Satellite People - [29]

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.’