No More Murders!

by Maria Lang

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

Worn by his daughter Puck's appetite for macabre detail, John Ensted,
Professor of Egyptology, is sceptical about their prospects of a peaceful
holiday. but as they set off for Skoga, the small Swedish lakeside town,
Puck and her husband,Edwin Bure, are in high spirits. However, the
Professor's fears are soon justified.

Thotmes III, the Professor's sacred white cat, is the first to discover the
body of the young man behind the lilac bushes. Plunged into the victim's
heart is the Professor's Egyptian paper knife...but who is the man and
why was he killed?

Puck's insatiable curiosity leads her to make her own enquiries and soon
discovers that well kept secrets and ancient scandal smoulder beneath the
surface of the idyllic town. When Christer Wick, well known Stockholm detective,
arrives, the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place.

NO MORE MURDERS is a crime fiction classic that helped inspire the new
BBC4 drama Crimes of Passion.

Release date: April 24, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 224

Sample

‘All right, I’ll come with you. But on one condition: No more murders. They’ve been more than enough already.’

John M. Ensted, Professor of Egyptology at Uppsala University, had spoken, and Edwin and I drew a double sigh of relief. There was no doubt that my father needed a rest; he had become alarmingly thin during his winter excavations in the desert, and ever since his return home he had been restlessly busy cataloguing and working on the new material, which was now complete and awaiting publication in some learned journal called Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatisch-ägyptischen Gesellschaft or something equally distinguished and unreadable. As Edwin – and I to some extent – had just decided to spend the last two weeks of our summer holiday in Skoga, and as Skoga is the most peaceful and relaxing town in the whole of Sweden, we had naturally done all we could to persuade Father to come with us. That he had finally agreed to abandon his beloved work for the first time in fifteen years was both surprising and pleasing, and we hastened to agree to any condition he might impose.

His remark about murders was not just a joke. As far as I can make out, Father is delighted with the son-in-law I have chosen for him, but he has reservations on one point: his exaggerated bent for criminology. Edwin’s and my own capacity for becoming involved in bizarre murders, our friendship with Christer Wick, Edwin’s passion for detective stories, all irritate my father, who is under the impression that a corpse has to be at least three thousand years old to be interesting. Unfortunately a particularly revolting trunk-murder in Stockholm had recently been headline news and as Christer was in charge of the case, Edwin devoured every bulletin with exultant glee. At breakfast, dinner and tea, Father and I were fed with gory details and hazy theories, until my father finally lost patience and said that only on one condition would he consider going away on holiday with us.

‘No more murders; not in any form …’

We assured him that Skoga had nothing to offer except pleasant, peaceful and light-hearted thoughts and events. Edwin resolutely flung the half-read evening paper into the waste-paper basket and soon all three of us were engrossed in persuading one another of the need to take only the minimum of clothes, books and rainwear since we were not going to be away for more than two weeks, but of course each one of us crammed our suitcases to the brim and then went to bed, exhausted and expectant, as one should the night before going on holiday.

It was Tuesday, the fourteenth of August, eight o’clock in the morning and the weather promised to be lovely. I felt as if my mood were in complete accord with the weather and I looked at the scene before me with happy and loving eyes.

To celebrate his somewhat recently acquired doctorate, Edwin had bought a second-hand Ford of indefinite age and colour. He was now trying to stack a motley of rugs, cushions, books and typewriters into the back, in the hope that they would not all collapse and bury both Father and Thotmes III the moment we started.

‘You know,’ I said happily, as I tried to arrange an enormous Spanish straw hat on my hopelessly short black curls, ‘you know, we really look more like a rather disorganized travelling circus than anything else.’

Five weeks’ wild and carefree racketing with the Ford round southern Europe had made me as brown as a gypsy and Edwin black – his hair, eyes, skin, trousers, everything except his shirt and teeth, but the latter shone brilliantly white in contrast as he now crawled backwards out of the back of the car and smiled at me.

‘It’s just possible, darling,’ he said, ‘that you and I might be taken for tinkers or rogues, but hardly your father. Whatever the circumstances, he looks exactly what he is; a very learned and famous professor from Uppsala, temporarily torn from his natural surroundings and on his way to spend an enforced holiday in the country.’

The said Professor, muttering meanwhile, squeezed his long and gangling body into what remained of the back seat, and when I looked at his silver hair, the roguish look in the eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles and the sloppy but nevertheless appropriate tweed jacket, I thought that Edwin was right and the only thing one might possibly be mistaken about was his place of origin. He might equally well have come from Cambridge.

Thotmes III had majestically taken her place on top of a pile of books and typewriters, and was energetically working with her pink tongue to make her soft white coat even whiter. It would take more than a car trip to make Thotmes lose her composure. No one knows what she had been up to before the day she appealingly stretched out her pink nose to an astonished Swedish archaeologist down in a newly opened Egyptian royal tomb. But from that moment on, she had been on both sea and air trips which she had endured with her characteristic sublime and almost contemptuous calm. In some mysterious way she still seemed to carry with her the slightly frightening aura of holiness which had surrounded her in her cat-worshipping native land. Why a cat, created by nature a gracious and fine-limbed little she-cat, should be named after the great warrior-pharaoh Thotmes III was another mystery, though the explanation could be John Ensted’s lack of biological knowledge. Now she snorted haughtily at the hellish racket set up by Edwin and the Ford, and in the glitter of the August sunlight, our cheerful company set off for Skoga.

