by Ulf Durling
‘Very little. He was probably single and independent. What was surprising was the contrast between his strikingly simple clothes and few belongings, and his relative prosperity. For almost two weeks he had occupied a double room which he had paid for in advance. He was probably in need of space because of his walking problems. We should note in passing the boarding house was not cheap for what it was: 24 crowns a night for a single room and 38 for a double.’
‘Have they determined where his money came from?’
‘No. They found some cash in the room, but just a few ten-crown bills. Besides, he had told Blom that money was not a big problem for him but that he wouldn’t be staying long at The Little Boarding- House.’
‘What could he have meant by that?’
‘That he had a source of income we didn’t know about, any more than we knew of his plans.’
‘Did he receive any visitors? Did Blom know anything about any relatives or acquaintances?’
‘I can answer the second question with a no. Regarding the first, it seems he had a visitor during the night of the murder.’
‘A woman?’
Yet another interjection from the doctor. He had up until now been responsible for all the questions. I had been silent, for there was something about the name of the dead man that had drawn my attention. Some memory associated with the name lingered on, just as when one strikes a chord on the piano and the overtones gradually die away, but the keynote lingers and can be discerned a long time after the initial impression has gone.
‘No woman, no. Blom didn’t know who it had been, but he gave the following account: from about eight o’clock, he had been sitting in reception doing his accounts. There were several vacant rooms, but no new guests had arrived. Everything was calm. Around nine o’clock a few of the guests had gone out, either to the cinema or to a café to watch television. The hotel television was out of order, so the lounge on the first floor was empty. You may be aware that on Saturday nights there is a German criminal TV series called Babeck. Shortly after eight o’clock, loud voices could be heard coming from Nilsson's room. There was Nilsson’s own, indistinct but indignant, and another, coarser, male voice, trying to be calmer. They were both angry and wrangled and cursed vehemently.’
‘Why didn't the host interfere? Didn’t any of the other guests complain?’
‘It went on practically without interruption and even Gunnar was surprised that Blom had not at least knocked on the door in question. You mustn’t forget that The Little Boarding House doesn’t enjoy a very high reputation, and Blom seems to have turned a blind eye to much that went on. He decided he would interfere if the noise went on after ten o’clock when, according to notices in all rooms, silence is expected. The guests are asked to observe other rules like not consuming intoxicants, not accepting visitors after ten o’clock and not keeping pets in the rooms.’
‘He was not very particular when it came to that first rule, was he?’
‘No. Knowing of his guest’s fondness for alcohol, Blom must have suspected that they were drinking upstairs, but he chose to do nothing.’
‘What happened then?’
There was no mistaking that the doctor’s curiosity was thoroughly aroused. He was leaning forward in the sofa and had forgotten to stir the sugar in his second cup of tea.
‘At about ten minutes to ten Blom went to his own room—which, by the way, is situated exactly under room number 5, Nilsson’s room. For fifteen minutes he listened to the news on the radio, which is situated in the window-recess, after which he went upstairs in order to subdue the hullaballoo. He listened outside Nilsson’s door, but now it was totally silent, from which he drew the conclusion that the visitor had gone. The door was locked. He confessed that he looked through the keyhole without seeing anything. He remained there for a few minutes, but—no, I’m forgetting, it was not totally silent. Nilsson’s radio was on. There was some kind of lecture being broadcast.’
‘So Nilsson had a radio?’
‘Yes. He’d placed it over by the window. He’d come across an old Philips somewhere.’
‘But how and when had Nilsson’s guest been able to leave the premises?’
‘That’s what Blom found incomprehensible! Nilsson could still be heard swearing at ten minutes to ten, when Blom had completed his monthly accounts. That was why he’d been in the reception area, which also functions as an office. That’s where he keeps his ledgers and binders. The disturber of the peace must have left during the fifteen minutes Blom was listening to the news, but he could not have gone out through the front door because the doorbell had not rung, and Blom himself had been guarding the back door from his room. He is quite adamant about that. After listening outside Nilsson’s door, he locked the front door and put on his radio again. Programme 3 had dance music, which he listened to. At one o’clock he locked the back door and went to bed. He had hung up the back door key on a hook on the inside of the door and it was still there in the morning. The cleaning-lady enters that way with her own key. Blom seems to be very careful when it comes to making sure that no undesirable elements get into the hotel. From his window he can see anyone trying to get in through the back door. Thus, at ten o’clock every evening he locks the front door and hangs out a sign above the doorbell referring guests to the back door. At one o’clock he locks the back door and anyone who comes back after that has to ring the front doorbell. No keys are permitted to leave the building, since they have a tendency to disappear with the guests. Room keys must be hung up outside the respective rooms or handed in at the reception, where they are kept on a wooden board.’
The doctor had been looking troubled throughout this explanation.
‘There’s something odd about this. It doesn’t quite fit.’
‘What is it that doesn’t fit?’
‘Well, why is it necessary to guard the hotel like this? What’s Blom protecting it from? We know about the rowdyism which takes place at The Little Boarding-House and that it’s possible to take women up to the rooms. At the same time, we hear of the owner lying in wait at a window until late at night, seemingly for the purpose of going against what he’s actually making a living from.’
