I had to admit that this was a theory worth noting. But I felt rather confused. So I excused myself, saying that I was tired after a long day of investigation, and asked with a fleeting smile whether we could meet again and discuss this further tomorrow. By then I would also, hopefully, have some more information to add.
Patricia replied with a bigger smile that she in fact had no other important arrangements tomorrow and that it would suit her very well if I was to drop by sometime after six, for example. Unless the staff had fallen asleep on the job or gone on strike, there was even a hope that I might get a simple meal after my hard day’s work. I thanked her and promised to be there before seven o’clock the following evening. Then I followed the maid out, still pensive, but far more optimistic than when I came in.
I had an extraordinary amount to think about when I went to bed, alone, in my flat in Hegdehaugen at around eleven o’clock on Thursday, 6 August 1970. The faces of the various people I had met in the course of the day flashed through my mind. Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen’s face stayed longest, even though she was the one I least suspected of being a murderer. But then I could not really imagine any of the people I had met so far as being Marie Morgenstierne’s extremely cold-blooded murderer. And if one of them was in fact behind it, I had no idea of who that might be.
And so, just before I fell asleep, I pondered what Patricia had said about the curse of public space, and concluded that the murderer was probably someone else, somewhere else out there in the dark. And I unfortunately had no idea as to how we might find him or her.
