al02 Biehl Parfumkunstwerke 2007

Children's book enthusiast and police station apprentice Prof. Dr. whatever Meggi had, in light of the many unanswered questions, simply linked himself to the story of the robber Hotzenplotz and was now sitting next to Constable Dimpfelmoser in his office. Both were going through the documents and evidence for what felt like the twelfth time. The only certainty was that the robber had stolen grandmother's coffee grinder. Everything else was - so far - pure speculation.

Hotzenplotz claimed he had absolutely wanted a coffee grinder that plays a song when you crank it. But why had he later made Seppel grind the coffee in his robber's cave instead of doing it himself? Obviously a lie. And why had Kasperl and Seppel been so eager to retrieve the coffee grinder immediately, yes, to catch the robber right away, instead of leaving it to the authorities?

The great and wicked wizard Petrosilius Zwackelmann had stated during the castle search that he was only interested in theoretical magic and fried potatoes. But that wasn't true: Upon entering the study, the two investigators had felt an unsettling sensation and, by comparing the dimensions of the room with the hallway and the nearby guest toilet, quickly discovered that there must be a secret chamber in between.

At least, that’s how it would read in the official police report. In reality, the professor had slipped on a puddle of toad slime and, in falling, had knocked the constable headfirst through a portrait of Zwackelmann's great-aunt. It had looked amusing, how the policeman had been stuck up to his neck in the décolletage of the elderly lady. Moreover, the picture had turned out to be a secret door to a storage room. Inside, it had been filled with fruit. Mandarins, peaches, lemons, but above all: plums upon plums. And spices - the room had also smelled of cinnamon with a hint of vanilla. Why was the wizard hiding that? What experiments was he conducting there and with what goal?

And why had Kasperl, cleverly disguised as Seppel, searched the wizard's castle after learning about the Hotzenplotz-Zwackelmann connection? Why had he crawled through the mossy forest at night? He had claimed he needed to procure fairy herb to free the fairy Amaryllis from her captivity. Such a ridiculous story hadn't been heard in a long time. Fairy herb… Pah! Well, a fairy was present, that couldn't be denied. However, this fairy was in turn an opaque figure. Named Amaryllis and suspiciously smelling of rose, that is very… well… indeed: suspicious. She claimed she had been holed up in Zwackelmann's cellar for seven years. Seven years! Absurd. There hadn’t even been a shoe cabinet down there.

And why, at the end of the story, did neither Kasperl nor Seppel marry the beautiful fairy, as would befit a proper fairy tale? Instead, they simply sat down in grandmother's good parlor and…

Of course! It had all been about grandmother's plum cake with whipped cream from the very beginning! And cinnamon and crumbs - for although the sources on the latter were sparse, it was beyond question that Otfried Preussler, being a native Bohemian, knew exactly what a proper plum cake should contain.

That was it: Hotzenplotz had wanted to soften grandmother up with the robbery and then blackmail her into baking him her cake. Zwackelmann had been after the recipe because all his alchemical experiments had apparently yielded no success. And the boys? Quite simply! They must have realized immediately that grandmother would not bake a plum cake with whipped cream (and cinnamon and crumbs) until she got her coffee grinder back - and that’s exactly how it had turned out. As for the fairy: Of course, she had been an accomplice of Zwackelmann, who had switched sides at the last moment and had submerged as a toad in the cellar.

The chain of evidence for the plum cake conspiracy was seamless and impressive. Dimpfelmoser's ridiculous assumption that it could have been a compote conspiracy was off the coffee table. Once again, a mysterious case had been solved.

And now it was time to return to the so-called reality.