‘What is he making a living from? Isn’t it his hotel business?’
‘Of course, but how? He’s living on occasional guests, for example travelling salesmen, but also on people on shady errands, men who need a room for their love affairs and on more-or-less alcohol addicts, whose drunkenness is accepted by the host. In order to make a living from these kinds of people, he has to count on them bringing in extra guests.’
Carl and I were silent. He was right, of course. But the doctor had still more to say.
‘All that talk about surveillance of front doors and back doors seems to me to be for the benefit of the police. Blom wants to appear in as favourable a light as possible. The police most probably keep an eye on him and he doesn’t want any trouble. He wants to project the image of a clean-living man, a protector of morality and a true enemy of alcohol. As far as I’m concerned, the reputation of The Little Boarding-House doesn’t square with the picture he’s trying to paint of himself. And how can he expect anyone to believe he could possibly keep the back door under surveillance between ten in the evening and one in the morning so that nobody could get in unobserved? Does he spend three hours glued to his bedroom window? It doesn’t fit.’
‘I know it sounds strange, but that’s the way it is. Blom swears that nobody got in or out during that period without his knowledge. He says that his window stands ajar and through the small slit he could even have heard if the gravel outside had crunched.’
The doctor still looked sceptical but preferred for the time being to let the matter rest there. Carl continued his report, which now had been interrupted a couple of times, and his tone intimated that the objections had probably taken some of the pleasure from the climax he had so carefully prepared.
‘In any case, since Blom hadn’t seen anyone else coming in and out,
he concluded that Nilsson’s visitor must have been one of the guests.’
‘Bravo,’ cried the doctor gleefully. ‘Exactly what I’ve been thinking all this time. Continue.’
‘The person Blom suspected was a certain Ivar Johanson, a travelling salesman in furnishing fabrics. His room is upstairs, on the opposite side of the corridor from Nilsson’s. He had been in the hotel the entire evening and had, by the way, been on the telephone, which is on a table in the corridor upstairs, when Blom began knocking on the door of room number 5 the next morning. Johanson had then asked what was up and, when he realised that nobody was answering in the room, he recommended calling the police.’
‘What did Johanson say when the police asked him if he’d been in Nilsson’s room?’
‘He firmly denied it, as did all the other guests, by the way. However, he added that he had knocked at the door around nine o’clock, because “people seemed to be having a good time in there,” but he was not admitted. He had heard Nilsson saying “yea, yea” but nothing else. He felt rebuffed and returned to his room. Another guest, Warrant Officer Renqvist, happened to be passing at the time and confirms he saw Johanson at that particular time.’
During Carl’s latest pronouncement the doctor’s face had gone from red to crimson and from crimson to lilac. That is an unerring sign that a laugh is on its way and, sure enough, it began as a chuckle in his chest and developed into that loud, noisy snorting that inevitably leaves him utterly exhausted and his forehead covered in perspiration.
‘Imagine,’ he chortled, half choking, ‘that touching sight! Johanson, thirsty and longing for company, roaming the corridor, tooth-brush glass in hand. He knocks on the door of number 5, but Nilsson thinks that it’s the host who wants them to calm things down, so he just calls out “yea, yea,” meaning: “We’ll be more quiet.” At that very moment, when Johanson is about to say “It’s only me, Ivar,” the military person arrives and Ivar has to turn around, hiding his glass under his coat and, in a hypocritical way, muttering something to the effect that he had just got matters under control.’
‘That’s how it must have happened, but in the morning Blom still thought that Johanson had left the room around ten o’clock that night, that the party was over by then and that Nilsson had begun listening to the radio when he was alone. Johanson, moreover, declared that he had heard the radio on in room 5 until well after midnight.’
‘Did Johanson and Nilsson know each other?’
‘Only in passing. Johanson asserts, in any case, that he never set foot in Nilsson’s room, since he wanted to avoid being disturbed by the schoolmistresses reading aloud from The Saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf.’
I suddenly recalled the episode in the book when Anna Stjärnhök’s sleigh was pursued by wolves. (In passing, I would like to call attention to the fact that Miss Lagerlöf received a well-merited Nobel Prize in 1909. She also wrote a number of other masterpieces, such as Jerusalem and The Emperor of Portugal.)
Carl continued:
‘Just after ten, then, there was finally quiet in room 5, the door had been locked from the inside and Nilsson was listening to his transistor radio. That’s what the hotel owner claims, anyway. But in the morning Nilsson was found dead and the door was still locked from the inside. Who could believe he was not already dead when the unknown visitor, somehow or other, managed to leave the room and perhaps the hotel? Blom claims that nobody could have left the house unnoticed, and all the other guests deny that they had ever been in room 5. It’s difficult to determine who’s lying, but even more difficult to explain how someone could have managed to get out of a room locked on the inside, leaving behind a corpse listening to the radio. Just before ten o’clock, Blom could still hear the quarrel from room 5, and one hour before ten Nilsson had answered Johanson's knocking at the door and his voice had been unmistakable. Furthermore, he had been downstairs with Blom at the reception only fifteen minutes before that, because he wanted a strip of sticking-plaster.’
