“OK. What’s it about?”
“I believe you know Johanna Thorvaldsdottir?”
“Yes, we’re friends.”
“Have you seen her recently?”
“No. Not this year. She’s been busy taking care of her father. I hear he’s finally passed away now.”
“How did you meet?”
“Why are you asking me about Johanna?”
“There was a terrible incident on Flatey and we’re trying to form a picture of the people who live there. It’s a relatively small number of people, so we can get a pretty good idea of each individual.”
“I see. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Johanna, so I hope none of this will harm her. We met in Copenhagen at the end of the war when we were teenagers and became good friends when she became engaged to my brother.”
“What kind of a teenager was she?”
“She was a strange kid because she had been brought up by her father on the move across northern Europe. It took our family many months to break through the shell. Once we had, though, I realized she was an extremely gifted, tender, and fun girl. At first she sounded too much like an adult when she spoke, and her Icelandic was quite funny. Sometimes it was as if she were talking straight from the Icelandic sagas. She wasn’t used to speaking this language with kids her own age. We actually spoke Danish together to begin with because that’s what I was used to when I spoke to my friends in Copenhagen. We sometimes still do that for fun.”
“Have you stayed in contact with her since then?”
“On and off. After my brother died, she vanished from our family life. She got into a doomed relationship with some guy for a couple of years. She was a year ahead of me in med school, and we caught up a bit once the relationship ended. She was very unhappy during those years but did very well in her studies. I think she saw a shrink for a while.”
A nurse came running down the corridor. “Thorgerdur, come straight back,” she called. “The boy is starting to bleed again!”
Question twenty-nine: What cracked with such a loud noise? First letter. Then the earl said to Finn Eyvindarson, “Shoot that man by the mast.”
Finn answered, “The man cannot be shot if he is not fey. I can break his bow, though.” Finn then shot his arrow, which struck the middle of Einar’s bow just as he was drawing it for a third time, and the bow split in two.
Then King Olaf said, “What cracked with such a loud noise?”
Einar answered, “Norway out of your hands, sire.”
The first letter is n.
CHAPTER 46
Back at the vicarage, Frida was filled with indignation at being summoned for an interrogation by the Reykjavik inspectors like this without notice. Hogni 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.
“Frida 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.”
Frida’s eyes were beginning to well with tears. “Yes, precisely. So how should we know anything about it?”
“Now, now, Frida dear,” said the priest, slipping his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “Tell the men we’ll be there at eleven,” he said to Hogni.
“Eleven thirty, not a second earlier,” said Frida with a sobbing gasp.
Hogni took this message down to the school, and Grimur 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. Johanna and two visiting fishermen who were lying hungover and asleep in an old house they had rented with others.
Jon Ferdinand only spent two minutes with the inspectors. Thorolfur 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.
Hogni knocked on the door of the school, stuck his nose inside, and announced their arrival. Stina from the telephone exchange was finishing her statement and had nothing new to add, much to her regret. She remembered that the goodwife from Radagerdi 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,” Thorolfur said to Grimur, once Stina 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.
Grimur 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.
Thorolfur smiled. “Bring them both in.”
An extra chair was placed in front of the desk.
“I’m sorry for troubling you,” said Thorolfur 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.”
Frida 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?” Thorolfur 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 Thormodur Krakur’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 Radagerdi escorted him up to Krakur’s shed. Benny then came back on his own at around eight. Krakur 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. Krakur 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, Frida dear?” he asked. She nodded.
“Was there anyone else walking on the pass that evening?” Thorolfur asked.
This time Frida answered: “Hogni, 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. Krakur 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.”