“Had he known that later on it would be considered sexy to be bald—like Kojak and Picasso—he could have experienced more unforced success in his earlier years with numerous chambermaids and other females within his reach, by using more subtle seduction techniques, such as lollipops or bribes, rather than harsh and explicit orders.

  “On that particular day, just like any other, nobody in the household took any more notice of him than was strictly necessary. For it was undoubtedly preferable to avoid being near him and thus escape his malicious comments and choleric outbursts.

  “The one in the menagerie who most appreciated von G.’s forenoon siestas was Caro, also called Karon, since each meeting with his master gave a foretaste of Hades. Exhausted and frequently flogged, the poor creature stayed mostly in his backyard kennel, but did begin to bark whenever an unauthorized individual approached, whereupon he came hurtling out like a rocket for the purpose of biting the intruder’s throat.

  “But that day nothing had been heard from Karon, not even a muffled growl.

  “Nobody would have noticed anything, had not a cold front arrived and heavy clouds sailed in from the east, causing Alicia and Klaus to go outside and reluctantly check the baron. They found him sitting upright but askew, with his right arm dangling down from the elbow rest and his glass of spirits still untouched.

  “Bäck immediately took command. He had the table cleared away, carried von G. to lie in state in the Gustavian parlour, and sent for the local physician, who arrived within half an hour.

  “After having inspected the corpse without any remarkable findings, the doctor casually decided that no autopsy was required and wrote out a death certificate. ‘Natural causes,’ it said. A vague breeze had extinguished a nearly breathless flame of life.

  “Whereupon something unexpected happened. Hey, presto! A police officer appeared!”

  “Dad!”

  “Right you are. And he behaved in a rather peculiar way!

  “The news about the death had reached him through the grapevine. And now that he was on the spot, he carefully examined the ground around and under the apple tree, scratched his chin, and stared straight out into space. He kept silent, and after a while he disappeared.”

  “Strange,” I said. “Did they ever get to know how Rutger von G. met his destiny?”

  “Yes, in due course.

  “The reason for your father’s appearance was gossip he had heard, to the effect that a drunken young rascal in Kisa had talked loudly about killing von G. Thus, when the rumor of his death reached him, Max Axelson, Senior, quickly went to Örneholm, firmly believing that the promised act of violence had actually taken place. However, since there were no apparent signs of any crime having taken place, he was forced to drop his suspicions.

  “Not surprisingly, the brawler turned out to be none other than the stableboy who had recently been sacked by the baron. But when he was eventually caught, he was able to prove convincingly that he’d been sleeping off the effects of booze in his mother’s home for the last twenty-four hours.

  “That was a pity, because he belonged to those who were familiar to Karon and certainly would not have aroused his attention . . . .”

  “The dog that didn’t bark in the daytime,” I noted. “That was the remarkable thing!”

  “What?”

  “That Karon didn’t bark. Beyond the people of the estate, nobody could enter the place unnoticed. Very clever of my father—who, as far as I know, had never read ‘Silver Blaze’ by Conan Doyle . . . .”

  “To cut a long story short: The corpse was taken away, the bell of the estate promptly tolled subdued strokes, and the flag flew at half-mast.

  “Except for Karon, nobody mourned the deceased. The mongrel was seen prowling the manor in wider and wider circles, lop-eared and lost. Was he searching for the scent of his master? Could he, after all, have attributed the countless lashes, slaps, and kicks over the years as an expression of some kind of tough love?

  “Everything would have been resolved fairly satisfactorily,” Andreas concluded, “had it not been for . . . Maxi, my friend, guess what!”

  I made a helpless gesture.

  “Had it not been for a neighbour who, the same evening, had committed suicide, leaving a letter in which he admitted the murder of von G.!

  “It was an unambiguous confession,” Andreas added. “The truth of it could simply not be questioned.”

  “But what about motive and modus operandi? Why and how? And, in particular, how did he manage to pass under the radar of Karon, the guardian of the home estate, with the most infallible nose in the region? By means of voodoo or a homemade ray gun?”

