Free Open Grave: A Mystery by Kjell Eriksson Page B

murmured.
    Birgitta had peeled and cut up the last apple and let the segments disappear down into the tub of water. She wished there had been more fruit to peel.
    “As luck would have it I brought black chanterelles with me,” said Agnes.
    “From the island?”
    Agnes nodded.
    “I should have made the stock yesterday, but I didn’t find out until this morning that there would be a dinner this evening.”
    “I’m sure it will be really good as always,” said Birgitta.
    Agnes was standing by the stove and would do so until she could skim the stock a couple of times, and then leave it to simmer for several hours.
    “Afraid of the life out there,” she said unprovoked, making a movement with the ladle toward the window. “Here I had an income and a place to live anyway.”
    “But you’ve been happy, haven’t you?”
    Agnes snorted.
    “You all thought I couldn’t manage anything else,” she said. “Anything other than scrubbing, dusting, and cooking, cleaning up. And maybe that’s right.”
    “Now you’re being unfair.”
    Birgitta got up and went over to the housekeeper. “Look at me!” she said.
    Agnes slowly turned her head. Her eyes looked uncommonly fish-like, perhaps it was the heat in the kitchen, perhaps the talk about happiness and all the thoughts that brought with it that made her eyes stick out even more.
    “We have always appreciated you, you know that! The whole family, even if Daddy is the way he is. Even Mama wanted to have you stay.”
    The ladle stopped in the pan.
    “What do you mean ‘have me stay’?”
    “It was nothing,” said Birgitta, her face turning bright red.
    “Yes it was,” said Agnes, as she resumed the skimming.
    Birgitta thought she could perceive something triumphant in her voice.
    “I know that the professor wanted to fire me, but that Dagmar intervened.”
    “That’s not at all true!”
    “As true as I’m standing here. And what is really true? Is there more than one truth?”
    “Sometimes,” said Birgitta, who was relieved that she got off so easy.
    “I’ll stick to mine.”
    Agnes turned down the heat on the stove.
    “And one day perhaps you will find out why your father wanted to drive me out onto the street.”
    “He wanted to save on the household,” said Birgitta.
    “That’s the silliest thing I’ve heard.”
    Agnes made a smacking sound with her tongue as if to underscore what she thought about Birgitta’s understanding.
    “Now you’ll have to excuse me,” she said, “but I have to prepare the roast.”
    “How should I find out the truth? Daddy’s not likely to say anything.”
    “You’ll have to wait until I die,” said Agnes. “And that can be at any time.”
    “Don’t say that!”
    “What do I know?”
    “Ridiculous!” Birgitta hissed.
    “That may be, but you’ll have to wait.”
    Birgitta left the kitchen without a word, pulled off her stockings on the stairs, and took a few easy, girlish barefoot steps out on the lawn, with a flightiness that in no way corresponded to what was going on inside her. She needed to get away from Agnes and her evasiveness. Bitterness was the worst thing she knew, when people dug down into old injustices, many times imagined, and dwelled on them over and over again.
    What did Agnes really have to complain about? She had been free to leave the house at any moment whatsoever but had chosen to stay for over fifty years. She had reasonable pay and free food and lodging, had never needed to suffer want, after only six years of elementary school and a couple of courses at some kind of housekeeping school as her only asset.
    She wanted to scream out this simple fact in the kitchen, but realized that it would not lead to anything good. Birgitta was aware that it was crucial to keep Agnes in a good mood, because after all she was the one who kept the household running. Her father, Nobel Prize winner or not, would be in a bad way without her, and Birgitta was the one who would have to step in. Bertram