Satellite People (9 page)

The practical-versus-principle compromise was that Mr Rønning Junior would be in the office by half past eight on Monday morning and would phone me immediately to let me know the contents
of the will. He would then instruct his office to telephone or telegraph those people named on the list to request their presence at the reading of the will in the deceased’s home at three
o’clock that afternoon. I assured him that this would be easy enough to organize, as the deceased’s nearest and dearest had all been instructed to stay in town and were unlikely to have
made plans for the following day. I felt that we were both more relaxed towards the end of the conversation and I saw no reason to make more problems than I already had with the investigation. We
thanked each other courteously for being so accommodating and even put the receiver down at the same time.

It was only then that it crossed my mind that I had yet to make a very important phone call – to the commanding officer. It struck me instantly that the case might be taken from me before
it had even started. I could under no circumstances wait until the following day for fear that one of my colleagues might hear about the case in the meantime and snatch it from me. So I looked up
the commanding officer’s home number on my telephone list and dialled straight away.

Fortunately I caught my boss before he went to bed, and as luck would have it, he was in the better of his two known moods. He listened patiently for ten minutes to my account of the start of
this peculiar case, then for another two minutes while I reminded him of my success as head of investigation for last year’s most spectacular murder case. Then to my delight he interrupted me
to say that it was his wish that I should also head this murder investigation, certainly until further notice. He added that there might be changes if too many days passed without a breakthrough,
and that he would like a short report of the day’s events every evening. He merrily quoted the former foreign minister, Halvdan Koht: ‘That is my opinion, and I must respect it!’
I had heard him say this several times before, but laughed heartily all the same and did not object in any way to his conclusions.

I was in bed by eleven o’clock, as I knew that Monday could well be a long and demanding day. But I lay there unable to sleep until about midnight, but still had not managed to find an
answer to the Magdalon Schelderup mystery. I was barely able to pick out one of the guests as a more likely murderer than the others.

The Box That Contained Something Strange

I

Edvard Rønning Junior was an exceptionally correct young man. He telephoned me at the office, as agreed, at precisely half past eight on Monday, 12 May 1969, and read
Magdalon Schelderup’s will to me from heading to signature. It did not take more than a couple of minutes, even though he read at an irritatingly slow speed. The will was dated 6 May the same
year and comprised four short paragraphs. After the previous day’s interviews, the content struck me as particularly interesting, although I had to admit that the significance of it remained
unclear.

The first paragraph of the will was a sentence to say that the manager Hans Herlofsen, as thanks for his long and loyal service, was to have waived the ‘small amount’ still
outstanding on his ‘private loan drawn up in 1949’. There then followed a short sentence to say that ‘the promissory note and associated written material’ had been
destroyed.

The second paragraph of the testament was one sentence only where Magdalon Schelderup left his wife Sandra Schelderup two million kroner.

The third paragraph consisted of two sentences where Magdalon Schelderup acknowledged that he was the father of his secretary Synnøve Jensen’s unborn child and left her the sum of
200,000 kroner for ‘subsistence costs and necessary expenses during the remainder of the pregnancy’.

The fourth paragraph was the longest and most complicated. It stated that the remainder of Magdalon Schelderup’s wealth and assets should be divided equally between his children on 6 May
1970. The three grown children would each receive for immediate payment no more than their legal minimum share of 200,000 kroner.

I thanked the lawyer for his help and assured him that I would be there for the reading of the will, and requested that the contents should remain confidential until it was read out to the
deceased’s family and friends.

It was only once I had put down the receiver that I realized that I had not asked whether any previous versions of the will existed, and if that were the case, what was said there. When I tried
to call the lawyer back it was engaged both times, so I decided to leave it until after the reading. There was more than enough work to be done in the meantime.

II

The pathologist’s preliminary report was as expected. Magdalon Schelderup had died of heart failure, caused by an extreme allergic reaction to nuts. He had been in good
shape for his age, but had no chance of surviving such an attack. His heart and body were otherwise those of a sixty-nine-year-old man who had worked hard all his life, and the nut allergy had
obviously been extremely severe.

The reports in the newspaper did not pose any problems, but neither did they help to solve the mystery. The Labour Party conference dominated the headlines. The communist paper,
Friheten
, had a report on the front page under the headline ‘Key capitalist murdered’ and hinted at a conspiracy amongst ‘Norway’s corrupt capitalist elite’.
Other newspapers were more cautious and waited to see the consequences of the death, but instead wrote reams about the deceased’s wealth and earlier profiles.
Aftenposten
was the
only paper to publish a list of the supper guests and concluded its report by saying that ‘we are delighted to confirm that the already famous Detective Inspector Kolbjørn
“K2” Kristiansen has been assigned to the case, and wait with bated breath to see whether he can scale the heights of his previous success in this apparently very mysterious
case’. I read this with great satisfaction, but also with increasing anxiety, knowing how far I could fall.

I then swiftly put the papers to one side in order to pursue Patricia’s priorities, moving from the matter of Magdalon Schelderup’s will to the question of what sort of letter he had
thought of sending on Monday to one or several of his Sunday supper guests.

There were no unsent letters to be found in the deceased’s office or bedroom. Both rooms were so orderly that it was hard to imagine that anything important or current could be hidden
there. Magdalon Schelderup’s office housed a bookshelf with an array of books about business, but no archives of any note.

Sandra Schelderup told me curtly on the telephone that she did not know of any unsent letters from recent days, but also that she did not often ask about any major or minor details of the
business. Her husband had on one occasion joked that she need not worry her pretty head about his business drive, only his sex drive. In other words, I would have to ask the manager about any
important documents related to the business, and his secretary about more trivial matters.

