The Forest Lake Mystery Read online

  Holst returned to the Masonic Hotel where his travelling companion was waiting for him.

  III

  Lieutenant Sjöström had arranged a party that turned out to be quite festive. Beside the obligatory ‘smörgåsbord’, he presented Holst to an older fellow officer who was still serving in the artillery regiment: Baron Holger Kurk, a tall, lean, very obliging and well-mannered captain whom Sjöström jokingly described as the entire region’s uncle and the most sought-after cavalier throughout Kristianstad County.

  Captain Kurk did nothing to harm his reputation and the dinner, that included all the pleasures the most pampered garrison soldier could wish for, was both long and lively. The atmosphere was excellent; cheerful stories of garrison life and life in the capital crossed swords. It turned out that Sjöström had wound up as an equerry at a major feudal landowner in South Scania, on whose behalf he visited the regiment to acquire vulnerable older horses for breeding purposes. Holst was silent about his business, but allowed it to be understood that his visit was related to a legal matter, in that he stated that his occupation was connected to a department of state in the Danish capital, on behalf of which he was looking for some information in Kristianstad and other towns in Scania.

  He had thereby primed them for his question, and when the men sat drinking coffee in front of the building where the young people of the town paraded across the square, past the beautiful, blooming borders, Holst casually asked whether any of the gentlemen remembered a young lady named Annie Carlson, who had probably played some sort of role in the small town a few years back.

  No one knew her. Sjöström had a valid excuse, as he had already left the town at that time, but even Captain Kurk, who was a bachelor and, according to what Sjöström had testified, a pure encyclopaedia when it came to ladies, even outside family life, had to declare void. Holst easily sidestepped the matter; he didn’t want to let on that he didn’t know the name precisely and thereby expose himself to questions he didn’t want to answer, but chance came to his aid, as the Captain didn’t want to throw in the towel but kept coming back to the lady whom he wasn’t supposed to be able to remember.

  Holst eventually admitted that the name Carlson could be wrong, an assumed name, and this set the Captain’s thoughts going in a lively retrospective. It was an impressive regiment of Amazons the old warrior conjured up, a not insignificant addition to Vendes’ famous artillery, and when Holst helped with a description of the person whose characteristics were very clear in his mind, the Captain’s thoughts became gradually clearer.

  He looked acutely and intently at Holst before casting a glance at Sjöström.

  “Aha – so that’s it,” he blurted out.

  Holst could see that the Captain knew the correct name, but that there were circumstances that prevented him from mentioning it and, with great dexterity, he led the conversation totally away from the matter and avoided broaching it further. Sjöström was very clearly under the influence of the evening’s festivities; he was determined to drink a brotherly toast with Holst, but the latter noticed that Captain Kurk, after the little incident that had quite escaped Sjöström’s attention, had become very restrained and in between times cast sharp, furtive glances at him.

  Furthermore, Kurk had made a considerable impression on Holst; he was a pleasant table companion who exercised strong moderation with regard to the festivities and didn’t change his bearing despite the rather significant number of glasses that were emptied. Holst decided therefore to pursue his goal and, as the party gradually expanded with the arrival of more officers, while Sjöström’s exuberant joy simultaneously began to assume overwhelming proportions, Holst managed to beat a retreat at an opportune moment.

  The Captain stood up at the same time and followed him down the street. They walked instinctively towards the outskirts of the town and, as if the question had been burgeoning in both of them, they also stopped instinctively.

  “I’ll pre-empt the Captain because I wish to ask his forgiveness for being so restrained in front of the other gentlemen. Unfortunately, I found it necessary.”

  Captain Kurk looked sharply at him.

  “The gentleman is perhaps not Lieutenant Holst.”

  Holst looked up.

  “Yes, I am. Apart from the approach I made, as you will have noticed, as a pretext to gain your trust, I have no particularly reason to hide my name.”

