“A thought just struck me. If your oldest son is twenty-five, then maybe he knows Rebecka Schyttelius?”
“Of course. They were classmates in high school.”
“Did they spend a lot of time together?”
“They are far too different. My Per is an outgoing boy who always had a large group of friends. Rebecka is more reserved. Even in high school, she preferred to spend time with her computers.”
Suddenly she stood. “Wait. I’ll show you. . ”
She walked around the desk and pulled out a drawer. Two thick colorful envelopes were lying on top.
“Pictures from two Christmases ago. I dropped off the film, picked up the pictures and brought them here, and they’re still here.” She started flipping through the photos. At regular intervals, she would place one on the desk. When she had gone through both piles, ten pictures were lying on the desk.
“Rebecka wasn’t home this Christmas. She had apparently come down with the flu. But she was here the Christmas before. Our tradition is that all the pastors’ families eat breakfast together after Christmas Day services here in the Fellowship Hall. Of course, the rest of the staff is also welcome to join us, if they want. Both of my boys were home, so I brought the camera with me to the Christmas breakfast.”
As she was speaking, she laid out the pictures in a particular order. When she was satisfied, she said, “In the first pictures you have the Schyttelius family. And there is our family. And in the later ones you can see the rest of the staff.”
For the first time, Irene saw what the Schyttelius family had looked like when they were all intact and alive. Sten Schyttelius was smiling in three of the four pictures. In the fourth, he was laughing as he raised a schnapps glass to Bengt Maardh in a toast.
“Is the early service the only thing a pastor does on Christmas Day?” Irene asked.
“No. Then there is High Mass and Evening Service. Why?”
“Sten Schyttelius and your husband are drinking schnapps in the morning.”
“Just a small one, to go with the herring. Don’t worry, it would have worn off before High Mass. The service is divided among the pastors and the churches. It would be too much otherwise.”
Sten Schyttelius had been a tall, impressive man. His large hand which grasped the foot of the schnapps glass looked more as if it belonged to a day laborer than a clergyman. His face was powerful, dominated by a large, meaty nose. His hairline had receded, but his steel gray hair was thick, worn
Next to the rector was his wife. She looked plain next to her sparkling husband. A dark-blue suit jacket and a high-necked gray blouse added to that impression. Her thinning gray hair was cut short and lay flat on her head. Irene thought that she looked a bit like Rut Borjesson, but the deaconess had at least some sense of life about her. Elsa Schyttelius had none. She was looking straight into the lens in one of the pictures. Her gaze was empty and her facial expression stiff. Had she been sick during that Christmas season?
A young woman was seated next to Elsa. It had to be Rebecka. She was also big, and the contrast made Elsa look even smaller and more colorless. The similarity to her father was apparent. Rebecka wasn’t heavy like him, but her large bone structure was like his. She wore a light-brown suit jacket, under which a yellow turtleneck could be seen. Her thick hair was dark and shoulder-length. Loose curls softly framed her face. Based on what Irene could make out, she wasn’t wearing makeup, but her own coloring was strong enough to accent her distinct features. When she saw Rebecka’s face, Irene thought of a Mediterranean movie star from the fifties. She didn’t fit the twenty-first century ideal of anorexic good looks, but she was a beautiful woman.
“She must be tall,” Irene said, looking up at Louise Maardh.
“We are exactly the same height: One hundred seventy-eight centimeters,” Louise responded.
She smiled faintly when she saw Irene’s surprise at this exact reply.
“We started talking about it during breakfast. She had bought that nice brown jacket at a London shop. Long Tall Sally, I remember it was called. You, of course, will appreciate how difficult it can be to find clothes,” she said.
Irene nodded. She knew the problem well. The church accountant placed a long well-manicured index-finger nail on one of the photos and said, “Jacob is sitting there next to my Per. Jacob and Rebecka were the same height.”
Jacob Schyttelius smiled at the camera and looked happy and relaxed. He had light hair and a slender build. Irene couldn’t see the slightest resemblance to his father or sister, but it was possible to see some similarities with his mother. The only thing the siblings had in common were brown eyes and dark eyebrows.
In the last three photos, Irene saw the people she had met a little while ago in the hall, but also a number of others whom she hadn’t met.
“Who are these people?” she asked.
“The church association’s employees. The secretary of information, the parish hostess, parish assistants, childcare workers, activity director, youth director, and our three preschool teachers.” Louise pointed at each as she identified them.
“Childcare workers? Secretary of information? Are all of them employed by the church?” Irene asked.
“We have a Christian preschool and a good youth program. The church is a large employer here in the municipality. And I’m the one who tries to find the money to pay for it all. The churches themselves also need renovations, as well as the fellowship halls, the rectories, and other properties. I’m in charge of paying all the bills and salaries, and I do the bookkeeping as well.”
Irene had never thought of the church as an employer with a large economic impact, but that’s apparently exactly what it was. And Sten Schyttelius had been in charge of it all, the commander of the parish or association or whatever it was called. She said out loud, “So you’re financially responsible, but Rector Schyttelius was the boss. What was he like as an employer?”
For the first time, Louise thought before she answered. Then she said, hesitantly, “Sten was a pleasant person, but as a boss he had certain. . bad sides. He was actually ready for retirement, so you can understand that he was relatively old-fashioned and authoritarian. He was difficult to deal with sometimes. He had a short fuse and could get very angry. He saw women as personal assistants, not as colleagues. We had some clashes. . The woman who held this position before me actually quit. There was a lot of talk about harassment, but it didn’t come to anything. Not to mention his controversies with the vestrymen! The new director and Sten never got along.”
While Louise was speaking, one of the envelopes slipped from her lap and fell on the floor. The photos fell out, and Irene bent to help pick them up. She stopped at the first photo.
In the far left of the picture, Sten Schyttelius was raising a generously filled schnapps glass. Bengt Maardh was seated in the middle, half turned away from the rector. He had one of his arms around Cantor Eva Moller’s shoulders and was leaning over to whisper something in her ear. She looked enchanting in a red dress with embroidery around its square neckline, and she was smiling at what he said. It appeared to Irene that the assistant rector was taking the opportunity to peer down the neck of Eva’s dress.
Louise Maardh saw that Irene had examined the photo of her husband and the lovely cantor, but she didn’t say anything. She held out her hand to take the pictures Irene had gathered together. “Thank you,” she said.
“Do you know if anyone in the Schyttelius family felt threatened?” Irene asked.
Louise shook her reddish-brown hair. “No. I never heard anything like that.”
“Did Sten Schyttelius ever talk about Satanists?”
“Yes. After the summer chapel burned down; he was terribly upset.”
“Did he speak about Satanists during the last couple of months?”
“No, not that I remember. It was mostly in the months following the fire.”
“Did you hear that he was trying to trace the Satanists via the Internet?”
“Internet? No, that’s news to me,” Louise said with sincere surprise in her voice.
“Then I don’t have any more questions at the moment. Would you be so kind as to ask your husband to come in?”
BENGT MAARDH’S face bore a troubled expression as he seated himself in the visitor’s chair. He folded his hands and rested his elbows on the armrests while his serious gaze focused on Irene. Again she felt that a priest was here to console her, as if she was the one who needed comforting. The feeling was absurd, yet it was there.