Mrs Schelderup sounded somewhat bitter and tense today, but I could understand that. She perked up when I mentioned the will and said that she looked forward to a swift conclusion. She hesitated
for a moment, but then agreed to the will being read at Schelderup Hall at three o’clock that afternoon.

The manager, Herlofsen, was in the company’s office in the centre of town and answered the telephone on the second ring. He had nothing of any interest to add in the way of unsent letters.
He could confirm that any business documents were promptly sent to his office. However, there had not been anything of any significance in recent weeks, and outgoing post that was not related to
business was not his department. In short, there was unfortunately a zero per cent chance that he could help me on this occasion other than recommending that I contact Magdalon Schelderup’s
secretary.

I promised to do this, but added that I needed to ask him some personal questions. There was a few moments’ silence on the other end of the receiver. Then I offered to come and see him in
his office in town. He swiftly replied that he would rather come to see me at the police station in order to avoid upsetting the staff in the office. He asked if it would be possible for him to
come during his lunch break, so that there would be no unnecessary disruption to the day’s work. I immediately said yes to this, and he promised to be there at midday. Then he put down the
receiver with remarkable haste.

The telephone rang for a long time in Sørum. However, Synnøve Jensen managed to pick it up on the seventh ring and sounded so out of breath that I immediately imagined she had
rushed down the stairs from the bathroom to get it. Even when she managed to catch her breath, she knew nothing about any letters that Magdalon Schelderup had planned to send on Monday. She had
only written two letters for him last week and both were standard letters of congratulations that she had sent the same day. If he had any letters pending that he had written himself, they would
normally be left on or in his desk.

I immediately picked up on the formulation ‘would normally be left’ and in a slightly sharper tone asked where else such letters might be left if he did not want to leave them on or
in his desk. Her voice seemed to fade as she answered. The feeling that I was on to something got stronger.

‘Well, then they would be locked in the metal box that he kept here.’

She almost whispered the last words, before she mustered her courage and continued in a louder, faster voice.

‘But I have not opened it and have no idea if there is anything in it right now, or what on earth it might be. He made a point that the box should always be locked and that it should never
be opened unless he was here. So I have done as he said,’ she added, timorously.

She was undoubtedly thinking the same as me. In other words, that the ground was about to collapse beneath her. Following a few seconds of intense silence she spoke again, with rising
desperation in her voice.

‘Goodness, how silly I am. I should of course have mentioned the box to you yesterday. The death was such a shock. I really did not think I might have anything important in my house, and
nor did you ask . . .’

I did immediately ask, however, when Magdalon Schelderup had last been there and who had keys to the box. She replied, tearfully, that he had last been there on Friday. And, as far as she knew,
there were only two keys to the box. One had been on his key ring, and she had the other one in her hand.

She offered to open the box straight away, if that was what I wished. Instead, I asked her to stay at home and not to touch the box until I got there.

III

It took almost three-quarters of an hour before I found myself outside the right smallholding in Sørum. The contrast with Schelderup Hall in Gulleråsen could
scarcely have been greater. The land amounted to not much more than a potato patch in front of the house. And the house itself was small and subsiding. It looked as if it had been built by amateurs
and a carpenter with an unsteady hand.

Synnøve Jensen was just as ordinary and friendly as she had been before. Having first looked out of the window to check that it was me, she then opened the door immediately and gave me a
brave smile. She had put some coffee and cakes out on the small living-room table. The ground floor consisted of a small kitchen and almost equally small living room. A stepladder-like stair with
ten treads led up to the first floor, where I could see three doors, all closed.

My hostess waved her hand around, as if to apologize.

‘My home is not much to boast about. But it is all I have to offer my child, and all that my poor father had to offer me. He was a skilled carpenter once, or so said all those who had
known him a long time. But then the bottle took him. Apparently he got the material for his own house from a building that had burnt down.’

I nodded with understanding. It was hard not to feel sympathy for this crooked little house and its pregnant owner. But all my attention was now focused on the metal box that was standing with
its locked secrets on the kitchen table.

‘I swear that I have not even touched it since you rang. But I did open it last week, so my fingerprints will be on it, all the same,’ she added, hastily.

I lifted the metal box onto the living-room table and asked her not to look while I opened it. Synnøve Jensen nodded gravely and handed me the key straight away. Her hand was trembling
when I touched it. She demonstratively turned her head away, eyes fixed on the floor, while I unlocked the box.

I don’t know whether I actually expected to find a letter in the box or not, even less what kind of letter I then expected to find. But I certainly had not anticipated finding what I
did.

There was a stack of letters that nearly filled the box.

There were ten letters there. All had been sealed and addressed by hand. The letter on top, which I saw as soon as I opened the box, was, to my surprise, addressed to ‘Miss Synnøve
Jensen’. The second was addressed to ‘Fredrik Schelderup Esq.’, the third to ‘Leonard Schelderup Esq.’ and the fourth to ‘Miss Maria Irene Schelderup’.
Then all the others followed in succession. The letters in the box were addressed to the ten guests present at Magdalon Schelderup’s last lunch.

The temptation to open one of the letters immediately was irresistible. They all looked the same, so I started with the one on top. It contained photostat copies of two documents. One was the
will that had been read to me by the lawyer, Edvard Rønning. The other was a very short letter, which said the following:

The few lines must have flickered in front of my eyes for several minutes. Apparently Patricia had been right. Magdalon Schelderup had planned to send an important letter on
Monday, either before or after his meeting with me. He had after all written the letter and prepared ten identical copies to be sent. But I could not quite grasp what the intention and purpose
was.