Satellite People (11 page)

My head was spinning. The situation was easy enough to understand, but not the profundity of it. Among Magdalon Schelderup’s ten guests, there were already so many tragic fates and
possible motives for murder.

‘But I have managed to scrape together every single payment. And I have not touched a drop of alcohol or filled in a betting slip since 14 February 1949. I have managed to keep the whole
thing hidden from everyone, including my son. He thinks that I am just extremely thrifty with my daily outgoings and that I actually have a lot of money deposited in the bank. And I tell my
neighbours that I am careful with my money and happy with the car I’ve got. But the reality is that I can barely afford a new bicycle.’

‘So, 95,000 plus 10 per cent interest a year, less annual down payments of 10,000 from 1949, leaves . . .’

He nodded gloomily.

‘I’m afraid there’s still 66,361 kroner outstanding. My crime is now legally time-barred, so there is no risk in talking to the police about it. But I am still indebted to the
Schelderup family. If the story of my embezzlement gets out, I might as well forget trying to get another job. I have saved nearly enough for this year’s payment and have 8,212 kroner in the
bank. But I have nothing more than that, so if they got wind of my debt and demanded that I pay up now, I would lose my house and all my assets, and my son’s family and I would once again be
on the street. My suit is deceptive: I could be forced to sell it too. However, the worst thing is still the shame and grief it will cause my son.’

Hans Herlofsen looked at me with a pained expression on his face, and added: ‘And I guess that is what is going to happen now.’

I made a feeble attempt to comfort the poor manager, but it was not easy. He told me he had no idea where the confession and the promissory note might be, or who else might know about them. But
he should at least reckon that the promissory note and outstanding debt had been registered. If the company was broken up and dissolved, not only would all outstanding debts be collected, but his
position might disappear. And if the company was not broken up and dissolved, the only possible solution would be for the daughter and wife to take control. And in the best-case scenario, there was
a slim hope that he might be able to continue the current arrangement, albeit with higher interest rates and larger payments, he added with a bitter smile. His only hope was that there would be
some kind of clemency in the will or some other papers left by Magdalon Schelderup. But in a whisper, he estimated this possibility to be ‘under 15 per cent’.

I let Herlofsen go at half past midday. He apologized once again for not having told me everything yesterday. He said that it had felt as if the ground was opening up under his feet following
the events of the past twenty-four hours, and I believed him. Hans Herlofsen steadied himself on the doorframe as he left my office, and I do not believe he would normally have done that.

VI

At one o’clock, an important part of the puzzle was solved when I received a verbal report regarding Magdalon Schelderup’s metal box and the letters inside. It was
in part good news for Synnøve Jensen. Her fingerprints had naturally been found on the outside of the box, but they were old and unclear. The only fingerprints on the letters contained
therein were those of Magdalon Schelderup. These technical findings did not prove Synnøve Jensen’s statement to be true, but neither did they prove it to be false, and that was what
was most important here and now. The arrest warrant I had optimistically put on the desk stayed where it was, incomplete.

The greatest surprise at the police station, however, came at a quarter past one. A breathless constable knocked on the door when a letter arrived with the day’s post.

The address was in itself striking, the constable said. And I immediately understood what he meant.

The letter was addressed to ‘The head of the investigation into the murder of Magdalon Schelderup’. Of course, this was not so sensational in itself today, but became more so when it
was established that the postmark on the letter was from Oslo on the day before Magdalon Schelderup was murdered.

The content was no less sensational. A simple folded sheet, with the following typewritten text:

I looked up at the constable, who looked even paler than normal. He rolled his eyes and said that I should just say if I needed any help. Then he beat a hasty retreat.

The letter was obviously written by someone who was familiar with the seating arrangements and menu at Schelderup Hall. As far as I could see, the letter had been posted the day before the
murder – by a confident murderer who had laid a plan and felt sure of the outcome. I had every reason to take very seriously indeed the threat that more of the guests from Magdalon
Schelderup’s last meal might be murdered. I sat and thought for a few minutes, in part about who the murderer might have in mind and in part about why the murderer had gone to the bother of
sending the police a written warning.

I made a photostat copy of the letter and sent the original to be checked, without any great hope that it would help. No matter who had posted this letter, he or she was not very likely to have
left any fingerprints or other clues. So I reported orally to my boss that several of those who witnessed Magdalon Schelderup’s death might be under threat and asked if the evening shift
could be incremented should the need arise.

Then I rang Magdalena Schelderup and said that I needed to speak to her as soon as possible. She did not sound overly enthusiastic at the prospect. I heard a quiet ‘Oh, no’ when I
asked if she could come by the police station. When I then offered to drive over to her, she asked if we could not meet somewhere in between. I conceded to this and we agreed to meet in a cafe on
Bogstad Road at a quarter past two.

VII

The cafe was nice and the coffee was good. As we sat undisturbed in a corner with a piece of chocolate cake each, I decided that our surroundings were far preferable to the
study at Schelderup Hall. But Magdalena Schelderup’s face was definitely less relaxed and more aggressive than it had been during our first interview. She leant forwards in her chair, almost
angry, as soon as I started to ask about her situation and stance during the war.

‘Have the Wendelboes been wagging their poisonous tongues again? They have hated and scorned me for nearly thirty years now. I am sure that Herlofsen and many others do too, but those two
are malicious through and through. I should, of course, have told you myself rather than allowing others the chance to say it for me.’

She took a breath and then pressed on.

