The Flatey Enigma (20 page)

B
ack at the vicarage, Frída was filled with indignation at being summoned for an interrogation by the Reykjavik inspectors like this without notice. Högni had been sent over to the priest and his wife with the request, but the lady had taken it badly. She stood fuming in the hall, clutching her hat between her hands, as Reverend Hannes tried to appease her.

“Frída dear. This is a perfectly natural request for the authorities to make,” he said pleadingly.

“Request! We’re clergy, for God’s sake!”

“Yes, yes, it’s only a formality. They want to talk to everyone on the island.”

“Couldn’t these officers just show us a little bit of respect and come here in person so that we wouldn’t have to walk over there with everyone gawking at us as if we were common criminals?”

“These are busy people, dear,” Reverend Hannes tried to explain. “They’re investigating a most hideous crime, you know.”

Frída’s eyes were beginning to well with tears. “Yes, precisely. So how should we know anything about it?”

“Now, now, Frída dear,” said the priest, slipping his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “Tell the men we’ll be there at eleven,” he said to Högni.

“Eleven thirty, not a second earlier,” said Frída with a sobbing gasp.

Högni took this message down to the school, and Grímur changed the order of the interviews to accommodate the priest’s wife’s request. The questioning was running smoothly, and there were no visible signs of the policemen tiring. Most of the people questioned were in with them for ten to fifteen minutes. The islanders accounted for their movements between Sunday night and Monday morning and also provided the names of those who could confirm their testimonies. It all proceeded rapidly and efficiently, and there seemed to be no contradictions in the accounts. The overall picture of how Bryngeir had spent the last two days of his life on the island was beginning to sharpen. It was only on that hour while the mass was going on in the middle of the day that no one could comment on his whereabouts. Everyone had been in the church, except for Dr. Jóhanna and two visiting fishermen who were lying hungover and asleep in an old house they had rented with others.

Jón Ferdinand only spent two minutes with the inspectors. Thórólfur simply wrote “senile” across the page and sent him away. Little Nonni was the next to enter and corroborated everything Valdi had said about their movements. They had spent the whole evening at home boiling sea stew.

The priest and his wife then arrived at the school at eleven thirty on the dot.

Högni knocked on the door of the school, stuck his nose inside, and announced their arrival. Stína from the telephone exchange was finishing her statement and had nothing new to add, much to her regret. She remembered that the goodwife from Rádagerdi had confidentially told her that the Reykjavik reporter had bragged that he’d solved the Ketilsey mystery. It could also be that she had confided the story to someone else later that evening, she couldn’t quite remember.

“Let the priest’s wife come in first,” Thórólfur said to Grímur, once Stína had left the room. It was clear to him that most of the inhabitants of Flatey had been privy to the reporter’s secret by Sunday evening.

Grímur vanished out of the room and then reappeared in the doorway again.

“The priest’s wife refuses to talk to you without her husband being present,” he said. “I wouldn’t argue with her if I were you. She’s quite adamant,” he added.

Thórólfur smiled. “Bring them both in.”

An extra chair was placed in front of the desk.

“I’m sorry for troubling you,” said Thórólfur with a smile. “We felt we needed to question all the islanders. We feel it’s particularly important for us to talk to the more educated and intelligent members of this community, since you obviously have a clearer perspective on things than some of the local workers around here.”

Frída seemed thrown by this flattering welcome and decided to remain silent and allow Reverend Hannes to answer the questions.

“We’re happy to be of any assistance,” he said.

“Did you meet the reporter this case revolves around?” Thórólfur asked.

“No, not really. He actually knocked on our door early on Saturday evening, but he’d gone to the wrong house. He was looking for alcohol. I shooed him away. After that we spotted him every now and then, strolling around the village or up the pass. We have such a clear view from our living room window.”

“Can you put a time to these movements, particularly on Sunday?”

Reverend Hannes thought a moment. “On Sunday we first saw him at around noon, probably at eleven thirty, when he was coming from Thormódur Krákur’s barn. He prowled around the village a bit after that. Then, of course, we were busy preparing the mass and didn’t see him again until late that afternoon when Benny in Rádagerdi escorted him up to Krákur’s shed. Benny then came back on his own at around eight. Krákur brought us his half pot of milk at eight and told us that he had authorized the reporter to sleep in his barn if he needed to. Krákur is a generous man, and people sometimes take advantage of that. He’s also a bit gullible and into spiritism.”

