An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good Read online

  Praise for

  An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good

  “This elderly lady stops at nothing in her desire for a peaceful existence. I ought to feel guilty for enjoying her crimes, but I don’t. The stories are written with such persuasive logic and delicious irony that I want the killing to continue indefinitely.”

  —Peter Lovesey, Mystery Writers

  of America Grand Master

  “A juicy dose of senior justice.

  The book is pure fun.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Also by Helene Tursten

  The Irene Huss Investigations

  Detective Inspector Huss

  Night Rounds

  The Torso

  The Glass Devil

  The Golden Calf

  The Fire Dance

  The Beige Man

  The Treacherous Net

  Who Watcheth

  Protected by the Shadows

  The Embla Nyström Investigations

  Hunting Game

  “An Elderly Lady Has Accommodation Problems” and “An Elderly Lady on Her Travels” Copyright © 2013 by Helene Tursten. English translation copyright © 2017 by Marlaine Delargy. “An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace at Christmastime” Copyright © 2013 by Helene Tursten. English translation copyright © 2018 by Marlaine Delargy. These three stories were first published in Swedish in a collection entitled Mina Mindre Mord och Mysterier.

  “The Antique Dealer’s Death” and “An Elderly Lady Is Faced with a Difficult Dilemma” Copyright © 2018 by Helene Tursten. English translation copyright © 2018 by Marlaine Delargy.

  All stories published in agreement with H. Samuelsson-Tursten AB,

  Sunne, and Leonhardt & Høier Literary Agency, Copenhagen.

  All rights reserved.

  First English translation published in 2018 by

  Soho Press

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-64129-011-1

  eISBN 978-1-64129-012-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Anita

  An Elderly Lady Has Accommodation Problems

  An Elderly Lady Has Accomodation Problems

  The shrill sound of the doorbell sliced through the silence. Maud sat motionless in her armchair, making no attempt to get up. She knew the bell would soon ring again. And again. And again. This had been going on for weeks.

  The reason behind the whole thing was her living arrangements, which were rather unusual.

  The apartment in which Maud lived was the only thing her family had managed to hold on to after her father’s sudden death from a heart attack. Until then he had kept up appearances, but when he died the family lawyer quickly discovered there was virtually no money left. The only thing of value was the large apartment building in the Vasastan district of Gothenburg. When it was sold, the lawyer managed to work out an agreement with the new owner.

  To put it briefly, a clause was inserted in the contract stating that the widow and her two daughters should be allowed to remain in their apartment without paying any rent; they simply had to cover the cost of electricity, water, and heating. In return, the buyer was given the opportunity to purchase the building at a very reasonable price. In addition, the clause stated that “for as long as any member of the family wishes to reside in the apartment, no rent will be payable.” A few lines further down it was made clear that the term “member of the family” referred only to the widow and her two daughters. Seventy years had passed since the contract had been drawn up, and at the time no one could have envisaged that one of the daughters would still be living there.

  Of course there had been a dispute over the interpretation of the original contract when the building was taken over by a housing association many years later, but after taking the matter to court, Maud won the day, and still lived rent-free. The members of the housing association board ground their teeth in frustration, but there was nothing they could do, though they did win a small victory when it was established that Maud had to pay a small monthly sum toward the general maintenance of the apartment building.

  It had now been about forty years since Maud’s sister died, leaving her with no living relatives. Maud lived alone, and she went on vacation alone. That was the way she wanted it. Freedom, no idle chatter, and no problems. Idle chatter and problems were the worst things she could think of, and now she was faced with one of the biggest problems she had ever encountered. And she just couldn’t see a way out.

  Maud realized she had only herself to blame. She had walked straight into the trap with her eyes wide open. Even though a little voice inside her head had tried to warn her, she could never have imagined how badly things would turn out! It had all begun so innocently.

  During the spring, a genuine celebrity had moved into the building—a woman who was about forty years old, by the name of Jasmin Schimmerhof. She was famous mainly because her parents were famous. As the only child of two of Sweden’s best-known personalities, she experienced the trauma of growing up with parents who were totally preoccupied with their respective careers. Neither of them had much time to spare for their daughter, if any. A series of nannies and boarding schools were responsible for Jasmin’s upbringing. Her father was a successful financier, and her mother had been one of the country’s most internationally renowned opera singers. She toured the great opera houses of the world and was rarely at home with her husband and daughter. Jasmin’s mother had died in a car accident just outside New York a few years earlier. Nobody knew how it had happened because she had been alone when she crashed into a concrete column supporting an overpass. The newspapers showed pictures of the grieving widower, but there was no sign of Jasmin. After a period of intense undercover work by tabloid journalists, it emerged that she had been admitted to a private rehab clinic; she had been abusing both legal and illegal drugs, as well as drinking heavily. Her condition was so unstable that she wasn’t even able to attend her mother’s funeral. The trigger for the abuse was rumored to be her divorce from husband number two six months earlier. Both her first and second marriages had been childless. The press got plenty of headlines out of the tragedy, reveling in the misery of such a powerful family. Media interest flared up again when Ian Schimmerhof, Jasmin’s father, got married again six months later—to a woman forty years his junior. From the paparazzi shots taken at the couple’s wedding in Switzerland, where they were now living, it was very clear that the new wife was heavily pregnant. A month or so later, Jasmin gained a half-sibling forty years younger than her. The headline writers had a field day, speculating on whether Maria Schimmerhof’s car crash really had been an accident—or suicide.

