House of Evidence (10 page)

H
alldór waited out in the corridor while Matthías Kieler scrubbed his hands clean. Erlendur had gone to see to a number of things, including a visit to Jacob Junior’s long-standing friend the Reverend Ingimar Thorsteinsson.

“Most things in here have not changed at all since the house was built,” Matthías observed, as he dried his hands. “My father had the whole house plumbed, which was very rare in those days. Allow me now to show you round the rest of the house.”

The master bedroom was in the center of the house facing the street, with a balcony in front. In the middle of the floor stood a large double bed, covered with a beautifully woven bedspread, and on each side of it a small bedside table with turned feet, covered with a white crocheted cloth. On one of the tables was a pocket watch, a small box, and some old spectacles. The walls were decorated with tasteful, old-fashioned wallpaper.

“This was my parents’ bedroom and, later, that of Jacob Senior and Elizabeth. After Jacob died, Elizabeth moved to another room on the other side of the corridor. This bedspread is considered a great treasure, and was Elizabeth’s wedding present from her parents in Leicester.”

He opened the large closet, which contained old clothes, packed in plastic bags.

“This is Jacob Senior’s wardrobe,” Matthías continued. “Everything here is as it was when he died.”

Halldór took a bowler hat down from one of the shelves, removed it from its bag, and examined it. He had once dreamed of owning a hat like that.

“I hope someone will be able to make use of these clothes now, perhaps a museum or even a theater,” Matthías remarked wistfully. “They are clothes of quality.”

Opposite the television room was Jacob Junior’s study, with shelves bearing large numbers of books, ring binders, and stacks of papers.

“I assume you will need to look through Jacob Junior’s papers. Everything is on hand here. My nephew was very organized. All the account books for the running of the house will be found somewhere here.”

Elizabeth’s bedroom was directly opposite the bathroom. It had been arranged in the same manner as the master bedroom, with clothing packed in plastic bags in the closet, and everything kept clean and tidy. There were a few personal effects on the bedside table; some simple pieces of jewelry, a comb, and a Bible in English.

The last room upstairs was Jacob Junior’s bedroom. It contained a neatly made single bed and, on the bedside table, an alarm clock and a copy of Goethe’s
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
, with a bookmark tucked toward the back of the book.

“Did Jacob read German?” Halldór asked.

“Yes, he was a good linguist; he spoke English like a native, of course, but also had a good command of German. His father encouraged this.”

Halldór examined the book. It was dog-eared and worn.

“This is a much-read book,” he said.

Matthías took it and looked at the title. “Yes, my brother Jacob was fond of quoting
Werther
. A wise man once said that if a book was not worth reading twice it was not worth reading once.”

Halldór opened the closet. The clothes were somewhat shabby, though they had been neatly hung up or arranged on shelves.

As they walked back along the corridor, Halldór pointed at a trapdoor in the ceiling.

“What is up there?” he asked.

“A storage loft; among other things, it contains odds and ends from when the children were young. Nothing was ever thrown away in this house.”

“How do you get up there?”

“There is a ladder attached to the trapdoor that slides down when the trap is opened. You can also get out onto the roof through a skylight up there.”

They went back down to the ground floor. By now, Jóhann had left, and the two men found themselves alone in the house. A green sheet covered the largest bloodstain on the floor. Halldór could see that Matthías was not comfortable here in the parlor: he wrung his hands repeatedly and didn’t seem to know where to turn.

“This is an unusually large parlor,” Halldór said.

“Yes, it is spacious. My parents often invited guests here to listen to music. They would move in the chairs from the dining room, though the men usually remained standing. I can remember around eighty people attending a concert here. As I progressed with my music studies, I would sometimes play at these concerts, but otherwise the performers would be the very best instrumentalists or singers the town could offer.”

“Who is this woman?” Halldór asked, pointing at the painting on the wall to the side of the fireplace.

“That is my sister-in-law, Elizabeth Chatfield Kieler. The picture was painted at her home when she was in her late teens.”

It was undeniably a fine painting, and the sitter clearly exuded considerable character in spite of her tender years, Halldór mused.

“Can you describe her to me?” Halldór asked.

“Elizabeth was a grand woman. She was exceedingly intelligent and well educated, as well as being very determined and strong willed. She proved a very good wife to my brother and the best possible mother to the children.” Matthías moved closer to the painting and continued, “I remember very well the first time I saw Elizabeth. She and my brother arrived here in Iceland on board the
Gullfoss
, and my father and I went down to the quay to meet them.

“I had only just turned sixteen, and I hadn’t seen my older brother for ten years. He had written numerous letters to me, but when it came right down to it, I had no idea how to behave toward this sophisticated man. I was even less sure about how to greet his foreign wife, and when Jacob Senior and Elizabeth came down the gangway toward us, the words froze in my mouth; but to my great joy Elizabeth shook my hand and greeted me in Icelandic. Jacob Senior had taught her that on board the ship.

“Though the words were correct, the pronunciation was, of course, not perfect. Two daughters of a friend of my father’s, teenage girls, had joined us on the quayside while we waited, and when they heard what Elizabeth said they started giggling like idiots. I caught a flash of anger in my sister-in-law’s eyes, and she never again spoke a single word of Icelandic. She learned very quickly to understand the language, and she enjoyed reading
books in Icelandic, but she never again tried to speak it. Elizabeth was not a person you mocked.”

Halldór led the way into the office. There was gray fingerprint powder on the desk and on the stamp frames.

“I do apologize for this mess,” Halldór said, as he examined the stamps. “These must be worth quite a bit.”

