Free House of Evidence by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson Page A

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…

J óhann 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. Jóhannprocessed 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.
    Two officers had brought in a modest aluminum coffin, and after Marteinn helped Jóhann put the body into a large plastic zippered bag, it was set in the coffin and taken away. A postmortem would soon take place to establish cause of death, and Jóhann would have the clothes sent to the lab, each garment individually wrapped in plastic.
    With the deceased no longer present, the atmosphere at the house changed considerably, and all unconsciously heaved a sigh of relief. Their next task was to examine the scene; if there was the smallest crumb of evidence that could point to the perpetrator, it was Jóhann’s job to find it.
    Marteinn was given the task of vacuuming. He used an ordinary vacuum cleaner, but with a specially made nozzle into which a very fine filter could be slotted; anything the cleaner picked upwould get caught by the filter, and could be extracted easily and examined under a microscope if necessary.
    Marteinn was to clean the floors and furniture in stages, replacing the filter each time and placing the used filter into a labeled plastic container. This