‘I was, like my late younger brother, a member of the NS from autumn 1940 to autumn 1942. My younger brother and I saw it simply as a practical means to safeguard the family fortune. I
left the party when they started deporting the Jews and never took part in any NS events of any sort. After the war, I was given a suspended sentence of sixty days or the option to pay a fine of
1,000 kroner, which I paid in order to put the whole thing behind me and cause as little damage to the family and business as possible. The case was closed a long time ago now and really should be
a thing of the past. And it is for everyone else except those hypocrites from the Resistance. Does someone really want to make it look like I murdered my brother because I was a member of the NS in
the first two years of the war?’

After this outburst she quite literally sat in silence for a few moments, stewing. The first cigarette was lit, which had a calming effect.

‘Apologies if I appear to be over the top, but I have been hounded by whispering voices ever since the war. It is of course a source of immense frustration to me that I could be so stupid
as to get involved in all that to start with. But one,I have never been a Nazi and, two,I most certainly did not kill my brother.’

I noted that the latter was said with more conviction than the former, and that what she told me now was pretty well in accordance with what was written in the case file from the treason trials.
So I moved swiftly on and asked her to tell me about her broken engagement.

This prompted an unexpected change of mood. A shadow of a smile played on Magdalena Schelderup’s lips when she replied by asking: ‘Which one?’

I knew nothing about either of them and so said that I would like to hear about both.

‘The second one, the one to which you are perhaps alluding, was no great loss at the time. He changed his mind only days before we were due to walk down the aisle, because of all this
nonsense with the war and my NS membership. I didn’t shed too many tears. I had realized some time before that he was not the great love of my life, and he was neither charming nor
particularly good-looking. But he was a decent, presentable man with sound finances, who would no doubt be a good father and husband. I was thirty-eight years old when he broke off the engagement.
It somehow felt too late and too complicated to start looking for a new husband afterwards. So perhaps in retrospect the loss was greater, now that I know he was my chance not to end up alone, a
childless spinster.’

‘And the first one?’

She nodded, and straightened up in her chair.

‘That was a great loss. It was my first, greatest and only young love. A short and intense romance that lasted the summer and autumn of 1925, but which left its mark on my life for another
decade. He was irresistibly handsome and charming, in my eyes and everyone else’s. It was as though everything stopped the moment we met by a cafe table, one day when I was staying with a
friend in Bergen. It would be safe to say that I did not see very much of my friend for the rest of the summer holiday, but all the more of him.’

A smile slid over Magdalena Schelderup’s face, but soon froze to a bitter grimace.

‘Apparently I later said of that trip to Bergen in 1925 that I was so comfortable on the bed, I might as well lie in it. When I came home from Bergen to Bærum wearing an engagement
ring, I was left standing. I had not expected it to be easy. He was from the working class and, as if that were not enough, he was not working and did not have a family fortune. But I had not
expected it to be so utterly hopeless either. They had never really bothered much before at home about what I did. Mother and Father were not too opposed to it at first. Magdalon, on the other
hand, was adamant that this was nothing more than a youthful romance and that my fiancé was after the money. Back then, my older brother was the strongest in the family and has been so ever
since. Within a matter of days, there was a united family front against my fiancé, without any of them, other than me, having met him.’

A sad expression flooded Magdalena Schelderup’s face as she stubbed out her cigarette in silence and immediately lit another. She had definitely lost any appetite for her piece of cake,
but her cup of coffee was empty. She suddenly looked far older than her sixty-seven years.

‘We have time to do so many stupid things over the course of a lifetime. Every day I have regretted becoming a member of the NS during the war, but still, it is peanuts in comparison to
how much I regret allowing myself to be persuaded to break off the engagement and return the ring by post. I knew that I would not be able to go through with it if I met him and perhaps not if I
even heard his voice. So I asked him never to contact me again. He was an honourable man and respected that. But then we did meet again all the same, in an almost bizarre way, in a hotel reception
here in Oslo. There were sparks for a few minutes, just as there had been ten years earlier, until his wife appeared. And the worst thing was that I had been right, that he would have made a
wonderful husband. He was now a successful businessman of his own making and was on the local board of the Liberal Left Party. When we met again in 1935, my family would no doubt have thought he
would make the perfect husband. But by then he had married someone else and they had three children. It was a terrible feeling to go home alone that night, having met her and seen her beaming
happily between him and their children.’

Magdalena blew out the cigarette smoke in a violent blast. The tears I had not seen when her brother died were filling her eyes.

‘And I have never forgiven myself. It was the greatest mistake of my life, to betray him, not to dare to fight for my one great love when he was there, holding me in his arms.’

Without warning, she raised her right hand and pulled the odd pewter ring from her ring finger.

‘I sent back the engagement ring in 1925. But I have always kept this. It was the first ring he bought for me. I think he got it for one krone. But it was as good as the only krone he had,
and it was the first ring a man had ever given me. And as it turned out, I got it from the love of my life. So I am going to wear it until my dying day, to remind me of what was and what could have
been.’

‘And your brother – did you ever forgive him?’

Her sigh was heavy.

‘I’m afraid I cannot say yes to that, even on the day after Magdalon’s death. It has lain between us for all these years, without us ever speaking about it. After I met my
beloved again in 1935, I told him about the episode when I came home. But asking for forgiveness was not in Magdalon’s nature. Having heard what I had just been through, he did nothing, just
sat there. He shook his head pensively, but said absolutely nothing. Then he turned back to his work and carried on in silence until I left. And I have waited and waited for him to ask me for
forgiveness. He never did.’

Magdalena stubbed out her cigarette and finished her story in a determined voice.

‘People want to believe that the reason why we have spoken so little to each other in recent years is the war. But my old love story from 1925 left a deeper cleft between us. And it
started to come to the fore again as I got older and was left sitting my own, alongside my brother’s steadily growing family. He thought he had the right to dismiss his only sister’s
great love, but he could take whoever he wanted whenever it suited him. That did not make it any easier to forgive, not even for a sister who only had one brother left.’