Hrefna smiled. “Approximately is good enough for me. Was Jacob at home when you left?”
“Yes, he rarely went out in the evening.” Sveinborg thought it over. “He usually watched the news on the television after supper, but when I went into the television room to say good-bye, he wasn’t there. I found him downstairs in the office. I thought perhaps he was putting his stamps away.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I just sort of said good-bye. I told him that there were milk and cookies if he wanted a snack later in the evening, and that everything was ready for breakfast.”
“What was his reply?”
“He just said thank you.”
“Did you know if he was expecting visitors that evening?”
“No, if so, I would, of course, have stayed longer and served coffee to the guests.”
Hrefna looked at the cup in front of her. This seemed to be Sveinborg’s favorite occupation, supplying people with good, strong coffee.
“Er…” Sveinborg suddenly began, hesitantly, “do you think that Jacob Junior was…shot with a gun?”
Hrefna put away her pen and looked at the older woman. “Yes, that is what it looks like.”
Sveinborg shook her head. “This is a dreadful notion,” she said.
“Yes?” Hrefna waited for further explanation.
“Yes, well, it’s like this,” Sveinborg replied. “Jacob Senior also died in the parlor in Birkihlíd, almost thirty years ago. He was also shot with a gun. Thank goodness the mistress did not have to relive this.”
“Who shot him?” asked Hrefna.
“Nobody knows; they never found him.”
Diary II
July 10, 1913. Elizabeth and her friend Miss Annie Barker met me at the quay in London. They have organized a ten-day hike round northern England with three of their friends…
July 20, 1913. We struck camp and set off on the last leg of our journey at dawn. We walked all day. We are now proceeding along the Scottish border. We men carry the best part of the burden in our knapsacks, but the girls carry small knapsacks as well. Elizabeth’s energy amazes me. I lead the walk but she is always right behind me; she is enjoying the trip even though we are all exhausted…
July 25, 1913. Elizabeth invited me to dinner at her parents’ home along with Miss Annie. The Chatfields are extremely formal and polite. Afterwards we attended a concert given by a large orchestra. A work by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, the New World Symphony, was the one that will stay in my memory. He was born in 1841 and died in 1904, according to the program. This is the last evening of my visit…
Jóhann and Marteinn had brought some bags into the parlor, one including a camera and various accessories; another, equipment to collect fingerprints; and a third holding containers for the samples they hoped to collect. They then set up powerful spotlights on tall tripods around the parlor, leaving the windows covered.
While Fridrik waited to supervise the removal of the body, Jóhann began taking photographs of it, first full-body shots from several angles, and then close-ups of the entry wound, outside as well as inside the clothing.
Jóhann got Fridrik’s permission to take samples of the deceased’s fingerprints right away, rather than leaving it for the postmortem, which he was relieved not to have to attend. He drew from one of his bags a metal horseshoe-shaped tool, which somewhat resembled a shoehorn, that he used for fingerprinting. It had slots through which he could thread paper tape printed with five squares. He also withdrew a small inkpad containing special fingerprinting ink and, grasping one of the deceased’s hands, pressed each finger onto the inkpad and then onto the paper in the tool, whose horseshoe shape ensured that the impression of the whole fingertip was clearly reproduced on the paper. Jóhann processed both hands, and then covered them with plastic bags, securing them with rubber bands around the wrists.
He would have liked to check if the deceased had fired a gun recently, but it was not possible. He did have equipment back at the lab for doing a so-called paraffin test, where warm paraffin wax was applied to the hands to see if they revealed nitrates left by a gunshot, but recent research had shown this method to be very inaccurate so Jóhann had stopped running these tests. There were new methods involving expensive chemical tests, but he did not possess that equipment. In any case, a positive result would not have shown whether the deceased had fired the gun himself or had used his hands to protect himself from a shot fired from very close range.
Finally, he took out a clear plastic box from the samples bag and, with a small pair of scissors, cut a lock of hair from the victim’s head and placed it in the box. He wrote the name, place, and time on a sticky label, and affixed it to the lid of the box.