Some hours later we were working our way cautiously up a winding road in mountainous country. Tall pine trees paraded like guards on duty along the edges of the road, the sun burned, and dark-red, over-ripe wild strawberries looked enticingly out from between stones shaded by grass. We had not seen even a single cottage for many miles, and the thick forest seemed to extend for ever.

But Edwin, who knew the district better than I did, straightened up at the wheel.

‘Keep your eyes open now,’ he said, and then he swung the car out of the forest and stopped at the top of a long hill.

I gasped with enchantment. Down there in the valley, surrounded by dark forest-covered hills, glittered a lake, and along its shore lay nothing less than a complete and incredibly small toy-like town. Every little yellow or white house was peacefully embedded in foliage, a circular red water-tower cockily stuck its head up above the roofs, the white church, which might have been made of spun sugar, looked as if it had taken the whole of Skoga and its inhabitants under its protection. And down in the blue-black water the whole was repeated in reflection. For one brief moment I wondered which town was the real one – the one under the water or the one on the shore. Or neither of them?

Father said exactly what hundreds of tourists had said before him.

‘What a marvellous little idyll. To think that such places still exist.’

‘Oh, Edwin!’ was all I could say.

And Thotmes III yowled. Perhaps her instincts were more true than ours, perhaps she had simply grown tired of riding in the car, but she miaowed protestingly and warningly as Edwin spurred the Ford on again and slowly drove us straight into this treacherous idyll.

Edwin’s parents died several years ago, but his sister Ingrid still lives in Skoga. Together with her husband, she lives in the lovely old house down by the river in which both she and Edwin were born and brought up. This summer, however, she and her husband were spending their holiday in Italy, which was why we could have the run of the whole house and its contents.

River House lies with five other houses in an enclosed area usually known as the Valley, exclusively separated from the main part of the town. The narrow gravel road which leads off the main road right through the Valley, to end somewhere on the twisting but ever-present River Skoga, is not meant for car traffic, so we parked the Ford down by the fork and set about carrying all our chaotic baggage up to the house. On each side of the gravel track we could just see the houses, three on the right and three on the left, all surrounded by shady, leafy gardens and separated from one another and from the road by thick well-kept hedges.

‘These spruces are a bit gloomy, aren’t they?’ said Father, his voice slightly uneasy as we passed between man-high and completely impenetrable hedges, but he changed his mind as soon as we had got through the gate of ‘our’ house. The very fact that one knew one was hidden from view on all sides at River House made one feel ruler over a whole paradise; a paradise of lovely lawns and ancient fruit trees, with the river a coiling brown ribbon at the bottom of the slope.

We were welcomed with open arms and a marvellous dinner by Hilda, Edwin’s old nurse and the most valuable item on the inventory of River House. She is a very straight-backed and handsome sixty-year-old, without a single grey hair in her jet-black head, and I was pleased she had wanted to stay on and look after us, thus freeing me from all housekeeping worries during our holiday. Hilda is not one of those people who talk a lot, but now she burst forth into a litany on a single theme: how thin Mr Edwin was still, how small and thin and puny his wife was and most of all how horribly thin and undernourished the Professor seemed. But Hilda would feed us up. That was indubitably a matter on which not one of us had any doubts as we staggered away from the dinner table.

Thotmes III, who had eaten a whole tin of sardines and almost a whole carton of thick cream, nevertheless found the energy to start on a minute examination of both house and garden. Towards evening, however, she returned, apparently pleased with what she had discovered. She found us on the large open veranda which had been recently built all along the back of the house, without spoiling its original style. The view over the soft lawns and the calmly flowing river was peaceful and relaxing, and peace and relaxation had settled on the company on the veranda. Edwin, who had determinedly set about answering a month-old heap of letters, puffed away at his pipe and wrote continuously on his – fortunately silent – typewriter. Father seemed to have taken his divorce from his hieroglyphics and clay tablets like a man and was comfortably sunk in flowered low chair, reading a newly published paper on Weapons and Brooches as Clues to the Dating of Homeric Poetry. (This is his idea of a holiday.) I was trying to make a yellow striped beach bag of the same material as the dress I was wearing. But I soon tired of it and enticed Thotmes to me instead, as she could not make up her mind whether to sit on someone’s knee or on a more comfortable cushion at my side on the rattan sofa.

‘Thoth, angel. Come on, up you get.’

Father’s dark blue eyes abandoned Homer and turned reproachfully to me.

‘It’s extraordinary that my only child doesn’t seem to be able to learn even the elements of a science to which I have devoted my whole life … It’s utter nonsense to call a cat Thoth. Thoth is the Moon God, the ibis-headed scribe and judge –’

‘I know. He’s the one who in the Kingdom of the Dead weighs the hearts of the dead on a huge scales, and in the other bowl there’s an ostrich feather, which is the truth … what have you got there, Father?’

