Hard Cheese

by Ulf Durling

  He is in the habit of saying: “I generously offer myself.”

  In my mind’s eye, I see him as Dr. Fell, but Efraim doesn’t drink as much beer and is not yet using a cane. He is the youngest of the three of us, and when he turned sixty-nine this summer, I gave him The Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My expensive gift was very much appreciated.

  Anyway, our first evening passed most pleasantly. The doctor illustrated his reading in criminology convincingly and entertained us with strange cases from his experiences as a doctor. After Mrs. Bergman had looked in and said good night, a bottle of whisky was put on the table as well as soda to mix with it. We engaged in lively and rewarding conversation until midnight, and when we walked home I noticed the doctor staggered slightly. I had consumed as much as he, but I was nevertheless steady on my legs.

  The next time we met was at Efraim’s home on Gjutarevägen, and, following that, at my place. It was not until May, however, that we decided to meet more regularly, using the form we have observed ever since.

  On that memorable occasion the doctor brought the black binder for the first time. Carl summarized the content of Christianna Brand’s Green for Danger, which he had read in English during the previous week. After that, there followed a discussion conforming to the conditions Carl had set out. It was up to Efraim and me to point out the murderer and explain the relations between the gas cylinders, which were an important part of the solution.

  I think that one may safely say that it is not that important for a reader of detective stories to deduce the correct solution well before the end of the story. He would rather prefer to be led astray and surprised—and, in addition, experience some healthy mental gymnastics.

  The doctor actually maintains that we need small moments of stupefaction as a counterbalance to the trivialities of every day life, and that the helplessness we sense in the presence of the inexplicable gives us a salutary indication of our own limitations. We experience a pleasant lack of responsibility in the face of the unfolding events, which gives us a feeling of security amidst the dangers, the fears and the hatred. He furthermore states that reading horror stories is excellent, in that it satisfies unconscious and unspoken needs, giving us an outlet for our aggressive urges and criminal instincts.

  I have problems believing that beneath my timid surface there lurks an unabated thirst for blood, but I am nonetheless flattered by the thought that someone could envisage in me a Mr. Hyde in disguise.

  The above considerations, which are the fruits of our discussions, might seem exaggerated in the eyes of others. That’s why I thought long and hard before deciding to write about our private activities.

  If I’ve been able to convey some small idea about our small club and about ourselves, then the intention of my opening remarks will have been achieved, and I can proceed to recount the events which took place during our last meeting, yesterday, October 26.

  The preceding evening I had gone to bed with E. C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case and I must have fallen asleep just before midnight. My night’s sleep was calm and undisturbed, to which a glass of warm milk with a few drops of cognac, downed after the late evening news, may have contributed.

  2

  Carl called yesterday afternoon, around four o’clock. My first thought was that he had been prevented from attending that evening’s meeting, but, on the contrary, he wanted to make sure that I would be there. And when I met the doctor at the corner of Allégatan and Parkvägen at a quarter past seven, I was told that he had also had a call from our host during the afternoon and thought that he had prepared something really dainty for us and hadn’t wanted us to miss it. In response to a point-blank demand about the book title for that evening, Carl had replied evasively, saying that at first he had thought of A. A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery, but that now he wasn’t so sure.

  It surprised me somewhat that the doctor had been indiscreet enough to try to find out what mystery novel our friend had thought of, but Carl's phone call had probably provoked his curiosity. It is not our custom to reveal the topic beforehand and Carl's eagerness to ensure our presence during the evening made me even more curious. Nor did I understand why The Red House Mystery would be worth all the fuss, especially since that novel is said to include a secret passage, something I have always had reservations about within this particular genre, and which has most probably contributed to the fact that I have never read the book.

  Carl himself opened the door. He was home alone since Margit was baby-sitting for their son's family. Their daughter-in-law was in bed with the flu and their son was working overtime. We would thus be undisturbed during the evening, which I appreciated, especially since the expectations at this point were great, and disturbances during meetings have a tendency to confuse reasoning and destroy the mood. Carl's wife, who was an excellent woman, is always very unobtrusive and considerate. She is in the habit of putting the coffee tray in the entrance hall and discreetly rattling the spoons in order to attract Carl's attention. At those times when he doesn’t hear her low-key signal, the doctor usually clears his throat and announces that he is thirsty. In the event that even he has been distracted, I myself have, in my crafty way, prompted Carl by cautiously enquiring whether someone has recently been eavesdropping in the hall.

  In the living room, there were teacups, a cake and biscuits already on the table. While Carl fetched milk for me from the pantry—I prefer milk to cream because of the lower fat content—the doctor said something witty about the number of teacups and I retorted amusingly by pointing out that the windows, luckily, were indeed closed. We were, of course, alluding to The Ten Teacups by John Dickson Carr, and given that this esteemed writer was one of our favourites, I felt the evening had got off to an auspicious start.

  After we had all sat down, the doctor on the couch with the binders and other documents by his side, I in the easy chair and Carl in the armchair, the meeting was declared open.

