by Ulf Durling
‘Which would that be?’
‘I was hoping that you would have noticed it yourself.’
She looked at me hopefully with her beautiful, expressive eyes. She’s a charming woman, warm, personal and very wise. I’m unfortunately not an expert on women, besides my occupational experience and some theoretical anatomic knowledge, but I detected sympathy and an interest on her part.
‘Why didn’t you talk with your husband about this?’
‘I wanted to hear your opinion first. He thinks the whole thing is a pure accident. Does the detail in question change anything?’
‘It most certainly does.’
‘And which of the interrogations of the witnesses contains that important piece of information?’
‘That of the chamber-maid, of course.’
‘Yes.’
She looked relieved. She hadn’t come in vain.
‘Then Axel Nilsson’s medicines are important?’
‘Of course. How did you arrive at that conclusion?’
‘Well, Nilsson had only taken a few tablets of Diclo …’
‘Dichlotride-K.’
‘... a few tablets out of a bottle of a hundred he’d obtained almost two weeks before he died. In spite of that, the maid testified that he was careful with the medicine, or as she put it: “with his medicines.”’
‘What did she mean by that?’
‘That Nilsson took another medicine as well.’
‘But probably he only used that other medicine, since almost all of the Dichliotride-K pills were still left. He kept both bottles on his bedside table, so the maid naturally thought that he was in need of both prescriptions.’
‘Why two sorts of medicine? For what purpose did he take the other one?’
‘For his blood pressure, I presume. When the bottle was empty he threw it away.’
Mrs. Bergman looked at me disappointedly. She twirled a lock of hair with one hand and absentmindedly permitted her tongue to wander along her teeth, maybe on the hunt for non-existent yellow tartar, or scraps from the teachers’ lunch.
‘So my discovery wasn’t really worth much,’ she sighed.
‘On the contrary,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll almost certainly be able to work out how the murder was committed now. Before, I only had a vague, hypothetical idea.’
‘Do you mean the blood pressure medicine was poisoned?’
‘Not at all. It was totally safe.’
‘Then I don’t understand.…’
‘I hardly understand it myself, but in a few days I’ll be able to say something more, at least I hope so.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
In a heartfelt way I assured her of my great gratitude for her contribution and escorted her out.
When I was alone, I threw myself at the telephone.
On the question of what the name of the second medicine could have been, the chamber-maid Mrs. Svensson replied that she was not in the habit of snooping on the guests’ possessions. I rephrased the question, asking whether a person with her well-known powers of observation had observed anything about the medicine, especially since she most certainly dusted off the bedside table, where Nilsson kept his medicines. That bore fruit insofar as I learnt that the bottle, which had “a foreign label,” had contained small pink pills with notches. I expressed my deepest admiration for her acute attention, whereupon she consulted me about memory problems with older people and treatment of teenagers’ pimples. I recommended a fitting unction for the acne, which she might try for the other condition as well. On the question of where in such a case it would be applied, I suggested a thin layer on the temples three times a day. Then I hung up.
I looked through some annually published pharmaceutical catalogues and made an almost three quarters of an hour long call to the druggist Kvist, a personal acquaintance. Neither of us could make out what blood pressure medicine was manufactured in tablets which were pink and notched, and I was eventually forced to conclude that the preparation was not for sale in Sweden.
The father of medical science is Hippocrates, but necessity is said to be the mother of invention, and here I thought of arranging a temporary marriage of the two.
I arrived home later than usual, to find that my home help, Mrs. Storm, was still there. She is very reliable and conscientious, but usually not very talkative. All the same, she doesn’t hesitate to give me a lot of quite irritating advice: on how to dress properly and how to avoid catching cold, for example. This day, she took the opportunity to deliver some admonitions about changing my underwear more often. I listened absent-mindedly while I ate my dinner in the kitchen. Her meatballs doubled in size in my mouth and I tried to swallow them as fast as possible. She must have had me under strict observation for, just as I was to stretch out to reach a cheese on the table she raised her voice to make it louder than the vacuum cleaner.
‘Don’t eat so much that you’ll burst,’ she cried.
‘What?’
‘Don’t eat so much that you’ll burst. Didn’t you hear me?’
Her words coincided with something that had occupied my thoughts, and so her remark seemed of an almost visionary nature. I burst into a roar of laughter, which came as a sudden and unpleasant surprise. By the look on her face, I was confirming her long-held suspicion that I was suffering from a stealthy insanity, which had now all of a sudden broken out. She inched cautiously towards the door. When she got hold of her handbag and put on her coat, she asked anxiously if she should come the following Wednesday as usual.
‘Come every day,’ I shouted as she banged the door.
Too late, I realised the probable reason for her staying late. It was the agreed day for her monthly remuneration.
My laughter was caused by thoughts of cheese.
Not the safe cheese on my table, but the dangerous one in the boarding-house room.
Nilsson’s cheese must have been at the back of my mind ever since it had been mentioned. I had unfortunately overlooked it until now because it seemed to be wholly inappropriate in the context of murder.
A common piece of cheese.