‘A paper-knife.’

‘A paper-knife – that big?’

‘Yes.’ He passed the almost banana-shaped knife over to me and I saw then that it had a beautiful handle, worked in ivory and gold.

For once I sounded genuinely respectful.

‘It looks terribly old.’

‘Terrifically,’ said the Egyptologist drily. ‘About five thousand years.’

Edwin had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was staring sceptically at the exhibit.

‘Then it must be from pre-dynastic days. Can I look … oh, you old joker. It’s made of steel!’

Father beamed.

‘It’s a very clever imitation of a pre-historic flint-knife. I’ve got a native goldsmith down there in Cairo who amuses himself making things like that between times. One can always catch Puck out …’

I rose, offended, and went out to Hilda in the kitchen. We talked about food and methods of preserving for a while.

‘Come on, tell me something, Hilda,’ I said then. ‘What’s been happening in Skoga lately?’

‘Here? Nothing ever happens here …’

No, I thought, that’s just about it. In a little town like this, life goes along on an even keel without huge sensations. But I knew that even if it were seething with perturbing events, Hilda would be unlikely to tell me about them. If I wished to be entertained with gossip, I had certainly come to the wrong person.

It was ten o’clock. I stuck my head out on to the now almost dark veranda and told them I intended to go to bed. Edwin and I were occupying the big bedroom upstairs and I was soon stretched out in the heavenly broad bed, sleepily wondering whether Edwin and Father were thinking of sitting up all night. Oh well, once upon a time I had liked sleeping alone …

But my husband came and it was not part of his plan either that I should sleep alone or that I should sleep for the next few hours. Before I finally fell into a dreamless sleep, I heard a clock strike one single stroke.

The sun was shining and the birds were chattering in the large cherry tree outside our window. Edwin whistled Oh what a beautiful morning as he shaved and I hesitated between the yellow stripes and a bright red dress which left six inches of my diaphragm bare, finally deciding on the latter, although I knew Hilda would not approve. We knocked on Father’s door as we went past, but when we received no reply, we went on down the stairs and out on to the veranda. There he was, sitting in an ancient white linen jacket with a giant breakfast-cup in front of him, and three small anxious lines on his high forehead. Thotmes was balanced on the narrow veranda rail, her fine tail up in the air. I kissed Father.

‘How’s things?’ I asked. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Yes, thank you. Slept like a log. Perhaps I should add, unfortunately.’

We had sat down on the rattan sofa and there was a pause before we realized what he had said.

‘What do you mean? Unfortunately?’

Father took off his powerful horn-rimmed spectacles, and his eyes looked tired and melancholy as he spoke.

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to tell you,’ he said slowly. ‘I suppose something will have to be done about it.’

He paused and then went on in the same regretful tone which he might have used to an inadequate candidate.

‘I don’t like it at all … but the fact is, there’s a corpse lying on our lawn.’

All I could manage was stunned repetition of the incredible words.

‘A corpse? On our lawn?’

Edwin smiled appreciatively.

‘I’m glad you have the energy to joke at this hour of the morning.’

But I felt my hair rising at the roots when Father lifted his finger with great solemnity and pointed down towards the river bank.

‘It’s down there … beyond the lilac bush. And it looks to me as if it is very well preserved indeed.’

It was no longer possible to close one’s eyes to the truth and imagine that it was Father’s preoccupation with Egyptian mummies which made him see things on a lovely summer morning in this idyllic small town. There was a corpse lying on our lawn, and the birds were hopping anxiously round it, surprised at such protracted immobility in a human being.

He was lying on his back with his wide-open eyes directed straight up at the bright blue arc of the sky above. His mouth was open and his face twisted as if in violent pain. He was a young man, perhaps a little over twenty, and I thought he must have been very good-looking, with his smooth black hair and fine eyebrows. His grey gabardine trousers were as elegant as his soft leisure shoes, and his shirt …

I had been avoiding looking at his shirt, but now my eyes fastened as if glued to the unpleasant dark red patch on the dead man’s chest. Fat, revolting flies were buzzing eagerly round the sticky coagulated blood, and there … just above the place I thought his heart ought to be, something was sticking out.

The handle of a knife. A handle artistically worked in ivory and gold.

A moment later I was violently sick. I took the few steps down to the river and was sick into the muddy brown water. When it was over Edwin took me up to the house as I wept spasmodically on his shoulder.

Father was still sitting on the veranda, staring gloomily into his untouched cup. But Edwin conjured up a bottle of brandy and forced us both to consume a fairish quantity. Whether it did my empty stomach any good is best left unsaid, but it was certainly just what my nerves needed. I sat up on the sofa and when I had ensured that a comforting number of trees and bushes prevented me from seeing the horrible thing down there by the river, I managed to ask a question.

‘Who … who was it? Did you recognize him?’

I read astonishment and bewilderment in Edwin’s clear features.

‘Yes … but I don’t understand … I don’t understand at all. Perhaps I’v. . .