  “Herewith the minutes of the 35th meeting of the group in 1969, held October 19th at 19.30 hours at the home of factor Lundgren, Åbrogatan 2. Present: Johan Lundgren, Carl Bergman and Efraim Nylander....”

  The doctor read in a booming bass voice of great penetrating power. One may think that it is too legalistic to repeat these recurring facts at every meeting, especially since we were always plenary, but we like doing the agenda this way and we don’t intend to change.

  “After Dr. Nylander had read out the minutes of the previous week's meeting, Mr. Lundgren presented an interesting summary of The Listening Walls by Margaret Millar (see Meeting Minutes 193, Binder 2) followed by a lively discussion.”

  I shall skip over the rest of the minutes, since neither Carl nor I had any objections. In my capacity as last week's host, I thanked the doctor for his observant summary and proposed that he should continue to serve as secretary, which was agreed unopposed. He has, moreover, filled that position with honour ever since we began. The minutes were then filed and my written summary of the book was added to the collection of reports. A new card was added to the card index under M.

  During the proceedings I had detected signs of impatience on the part of Carl, who had changed his position in the armchair several times and was now nervously fiddling with his watch chain.

  In order to convey the right mood, I should perhaps add that a thin rain was drizzling against the window. It had, incidentally, rained a lot during the previous week, especially at night. In the darkness, one could barely discern the greenery of the foliage, with streaks of red and yellow here and there. On nights like this, a particularly fresh fragrance rises pleasantly from the soil.

  Carl then took the floor and, after a dramatic pause rather like the doctor’s—when he lights his cigar, pretending that there is no draft and looks concernedly at the glow—he began:

  ‘Well,’ said Carl, ‘I had actually intended to put your ingenuity to the test with a totally different problem, but I propose instead that we examine a case that is still unsolved and whi
ch happened in real life, right in our immediate vicinity.’

  Not understanding what Carl was talking about, the doctor and I remained silent. I was perplexed and Efraim appeared nonplussed.

  ‘This afternoon,’ continued Carl, ‘I received a visit from my son Gunnar and his children. As his wife was confined to bed, it was up to him to take them out. He seemed preoccupied and irritable.’

  ‘It’s hardly surprising that his wife has a raging fever and stomach pains,’ the doctor observed. ‘Half the town is in bed with the flu.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. When I asked him how Kerstin felt, he dismissed the question curtly. “She’s fine,” was all he would say. But a little while later he had a change of heart. Gentlemen, do you know The Little Boarding-House?’

  ‘Of course,’ we replied.

  The Little Boarding-House is a two-storey wooden house about a five-minute walk from the railway station, at the intersection of Sandstensgatan and Rosenborgsvägen. It has about ten rooms and is run by a certain Mr. Blom. Needless to say I have never stayed there, since the establishment does not enjoy a good reputation due to the drunkenness the guests often display.

  Parenthetically, I must state that the owner is an awful person. Once, as I strolled along Sandstensgatan, I found him sweeping the pavement outside his shabby residence and took the opportunity to suggest that he should perhaps also have his windows cleaned, and asked him if he was familiar with Arnold Bennett’s Grand Hotel Babylon. It’s not a mystery novel, as far as I know, but may be readable all the same. In spite of my friendly attitude, he looked offended and swore at me! He actually said “Go to hell!” Later, when we happened to meet at Stora Torget, I ventured to entertain him with a little anecdote of mine. Scarcely had I opened my mouth when he told me to shut up and turned his back on me. He is thoroughly mean, rude and shameless, believe me.

  ‘At eleven o’clock today,’ Carl continued, ‘Gunnar got a call ordering him to go there immediately. He understood that something unusual must have happened, since he was disturbed during the weekend and everyone at the police station knew that his wife was sick. It turned out that the boarding-house owner had been alerted that morning by the cleaning-lady. She had wanted to finish her work promptly, but couldn’t get into one of the rooms. Now, the rules say that any guest wishing to have his room cleaned must hang the key on a hook outside the door no later than ten o’clock in the morning. The cleaning-lady arrives around seven o’clock and is normally finished before twelve. This morning she found that the key to one particular room was missing and, when she eventually knocked on the door, she got no response.’

  ‘Excuse me for interrupting,’ I said, ‘but aren’t guests normally allowed to stay in their rooms until twelve o’clock?’

  ‘True enough, but the cleaning-lady only works part-time and guests who stay on at the hotel have a choice between getting up before ten o’clock, or making their beds themselves. This particular guest had been staying there in an upstairs room for a couple of weeks, and the cleaning-lady became concerned when it seemed that he didn’t want his room cleaned as usual. She suspected something was wrong and, since the guest was an older man and not in the best of health, she suspected that he had fallen ill during the night. Some of the other guests had gone down with the flu. Even when Blom knocked on the door there was no response, and they were unable to get into the room. The key was still in the lock and the bolt could be seen through the chink in the door-frame. At last they decided to call the police. Detective Ivehed arrived just before eleven o’clock, determined there was good reason to get inside as fast as possible, tried his keys without success, and then forced the door open. They saw at once that the man, a certain Axel Nilsson, must have been murdered. He was lying fully dressed beside the bed and it appeared he had hit the back of his head on the footboard. There was blood on his face and on his shirt-front. A bottle of wine on the table had been knocked over and the contents had spilled onto the table-cloth and down onto the floorboards—.’

