The Forest Lake Mystery

by The Forest Lake Mystery (retail) (epub)

  Holst looked at her in silence, then he took her hand once more. He was sure of her and he decided to tell her everything.

  “You should know,” he said, “that my presence here has a bigger goal than what you already know. It’s about Annie – the same Annie you were talking about. When she left you in Elsinore that day which you talked about, she was murdered. A couple of months later, I found her body in a quarry in North Zealand, and the man I had arrested here in this house yesterday is her murderer.”

  Jeannette went deathly pale.

  “Murdered! Annie murdered by Hugold! No, no, that can’t be true. Hugold hasn’t murdered Annie… he hasn’t… it must have been…”

  Her eyes became glassy and she gasped for air.

  Holst kept a firm grip on her hand.

  “Who?”

  Her voice sank to a whisper.

  “It’s him… the other one…”

  “Claes Ankerkrone?”

  “No, no… the other one… his father, the Captain, Arvid Ankerkrone…”

  Holst’s blood froze to ice in his veins.

  They sat totally silent for a couple of minutes while the water lapped against the wall of the house, and the wind, which had now started blowing round the corner of the canal, rattled the shutters outside the open windows.

  Holst broke the silence.

  “Arvid Ankerkrone!”

  Jeannette froze, her shoulders shook and she rubbed her hands together.

  “Annie murdered! So he’s done what she feared, just as she thought everything would turn out well.”

  “Who do you mean?” Holst asked.

  “It was Claes Ankerkrone’s father, the Captain, whom Annie was going to marry on the day she said goodbye to me.”

  “But you told me it was the son,” said Holst, subdued.

  “Yes, because no one was supposed to know about the other arrangement and I promised Annie to keep quiet and not tell anyone.”

  Jeannette bent down over Holst and cried convulsively with her head pressed down against his knee. Holst sat totally still; it was as if everything had stopped, as if his thoughts were suddenly silenced. He couldn’t think and if he tried to it was as if all his diffuse suspicions, all the forebodings he had held back, gathered together, towering up over him in one voice: ‘But you knew it was him all along, you must have been able to see that it was him. Each step you’ve taken pointed to this one person. You haven’t wanted to see it. You’ve betrayed your duty. Now you know how it is, you must act like a man.’

  For the first time in his life, Holst broke down. He sat bowed over the sobbing woman while his heart constricted. He couldn’t fight his way out. He felt that if this had happened just one day, just half a day earlier, he would have been capable of bearing it like a man, and he would have been able to do his duty without looking to right or left, without hesitation.

  Now it was impossible. He couldn’t raise his hand against her father.

  He lifted up the weeping Jeannette, led her to her bed and gently covered her. She wanted to speak, but he asked her to be silent. She looked up and with that intuition that every woman owns, she guessed his thoughts.

  “Is it his daughter?” she asked very gently.

  Holst didn’t answer. He sat silently on the edge of the bed, until Jeannette’s breathing showed that she was asleep.

  XIV

  It was midnight. Holst got up and left the house. He walked through the narrow alleys down to the Riva, from where he saw the moon shining like a narrow disc and the countless stars reflecting in the lagoon. The wind was now blowing quite briskly. Holst stopped in front of the hotel. He looked up at a certain window behind which a flickering light burned. Was Ulla asleep, he wondered. After what had happened, she couldn’t sleep. His gaze switched to the window next to hers, where a clear, calmly burning lamplight testified that Captain Ankerkrone hadn’t yet gone to bed.

  A door opened out to the balcony in front of the Captain’s room and Holst saw how Ulla stepped out supported by her father’s arm. There they stood for a long time while she leant her head on his shoulder. Holst saw that he put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead.

  Holst took a firm grip on an iron railing beside a stairway which led down to the water from where he was standing.

  No – that surely couldn’t be the meaning of life; that, in order to follow one’s duty, a random job laid on our shoulders, we humans should have to spurn the richest happiness of our lives. If it were true that the man who stood there on the balcony had taken another person’s life, taken it in order to revenge himself or protect someone else, then the higher powers that watched over what men call eternal justice could bring their will to pass without him.

