Hard Cheese

by Ulf Durling

  Sometime before eight o’clock Crona arrives. He has agreed to visit his old boon companion Nilsson for a drinking-bout. Knowing full well the hotel’s policy prohibiting alcohol, he’s anxious to get inside secretly. How does he manage that?

  When Carl went in through the back door last Sunday after getting Blom into the reception area by pressing the door-bell at the main entrance, he was merely proving that a person cannot be in more than one place at any given time.

  (I observe in passing that mystery writers have often dabbled with this and proved the opposite through brilliant manipulation of alibis and watches put back.)

  But Carl’s little experiment also proved something else: that from the reception area you can’t hear the signal that sounds in Blom’s room whenever anyone walks on the gravel pathways, either along the sides of the house or even in the passage leading to Björkstigen. The significance of this should be obvious to anyone. Crona must have opened the entrance door and caught a glimpse of Blom, who was at his desk, occupied with his accounts. He immediately withdrew, unnoticed by the owner. He didn’t know about the alarm system, but the watchdog’s presence at the front forced the goldsmith to walk over the garden towards the rear of the house, from whence he went upstairs to see the thirsty Nilsson, which turned out to be no problem at all.

  By the way, did you work out why Nilsson was in a double room? It was simply because Blom wanted to earn an extra bit of cash on the side and therefore claimed that all the single rooms were occupied, but Nilsson could have a double room if he wanted. He had no idea that it was off-season and that half the hotel was empty.

  Thus the old mates could settle down and the party could begin. A full-sized bottle of pure schnapps had been obtained for just such a purpose. Of the events after that, we only know that there was a quarrel and that the friends, or now enemies, wished to be left alone since they did not respond to Ivar Johanson’s inquisitive knocking.

  If anyone wanted to make the case that something important happened during these first hours, they would be totally wrong. The story about the plaster is the most irrelevant thing that happened during Crona’s visit to the hotel.

  The young Detective Sergeant’s theory that Nilsson asked for the plaster in order to divert the host’s attention while Crona slipped up the stairs is laughable. I won’t burden you with detailed timetables—if you find that kind of thing interesting, pick up any book by Freeman Wills Crofts—but, according to Carl’s account, the hullaballoo had been going on for a good half an hour before the need for a plaster occurred.

  To eventually dispose of the question of the plaster, I need to reveal what it was used for. I myself initially assumed it was to cover a wound, and from that false premise I developed a theory which, in hindsight, is impressive only for its monumental stupidity. Now, if it was not for medical purposes, what was it used for? What are the qualities of a plaster? Well, it can be used to fasten things together or be affixed to something. Under what circumstances was such affixing required? Well, it happened during a quarrel between two alcoholics.

  Now, your first thought was probably that something had been torn and needed temporary repair. But if an article of clothing or a piece of paper had been torn, you would ask for a needle and thread or a piece of sticky paper.

  So, what did they quarrel about? We can’t be certain because we weren’t there, but let’s hazard a guess, since we know what they were pre-occupied with: alcohol. What if they quarreled about the liquor? The most important thing in their miserable little lives at that moment was an expensively acquired bottle of alcohol. And, apart from the booze, they had a bottle of wine as well. Isn’t it possible that after the first friendly discussion there was an argument about how to divide the remaining liquor evenly? Suppose Nilsson was drinking from the plastic mug and Crona from the tooth-brush glass, which were of different sizes. What would be needed was a measuring-glass and they decided to obtain one.

  They borrowed a glass from one of the empty rooms on the same floor. It wasn’t fit for the specific purpose, but it could be. How? By making a mark on it, crosswise! Lead or ink doesn’t stick to glass, and using a transparent tape would not provide a distinct enough marking, particularly if visions had become blurred through alcohol.

  So Nilsson goes downstairs and collects a plaster which he affixes to the extra glass at a suitable height from the bottom. Then they pour out equal amounts of the coveted fluid and begin drinking again. They also continue quarrelling, but the important thing is that neither of them has been wounded.

