"Ach, Lord Hades, don't worry," Pipi von G and T murmured consolingly. She gingerly placed one little paw on Hell's bowed shoulder. "We do not have the death penalty in Germany. I think. You will just go to jail for many years."
Hell raised his head from his hands and glowered at Pipi. "Don't be ridiculous, young woman," he snorted. "I'm not afraid of death. Too old for that sort of nonsense."
"What is the matter then?" We all looked at Pipi incredulously. Prince Ludwig's death had clearly unbalanced her: not content with having seen Hell decapitate her late husband, here she was, taunting the fierce old man, as though she wanted to get her own silly little head bitten off.
"Pipi, could we get some coffee?" Lady Rudolphine intervened hastily. "Wouldn't you like some, Otto?" Hell grumpily growled assent. "Your Eminence?" The Cardinal nodded mutely.
"I don't know if they will let us, Lady Rudolphine," Pipi answered timidly. We were huddled together in a corner of the magnificent throne room. A guard stood at the door watchfully guarding us in case we tried to escape. After Anastasia's abductors had flown away in their helicopters, we had untied Dr. Hans-Jurgen Gauss's bodyguards, who, after some confusion, decided to tie us up in our turn. Much to our amazement, Pipi threw a magnificent tantrum and refused to be tied up or to allow the rest of us to be tied up either. She was the mistress of Schloss Himmelsberg, she pouted, and we were her guests, at least until we were taken to jail. The nonplussed bodyguards had to content themselves with demanding to be shown a room in which they could keep us until they could fetch arrest warrants. Head held high, Pipi led our incongruous procession down the corridors of the castle, straight to the throne room. But here her nerve seemed to fail her, the sight of the empty thrones perhaps reminding her too much of her happier days as Cinderella, protected by Prince Ludwig's commanding presence, and she shrank away towards the furthest end of the room and began to whimper. Numbly we had followed her. Some time later, the guards roughly shoved poor Saure, wearing only a mauve g-string, long silk scarves still dangling from his wrists and ankles, in towards us and slammed the door shut. Rubbing his bewildered eyes, Saure begged us to tell him what was going on. He had heard nothing, he claimed. The bodyguards had interrupted Anastasia's old hairdresser in the middle of a little tete-a-tete with one of the castle chauffeurs, whom they had arrested on charges of gross indecency and thrown into a separate dungeon. We were, after all, in Katholic Bavaria.
"Olympia, you are the mistress of Himmelsberg," Lady Rudolphine said firmly. "What comes after dinner?"
"Coffee and liqueurs," Pipi replied mechanically, "And cigars for the gentlemen."
"Good girl. Which finishing school did you attend?"
"Miss Blandish's in Lucerne. But I didn't learn about liqueurs until much later." Pipi's face crumpled like a wet handkerchief. "It was Ludi who taught me everything." She burst into loud sobs. "What am I going to do without him? I'll never know which champagne to serve after which wine... Boo hoo hooo!"
Saure patted her arm sympathetically. "There, there, miss," he said soothingly. "You just have to hire a good butler, that's all. It's nothing to worry about. I'll be your butler until you get a real one."
Still sobbing, Pipi looked at him suspiciously. "What are your qualifications?" she demanded brokenly. "Did you go to buttling school? Do you have any references?"
"Very good, Olympia!" Lady Rudolphine exclaimed encouragingly. "That's the spirit. Just wait till you get the billion Ludi left you. Then you can hire a dozen butlers!"
Pipi looked up. A glimmer of hope shone faintly on her wet little face. "Do you really think I'll be able to manage, Lady Rudolphine?" she asked anxiously. Lady Rudolphine nodded reassuringly. The glimmer blossomed into a dazzling rainbow. Pipi smiled, stood up, and straightened her shoulders, pushing out her little breasts. "Which liqueur do you prefer, Lord Hades?" she asked in a sultry voice.
Hell looked up in surprise. "Can't stand them," he said gruffly. "Too sweet. Gives me indigestion. But if you could get a spot of old brandy... Actually, make that a couple of bottles." Pipi marched to the doorway and gave strident orders. Hell held his head in his hands until the brandy came. Then he gulped down his cognac, burped loudly, and poured himself another. Pipi curled up at his feet and looked up at him adoringly. She looked like a prize poodle. "First things first," Hell rasped. "How do we get out of this situation?"