  Over the next two years, no one had heard much about Jasmin Schimmerhof. It was said she was writing her autobiography, and when the book was published, it became an instant bestseller; everyone wanted to know what life had really been like behind the stylish façade of the enormous villa in Örgryte. A number of reviews may have hinted that the use of language was poor, the descriptions of the characters somewhat flat, and the narrative style rather clumsy, but people didn’t care. There were a few particularly juicy sections where Jasmin tore into her parents, especially her father. It was clear from the book that he had lavished money on his daughter but had given her neither his time nor his love. She wrote candidly about her father’s many affairs and how her mother had hit back with her own indiscretions. The book sold like hotca
kes.

  The following year, Jasmin bought an apartment in Vasastan, in the same building where Maud lived. It was the only apartment on the ground floor. It had a special entrance at the foot of the elaborate marble staircase in the lobby, and its windows looked out onto both the street and the backyard. With the permission of the housing association board, the previous owner had built a small glassed-in terrace at the back. He owned an IT company and had renovated the run-down apartment to the highest standards, according to what Maud had heard. When he married and the couple was expecting their first child, he sold the place to Jasmin Schimmerhof and moved to a delightful house by the sea. Among other reasons, Jasmin wanted the apartment because it was fairly large—around 450 square feet. After the success of her autobiography, she had decided to embark on a new career. She was going to be an artist. Several walls were knocked down in order to make room for a substantial studio. Jasmin wanted to create large installations and needed space.

  She had spent the entire spring working on her creations. She wrote in her blog, Me Jasmin: I despise sovereignty and the patriarchy. I have grown up under that kind of oppression, and I know how terrible it is. I want to give the finger to all oppressors and tell them to go to hell! In October, I will be putting on an exhibition at the Hell Gallery. Come along and see my new pieces! At the moment I am working on Phallus, Hanging. It’s going to be a kick in the balls for all those bastard men!

  Maud had learned all this over the past few weeks by looking up newspaper articles online; she also found Jasmin’s blog extremely informative, and it contained high-res pictures of various works. The enormous pieces of art had thickly painted layers of color, into which Jasmin had pressed photographs, scraps of fabric, sheet music, tampons (Maud couldn’t quite see whether or not they were used), fragments of bone, and all kinds of unidentifiable trash. And trash was precisely the right word for Jasmin’s art, in Maud’s opinion. The pictures were titled No Title I, No Title II, No Title III, and so on.

  Her so-called sculptures all had the same construction. Each one had a concrete base into which Jasmin had stuck various objects before the concrete had set. There were pieces featuring old exhaust systems pointing up at the ceiling, baseball bats, broken ice hockey sticks, golf clubs, cone-shaped items with Missile or Atomic bomb written on the side, and—last but not least—enormous black rubber dildos. Needless to say, these masterpieces were titled phallus i, phallus ii, phallus iii, presumably ad infinitum.

  Makes life easier, I suppose, Maud thought.

  Every morning Maud spent an hour or so surfing the Internet on her laptop, checking out interesting people and events. She hadn’t bothered researching Jasmin’s life when her flamboyant neighbor moved in; at the time, Maud had been fully occupied with planning her first visit to a spa. After a very successful stay she had gone on vacation to Sardinia, where she had spent three glorious months before returning to Gothenburg.

  And that was when it began.

  Maud had been home for only a couple of days when the doorbell suddenly rang. Those days it was a rare occurrence, so Maud went to see who was there. Through the peephole she could see a woman standing outside. Hesitantly, Maud opened the door a fraction of an inch. The woman was slim and dainty, with bleached, tousled hair loosely pulled back in a ponytail on top of her head in a big pink plastic clip. She was smiling brightly, and said in an exaggeratedly loud voice without pausing for breath:

  “Hi there! My name is Jasmin Schimmerhof and I moved in here back in the spring. I threw a big housewarming party for all the neighbors in August, but unfortunately you were away, so I thought I’d bring you a little taste of what we ate and drank at the party. May I come in?”

  Broadly speaking, everyone Maud met these days spoke loudly and articulated with exaggerated clarity. They automatically assumed she was deaf, which she most definitely was not. Nor was she senile. But she had learned that it was smart not to reveal that all her senses were in full working order; instead, she allowed people to act in accordance with their own preconceptions. This was often a useful source of information, and Maud could form her own opinion of the person and the situation. But this time she didn’t exactly adopt her usual approach. Later on, Maud would blame it on the fact that she had been completely taken by surprise. Perhaps there was also a certain amount of curiosity about her famous neighbor. In any case, that was when she made her first mistake. She let her visitor into the apartment.

