Warning: Character death.
Lovise hadn't been lying; there really was a dead body in their back yard.
Warmly dressed, the two housekeepers couldn't look away from the mess the maid had stumbled upon while looking for a midnight snack. It wasn't uncommon to find someone dead from drinking too much and dressing too thinly during the late autumn, but they were usually by the docks, in alleys or sometimes even in the parks; there had never been one in Einar Strand's back yard before now. It was an awful sight, mainly because they recognised the dead man.
It was Ivan Braginsky, whom Einar and Søren had visited earlier that very night. He lay on the grass, face down. He was as tall as Berwald, with a compact body and an obviously Russian face, with his prominent cheekbones and his broad jaw. One would have thought that since he was Russian he would have survived the cold autumn night, but clearly this was not the case.
"What do we do?" Lovise hissed..
Tino kept his eyes fixed on the body. "I... I suggest we should get a hold of the authorities?"
Lovise nodded in agreement. "The police, probably? Berwald, could you run down to the station and get them?"
Before Berwald could say anything, Tino came to the rescue: "I'll do it. I'll be right back." And off he ran.
Grateful that Tino had understood how little Berwald had wanted to run after their most recent night-time activity, he let out a little sigh. He took a few steps towards the dead man, and crouched to get a closer look at him. His face looked at peace, but there must have been a damn good reason why he had decided to collapse in Mr. Strand's yard. Or maybe not such a good reason, Berwald mused, taking the half-empty bottle in Ivan's hand into consideration. Its contents looked home-brewed.
"Wh-what would make him c-c-come all the w-way over here?" Lovise whispered, her teeth chattering with cold. She had not, for some reason, dressed warmly.
Berwald turned to look at her. He considered her question for a moment before an answer came to him.
"Einar told me he ins'lted Mr. Brag'nsky this ev'ning," he muttered. M'be he came to demand Einar apol'gise?"
Lovise shrugged. "P-probably." She hesitated uncertainly. "D-d-do we take him inside, or do we leave him there?"
"Not sure," Berwald mumbled, looking back at the corpse. Poor Mr. Braginsky. He had certainly not deserved to end up like this. The police wouldn't be too happy if they moved him, but it felt wrong to leave him there. He mentioned this, and in his peripheral vision he saw Lovise nod her head in agreement.
In the end the two of them had decided to carry Mr. Braginsky inside; leaving his body out in the cold seemed wrong, even if he wouldn't feel a thing, dead as he was. Neither of them had the heart to leave him outside and try not to think about what they had just found, so in stead they dragged the poor man indoors, as silently as they could in order not to wake the master of the house and his guest, or anyone else for that matter. A minor reason for taking him inside was that the neighbours could quite easily spot him lying there should they for any reason decide to look out their window in the middle of the night. Einar did not need this sort of gossip.
Berwald and Lovise sat silently against the wall, both of them staring at the body slouched in the corner of the hallway. Lovise had taken the bottle from him and placed it on the floor next to him, as if she expected him to wake up and look for his drink. But he lay there, white as the snow that had not yet reached Bergen, his damp hair plastered to his face, with his eyes closed and his chin resting on his chest.
Everything was silent.
It was not a comfortable silence.
The two of them kept staring at the man whose dinners were the finest in the area. It didn't matter how respectable you were, nor how refined a gentleman you were; Ivan decided himself who he wanted to invite over for dinner. He was a man who was blunt about what he thought about people (although he wasn't particularly happy when others were blunt towards him), almost childishly so, and would only invite the ones he liked, regardless of their social status.
"Sooo," Lovise began, dragging the word out. "You and Tino do it with your night shirts on, huh?"
Berwald cringed uncomfortably. "Please don't tell an'one what y' saw," he begged, not looking at her. He knew his face was flushed with embarrassment.
A nervous chuckle escaped from Lovise's lips. "You're not the only ones with secrets, you know," she said cryptically, and when Berwald turned to give her a curious look, she just smiled teasingly back at him, before leaning close to him to whisper her secret in his ear with confidence that he wouldn't tell anyone else.
When she leaned back again, Berwald gave her an incredulous look. "Really?" he asked, and she nodded excitedly, a faint blush decorating her chubby cheeks.
They exchanged grins for a brief moment before the soberness of the situation caught up with them, and they turned to stare gravely at Mr. Braginsky again. From that point on it didn't take long before they heard Tino return with a couple of policemen.
As expected Berwald and Lovise were told that they shouldn't have moved the body, and the tired policemen couldn't help but to be a bit annoyed with the whole situation, replying exasperatedly to what they reckoned to be 'dumb questions', and grumbling to themselves as they took Ivan's body with them. Why was there always some sort of crime during the night? Didn't criminals sleep?
The three household workers were promptly questioned by the most sour-looking of the officers, whose eyebrows were so unbelievably bushy it was distracting. Tino had to ask him to repeat himself several times, which certainly didn't make him any more agreeable.
The questions asked were as expected: how did you find him, where did he lie, in which position did he lie, what time was it, et cetera, et cetera. The policeman looked as keen as they were to finish up this business and go back to sleep, which had almost caught up to them all. The three of them explained everything, with minor twists to the truth: Lovise had gone downstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat, when she saw a body in the back yard, and she went to get Tino and Berwald, who were sleeping in their bedroom. And, quite frankly, it wasn't that far from the truth. The policeman took notes.