  His place was with these people, to support them with advice and deeds. Anything else would be treason against the greatest of all things, against his young, burning love, against happiness, that was smiling on him for the first time after an arduous life of hard work.

  And at this moment, Holst decided to betray what he had called his duty to follow the voice that spoke to him in the beating of his heart.

  He stretched out his arms towards the two and spoke her name in a loud voice.

  “Ulla!”

  It echoed across the silent Riva, across the lapping waters of the lagoon.

  Ulla reached out towards him too and he quickly headed over to the high portal to the hotel and, after a few minutes, was standing up there, where the light had been blinking at him, with the two people to whose fate he would be inextricably bound in the future.

  Ulla left them after a while to go to bed and Holst found himself alone with Captain Ankerkrone, who looked at him sadly and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Eigil,” he said, “we two have yet more words to exchange with each other.”

  “About Ulla, yes,” replied Holst, “but not about anything else.”

  “And Annie?” asked Ankerkrone.

  “No,” said Holst, “from today, I’m stepping back from everything to do with Annie. It was a case I volunteered for and no one will force me to take any more steps along the paths which lead to solving it.”

  “You will betray your duty?” asked Ankerkrone.

  “Yes.”

  “And the murderer?”

  “He must stand to account to God for his actions. If earthly justice is to reach him, it won’t be at my hand.”

  The Captain looked acutely at Holst.

  “So you now know who the murderer is?”

  “Yes, I do,” replied Holst.

  “And despite this knowledge, you want to marry his daughter?”

  Holst grabbed the Captain’s hand and squeezed it firmly, while bowing his head in a silent answer.

  A glimmer of victory flickered in Ankerkrone’s eyes, while he held the young man’s hand in his and drew himself up proudly, as if all his bodily weakness slipped away in this moment because of the silent response and the warm handshake.

  “Thank you, Eigil, for your answer; now I dare to speak and tell you everything.”

  “You’ve guessed right. I’m Annie’s murderer, me and no one else. Even if it may be Sjöström who’ll be held responsible in a human court, in the court of God, it is me and me alone.”

  “What are you saying?” Holst cut in. “Sjöström – but then it’s…”

  Ankerkrone smiled wistfully.

  “Take a seat, my dear friend, and I’ll tell you what I’m now free to reveal to you, because you’ve made your choice and bound your destiny to me and my daughter. From the diary and letters I sent you, you know all that happened between Annie and me up until the day when I decided to save my son from the disgrace that awaited him if he followed his foolish love for that woman and betrayed his duty to his wife and children. I could have prevented the fate that befell her. I didn’t. I have demanded a ‘divine judgement’ before, when I forced Cedersköld to dare to attempt the leap at the cliffs in Stilfserjoch. I once again demanded a divine judgement when I se
nt Annie away to meet the fate which Sjöström, in his insatiable lust for her money, had prepared for her. In both cases, the judgement was death and the responsibility mine – I don’t deny it. They were both instrumental in Giulia’s death.”

  Holst sat silently. During Ankerkrone’s speech, his thoughts had reverted to their customary path. So it was definitely Sjöström and not the Captain who had carried out the murder. By going on what Jeannette had said and the Captain’s communications, he had allowed himself to be led to the suspicion that had now proved unfounded. He looked up at Ankerkrone who was standing in front of him with a strange, dreamy facial expression.

  “Have you assigned Sjöström to kill Annie and paid him for it?” asked Holst.

  “No,” replied the Captain, “but I don’t claim any credit for that either. It was unnecessary and I dare say I wouldn’t have done it even if it had been necessary.”

  Holst smiled; he had recovered his balance.

  “Captain Ankerkrone,” he said, “this strange case has really driven me, level-headed and pragmatic Copenhagener that I am, out into realms that so far have been way beyond my experience. It’s your fault; in your diary and your letters as well as in your speech tonight, you’ve travelled so far away from everyday life that you seem to be moving in the foggy world of the novel, where your son-in-law, Eigil, delights in taking walks with your lovely daughter Ulla, but where Sergeant Holst, for purely official reasons, doesn’t dare to venture. You will perhaps allow me for the first, and hopefully the last, time to ask you to tell me, in an earthly language, what you were doing in the days from 22nd to 27th March 1902.”