"How did we get into this situation?" Lady Rudolphine asked.
"What is the situation?" Pipi chimed in.
Hell nodded at Pipi approvingly. "Good question. Why are we being held here?"
"You are being held on charges of murder, Lord Hades," the Cardinal said icily. "You murdered my cousin, Prince Ludwig, in cold blood. We are witnesses."
"I did it at Ludwig's request," Hell answered evenly. "As an old comrade in arms."
"Comrade in arms!" the Cardinal spluttered, a fine spray of coffee misting his robes. "You were on the other side in the war! He hunted you for years! And tonight you murdered him like you murdered Christ! You filthy Jew!" A deathly silence filled the room. Hell stared at the Cardinal, unblinking. The Cardinal flinched first. "You killed him," he repeated, averting his eyes.
"And I am a Jew," Hell said patiently. "Glad to get the facts straight. But I am not filthy. Took a bath just the other week. You, on the other hand, your Eminence..." Hell's voice changed suddenly. "How long have you been plotting against Ludwig, you filthy hypocrite?" Hell roared. He leapt out of his chair, grabbed the Cardinal's collar, and twisted it tight. Saure gasped and crossed himself. "For how long now have you been trying to replace Ludwig with your own little pet, Axel von Schadenfreude? And for how many silver pieces, Judas?"
Hell released the Cardinal and sat down again, breathing heavily. The guard came running up, genuflected before the Cardinal, and asked if he was all right. The Cardinal beckoned him away and sat still for a moment, fighting for breath. My head was reeling. What was this new plot development?
"What is all this, Otto?" Lady Rudolphine asked quietly.
"Ask this rat," Hell gestured contemptuously towards the Cardinal. "Ask him to vomit up some of his Vatikan conspiracies for us."
"How dare you insult the Holy Church?" The Cardinal's face was flushed magenta, mismatching unpleasantly with his purple robes, and his voice was going all over the place. Lady Rudolphine got up and firmly sat him down. Quite right too: one apoplexy for the evening was quite enough.
"Does the Pope know about your little scheme to sell the Holier than thou Bank to the Muslims?"
"It will be a merger," the Cardinal spat. "And none of your business, you infidel."
"How much will the Nectarini family give you if the deal goes through?"
"The money goes to a greater good!"
"And was it for the greater good that you had Prince Ludwig murdered?"
The Cardinal gained control of himself. He looked over at Hell and smiled, showing a row of crooked yellow teeth. I shook my head in disapproval. He obviously had bad tartar, and worse still, advanced gum disease. Nobody had taught him how to floss his teeth. "Axel is now master of the Himmelsberg legacy," the Cardinal crowed. "There is nothing you can do about it. We have won."
Pipi had been following this turbulent exchange like an engrossed spectator at a ping-pong match, her protuberant eyes moving back and forth between Hell and the Cardinal. "But the lawyers said that I could stay at Himmelsberg as long as I wanted," she quavered.
"What is the Himmelsberg legacy?" Lady Rudolphine wondered aloud.
The Cardinal laughed unpleasantly. "It is not the castle or the money, of that you may rest assured."
Hell did not take his eyes off the gloating cardinal. "I'd like to hang him up by his toes and make him talk..." he muttered.
The Cardinal reddened. "And I would like to break you on the wheel, you interfering Jew," he hissed.
"And I would like to..."
"Stop it, both of you," Lady Rudolphine cried, exasperated. "Honestly. Men!" Hell and the Cardinal both blushed, leaned back in their chairs, and looked away, like small boys pretending not to care about their nanny's rebuke. "Would you just tell us what you are talking about?"
"Politics," Hell grumbled.
"You're a woman. You wouldn't understand," the Cardinal added.
Lady Rudolphine rose quickly, the color high in her cheeks, pulled up the Cardinal's robes over his head, and reached into his trousers. She must have been squeezing awfully hard: I could hear the Cardinal's muffled wails even through the thick fabric. Hell watched wide-eyed as, still squeezing, Lady Rudolphine turned to him menacingly. "We're friends, Otto," she said grimly. "But don't count on it too much. Will you talk?" Hell nodded dumbly. The guard looked on curiously. From his position at the door he could see nothing to indicate that a prelate was undergoing an agony like nothing endured by so high a dignitary of the Church since the crucifixion of the first popes. Lady Rudolphine released the Cardinal, daintily rinsed her hands, wiped them with a napkin, went back to her seat, crossed her elegant legs, and sipped Benedictine as though nothing at all had happened.
