Hard Cheese

by Ulf Durling

‘Born March 2, 1917. Here we have some information of medical interest, but after that we have social circumstances: Unmarried, no children. Fiancée: Rose-Marie Åhlund, dental nurse trainee. Well, that’s it.’

  ‘Then we must hope that he didn’t make any other girls pregnant before he did a bunk,’ Carl objected prudently.

  ‘Yes, of course. What do we do now?’

  ‘Do you have a phone directory?’

  The doctor fetched one. Carl took it and turned over the pages with a deft hand to the letter Å.

  ‘We only have three subscribers with that surname. Åhlund, Beata, Mrs.—no, Åhlund, Christer, smith worker—what about that?’

  ‘Who’s the third one?’ the doctor asked. He was on tenterhooks.

  ‘Åhlund, Sven. Does it say anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. Wait a minute.’

  The doctor disappeared again and returned after a few seconds with another card. I saw that the name on the new card was Sven Åhlund.

  ‘We must check his address,’ he muttered and searched in the directory.

  ‘You’ve written Jul... Jolin...’

  ‘Johanneslundsvägen 3,’ the doctor interrupted me irritably. ‘That's right. No, I don't know Sven, but I have a card here for Maja Åhlund.’

  The name on the card was Maja and not Sven. The doctor’s handwriting made the difference almost indiscernible.

  ‘Maja Åhlund’ he read, ‘born November 9, 1908. She seems to have come to me about depression in the early 1960’s... Phenobarbital tincture, yes, very well. Here: Worse, referred to Saint Katarina hospital. She was obviously in a bad way. No more notes. I assume she recovered.’

  ‘But where do we have Rose-Marie?’

  I had hardly been able to hide my impatience during the reading aloud from the journal and my eyes darted to the table, where the cover of a weekly magazine displayed a sickly-sweet Central European royal couple in colour. They were standing embracing each other on the lawn in front of a castle-like building.

  ‘These are her parents!’

  I gave a start, hit by the impossibility of Rose-Marie Åhlund being of noble descent. The time was almost one o’clock and an insistent sleepiness might excuse me for my mistake. I had to say something sharp-witted.

  ‘So she’s either still living at home, or she’s moved.’

  No one seemed particularly impressed by my remark.

  ‘She’s probably married.’

  ‘Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to call around at this time of night to ask the housewives of the town if their maiden name was Åhlund,’ Carl pointed out. ‘We must be content with what we have for the moment. If we eliminate Sven and Maja Åhlund as murderers we can … is there anything else about the siblings of Rose-Marie?’

  The doctor picked up the card and looked at the scribble on both sides.

  ‘How fortunate! I don't usually mention anything about the children of my female patients unless they have gynecological problems. In this case, I can see that she consulted me in 1948 for vaginal discharge and ....’

  Medical secrecy could be difficult to observe at one o’clock in the morning and after several glasses of punch.

  ‘I noted that she was 2-para,’ he continued after a short and embarrassed pause. ‘That means two deliveries. Daughter born 1933 and daughter born 1941—the latter could be Rose-Marie.’

  ‘Excellent. Let us exclude the spouses Åhlund and their two daughters as murderers. It should be easy to find the name and address of Rose-Marie’s husband in the people registration. He’s the guilty one.’

  ‘For the sake of justice, you might at least say a few words about how you can glibly exonerate four of five potential suspects.’

  ‘For the simple reason that nobody except he could reasonably be expected to jump from the first floor.’

  Carl didn’t give us the opportunity to digest our surprise.

  ‘It’s a ten minute walk to the boarding house. I want to do a few small experiments over there. After that I’ll explain what it’s all about.’

  Many mystery stories end with the detective gathering all the suspects, including the LSP—the least suspected person: den minst misstänkta personen —in a room, e.g. the drawing room in an English manor. There, the murderer is lulled into security by small talk during one chapter, after which the subsequent unmasking comes as an unpleasant surprise to him or her.

  Whereupon the murderer invariably becomes confused, immediately rushing out through the door, only to be captured in the corridor by a superintendent of the police district of the earldom, who has been planted there beforehand.

