by Ulf Durling
‘Why?’
‘To find out if Axel Nilsson really signed in there one and a half months ago.’
‘But he wouldn’t have signed under his own name. Whatever name appears in the hotel register, it won’t be Axel Nilsson.’
‘So what? How do criminals in our mystery novels proceed?’
‘They use a false name.’
‘Exactly. Most writers of detective novels write in English. What name do murderers mostly choose when they want to use an alias?’
‘Well, anything goes. I don’t know.’
‘Of course you do! Murderers mostly use the most common name they can think of. John Brown, William Smith and so on.’
‘It wouldn’t do here.’
‘No, of course not. But they would use the same method. I bet the hotel guest who stole the key called himself Erik Andersson or Lars Pettersson. Something like that. Anything but Axel Nilsson. We need to ask Blom about it.’
What Efraim proposed was indeed an exciting experiment.
It was only a quarter past twelve and Blom didn’t go to sleep until one, so we wouldn’t be disturbing him. We decided for me to say that an acquaintance of mine and his wife might have stayed at the hotel around September 12. Blom would tell me that around that date he didn’t have any couples in his double rooms (I counted on it being the off-peak season and the boarding-house being hardly the kind of place where people would stay overnight with their wives) and that my friends must have chosen another accommodation, since his only occupied double room had been held by a single man. After I somehow managed to explain away the wife, I could ask if the name of the guest was Erik Andersson. Using a possible excuse for asking, perhaps by mentioning that my friend had forgotten a valuable item of equipment and had asked me to try to trace it, I would probably be able to get hold of the name Axel Nilsson had been hiding behind.
I reminded myself not to forget to beg my pardon for troubling the establishment and its night porter at this late and inconvenient time.
Our conversation took about one minute. When I replaced the handset and turned to the doctor and Carl, who were scarcely visible in the darkness in front of the almost burned-out fire, they asked me immediately if I had obtained the name.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Erik Andersson?’
‘No, Axel Nilsson.’
6
Once we’d recovered from the shock, I had to report the conversation again with scrupulous accuracy. Blom had replied in the negative to the question of whether an acquaintance of mine had put up at the boarding house a month and a half ago and had subsequently returned his room key, which he had taken with him by mistake. After which, Blom had looked in his register and asked me whether Axel Nilsson was the person I was talking about, that being the only name which fit within the period of time I had mentioned.
‘Just imagine,’ said Carl, suddenly jumping to his feet, ‘if Axel wrote from America that he would be returning home and asked for help in getting a—.’
‘Please wait,’ I asked, but Carl was not to be stopped.
‘— commodious hotel room booked. The recipient of the letter suspected complications and misappropriated the key himself when he put up at The Little Boarding-House in the name of Axel Nilsson.’
‘Why?’ the doctor asked incredulously.
‘Because the murderer thought that Nilsson himself wanted to put up under an assumed name. With the key, the murderer could perform his trick last night. What do you think?’
Carl looked expectant, but we were just perplexed.
‘That’s unfortunately impossible,’ I pointed out regretfully.
‘What’s impossible?’
‘Everything. The missing key has turned up.’
I hadn’t had time to tell them that Blom had also informed me that he’d actually found the key, which had been lost for a long time, on the bottom of a chair in room 5 that very same evening. After which, Blom had begun talking about the weather in a very detailed way, leading me to suspect that our conversation over the telephone was being traced, so I hung up.
The discovery of the missing key had caused everything to collapse. But when we began to pick everything to pieces we found that there were more things that, disquietingly, didn’t hold together.
Axel Nilsson couldn’t have had any reason to appear at the boarding house under his correct name on two different occasions, but in two different disguises. If the purpose had been to get hold of the key, he would have had to avoid at all costs being recognized when he returned. Why, then, use the same name? Furthermore, the landlord would already have sensed there was something in the wind during the first visit, if Nilsson at that time had demanded a double room for himself. It would also have been impossible for Edvin to have killed his brother, obliterated every trace of himself from the room, planned his escape, arranged the locked room and exited, all in the space of the mere quarter of an hour he’d had at his disposal.
We had to accept that the radio hadn’t been on for the purpose of delaying the suspicions of those who heard the quarrel. Axel Nilsson had indeed actually been listening to the radio.
The doctor also pointed out that there would have been a label on the bottle of pills giving the name of the patient, and had the name been any other than that of Axel Nilsson, the police would have become suspicious.
Concerning the cheese knife, Carl pointed out that it hadn’t been recovered. If the knife had indeed played a harmless part, why then didn’t the murderer leave it behind?
We even succeeded in demonstrating that the idea of the Nilsson brothers living together was contradicted by Ivar Johanson’s knowledge of Selma Lagerlöf.
It had often rained during the night in the week when the readings- out-loud were alleged to have taken place, so it was highly improbable that Edvin would have been turned out of the room in the middle of the night in order for Axel to receive his visitor. Therefore, we reasoned, the travelling salesman must have been lying when he stated that he’d never been inside room 5, since he demonstrably must have caught isolated parts of The Saga of Gösta Berling through the wall in room 5. Nilsson himself did not know what book it was. We concluded that Johanson had concealed his dealings with Nilsson for fear of being unnecessarily under suspicion for what happened during that Saturday evening.