  When Crona falls asleep around ten o’clock, Nilsson removes the plaster and throws it through the window. They no longer need a measuring glass. He then wipes the third glass clean, so that when he returns it in the morning it will look as if it hasn’t been used.

  Now we have to consider the next question, a most important one: when did Crona leave?

  He’s told us himself when and how. I don’t need to repeat what he said to Gunnar Bergman, but soon afterwards he gave me the same explanation. There’s no reason to doubt his account of what happened after he woke up around two o’clock, nor his statement about loss of memory. Nilsson was murdered during the hours while Crona was asleep, and when Crona woke up he found him exactly as he’s described.

  We don’t know what Nilsson was doing while his guest slept. We only know one thing: he didn’t listen to the radio.

  How could this be possible, when different witnesses affirm that the radio was on in the room? On the one hand, it was on just after ten o’clock according to Blom, and at that time Crona would have been asleep. On the other hand, it was on just before one o’clock, according to Ivar Johanson, and at that time Nilsson would have been dead. I believe that he was murdered around eleven o’clock. Despite that, the radio was off when Crona woke up. And please remember that the battery was still working, for next day the police turned on the radio and heard the Sunday High Mass.

  This circumstance raises the obvious question: on what programmeme is the High Mass transmitted?

  I will answer it for you. Programmeme One.

  But P 1 is not on the air at one o’clock in the morning, only P3 is, and it keeps going through the night.

  Did the radio turn itself off between one and two, and change the programmeme from P3 to P1? No!

  Now what happens regularly at one o’clock in the morning in The Little Boarding-House?

  Well, Blom goes to bed and at the same time he normally closes the window. In any case, that’s what he did that night, as well as the next one, when Johan saw him doing it from the backyard. Why was the window open in the first place? It wasn’t because Blom was listening for footsteps on the gravel—for that purpose he had installed his signal system— but because he was warm and feverish and wanted to cool himself down. Remember how relieved he was when Gunnar Bergman opened the window during the interrogation! Nilsson’s window on the other side was open until after two o’clock, a point in time when the wind, which had begun blowing after midnight, slammed the window shut. That was after Crona had thrown the key in from the backyard.

  The truth is that Blom heard his own radio through Nilsson’s room. His radio was on his window-recess and the sound was propagated through the two open windows, which are situated one above the other. The radio could be heard coming out of Nilsson’s room, but not if one of those two windows was closed. When Blom stood outside Nilsson’s room on the first floor, he heard the news being read from his own radio, which he had not yet switched to P3. He didn’t do that until he was back downstairs again. Later that night, Johanson correctly reported hearing radio music when he listened from the same position as Blom had done a few hours earlier.

  In other words the radio was Blom’s, not Nilsson’s, and the footprints Johan found in the garden after the rain belonged to Mr. Odestam and not to Göran Eriksson. The mistakes were made according to the same principle.

  Now I turn to another puzzling matter, the dreary and hard-to- interpret whining sound th
at was heard by both Ivar Johanson and Warrant Officer Renqvist during the night the murder took place. It went on between twelve o’clock and half past one or two. It has been thought of as the death struggle of the murder victim, as someone crying and as the squeaking of the window that was open in Nilsson’s room. That last explanation is the least plausible, for in such a case, why wasn’t Crona woken up just as Johanson was?

  You have actually heard of the one who produced those sounds, but you may not remember when and where. Therefore I will dwell a little on the subject in order to make it perfectly clear.

  We can safely assume the only person in the house who could not have been the cause of the sounds was Nilsson, since he was dead. It is necessary to establish at what point of time this sound ceased, because it was directly linked to Crona’s departure. How was it possible that he found the backdoor unlocked at just after two o´clock in the morning? The same backdoor, which he did not lock, but which the chamber maid found locked in the morning? That means that someone other than Crona must have left the house round about two o’clock in the night and left the door unlocked for a while. Who?

