Herr Basil bought an enormous quantity of milk chocolate. Not enough to fill a laundry sack, but enough to fill three pink cardboard boxes. Vivi named the items out loud as she arranged them in their beds of tissue paper and wrote them down on the bill: ‘Ten Margrit Milk pencils . . . One large, praline-centred heart . . . Five Lake Lucerne chocolate pebbles of assorted size . . . And two dozen giant milk truffles. You are taking every last one of the truffles, Herr Basil. They must be your favourites! And I can understand why. They are as big as hens’ eggs and yet they melt in the mouth and slip into the belly like sugared air fluffed with clouds of cocoa and wisps of joy.’
Herr Basil chuckled and rubbed his hands while Vivi put the lid on the boxes and tied them up with a cream satin ribbon.
‘I am having an important meeting with some of my clients today,’ he said, patting his briefcase. ‘The Margrit Milk chocolate is famous, ja, and will put everyone in a good mood for business.’ He turned to Freja and winked. ‘At least, it will put me in a good mood for business and the day will run more smoothly than if my tummy is rumbling and I am bored out of my brain.’
Leckerbissen’s front door flew open and banged against the wall, so hard that it made the shelves rattle. Chocolate buttons and chocolate-coated nuts tumbled from the tops of their bowls, bounced across the shelves and fell to the floor. A woman dressed in a long cream fur coat and a matching fur hat flounced into the shop. Finnegan slunk in after her, growling.
‘Finnegan!’ scolded Freja. ‘You’re not allowed in here.’ She grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back outside.
Closing the shop door once more, Freja apologised. ‘Sorry, Fräulein. He’s just a puppy and gets confused sometimes. I think he got a fright when the door slammed so hard against the wall.’
The woman smoothed her black gloves, pushed her dark glasses further up her nose and pulled her fur coat more tightly around her body. The collar sat up around her cheeks and the hat reached down over her forehead and ears so that her face could barely be seen amongst all the fur. She looked like she’d been swallowed by a polar bear.
‘Ciao!’ sang Vivi. ‘I mean, guten Tag!’
Freja loved that Vivi used Italian by mistake when excited or surprised. This time, she was probably surprised. The woman looked rather startling covered from head to toe in cream fur. The fog had made the day unusually cool, but it was hardly Arctic. Freja giggled, then pressed her hand over her mouth.
The woman in the fur was not amused. She squeezed in between Herr Basil and the chocolate-laden table. She clapped her gloved hands together just centimetres from Vivi’s nose and announced in a thick German accent, ‘I would like everything you have that is made from Margrit Milk chocolate.’
Freja gasped. What was it with the Margrit Milk?
‘Margrit Milk?’ asked Vivi, her voice showing the same surprise that Freja was feeling. ‘But that is strangely popular today.’
‘And why not?’ the woman snapped. ‘Word is out that it is the best chocolate in Lucerne. Why else would a lunatic be running about breaking into chocolateries and stealing all the products made from Margrit Milk?’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Vivi. ‘Even I did not know that. The chocolate stolen last night from Café Schokolade-Schokolade was Margrit Milk, but I did not know that the chocolate stolen from Schokoladen-Fantasie was also the Margrit Milk.’
The woman’s gloved hands twitched, rubbed together for a moment, then stilled. ‘Everyone knows!’ she snapped. ‘Gossip gets around. Especially chocolate gossip.’
Freja nodded. It made sense. Chocolate was so terribly important to the Swiss.
Vivi smiled. ‘I’m afraid we have just a small amount of goodies made from Margrit Milk. Herr Basil, here, has just made a large purchase.’
Herr Basil waved from where he was now standing, gazing at the chocolate doll’s house. ‘The people in the doll’s house are all made from Margrit Milk!’ he cried. ‘The little family around the dining table and the Frau in the bath. I love the Margrit Milk and would recognise its smooth creamy colour and texture anywhere!’
‘It is true,’ said Vivi. ‘But, of course, the chocolate dolls are not for sale.’ She smiled apologetically.
The woman’s nostrils flared and the fur of her coat seemed to shiver all over. ‘Then I will have all of your remaining Margrit Milk goodies. Quickly please. Snap-snap!’ She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at Herr Basil.
Vivi placed seven chocolate pencils and two Lake Lucerne pebbles in a pink box. The woman threw some notes across the table and snatched the box before Vivi had time to tie the lid on with a ribbon.
‘I will be making more Margrit Milk treats this afternoon and tomorrow,’ said Vivi, but the woman was already on her way out the door. She glared through the window at Herr Basil and disappeared around the corner. Finnegan stood growling in the street, long after she had gone.
