Read Online Open Grave: A Mystery by Kjell Eriksson - Free Book Online

remained standing, and he remained standing, even though he always walked around talking. She said, “Thanks, G ö sta, that was nice of you.” He went to make sure that the cars got off the ferry. She would never forget G ö sta Fredell.
    She walked from the ferry home. It was only a few kilometers, if you counted like when she was a child. I’ll catch pneumonia, she thought, but trudged on. There was a comfort in the landscape, late yarrow and columbines swayed at the edge of the ditch and the apples shone in the gardens. At old Lidb ä ck’s a mare was standing that whinnied as she walked past. She stopped and said a few friendly words.
    Her childhood home, a poorly built wooden shack, looked even smaller, as if the house had adapted itself now that it needed to house only two persons instead of three. It was a gray, melancholy house and had been like that since Anna’s return from service with the “old professor.” Later on she left for Stockholm, where she got a position with a businessman with houses in both Saltsj ö baden and in France.
    She was replaced by Greta, who in turn was replaced by Agnes, a relay team of sisters to keep the Ohler home in good shape.
    Agnes could still remember the short walk from the road up toward the house. It was as if it was the last time, even though she realized that was not the case. But it was a painful way to go, a farewell. Thirty-five years ago, she thought, staring at her feet in the bath.
    *   *   *
    “He went first,” said her mother as Agnes stepped into the kitchen.
    She was sitting at the table, and immediately poured a cup of coffee from a thermal carafe, as if she had been sitting there a long time waiting for her daughter’s arrival. They had their coffee in silence. If her father had become somewhat more easygoing with the years her mother had changed in the opposite direction.
    Greta was at the funeral parlor to take care of the practicalities. Agnes helped pack clothes in boxes and bags, which would most likely end up in the attic. Agnes did not ask what her mother intended.
    “The office,” the box room under the stairs, which Aron had furnished as his own little den, was mostly cleaned out. Agnes suspected that her sister had been there. But in a drawer she found her childhood. In the warped drawer in a worm-eaten cupboard he had stored the loose tobacco, the only vice he allowed himself. He did not smoke, instead he cut up the long braids and drew the tobacco into his nose. He did it to “clear his nasal passages.”
    That aroma was her father, but also a kind of worldly perfume, an almost sensory reminder that there was an existence beyond the home and the congregation.
    She had pulled the drawer out completely and brought it to her nose, breathed in deeply, and experienced her father’s mute devotion. So certainly she had been loved, in his reserved way, but loved all the same.
    Agnes knew that Greta had tried to get hold of Anna and before she returned to Uppsala she asked whether their big sister had been heard from. Her mother did not answer and Agnes took that as a no.
    A few days later Agnes got pneumonia, was bedridden, and could not be at the funeral.
    *   *   *
    The water had long since cooled in the tub. Her feet were wrinkled and softened. Agnes filed them long and well, a task that brought her a kind of pleasure.

 
    Eight
    “There are rats!”
    “It’s mice,” Agnes Andersson corrected.
    “Doesn’t matter.” Birgitta von Ohler looked around the library as if she would discover more. “They are rodents,” she continued, “and they can eat up a household from inside.”
    Maybe it was the fatigue that made Agnes’s eyes tear up.
    “Don’t be sad,” Birgitta exclaimed, taking hold of her arm. “It’s not your fault. I’m just so surprised that it’s happening in this house.”
    “Mice make no distinctions,” said Agnes, freeing herself from her grasp. “They make their way indoors this time of year. I usually