Now, don’t think that it was poisoned. Like the red wine, or my forcemeat balls, it was not. Nevertheless it was an indispensable link in the chain I was in the process of forging around the neck of the culprit.
You will recall that we commented earlier on the cheese and the red wine in the room of the murdered man. And also on the paradox that two bums on a bleak Saturday in a third class boarding-house would feast in such a sophisticated way.
I spent the evening going through the case in all its details. With my eyes fixed far away, beyond my book case, my desk and the limits of the room, I completed the argument in my mind.
By the time my last cigarillo had burned itself out, the bottle of port was largely empty and the twilight had long reigned outside the windows. I knew how it had all happened and what measures should be taken. I even called the perpetrator, though I was almost certain he wouldn’t answer. I honestly can’t explain why I tried to call him. Did I want to prepare him for the worst?
At midnight I set the alarm-clock for eight o’clock for the purpose of getting in line in time at the State Liquor Store, where I had a reasonable chance to be at the front, as long as Crona wasn’t there.
4
The following morning, I went to the largest liquor store in town.
The manager received me graciously in his small office. On the other side of the counter were storage spaces filled with all the different bottles they carried. It was a fascinating sight. Hundreds of colours glinted at me and the sun’s rays, refracted by the glass bottles, threw reflections on the opposite wall. Big cardboard boxes of beer cans stood stacked on the floor, and on the rows of bottles on the upper shelves I read strange names, difficult to pronounce, from all the corners of the earth, on tempting labels from vineyards and chateaux. Here and there I recognized items that had sometimes graced my table: Estremadura, Bonita Sherry and Karlshamn’s blue flag-punch.
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Mr. Andersson sat behind a desk crammed with paper and brochures. He was a benevolent little man, round and bald-headed, with high colouring in his face, a man who no doubt studied his products in depth in order to be able to give an expert account of them. A dedicated businessman must know his merchandise inside and out.
I explained that, in my practice, I often encountered alcoholics of different kinds, and that I was, mostly for my own interest, doing a comparative study of the injurious effects of alcohol as compared to light wine and malt liquor. Mr. Andersson looked attentive, especially since I assured him that I did not aim to endanger his turnover, but had come in order to get his professional opinion about the Chianti wines. They seemed, I lied, to have certain specific qualities, positive to liver and other visceral tissues, and I wondered if he could tell me something about their composition and popularity.
‘I am sorry, doctor, but I don’t have much to tell you. The name comes from the province in northern Italy where the grapes are harvested. It is laid down to mature and has a full-bodied taste, with a dark red colour, almost like ox blood. The percentage of alcohol is just about the same as for other light wines, with the exception of Burgundies. Chianti makes me somewhat sleepy, but the experts consider it to be easy-going, fresh and simple.’
‘Is there a demand for it?’
‘Not very much, a few bottles a day, which is just a fraction of our total sale of wine.’
‘Which is the most popular?’
‘I would say the red wine, Chianti Ruffino.’
Since my purpose was trying to get to know who it was that had bought the bottle found in Axel Nilsson’s room, my hopes were now awakened.
Were there security provisions for people working at State Liquor Stores, I wondered, and decided to proceed with the utmost care.
‘Why do you think people don’t drink more Chianti?’
‘There are equally good Spanish and Algerian wines, and they are almost ten crowns cheaper per bottle. Tourists in Italy take a fancy to the picturesque bottles covered with straw, which are often used as vases or candlesticks. They try and recreate the atmosphere of the tourist hotel back home, but in my opinion it seldom works.’
‘Do you recall any of your customers buying a bottle over the last few weeks? There can’t have been many, and I’d like to get a few personal impressions.’
Mr. Andersson pursed his lips, which assumed the form and the appearance of a wild strawberry. If the colour of the lips had been bluish, which is the case when it comes to advanced forms of untreated heart disease, they could have been compared to a shrivelled grape. He looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling and tapped his plump fingers on the table-top.
‘I’ll ask the sales clerks.’
He disappeared and soon returned, triumphantly announcing that two well known citizens in our town, Carl Bergman and Johan Lundgren, had each bought a bottle from Miss Granlund in cash desk 1 three days ago, but she couldn’t recall anyone else.
‘Nobody last week?’
‘Unfortunately not. Maybe you’d like a bottle from us, to be used in your scientific research, so to speak.’
‘That would be very kind of you.’
I managed to suppress my disappointment, said thank you and left his office. With an effort I repeated this tour de force when Miss Granlund gave me a bag with a bottle and receipt for ten crowns.
Firmly resolved not to get charged for any unwanted cheeses, I crossed Rådhustorget to the market hall with the bag hidden under my coat.
As I walked past the different stands in the supermarket, my thoughts wandered to Zola’s overblown descriptions of Les Halles in Paris. Ours were just like those, in miniature.
I stopped in front of a cheese counter. It offered a tempting sight. Big chunks of cheese looking like mill-wheels formed a semicircle, with smaller cheeses on top. The Edam, the Camembert, the Cheddar and our Swedish household cheese were all easily recognizable, as were the blue cheeses, Gorgonzola and Stilton. Others were covered with tinfoil, which meant I had to lean forward to read the name through the display-glass.
