line. Harriet focuses her gaze. In her face can be read...what? Sorrow, shock, fury?
Harriet lowers her eyes. Harriet is gone.
Blomkvist played the sequence over and over.
It confirmed with some force the theory he had formulated. Something happened
on Järnvägsgatan.
She sees something—someone—on the other side of the street. She reacts with shock.
She contacts Vanger for a private conversation which never happens. She vanishes
without a trace.
Something happened, but the photographs did not explain what.
At 2:00 on Tuesday morning Blomkvist had coffee and sandwiches at the kitchen
bench. He was simultaneously downhearted and exhilarated. Against all
expectations he had turned up new evidence. The only problem was that although
it shed light on the chain of events it brought him not one iota closer to solving the
mystery.
He thought long and hard about what role Cecilia Vanger might have played in the
drama. Vanger had relentlessly charted the activities of all persons involved that
day, and Cecilia had been no exception. She was living in Uppsala, but she arrived
in Hedeby two days before that fateful Saturday. She stayed with Isabella Vanger.
She had said that she might possibly have seen Harriet early that morning, but that
she had not spoken to her. She had driven into Hedestad on some errand. She had
not seen Harriet there, and she came back to Hedeby Island around 1:00, about the
time Nylund was taking his pictures on Järnvägsgatan. She changed and at about
2:00 helped to set the table for the banquet that evening.
As an alibi—if that is what it was—it was rather feeble. The times were
approximate, especially the matter of when she had got back to Hedeby Island, but
Vanger had not found anything to indicate that she was lying. Cecilia Vanger was
one of those people in the family that Vanger liked best. And she had been his
lover. How could he be objective? He certainly could not imagine her as a
murderer.