When the Cardinal had finished retching, Hell spoke once more. "If your people arrest me I will talk openly about poison." Still wheezing, the Cardinal gaped in dismay. Hell nodded calmly. "Yes, I know all about Dr. Dufarge and his clinic in Zurich. I know all about the special cure for arthritis you recommended to Ludwig three months ago. A cure which wrecked even that hardy constitution. Ludwig was poisoned at your command. Because he was using his influence in the Church to delay your wretched plans to use the Holier than Thou Bank's money for your own twisted ends. Because he wouldn't let Axel von Schadenfreude give young Ulrich to the Jesuits for brainwashing. Because he defended his daughter Anastasia from Axel's clutches against all odds. Am I wrong, your Eminence?"
"There is no proof," the Cardinal wheezed but his eyes were glassy and contorted, a mirror in which we could all see the convexity of his warped little soul.
Hell laughed. I was beginning to like the sound of rusty chainsaws. "You always did underestimate Ludwig," he said easily. "We have his medical records. And tape recordings of your conversations. I didn't murder him. You did. And I can prove it. Good public relations for the Church, Your Eminence."
The Cardinal rose, clutching his genitals. A bestial spasm of hatred contorted his face. "We'll be back," he snarled. "You'll regret it." He hobbled to the doorway and spoke hoarsely to the guard. They disappeared. We sat in the throne room in amazed silence. Very soon we heard the sound of helicopter engines again, growing more distant, in the circumstances, a welcome whine, but for me, a hated din, a noise which I could never again hear without a rending pang of pain.
Pipi got up and tip-toed to the door. We could hear her high heels clacking down the corridors. After a while she returned to the room, an awed look on her face. She threw her arms around Hell's neck and kissed him, quite sexily for a freshly bereaved widow. "They really have gone. How did you do it?" she breathed. "You're marvellous. Will you marry me?"
Hell shrugged. "Why not. No fool like an old fool."
Hell raised his head from his hands and glowered at Pipi. "Don't be ridiculous, young woman," he snorted. "I'm not afraid of death. Too old for that sort of nonsense."
"What is the matter then?" We all looked at Pipi incredulously. Prince Ludwig's death had clearly unbalanced her: not content with having seen Hell decapitate her late husband, here she was, taunting the fierce old man, as though she wanted to get her own silly little head bitten off.
"Pipi, could we get some coffee?" Lady Rudolphine intervened hastily. "Wouldn't you like some, Otto?" Hell grumpily growled assent. "Your Eminence?" The Cardinal nodded mutely.
"I don't know if they will let us, Lady Rudolphine," Pipi answered timidly. We were huddled together in a corner of the magnificent throne room. A guard stood at the door watchfully guarding us in case we tried to escape. After Anastasia's abductors had flown away in their helicopters, we had untied Dr. Hans-Jurgen Gauss's bodyguards, who, after some confusion, decided to tie us up in our turn. Much to our amazement, Pipi threw a magnificent tantrum and refused to be tied up or to allow the rest of us to be tied up either. She was the mistress of Schloss Himmelsberg, she pouted, and we were her guests, at least until we were taken to jail. The nonplussed bodyguards had to content themselves with demanding to be shown a room in which they could keep us until they could fetch arrest warrants. Head held high, Pipi led our incongruous procession down the corridors of the castle, straight to the throne room. But here her nerve seemed to fail her, the sight of the empty thrones perhaps reminding her too much of her happier days as Cinderella, protected by Prince Ludwig's commanding presence, and she shrank away towards the furthest end of the room and began to whimper. Numbly we had followed her. Some time later, the guards roughly shoved poor Saure, wearing only a mauve g-string, long silk scarves still dangling from his wrists and ankles, in towards us and slammed the door shut. Rubbing his bewildered eyes, Saure begged us to tell him what was going on. He had heard nothing, he claimed. The bodyguards had interrupted Anastasia's old hairdresser in the middle of a little tete-a-tete with one of the castle chauffeurs, whom they had arrested on charges of gross indecency and thrown into a separate dungeon. We were, after all, in Katholic Bavaria.
