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

“We’ve thought of that,” Lars countered. “But it’s a hundred and fifty yards to the sea and she could not possibly have been near the shore the last weeks of her life, certainly not in her last days. We were here most of the time, and she told us she had only just got rid of it. We were by her side as she swallowed her pills with her glass of water, but she refused to eat anything. And for your information, I don’t think she had any opportunity to give the diamond to the home help as Ulrika thinks.”

He looked reproachfully at his wife.

The funeral service was sparsely attended. The usual psalms were sung. “Earth to earth,” the minister said. The home help wept a little. “Ashes to ashes,” the minister continued. Lars puckered his brows. “Dust to dust.” The coffin was carried out and lowered into the prepared grave. The next day it would be covered by the gravedigger. My eyes moved from one face to another as we stood gathered there around the pit in the ground. At the request of the deceased, there were no flowers and no wreaths. Laura hated cut flowers. Her opinion about this was crystal clear: “It’s enough that I fade away. No flower shall fade on my coffin lid.”

The home help’s face was red and swollen. Lars looked in a pondering way at his mother’s coffin, which now touched the bottom of the grave. Ulrika, who had looked serious, suddenly seemed to have thought better of it. Her face lit up, and for a moment a smile of — was it triumph? — was on her lips. It lasted for a second and then she looked serious again. Lena, the daughter, bit with her upper row of teeth at her bloodless lower lip. Sven, her husband, nervously fingered his left lapel with his right hand.

“Well, let’s go back and continue the search,” Lars said.

“Is there any sense in searching?” Sven wondered.

“Hardly,” Ulrika said. “Lars and I will go home.”

“I don’t know,” Lars said, but stopped speaking as Ulrika caught him with her sharp eyes.

Lena shook her head. “We decided not to have any funeral feast,” she said, her voice tired and flat, “so that Sven and I could go on searching.”

She turned to me. “How about you?” she asked.

“None of my business.”

But I was not sincere when I said that.

The glimpse I had had of the momentary expression on Ulrika’s face bothered me.

“I think that you should come with me and Lars,” Ulrika said to Lena and Sven. I saw them driving away in their cars, Lars and Ulrika in a flashy Volvo, Lena and Sven in an even flashier Chevrolet of a vintage kind. I myself sat in my cheap Skoda Felicia and pondered.

Later that evening, I tried to read but I could not concentrate on the speeches of Cicero. I still pondered as the wall clock in my library struck eleven o’clock. It was then that the pieces fell into their proper places. I shook my head in despair and called my friend Roland Franzen, the police superintendent. I told him about my conversation with Laura a few days before she died. And I told him my theory.

“I think she took the opportunity to swallow the diamond when she took her pills,” I said. “She could have done it under the very noses of her heirs. Maybe she got the idea when she told me that there are no pockets in the graveclothes. I suspect that her daughter-in-law guessed the truth. And she is a surgeon. And the grave is open till tomorrow.”

Roland listened to me and I fairly saw him nodding on the other end of the line. I picked him up in my Skoda. The church clock hit the midnight mark as we arrived. The grave was open. I shone my torch. The lid was on the coffin, but it was unscrewed. Roland leaped down and took it off. The coffin was empty.

“They will either get rid of the corpse or they will return it to the grave,” I said.

“We’ll take no chances,” Roland decided, and sent for reinforcement.

The perpetrators’ cars were parked outside the house of Lars and Ulrika. The door was unlocked. We did not ring the bell but walked straight in. We stopped in silence in the doorway of the dining room. There, on the oblong dining table, was the naked body of Laura. Her daughter-in-law Ulrika leaned over the corpse. We saw how she brought up something from the insides of her mother-in-law, while Lars, Lena, and Sven stood gathered stock-still around the body. In her hand Ulrika held a small capsule. She opened it and unfolded a paper.

“Damn it,” the surgeon said. “She has cheated us.”

Ulrika gave the paper to Lena. She read aloud: “That’s what you get, body-snatchers and desecrators of corpses!”

At that moment Roland intervened.

“Enough is enough,” he said.

The four of them turned their surprised and horrified faces towards the door where Roland and I stood.

My neighbour had hung upon my words as I told her the story. Now she thoughtfully looked out over the narrow strait that separated our island from another small rocky islet.

“I guess they had to pay a price for their outrage?” she said.