Open Grave: A Mystery (25 page)

He checked when the will was drawn up and found that it was only two days old.

For a long time he sat staring into space. He could have expected anything at all, but not this. He had been given a family.

He read the will again, determined that the amounts Ohler bequeathed to the Andersson sisters were an insignificant fraction of what he owned in total in properties, securities, and cash bank deposits. This was shown by the appendices that were attached to the will. A major item among the agricultural properties was a farm outside Esl
ö
v, which the Ohlers had apparently rented out since the early 1900s to the same farm family. Bertram von Ohler was determined that this would also apply in the future.

But there were also other farms mentioned, including half a dozen in eastern Sm
å
land and two in the areas around B
å
lsta.

The shares were distributed among some two dozen Swedish companies. The largest individual entry was in Alfa Laval with 180,000 shares, but the holdings in SKF, Handelsbanken, various pharmaceutical manufacturers, and forestry companies were also significant. The strangest information was a fifty-percent ownership of a car garage in Nybro, Johansson Brothers Welding and Forging.

A numbing enumeration of companies and figures. Page up and page down that testified to a financial power that was hard to imagine. This was no chance lottery winning but instead columns of riches that had accumulated over many years, perhaps centuries, Karsten Heller suspected.

He was dispirited, melancholy in a way that he did not completely understand. Not just at the discovery that extraordinarily enough his mother was mentioned but rather over the massive weight that the will expressed. There was no mercy, that was how he experienced it. Pure and sheer power. How could you object to such wealth? It stood out as a massive colossus of granite, obvious and imperturbable. The Ohler family had succeeded, to put it simply. To oppose it was to air your envy, nothing else.

He gathered up the papers into a package, not caring whether they were in the right order, pushed it all down into the folder and nonchalantly tossed it into the safe. The remaining contents he had not been concerned with so far, but now he crouched down to investigate what was on the other shelves. He picked a little absentmindedly for a while in the piles of papers, which appeared to be letters. But under everything he glimpsed something that he recognized from his uncle’s safe: bills. In a shoebox were bundles of five-hundred-kronor notes, held together by rubber bands. He rooted in the box and picked up a bundle.

Money doesn’t smell, it was said, but that wasn’t quite true—Karsten remembered the story about the hotel in San Francisco that washed and ironed the guests’ currency—the professor’s money smelled greasy and musty.

There must be a dozen bundles. Half a fortune, all in five-hundred-kronor notes. He wondered how much it could be, surely half a million, maybe more.

He pocketed the bundle without really thinking about it, then got up, numbed by all the wealth and not least by the will. He closed the safe.

A hundred thousand kronor his mother would have gotten. That was the amount that Ohler thought was suitable to pay for a ruined life. She had never really recovered from the rape. It was not about forgiveness, Karsten understood that when he read her diaries. Sure, you could try to forgive even the cruelest actions, but the wound was so deep that it could never possibly heal. His mother had been deprived of so much, not only her virginity, but above all a kind of faith in the future. She had always, as long as Karsten could remember, lacked faith in herself, always expressed an anxious worry that perhaps things wouldn’t go well, that any temporary happiness sooner or later would be ended.

He only realized now that the reason for her anxiety perhaps had its background in what played out in Ohler’s cellar in 1944. While she was alive he had often been irritated at her vacillation and nervousness. Now he regretted that deeply. If he had only known!

She had never recovered from the loss of the fetus either, even though it was the result of an assault. She had written something about that: “It was my chance to have a child of my own.” Those were words that hurt. In his late teens Karsten found out that Anna was not his biological mother. It had been a cataclysmic piece of news but still did not constitute a terrifying shock. He had always felt surrounded by Anna’s and Horst’s love and concern, so the message did not basically disturb his trust in them. At the same time his parents told him that Anna had adopted him.

