Open Grave: A Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ohler to travel to Germany, but his wife’s death came very conveniently for the associate professor. He was sent as a replacement and got to receive much personal evidence of his German colleagues’ appreciation. One of them he still kept in contact with. To him he could be completely frank. The conversations and correspondence with Horst Bubb were the valve where the excess steam, when the pressure got too high, could be let out.
    Horst had also called early in the morning, something which nowadays otherwise happened only on the associate professor’s birthday, and tried to cheer him up. The German, who had worked with Ferguson for fifteen years at the Max Planck Institute, understood the associate professor’s feelings very well.
    They happened to talk about Ferguson in particular, now retired and living in Vermont, according to Horst very aggrieved. The associate professor got the idea that his friend, by apportioning the bitterness to several researchers involved and in that way diluting it, wanted to alleviate the associate professor’s disappointment.
    His colleague had also mentioned something about an article that might possibly appear in an influential newspaper with a quiet but very clear criticism of the selection of prize winners. According to Horst this was being initiated by a certain Wolfgang Schimmel, an influential doctor from Munich, who intended to gather a number of significant names behind him.
    The associate professor, despite his own frustration, strangely enough remained unresponsive to all this talk about the injustice that was now being committed. He was already tired of it all and wished that the festivities on the tenth of December would be over, the articles cease, and Ohler become a name, not for the day, but instead one in the line of prize winners, who after a few years only the chief mourners would remember.
    Ohler was no Einstein, Bohr, or Curie, who would write themselves into scientific history, so let all this go away, he thought in his tower.
    “Let it go away, let us die,” he mumbled.
    The lemon tree in front of him responded at that very moment by dropping a leaf.

 
    Four
    Right before twelve the associate professor’s doorbell rang, an event if not sensational, then still very unusual. Most recently it concerned a security alarm salesman.
    The associate professor was in the kitchen making his usual lunch: a couple of fried eggs, a few slices of pickle, and an open-faced cheese sandwich. The menu had looked like this ever since retirement.
    The first ring was followed by another, more drawn out and sharper in tone.
    The associate professor was in a quandary: should he finish frying the eggs or move the pan to the side to go and answer the door? In his confusion he did neither. He remained standing with the spatula in his hand, while the eggs were transformed into inedible, dry flakes in the pan.
    He thought later, as he disposed of the scraps, that it was like an illustration of municipal politics in Uppsala: While those in charge in other municipalities held discussions, made decisions and then implemented them, Uppsala’s politicians remained standing with spatula in hand, year after year.
    When the frying pan started to smoke he came to his senses, turned off the burner, took off his apron, and hurried out to the hall.
    The associate professor peeked out through the peephole: Torben Bunde. He looked impatient, staring intensely at the door. The associate professor felt as if he was the one being looked at, not the other way around. His neighbor raised his hand and another ring resounded through the house. Now that he knew who the visitor was, he experienced it as even more insistent.
    He knows I’m home, the associate professor thought, it’s just as well to take the bull by the horns. He unhooked the security chain and opened the door.
    “Is this how it’s going to be now?”
    Torben Bunde, Ph.D. was dressed in something that the associate professor thought was