Reverend Hannes glanced at his wife. “Wouldn’t you say that’s true, Frída dear?” he asked. She nodded.

“Was there anyone else walking on the pass that evening?” Thórólfur asked.

This time Frída answered: “Högni, the teacher, came out from the district officer’s house after dinner at around eight, and the magistrate’s envoy came down at around nine and walked across the village to the interior of the island. Krákur then went back up to the shed at around ten. After that we went to bed and therefore didn’t witness anyone else’s movements.”

Thórólfur jotted down some notes on his sheet and then asked, “Is there anything else you can think of that might be of help to us in this investigation?”

“No,” Reverend Hannes said, shaking his head, but Frída nudged him.

“Don’t you remember?” she whispered.

“Remember what, Frída dear?”

She took the initiative. “People here on the island have been gossiping about the fact that the Dane had been our guest and that we were the last people to see him. That’s simply not true, and I want it to be known.”

“Who saw him last then?”

“When he left us he was going to go to Doctor Jóhanna to buy seasickness pills. He was so afraid of being seasick. That’s why he left so early. That means that she was the last person to see him, not us, so you can write that down for the record.” Frída punctuated this statement by tossing back her head and crossing her arms.

Thórólfur thanked the priest and his wife for the chat, and the couple said good-bye, telling the policemen that they were welcome at the vicarage anytime. They could even stay with them if the school was uncomfortable. Frída had taken a shine to them.

“We need to talk to the doctor,” Thórólfur said to his assistant when the priest and his wife had left. “All our leads end with her.”

A member of the coast guard crew appeared with an envelope. Thórólfur opened it and read its contents. “Yes, we definitely need to speak to the doctor,” he said, folding the paper again.

Question thirty: The greatest sorcerer. First letter. On the eve of Yule, Svasi the dwarf came to King Harald Fairhair and, using sorcery, turned his mind to a Finnish woman by the name of Snæfrid. Harald married her and loved her to distraction, blinded by Svasi’s spell, which made her seem like the sweetest woman in the world. They had a son together. When Snæfrid died, a veil made by Svasi was draped over her. It possessed such a powerful spell that King Harald found her corpse so bright and vibrant that he refused to bury her and sat by her side for three winters. Then a wise man suggested the veil should be removed from her body and it was done. The body was rotten and gave off a foul smell. Following this, King Harald was so angry about the spell and all the sorcery that he banned the practice of all magic in his kingdom. The answer is “Svasi,” and the first letter is
s.

A
fter lunch, Högni was sent down to the doctor’s house to summon Jóhanna to an interview. It was still raining and cold. Högni walked swiftly against the wind, tightly clutching the collar of his jacket under his chin. In less than twenty-four hours, everything seemed to have taken a turn for the worse in Flatey, including the weather. And instead of attending to their seal nets and picking eiderdown, farmers sat at home and waited for the inspectors to track down the monster who had started to kill people.

Högni knocked many times on the doctor’s hall door and, when no one answered, opened it and stepped into a little hallway. The islanders were not in the habit of locking their houses on Flatey, and it was all right to pop one’s head through the door if the matter was urgent.

“Hello?” he called out, hearing nothing but the echo of his own voice in the small, dark hallway in reply. He could smell odors from the infirmary and pharmacy. All kinds of peculiar scents combined to produce that special mysterious hospital aroma that could feel both menacing and comforting, depending on the circumstances.

Högni penetrated deeper inside and saw a patient’s room to his right in which there was a hospital bed containing a corpse veiled under a white sheet. Björn Snorri Thorvald was lying there, waiting for his removal and final farewell to the house. A flame glowed on a candlestick by the side of the bed.

Jóhanna wouldn’t have left the house like this
, Högni thought to himself.
She must be home.

“Hello?” he called out louder than before.

This time he heard a door open on the floor above, and Jóhanna appeared on the stairs.

“What is it, Högni? Are you sick?” she asked.

“No, no, no one is sick. But the inspectors from Reykjavik would like to talk to you. They’re talking to everyone.”

“Yes, I know. Is it my turn then? I won’t be a minute.”

“I’ll wait,” said Högni. “We can go together.”

Jóhanna vanished for a moment before reappearing at the bottom of the stairs in her coat. She walked over to her father’s bed, blew out the candle, and locked the room behind her. In the hallway she grabbed an umbrella off a hook.