"Olympia, you are the mistress of Himmelsberg," Lady Rudolphine said firmly. "What comes after dinner?"
"Coffee and liqueurs," Pipi replied mechanically, "And cigars for the gentlemen."
"Good girl. Which finishing school did you attend?"
"Miss Blandish's in Lucerne. But I didn't learn about liqueurs until much later." Pipi's face crumpled like a wet handkerchief. "It was Ludi who taught me everything." She burst into loud sobs. "What am I going to do without him? I'll never know which champagne to serve after which wine... Boo hoo hooo!"
Saure patted her arm sympathetically. "There, there, miss," he said soothingly. "You just have to hire a good butler, that's all. It's nothing to worry about. I'll be your butler until you get a real one."
Still sobbing, Pipi looked at him suspiciously. "What are your qualifications?" she demanded brokenly. "Did you go to buttling school? Do you have any references?"
"Very good, Olympia!" Lady Rudolphine exclaimed encouragingly. "That's the spirit. Just wait till you get the billion Ludi left you. Then you can hire a dozen butlers!"
Pipi looked up. A glimmer of hope shone faintly on her wet little face. "Do you really think I'll be able to manage, Lady Rudolphine?" she asked anxiously. Lady Rudolphine nodded reassuringly. The glimmer blossomed into a dazzling rainbow. Pipi smiled, stood up, and straightened her shoulders, pushing out her little breasts. "Which liqueur do you prefer, Lord Hades?" she asked in a sultry voice.
Hell looked up in surprise. "Can't stand them," he said gruffly. "Too sweet. Gives me indigestion. But if you could get a spot of old brandy... Actually, make that a couple of bottles." Pipi marched to the doorway and gave strident orders. Hell held his head in his hands until the brandy came. Then he gulped down his cognac, burped loudly, and poured himself another. Pipi curled up at his feet and looked up at him adoringly. She looked like a prize poodle. "First things first," Hell rasped. "How do we get out of this situation?"
"How did we get into this situation?" Lady Rudolphine asked.
"What is the situation?" Pipi chimed in.
Hell nodded at Pipi approvingly. "Good question. Why are we being held here?"
"You are being held on charges of murder, Lord Hades," the Cardinal said icily. "You murdered my cousin, Prince Ludwig, in cold blood. We are witnesses."
"I did it at Ludwig's request," Hell answered evenly. "As an old comrade in arms."
"Comrade in arms!" the Cardinal spluttered, a fine spray of coffee misting his robes. "You were on the other side in the war! He hunted you for years! And tonight you murdered him like you murdered Christ! You filthy Jew!" A deathly silence filled the room. Hell stared at the Cardinal, unblinking. The Cardinal flinched first. "You killed him," he repeated, averting his eyes.
"And I am a Jew," Hell said patiently. "Glad to get the facts straight. But I am not filthy. Took a bath just the other week. You, on the other hand, your Eminence..." Hell's voice changed suddenly. "How long have you been plotting against Ludwig, you filthy hypocrite?" Hell roared. He leapt out of his chair, grabbed the Cardinal's collar, and twisted it tight. Saure gasped and crossed himself. "For how long now have you been trying to replace Ludwig with your own little pet, Axel von Schadenfreude? And for how many silver pieces, Judas?"
Hell released the Cardinal and sat down again, breathing heavily. The guard came running up, genuflected before the Cardinal, and asked if he was all right. The Cardinal beckoned him away and sat still for a moment, fighting for breath. My head was reeling. What was this new plot development?
"What is all this, Otto?" Lady Rudolphine asked quietly.
"Ask this rat," Hell gestured contemptuously towards the Cardinal. "Ask him to vomit up some of his Vatikan conspiracies for us."
"How dare you insult the Holy Church?" The Cardinal's face was flushed magenta, mismatching unpleasantly with his purple robes, and his voice was going all over the place. Lady Rudolphine got up and firmly sat him down. Quite right too: one apoplexy for the evening was quite enough.
"Does the Pope know about your little scheme to sell the Holier than thou Bank to the Muslims?"
"It will be a merger," the Cardinal spat. "And none of your business, you infidel."
