The Glass Devil Read Online Free

vaulted lid. The year “1796” was barely visible on it, among painted flowers and butterflies. The chest was beautiful and might very well be as old as the date indicated. The mirror that hung above it hardly appeared newer. It had a heavy golden frame, and the glass was divided into sections. A grandfather clock stood next to it, beating out the time with heavy ticks.
    Jonas Burman made a funnel with his hands and yelled into the house, “Ho! Ho! Sten and Elsa! It’s Jonas!”
    The three of them listened tensely. An unbroken silence ensued.
    With a resigned sigh, Burman went to the center of the room. “There’s a bathroom under the stairs that lead to the second floor. There are several bedrooms and some other smaller rooms on that level, a bathroom and a separate toilet as well. To our right, on the first floor, there’s a dining room and a living room. But out here in the country, we use the old-fashioned word ‘hall’ for the living room. Since this estate is old and the room is large, there is a reason for this usage.”
    He turned a hundred and eighty degrees and pointed at the door opposite. “The kitchen is in there. The door next to the stairs leads to a work room. If you walk through that room, you come to the library.”
    They decided to inspect the kitchen first. It was large and airy. At first glance, Irene felt as if she had been transported back in time but then she saw that the refrigerator and stove were new. There was also a dishwasher. Other than that, the cabinet doors were made of a dark wood, country style. Beams in the ceiling were visible, and a large table stood in the middle of the polished wooden floor. Irene counted twelve chairs around the table. Everything looked old and well-built. She couldn’t keep from asking the pastor, “Are there only two people living here?”
    “Yes. That’s the problem with these old rectories: They’re terribly expensive to heat and a normal modern family doesn’t fill the house with life. In the old days, pastors often had large families, as well as servants. The pastors’ homes were also fellowship halls. That’s why they were built on such a grand scale.”
    Irene had very vague ideas about what the function of a fellowship hall was, but decided not to ask. They opened the doors at the other end of the kitchen and found a very small room which had probably been a maid’s room and, behind the other door, a laundry room with modern conveniences. A large box freezer buzzed monotonously in a corner. In the laundry room, there was also a door that led to the back yard. Irene determined that it was locked. She carefully lifted the lid to the freezer. It was half-filled with neat packages and plastic containers. They went back through the kitchen, turning the lights on as they went.
    A quick tour of the Schyttelius work room and library revealed that they were large and the furniture very old. The walls of the library were covered with bookshelves full of old books. It smelled of dust and old leather.
    The dining room and the so-called “hall” were adjacent: It was necessary to walk through the dining room to reach the hall. The rooms were big with high ceilings, but they were also very cold. Irene understood why the door from the front hall had been closed. The heat in these two rooms had been lowered considerably. Capacious tile stoves on either side of the hall looked as if they hadn’t been used in a long time. The furnishings were sparse. There were a very long settee and a single Windsor chair in the floor. The settee might have seated as many as ten people if they had squeezed together. Chairs matching the settee were ranged along the walls. A large rug covered the center of the floor. It was worn, the colors faded, but it had probably been magnificent once upon a time. A long white painted table with just six chairs furnished the dining room. Irene concluded that the family sat in the kitchen when they had company.
    Reentering the front hall