Free My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen

indeed die, at least in a manner of speaking, & lose all hope of seeing her dear face again!
    As I watched them play on, I considered again what Herr Bang had told me, which I had promised not to disclose, & saw how
it fitted in with what Gudrun had said. And then a notion struck me, clear as a pearl, & my heart went pit-a-pat, & while
the aces & the kings & the queens & the numbers flew again, I watched the two women with their fast fingers & their quick
flashes of argument & the red & the black, & then suddenly all hearts & diamonds, spades & clubs ranked up in groups of flushes
& they laughed & cheered. And quietly I took my leave of the two of them in the candle-light, with the first scent of Christmas
spices hanging in the air.
    We would feast upon a tasty fat goose with apple & prune stuffing, accompanied by sugared potatoes with lashings of gravy;
& then, when even Fru Schleswig thought she could eat no more, there would appear before us a palely fragrant rice pudding
bloated with whipped cream & flavoured with chopped almonds, served with cherry sauce, & the prize of a marzipan pig for whichever
one of us found the whole nut hidden in the pudding, followed by as much port as we could glug down. Such were the opulent
temptations I described to persuade the obese one – who is not a creature of intelligence, as you will have gleaned, O precious
reader – into assisting with my plan, for I told her there might be money to be had by it, & money meant a succulent Christmas
meal, if she complied. Soon she was drooling, for being of a gluttonous disposition, the prospect of large quantities of fine
victuals made enough of an impression to win her assistance – for what it was worth. (Though as you shall shortly see, it
was worth nothing, & it was thanks to her that the whole scheme went so horribly awry.)
    Fired up with a quart of schnapps, we waited until the clock chimed half past eleven, then made our way in the freezing, owl-hooting
dark to the Krak residence, Fru Schleswig waddling behind me & grumbling all the while about her pore neez. There, thanks to the enterprising Gudrun’s pilfered key, we entered quiet as church mice (or should I say quiet as one small
discreet church mouse & one large clumsy ox), & descended the spiral stairs that debouched directly into the basement, where
we waited for the church bell to ring midnight, for my plan was for Fru S to attack the lock just as it tolled, & time the
blows of her pickaxe to coincide with their ringing, thus muffling the sound of our illicit activities. I must pride myself
here on coming up with such an inspired scheme, for it worked so brilliantly that within three mighty strokes, Fru S had forced
the lock open: with a sudden lurch the door swung wide like a gaping mouth, exposing a yawning darkness within. Here was what
Gudrun Olsen had called the Oblivion Room.
    Tick, tock.
    We stood in silence for a moment, our eyes straining against the pitch dark, which the lantern barely permeated. So far, there
was no sight or sound of human life. But what was I hoping for? Had I really been expecting to come face to face with Professor
Krak?
    Feeling both relieved & disappointed not to see the man step out in person, I shooed Fru S on to the landing & ordered her
in a fierce whisper to stand guard there, in case Fru Krak awoke & came to interrupt us. Well aware that the slothful creature
was capable of falling asleep at any moment (even when standing up, in the manner of a horse or cow), I instructed her to
sing ‘Tragic Johanna’ under her breath, & in this way stay conscious while I performed my survey of the Oblivion Room. And
so off she lumbered to the landing of the spiral staircase & settled herself there, mumbling incoherencies under her breath
about what had she done to be so cursed with her only child, & ‘howe dare any dorter boss her pore old mutha so’.
    Fru Schleswig dispatched to her duties, I wielded my