  How long was the door open? When was it opened? Who had a reason to get out? The answer to the first question is trivial: enough time for the person who went out to be able to perform his or her errand.

  What it was that needed to be done will be evident from the answer to the third question. The essential thing is that the door was open and that Crona could disappear. It happened around two o’clock, and just before that the sound had ceased.

  Last Tuesday I met Renqvist at his regiment and after my conversation with him—you may prefer to call it a consultation, without him knowing it—I’ve been able to deduce that Renqvist’s statement that the sound ended half an hour earlier was wrong.

  I had passed through the barracks gates many times during my days as a part-time regimental medical officer. When I went there this time I was admitted by kind permission of the junior officer of the day, Staff Sergeant Holm.

  In the surgery, I met another officer, who sent for Renqvist. It was at the end of the day and shooting practice was over. He didn’t object to me asking a few questions, so we took off our outer clothes and went into the examination room in order to talk in private. I told him that there were still many unsolved problems regarding Nilsson’s death and I needed one further piece of information. Whereupon, I bluntly asked if he was deaf.

  ‘Deaf?’ he said. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘You were originally an artillery man. Did you ask to be transferred to infantry, before someone else found that the deafness was causing problems with your work?’

  ‘I’m not deaf. Who told you that?’

  ‘I did. I assert that you’re deaf in your left ear, but if you claim that’s not true, would you be willing to submit to a test?’

  ‘If you like.’

  I asked him to stay at the other end of the room and cover his left ear. From a distance of five metres I whispered three numbers.

  ‘8, 3, 7.’

  ‘8, 3, 7,’ Renqvist repeated.

  He turned around and we repeated the procedure with his right ear covered.

  ‘2, 9, 1.’

  As he turned to me he had a somewhat ironic smile in his otherwise impassive face.

  ‘2, 9, 1. Is the examination over now?’

  I apologized. While I put on my overcoat, I wondered frantically how I could have made such a mistake.

  Sometimes when you’re grappling with a difficult problem, you can get a lucky break This happened to me when I suddenly realised I was without my spectacles and had to search for them for a while. It was when I returned to the problem that I had a flash of inspiration.

  I rushed into the waiting room, out on to the barrack square and after the warrant officer, who had just disappeared into a grey building. I read 8 above the door. When I got there, I heard a nasty kind of clatter from the inside and twenty soldiers jumped out. They were wearing helmets with masking nets, green field uniforms and sub-machine-guns, and they formed two lines and began stamping on the gravel. I retreated behind the corner and bumped into a lieutenant. He was a polite man, who perhaps took me for a stray man doing his refresher course, so he showed me the way to the office, where I used a telephone. By the side of it was a list of numbers. I lifted the receiver and called the 8th company.

  ‘The expedition, 8th company,’ answered a young man. I could almost hear the youthful pimples in his voice.

  ‘May I talk to Warrant Officer Renqvist?’

  ‘Who’s calling?’ the conscript asked.

  I thought of giving the name of a well-known military commander, but the only name I could recall in a hurry belonged to the main character in Fänrik Ståls sägner, a national epic written by the Finnish poet Runeberg in 1848. Instead, I played the role of someone at the top of the military hierarchy, invented by me on the spur of the moment.

  ‘Colonel Ankarström!’ I roared.

  ‘Who?’ he replied and then the warrant officer took over.

  ‘Renqvist.’

  ‘Colonel Ankarström here. Take down the following order until further notice.’

  ‘One moment, Colonel.’

  The silence lasted five seconds.

  ‘Please go on, Colonel.’

  At that, I whistled in a squeaky way a few bars from the second symphony of Beethoven, the trio of the minuet movement.

  Silence.

  ‘Hello, Colonel,’ Renqvist said after a while.

  ‘You didn’t hear?’

  ‘No, Colonel.’

  ‘Are you deaf?’

