Jan glanced again at the time.

‘Yes. I fancy a dram. The usual. What about you?’

He shot a look at Selma, who had finally sat down again.

‘If you have a Pepsi Max, I’d like one of those. If not, nothing. Thanks.’

‘Unfortunately we don’t have any soft drinks at all.’

Without another word, Maggi cleared the table.

Jan Morell liked having Maggi around. He didn’t really know what he thought of her, apart from that she was good at what she was employed to do. A woman of few words, simply, who had come into the family at a time when he couldn’t even manage to speak to his own child. Magdalena Wajda arrived with excellent references into a house that had come to a standstill because of grief. He gave her short, sharp orders in the first few days. Later she found things out on her own initiative. There was nothing to be said about her efforts, though the food she had prepared in the first six months had been tasteless and bland. For her first Christmas she had received three cookery books from Hege and him in a present she had taken with her to Poland. The books returned with her to Vettakollen, and everything improved after that.

He didn’t know her. It had never been necessary.

Now, however, something unfamiliar had come over her, he realized. Usually she moved in a light, determined manner – Maggi was an efficient woman who had never broken a single object in all of her thirteen years as housekeeper. Now she knocked over Selma’s coffee cup. It was half full, and a Polish curse slipped from Maggi’s lips before she dashed to the kitchen for a cloth.

Jan had never seen her run before.

‘There you are,’ Selma said, having gathered up the dishes by the time Maggi had come back. ‘I’ll carry them out.’

Despite Maggi’s protests, she was as good as her word. Maggi wiped up the spillage, brought Jan a tumbler of whisky with ice cubes and made herself scarce again.

‘You don’t drink,’ he said, raising his glass in a toast. ‘I’ve read that. Sensible of you.’

Selma scratched just above her eyebrow and asked: ‘Where’s Hege?’

‘Out running. Up the Korketrekkeren track.’

‘So late?’

‘She can’t settle.’

‘No. Who can?’

Yet again she stood up and crossed to the window.

‘Who in heaven’s name could possibly be behind all this?’ Jan ventured again.

‘I don’t know, as I’ve said. Repeatedly.’

‘No, but can’t you think of anyone? What could be the purpose of it? Who could be interested in harming both Hege and Haakon? And maybe Hedda?’

‘Stian Bach comes to mind as far as the last-mentioned is concerned,’ Selma said, as she put more wood on the fire. ‘But we know for certain that he hasn’t been anywhere near Hege since then. She said so herself.’

‘And how on earth would Hege and Haakon ingest such a thing? Neither of them suffers from herpes, and …’