  “An impossible crime, a mystery.

  “Your father had continued fumbling in the dark and had found nothing, so the investigation was eventually discontinued.”

  At this point Andreas remembered his duties as a host. A bowl of apples stood on the table between us and when he leant back after having pushed it towards me, he suddenly grimaced and touched the small of his back.

  “Demons of darkness!” he shouted. “My lumbago is killing me! From now on I’m incapable of moving an inch. But maybe I can take a catch.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “As we did when we played baseball at school. Two teams, one out and one in. We . . . no, it doesn’t matter. Do me a favour and throw one of the red apples to me. They are Red Delicious from the ICA Supermarket.”

  I obeyed him. He seized the fruit and took a bite out of it.

  “The drama at Örneholm, Act Two,” he resumed, while the ornamental timepiece behind him struck eight o’clock. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Very well, after what happened later that night in October nineteen thirtyfour, Johannes Somenius and the county administrator Max Axelson, our respective fathers, often discussed the affair without ever getting anywhere close to the truth. Why? Because they didn’t have access to a vital clue that clears everything up! A clue, my friend, that was waiting for me yesterday at the ICA Supermarket, where I well and truly had my eyes opened! But before I go on, you have to meet David Mendel.”

  “Who’s that? A strange name, by the way.”

  “Yes. And curiously enough, it suggests the solution of the Örneholm mystery! Here we go! It turned out that the background of the self-accusing man was uncertain. Maybe Mendel was an immigrant, certainly to some people his features hinted of a Jewish origin. In such a case he could have come from Germany, where there were harsh times for him and many others. At the age of thirty, and after years of rather loose living, he had been lucky enough to meet God. Finding salvation, he had become acquainted with my father, and decided to build up both body and soul through physical training— mens sana in corpore sano.”

  “And how did he strengthen his bodily resilience?”

  “Mainly by gymnastics, sit-ups, weightlifting, and plenty of tennis. But the spiritual part was the most important to him. My father supported everyone who openly tried to find a firm ground for their faith, especially if they did so along spacious roads and complicated roundabout ways. Our parish lies, as you know, on the outskirts of the so-called Bible Belt. And if you give that concept a more geographical than a symbolical meaning, you can say that spirituality neither should be like a tight belt nor a choke collar, but . . . ahem, sorry, I am not in the pulpit now! Anyhow, Dad liked him. He described him as an ugly duckling transformed into a white swan.

  “They kept regular company before that black Friday in nineteen thirtyfour. That explains why Somenius got to know almost immediately about Mendel’s death, which occurred at Lidhult, a cottage near to the Örneholm estate previously reserved for forest keepers.

  “Even before the tragedy took place, he knew a lot about Mendel, among other things that he was very much in love with Miss Alicia! Who, furthermore, reciprocated his feelings. Great joy, but even greater disappointment, since a common future between them was impossible. Baron Rutger von G., Alicia’s guardian, had expressly opposed their alliance and turned a deaf ear to the girl’s desperate appeals. He had forbidden her to see ‘that bloody darkhaired one.’ That is what the bewigged baron called anyone who didn’t look Swedish, whether the person wore a kippa or a fez or any other kind of headgear. Or, for that matter, no headgear at all.”

  “Did Alicia respect his ban?” I asked.

  “No. She . . .”

  “Aha! A rebellious teenager, a little sister of Lady Chatterley! The woman of birth and the man of the people, right?”

  “Not at all. On the contrary, honorable Miss Alicia had no end of virtue and David was very civilized when courting her. But they met secretly during clandestine walks in the evenings. Both, of course, waited eagerly for the dragon to die so that they could at last legalize their relationship.”

  “Whereupon Mendel couldn’t take it anymore? He raced ahead of the grim reaper and . . .”

  “It wasn’t as simple as that. Nevertheless, you’re on the right track, for he could have fantasized along those lines. If only someone—or he himself— could get rid of the baron . . . . Now listen carefully!