I was lost in thought in front of these delicacies. My friends often insinuate, unfairly, that I am a glutton. Rather, I am a gourmet, particularly as far as cheese is concerned.
I tend to favour the rounder, yellower and more solid pieces of cheese. They radiate good health and heavy dullness. It’s possible my own unfortunate body perceives kinship and sympathy in their presence. They look prosperous and lucky in some way. We Swedes also talk about a lucky person as being a “lucky cheese” in the same way the English talk about a “lucky dog” or a “lucky devil.” We also talk about “payback for old cheese,” meaning getting one’s own back on a person.
As I had studied about cheese the night before to pick up a few terms, that familiar quotation about old cheese kept coming back to me. It was not only that the murderer was getting his own back, he was also using an “old cheese” in the word’s literary sense. And that was what I was after. I looked for an old cheese and wanted more information about it. The only thing we had learnt about the murderer’s tool—and food often appears in detective stories, in some of Agatha Christie’s mysteries for example—was that just a small and obliquely cut remnant of it had been found in Nilsson’s room when it was searched in the morning.
To my mind nothing is more attractive than a fresh uneaten piece of cheese, and few things as repellent as the old remains, looking like the lopsided sole of a shoe, which, after a while in the open air, acquires curly, hardened edges and is sweaty on the surface. Over time it can even become mouldy and be transformed into a living entity, nasty and disgustingly smelly.
Edgar Allan Poe could have created such a diabolical cheese as the villain of a story. I can only theorise about the modest piece of cheese among Axel Nilsson’s leftover belongings. It looked innocent enough, and may well have had its own period of glory in the past, but after having satisfactorily performed its task, it had been thrown in the wastebasket.
There are hundreds of different cheeses. Finding which kind the murderer had used was not easy, but at least I knew that it was a hard one. And it been cut, not handled with a cheese slicer. I also knew that it had to be old, i.e. long-stored. For the murderer had to get back at his victim for the sake of old cheese.
The proprietor of Blomberg’s provision shop readily answered my questions.
‘Ripe cheese?’
‘That’s right. What kind is the most ripe?’
‘That depends. Our cheeses are stored for different periods. For the time being we have a most—.’
‘Sorry, but I just meant on an average.’
‘Maybe the hard Swiss-type cheese, hard granular Swedish cheese or Cheddar. Those have usually been stored for the longest time and they don’t reach the market until after twelve months.’
‘Is that also true about the hard cheese, those with a granular texture?’
He looked surprised and embarrassed. I lowered my gaze. The knowledge I’d learned by reading sounded forced.
‘Well, yes, that’s true. The longer the time stored, the more strength and taste, irrespective of the preparation procedure. The customer decides whether the cheese should be strong or weak. Our Swedish cream and household cheeses are mostly mild, and if the customer wants such a cheese as a dessert, they are very fitting, such as Tilsit cheese or some kind of processed cheese.’
‘But if I want a well-stored cheese it would perhaps rather be a Suecia cheese?’
‘That depends on what cheeses we have for sale at the moment.’
‘How do you know how old the cheese is?’
‘All Swedish cheeses are stamped by the dairies. Percentage of fat and date of production is included.’
‘What about the self-service stores, where the pieces of cheese are packaged beforehand? Would the customer be able to make sure of the qualities of the cheese by reading the label?’
‘I think so. We in the privately-owned retail trade have the pleas
ure of personally giving the wanted information about our line of products.’
A touch of haughty self-satisfaction was reflected in his face—a face which, because of the presence of blackheads, had a next to granular texture.
I thanked him heartily for his advice and looked at my watch. I had certainly not become much wiser, but in any case I had to make one last and decisive visit before my confrontation with the murderer. It was my intention to pay my colleague, Dr. Herder, a visit that afternoon. He’s the chief physician at St. Katarina’s. If it wasn’t too late by then, I could pay the most important visit of all later that evening.
But, as everyone knows, I was summoned to the police station this Thursday, and the demand for my services reached me just as I was about to leave my home. My meeting with Crona was in many ways valuable and had given me some information of supplementary interest. His loss of memory was incontestable, but whether it was true amnesia due to a blackout caused by alcohol abuse, or just a gap in his memory as the result of such extreme intoxication that he ultimately dozed off, is an academic question.
Because of my conversation with the goldsmith, I had to postpone my visit to the murderer until the following day.
One has to respect other people’s time. They may go to bed early.
5
Before I introduce you to the perpetrator, at long last, a number of obscure points need to be cleared up.
Johan embellished his report with speculations of his own, many of which turned out to be irrelevant, and Gunnar Bergman gave an account of actual events which he interlaced with personal comments and evaluations. Carl read out parts of his son’s account during a phone call earlier today, so I know what I’m talking about.
My co-writers had no answers, at least not the right ones. I, on the other hand, have the answer but prefer—in accordance with longstanding detective tradition—not to reveal the murderer straight away, even though the newer English school often violates this rule and turns cases back-to-front.
Therefore, please accept my invitation to the street called Sandstensgatan, and let us see for the last time the events as they took place more than a week ago.
