Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

pulled the lanyard on the brass bell by the front door, steeling myself to see Todtenhausen himself, but when nothing happened, and I was about to ring the bell again, the door behind the screen moved inwards. An older woman, wearing an apron, hair tied up in a bun, stepped cautiously from behind it. She was rather attractive by heterosexual standards, dressed in the apron and long dress of a typical Brazilian hausfrau. I launched my prepared introduction, a hat in my hand against my chest in the Latin manner, then I stopped dead mid-sentence. Peeling back the layers of twenty years, imagining her gray hair dark, skin not wrinkled, a bit less growth of ears and nose, I recognized her as sister Kathe.

I dropped the entire case of wine on my foot.

Nicolaus: Gobsmacked

Only one bottle broke, and by the welcome alcoholic fragrance, obviously one of the bottles with real wine. It poured through the cardboard case and onto the ground just outside the door. Kathe tut-tutted her way through a quick clean up, handing me a rag for my shoe, and helped me deposit the case of remaining bottles ignominiously by the muddy shoes and jackets kept just inside the door. I struggled to regain my composure and place the meeting back on a footing that I could control as Kathe ushered me past an enormous grandfather clock. But I failed badly.

A distinguished gentleman, hair going white over one temple, entered from a room beyond to take in the commotion, introduced himself as Procrustes Damastes. My heart sank. He looked nothing like I imagined Todtenhausen would look, but then, he had twenty years, the skills, and the equipment to fix that. He certainly wasn’t the Helmut Gorgass I saw eaten by the dog. Could there be another on this planet with that name? I had no interest in assassinating a man because he had the misfortune of sharing the name of another victim of wrongful assassination.

I rushed through the amenities in my best Portuguese, still shaken, as we sat in overstuffed chairs by an unlit fireplace in the receiving room. I gestured to the case of wine positioned next to the grandfather clock, noted the time, 2:30pm, and made my presentation of it as gift for his estate to sample at its leisure, and then finally broached the artificial business of buying this year’s harvest from him.

My spirits lifted again when he spoke to the housekeeper, in German with a slight Greek accent to open a bottle for us to sample while talking business. I made some silly comment to imply I did not understand what he had just said, and would he repeat it in English? As he did so, I checked the first mental box: Speaks German with a slight Greek accent.

I rose to retrieve one of the real bottles, but the man motioned for me to sit back down, indicating in English that the reason one had housekeepers was to perform these functions. I am usually quite good at improvising, and in other circumstances might have invented an excuse to prevent Kathe from drawing another bottle. But these were not those circumstances, and I could not stop Kathe from drawing another bottle from the case at random without making an ugly scene. She was drawing from a case of only five good bottles and six explosive ones, a 45% chance that we would all walk away from her selection alive.

She moved a table with a top that folded down to serve the wine, revealing an object on the fireplace hearth I had not noticed when I first walked in. It was a German Shepherd heeling in permanent obeisance. It had been stuffed and mounted. I check another mental box: Geronimo the dog. Again, the meager insouciance I had mustered since arriving drained away like the wine in the broken bottle on the porch.

The man, perhaps himself a poker player, noticed the change in my face as I stared at the mounted German Shepherd. Thinking I might be admiring his handiwork, he asked if I liked it and explained that his side hobby, aside from growing grapes, was taxidermy. Another box checked: Taxidermy. This Damastes was the right Gorgass, which is to say, Todtenhausen. My heartbeat increased, but so did my resolve.

Kathe pulled the cork on her randomly picked bottle. No explosion. She poured three demitasses. Todtenhausen performed the usual ritual of sniffing, slurping, testing the brix, and examining the legs, and a look of perplexity crossed his face. Another sniff and another sip before asking me to confirm that this wine was from California, a region not yet known as a world-class wine producer. As he examined the label, I assured him that it was, my composure beginning to slip again wondering if Halina had made a label forgery error.

But if the label had not raised Todtenhausen’s skepticism, it was certainly the wine itself. He declared in German to the housekeeper that this was certainly a Bavarian Gewürztraminer. He doubted it came from California, and he asked her to get another bottle so he could compare. The chances of her grabbing a benign bottle of actual wine were stacked against the room, now four in ten, 40%. If this bottle did not explode when she opened it, the others certainly will in another sixty minutes, unless I stop the dead-man switch timer.

This bottle was opened uneventfully, with little ceremony. There was no explosion, no bouquet of manure and engine fuel. But this viticulture roulette had to stop now. The next bottle would have a sixty-seven percent chance of being loaded.

Todtenhausen declared with certainty that this was a German grape, if not actual German fermented wine being counterfeited as Californian. He looked at me, struggling for the right English word.

“…Erstaunt? How do you say?”

“Gobsmacked?” I offered just as I realized I had fallen into a trap. This sly fellow was checking boxes of his own. He glanced at Kathe, who took a noticeable breath after I