"It does look obvious," said the policeman, with a slight foreign accent Berwald couldn't quite place, "that he's gotten drunk and frozen to death, but could any of you think of why he would end up in this particular yard?"
"What?" Tino asked, this time not out of distraction, but out of confusion. "Uh, he got drunk and ended up here coincidentally?"
"Is it really a coincidence that Mr. Braginsky ended up in this particular yard?"
"Of course it was, how could―" Tino's face fell. "Oh." He turned to Berwald. "You think they had a fight, or something? I mean, Einar did offend him and get thrown out of his house. Perhaps something else happened that he didn't tell you?"
Berwald couldn't imagine that Einar and Ivan would ever have a proper fight, but he couldn't quite find it in him to deny it in front of a policeman. In stead he shrugged. "M'be."
"I see," the policeman grunted. "I'm afraid I will have to question Mr. Strand myself. Any information is useful. Where is he at this hour, do you know?"
"Sleeping," Lovise said flatly.
"I wouldn't wake him up if I were you," Tino added quickly. "I'm not here to tell you how to do your job, but I would have waited until he woke up on his own accord. He can do quite a lot of damage if you interrupt his sleep. I-I-I mean, not serious damage," he corrected himself, realising just how dangerous he had made Einar sound. "I mean, glares and orders us around, but he... he wouldn't... uh..." His voice faded.
The policeman shot him a curt look. "I'll take my chances."
Of course you will, Berwald thought bitterly. You're not the one who will suffer the consequences in the morning.
"Wake him up for me, please," the policeman asked the maid. He turned to Tino and Berwald. "Please wait in the living room until I return," he told them. Grudgingly, Lovise did as she was told, and showed him the way to Mr. Strand's bedroom, not at all looking forward to facing Einar's tired anger.
As predicted Einar was not pleasant to deal with at this hour. Shortly after the policeman and Lovise had gone to wake him up, he appeared in the living room where Berwald and Tino currently sat, his eyes baggy and his brows knit into a deep frown. He cast a quick glance at Tino and Berwald but said nothing to them, and slumped down in his chair by the fireplace. Berwald couldn't help worrying about his master; in addition to looking tired he also looked like his morning robes were simply hanging from his joints. Berwald had never noticed how skinny his master was. Never before had he seen collarbones that prominent.
The policeman entered as well, and it didn't take long until Lovise followed, tailed by Ester and, to Berwald's surprise, Alma. A long minute passed, and Søren entered as well, struggling with draping his own robes around himself. He, too, looked deathly tired, and there was not a trace of humour in his face. Apparently his happy-go-lucky attitude wasn't available at night-time.
"What has happened?" he asked, looking briefly at everyone in the room.
"Please take a seat," said the policeman.
Søren and the maids hesitated. There weren't enough seats for everyone. The sofa in which Tino and Berwald sat had one seat available, and there was also the chair opposite Einar. The solution was simply for Ester and Lovise to sit on the armrest on either side of the sofa. Reluctantly Alma sat herself next to Tino, offering him a quick smile which didn't reach her eyes.
"As I mentioned to some of you before," said the policeman, who was still standing, "there's been a death just outside this house." Ester gasped audibly, and Søren looked dumbstruck, staring at the policeman, who continued talking. "It appears obvious that he had simply gotten drunk beyond compare, waddled over to your back yard, fallen asleep, and simply... well, there's no way to sugar coat it: he died." There was a second of uncomfortable silence in the room before he continued. "Despite the fact that the death looks obvious, I would still like to hear what happened, from last night at Mr. Braginsky's social arrangement, up to the point the police arrived at the scene."
There was a light groan of exasperation coming from Einar. He'd much rather have waited until morning with this nonsense, but he knew it was pointless to complain. He rested his head in his hand, his eyes closed, and muttered, "You tell the story, Søren."
Søren looked horrified at his host. "Me?"
"Yes, you. Everything."
The Dane looked unhappy by the very thought of it. Berwald sat up a bit, his curiosity increased; if the truth could make the boisterous, shameless guest uncomfortable, it must be something worth listening to, whether it be nothing more than juicy gossip, or something delicate ladies and young children should avoid hearing at all costs.
"I suppose," said Søren, slowly, "I could try. I had a bit to drink, so I might not remember everything, but I'll do my best."
Nobody mentioned that the foreign policeman might have problems understanding the man's language, but for all they knew he might be fluent in Danish. The worst that could happen was that Søren had to repeat himself several times, look at the Norwegians with a helpless look, and have them explain. This very thing happened a few times during his depiction of what had happened that evening. By the end of the story none of them knew what to think.
Søren began. "It was a dark and stormy-"
"No," groaned Einar, his eyes still shut.
His guest looked crestfallen, but continued talking, surprisingly enough uninterrupted by any sort of attempt at being funny.
A/N: This is dreadfully boring. I'm sorry you had to wait two months just for me to post this anti-climactic thing.
(Also, my laptop died, but hopefully I'm getting a new one soon. I can't keep writing and drawing at work.)
