Then he leaned his head towards her full bosom and said:
"I will sleep with you."
"Oh, shame!" snubbed the maid and pushed him away from her.
He replied, "How coarse your thoughts are! Fie!"
One evening some days later Vestman's maid ran down and begged the Doctor to come up and see Vestman's wife, who was dying. The request seemed somewhat unexpected to the commissioner, but with the clear-sightedness which during intervals of light accompanied his sickness, he perceived that here a murder had been committed and that they would use his name and title instead of a legal medical examination. The case was immaterial to him, but it aroused him for a moment. Something had happened, and the unusual had made a long needed impression. He therefore went up to the custom house cottage and was received by both brothers, who showed him into the sick room with a politeness, which seemed to the commissioner extremely suspicious. But he said nothing, asked nothing, for he would draw out the vague confession by constraining the husband to speak first, sure that he would betray himself at the first word.
By a tallow candle sat the child eating a cookie, which had not been given her without an object, and she was dressed in her best clothes, probably so that she should feel solemn and appear in a constrained manner.
After the commissioner had looked around the room and observed that Vestman's brother had sneaked out, he stepped up to the bed where the woman lay.
He saw at once that she was dead, and by the contracted muscles of her face he understood that some violence had been committed, and when he also observed that her hair was carefully combed over the top of her head, he understood at once that the old, good way with the nail had been used.
But he would have the man speak first, and with half open lips and questioning eyes, just as though he would ask something, he turned to Vestman. This at once put him off his guard, and relying, that he need no longer be sly with one who was insane, he said:
"Can't the Doctor testify that she is gone, so that we shall be permitted to bury her at once, for you see, we poor cannot afford to call a physician out here."