House of Evidence Read Free Page A

and stood up. He took a thick gray overcoat from the closet in the lobby, along with a checkered scarf and a fur hat. At the front door he slipped into a pair of well-polished black leather winter boots. His wife handed him his briefcase and kissed him on the cheek.
    “Bye, dear, and be careful; it’s very slippery,” she warned. He stopped for a moment on the steps. It was still snowing, and the branches on the big conifers sagged under the bulk of the snow that had piled upon them during the night. It was rare for this amount of snow to fall when it was so calm, and it rather reminded him of a Christmas card. The snow creaked as he carefully descended the steps.

    Diary I
    July 12, 1910. Skagafjördur. Woke early and crawled out of the tent. The fog had lifted and now there was a view all round. Hegranes is low-lying on the eastern side along the lagoons, but higher toward the west, where marshes alternate with gravel flats and steep cliffs…Crossing the western lagoons by an ancient rope ferry that is hauled by manpower with a winch, an antique if ever I saw one. The ferry carries 8 to 10 horses, and the tariff is 5 aurar per horse and 10 aurar per person. The ferryman is tall, with a full, strawberry-blond beard; a good-looking man, and likeable. He invited us to take a draught from his flask of brennivín after we had paid him a generous fare. He lives on his own in a hovel by the mouth of the lagoon. I felt dizzy during the ferry. Perhaps it was the brennivín. I am not used to it…
    July 14, 1910. We set out over Holtavörduheidi. You are hardly aware of the escarpment, although the ground rises steadily. There are a number of watercourses and small rivers to wade across, with concrete arch bridges over the largest ones. In the middle of the heath, there are a number of small lakes with trout, and close by, on top of a prominence, there is a refuge hut; innermost it has acabin intended for human habitation while the rest is for horses. There are two bunks in the cabin, a table and cooking utensils, kettles, jugs, a lamp, and other things. There are cribs along the walls in front, and in the loft there is hay. The house is built from turf and stone, with a metal roof and wooden gable…

I t was eleven o’clock in the morning, and Sveinborg Pétursdóttir, a stocky woman who was getting on in years, was on her way to work from her home in Ránargata, east through the Kvos then up toward Laufás. Day was just breaking, but the streetlights were still lit, casting an eerie glow over the snowflakes that drifted earthward in the stillness. There was not much traffic on the streets; most people were now at work and the new snow had already covered their footprints.
    Sveinborg plodded on slowly but steadily. She was wearing woolen socks and a sensible pair of wellingtons that were covered by her heavy, long skirt. She wore a blue nylon parka and had a thick wool hat on her head.
    This was the route she had walked most days for nigh on twenty-six years. Before that she had been a live-in housekeeper at her current place of employment, so altogether she had been at the house for forty-five years. It was her opinion that having a good employer and the ability to walk to work was life’s greatest happiness.
    She paused at a gap in the ice on the edge of Tjörnin Lake, took a paper bag out of her pocket, and picked out a few pieces of bread, throwing them one at a time to the hungry ducks paddling in themeager opening. She often stopped here in bad weather, knowing that there would be few people around to feed these poor creatures that she counted among her best friends. She watched the birds squabble over the crumbs, and tried on her next throw to divide the bread more evenly between them. One of the ducks seemed to be fighting a losing battle, so she threw the next bit in its direction.
    “Here you are, ducky,” she said softly, “there’s a bit for you, and don’t let those bullies take it, now.”
    When the bag was