“Yes. He didn’t like to talk about her. My father was a down-to-earth, practical man. He had no respect for ghost stories and that kind of thing.”
“An old rumor says that your father and Nurse Tekla had a relationship. Have you heard anything about that?”
“Not at all. That’s ridiculous. Papa and some old nurse!”
“She was only thirty-five, and your father was fifty,” Irene countered calmly.
“No, it doesn’t fit. She hanged herself in the spring of ’47. I was just a few months old then. Mama and Papa had given up hope of ever having children, so I was the miracle child. Mama was already fairly old, and she had to be under the supervision of specialists during her entire pregnancy. Would Papa do something while …? No! It’s just not possible.”
Irene decided to change the subject.
“Your mother passed away when you were fairly young?”
“That’s right. She had an aneurysm. What does this have to do with the murder investigation?”
“We don’t know yet. We’re trying to find out. As we said, many of our leads point backward in time.”
“Damned strange.”
“That’s what we think, too. So we’re not letting go of this line of investigation until we’re sure it won’t have relevance in the present. The only people who have seen the murderer are Siv Persson and Gunnela Hägg, the homeless woman in the garden shed, who was killed. You didn’t know of her existence, you said.”
“No. I’ve already told you that.”
Nodding toward the heap of paper, Tommy said, “Have you found a way to save the hospital?”
“No, it can’t be done. I’ve decided to close it at the end of the summer. I’ll be informing my employees next week.”
Irene felt some sympathy for him, but still, how much of this failure could be laid at his door? A good doctor, yes, but the administrator of a hospital? He couldn’t blame circumstances entirely. Perhaps he was too weak and indecisive. Handsome but hopeless, she thought sarcastically as she contemplated the defeated figure in front of her.
AFTER TAKING IN a bowl of soup in the police cafeteria, Irene and Tommy headed up to their department. They’d begun to sort through their impressions of the Löwander couple when Hannu Rauhala appeared, holding a large, old-fashioned suitcase of brown leather.
“Hi. Here’s the arson investigation’s results.”
He set the suitcase down and pulled out a thick envelope from the waistband of his jeans. Irene decided that Hannu must be clairvoyant. Although neither she nor Tommy had mentioned it, Hannu had tracked down all the papers pertinent to the investigation of the mansion fire. Since they already knew the result of the investigation, they decided to take a look inside the leather suitcase.
“So this is from the attic?” Irene asked.
“Yes, the lab’s finished with it. We’ll get the other two tomorrow. Apparently they contained traces of something,” Hannu replied.
“What kind of traces?”
“No idea.”
Irene walked resolutely over to the suitcase, grabbed it by the handle, and heaved it onto the desk.
“Whose is it?”
“Lovisa Löwander’s. Says so on the inside.”
The suitcase was unlocked, but the metalwork of the hinges was rusted shut. Finally it creaked open, and Irene lifted the lid.
On top lay a dark blue dress uniform belonging to a Sophia nursing graduate. Between the yellowing halves of the collar, the flower-shaped, four-edged silver brooch was proudly pinned.
Irene could hardly believe her eyes. Once over her initial surprise, she cautiously lifted the dress. It was exactly like the uniform Siv Persson had modeled for them, but in a much smaller, even a child’s, size.
“Yet another nurse’s uniform. But didn’t Siv Persson mention that Lovisa had been a graduate of the Sophia nursing school?”
“It’s rather small,” said Hannu.
“She must have been under five feet. Unbelievably short and thin.”
Underneath the uniform they found a nurse’s cap and apron so small that they had to belong to the same person who wore the dress. They began to take the other contents carefully from the suitcase and array them on the desk. In addition to the pieces of the uniform, there was a pair of black dress pumps. Irene estimated that they couldn’t be larger than size four.
Beneath the clothes were some framed photographs wrapped in yellowed silk paper. The first one must have been Hilding and Lovisa Löwander’s wedding photo. The stamp of the studio could be seen at the bottom-right-hand corner. The year 1936 was written in black ink. The handwriting was elegant.
In many ways the bridal couple was a remarkable sight. Hilding stood ramrod straight, his right hand tucked into his tuxedo lapel, his left hand resting on the bride’s right shoulder. This man knew how to wear a tuxedo. He was tall and stylish and had a self-confident smile on his face. He looked straight into the camera. His bearing, his features, and his thick hair shared a family resemblance with those of his son. Irene peered closer to see if Sverker’s sea-green eyes had also been inherited from his father. It didn’t appear so. It was hard to say, since photograph had been tinted, but Hilding’s eyes seemed to be a kind of grayish blue.
Irene turned her attention to Lovisa. The tiny bride barely reached her husband’s chest. She also stared directly into the camera, but her hands were grasping her bridal bouquet tightly. The bouquet was oversize and bursting with roses and cornflowers. Or more likely the bride was so undersize that the bouquet was in fact normal. She was wearing a lace veil, and her dress had a high collar and long sleeves. It was heavy white silk.
For a long time, the three police officers studied the photograph without saying a word. Finally Tommy said, “She’s hardly more than four and a half feet tall.”
“She looks like a little girl,” Hannu said.
Irene did the math quickly in her head. “Lovisa was actually thirty-three years old when she married Hilding. They were married for eleven years before Sverker was born.”
“It must have been difficult for her to bear children,” Tommy commented. He knew what he was talking about, since he’d attended the births of his three children.
Irene was surprised that Sverker had not inherited the brown eyes of his mother. Her face was cute, but fairly average. Her dark hair was curly under her veil. Sverker seemed to completely take after his father.
The other two photographs showed Sverker as a child. Both were framed in silver. In the first one, Sverker was a newborn, and in the other he was about three years old. The latter was a studio photograph. Sverker held a teddy bear and was laughing at the photographer. Happiness glittered in those large, sea-green eyes.
The last silk paper bundle revealed itself to be Lovisa’s record from the Sophia nursing school. Her highest grades were in bedside manner and pharmacology. All the other grades were nearly as high. Lovisa had been a good student. Irene couldn’t help giggling at one of the teacher’s comments: “Although she is small, Lovisa wears her uniform beautifully.” Irene hoped Lovisa had taken it as a compliment.
There were some books at the bottom of the suitcase. They were all textbooks from Lovisa’s training. After that the suitcase was empty.
“Why did they let you take this suitcase?” Irene asked Hannu.
“The locks had been broken, but the contents weren’t disturbed,” Hannu replied.
“So the technicians think that someone was digging around in the others?”
Hannu shrugged. “Apparently.”
They carefully put all the articles back into the suitcase. Irene looked at her male co-workers and said, “We should wait for the technician’s reports on the other suitcases before we return this one to Sverker Löwander.”