Time seemed to have had no impact on the place.
She hadn’t been here in more than thirty years, but it all looked just the same.
The white house, its design inspired by functionalism, the garden running down to a jetty and Lake Mälaren, the small guest chalet by the jetty that had been their home for so many years. The only difference was that the garden shed had burned down.
And now here she was – the victor.
The one still standing at the end of the bout.
Now she could finally move freely around the house. No one could stop her.
The spare key was still at the back of the house under the pot from Waldemarsudde, just as it always had been.
Jane took the key and went inside. She needed to get on with it before they finished drawing up the estate inventory, before the house was sold or taken over by one of the daughters: a new generation of evil in the house of horrors.
She stopped for a moment in the spacious hallway and listened. Small, imperceptible creaks in the walls. The ticking of a clock in the living room. If she shut her eyes, she could hear the voices of the past. From all those parties and events that she had served at, from the children playing and causing a nuisance, Agneta telling her what to do.
The living room with the shabby Pernilla reading chair in which Stellan had met his maker. The Josef Frank sofa with Aralia upholstery that she had been under orders to keep spotless, Falsterbo Stripe wallpaper from Boråstapeter on the walls and souvenir plates from all sorts of places around Europe.
On so many occasions she had been lectured by Stellan and Agneta about what everything was called and how much it had all cost, so that she would understand how carefully she had to look after their beautiful home. For the home was undeniably beautiful, unlike the people who had lived in it.
But what she was looking for was probably upstairs, she thought, as she slowly climbed the stairs.