Open Grave: A Mystery (20 page)

“Perhaps I should check on Viola,” said Greta.

“She’s sleeping,” said Ann. “I can tell that something is bothering you. Are you worried about your sister?”

“No, not anymore,” said Greta with bitterness twisting her mouth. “They have always treated people like whores, everyone who worked there.”

“You too?”

Greta nodded. With her fingers she twined a thread that was hanging loose from a small lace tablecloth. Ann guessed that she was the one who put it on top of the oilcloth.

“I got away,” she said. “But Anna didn’t. Do you know that she lived with Viola for a while?”

“Who is Anna?”

Greta looked up in surprise.

“My oldest sister. She had to live here. Our parents were very strict. They couldn’t bear that Anna gave notice at Ohler’s, so when she came back to the island she was not welcome. Papa was convinced that she had behaved badly and had to quit for that reason. So he sent me as a replacement to Ohler’s. I was only fourteen. It was during the war. I lasted for nine long years. Then it was Agnes’s turn.”

“What had Anna done?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Anna was the most peaceful creature you could imagine.”

“So she had to stay here?”

“Viola took pity on her. She never forgave Papa. Or Mama either. Viola said that a mother who did not defend her children was not a true Christian. Anna lived here almost a year. She did not visit Mama and Papa a single time. It’s only a kilometer or so through the pasture and L
ö
vgren’s hill.”

Greta told about God’s Army and how her father had preached in his own house, condemned his daughter as faithless.

“The congregation revived during the war, people were worried, and then they got Anna to think about. It’s always good to have some sinner who you know about, who you can condemn and lament over. Agnes said that it never smelled of brimstone as much as then. She was always afraid, she was just a little girl. And Anna had always been so kind to her, but then suddenly she became the devil incarnate. I avoided hearing that myself. I cried myself to sleep in the maid’s chamber at Ohler’s.”

“What happened to Anna then?”

“She moved from the island. Went south.”

Ann guessed that Anna was dead. The thread from the cloth had now definitely come loose and Greta wrapped it slowly around her left index finger. It was a gesture of absentminded playfulness that contradicted the seriousness that marked her face.

“Did Anna forgive her parents?”

Greta slowly shook her head.

“Not that I know of,” she said.

“You had no contact?”

“I know that she wrote to Viola,” said Greta. “Anna was eternally grateful to her for the support she got when she came back from the Ohlers.”

She unwound the thread from her finger and looked hastily up.

“Do you think there are people who wish Ohler harm?”

Ann felt a sting of bad conscience that she had apparently so quickly seemed to leave Anna to her fate, but Greta appeared almost relieved.

“I firmly believe that,” she said. “Those kinds of bigwigs always make enemies.”

“Has Agnes mentioned anything? I understand that you don’t want to gossip, but we have a difficult situation,” said Ann deliberately vaguely.

“I think you also have a difficult situation,” said Greta, pursing her lips.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s written all over you. You came here to see Viola, but you’re shaky as an aspen leaf because of Edvard. And now you’re playing cops and robbers awhile to stop thinking about Edvard.”

Ann’s cheeks turned bright red.

“Yes, it’s true,” she said. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

Of course she’s right, thought Ann, and cursed her own insensitivity. She was playing policewoman in a dying woman’s kitchen, while the great love of her life was chopping wood simply to avoid being confronted with her.

“I am like an aspen leaf,” she said. “But now I’ll drive home and leave you in peace.”

It sounded more self-pitying than she intended.

“Agnes hasn’t said anything,” said Greta. “I know everything and I despise that house and, may God forgive me, the whole family. I don’t understand how Agnes endures. I go there to help her. She has gotten so tired.”

Ann got up. The tension made her tremble.

“Thanks, Greta,” she said. “I’m glad that I came here. I got to talk with Viola awhile. Perhaps you think I’m insensitive for coming here, but Viola was like a mother to me too.”

Greta gave her a quick glance and Ann saw the surprise in her eyes.

“And then I got to see Edvard, that he seems to be doing well. And got to talk with you awhile too.”