‘Plaster?’
Now both the doctor and I were on the alert. This we had not heard before and plaster means, as we know, blood and trauma.
‘Was Nilsson injured?’
‘The hotel owner doesn’t know. He offered to go upstairs with cotton and disinfection fluid, but Nilsson declared, blinking his eyes in that strange way of his, that he only wanted plaster. Blom says he smelled strongly of alcohol.’
‘Did he have any wounds when he was found in the morning? Was there any plaster on him?’
‘No. Gunnar says flatly that he examined the body thoroughly without finding anything that would have needed a plaster. And the plaster itself was nowhere to be found.’
‘So, it could mean that it was the murderer who had been wounded!’
I used the word murderer though the murder, as such, had not been proven as yet.
‘That was what the police thought, but they couldn’t find any plaster in the house or the slightest wound on any of the guests.’
We sat silent for a while. It was pitch dark outside and the wind was rising. One could sense the trees slowly swaying from side to side, but only because of the stars they blocked out as they moved. It was somewhat cooler now and Carl put more logs on the fire, which had already been lit when we arrived and which he had maintained at regular intervals since.
It was almost ten o’clock and I believe we all thought about how Blom would soon be locking the front door of The Little Boarding- House and then be on the lookout for self-invited guests from his room at the back, or perhaps pricking up his ears for crunching noises on the gravel path.
The doctor had long ago hung up his jacket and rolled up his shirt-sleeves. The lighting was deliberately subdued, in order to create the right atmosphere. I lit one of the doctor’s small cigars, though normally I am very abstemious when it comes to tobacco. I savoured the moment before I spoke:
‘Gentlemen, this means, unless I’m very much mistaken, that we have here a case of—.’
‘— the locked room,’ Carl chimed in.
He could not deny himself the pleasure of pronouncing what were, to us, three almost magical words.
We looked at each other, amazed and dumbfounded. It reminded me of one Christmas Eve when, as a child, I looked in disbelief at a set of tin soldiers I had dreamed about but never dared hope for.
‘Yes,’ repeated Carl. ‘It does indeed appear to be a case of the locked room.’
The doctor stared thoughtfully out of the window, then at the fire, then down to his stomach where he had neglected to fasten a shirt button. Now he rectified that slowly and methodically, and, trying unsuccessfully to appear detached, said:
‘If you could prove that Nilsson did not die a natural death, it means, damn it, that he was killed in a locked room around ten o’clock last night. The man was alive until just before ten, as witnessed by Blom. At five minutes after ten, the room was silent except for the radio. The door was locked from the inside and remained so twelve hours later. Nobody could have left the room. After the quarrel, the visitor disappeared as imperceptibly as he had arrived, leaving behind a corpse whose head had hit the edge of the bed. Yes, it might be, but I repeat that several things have to be checked before we know if it really could be a murder in a locked room in our specific sense.’
‘Suicide?’ I asked anxiously.
Unfortunately, it has happened more than once that a well-structured locked room with a corpse inside has turned out not to be the scene of a crime. The author has let the dead person commit suicide under circumstances that point to murder. When you have been struggling with an insoluble murder mystery for 220 pages, such a solution is a downright disappointment. Such a trick of the trade is nothing short of despicable.
‘Poppycock!’ scoffed the doctor. ‘One might knock back a bottle of pills, hang oneself, or shoot oneself to death, but one doesn’t throw oneself at a footboard. Let’s keep a sense of proportion! No, if it wasn’t an accident, it can only be murder and nothing
else.’
‘Not only that,’ added Carl, ‘the murdered man must have got up and switched off the radio during the night, since it was not on this morning.’
A stunned silence followed that remark, during which Carl brought out a bottle of chilled Swedish arrack punch he had been keeping in readiness for the occasion.
3
Space does not permit a detailed analysis here of “the locked room” in detective fiction. I must refer the reader to the very thorough account in The Hollow Man. The room where the murder has taken place must, however, be sealed, the entrances at all events under continuous surveillance and the method of the murderer a mystery. At the end, the solution is revealed and the author forced to explain how the wool has been pulled over the reader’s eyes.
I opened the discussion by declaring:
‘To begin with, we know that the door was locked and that the key was in the lock inside the room.’
‘That’s right,’ Carl agreed. ‘The hotel owner swore in the morning that it was there. He had looked through the keyhole without getting clear sight into the room.’
‘Wait a minute, interjected the doctor. ‘A dark keyhole is not a proof that the key is on the other side. A towel hanging over the door handle would produce the same effect.’
‘Blom is adamant that he saw the key in the hole. Furthermore, they tried the door and found it locked and the bolt was visible. Besides, after smashing the door, they found the key on the doormat.’
‘So it fell down on the mat when Officer Ivehed threw himself at the door?’
‘Yes, it must have slipped out of the keyhole when the door buckled under the impact. Moreover they had knocked and pounded on the door in a heavy-handed way for a long time. As you know, a key could be seated quite loosely if the door had been locked by turning the key only one revolution.’
‘Is it out of the question that the door could have been locked from the outside and the key put into the keyhole on the inside later, using some ingenious mechanism?’