  This kind of cut-and-dried ending has always irritated me, and I was glad that nothing of the kind had to be arranged. As of now, the murderer had been identified and the investigation was moving forward.

  Once outside, I noticed in the light of the street lamp that the colouring of the doctor’s face had been deepening, a clear manifestation of an approaching explosion.

  ‘Carl Bergman,’ he hissed (he always uses the full name of the offender when irritated), ‘were we or were we not in agreement that that nobody could have jumped from that infernal window? Have you been leading us on?’

  ‘So truly help me God, no. I meant that a jump across a two metre wide rose bed was impossible to perform from a height of three and a half metres.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘Unless you use a trick.’

  ‘What damned trick?’

  ‘I shall disclose that shortly.’

  ‘Well, would you at least be so kind as to reveal the nature of your … what did you call it, experiment? Am I supposed to jump through the window just to confirm that.…’

  ‘Absolutely not. But I will ask you to check whether the window shades are down on the lower flat of the short side of the house opening on to Rosenborgsgatan.’

  ‘Then should Johan concentrate on the shades on the first floor of the aforementioned short side?’

  ‘No, and this is not a joke. He is to inspect the ground behind the shrubbery in the garden between the fence and the laundry.’

  ‘Why?’

  No reply. Another deafening silence. It lasted as far as Anderberg’s fishmonger’s shop. Then I broke it.

  ‘Excuse my inquisitiveness,’ I said. ´But how could we rule out the other Åhlunds in the phone book as possible parents of Rose-Marie? Carl excluded Beata, and Christer didn’t arouse any enthusiasm either.’

  ‘Beata Åhlund is living on Ängbyvägen,’ Carl explained. ‘It’s a short road just beyond the fire station. There’s an old people’s retreat there, and Rose-Marie’s mother would in all likelihood be too young for that kind of care-taking.’

  ‘And Christer is an unusual name among older men,’ the doctor added. ‘The parents’ ages should to be similar to our own, sixty or seventy. Christer is too young. That’s what it boils down to.’

  Soon we reached Sandstensgatan. In front of the short side of the boarding-house, which has a trellis on the rear corner, Carl stopped, opened the gate carefully, bade me enter and gave me his flashlight in passing. In order not to create any unnecessary noise, I walked on the edge of the gravel path and arrived on the lawn level with the rose bed. There, I turned round and found that the doctor had disappeared and that Carl was standing behind me looking at his watch. I glanced at mine as well. It has luminous hands, which are helpful in the dark. The watch, by the way, is a gift from the staff of my former place of work. It is rare these days that I creep around at night alone and I wonder what my colleagues in the Ornithological Society would say if they could see me now. Bird life is generally sparse around midnight, and in this backyard very few important discoveries would be likely, even at dawn. House sparrows and pigeons lack interest as curiosities.

  The house was dark except for the second window of the first floor, counting from the back door. I thought I heard the low sound of a night radio through the open window. I’d reached the farther end of the backyard when I heard half-running st
eps on the gravel path and saw someone’s silhouette outlined against the street lighting. Under the cloak of darkness, as well as the thick bushes, I also caught a glimpse of an individual sneaking in through the back door.

  I waited for a couple of minutes without moving, which was quite unnerving. Everything was quiet, but now and then there was a rustle in the branches of the trees. There was a sudden gust of wind, and I pulled my hat far down over my forehead. At one point I discerned a distant mewing, as if from a cat or some other furry animal.

  Suddenly the back door opened and a sturdy man came out and stood under the lamp. I couldn’t make him out clearly because he was a good ten metres away. After gazing into the darkness for a while he went back inside, shut the door and locked it.

  I deduced that it was Blom who had locked the door and that the earlier fleeting figure had been a boarding-house guest returning late. I made a note of the time, which was five minutes to one.

  Shortly thereafter, the light went out in the illuminated window, which had been pulled shut. I took out the flashlight, screened it off with my handkerchief—a trick I learned through private studies—and began to examine the ground. I didn’t actually know what I was looking for, but in cases like this it is usually footprints, fag-ends—with or without lipstick—smaller articles of clothing and suchlike. Or so I’ve read.