No, the hidden brother had never existed. Nilsson had mostly been drinking alone in his room.
I tried to formulate something to the effect that it probably had been wet out of doors as well as inside room 5 during the nights, but I was the only one who laughed.
When we were at last forced to find an explanation for the fact that Axel Nilsson had put up at the boarding-house around September 12, we were forced to accept that the name is not that uncommon and that a random occurrence was probably the explanation for the key thief being a namesake of our corpse. It was at that moment that the telephone rang. We immediately understood what that implied.
The phone call to the boarding-house must have been traced and Gunnar Bergman wanted an explanation. It was Carl who took the call. People talk about half-choked voices: his was more like strangled.
But even this last phone call ended in anticlimax, this time a rather positive one. It was Kerstin, Carl’s daughter-in-law, who wanted to know about the health situation. She apologized for calling so late, but her husband had told her that on this particular night one could call even after midnight. She herself felt fine and she wished us a good night.
I took the opportunity to let Carl convey that I personally was very fit and that I had not noticed any influenza signs.
We all three understood that her call was at the behest of her husband, who was thus communicating his knowledge of our interference in the affairs of the police authorities. It felt like a rebuke.
Before we parted company, the host of the evening was supposed to deliver a comprehensive summary of the evening’s events, but given that it had lasted until half past midnight, and therefore far later tha
n usual, Carl was unanimously relieved of that duty.
We thanked him for an exceedingly pleasant evening, perhaps our most successful to date. In spite of our surface cordiality, certain undertones of disappointment, dissatisfaction and general misgivings could be detected with regard to the lingering unsolved questions.
As we were putting on our coats and shaking hands at the door, Carl surprised us by accompanying us in order to get a breath of fresh air. Since during the Sunday evening sessions a small glass of alcohol of some kind is generally served (which is especially welcome during the cold autumn evenings), the doctor had fortunately left his car at home. I can reveal that, although he is an experienced driver, we often have differing opinions about the meaning of certain road signs and traffic signals; and that his chattiness at the wheel, together with his sidelong glances at the passengers, greatly contributes to his diminished attention.
It was a starry night. The wind was blowing quite forcefully, but we were quite sheltered as we walked along the avenue towards the Kungsbron. Just a few night wanderers crossed our path.
Although we were making strenuous efforts to avoid the topic we had spent so many hours discussing, it became abundantly clear that Carl wanted to have the final word.
His home is on the edge of town. Wealthy inhabitants have built their houses in this neighbourhood and the area has an air of stylish and snobbish isolation. Our path naturally took us along Kungsbroallén to the Bus Square and then Centralgatan towards the Old Homestead Museum. After that it was a short walk to Åbrogatan, from which point the doctor had a mere five minutes before reaching home. He would, incidentally, pass by the boarding house if he chose to take Rosenborgsvägen, a considerably longer walk. In that part of town, Centralgatan extends over a kilometre and we had to spend ten minutes to cover the distance.
It took exactly as much time, after we had left the Bus Square, for Carl to solve the problem we had grappled with during the previous four hours.
I had actually thought of buying a hot dog at the stall by the Bus Square, but, out of consideration for Carl, who had been an excellent and generous host, I refrained.
7
‘What’ wrong with our reasoning up to now,’ Carl began, ‘is that we’ve taken for granted that the murderer—either by pure chance or thanks to a casual impulse—succeeded in leaving his victim in a locked room. As a matter of fact, the locked room is the evidence that a murder must have taken place. For various reasons, even Gunnar thought that Nilsson was murdered; although we don’t know why. Due to our insufficient knowledge of Axel Nilsson’s relationships with different persons in town, we have mostly dwelt upon the technical details of the murder rather than the motive.’
He paused to allow for objections, but when they did not materialise he continued:
‘Efraim thought that the murder had been an accident, and that the culprit was unaware of what he had done. Thus Nilsson’s death was the unforeseen consequence of the fight, in which even the murderer was wounded. On the other hand, according to Johan, who presented an admirable but quite far-fetched theory, Edvin felt enraged at his brother having duped him, which led—as the result of a violent quarrel—to the manslaughter. And facing fait accompli, upset, intoxicated and wounded, the perpetrator was able to devise a clever version of the locked room and implement that plan! But could the murderer’s moves and escape have been executed in such a perfect way if it had indeed been a mere accident and a pure happenstance that he was able to recognise and exploit?’
We didn’t really understand what Carl was getting at, but his views commanded our outright approval. Something in his pitch and execution suggested that this was merely a beginning.
‘Let me put it bluntly! We know from our … literary experiences that the perfect murder, or even the next-to-perfect one, demands careful planning. Here we have a perfect murder, at least in the sense that it seems to have been committed in the classic locked room, and so I now call for the perfect perpetrator!’