When he read the diaries and his mother’s words about “a child of my own” he had been angry and heartbroken to begin with, but gradually the anger had subsided. He understood her longing and boundless despair that the abortion also made her sterile. In reality the circumstances enlarged the image of his mother as the considerate and loving person she had always been. She had never uttered even the slightest little comment that could have made him feel sidelined or a kind of substitute for a “real” child.

He leaned his head against the safe, whose steel was not cool. On the contrary, it burned his forehead.

One hundred thousand kronor for a rape. A domestic servant’s virginity, future life, and peace of mind.

Anna Andersson. Anna Haller. Raped, dead, and buried.

Someone called, woke him out of his daze. It was Miss Elly, his companion. She was calling as usual for justice. He raised his head, looked up toward the ceiling, burrowing his gaze through the brown-stained paneling and screamed with Miss Elly.

He started going like a warrior through the house, firmly determined to administer justice, but stopped suddenly when he came out in the hall. It was too simple to kill the professor, it struck him. He wanted to create greater damage than that. Then the old man could die in shame and disgrace.

Perhaps it was the thought that he had been given an aunt, perhaps two, that made him calm down. They could fill out his mother’s life story about her childhood and youth, a period in her life she never talked about.

The return through the cellar out into the fresh air went quickly. He was no longer afraid of being seen, whether from inside the house or by the neighbors.
What of it,
he thought rashly,
I’m the one who’s sitting with the strong cards.

He jumped over the fence, took his bicycle, pulled it out onto the street, and disappeared from the block.

Twenty-six

It was with mixed emotions
Agnes noted that Birgitta and Liisa Lehtonen had decided to spend the night in the house. After finishing the wallpapering they shared a couple bottles of wine and then decided to continue the renovation work the following day.

Cleaning and mess—dust and garbage to take care of—Agnes had thought the evening before, but now at the breakfast table having the two women there felt refreshing. The Finnish woman was in an unusually good mood besides and entertained the others with hilarious episodes from the time she was active as a competitive shooter.

The professor preferred to have breakfast in the dining room and had then withdrawn to his study.

“Did you hear all the commotion last night?” asked Birgitta. “Were you the one who was up?”

She looked with a curious expression at Agnes, who realized that Birgitta saw a chance to ventilate her theories about night sleep, the position of the planets, and inner harmony. Agnes denied having left her bed.

“I usually sleep like a log,” she said. “You know that.”

“And then someone screamed,” said Birgitta. “But that was probably Daddy having a nightmare.”

Agnes had also heard the scream but was convinced it was not the professor, the scream had come from the ground floor. She thought Birgitta and Liisa had quarreled, and fell back asleep almost immediately.

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Liisa suggested. “Strange things do happen here in the house. And probably always have. What was his name, that chauffeur who worked here long ago that we saw a year or so ago?”

“I don’t remember,” said Birgitta.

“Don’t be that way, of course you remember!”

Birgitta shook her head.

“What was it? Something short, like Malm or Berg,” Liisa forged ahead. “Maybe we can ask Bertram? He must know.”

“Wiik,” said Birgitta.

“That’s it!” Liisa exclaimed. “He maintained that you could hear someone sighing and moaning in the cellar.”

Agnes saw that Birgitta was becoming more and more irritated.

“What was that?” she asked.

“It was before your time,” said Birgitta, “and the old man was ancient and gaga when we saw him.”

“I think he was as clear as anything,” said Liisa with an unconcerned expression. “He maintained that awful things had happened in the house.”

“Talk,” Birgitta said.

Now there was not just irritation but also discomfort in her face.

“When was that?” asked Agnes.

“During the war,” said Liisa. “He claimed that he was fired by the old Ohler. That he knew about things that—”

“Stop now!” Birgitta screamed suddenly and started sobbing. “I don’t want to hear a rehash of untrue old rumors. It’s enough with all the new untruths.”

“What do you mean?”

Liisa’s voice sounded unusually melodic. Agnes sensed the breakdown. From a pleasant conversation at the kitchen table to a stormy quarrel. She had experienced it before. There was something in the Finnish woman’s voice that called forth these recurring eruptions.