  Nothing of great importance happened after that, except that someone left the house by the back door and silently disappeared. But then I happened to discover what I was presumably supposed to find, in the bushes by the side of the Ekbom laundry. I refrain from describing the rest of my hardship in detail.

  Carl and the doctor had been waiting for me for at least a quarter of an hour, and the time was now nearly one thirty. Nobody had any more thoughts of sleep. I proposed that we take refuge in my apartment at Åbrogatan 2 for a final summation, and even promised a glass of warm milk as preparation for sleep.

  My friends have often visited me there and, although the situation did not call for any formality, I still put on my smoking-jacket. While they settled themselves in the library, I went to the kitchen to boil some milk for nightcaps, but the doctor shouted that he didn’t want any and Carl agreed with him. Maybe they were anxious that it would make them too drowsy. So I postponed the treat until after my guests had left, when I could lace it with a few drops of brandy.

  ‘We can,’ began Carl, ‘start with any detail and see where it leads. Take Nilsson’s transistor radio, for example. We know it was turned on around ten o’clock and that it could still be heard by anyone in the upper corridor at around one o’clock. Now, I ask the following question: What did Blom hear through the door just after ten o’clock?’

  He answered his own question.

  ‘He heard a lecture or a recitation, which had just begun. And it wasn’t someone reading aloud from The Saga of Gösta Berling, for the schoolmistresses did not return to their room until after the picture show, which only began at nine o’clock. According to Efraim, when Axel Nilsson found himself sick a few hours after the departure of the mysterious unknown guest, his first act was to turn off the radio. Now, if he was in such bad condition that he died soon afterwards, and if that change for the worse had developed gradually, why didn’t he call the hotel staff for help? Was he too sick to reach the bell right by his bed, but not too sick to turn off the radio by the window at the other end of the room? It doesn’t make sense. I’ve checked the radio programmemes, and at a few minutes after ten on Saturday evening there was an item entitled “Modern Flemish Storytellers” on the P1 channel. That doesn’t make sense either, for why would Nilsson listen to that when he was allergic to other forms of reading aloud? Remember that he didn’t like listening to a less modern storyteller from Värmland, Selma Lagerlöf. The answer is that he wasn’t listening for the pleasure of it. Johan thought that the radio had been turned on in order to make people in the corridor believe that Axel was still alive. But, gentlemen, in that case aren’t you surprised that the radio was still on and could still be heard at one o’clock?’

  None of us could understand what Carl was driving at.

  ‘Yes, if the radio was on after ten o’clock, when the murderer left— after having been able to produce, as if by magic, the locked room— how could it then be heard three hours later if P1 signs off at half past ten? Even if the transistor batteries were not worn out, the murderer could only have been able to get people to believe that Axel was alive as long as the radio was audible, but not after half past ten. After that time, P1 is silent. But the radio in room number 5 was not silent, which means that the hotel guest must have changed to the music channel, which runs most of the night. So once again we have to ask: why was the radio turned on? Do you see what I mean?’

  I didn’t want to appear stupid, so I nodded profoundly.

  ‘I found the solution to the mystery by considering this particular oddity and arrived at the conclusion that the radio was on solely for the purpose of keeping Nilsson awake. The red wine had made him drowsy.’

  ‘But why did he need to stay awake?’

  ‘To keep his part of the agreement.’

  ‘What agreement?’

  ‘The agreement between him and the murderer.’

  We didn’t understand anything, so Carl abandoned his cat-and-mouse approach and prepared to give us a more coherent account. Before that, however, he presented his own interpretation of yet another minor problem which had bewildered us.

  ‘Let’s take another detail and examine it from several different angles. Why was the victim drenched in red wine? Efraim’s explanation was that it had spilled over Nilsson when he’d fallen down and slipped into a coma. Johan’s was that the wine was there to make the identification difficult. Mine is that the murderer consciously poured it on him in a moment of arranged distraction.’

