House of Evidence (16 page)

I
t was midday, and Jóhann and Hrefna were on their way to Birkihlíd to conduct a thorough search of the house for any clues that might possibly help the investigation. In particular, Halldór had asked them to look for the gun, which he suspected had never left the house.

The sun had broken through, and it was getting warmer. Hrefna drove, while Jóhann leaned comfortably back in his seat; both were silent, lost in thought. Jóhann was reflecting on Birkihlíd itself; it was an unusual house and he suspected that this case would have an unusual conclusion. In addition, he was not totally satisfied with the results of his investigation the day before. He had the feeling he had overlooked something.

He could smell the faint fragrance of Hrefna’s perfume. He felt good being close to her, and was sorry they reached their destination so quickly.

They broke the seal on the front door and let themselves in with a key. Something obstructed the door as Jóhann tried to push it open—it was a copy of
Morgunbladid
, lying on the floor in the lobby. He picked it up and scanned the front page. The main story was on the Kiel Marine Research Institute review, and a smaller story on the Kieler murder.

“This is today’s paper,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” Hrefna replied. “What else would it be?”

“If today’s paper is lying here, then where is yesterday’s?”

Hrefna looked around. “There’s usually somewhere in a home where newspapers are kept,” she said.

They entered the inner lobby and Jóhann spotted a stack of them on the shelf under the telephone. “I should have checked here yesterday,” he said, picking up the paper on the top of the pile. It was dated Thursday, January 18.

“This explains the footsteps we spent all that time examining yesterday,” he remarked. “They belong to the person who delivered the paper, of course. He must have arrived at the house early in the morning, while it was still snowing.”

“But how did it get onto the shelf?” Hrefna asked.

“The old housekeeper must have put it away before we arrived. She wouldn’t have left it on the floor for everyone to trample on.”

“That’s probably right,” Hrefna agreed. “I’ll give her a ring and have her confirm it.”

While Hrefna went to make the call, Jóhann entered the parlor and went around opening the drapes to let the light in; there were potted plants on the windowsill and their flowers already seemed to be fading.

“Sveinborg remembers having picked the newspaper off the floor when the policemen arrived,” Hrefna announced, entering the parlor. “You were right. She didn’t want them to trample over it.”

“Right. That means we have no footprints to work with,” Jóhann said, disappointedly. “They didn’t fit with the time of death, anyway. The pathologist said he had died between one and two, but it didn’t start snowing properly until after that.”

They divided the workload; Hrefna went upstairs to look through Jacob Junior’s personal papers, and Jóhann checked things downstairs, starting in the office.

He sat down at the desk and examined it carefully. It had four drawers on the left side and, on the right, a locked cabinet. In the top drawer he found a
Directory of Engineers
, dated 1966; he looked up Jacob Kieler’s name:

Jacob Kieler, b. March 4th 1890 in Hafnarfjördur, d. July 15th 1945. Parents Alfred Kieler, merchant, son of Jacob Kieler, store manager, and his wife Kirsten, born Pedersen.

Graduated from MR High School 1910, degree in propaedeutic (cand. phil.) from Copenhagen University 1911, BA in engineering from Polyteknisk Læreanstalt in Copenhagen 1913, MSc in railway engineering from Technische Hochschule in Berlin 1915. Assistant engineer at the Chicago & North Western Railway Company in the United States 1915–1918. Engineer at the James Leslie engineering firm in Leicester, England 1919–1920. Operated his own engineering firm in Reykjavik 1920–1945.

Married June 15th 1919 to Elizabeth b. August 26th 1894, daughter of Joseph Chatfield manufacturer of Leicester and his wife Marjorie, née Stewart. Children 1) Jacob b. Oct. 12th 1925, historian 2) Kirsten b. Nov. 21st 1930, married to Árni Jónsson, headmaster.

The next drawer contained old writing utensils, an inkpot, and some penholders; the third drawer held writing paper with the printed letterhead “Jacob Kieler MSc”; and in the bottom drawer were envelopes containing old photographic films and various pictures. The locked cabinet was no doubt the safe, Jóhann guessed.

Grasping the desktop from beneath, Jóhann tried to lift the desk, but he could hardly move it. The cabinet must be made of really thick steel, he reckoned. Before they could open it, they would need a court order, which Halldór was working on, though that might take all day. They would also need to get a locksmith here if they could not find the key.

He decided to turn his attention to the books on the shelves next. He checked them all, taking each one out one by one and leafing through them before putting them back. It was here he finally found dust. The books had clearly not been touched for ages. They were all old, and most had good quality bindings; the number of English titles was striking. He found the photograph albums and looked through them with interest. In these pictures, one could trace the history of the family and of the house they had lived in; pictures of parties and other holiday celebrations, but also scenes from daily life: girls working in the kitchen and doing the laundry in the basement, a laborer shoveling coal into the coal store, and a man cutting the grass in front of the house with a scythe.

There was a gap on the shelf next to the picture albums where the diaries had been; Jóhann knew that Hrefna had been given the task of going through them, and wished he could have had a chance to look at them as well.

The gun cabinet on the other side of the room was locked, but you could see the contents through the glass. Jóhann recognized
the only revolver in the cabinet, which was a .22-caliber Colt, manufactured before the turn of the century, and small enough to keep in a pocket. He knew it was too small to have been used for the murder.

Opposite the gun cabinet was a model of a railroad station on a low table. It was not a toy, but a near-perfect replica of the buildings and equipment one would need to run a railway. Tiny letters on the railway carriages read “Iceland Railroad Company Ltd.”

He went back into the parlor and checked under the sofa cushions; even here there was no dust. He looked into the fireplace and peered up the flue. A faint burned odor could be detected, and as he rummaged around with the poker, he could see a thick layer of soot on the slabs of the hearth and that the ventilator grill was in the open position. The fireplace had clearly been used frequently.