  “Are you interrogating me?” asked Ankerkrone.

  “With your permission, yes,” Holst replied, “but only the actual facts. The novel is Ulla’s and mine, the everyday story is yours.”

  Ankerkrone sat down in an armchair opposite Holst. He collected his thoughts for a few minutes, before briefly and clearly explaining what had happened.

  “As you know, I had decided to prevent Claes from the folly he was in the process of committing in marrying Annie and abandoning his marriage. On 23rd March, Emily and I arrived in Copenhagen and went to the Hotel d’Angleterre. I had discovered that Claes and Annie, along with a kind of lady’s companion, a daughter of my former Captain of the Guard, Ljunggren, had arrived in Copenhagen a few days before. They had taken residence at the Hotel Kongen af Danmark. I had previously used Ljunggren’s daughter as a kind of spy. She told me that Annie and Claes had gone to Helsingborg. I decided to go after them, but on the same day Sjöström arrived, a man I knew quite well from the time he served in the army as a young man. He sought me out and I learnt very quickly that this man, who up to then had taken every advantage of Annie’s relationship with Claes, had become afraid. From the turn events had taken, he was frightened of losing the benefits his relationship with Annie offered. I therefore decided to try to bring about that Annie married him, and in so doing ward off the danger.

  “We only travelled together as far as Elsinore, as I didn’t want to attract attention by appearing with these people in Scania. Sjöström went on to Helsingborg and returned to Elsinore on 25th March with Claes and Annie. It proved impossible to dissuade Claes and Annie wanted nothing to do with Sjöström. She said she had come to terms with him for a generous sum, and now it was enough.

  “On the evening of the 25th, I had a long conversation with Annie. In the beginning, she was contrary and spiteful, but bit by bit I gained my old dominion over her, and she became moved and compliant. I had told Claes what had occurred between us, but he was completely out of reach, so I came up with a plan that I immediately carried into effect.

  “I promised Annie I would marry her, and through this I got her to tell Claes that she didn’t care about him and never had. That helped. A fierce argument arose between Claes and I, but when Claes, who stomped off in anger, had met Emily in Copenhagen, she managed to regain some power over him, and the danger thus seemed to have been eliminated at a stroke. Annie was happy; she had now achieved the goal of all her life’s wishes, she said, and as for me – well to be quite honest, it was only consideration for Ulla that held me back. I didn’t love Annie, but I had committed great injustices against her. I’m now an old man and, in many ways, look at things differently than I did in my younger days.

  “Annie was afraid of Sjöström. She told me that he had twice threatened her life in order to get hold of her money and that, as Sjöström had now learnt how rich she was from her lawyer, a man named Karlkvist in Kristianstad, she was in great danger if I didn’t protect her. She didn’t want to sacrifice her fortune, which amounted to about one hundred and fifty thousand kroner, even though I informed her I didn’t want anything to do with this money.

  “I hesitated in my decision; as I said, entirely out of consideration for Ulla. Then Sjöström sought me out and tried to squeeze money out of me by declaring that he would disgrace both of us if we didn’t agree terms with him. He seemed close to desperation. It was clear that nothing would stop him. I managed to put him off.

  “I spent the 26th together with Annie, who seemed happy and well-satisfied and it broke my heart to see her like that. I couldn’t decide, but on that day, I learnt what you now know from the letter Annie had once written to me during an illness and which her mother had received for safekeeping. You will understand that this letter sealed Annie’s fate. I held my peace – I couldn’t have talked that evening and I can hardly recall exactly what I was doing. I was acting as if in my sleep. I only recall that Annie and I agreed that I should arrange everything so that our wedding could take place in the little church near the town where we had lived together before her child was born. I was to travel there in advance and Sjöström and Annie were to follow me there the next day. He and the farmer whom I had met in town the day before, and who knew us both, were going to be witnesses.