‘You mean a murderer who ...?’ I asked.
‘... who planned everything down to the smallest detail and who, and this is important, had a motive. Find out who had the greatest reason to get rid of Axel Nilsson and then you most probably have your murderer!’
‘It sounds simple, but we don’t know enough.’
‘We can assume and guess once more. Third time lucky! The murderer must have had some kind of relationship to Nilsson. Who has such a connection to him? Do we not have at least one such person?’
‘Well, we don’t know. No wrong committed ten years ago could still be so topical that it motivates a murder now, and—in contrast to Edvin— Axel had, as far as we know, not been refused admittance here. He could return here and nobody here would mean anything to him, and he himself would mean nothing to anybody.’
‘He would to one person!’
‘And who might that be?’
‘His daughter!’
‘Yes, of course. But you can’t be suggesting that a—let me see—nine or ten year old girl would be likely to take revenge on her lost father, whom she’d never seen, hardly heard from and perhaps never even heard of?’
I understood of course what Carl meant, but I thought for a moment of Crooked House by Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen’s The Tragedy of Y and The Bad Seed by William March, where the writers’ speculations about juvenile murderers bestowed the stories with an extra mysterious and macabre character.
‘You’re thinking of the mother of the child,’ I ventured.
‘Yes. Whoever she is, it wouldn’t be appreciated if the father—
especially not this parody of a father—shows up all of a sudden and begins to act.’
‘He wouldn’t have much to gain. Just think of the child welfare board and all his maintenance advances.’
‘That’s right, but just because of that, any small amount he could get would be important.’
That was another subtle wording that made us confused.
‘He could create a lot of trouble for the mother of the child, and she might try to get rid of him.’
‘Do you mean that she might murder him in order to get away from being harassed? But what would he gain from causing her to lead a dog’s life?’
‘He could threaten her by thrusting himself on her, demanding right of access to the child, revealing spicy details from her past, and generally raising hell in the town with the intention of bringing disgrace down upon the daughter. He could demand compensation to avoid that. What would the poor mother feel if he started visiting the daughter, appealing to her childish compassion, deluding her into believing a lot of lies, waiting for her outside her school, disgracing her in front of her schoolmates, and so on?’
‘Carl’s right,’ the doctor put in. ‘Such behaviour would be in line with what we know about Nilsson’s personality. He wouldn’t hesitate to do something of the kind. Maybe the daughter, if her mother has married, believes that her stepfather is her biological father. A sudden exposure without warning about the fatherhood could be harmful. We could come up with a dozen valid reasons why it would be better to put Axel Nilsson out of the way rather than allow him to encroach on his former girlfriend’s life.’
‘You mean that if we can identify her, then we have the murderer, or in this case, the murderess?’ I asked.
‘Yes, or her husband, if she is married. They have created a mutual existence and a common future; they may have children together and a prosperous life. Axel could have known of all this because of letters from his mother before she died. Since he was almost certainly in a state of destitution in America—and, on top of that, suffering from a heart disease—he might decide that a little bloodsucking or blackmailing could lead to a more comfortable life.’
The doctor had been silent during Carl’s exposition.
There was no doubt that he had accepted all this. Moreover, he seemed as if he were searching his memory for something. In fact, this something would turn out to be manna from heaven.
>
We had walked just about half way and, of all coincidences, this one happened just at the right time and place. Centralgatan is, as the name of the street suggests, situated in the central part of town and is our most distinguished shopping street. Here are the big department stores and the banks, and here our lawyers, dentists and doctors have their offices, receptions and consulting-rooms. Even Dr. Efraim Nylander. He stopped outside Centralgatan 47 with the familiar sign advertising that he exercised his doctor’s practice upstairs. He fished a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, ushered us inside and proceeded to climb the two half-flights of stairs without a word. We followed him and were directed into the small waiting room.
‘A moment, gentlemen. I have a surprise for you,’ he said mysteriously, and disappeared into a room which I knew he used for his examinations.
There was a sofa and three Windsor-style chairs in the waiting room. On a table were battered weekly magazines, Hemmets Journal, Vi, Hoppets Härold and Allers. On the window sill were some drooping begonias. They had not been watered for several days. On the wall was a faded reproduction of the painting Grindslanten. It showed some poor children fighting over a coin which had been thrown at their feet from a passing carriage as payment for opening a road gate. The painting could be alluding to the doctor’s modest remuneration, or maybe the fight for patients and their symptoms among his colleagues.
After a minute, the doctor appeared with a card in his hand.
‘Exactly what I thought,’ he said in a satisfied way. ‘When I returned the document about Axel Nilsson to the Temperance Board, I made some notes for myself on a case-book card. Obviously, I wanted to have it in readiness if Nilsson resurfaced and the examination ever actually took place. Let’s see now!’
He put the card in front of us on the table. The notes were, needless to say, illegible, but with a little bit of good will one could divine that the scrawls in the beginning symbolised the name of Axel Nilsson.