Open Grave: A Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

conversation with Ohler. Had the professor been sincere in his intentions when he came over? Perhaps he truly wanted to share the honor? Could it be the case that he had let his many years of disappointment cloud his judgment, that he had not understood that the professor had gradually changed character?
    In yesterday evening’s news broadcasts, which the associate professor followed on a couple of channels, the professor had repeated his preaching that the honor was not his alone. He had even mentioned Ferguson, which before, during his active period, would have been completely inconceivable.
    It was during the last years before retirement that the associate professor’s bitterness had grown; it was when forty years of work suddenly was perceived as worthless. To now come up with flattering remarks changed nothing.
    *   *   *
    He went up the stairs to the tower. The last bit, very steep, was becoming increasingly troublesome.
    A pale October sun bathed the plants in a conciliatory glow. He let his hand run across the two-meter-long leaves of the multistemmed dracaena in a careful caress. Against all the green in the tower it shone bloodred. He dampened a rag and wiped off all the old dust so that the contrast stood out even stronger.
    In the corner of his eye he thought he perceived a movement between the apple trees on Lundquist’s lot. A branch swayed. The Katja tree’s fruits shone like little lanterns.
    The associate professor removed his glasses and wiped off the lenses with the rag, put the glasses on again and scanned the neighbor’s lot. But now everything was quiet.
    Must have been a blackbird, he thought. Lundquist never bothered to harvest fruit and berries, so the birds would feast far into autumn. At Christmas the waxwings came and pecked their way into Ribstons.
    After pottering with the plants for a while it occurred to him that he hadn’t had lunch. The Nobel Prize had certainly made a mess of life on the street, and he set aside the rag and started the descent to the kitchen.
    “This stairway will be the death of me,” he mumbled.

 
    Five
    “Agnes, would you please get the medicine.”
    He had called several times before she heard his voice. Before they had a functioning bell system from the library too. That was when the male guests gathered there to have a cognac after dinner. Then sometimes the housekeeper’s attention might be called for.
    She was standing a couple of steps inside the room, looking at him with that inscrutable expression he had such a hard time with. It might entail willingness just as well as total repudiation and contempt.
    Needing to involve Agnes in this was not something he was happy about, but now he was feeling so dizzy that he did not dare try to get up from the chaise longue.
    Agnes organized most everything in the house but he wanted to take care of the heart medicine himself. He knew that she kept track of how many pills he took, because several times she had pointed out that he had to renew the prescription.
    “Shall I call Birgitta?”
    Agnes twisted her head slightly, her lips pressed together, the eyes somewhat clouded by cataracts, expressionlessly observing an oil painting that was hanging above the fireplace, a portrait of a woman attributed to Arvid Lagerstedt.
    The professor had the feeling of being a very obstinate patient, who for the hundredth time was trying his caregiver’s patience, and where conventional surface politeness alone kept the caregiver from slapping the patient across the mouth and then leaving him to his fate.
    He chose not to answer the question, the customary tactic. It was theater, their single combat tested over decades. A theater where he always got the last line.
    “Thanks, that’s fine, Agnes, the medicine.”
    She disappeared without a word but returned immediately. While he rinsed down the pill he observed how Agnes circled the library, while she waited for him to set down the glass. He got the impression that there