despicable.”

  “Quite so. But fraud, you say. Not violence?”

  “We have never been able to prove a link between the Mullers and any suspicious deaths in the area.”

  “But you have your own theories?”

  “I do.”

  Hans returned with the brandy. Strudel took his and sipped delicately. Hans began trying to recap who was who once more, causing the kingsman to drain his glass in a single gulp.

  “Hans,” said Gretel, “fetch Kapitan Strudel another, please.”

  The alcohol had had an instant and noticeable effect on the little man. Gretel saw her chance.

  “I am grateful, Herr Kapitan,” she said, “that you were available to investigate this terrible event so swiftly.” She shook her head sadly, taking in the prone figure still flattening the weeds before her. “Whatever Muller’s crimes, it was a horrible death. One wonders what can have driven a person to do such a thing.”

  “The criminal classes fall out with one another just as easily as anyone else,” Strudel told her.