  “When I left Annie, I visited Sjöström and told him that we were going to meet at the little lake in the forest which Annie knew. I didn’t want anyone to know anything about that. Sjöström asked me how I was going to proceed with regard to the money and I replied that he could act as he wanted, but I added – and it’s here my responsibility lies heaviest – ‘If I don’t turn up tomorrow, I will never ask any questions about you or Annie or anything that concerns either of you. So Annie’s fate is in your hands.’ He didn’t reply – after a few minutes of silence, he simply asked me if I loved Annie, to which I just replied, ‘Annie has killed my wife, whom I loved.’ Then I left. I returned to Copenhagen the same evening. I was convinced that Sjöström would make every effort to go through with his plan. Yes, I don’t deny it – I felt convinced that Annie’s death sentence had fallen. She hated Sjöström and wouldn’t bend for him, and for him the only thing that mattered was to get hold of her money.

  “I lay low for a month in my house in Malmö with Ulla, until anxiety drove me to the place where my thoughts went all the time. I rented rooms for myself at the farm where we met each other and my path took me daily to the lake where we two met each other that day in May.

  “When they emptied the quarry and Annie’s body appeared, I got peace of mind. Now I knew what had happened to her, but you will understand why I was so deeply interested in everything that was happening in those days. It was me who encouraged the district magistrate to summon you, and from the outset, I had the feeling that this day would come. Now you know my responsibility and you know I’ve put everything in your hands so far. I think you should continue your work. I’m prepared to bear my responsibility.”

  Holst got up and went over to Captain Ankerkrone.

  “For Ulla’s sake, you should consider what you’re doing,” he said in a gentle, subdued voice.

  “Ulla should know everything,” said Ankerkrone seriously.

  “Yes, she should,” replied Holst, “but she shouldn’t learn it from your mouth, but from mine when she becomes my wife and life has taught her to understand what her pur
e young woman’s mind isn’t capable of taking in now.”

  The Captain pressed his hand warmly.

  “You’re right, Eigil – you’re quite right. It shall be as you wish.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Ankerkrone was the first to break it.

  “There’s still another way out – one I want to try.”

  “And that is?” asked Holst.

  Captain Ankerkrone smiled sadly.

  “No, my friend, this is a matter for me, me alone – and Kurk, if he will.”

  Holst didn’t ask anything more. The morning was already becoming light and he needed rest. Early that morning, Ankerkrone sent a message to Kurk to come to him and the two old friends sat talking together for a long time. When Kurk left the Captain, his face was serious, but his firmly set mouth testified that the two men’s conversation had led them both to a solemn decision, the responsibility for which they were willing to bear.

  In the hotel’s vestibule, Kurk met a man whose presence in this place at this moment didn’t surprise him in the least. He stopped and uttered his name. The stranger opened his arms, as if to embrace him. They went off together and talked for a long time, and when Kurk left him, his face, while still solemn, was much calmer than when he had left Captain Ankerkrone.

  The newcomer was the happy equerry from Riddartofte, Bror Sjöström, who had been summoned to Venice by reports in the Swedish press. He obtained permission through the consulate to visit the prisoner along with Kurk.

  XV

  Jeannette had not slept well that night. She had attached a faint hope to the effect of what she had told Holst, but she soon realised that for her there was nothing for it but to give up any hope of binding her destiny to Holst in even the loosest way. While he was gone, she got up and started gathering her jewellery and belongings together to think about how she could meet the demands that life would present her with in the near future. She didn’t want to accept anything from Holst. She didn’t own very much, but she had gradually collected some jewellery. She recalled that Sjöström had shown her a secret space in a writing desk, where he had hidden some items of value and she decided to check this hideaway. Initially, she didn’t find very much in there, but among the items was a small box, wrapped in thick paper and sealed. She broke the seal and, in the box, she found to her astonishment a little diamond-studded lady’s watch, a couple of lockets and some rings she recognised, as well as the jewellery Annie had always worn.