  ‘—and onto Nilsson’s face and shirt,’ the doctor suggested.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Carl looked at us triumphantly.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘An older man in a lonely hotel room feels sick and perhaps vomits during the night, gets up with the intention of going to the bathroom, stumbles on his way there, hits the back of his head on the footboard and passes away as a consequence of a heavy concussion of the brain. Surely that’s the first thing to spring to mind after hearing your account?’

  ‘I agree with Johan,’ the doctor announced. ‘How old was Nilsson?’

  ‘They think he was about fifty.’

  ‘They think? Didn’t he have any identity papers? What year of birth did he give in the hotel register?’

  ‘1917, I remember now. It fit with the driving license and the passport, which was issued in the USA. According to the entry stamp, he arrived in Göteborg harbour on the twelfth.’

  ‘Fifty-two years old, then. That is hardly an older man. If it were, that would make the three of us decidedly ancient. The vascular systems in older and middle aged people often have a reduced elasticity, which creates the risk of a fall in blood pressure at sudden changes of position. That would bring about a sense of dizziness and, every so often, regular fainting fits with people who are so predisposed. These tendencies are strengthened if one is hungry or physically exhausted. As Johan says, he could have been awakened by a strong urge to visit the bathroom, perhaps because of diarrhoea as a result of the flu we talked about, and had not realised how weak he actually was. So when he got up quickly in the darkness, he banged against the table and upset the bottle so the wine ran out, then fell backwards against the headboard. Isn’t that possible?’

  Carl had been listening with an encouraging smile.

  ‘Yes, entirely possible. The light was off and the room was indeed dark. But there’s something else which needs to be taken into consideration, gentlemen. Allow me to continue. When Ivehed forced the door open and saw the devastation and the body that seemed to be covered with blood, he prevented anyone else from entering the room. At that point several upset guests had gathered outside the door. There was reason to suspect foul play, so after he had made sure that Nilsson had no pulse, he mounted guard over the broken door until my son arrived. He came just after eleven, made a preliminary search of the room, covered up the dead man and called for reinforcements. I shall return to the room itself and what was found there later, but first I want to share with you what I heard about the preliminary questioning of Blom.’

  ‘Was there any reason to suspect that death was not accidental?’

  The doctor sounded impatient and one got the feeling that he was not at all happy with Carl's apparent lack of interest in Nilsson’s blood pressure.

  ‘No, not exactly. Blom had said, during a conversation that had taken place downstairs in the owner’s private quarters, that Nilsson checked in at the boarding house on the thirteenth of this month. He hadn’t brought much luggage, just a suitcase and a briefcase, and he claimed to be returning home after a visit abroad. He was a rather thin man with a moustache and appeared to be worn out. His clothes, which hung loosely on his body, were baggy and outmoded. He limped and Blom was convinced that he had alcohol problems, for his speech was thick and he sometimes reeked of hard liquor. He seemed to be sleek and unpleasant, oily and ingratiating, with a habit of blinking cunningly and maliciously behind thick spectacles. He conveyed an untrustworthy impression overall, being quite reticent about himself, but asking the host all kinds of questions about the other guests or about circumstances in the city, so that Blom came to the conclusion that Nilsson must have known the place before, but had been away for quite some time. The evening before, he had, for example, asked how long a couple of female guests would be staying, and had seemed to be happy to learn that they would be leaving soon. However, one of them caught the flu on Saturday and they both decided to stay on.’

  ‘What had he
against those ladies? Did they drink?’

  There was obviously no reason for any illusions about the guests of the hotel.

  ‘No. They were very decent schoolmistresses. They had the rooms on either side of Nilsson’s and entertained each other reading out loud in one or the other’s room until the small hours. Nilsson had to listen to that night after night. He thought they were reading from a book about animals, for once he caught a reference to a pack of wolves hunting a woman. That’s what he said to Blom, at least.’

  ‘Blom seemed to think that Nilsson was sick. What was he suffering from?’

  ‘Gunnar asked the same thing. Yes, Nilsson looked to be older than his age: pale, with hollow cheeks and a perpetual air of tiredness. Most of the time he stayed at his room. He had bad eyesight and he seemed to refrain from long walks because of his legs, at least if there was no need for a visit to the state-controlled liquor store. He seemed to avoid meeting people as well and would slip quickly into his room when anyone appeared.’

  ‘Did Blom get to know anything about his personal circumstances?’

  The doctor was visibly interested, which surprised me, since I myself at the time could not conceive of the death being anything but the result of a pure accident.