  The Captain bowed. Earlier in the evening, Holst had made the discovery that Captain Kurk – quite naturally in a city like Kristianstad – was a Freemason, like Holst himself.

  “It’s just a matter of the purpose of my presence here and of my question from before – the girl I asked about,” continued Holst.

  Kurk nodded.

  “The girl – Annie Cederlund.”

  Holst looked up.

  “So her name was Cederlund.”

  “You didn’t know?” asked Captain Kurk.

  “No,” said Holst, “I didn’t know – but to come back to myself, I am, besides being a lieutenant, also employed by the Copenhagen police and it’s in this capacity that I’ve come here.”

  The Captain nodded once again – it struck Holst that his face took on the same expression as Ulla Ankerkrone’s when he first mentioned his occupation.

  “Aha,” continued the Captain, “so the gentleman is a ‘detective’.”

  “Yes, I am,” replied Holst abruptly.

  The Captain smiled.

  “I suspected as much, by the way, when you asked about Annie. However, I had a reason not to mention her name while poor Bror Sjöström was present.”

  “Oh – and that was?” asked Holst with interest.

  “Well, Annie Cederlund has cost poor Bror most of his wealth and, into the bargain, his family’s honour. So, what do you really want with Annie? Has she committed crimes in Copenhagen? The last I heard of her…” Captain Kurk suddenly stopped.

  Holst looked intently at him.

  “My dear Captain,” he began in a subdued voice, “we two don’t know each other and the Captain can of course reject my intrusion. I only have the operational way to approach this, you see, and I don’t expect very much out of that. If, on the other hand, the Captain would show me the trust that, in accordance with what he already knows, I have a claim to, I might be able to take care of my business here as early as this evening and leave town as quietly as I came, without a word about the sad events that have brought me here needing to be known to anyone else than the Captain himself. It is an urgent prayer concerning a very important matter.”

  Captain Kurk was silent for a moment; the moonlight fell on his upright figure, while his head was bowed and his thoughts were churning round.

  “Lieutenant Holst, there are reasons, very serious reasons,” he said, throwing his head back and emphasising every word, “that could compel me to reject your request. I know quite a bit about Annie Cederlund and her name is one I’d rather not mention. I can give you my word of honour that I don’t know where Annie is now, but I can say just as certainly that I can only give you information about her that is several years old. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know anything about her since then, only that I’m unable to tell you anything. Will you from your side give me your word that you won’t request any further information from me than that I can, and will, give you?”

  Holst thought for a moment. There was something solemn about this conversation beneath the moon, while light was flickering sparsely from individual lamps and the water in the lake inlet lapped against the shore.

  He raised his eyes and looked firmly into the Captain’s.

  “Will you for your part give me your word of honour that you don’t know where Annie Cederlund is at present or what her final fate may have been?”

  The Captain maintained eye contact with Holst – his face was fully illuminated, bearing a seriousness that made it clear that what he was about to say was the truth.

  “You have my word of honour, Lieutenant Holst. Come home with m
e, and I’ll tell you what I know and what I feel able tell you about Annie Cederlund. That name contains more for me than you can imagine. Is she dead?”

  “Yes,” said Holst softly. “She was murdered in Denmark in March this year.”

  Captain Kurk went as pale as a corpse but said nothing. The two men went to the barracks together.

  IV

  Captain Kurk lived in a flat in the artillery regiment’s barracks, which in its consummate, Spartan simplicity was no small contrast to its resident’s exquisite elegance. The complete contrast certainly made an impression on Holst, but it was as if the furniture and walls in the large, square study quietly but convincingly testified to the Captain’s rule-bound and completely trustworthy comportment.

  The household effects had been kept strictly in the Biedermeier style from the years 1820-50 – dark mahogany mostly without inlay, a broad but hard sofa with storage, and black, leather-covered armchairs. The desk in particular, a delicate piece of mahogany furniture, was an outstanding specimen of this style. The windows were high and framed with austere, green damask curtains, the tops only covered by a pelmet. The floor was whitewashed and the living room, where an old moderator lamp, already lit when the gentlemen arrived, spread a gentle yellow glow, giving the space a sheen almost of purity and meticulous order.