“It’s not often that you see one of those in Flatey,” Högni said as they set off and Jóhanna opened the umbrella.

“No, people around here are so used to having their faces pelted by the rain it doesn’t bother them. I’m more delicate,” Jóhanna answered. Then they walked in silence.

Högni wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have spotted Kjartan’s—the magistrate’s assistant’s—coat in the hallway of the doctor’s house.

Question thirty-one: The cause of the death of King Harald Gormsson. Fifth letter. The Jomsvikings saga tells of a man called Pálnatók, who was a Viking, lived in Fjón, and was one of the most powerful men in Denmark, apart from King Harald Gormsson. There were feuds between these leaders, which culminated with Pálnatók coming to a place where the king was resting by a fire in the evening after a battle. The king was stooped over the fire with his chest leaning forward and his ass in the air. Pálnatók heard the king talking, armed his bow with an arrow, and fired. It is said that the arrow shot up straight up the king’s ass and out his mouth. He dropped dead, as was to be expected. The cause of his death was the “arrow up his ass,” and the fifth letter in the answer is
w.

I
nspector Thórólfur scrutinized the woman who sat facing him, bolt upright, on the other side of the school desk. She seemed calm and reflective and had been waiting in silence since they had shook hands and sat down. District Officer Grímur awaited further instructions by the door.

“Should we call in more people?” he asked.

Thórólfur shook his head. “No, let’s wait a bit. This will be a long interview.”

He turned to Jóhanna. “Let’s start by talking about Professor Gaston Lund. Do you remember him coming to you last autumn to obtain some seasickness tablets?”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“Did he get the tablets?”

“Yes. They’re kept in the pharmacy.”

“What happened then?”

“He went off to catch his boat.”

“Are you sure he caught that boat?”

“No, I don’t know anything about that. I didn’t follow him.”

“Did he stay with you longer than he needed to when he bought the seasickness tablets?”

“Yes, he stayed on a bit with me and my father.”

“Why was that?”

“We knew each other from the days when my father and I lived in Copenhagen.”

“So it was, in fact, a reunion?”

“Professor Lund and my father were happy to have the opportunity to meet again.”

Thórólfur unfolded a sheet of paper on his desk. “As you can appreciate, there are many people working on this investigation. Both in Copenhagen and Reykjavik. They’ve been talking to people to try and understand what kind of lives Gaston Lund and Bryngeir led. Is there anything in particular you would like to say before we continue with this interview?”

Jóhanna gave Thórólfur a long stare, and then she shook her head with a numb smile. “Let’s just assume your colleagues are doing their job right and you, yours and just see what happens.”

“Very well, if that’s the way you want it.” Thórólfur picked up the sheet. “Here’s the first telegram with information on this case. We asked people in Copenhagen if they knew of anyone in Iceland who might bear a particular grudge against the professor. People could only think of one name.”

“Really, and what name was that?”

“Björn Snorri Thorvald. Isn’t that your father’s name?”

“Yes.”

“Professor Lund, therefore, wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms when he visited your home last autumn?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact he was. My father and Lund were actually very good friends and colleagues at the Arnamagnæan Institute for many years. The friendship then became increasingly strained during the German occupation of Denmark and turned to hostility at the end of the war. But when Professor Lund came into our home by sheer coincidence last autumn, they chatted for a while and were fully reconciled again. I think they both felt better after that.”

“Is there someone who can bear witness to what you’re saying?”

“No, my father’s dead, as you probably know.”

“What fueled this hostility in the first place?”

“My father was fired from his post at the Arnamagnæan Institute and he partly blamed the professor for it.”

“Why was your father fired?”

“I’m sure your men in Copenhagen will dig up a plausible explanation for that. It only happened fifteen years ago, and somebody should be able to remember the story.”

Thórólfur clenched his fists and leaned over the desk. “It would speed up our interview here if you would be willing to collaborate with us,” he said.

Jóhanna smiled coldly. “Yes, that’s probably true. Maybe I should explain it to you, since I doubt that your men will either have the ability or the will to get to the bottom of what really happened.”

Jóhanna told the inspectors how she had been brought up traveling with her father across the Nordic countries and Germany. How her father continued to travel to Germany after Denmark was occupied, and how he stirred up animosity among his colleagues at the Arnamagnæan Institute and the Royal Library. Finally the war ended and the Germans abandoned Copenhagen.