Ann extended her hand across the table and in that way also forced Greta to get up. They shook hands and Ann left the kitchen, closing the veranda door behind her. It had cleared up and the stars were sparkling.

Like before, she thought, but took care not to stay on the farmyard staring at the sky. Edvard was nowhere in sight. She hesitated a few moments before she got in the car.

*   *   *

She drove down the hill
toward the ferry, passed the church, and checked whether the old man was still sitting on the wall, which he was. Everything was as it should be on the island. As the fifth and final car she rolled on board. Immediately the gate closed behind her and the ferry departed.

Thoughtfully she remained sitting a few seconds before she put on the hand brake, got out of the car, and went up to the railing. She let out a sob in sorrow, but also felt pride that she managed the encounter with Edvard so well. The mainland came ever closer, she wished she could have stood at the railing longer.

She got an impulse to call home but refrained. For one thing she knew that Anders and Erik got along well together, and for another she was unwilling to break the enchantment at finding herself on the Road Administration’s ungainly, clumsy ferry.

It struck her that this series of events and emotions that were layered over each other in a single house, Viola’s, expressed everything there was to say about life. A single house. One of thousands, millions.

Viola had experienced almost a hundred years of sorrows and joy by turn. People came and went in her house. Viktor her whole life. Edvard who by chance happened to rent a room and stayed. Anna who in the 1940s got a sanctuary, and then herself fifty or sixty years later.

“Anna,” she mumbled. “Anna and Ann.”

The thud of the ferry against the abutment made her wipe away the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. If she could only blow her nose, the way Edvard used to do! Just keep on blowing, then everything was cleared out.

I managed it!
she thought, and drove off the ferry. Viola was her next thought.
Now you will pass away. Edvard will carry you, just as he carried Viktor.
She suddenly pictured Edvard, felt his hands.

She was exploding with loss and absence, and could only barely steer to the side and stop the car.

I didn’t manage it!

The rest of the drive to Uppsala was a reprise of a previous trip many years earlier. That time when everything was over. Convulsively she held on to the steering wheel and guided the car in a headwind toward the southwest.

Nineteen

The uneasiness gave way as
he dug. At nine he took a break, put the spade into the ground and sat down on a rickety garden chair that he leaned up against the wall. He had coffee, ate a sandwich, and enjoyed the October sun that had just found its way onto Lundquist’s lot.

In front of him was his work, the hole he had excavated. A new grave. To avoid removing the excavated clay soil, he had used it to form a little bow-shaped ridge at the one edge. He had previously carted in lighter, more humus-filled soil, which he tipped into a neat pile on the lawn alongside the excavation.

In the hole he would plant a magnolia, which stood in a garbage bag against the wall. Alongside were three sacks of compost. As ground cover he would use wintergreen, an unimaginative choice perhaps, but a safe bet, hardy and invasive as it was. And he appreciated its blue flowers. The magnolia was a Wada’s Memory, one of the best white-blooming varieties. It would all be complemented with a few Himalayan windflowers and, as a companion to the magnolia, the witch alder from the neighbor. He would also dig down a few yellow stars-of-Bethlehem. Spring dominance with an element of sparkling autumn fire, that was the intention.

What a joy it was just to be able to look at his work, and actually be able to touch it. A bus driver had every reason to be proud of his job, his trips, but purely physically there wasn’t much to show afterward. A teacher might feel satisfaction when her pupils understood what she was talking about, but there was nothing tangible that testified to her exertions.

A landscaper on the other hand could return to his workplace five, ten, or fifty years later and see that the result of his work was there, a stair, a wall, a horse chestnut, or whatever it was, and many times more magnificent than the design. A stone worn by feet, rain, and wind became lovelier with the years, a striped maple’s full beauty did not appear until after a couple of decades.

Whether the magnolia would be alive in fifty years was uncertain, but it would bloom splendidly every spring in any event as long as he himself was alive and certainly many years after.

He thought he heard pounding from the professor’s house. A window opened and he saw the elderly woman, whom he assumed was domestic help, hook it fast. She must have a lot to do now, he thought, and let his eyes sweep across the fa
ç
ade with all its windows, eighteen in all and those on only the back side of the house.