But this time Birgitta’s customary vehement reaction and the accompanying escalated dispute did not appear. Instead she leaned her head in her hands and Liisa mumbled something that could be understood as an apology.

Agnes had listened to and observed it all with increasing astonishment. She had never heard mention of any Wiik who might have worked in the house. Whatever the story was about, untruthful rumors or not, they must have been buried deep in the hidden chambers of the house. Rumors had a habit of propagating among the employees, sometimes for generations. There were few circumstances that the servants did not know about. Here was evidently a case that had been effectively hushed up. Agnes understood that it meant several things: The rumor was completely or at least mainly true; it concerned something sensational; and the servants had been properly frightened and certainly warned. Her coworkers during the early 1950s, who surely would have known who Wiik was, had kept their mouths shut, probably out of fear of losing their positions.

It struck Agnes that perhaps it was about homosexuality. Did the old professor have a relationship with Wiik, perhaps exploit him? That could explain the Finnish woman’s hectoring—she loved to mercilessly swoop down on all forms of double standards and fear of deviant sexual behavior. Agnes had been astonished many times at her frankness.

But now Liisa too fell silent, surely out of consideration for Birgitta, who calmed down and wiped away the tears with the back of one hand. The other hand held Liisa’s.

Agnes got up from the table and started clearing. Experience told her that the two women would withdraw for a while. That was not something she had an opinion about any longer.

“We’re going to rest a little,” said Birgitta.

The two women left the kitchen. They could at least say thank you, thought Agnes, but more out of old habit than because she was actually displeased. Nor did the fact that they disappeared to “rest” right after breakfast surprise her.

She picked up and did the dishes at the same time as she kept an eye on whether the gardener would show up. Perhaps he was working on the front side of Lundquist’s lot? She had become more and more curious about the man, although the connection to Anna was too vague for words. A saying, a few words, no more than that. But still, the uncertainty about who he was and where he came from was there, and it worried her more than she wanted to admit to herself.

The house was silent. She recalled a time when there was life and movement. Birgitta and her friends especially could make a racket. And then Dagmar, “the professor’s wife,” as she was called by the employees, she could also live it up so that it resounded in the whole house. Above all when the drinking started getting more serious. At night Agnes could sometimes hear her tripping across the floor, the sound of the liquor cabinet being opened, then a short silence—when Agnes could imagine how Dagmar was bringing the bottle to her mouth and taking a few swallows—followed by a contented “ahh.” And then the tripping back to the bedroom. Sometimes she vomited early in the morning. Agnes was always the one who had to tidy up.

Strangely enough the professor never realized the extent of his wife’s boozing, but on the other hand there was a lot at that time that he didn’t notice. He lived for his research, showing his family and home only a preoccupied, duty-bound interest.

Everyone knew that he was unfaithful. There was talk of a younger woman who worked at the hospital whom he, like an old-fashioned benefactor, supported with an apartment and certainly other things too. Agnes suspected that his trips to Italy did not have that much to do with his work but instead were outings together with his mistress, or “the piece” as the cook called her.

Dagmar was deeply unhappy. Everyone in the household realized that, but no one actually showed any pity on her. The professor’s wife took out her frustration on the servants, she was spiteful and unfair. The professor could be obstinate and really mean.

Their quarrels poisoned existence for everyone. When Dagmar died after a heart attack, Palm
é
r, who used to come and potter around in the garden, adjust the furnace, and take care of other practical tasks, summed up everyone’s opinion when he said, “It was probably all for the best that she was called home” and made a gesture with his hand to show in which direction he thought that Dagmar von Ohler’s new “home” was.

She was written out of the story with ease and with relief, but so many years later Agnes was prepared to partly reconsider her judgment of Dagmar. She was probably driven to drinking and ill temper. Agnes could also recall a considerably more obliging and friendly woman.