“I accompanied my father to the institute as usual that morning, but just as he was about to enter they blocked him. Then some superior came to tell him that his post had been abolished and that he no longer had access to the manuscript collection. He was given no explanation, and he was escorted out of the building when he started to raise his voice. A number of employees witnessed the scene, including Professor Lund. I don’t know how it would have ended if Fridrik Einarsson, his Icelandic friend, hadn’t been there to break it up. Fridrik then took us to his home and offered us some refreshments. He could tell my father that his lecture tours around Germany had probably been the cause of this animosity. He suggested we go to Iceland with him and his family a few weeks later and suggested we stay there until the turmoil had blown over.”

“Did you move to Iceland then?”

“Yes.”

“But did you never go back to Copenhagen?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My father desperately tried to get his post back from Iceland, but failed. I’d also grown opposed to the idea of moving away from Iceland because I got to know Einar, Fridrik’s son, when we stayed with them in Copenhagen and when we traveled on the ship together. He was the first friend of my own age I’d ever had, and he then became my boyfriend. He was a great guy and I couldn’t think of leaving him. We were together for the first few years of high school, and then he died in an accident.”

Thórólfur scribbled down a note and then asked, “You were called upon to examine the bodily remains of Gaston Lund when he was found and transported here last week, were you not?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t recognize him?”

Jóhanna smiled numbly. “It would be easy for me to say I didn’t. No one could doubt me, considering the state of the body. And it would be easier for me if I stuck to that version, but I don’t want to lie. I recognized him as soon as I opened the casket.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I was in such a terrible state of shock. And I thought of my father. The cancer had progressed so far and he only had a few days to live. He wasn’t suffering, though, because I’d managed to treat the pain quite effectively. At that moment I couldn’t bear the thought of him spending his last hours agonizing over the fate of his friend. So I decided to postpone any revelations, while I was still catching my bearings. It wouldn’t really have greatly changed the outcome of the investigation, since the man had been dead for several months anyway. It was just a twenty-four-hour reprieve, and that was all I needed. My father died without ever knowing about this incident.”

Lúkas coughed several times to attract Jóhanna’s attention. It was his turn now. “That’s quite a story,” he said, moistening his lips. “But I think the reality is slightly different. What if it went something like this, for example: Lund came to you as a doctor and pharmacist. What kind of initial exchange you had I don’t know, but he asked you for some seasick tablets. You gave him some drug and advised him to take one pill straightaway, maybe two. He did as he was told, but soon felt drowsy and then fell asleep. You keep some strong sleeping pills, I take it, don’t you? We can easily check that.”

Jóhanna looked at him, aghast. “That’s correct, there’s an ample supply in the pharmacy, but your suggestion is preposterous.”

“Well, let’s see. Lund is asleep in your living room. Maybe you needed to give him an injection or something to keep him as unconscious as possible? Then you took him out on a boat to the most forsaken island you knew of in Breidafjördur. We know that considerable fuel vanished from one of the boats on the island at that time. You know how to handle a motorboat, don’t you? You know I can easily check on this.”

“Yes, I can handle a boat all right. But I haven’t a clue of where Ketilsey is in the fjord. And I don’t have the physical strength to carry a sleeping man on my own, let alone onto a boat and then off it again.”

“Perhaps your late father gave you a hand moving him? Maybe he was in better shape last autumn than he was lately. And happy to avenge himself. The man could also have been transported on a handcart. There are several of those on the island.”

“This is in very poor taste.”

“Yes, well you can’t really prettify an atrocity like this. The retribution was clearly meant to be memorable and final. How do you think that man felt when he woke up and realized where he was?”