His mother had written about how laborious it was to clean all the windows in the house, even if there were several who helped out. Three times a year the ritual had to be gone through. Now it was probably less often, he assumed. They looked gray and shabby.

The thoughts of his mother and thereby the Ohler clan made him uneasy. With a little effort he got on his feet, he was getting more and more stiff. He stared at the massive house, tried to imagine his mother there. In her diaries she had laconically yet vividly described the routines, her coworkers, and the gentry. There was also an element of sensationalism when she described the intrigues and gossip that always arose in a big household. But Karsten did not think that was strange, she had been young and inexperienced.

The notes from the first few months were filled with wonder at the life in Carl von Ohler’s home. She described the toilets as if they were marvels and the number of exclamation points when she told how many sheets, crystal glasses, and table settings there were in the house testified to her excitement.

But soon the exclamation points in the diaries would have a different connotation.

Karsten Heller was seized by a desire to see the house from inside. He wanted to walk on the stairs where his mother had walked, see the gigantic bookcases in the library that she so solemnly described, and take a look in the kitchen. But that was impossible. He would never be let in, whatever pretext he resorted to.

He could in principle force his way in, or sneak in. He smiled to himself. Break in but without intention to steal. What could that be classified as? Breaking and entering perhaps?

The woman in the window reminded him of his mother’s fate and also made him aware of the continuity. Even today women served at Ohler’s, exactly like sixty or seventy years ago, and he wondered how many had come and gone over the years. How many there were who had had experiences similar to his mother.

He had not followed the political squabbling about domestic services and maid’s deduction very closely, but after finding his mother’s diaries the debate had a different connotation for him. The books were a unique testimony by a woman in the most subordinate position you can imagine and the feeling that he was the one who had to make the text known was growing ever stronger. It would be a contrasting image to the national Nobel Prize frenzy and bombastic tributes. He readily admitted that there was a large measure of desire for revenge in this wish to expose the Ohler family.

He was returned to reality by a signal from his cell phone. It was Roffe from the nursery he usually used who reported that two flats of wintergreen were now ready for pick up. Would twenty-eight plants be enough? He cast a glance across the surface. Since he made the order he had expanded the flower bed by a couple of square meters. Sure, he thought, I’ll spread them out, they’ll quickly grow together.

It fell into place: the magnolia, perennials, and then the witch alder. He picked up an Ingrid Marie apple and chewed meditatively. He decided to wait for twilight before he went to work.

Twenty

Ann
Lindell was on a
stroll through her old investigations, that was how she experienced it. She had never seen such a dull period before. The crooks really had taken a fall vacation. She could pick a little absentmindedly at what was now on her desk, including a number of cases that were very well-seasoned. Fortunately the folders were not starting to smell like old cheese; instead they were drying out, shrinking, and sinking deeper and deeper into a dusty forgetfulness. But she had a three-year-old rape in English Park that she could not let go of, even if she realized that the prospects for success were not particularly good.

On the other hand she had a knifing at a bar in the center of town. She ought to do something about that. It looked like a dispute in criminal circles, as the local newspaper called it. The chances of solving the case were moderately good. There was presumably someone out there who would profit from the perpetrator going away for a few years. Perhaps she ought to dig a little more? There was a tip about a Ludwig Ohrman, who should be questioned. She stared at his list of credits. Not a nice guy, she could see that.

She pushed aside his CV and became lost in thoughts about yesterday’s outing to Gr
ä
s
ö
. It had left a bad taste in her mouth. She regretted not having said goodbye to Edvard. She had been uncertain whether she could cope with a strained good-bye on the farmyard and instead sneaked off with the thought of calling him later. But that did not seem like a good idea either. She simply could not muster the courage. She was afraid of his judgment. Had he put it all behind him, forgiven her? She was also afraid of her own reaction. She did not want a romantic nostalgia trip back in time to destroy everything she had built up with such effort. Edvard was history. Sure, he still had that magnetic influence over her, she had felt it immediately, but now she had a new life to live. Being thrown back several years was not an alternative.