“I don’t think they’re worth a fortune, but they are attractive and neatly displayed. Jacob Junior inherited a large stamp collection from his father, but I gather he had sold everything apart from these here.”

Halldór selected the latest diary from the bookshelf. “I assume that Jacob Senior continued to keep a diary after he completed this one at the beginning of 1932.”

“That’s right. He kept a diary until his death.”

“Do you know where the more recent books are?”

“No.”

Halldór turned to the gun cabinet. It seemed quite sturdy, with the guns securely locked behind an iron grill. There were two shotguns, three rifles of various sizes, and one pistol, all clean and shiny—it looked as if they had recently been polished.

“Who owned these weapons?” Halldór asked.

“Jacob Senior was a great shooting enthusiast; they were his,” Matthías replied. “Jacob Junior also went shooting with his father, and was a reasonable shot.”

“Is there ammunition here for the guns?”

“I expect so, but Jacob Junior probably kept it in a safe place.”

“Can you tell me why one of the dining chairs has been moved into the parlor?” Halldór asked, as the two men made their way through the parlor toward the dining room.

“No,” Matthías declared, shaking his head.

In the dining room was a large sideboard for china; some of the doors were glazed, revealing the collection of beautiful plates inside. There was a small trolley in one corner of the room.

They passed through the door that led from the dining room into the kitchen. And Matthías paused, looking around the room. “Jacob and his mother showed great persistence in putting up with this turn-of-the-century kitchen all these years. The refrigerator was the only thing that was bought new, but it was hidden inside one of the cupboards. There is also an electric stove.”

Halldór examined the utensils hanging on the walls. “Has this stuff been in use here all the time?” he asked.

“No, hardly,” Matthías replied. “I assume that Sveinborg has cooking equipment that she keeps somewhere. These things are more museum items. Jacob Junior even collected old kitchen equipment from other houses to display here.”

“There is a coal-fired range here; is it in working order?” Halldór asked.

“Yes, it is connected to the house’s main chimney stack, which has three flues. There is also a fireplace in the laundry room in the basement. Come, I’ll show you all this on the plan of the house that is kept in the studio.”

To the right of the house’s main entrance was a door leading to the extension. “Jacob Senior had this studio built in 1935 to provide a work space for himself and his assistants,” explained Matthías.

It was a spacious room, about twelve by twenty-six feet, containing a large drafting table with a complicated wrought-iron support that allowed one to adjust the table’s height and position. A heavy counterweight made it easy to set the angle of the table, and a drafting machine with two long rulers was attached to its top edge. There was a chair with a screw thread so it could
be made higher or lower by turning the seat. Halldór’s eye was caught by the large framed drawings, white lines on a dark blue base, hanging on the walls. He examined the one nearest to him. “Reykjavik Station, Scale 1:2000, 1923.” The drawing was a rough sketch of Reykjavik city center, showing the outlines of the principal buildings and Tjörnin Lake, but also incorporating a railroad station and train tracks.

The railroad station had been drawn on the corner of Skothúsvegur and Sóleyjargata, where the Hljómskáli building had later been built; Birkihlíd could also be seen nearby. The tracks were shown running southbound along Sóleyjargata, and northbound along Lækjargata toward the harbor. There was a legend with explanations and references by letter or number to the various features of the drawing: station building, office and heated warehouse, freight shed, freight-loading bay, weighbridge, workshop and locomotive shed, turntable, ash hopper, water tank, main running tracks, passenger sidings, freight sidings, freight yard, harbor yard, locomotive sidings.

“So they must have done a great deal of the planning for this railroad,” Halldór said.

“Yes, there was a lot of work behind this. Jacob Senior was very proud of these drawings,” Matthías said.

“These are photocopies of the originals, aren’t they?”

“Yes, that is correct. The originals are somewhere in safekeeping. I remember helping my brother Jacob make this copy.”

“How was that done?”

“The original was fastened into a frame over a sheet of paper that had been treated with chemicals, ammonia among other things; the stench was dreadful. The frame was then held in a window, and the part of the copy exposed to daylight turned blue, while those parts under the pen markings remained white.”

Halldór moved to the next drawing. It showed a railroad track leading eastward from Reykjavik over Mosfellsheidi, north beyond Lake Thingvallavatn, and from there south toward Ölfusá River, and east to Thjórsá River.

“Is this not an odd route for a railroad?” Halldór asked.

“It seems like it today, but at the time that they were planning the railroad, the heath over Hellisheidi was considered too high and steep to be crossed. Mosfellsheidi was much flatter. Later on, the route through Threngsli was discovered, and subsequently all plans were based on that one.”

There was a large bookcase on the inner wall of the room, all but one of whose shelves was filled with old ring binders and books.

“Here you can find all the data relating to the railroad,” Matthías said, “in case anyone should be interested in it.”

On one shelf were two old surveying instruments, and Halldór picked one of them up and peered into its eyepiece.

“That is a theodolite; the other is a leveling instrument. You’ll probably see everything upside down.”

“I don’t really see anything at all,” Halldór said.

“The lenses need to be focused,” Matthías said, taking the instrument from Halldór. He held it briefly up to his eye before replacing it on the shelf. “I helped Jacob Senior with some of the surveying in the summers before I emigrated; for instance, I helped with the route east through the Threngsli Pass.”

There was a rack on the wall in which a number of thin plywood curves of different radii were arranged.

“What is that?” Halldór asked.

“When they were designing railroad tracks or roads, they used these curves to plot the shape of bends,” Matthías replied. He pointed to some thick books with German titles in the
bookcase. “These are tables of coordinates for shapes like these, and were used to calculate transition curves.” He took out one of the books and flipped through it, revealing pages covered in columns of numbers printed in tiny characters.