Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

When Evert died and Laura became an ageing widow, she now and then invited me for a dinner in their mansion with its view of the sea. Her relationship with her children was not the best. She used to complain that they wished to see her dead so they could lay their hands on the fortune she had at her disposal, for as long as she lived, she retained undivided possession of the estate.

Her health eventually gave way, and one day she asked me to come over and see her. I had no idea then that she was dying. On the porch, she sat in a deck chair in a semi-recumbent position. It was a sunny afternoon in August. I saw that she had fallen away since the last time I had seen her. But her eyes had their usual acuity.

“I’ve not long left,” she said. “Soon the brats will have their way. Unfortunately, there are no pockets in the cerements, so I can’t bring anything with me to the other side. Or do you think I could? As a staunch Christian, you should know.”

I was puzzled. I did not get what she was driving at, and she was not kidding. She was calm, her voice weak but firm.

“What are you talking about?”

“This,” she said. “Look here.”

She handed me a small case.

“Open it!”

There on a bed of dark blue velvet was that uncut diamond that Evert had shown me many years ago.

“Do you know what this is?” Laura asked.

“A piece of uncut coal that is worth a fortune,” I answered with the words Evert had once used, and I returned the case to her.

“I don’t want the brats to get it,” she said. “They don’t deserve it. I want to give it to you. Evert always enjoyed those afternoons and evenings together with you. And he once told me that he would like to give it to you. So I’ve made up my mind.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. Give it to your children.”

“Don’t worry about them. They’ll get more than they deserve,” Laura tried to persuade me.

“I’m not fond of these kinds of things,” I said.

“You can give it to charity,” she said.

“No. These things have a tendency to bring ill fortune. You give it to charity.”

“It’s too late. I’m dying.”

“Oh, come on, Laura.”

We were interrupted by her home help. She came to serve us coffee. With some water Laura swallowed some pills that her doctor had prescribed. Understanding that this was our last conversation and feeling the atmosphere turn solemn, I bid her goodbye, bent forward, and kissed her forehead. It was feverish and cold at the same time. When I left her, she sat there with the case in her hands. There was a bewildering smile on her lips. I had never before seen her smiling that way.

Three days later, Laura died. She still lay dead in the living room when I came over to express my sympathy. Sorrow and distress were not exactly palpable. Instead a quarrel over property was in full swing.

The brother and sister and his wife and her husband could not agree on who would have the bisected antique mirror or the Gustavian rococo furniture. And above all, they were excited about the uncut diamond:

“On Sunday morning she was there in her bed stuffing herself with those damned pills her doctor prescribed. She did not trust me to attend, of course. It had to be some other doctor. Her daughter-in-law was not good enough. She bluntly told us that she had disposed of the diamond, and then she died. Just like that. We’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it.”

It was Ulrika, her tongue as sharp and her voice as piercing as the tools she used in her profession.

“It was in a case,” I said.

“It’s empty now,” Lars explained.

The small case was indeed empty. A small depression in the velvet indicated where the diamond had been all those years.

“I wonder where she hid it,” Ulrika said.

At the funeral a week later, the diamond was still missing. I understood from the line of reasoning they followed, which was as far removed from mourning as imaginable, that the house had been meticulously searched. The home help had been the target of insinuations. She was red with weeping.

“Perhaps you have some notion of where the diamond could be?” Lars said to me.

I had no idea, and even if I had had one, I did not feel like assisting them in finding a fortune that I knew the deceased had grudged her heirs.

“Laura said that she disposed of it,” I said to Ulrika. “So why do you suspect the home help?”

Ulrika looked intently at me with her big brown surgeon-eyes, as if she reflected on performing a kind of live autopsy on me.

“For the simple reason that the home help could have helped Laura to hide the diamond,” she said. “Haven’t you any idea where it can be?”

“Well, if I had been Laura, I would have thrown it into the sea,” I said, suppressing my anger.