  ‘No, Colonel.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Beethoven was also deaf,’ I said and hung up.

  Then I went home.

  Renqvist had simply not heard my whistling and so he had escaped a totally unenjoyable musical experience. He had, of course, a hearing impairment of the higher frequencies, an occupational hazard of artillery men. When I had whispered to him he could hear it because the sound had a low frequency, but my shrill whistle had been inaudible.

  I’d noticed that he was right-handed when he buttoned the coat of his uniform. After moving the handset from the right ear to the left one, as we right handed people do when we note down something during a phone call, I could establish that it was the left ear that did not react to high frequency sounds.

  Therefore, Renqvist couldn’t have heard the mysterious sound in the boarding-house after he changed his sleeping position around half past one. When he turned in his bed, he had obstructed the normal hearing of his right ear.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to report his disability to anyone, and he would surely be thankful for that. However, I will never know how comforted he was by my consoling words about his fellow-in- misfortune Beethoven.

  Thus Johanson’s statement that the sound ceased just before two was correct. It had a high frequency and we know from earlier reports that it sometimes disappeared—for example when Johanson went to the loo just before one o’clock—and then recurred.

  Now I ask once again: who had an errand outside the house? What kind of squeaking sound could start at various times and urge someone to go for a walk? I’m assuming there’s a connection between the ceasing of the sound and the fact that somebody went out and left the door unlocked.

  There were seven people in The Little Boarding-House.

  Axel Nilsson, who was dead.

  Blom, who was asleep and had no reason to go out.

  Crona, who doesn’t count.

  Johanson, who went up roughly when the sound had ceased and who got his alibi from the warrant officer in room 10.

  Renqvist, who was in bed and was found there by the travelling salesman, who needed company.

  Hurtig-Olofsson, who was reading aloud for Mrs. Söderström.

  Söderström, who was listening to her woman friend reading aloud or….

  You understand that I’m talking about the schoolmistresses. Mrs. Söderst
röm, who was obviously a good deal more strong-willed, had succeeded in persuading her companion to let her take the dog for a walk. Especially since the dog had been whining for some time and had to be exercised and since Miss Hurtig-Olofsson was the archetypal anxious woman, afraid of the dark and reluctant to go out in spite of being the dog’s owner. A telephone call to the caretaker at Miss Hurtig-Olofsson’s home address, Ringvägen 88 in Stockholm, revealed that she possessed a Pekinese. The prohibition of both liquor and pets in the rooms of the boarding-house had made it necessary to smuggle in her little darling in the bag she always carried.

  I stated earlier that you had indeed heard about what it was that created the sound. Do you remember that Crona developed his theory about delirium tremens from “a dog with slobbering jaws,” which he did in fact see during his flight along Björkstigen? Mrs. Söderström, who herself was somewhere in the shadows, was walking the dog there, as it sniffed around trees and lamp-posts. Even though she’d seen Crona, she couldn’t reveal that during the police interrogation. She had to prevent the unauthorised harbouring of the animal from being exposed. It was unusually cool of Miss Hurtig-Olofsson to keep her head while she was reading out loud alone in the room. Her voice should have broken now and then, for “Lilliecronas hem” is a very emotional story. She was aware of the fact that other people were still around at this time of the night and she’d probably heard Johanson knocking at the door of the next room. He may, by the way, have woken up a few minutes before when Mrs.Söderström passed his door with the whining dog on her way out.

  By reading aloud, Miss Hurtig-Olofsson tried to give her friend an alibi during the short time of her absence. Needless to say, she had a really bad conscience over the dog’s forbidden stay at the hotel, and perhaps she also feared that other guests, present as well future ones with allergies to furry animals, would develop painful, dangerous and ultimately even lethal reactions and.…

  Before I turn to discussing other things that happened beneath the deceptive surface and behind the scenes, a clarification would not be out of place. It is about lies—in particular, about one perplexing white lie.