Satellite People - [24]

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: