Kjartan took the bag and examined it. Inside it he found a camera, pair of binoculars, a toiletries bag, and underwear that had grown musty from damp storage.
“The camera’s broken,” said the boy. “I’ve tried everything you’re supposed to do, but there’s no picture in the box.”
“Tell us about when your grandpa took the foreigner out,” said Kjartan.
The boy looked up and said, “Dad went to the mainland with the mail boat to get Mom. Me and Grandpa went down when the boat was coming back to grab the ropes. We were then going to go out in the strait to fish some small cod for dinner.”
He grew silent and stared at his treasures. He was trembling from the cold and fatigue.
“What happened then?” Grimur asked.
“We were still on the pier when everyone else had left, and we were going to go out on our boat, Raven. Then the foreigner came running over and calling. He was far too late because the mail boat had left ages ago. Then he ordered Grandpa to take him to Stykkisholmur, but it was really difficult to understand him.”
“Did your grandpa agree to sail with him?” Grimur asked.
“Yeah, the man showed us the loads of money he was going to give us when they got to Stykkisholmur.”
“So they went then?”
“Yeah, but the foreigner didn’t want me to come along.”
“Was your grandpa away for long?”
“Yeah, he didn’t come back until the next day. The motor was completely out of fuel, so he came in using the sail when the southern winds started blowing. Grandpa then went to sleep, but I found the bag in the boat and hid it. I would’ve given it back to the foreigner, but he never came back to ask for it.”
“Didn’t your dad know about this?”
“No. He was so angry when he got back from the mainland because Mom wouldn’t come back with him from her roadworks job. He complained about everything and got really mad when he saw the boat was out of fuel. Grandpa couldn’t remember anything about his trip with the foreigner, and I didn’t dare to tell Dad about it. Grandpa has started to forget so many things. I think the foreigner also forgot to pay him the way he’d promised because Grandpa didn’t have any money on him when he got home. I peeped into his pockets when he was asleep.”
“But what about that man from Reykjavik, the reporter? Did he know you were keeping the bag?” Kjartan asked.
Nonni averted his gaze. “Yeah, when I sneaked out of mass, I went home to have a little look through the binoculars. Normally I hardly ever dare to use it because no one’s allowed to see me. I was sure that District Officer Grimur would take it away from me if anyone saw me.”
The boy looked shamefacedly at the district officer.
“Did the reporter see you?” Kjartan asked.
“Yeah, I thought that everyone was still in the church, but then he was suddenly there standing beside me.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He asked me if I owned the binoculars. Then he looked into the bag and saw the little books. Then he asked me if Dad had taken the foreigner to Stykkisholmur. I told him that Grandpa had, but he’d run out of fuel. Then he asked me if he could keep the little books if he promised not to tell anyone about the binoculars and the camera. I said yes, if he wouldn’t tell anyone. He promised and said that then I wasn’t to tell anyone either.”
The boy started whimpering. “And now the reporter is dead and I’m breaking my promise.”
“Do you remember the dead man you saw in Ketilsey?” Kjartan asked.
“Yeah,” the boy answered.
“Had you seen him before?”
“No, I don’t think so. You couldn’t see his face.”
Grimur had listened to the whole story in silence and now spoke: “Right, my friend. Let’s go to my house, Nonni, and we’ll get my Imba out of bed. She’ll give you some milk and something good to eat. Then maybe you’ll get a slice of cake and go to bed. Me and Kjartan here will go looking for your dad and grandpa.”
Question forty: The final question has now been reached. It is the key to all the other answers and goes as follows: “Who spoke the wisest?” The answers can vary greatly, according to personal taste and wisdom. There are many wise sayings in this book, but the key here is composed of the following letters:
O S L E O Y I A R N R Y L
E M H O N E A E N W T L B
A U R M L E Q W T R O N E
“My father went through the entire book, page by page, trying out all the sentences that felt reasonably sensible to him and contained some ounce of wisdom. He played around with them, rearranging the letters to see whether they could make up a complete sentence. The spelling was supposed to be in line with what was used in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as far as he knew, and the sentence had to contain exactly thirty-nine letters. He created little tables with these letters and shuffled them over and over again, but still couldn’t find the text to unlock the riddle, and he eventually gave up. Many weeks later, he started thinking about the enigma again. He realized something else was needed to find the right key sentence. Some letters appeared more than once in the rows of key letters, and it was impossible to say how the rows were connected. There had to be some other way of decoding the answer. Then he focused his attention on the drawing that accompanied the clues and had come to be known as the magic rune. Personally, he didn’t believe in that kind of stuff, but he was sure that the author had placed the picture beside the riddle for a reason. He noted that on each side of the picture there were thirteen lines that crossed the picture and reemerged on the other side of it in a different place. Thirteen multiplied by three is thirty-nine, which is the number of letters in the key. He drew a copy of the picture, reproducing it three times in a vertical row. Then he wrote out the key letters downwards in the vertical column and moved them across to the other side of the grid, following each line. The following sentence emerged: ‘Rarely is only one to blame when two men quarrel.’ This is the second part of a sentence that reads as follows and can be considered wise: ‘Remember, though, that rarely is only one to blame when two men quarrel.’ It’s a line from the old saga of Hakon. My father was so fervent in his quest that he overdid it that night. He was extremely ill when I found him in the library, but I had never seen him in such ecstasy. Now all he needed to do was to go over his answers to the thirty-nine questions and see whether they formed the end of the key poem. It should only have taken him part of the day, but he was too ill now and never got out of the house again. He knew he could only do this by strictly abiding by the rules. A short while later Gaston Lund arrived on his fateful visit. My father told him how the ‘magic rune’ was to be used to unlock the solution to the riddle and fortieth question. Lund got very excited about it and was lent the library key to rush up there and try out his answers. But he ran out of time. He didn’t manage to finish the test and later probably missed the mail boat. What happened next is difficult to imagine.”
“My father spent the whole winter trying to muster up enough energy to return to the library and try out his solution. I often offered to do it for him, but he didn’t want me to. He wanted to see the solution appear before his own eyes. Then finally, yesterday, he asked me to go up and try out his solution. He felt death was approaching and wanted to hear the end of the poem before he passed away. I was going to ask Ingibjorg to watch over him and sent for her, but he lost consciousness as I was waiting for her to arrive. He steadily deteriorated during the day and died that evening. He’d solved the code but never knew if he’d found the right solution to the entire enigma. But now we’ll see what happens.”
Johanna wrote down the thirty-nine letters in a single column, following her father’s diagram, and numbered them at the same time. Then, starting on each letter, she followed each line across the grid to where it ended on the other side of the picture and wrote the letter out again. Wherever Bjorn Snorri and Gaston Lund’s answers differed, she wrote down both possibilities. Then she scrutinized the solution for a moment. She crossed out three letters in her father’s answers and three letters in Gaston Lund’s and inserted dashes between the words. She said, “The solution is: t h e f e y i s d o o m e d t o d i e t h e l u c k y i s s a f e f o r n o w
“There are, therefore, errors in my father’s answers to questions seventeen, twenty-six, and thirty. Lund got those answers right. There were three errors in Gaston Lund’s answers. But once he’d found the solution to the key,
