With as much sensitivity as I could, I asked Ingrid Schelderup the one question that I needed an answer to here and now: had she found both the body and the gun exactly where they were lying now? She dried a tear before answering, but then gave a decisive nod. She had not touched the revolver and she had only gingerly touched her son on the neck and wrist to feel for any sign of life. The front door was unlocked when she arrived, she told me. When she discovered that, she was almost paralysed by fear. Then she had opened the door and seen the gun without hearing any sounds of life from the flat and had immediately realized that he had been murdered during the night.
It was easy to draw some conclusions, having looked around the flat. Leonard Schelderup had obviously been shot, presumably with a revolver that someone had stolen from his father’s house and brazenly left on the floor after the murder. Given Leonard Schelderup’s intense fear the night before, it was unthinkable that he might have forgotten to lock the door before going to bed. He must therefore have been murdered by a guest who either had a key or whom he had let in. But there was little more to deduce from the scene of the crime. Even if the list of potential murderers was limited to the nine remaining guests who had been at supper in Schelderup Hall when his father had been murdered two days earlier, it was impossible to exclude any of them.
I looked at Ingrid Schelderup without saying anything. She looked back at me, equally silent. Her eyes were not only sad, but frightened. I got the feeling that we were thinking the same thing. Namely, that it would seem Leonard Schelderup had been shot in much the same way that members of his late father’s Resistance group had been, but twenty-eight years later.
II
One detail in Leonard Schelderup’s flat quickly caught my attention. The two chairs on opposite sides of the kitchen table did not give away much in themselves, even if he did live on his own. But the kitchen table was set for two. The coffee cups served to reinforce the impression that young Schelderup had sat here the night before with a guest. When he called me at around ten o’clock, the guest had not yet arrived, or he had chosen not to tell me. There was not much more to be drawn from it. One of the cups had been used, but the cup and plate on the other side of the table were untouched. I was fairly convinced that Leonard Schelderup’s guest had been sitting on that side.
However, the most remarkable discovery was in the bedroom. It seemed unlikely that Leonard Schelderup had gone to bed, only to get up again and get dressed before being shot in his living room in the middle of the night. And yet it would appear that there had been considerable activity in his bed the day before. The pillows and duvet were in a tangle and the sheet was half pulled off the mattress. It might of course be the case that Leonard Schelderup had simply not made his bed when he got up yesterday morning, but his mother insisted that he was a very tidy and good boy who always made his bed as soon as he got up. There were no visible physical traces of sexual intercourse on the covers. The crucial proof that someone else had not only been in the flat in the past twenty-four hours, but also in the bed, lay on the pillow. The forensic team found two curly blond hairs that clearly came from Leonard Schelderup’s head, but also three longer, darker hairs that were quite obviously not his.
As I stood there looking at the three dark hairs, it seemed to me that the case had now leapt forwards towards a possible solution. I felt a stab of sympathy for the dark-haired Synnøve Jensen, but the evidence was certainly stacking up against her.
Ingrid Schelderup held her poise and control throughout our conversation and the examination of the flat. But then the tragedy apparently struck her. Sitting alone on the sofa, she suddenly broke down and collapsed in a sobbing heap. I managed to coax her back up intoa sitting position. It was of course no easy thing to comfort a woman who has just found her only son shot and murdered. In the end, the constable offered to drive her home and to stay with her until she was given some tranquillizers.
At half past eight, I was sitting on my own in Leonard Schelderup’s flat, with my dead host lying eternally silent and cold on the floor in the living room. My eyes rested on him while I used his telephone to call the main police station, who promised to send down some more forensic scientists to examine both him and the flat. His body was now finally released from the tension of the past few days. But his face was tense and frightened, even in death.
I sat there looking at the dead man. There seemed to be no way around it; all circumstances now seemed to point to Synnøve Jensen. Though why she should kill her other lover and fellow conspirator, if that was what Leonard Schelderup had been, was very unclear. But the hairs on the pillow were a strong indication that that was the case.
III
I did not need to go far to question my first witness. Leonard Schelderup’s neighbour was the obvious starting point and as luck would have it, she was at home.
Halldis Merete Abrahamsen was, in her own words, the seventy-nine-year-old widow of a successful pharmacist. She was well off and her mind and all her senses were still in perfectly good working order. And I could absolutely believe that. It was also obvious, however, that her social life and horizons had shrunk somewhat since her husband had died and the children had moved out. The pictures, books and furniture were all those of a woman who spent an increasing amount of time at home, with her thoughts drifting further and further back in time.
This was a sad situation for Halldis Merete Abrahamsen, but very good for the investigation, as she seemed to have developed a keen interest in her neighbours instead. A small pair of binoculars placed to hand on the windowsill in the kitchen confirmed my suspicions in this regard. And the young Leonard Schelderup held a special position amongst the neighbours. This was due no doubt to the fact that he lived in the flat next door, but perhaps even more to his name and family fortune. Mrs Abrahamsen proved she had an impressive memory when she rattled off her neighbour’s family tree and the most recent estimates of the family’s wealth.
‘One still reads the papers and takes an interest in those around one,’ as she put it.
The widow first of all expressed her shock at the news about the ‘handsome young man’s tragic death’, and then proceeded to tell me everything about him. As a neighbour he had been very considerate and never disturbed her in any way. He left for work early in the morning and often came home late at night, because of his training sessions. Other than his mother, he seldom had visitors, and on the rare occasions that he did, the guests all left early without making any noise in terms of music or other boisterous behaviour.
She then lowered her voice discreetly and confided in me that a mysterious man had come to see him in the evening several times this autumn. As she remembered him, he was a young, dark-haired man, but she was a little uncertain of his age as he had a beard, and was wearing a hat and a winter coat with the collar turned up. ‘As if he was doing his best not to be recognized by anyone. Isn’t that rather odd?’ she added in a whisper. The only thing she could say with any certainty about the guest was that it was a man, and that he was above average height.
I dutifully noted down all the information about this apparent stranger. It was clear that her description did not fit any of the guests from Magdalon Schelderup’s last supper, unless it was Fredrik who had come wearing a false beard. On the other hand, it seemed unlikely that the murder of Leonard Schelderup had nothing to do with the murder of his father the day before. With the exception of his family and their fortune, Leonard Schelderup appeared to have lived a quiet life.