"How much will the Nectarini family give you if the deal goes through?"
"The money goes to a greater good!"
"And was it for the greater good that you had Prince Ludwig murdered?"
The Cardinal gained control of himself. He looked over at Hell and smiled, showing a row of crooked yellow teeth. I shook my head in disapproval. He obviously had bad tartar, and worse still, advanced gum disease. Nobody had taught him how to floss his teeth. "Axel is now master of the Himmelsberg legacy," the Cardinal crowed. "There is nothing you can do about it. We have won."
Pipi had been following this turbulent exchange like an engrossed spectator at a ping-pong match, her protuberant eyes moving back and forth between Hell and the Cardinal. "But the lawyers said that I could stay at Himmelsberg as long as I wanted," she quavered.
"What is the Himmelsberg legacy?" Lady Rudolphine wondered aloud.
The Cardinal laughed unpleasantly. "It is not the castle or the money, of that you may rest assured."
Hell did not take his eyes off the gloating cardinal. "I'd like to hang him up by his toes and make him talk..." he muttered.
The Cardinal reddened. "And I would like to break you on the wheel, you interfering Jew," he hissed.
"And I would like to..."
"Stop it, both of you," Lady Rudolphine cried, exasperated. "Honestly. Men!" Hell and the Cardinal both blushed, leaned back in their chairs, and looked away, like small boys pretending not to care about their nanny's rebuke. "Would you just tell us what you are talking about?"
"Politics," Hell grumbled.
"You're a woman. You wouldn't understand," the Cardinal added.
Lady Rudolphine rose quickly, the color high in her cheeks, pulled up the Cardinal's robes over his head, and reached into his trousers. She must have been squeezing awfully hard: I could hear the Cardinal's muffled wails even through the thick fabric. Hell watched wide-eyed as, still squeezing, Lady Rudolphine turned to him menacingly. "We're friends, Otto," she said grimly. "But don't count on it too much. Will you talk?" Hell nodded dumbly. The guard looked on curiously. From his position at the door he could see nothing to indicate that a prelate was undergoing an agony like nothing endured by so high a dignitary of the Church since the crucifixion of the first popes. Lady Rudolphine released the Cardinal, daintily rinsed her hands, wiped them with a napkin, went back to her seat, crossed her elegant legs, and sipped Benedictine as though nothing at all had happened.
When the Cardinal had finished retching, Hell spoke once more. "If your people arrest me I will talk openly about poison." Still wheezing, the Cardinal gaped in dismay. Hell nodded calmly. "Yes, I know all about Dr. Dufarge and his clinic in Zurich. I know all about the special cure for arthritis you recommended to Ludwig three months ago. A cure which wrecked even that hardy constitution. Ludwig was poisoned at your command. Because he was using his influence in the Church to delay your wretched plans to use the Holier than Thou Bank's money for your own twisted ends. Because he wouldn't let Axel von Schadenfreude give young Ulrich to the Jesuits for brainwashing. Because he defended his daughter Anastasia from Axel's clutches against all odds. Am I wrong, your Eminence?"
"There is no proof," the Cardinal wheezed but his eyes were glassy and contorted, a mirror in which we could all see the convexity of his warped little soul.
Hell laughed. I was beginning to like the sound of rusty chainsaws. "You always did underestimate Ludwig," he said easily. "We have his medical records. And tape recordings of your conversations. I didn't murder him. You did. And I can prove it. Good public relations for the Church, Your Eminence."
The Cardinal rose, clutching his genitals. A bestial spasm of hatred contorted his face. "We'll be back," he snarled. "You'll regret it." He hobbled to the doorway and spoke hoarsely to the guard. They disappeared. We sat in the throne room in amazed silence. Very soon we heard the sound of helicopter engines again, growing more distant, in the circumstances, a welcome whine, but for me, a hated din, a noise which I could never again hear without a rending pang of pain.
Pipi got up and tip-toed to the door. We could hear her high heels clacking down the corridors. After a while she returned to the room, an awed look on her face. She threw her arms around Hell's neck and kissed him, quite sexily for a freshly bereaved widow. "They really have gone. How did you do it?" she breathed. "You're marvellous. Will you marry me?"
Hell shrugged. "Why not. No fool like an old fool."