Jóhanna gave Lúkas a long stare before answering: “How do I think he felt? I’ll tell you. For the first few hours he was angry. Then very angry. He yelled and yelled and shouted and shouted. Then he was cold, and when night fell he was scared. Then he got very cold and even more terrified, and he cried. When the sun rose in the morning, he was thirsty and hungry and very tired. He gathered some driftwood and built himself some shelter by placing the wood against a crag. He packed some gravel and seaweed around the sticks and then crawled inside and lay down. Maybe he slept for one or two hours, and then woke up again shivering from the cold. Then it started to rain. He found an old plastic flask drifting on the shore and was able to collect some of the water that was running down the rocks. He drank and drank, but he got badly drenched in the rain. He crawled into the shelter and it didn’t rain on him. But he was already wet, and when night fell again, he was colder than ever before. He lay there shivering for many hours until he couldn’t take it anymore, and he crawled out and ran to try and get some warmth into his bones. It helped a bit, but it hadn’t stopped raining, so he got even wetter and colder. The day after the rain stopped and the sun appeared. He managed to sleep a few hours. Then he went down to the shore in search of something edible. He turned over stones, picked some copepods, and dug up some lugworm. He found shellfish. He shoved it into his mouth and washed it down with the water without chewing. He couldn’t bear the thought of biting into those bugs. He arranged the stones in the grass so that they would form a big SOS. Four days later he had a cold, a day after that a bad cough, and then he contracted pneumonia. Then he arranged some little pebbles on a flat rock and tried to write some kind of message. He coughed and coughed until he threw up and developed a high fever. And then he died.”

Lúkas was dumbstruck. Eventually it was Thórólfur who asked, “How do you know all this?”

“This isn’t something I know,” Jóhanna answered, “but I can imagine it, and I can tell you that I’ve thought about him every single hour since I saw him in that casket, and felt a great deal for him. I’ve tried to place myself in his footsteps, tried to convince myself that it went swiftly and that the pain wasn’t unbearable. But everything you’ve said here is pure supposition. I’m in no way responsible for this nightmare Gaston Lund got himself into. The events in my house were exactly as I described them to you.”

Thórólfur peered at her skeptically. “Yeah sure, give it to me all again then, in every detail.”

“Professor Lund knocked on our door and told me what he’d come for. I welcomed him in and immediately recognized him. He obviously didn’t recognize me because I had only been a child when I had been with my father in Copenhagen. I was just about to give him his seasickness tablets when he saw my father through the door. It took them both a moment to decide how they were going to take this reunion, but then they embraced and it was all just like the good old days. They had so much to talk about, and time was precious. Lund told my father that he’d been to the library to try and solve the Flatey enigma. He had the answers to all the questions but couldn’t test them by getting them to fit with the final key. He couldn’t figure out the methodology. My father had spent endless hours at the library poring over the string of letters that constitute the final key. He discovered that if the letters were placed in a certain order, they formed a sentence. If the letters in the answers were placed in the correct order, following the same pattern, they formed the last two lines of the poem and thereby the solution to the whole riddle, the Aenigma Flateyensis. Lund was very taken by all this and decided to go back to the library to test his answers using this method. My father could lend him the key to the library. We could already see the mail boat heading south on its way from Brjánslækur, so he didn’t have much time. We never saw him after that, so we presumed he’d caught the boat. I later walked up to the library and it wasn’t locked and the key was on the table.”

“But he didn’t catch the mail boat?” said Thórólfur.

“No, it seems not. He must have run to the library, sat down, and started to arrange the letters. The mail boat was steadily approaching, and he finally didn’t dare to wait there any longer. The last thing he did was to write down the key on a piece of paper so that he could continue later. We found that note in his pocket. But that was against the rules of the game.”

“So he was doomed to some mishap, according to folk belief,” said Thórólfur.

“So they say, but I don’t believe in that stuff. In fact, I think it’s just a perfectly honorable and innocent game. But when people start connecting it with accidents and deaths, I think that’s going too far.”

Question thirty-two: Who made Earl Hákon’s crotch itch? Third letter. Thorleifur visited the earl in Hladir on Christmas Eve, disguised as a beggar. The earl had him brought before him and asked him for his name. “My name is an unusual one,” the man answered. “I’m Nídung, the son of Gjallandi, and I come from Syrgisdalir in cold Sweden. I have traveled widely and visited many chieftains. I’ve heard a lot about your nobility.”

The earl said, “Is there something you excel at, old man, to enable you to mix with chieftains?”

Nídung wanted to recite a poem he had composed to the earl. But as the poem was being recited, the earl was puzzled to feel a terrible itch spread all over his body and particularly around his thighs so that he could barely sit still. He had himself scratched with combs wherever they could reach, and three knots were made in a coarse cloth so that two men could pull it between his thighs. The earl started to take a dislike to the poem. The answer is “Thorleifur Ásgeirsson,” and the third letter is
o.