  “Next day it was discovered that the two young people—well, David was a middle-aged youngster—had planned to meet on that Friday evening, weather permitting. Alicia, irrespective of what was expected of her, would certainly have slipped over to Lidhult to inform David of the fortunate news, had she had the opportunity. But Klaus scotched that plan by asking Bäck to drive her to the nearest town, Vimmerby, in order to summon some prominent members of the family society to a memorial service at Örneholm, at which Alicia would be expected to be present, in order to create the right mood with piano music and lamentations. To withdraw from such an obligation was out of the question.

  “She had accepted her guardian’s death with composure. But when she got the news of David’s death, she collapsed in such a dramatic manner that nobody could have doubted what he had meant to her.

  “Curiously enough, it had been thanks to her that Mendel’s body had been discovered. For at the end of her day of family duty, she had written a sealed note to him and sent it to Lidhult. The runner, a farmer’s girl, found his front door unlocked and, when nobody answered her knock, she entered and found a note inside the threshold, which caused her to run for assistance:

  DEAREST ALICIA, I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO PAY FOR MY CRIME. ONLY GOD CAN FORGIVE ME MY ENORMITY. YOU WERE THE BEST THING THAT HAPPENED TO ME IN MY LIFE, MY ROSE OF SHARON, PLEASE PRAY FOR MY SOUL. DAVID

  When Andreas quoted the contents of David’s letter so accurately it became obvious to me that all his information about the case must have been conveyed to him by his late father, Reverend Johannes Somenius, who in turn had got it from Senior. Thanks to his remarkable memory, my friend was also able to recite the exact words of Alicia’s own message to her sweetheart before she learnt of his death: MY OWN, MY TREASURE! AT LAST WE ARE FREE! YOU AND I AND WE FOREVER. YOUR ALICIA.

  “But even before the message was sent, David already knew what had happened at Örneholm. The commotion over there and the flag lowered to halfmast must have confirmed his worst fears. By the time Alicia’s letter was delivered, it was too late.

  “Investigating Mendel’s death that evening, your father determined that he had stabbed himself in the stomach and bled to death in his kitchen. He decided not to check Lidhult and its surroundings there and then, but to return at dawn. It was a wise decision, because rain was pouring down, the darkness had deepened, and the wind had increased. It would have been meaningless to stumble about in the wet with a kerosene lantern, trying to perform a crime-scene investigation.

  “Fortunately, by the next morning the rain had stopped, the sun was shining, and little birds were chirping in the bushes.

  “But what did he find? Nothing of the slightest interest. The medical examiner, barely awake and resenting being grilled again about his observations at Örneholm the day before, testified that the deceased baron bore no marks of external injury: no pinpricks, bruises, wounds, or swellings. There were indeed signs of death, i.e. livor mortis—discolouration of the skin as a result of congestion in the lower body parts—but such signs appear quite soon post mortem, after just a few hours.

  “Why all this nagging and scepticism? Did they distrust him? Aggrieved and not properly rested, the poor doctor had hardly been able to make even his unLatinized language intelligible.

  “The cook was similarly angry. Would she have acted on behalf of an unknown person and put something in her master’s coffee or . . . what an accusation! Had she not indulged herself with a cup from the same jug after the morning boiling and later permitted herself to consume a sandwich—one of three that her master had not managed to eat—and that without any side effects?

  “With cheeks rosy with indignation, she threatened to quit. ‘Pick on Klaus instead of me,’ she had screamed. ‘He who constantly knocks back every drinkable drop within reach!’

  “Then they were told that the day before, with people cackling around the carcass like dizzy chickens, she had seen Klaus secretly draining the glass of Calvados that the baron had left untouched!

  “Did Axelson have anything else on his mind, she had roared, or could he please leave her alone?

  “Whereupon he declared himself to be very sorry, asked for a cup of coffee— and, if possible, one of her famously tasty cinnamon buns—and fled.

