A U R M L E Q W T R O N E
“My father went through the entire book, page by page, trying out all the sentences that felt reasonably sensible to him and contained some ounce of wisdom. He played around with them, rearranging the letters to see whether they could make up a complete sentence. The spelling was supposed to be in line with what was used in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as far as he knew, and the sentence had to contain exactly thirty-nine letters. He created little tables with these letters and shuffled them over and over again, but still couldn’t find the text to unlock the riddle, and he eventually gave up. Many weeks later, he started thinking about the enigma again. He realized something else was needed to find the right key sentence. Some letters appeared more than once in the rows of key letters, and it was impossible to say how the rows were connected. There had to be some other way of decoding the answer. Then he focused his attention on the drawing that accompanied the clues and had come to be known as the magic rune. Personally, he didn’t believe in that kind of stuff, but he was sure that the author had placed the picture beside the riddle for a reason. He noted that on each side of the picture there were thirteen lines that crossed the picture and reemerged on the other side of it in a different place. Thirteen multiplied by three is thirty-nine, which is the number of letters in the key. He drew a copy of the picture, reproducing it three times in a vertical row. Then he wrote out the key letters downwards in the vertical column and moved them across to the other side of the grid, following each line. The following sentence emerged: ‘Rarely is only one to blame when two men quarrel.’ This is the second part of a sentence that reads as follows and can be considered wise: ‘Remember, though, that rarely is only one to blame when two men quarrel.’ It’s a line from the old saga of Hakon. My father was so fervent in his quest that he overdid it that night. He was extremely ill when I found him in the library, but I had never seen him in such ecstasy. Now all he needed to do was to go over his answers to the thirty-nine questions and see whether they formed the end of the key poem. It should only have taken him part of the day, but he was too ill now and never got out of the house again. He knew he could only do this by strictly abiding by the rules. A short while later Gaston Lund arrived on his fateful visit. My father told him how the ‘magic rune’ was to be used to unlock the solution to the riddle and fortieth question. Lund got very excited about it and was lent the library key to rush up there and try out his answers. But he ran out of time. He didn’t manage to finish the test and later probably missed the mail boat. What happened next is difficult to imagine.”
“My father spent the whole winter trying to muster up enough energy to return to the library and try out his solution. I often offered to do it for him, but he didn’t want me to. He wanted to see the solution appear before his own eyes. Then finally, yesterday, he asked me to go up and try out his solution. He felt death was approaching and wanted to hear the end of the poem before he passed away. I was going to ask Ingibjorg to watch over him and sent for her, but he lost consciousness as I was waiting for her to arrive. He steadily deteriorated during the day and died that evening. He’d solved the code but never knew if he’d found the right solution to the entire enigma. But now we’ll see what happens.”
Johanna wrote down the thirty-nine letters in a single column, following her father’s diagram, and numbered them at the same time. Then, starting on each letter, she followed each line across the grid to where it ended on the other side of the picture and wrote the letter out again. Wherever Bjorn Snorri and Gaston Lund’s answers differed, she wrote down both possibilities. Then she scrutinized the solution for a moment. She crossed out three letters in her father’s answers and three letters in Gaston Lund’s and inserted dashes between the words. She said, “The solution is: t h e f e y i s d o o m e d t o d i e t h e l u c k y i s s a f e f o r n o w
“There are, therefore, errors in my father’s answers to questions seventeen, twenty-six, and thirty. Lund got those answers right. There were three errors in Gaston Lund’s answers. But once he’d found the solution to the key, it should have been easy for him to correct his answer. The guess someone had scribbled at the bottom of the sheet sometime was somehow completely wrong. The final lines of the poem were as follows:
Heavy gray clouds of eerie pelting hail
Demanding the magic words
The fey is doomed to die
The lucky is safe for now.”
Johanna looked up Sverrir’s saga. “This is an account of a yeoman who followed his son to the warships and gave him some advice, urging him to be bold and audacious in battle. Reputation is what survives a man the longest, he said. In every battle you’re in, remember that you will either die or survive. Be valiant, therefore, since everything is predetermined. ‘The fey is doomed to die, the lucky is safe for now. To die in flight is the worst death of all.’”
Kjartan pondered this wisdom. It reflected a belief in predestination that might have been be useful to resort to when your life was turned upside down, but he still preferred to live by other laws. He pulled out his pocket notebook and scrutinized the picture he had drawn in Ketilsey. “Lund had probably managed to complete the solution on Ketilsey, and since he had nothing else to write with, he used the pebbles to form the missing word from the poem. Lucky wasn’t the name of a boat.
“I feel slightly ashamed because I almost caused an uproar today by connecting Sigurbjorn in Svalbardi’s boat to Gaston Lund’s death. And then I was going to claim that Gudrun in Innstibaer was the mother of Lund’s child and that their son had been involved in this case. It was a good job District Officer Grimur brought me to my senses and made me hold my tongue.”
“Yes, a good job he did. Gudrun’s son is not Gaston Lund’s son. The child that Gaston Lund did his best to disown is another man altogether,” said Johanna.
CHAPTER 57
Grimur, Kjartan, and little Nonni walked across the village together, and Grimur woke up his wife. She got up to prepare some food and also fetched a snack from an old cake box. The boy then stayed in the district officer’s house with Ingibjorg, while Grimur and Kjartan continued on down to the moored boats.
Both men were silent, lost in separate thoughts. They boarded the boat, and Grimur started the engine. The sound of the motor seemed abnormally loud as it broke the stillness of the morning. Even the birds in Hafnarey were silent just before dawn.
Grimur headed to the west of the island, passing the new pier and the coast guard ship and skerries.
Finally Grimur spoke: “How did it occur to you to ask the boy if he had any binoculars?”
Kjartan hesitated a moment before answering. “It was a hunch. On Thursday when we went to collect the body in Ketilsey, we spotted the boy on the shore below the croft. I saw he was holding something up to his eyes that glistened. It occurred to me that they might be binoculars. Then I remembered that Lund had been carrying some binoculars and a camera in his luggage that were never found. I knew there could be a connection there somewhere. That’s why I asked the boy.”
Grimur nodded. “I think it’s becoming quite clear then. Professor Lund delayed for too long at the doctor’s house and lost track of time. He thought he had enough time to go to the library, but when he finally got down to the pier the mail boat had already left. He could probably still see it sailing south. He now badly needed to get to Stykkisholmur and from there south to Reykjavik because he had a flight to catch to Copenhagen. Old Jon Ferdinand and the kid were on the pier with the boat, and Lund managed to communicate to them that he needed to get to Stykkisholmur. He must have insisted and been pushy enough to make the old man sail off with him. But I think it had been many years since Jon Ferdinand had sailed all the way to Stykkisholmur. He must have forgotten himself on the way and headed for Ketilsey, since that was the route he was most used to sailing. Lund saw nothing strange about this, because Ketilsey is to the southeast, which could have been the sailing route to Stykkisholmur, as far as a stranger was concerned. The boat then ran out of fuel close to Ketilsey and they rowed to the landing slip. Lund must have gone on land to look for inhabitants and get some help, while Jon Ferdinand waited on the boat. After a while, Jon Ferdinand completely forgot that he had a passenger. All he can think of is that he’s out of fuel in Ketilsey and has to get home. Then a southerly breeze picks up and there’s no time to waste, so he hoists the sail and heads home for Flatey. Lund is left stranded on the island, and we know how the story ends.”