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a suite of furniture that seemed to date from the 1940’s and consisted of a sofa, three matching easy chairs in varnished blond wood and flowered cretonne upholstery, and an oval table of the same light wood. A white lace cloth lay on the table, and in the middle of the cloth was a large crystal vase of red tulips. The two windows looked out on the street, and behind the white lace curtains stood rows of well-tended potted plants. The wall at one end of the room was covered by a bookcase in gleaming mahogany, half filled with leather-bound books, half with souvenirs and small knickknacks. Small polished tables with pieces of silver and crystal stood here and there against the walls. A black piano with the lid closed over the keyboard completed the list of furniture. Framed portraits of the family stood lined up on the piano. Several still lifes and landscapes in wide ornate gold frames hung on the walls. A crystal chandelier burned in the middle of the room, and a wine-red Oriental rug lay beneath their feet.
    Martin Beck took in the various details of the room as he listened to the footsteps approaching in the hall. Rönn had walked up to the bookcase and was suspiciously eying a brass reindeer-bell, one side of which was adorned with a brightly colored picture of a mountain birch, a reindeer and a Lapp, plus the word ARJEPLOG in ornate red letters.
    Mrs. Nyman came into the room with her son. She was wearing a black wool dress, black shoes and stockings,and held a small white handkerchief clenched in one hand. She had been crying.
    Martin Beck and Rönn introduced themselves. She didn’t look as if she’d ever heard of them.
    “But please sit down,” she said, and took a seat in one of the flowered chairs.
    When the two policemen had seated themselves she looked at them with despair in her eyes.
    “What is it that’s happened actually?” she asked in a voice that was much too shrill.
    Rönn took out his handkerchief and began to polish his florid nose, thoroughly and at length. But Martin Beck hadn’t expected any help from that quarter.
    “If you have anything to calm your nerves, Mrs. Nyman—pills I mean—I think it would be wise to take a couple now,” he said.
    The boy, who had taken a seat on the piano stool, stood up.
    “Papa has … There’s a bottle of Restenil in the cabinet in the bathroom,” he said. “Shall I get it?”
    Martin Beck nodded and the boy went out to the bathroom and came back with the tablets and a glass of water. Martin Beck looked at the label, shook out two tablets into the lid of the bottle and handed them to Mrs. Nyman, who obediently swallowed them with a gulp of water.
    “Thank you,” she said. “Now please tell me what it is you want. Stig is dead, and neither you nor I can do anything about that.”
    She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth, and her voice was stifled when she spoke.
    “Why wasn’t I allowed to go to him? He’s my husband after all. What have they done to him there at the hospital? That doctor … he sounded so odd …”
    Her son went over and sat on the arm of her chair. He put his arm around her shoulders.
    Martin Beck twisted in his chair so that he sat directly facing her, then he threw a glance at Rönn, sitting silently on the sofa.
    “Mrs. Nyman,” he said, “your husband did not die of his illness. Someone entered his room and killed him.”
    The woman stared at him and he could see in her eyes that several seconds passed before she understood the significance of what he’d said. She lowered the hand with the handkerchief and pressed it to her breast. She was very pale.
    “Killed? Someone killed him? I don’t understand …”
    The son had gone white around the nostrils and his grip around his mother’s shoulders tightened. “Who?” he said.
    “We don’t know. A nurse found him on the floor of his room just after two o’clock. Someone had come in through the window and killed him with a bayonet. It must have happened in the