  Jasmin danced in through the door like a playful breeze. The careless ponytail bobbed and swung as she turned her head in all directions, checking out the spacious apartment. A sheer white kaftan billowed around her, with only a tiny tank top underneath; it was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her black leggings were covered in pale dust and little hard lumps of something that looked like dried plaster or cement. Her feet were even dirtier, if that were possible. They were also rather conspicuous because Jasmin had shoved them into a pair of open sandals. Chipped blue nail polish adorned her toenails. She turned around, tilted her head to one side, and gazed appraisingly at the old lady, who was still standing by the door. With another beaming smile she handed over a shiny bright red gift bag.

  “There you go. Leftover champagne and caviar. They both need to go in the refrigerator. We actually had shellfish too, but of course it doesn’t keep. Where’s the kitchen?” she said in a loud, cheerful voice.

  Her shining eyes should have warned Maud, but instead she made her second mistake. She accepted the red bag.

  “Thank you. But there was really no need . . .” Maud murmured.

  “I know. But I thought you ought to FEEL that I’m living here now. That it makes a difference. We’re going to be really good friends,” Jasmine said in a lighthearted voice, but still at full volume.

  Before Maud could stop her, she shot off down the long hallway and found the kitchen door.

  “Soooo wonderful, and soooo much space! I’m sure nothing has changed since this place was built at least a hundred years ago, apart from the stove and the refrigerator!”

  Jasmin made the comment with a smile to show that she was joking, but Maud picked up something in her tone. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but she knew right away that she didn’t like it.

  “This really is an enormous apartment. How big is it?” Jasmin asked, still smiling.

  “Almost a thousand square feet,” Maud answered reluctantly.

  It was actually slightly larger, but she thought that was none of Miss Schimmerhof’s business.

  Jasmin nodded to herself as if she had just received confirmation of something she already knew or had suspected. She gave Maud a speculative glance, but seemed to change her mind.

  “I’d better go back downstairs and get on with my work. You’re very welcome to come and have a look at my little studio. As I said, it’s . . .”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but flashed another quick smile. Maud put the red gift bag on the counter and accompanied her uninvited guest to the front door. When they got there, Jasmin turned around and gave her a big hug. Maud could feel Jasmin’s soft breasts under her top as they pressed against her own small, flat bosom. She was so taken aback that it didn’t occur to her to defend herself. At the same time, she was embarrassed. Nobody had hugged her for several decades. In fact, she couldn’t even remember the last time somebody had touched her, apart from the therapists at the Selma Spa Hotel, of course. But that had been entirely professional, rather than an expression of affection.

  “See you soon,” Jasmin chirped.

  Maud had still not recovered from the hug and the confusing feelings it aroused. She caught herself mumbling something in response and nodding in agreement. To think that a hug could knock her off balance so completely!

  Without really knowing why, Maud once again had a bad feeling as she listened to Jasmin’s footsteps disappearing down the stairs. And yet there was something else there t
oo: a longing for someone to touch her. For someone to smile at her. If only she had known . . . But how could she have known? Jasmin would turn out to be far removed from most things Maud had come across during her long life.

  The champagne was a really expensive brand—Champagne de Pompadour. When Maud looked it up on the Internet, she saw that it cost 549 kronor at the state-owned liquor store. Ridiculous! Admittedly, Maud enjoyed the odd glass of genuine champagne from time to time, but she was happy with brands that cost less than half that amount. The little tin of Russian caviar was also the real deal and probably cost as much as the champagne. Maud seriously doubted whether the other residents of the apartment block had been offered such expensive delicacies at Jasmin’s housewarming party, which led her to conclude that Jasmin was trying to get into her good books. But why? Perhaps she was lonely and looking for friendship? Maud was an old woman, a good forty-five years older than the social butterfly with artistic ambitions; they had nothing whatsoever in common. What did she want? Was she looking for a surrogate grandmother?

  After a little research online, Maud discovered that Jasmin’s maternal grandmother was still alive. She seemed to be a lively and active person, and she was two years younger than Maud. It was obvious that both of Jasmin’s parents came from wealthy families. Her father was now seventy-six; when he eventually passed away, his new wife would inherit his money, together with Jasmin and her half-sister. The wife would probably be the main beneficiary, but Jasmin would be entitled to her legal share, which would no doubt be substantial.

  It’s easy to criticize the patriarchy and the upper classes when you come from a privileged background and expect to inherit a fortune, Maud thought to herself, pulling a face. She had had to fight for the very basics for most of her life. She had been able to do quite a bit of traveling after Charlotte’s death, but she was forced to take in three tenants in order to make ends meet. This had been possible because the apartment was so large, and she hadn’t been at home all that much while she was working. The last tenant had moved out twenty-five years ago, when Maud retired. By that time she had saved enough money to get by for the rest of her life. She had invested a small amount in long-term safe bonds; the income from this investment, together with her small pension, was enough for her simple needs. She also had plenty of money in the bank, which she used when she wanted to travel farther afield, and that money would see her through. There was no one to inherit from her after her death.