  ‘What does that mean in plain Swedish?’

  ‘The murderer “happens to” spill the red wine on him. He makes a gesture with his hand but appears to “forget” there’s wine in the glass. Nilsson doesn’t realise it’s deliberate, wipes his face with one hand and ... what does he do next?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Really? Well, he looks down at his soiled shirt and in the next moment the murderer hits him on the head. So there’s Axel Nilsson lying on the floor with wine all over him, which seems to have been the result of him falling towards the bedstead. The culprit may have thought of mopping up the wine, but I guess Nilsson had tied the towel around his neck as a napkin. The wine is nevertheless on his shirt and the stains can’t be removed. So the wet towel is thrown into the wastebasket and the murderer pours another splash of wine on the man on the floor. Of course, he also arranges the pools on the table and the overturned empty bottle.’

  ‘And before the murderer leaves the room, he turns on the radio?’

  ‘No, no and no again. Don’t you understand? The person who quarrelled with Nilsson could not have planned all this—or else why would he have advertised his presence in the room so noisily during the couple of hours before ten o’clock? Forget about him, he’s totally irrelevant. But the real murderer, who faced several disadvantages because of the former visitor in room 5, could nevertheless use his visit for his own purposes. He had made preparations for the murder, but, because of the other person’s unanticipated visit to the room, it looked as though he had been the one responsible for the crime and the locked room. This complicated things enormously: a murder in a locked room can be impossible to commit at ten o’clock at night, but not at half past one in the morning. Have I made myself clear now?’

  Our negative reply was in such perfect unison that one would have thought we were being led by a conductor. The ironic lines at the corners of Carl’s eyes proved that he was amusing himself at our expense, and his air of astonishment was worthy of an actor. Troubled wrinkles appeared on his forehead, and his innocent bright blue eyes looked at us in a questioning and helpless way.

  ‘Let’s take it from the very
beginning. The murderer wants to get at Nilsson, who is threatening his family with blackmail. Call him the son-in-law, since we agree that there’s a high probability the perpetrator is married to the daughter of Sven Åhlund. By the way, I can assure you that probability will become even higher shortly, so please listen carefully. Nilsson is aware that blackmail is a crime and wants to avoid being seen in the son-in-law’s house. Because of that, the negotiations take place in the boarding-house. The meeting on Saturday evening was supposed to be about agreeing terms, including a lump sum, but the son-in-law has other plans: he’s decided to put his tormentor out of the way. While waiting for his benefactor, Nilsson celebrates his anticipated success with a supper of cheese and red wine. It’s been agreed that the son-in-law will slip into the boarding-house through the back door at around ten o’clock.’

  ‘Why on earth would such a confirmed alcoholic be drinking Chianti by way of celebration? Wouldn’t he be drinking the hard stuff, like any red-blooded Swede?’

  Need I say that the interjection came from the doctor?

  ‘Good question. Come to that, the cheese doesn’t fit the picture either. But Nilsson hadn’t much money and could probably only spend fifteen crowns for supper. We don’t know how Nilsson could afford the room, for that matter. Maybe he had received some money in advance and used it to pay for the lodgings.’

  We nodded. Carl’s explanation sounded reasonable. He noticed our approval and went on.

  ‘What happens next? Round about eight o’clock, or a little bit earlier, there’s a discreet knock on the door and his first guest comes in. Nilsson has probably run into a boon companion during his weeks in town and the fellow has turned up, probably with a surprise in liquid form. They get tipsy together. The red wine is set aside but the cheese is consumed, in the course of which the guest cuts himself by mistake and needs plaster. Time goes by, but Nilsson stays sufficiently sober to realize that his visitor has to leave before ten o’clock. His guest doesn’t take the hint and Nilsson becomes impatient. A squabble starts. How the unwanted visitor was eventually persuaded to leave is anyone’s guess, but during the argument, the son-in-law arrives. He has just entered the boarding-house through the rear door when he hears someone coming down the stairs with Nilsson’s curses ringing in his ears. He needs to take cover before Blom comes out from his office. Where does he hide? I think Johan can tell us.’