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said, putting his glass down on a small table.
    â€œIt’s the best you can get these days.”
    Then he fell silent. The silence never discomfited Hamling. Perhaps he did it on purpose because he knew that it disconcerted others, especially Lotte, who only stopped talking when her mouth was full.
    He looked calmly at the open piano with its absurdly homey air, at the two little tables with their manicure sets. He had caught a glimpse of Minna as she left the room to go into the kitchen, and must have known she was a new girl. He had heard the piano from the landing.
    What did he think? Nobody knew. They had often discussed it.
    He obviously knew about Lotte’s activities. Once he had come in the afternoon—that had never happened before— when a client was there, and there was no mistaking the sounds that reached the salon.
    Making some excuse about a stew on the stove, Lotte had gone to the kitchen and warned the man not to come out until she gave him the signal.
    That time, unexpectedly, Hamling had stayed for two hours for no reason, without any excuse, and with his usual air of paying a polite call.
    Did he know Minna? Had her parents been to the police?
    Lotte was all smiles. Frank, on the contrary, looked at him coldly and without trying to hide his disdain. Hamling’s features and body were hard—he was a man of granite—but the contrast with his eyes, glittering with irony, was striking.
    â€œThose fellows had some work to do in your street this morning.”
    Frank didn’t betray any emotion. His mother only barely kept from glancing at him, as though she sensed her son were somehow involved.
    â€œA fat noncommissioned officer was killed near the tannery. He lay all night in the snow. He had come from Timo’s.”
    All this was said as if casually. He picked up his drink again, warming it in the palms of his hands and sipping it slowly.
    â€œI didn’t hear anything,” Lotte said.
    â€œThere was no gunshot. It was done with a knife. They’ve already arrested someone.”
    Why did Frank immediately think, Holst !
    It was stupid. Even more stupid because the streetcar conductor had nothing to do with anything.
    â€œYou might know him, Frank, a young man about your age who lives in the building with his mother. On the second floor, at the end of the hall on the left. He’s a violinist.”
    â€œI’ve sometimes seen a young man with a violin case.”
    â€œI forget his name. He insists he didn’t leave his apartment last night, and his mother, naturally, says the same thing. He says, too, that he’s never set foot in Timo’s. At any rate, it doesn’t matter to us. Those gentlemen are in charge of the investigation. All I’ve heard is that his violin was a sham, that most of the time the case is full of documents. Apparently he’s a member of a terrorist group.”
    Why did Frank wince? He lit another cigarette. “He seemed sick to me,” he said.
    It was true. Several times he had passed a tall, lanky young man on the stairs, always dressed in black, wearing a too-light overcoat and holding a violin case under his arm. He had red spots under his eyes and overly red lips, and he would often stop on the stairs to cough his lungs out.
    Hamling had said “terrorist,” like the occupiers. Others said “patriot.” But that meant nothing. Especially when it was an official talking. It was hard to guess what he was thinking.
    Did Hamling despise them, his mother and him? Not because of the girls—that was no concern of his. But because of everything else, their coal, their being in with so many people, and because of the officers who frequented the house.
    Suppose Kurt Hamling wanted to make trouble for Lotte, what could happen? Lotte would go see some people she knew in the military police, or else Frank would speak to Kromer, who had influence.
    In the end the chief inspector would be summoned