Then he carried the dining chair that stood forlornly in the middle of the parlor floor back to the dining room. The rooms looked far better with the chair back in its place at the big dining table. Jóhann examined the sideboard carefully, looking inside, under, and behind it, where he found a Christmas card from 1965 that seemed to have fallen down there and been forgotten. The greeting was to Jacob Junior and his mother, from Ingimar and family.

The kitchen was fascinating. Ancient, battered utensils hung on the walls; they had probably not been used for decades, but it was interesting to see what housewives from the first half of the century had to put up with.

There was nothing of note in the inner lobby apart from the telephone table and, beneath it, the newspaper rack, whose contents they already knew about.

In the outer lobby there was a door leading to a small guest bathroom, and another into the engineering studio. In the
bathroom, the fixtures were of the same generation as elsewhere in the house, and everything was clean and shining; the toilet had a varnished wooden seat, and from the cistern high up on the wall dangled a chain with a porcelain handle. Jóhann took off his shoes before stepping up onto the toilet lid in order to peep into the cistern, but there was nothing unusual there.

Jóhann found the engineering studio most interesting of all. He could sense that a scientist had worked here. The drawings, the equipment, and the instruments were fantastic collector’s items. He examined the drawing of the railroad station that hung on the wall, and recognized immediately the same structures shown in the model in the office. He went through cabinets and drawers, and spent a long time looking at drawings and other materials. He found a file containing press cuttings about the railway, including a magazine article by Jacob Senior. Jóhann sat down and read:

The Railway, by Jacob Kieler, engineer, written in June 1920.

There is increasing interest in harnessing mechanical power to the maximum for the facilitation of labor of all kinds, not least as regards the transportation of goods, as is evidenced by the ever-growing importation of automobiles. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to assume that greater support now exists for the mechanical transport method considered by most people to be the safest and most productive, that is to say the railway. It is clear to all thinking people that the automobile will never achieve a level of efficiency
to make it possible to rely solely on that particular technology. With the arrival of the railway, it will naturally follow that the commercial transportation of goods and people by automobile will be prohibited on those routes served by the railroad.

The proposed railroad is intended to link Reykjavik eastward to the lowlands of southern Iceland. Surveys show that arable land in the lowlands in the south extends to 2,372 square kilometers, equivalent to more than a fifth of all arable land in Norway. The value of a railroad connecting this region to the world at large is, therefore, incontrovertible. It has been calculated that the price of milk will be reduced by a quarter on arrival of the railroad.

Over the past year, a survey has been carried out of all traffic along the Thingvellir Road and across Hellisheidi. These roads are far from being of quality, yet it transpires that the traffic is incredibly heavy, with 28,000 people crossing Hellisheidi, along with 5,000 tons of goods and livestock.

There has been much discussion on the gauge of the railway. This must be coordinated over the whole network so that the same type of rolling stock may be used throughout, and, rather than having to transfer freight between wagons, it will merely be necessary to attach previously loaded wagons to a train. In this discussion it is very important to strike a balance between excess and parsimony, as not only must the main tracks have sufficient capacity to meet
all potential transport needs for the unforeseeable future, but one must also give due consideration to the construction costs of both main and prospective branch tracks.

Electricity would be the most practical motive power for the rolling stock. The main advantages are these: Electric cars run more evenly and are more stable than steam locomotives; they therefore create less stress to the infrastructure and are less likely to derail even at high speed; they are ready to go at a moment’s notice while steam locomotives take a long time to fire up; and they have both acceleration and deceleration rates that are twice those of steam locomotives, making for a quicker journey when railroad stations are close together.

In order to provide enough electricity for the railroad and other developments it will be necessary to embark as soon as possible on harnessing the river Sog, something that has already been proposed. With a moderate increase in costs, it will be possible to provide villages and whole regions along the path of the railroad with as much electricity as production permits.

It is of great detriment when planning major projects not to allow for natural growth. We Icelanders have often fallen into this trap, and it has done us much harm; it cannot be overstated that when embarking on expensive developments, one of the main issues is not to do a shoddy job for the sake of short-term economy, but rather to go for perfection from the start in order to secure the long term.

Behind the article in the file was a folded map, showing railroad routes under consideration in thick pen markings. The map was shabby, its corners worn.

Jóhann leafed through several pages of expense calculations and plans before coming across a newspaper article that someone had marked throughout in red pencil.

Comments on the Railroad Affair by A Southerner.

In my opinion it is totally unacceptable that the citizens of Reykjavik and “those below the heath” should be the only ones to take part in the discussion on the transport affairs of us southerners, and for this reason I contribute these few words to the debate. It looks as if, for whatever reason, the fiercest railroad preachers here to the east have more often than not had some vested interest not unconnected with the proposed railway. And they keep banging that particular drum to this day, that a railroad must be built, without offering any reasoning in support of their case.

I am not in possession of information enabling me to discuss the railroad affair in detail. I am not in possession of engineers’ estimates of the cost of laying railroad tracks here to the east, although I seem to remember a sum being mentioned of approximately six million krónur, according to the latest “reduced” and “amended” estimates. So it would not be far off the mark to assume that the cost would in all probability reach not less than nine to ten million krónur, bearing in mind those engineers’ estimates for some enterprises here in the east that we remember with pain and heavy hearts. We have probably had greater and more costly experience of engineers’ estimates than other regions of Iceland and, if truth be told, we have concluded that it would be foolish indeed to assume anything other than that all such estimates are more or less wrong, and always far too low. Low estimates are more dangerous than high ones, as they frequently lure people into enterprises they would not dream of undertaking if they knew precisely from the outset what the cost would be.