  “And since Klaus had survived the purloined drink, he could not possibly be suspected. Why first sharpen it with arsenic or prussic acid—on his own initiative or Mendel’s—and then drink it? Otherwise he had most probably wished his old relative would kick the bucket, in the hope of inheriting the whole estate, particularly the wine cellar.

  “Thus Axelson was faced with a dilemma. How on earth could David Mendel be guilty of murder? With Karon mute and everything else taken into account, there appeared to be no way that von G. could have been reached at his breakfast table.

  “At last he decided that there must have been some kind of overheating in Mendel’s brain. The poor devil had simply fallen victim to a misconception.”

  “You mean that the crime was a delusion on his part?”

  “Well, how else to look at it? In spite of the confession, opportunity was missing and the method and means had eluded your father. When it came to the motive, however, lots of people had wished him a violent end—raped women, illegitimate children whom he had refused to accept, maltreated subalterns, deceived business associates, and dismissed servants.”

  Then Andreas recounted a recent visit he had paid to the scene of the tragedy, which had taken place just a week ago. He had hoped the Örneholm of today would inspire him to a solution of the mystery. But to his disappointment, the mansion had been demolished and a conference center now stood in its place. The new owner had bought every hectare within sight and created an eighteen-hole golf course.

  “It was a fiasco,” he summarised. “Not a single apple tree in sight!”

  That his words were heavy with meaning would shortly be revealed.

  “What happened to the survivors who once took part in the tragedy?” I asked.

  “Alicia soon departed the scene. Rumour had it she had gone to a health resort in Switzerland.

  “The other players left within a month: The cook returned to the peasantry from whence she had been recruited; Ivar Bäck went to Eksjö and enlisted as quartermaster at the town’s hotel; and Klaus von G. was confined to Saint Gertrud’s asylum in Västervik.”

  With a trace of irony, I asked about the animals.

  “Two thoroughbreds with accompanying accessories, pedigrees, and harnesses had been taken over by a stud farm as part payment for one of the baron’s many debts, and an Ardennes cart horse had gone to slaughter. As for Karon, nobody cared. When Örneholm was abandoned he was simply left to starve to death in his doghouse.”

  Now my patience was exhausted.

  “Okay, enough is enough! How did the murderer do it?”

  “Well, Justice is blind, at least Lady Justitia. But with a little additional help from me, even he who wanders in darkness, as you do, can . . .”

  “Skip the gibberish,” I hissed, trying to conceal my impatience by playing a tough cop like Dick Tracy. “Spit it out, for God’s sake!”

  “By all means! Let’s use our imagination then, and go back to Friday eleventh of October, nineteen thirty-four. You are David Mendel and . . . it’s two or three o’clock in the afternoon, long after breakfast. You’ll soon be meeting your sweetheart. It’s getting cold, the wind is blowing up. You start to get worried. Maybe your meeting will be canceled. When you go out on the porch of your cottage in order to assess the meteorological situation, you see black clouds in the sky beyond the fence between your lots—yours is very small, your neighbour’s is as large as two tennis courts. And not far away from the boundary of your lot—fifty metres, give or take ten—sits your worst enemy. Apparently he’s asleep, still weak from the sickness which, according to Alicia, almost killed him. What goes through your mind?”

  “I . . .”

  Andreas held up his hand. He was doing the talking, not I.

  “That it would be great if the old bastard kicked the bucket, and sooner rather than later. If he would just stay out there a little longer, and catch a cold which would turn into pneumonia, then . . .”

  He interjected one of those pauses he uses so often during his official duties.

  “But,” he continued, “the thought has only just occurred to you when you are overcome by pangs of conscience. Such a reaction is not consistent with the Christian message of love and your own nature. Thus you must say mea culpa and atone for your sinful fancies. How? By warning the baron about the impending danger, since obviously nobody else will. But again, how? Do you have a good method or modus operandi? You can’t go over there and wake him up. Karon would attack you straightaway. And you can’t wake up a deaf old man by screaming. What else can you do?”