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Lea’s in Israel… Both the children are away when their father dies…”
    She was cut off by a gush of tears, but it didn’t take her long to pull herself together.
    â€œI’d like to ask a few questions. It’s important that we get the investigation started as quickly as possible. Do you think you can you manage that?”
    â€œOf course. Luckily, you’re a good detective and you’ll find whoever did this. Ask whatever you need to.” Ethel blew into her handkerchief, and looked at me expectantly.
    â€œYour husband stayed home from work for several days. Why was that, even though apparently he wasn’t ill?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œBut his absence from work was not due to illness, is that correct?”
    â€œThat’s correct.”
    â€œAnd you don’t know the cause?”
    â€œOf course I asked him. He said he had his reasons, but that he couldn’t talk to me about them. I was worried, because work is so important to him… I tried my best to get him to explain what was going on, but he wouldn’t budge. He could be a stubborn man. He wouldn’t let me help, his own wife…”
    I continued questioning before her emotions got the best of her again.
    â€œHow many days had he been away from work?”
    â€œThree.”
    I glanced around. The living room looked almost exactly the same as it had twenty years earlier, with the exception of a new flat-screen television in place of the old TV and a couple of striking bronze sculptures standing on the floor. But the sofa was the same one where I had tried to warm up Lea on the few evenings we had spent out from under the watchful gaze of her parents.
    â€œAnd you don’t have the slightest idea what it could have been about?”
    â€œNo. I thought so hard I couldn’t sleep and my imagination started conjuring up all kinds of strange ideas, but in the morning I understood they were complete nonsense.”
    â€œI’d still like to hear them.”
    â€œAt first I thought Samuel had written something that had angered those crazy racists. I kept telling him to think twice before he wrote but —”
    â€œWhere did he write?”
    â€œFor Hakehila .”
    Hakehila was the publication of the Helsinki Jewish congregation.
    â€œThen I thought he had embezzled money and was too ashamed to go in to work… Until I realized that you can’t embezzle from yourself, can you?” Ethel laughed bitterly. “It even crossed my mind that he may have had some ugly affair at the office, and that the woman’s husband was threatening him.”
    â€œAffair? Was he involved with one of his employees?”
    â€œNo, but I imagined he was. He had several attractive women working for him.”
    â€œDid he seem anxious?”
    â€œI asked him if had done something that was forcing him to hide. He denied it. I still thought he was afraid, though. He tried to act as if everything was normal, but I noticed that he’d walk over to the window from time to time and look out, and he tested the door several times a day to make sure it was locked. He told me not to let in anyone I didn’t know. It wasn’t until I asked him why that he told me he might be in danger. He wouldn’t say any more than that.”
    â€œDid anything else come to mind besides racists or a husband who had been cheated on?”
    â€œMy mind was on a roller coaster. I thought it was one thing, then something else. In the end I decided it was money… Maybe he’d had a disagreement with someone over money, a deal or something like that… Maybe someone felt like they had been cheated.”
    â€œHow did he respond?”
    â€œHe said it wasn’t about money. For him, life was too short to argue about money.”
    I had a slightly different view of Jacobson’s philosophy of life, but this wasn’t the right time to discuss it.
    I took