She waved Heloise over to a rectangular teak table in the middle of the conservatory and asked her to sit down.

“You have a very beautiful name. Heloise.” Mrs. Mossing spoke the name in a singing French accent. She took off her cap, and her long, silver hair cascaded down her back. “Far more exotic than Ellen.”

“Thank you,” Heloise said. “Then again, I bet you’ve never had to spell or explain your name to anyone.”

“Well, you can’t have everything.”

“I guess not,” Heloise said, sitting down opposite her. “I should probably explain why I’m here.”

“Noy said you had some questions about Christoffer?”

“Yes, that’s right. But I need to tell you that I’m a reporter. I work for Demokratisk Dagblad, and I’m looking into your son’s death.”

Ellen studied her for a while without saying anything.

“Why now?” she then asked. “Has something happened that I don’t know about?”

“No, nothing specific. But I’m trying to found out whether something might have been overlooked during the original investigation. I’m here to ask you to tell me about your son.”

“No one ever talks about him anymore.” Mrs. Mossing gazed out at the water. “Not even my husband. It’s as if people think it won’t hurt if they pretend it never happened. My son is dead, and now the world is acting as though he never existed.” She turned to Heloise and smiled sadly. “I don’t want you to quote me, but I don’t mind telling you about Christoffer.”

The housekeeper appeared with a tray and served the coffee. She placed a small plate of cookies in front of Heloise before leaving the room.

“Help yourself.” Mrs. Mossing nodded in the direction of the cookies.

“I saw a picture of Christoffer in the hall. Did he study in the States?” Heloise took a cookie and bit into it. It had a strangely salty taste.

“Yes, he graduated from Harvard Law. I believe those were some of the best years of his life. He would always have a special tone in his voice whenever he talked about his time there,” Ellen said. “I have a grandchild in America, did you know?”

Heloise shook her head.

“A woman reached out to us after Christoffer’s death. Someone he’d been seeing. It can’t have been anything serious, though; we’d certainly never heard of her. But then again, he had so many girls. He was very popular.” She took a cube of sugar from a bowl on the table and dropped it into her coffee. “She called us a few months after the funeral. She had heard what had happened and was very upset, as I’m sure you can imagine. She told us that she had gotten pregnant back then, and that there was a child—a young boy.”

“Didn’t that make you suspicious?” Heloise asked.

“Because of the inheritance, you mean?”

“Yes.”