  On the wall above the sofa, a trophy display was assembled, consisting of numerous shiny weapons; an extensive collection, in part of very rare slashing and stabbing weapons, and above this stood a bust of Sweden’s reigning king in bronzed plaster.

  The walls were tightly bedecked with copper engravings and lithographs, mainly representations of Sweden’s kings and distinguished statesmen; one end wall was adorned with photographs of friends, and in the middle of this group hung a painting of a wonderfully beautiful woman with a fine oval face framed by black, curly hair. A black mourning crape was hung over the frame of this picture and in black letters on the bottom edge was a name: Giulia.

  Underneath the picture was a large photograph that showed three men in uniform in front of a camp tent; a wreath of rather withered everlasting flowers had been laid over the black frame, and as Holst ran his eyes over the picture, he saw that one of the men was his host, the second, who was bending over him with a hand on his shoulder, was Captain Ankerkrone, while the third was unknown to him.

  Captain Kurk watched him closely while he stood in front of these pictures and, as Holst turned to him to ask about them, he sensed such tight-lipped melancholy in his host’s face that the question died on his lips. The Captain asked him to take a seat and an old, composed servant brought in a tray of refreshments, which he quietly placed on a table between the two of them, after which he noiselessly retired.

  The Captain opened a drawer in the large, beautifully inlaid mahogany writing desk standing between the tall windows and handed Holst a miniature portrait made of ivory mounted in a slim gold frame.

  “That was Annie Cederlund,” he said with a sad smile. “That’s how she looked in 1885.”

  Holst looked up in surprise.

  “1885? I thought she was only a little over twenty.”

  “She was born on 7th June 1866 in Bäckaryd by the River Laga, close to Ljungby in Småland. Her father was a corporal and a gamekeeper in the big hunting districts that some English lords have rented in this part of the country. He’s dead now, but her mother is still alive and lives in a small house by the Laga. Some old friends of her husband, me among them, give her an annual support payment; she’s now childless as Annie was her only child. As promised, I’ll tell you as much of this unfortunate girl’s story as I can, even though unfortunate is hardly the word to use for a creature whose conscience has had to bear such heavy burdens as Annie’s.”

  The Captain pushed the carafes of whisky and water over to Holst and, having made himself comfortable in his armchair, proceeded to tell Annie’s story in a subdued, serious voice.

  It struck Holst that the serious man sitting opposite him in his austere, soldierly quarters didn’t much resemble the handsome, smiling officer his travelling acquaintance had presented to him, and he recalled the Captain’s remarks about the beautiful people he knew with surprise. Now it was as if his mouth had never smiled and he didn’t look anything like a brave conqueror, a happy soldier in peace time.

  Holst listened while the Captain spoke and the hands on the large mahogany grandfather clock moved slowly towards the midnight hour.

  “As I said, Annie was born in Bäckaryd in 1866, her father’s name was Bengt Bengtson and she was known as Annie Bengtsdotter, according to the customary tradition of Småland. As the only child, she was the apple of her parents’ eye, especially of her father’s. She didn’t learn much in school, but this just made her all the more eager to go out with her father in the forests and heather-covered clearings. She learnt to know the shriek of the reindeer, the call of the bull and the cry of the roe deer in the summer; she learnt to recognise the tracks of the game, to hunt foxes and hares in the clearings in the autumn, and no forestry assistant could have been a better marksman and hunter than she. She was straight-backed and lithe, and furthermore as beautiful as a shepherdess in one of Watteau’s paintings, and just about all the young lads of the parish courted her… indeed, the magistrate’s son in Bäck even took his own life because of her scornful response to his courtship. I first saw her in 1880 when I was a hunting guest with a couple of friends on grouse shoots in the clearings by the Laga. She was only fourteen years old, but fully developed and dazzlingly beautiful.