Herr Basil looked at his watch, gave a little start of surprise and cried, ‘But it is late! I must be off to my meeting. Auf Wiedersehen!’ Nodding his farewell, he ambled out the door, his briefcase swinging from his hand, the three chocolate boxes tucked snugly beneath his arm.
He doesn’t look at all like he is rushing to a meeting, thought Freja. And he was very good at identifying Margrit Milk chocolate in the doll’s house. Suspiciously good.
‘Oh,’ said Freja out loud, remembering that she herself had somewhere to go. ‘I would like a box of mixed chocolates, please, Vivi. A big box for Clementine.’
Vivi smiled and her eyes softened like chocolate melting in a saucepan. ‘A heart-shaped box, I think,’ said Vivi, ‘filled with the praline flowers and the peppermint leaves and the pretty little acorns with vanilla cream centres.’
Freja watched in silence as Vivi moved about the shelves, smiling, humming, filling the pretty pink box and tying it with a wide purple ribbon.
‘And perhaps,’ suggested Vivi, ‘you will want something for the lady who shares Clementine’s room?’
Freja nodded, grateful that Vivi seemed always to know what was best. ‘Yes, please. Something soft for Lady P. Something that can be eaten without her bruised jaw aching or her squashed nose throbbing.’
Vivi tapped her lips as she scanned the shelves. ‘Aha!’ she cried, her eyes lighting up. ‘Chocolate mousse cups! The soft fluffy filling can be licked out, then the thin, delicate cups broken into tiny pieces that will melt on the tongue with little effort but a great amount of pleasure.’
‘Perfect!’ cheered Freja.
‘And delicious!’ cried Vivi. She passed one of the chocolate mousse cups to Freja and popped another into her own mouth.
Leckerbissen’s door flew open once more and Herr Basil staggered back inside. His shirt was torn, his tie askew, his briefcase battered. His hands and knees were covered in dirt.
‘Hilf mir! Hilf mir!’ he groaned. ‘Help! Help!’
Freja and Vivi ran to his side and, taking one arm each, helped him to the nearest café chair. He flopped forward so that his forehead rested on the cool marble surface of the table. He moaned, ‘I have just been mugged!’
‘How terrible!’ cried Vivi.
‘Unbelievable!’ gasped Freja.
Vivi wrapped her arms around the banker’s wide shoulders and cooed, ‘But you are safe now — here amongst the chocolate and your friends.’
Freja crept around to the far side of the table. She grabbed the edge of the marble, narrowed her eyes and peered at Herr Basil. Long and hard. The banker’s heavy gold watch still encircled his wrist. His wallet remained tucked into his shirt pocket. And his briefcase, although battered and dirty, was still locked, its secret papers safe and sound inside.
Could Herr Basil be making the whole thing up? Was he just pretending he’d been mugged?
No, thought Freja. That doesn’t make sense.
But if he really had been mugged, what on earth had been stolen?
Freja pulled off her beanie and scratched her head.
She stared and wondered.
She wondered and stared.
And then she gasped.
For, suddenly, she realised what was missing.
The chocolates!
The chocolates had been stolen.
All three boxes.
All Margrit Milk.
‘Another chocolate theft!’ gasped Frau Niederhauser.
‘And this time, a violent one,’ said Vivi.
Frau Niederhauser, François-Louis, Daniel, Vivi and Freja sat around the table with Herr Basil. The banker seemed a little less shaky now that he had eaten a chocolate éclair and licked clean the bowl in which Daniel had been making a chocolate kirsch ganache.
‘Was it the lady in the fur coat?’ asked Freja, unable to keep her suspicions to herself a moment longer. ‘It was her, wasn’t it?’
‘What?’ gasped Herr Basil. ‘The lady? Nein! Nein! It was a ninja, a man dressed in black from head to toe. Even his face was covered in black with just two gaps for his eyes to see out.’
‘A ninja!’ gasped Daniel.
‘Like a villain from an action film,’ said François-Louis.
‘Like an acrobat,’ added Freja.
‘Ja!’ Herr Basil nodded, his eyes wide at the memory. ‘I had just turned down a small alleyway between two buildings when he appeared from nowhere. Poof!’ He made a small exploding action with his hands. ‘Perhaps he came down from the rooftops. Perhaps he came up through a manhole in the street. Perhaps he just appeared by magic. But once he was there, he pushed me down, he beat me up, he jumped up and down on my briefcase, he seized my chocolates and he disappeared once more. Poof!’
‘Wicked!’ cried Daniel.
‘Ja! Ja!’ agreed François-Louis. ‘Böse!’
‘Ja! Ja!’ agreed Frau Niederhauser. ‘But at least the mugger did not jump up and down on the chocolates. That would have been unforgivable.’