  “We were guests there two years in a row. Besides me there were two gentlemen whose names I won’t mention, since the circumstances make it my duty not to mention their names in connection with her. During the second year, Annie left her home with one of these men.

  “Her father’s anger was boundless; he implored me to get his daughter back and I tried as hard as I could, but in vain. Then he went to the town where his daughter had taken up residence, but Annie refused to come back home with him. Two years passed, Annie had a child, and her father attempted to kill the man he regarded as her seducer, but failed, and one night in the county gaol he hanged himself while his guard was asleep.

  “He was a brave soldier and a loyal, skilled hunter.

  “The case attracted a lot of attention and Annie and her lover went away. He, who was an officer of the regiment here, had his pay stopped, but a couple of years later, he was forgiven by his superior officers and returned to the town.”

  The Captain paused for a moment before continuing.

  “Strange things happen in this world, and he went back to his debauched lifestyle – to the sadness and distress of his best friends. Shortly after his return, an event took place here in the district, something which remains another person’s secret, so I cannot and will not explain it to you more fully. A respected family of high standing was ravaged by a sad incident, in which Annie’s lover played an enforced, if ugly and humiliating, role. A friendship that tied him to one of the best men in his station was broken – Annie was to blame, but the events that occurred removed him forever from Annie and the country and cost him his life abroad.”

  The Captain’s voice became even more subdued and serious and Holst noticed with surprise how intensely he was moved by the memory. It was almost as if tears were blurring his gaze.

  He broke off abruptly before resuming at a brisker tempo.

  “Annie left the country for around ten years. No one knew where she had gone and her name, which had been on everyone’s lips in those days, was forgotten by everyone. Then, one fine day, she showed up once more in town. She called herself Annie Cederlund and she opened a dressmaker’s workshop in this name in Voldgatan. The middle classes were distrustful in having her back so her business could hardly have been particularly extensive. But she was dazzlingly beautiful, her figure was now stately and fully developed and her ability to coerce men and lead them where she wanted was so rare that I still don’t quite understand why sh
e hadn’t tried to find her place in the demi-monde of a large city, which she could easily have achieved as a first among equals. Ah well – but she had that child, a girl who had been brought up here in the town – and that was no doubt one of the reasons she had returned.

  “However, she may have had other reasons for choosing Kristianstad for her home. I didn’t look her up – the events I have only hinted at to you separated us like a deep, insurmountable chasm. On the other hand, she seemed to want to seek me out and, as I consistently rejected all her approaches, she took revenge by forming a close attachment to a young man for whom I harboured a fatherly friendship, the younger brother of our dear fellow tonight, by the name of Hugold Sjöström, who was my first officer at the Armoury, which I was commanding at that time.

  “Hugold was a handsome, spirited lad with excellent abilities, but without any strength of character and weak as a kitten when it came to women. Annie pressured him to advance himself, step by step, without any love, I believe, just out of a desire to stir up trouble. Then her little girl died and, as if trying to drown her sorrow, she abandoned all restraint and indulged in orgies that caused a stir in the town, but as she was free and independent, there was no power that could stop her – and unfortunately not him either. Hugold Sjöström took money from the regimental cash box which he was in charge of, signed fake bills of exchange for a considerable amount, and the respectable Bror only managed to save his brother from dishonour through great sacrifice involving most of what he owned. Hugold was dismissed from the regiment and went abroad with Annie. This happened a few years ago in the autumn of 1898. Since that time I’ve only heard from the couple occasionally. Sjöström slid further and further down; he was still Annie’s companion, but there is no doubt that the funds for his upkeep were solely raised by her, and her sources have hardly been the purest.

  “I saw them once myself in Paris a year ago. Sjöström tried to avoid me, but Annie nodded to me in recognition and laughed. The couple were on that occasion accompanied by a young man whose fate was close to my heart. I warned him about Annie. But… Well, I suppose that kind of warning doesn’t usually bear fruit.”