The doctor himself was a pleasant surprise when he finally came on the line. He was so unbureaucratic and informative with his answers that I almost made up for the time lost on the engaged signal and the pedant nurse. Yes, he had been Magdalon Schelderup’s personal doctor for many years, twenty-one to be precise. Yes, Schelderup had been in generally good shape both physically and mentally. Yes, something dramatic had happened to his health a year ago. Again, to be precise, on 8 July 1968.
The doctor had noted the date partly because it was his best-known patient, and partly because it was the first time he had experienced a patient having a heart attack in his waiting room. The nurse had called the doctor when she discovered Schelderup sitting almost lifeless with his eyes closed on a chair in the waiting room, mumbling incomprehensible words. He had been treated quickly and the situation had not been life-threatening. At his own wish, Schelderup had gone home after only a few hours in hospital. The heart attack had, however, revealed serious heart disease which meant that Schelderup was not likely to live much more than two or three years longer, with the risk of a new and more serious heart attack within the next twelve to sixteen months.
Nor had the doctor ever known a patient to receive such grave news with such calm as Magdalon Schelderup showed. He had later come to several routine check-ups, but had never asked any questions or made any comments as to how he felt about the situation. He had not revealed who he had told about his heart, but the doctor had the impression that he had kept it to himself.
My final question to the helpful doctor was whether he had heard anything of what Magdalon Schelderup had said when he was semi-conscious after the heart attack. The doctor remarked with a merry little laugh that that was something that Magdalon Schelderup had also asked, a few hours after the attack. He could only tell me what he had told him – and that was that the name ‘Synnøve’ was the only thing that had been clear to anyone in the midst of all the incomprehensible burble. Schelderup had commented with an almost joking smile that it was, in principle, perhaps not such a good thing to mention your secretary rather than your wife, but at least no great secrets had been revealed.
In short, Patricia had once again been right. Something dramatic had happened in Magdalon Schelderup’s life in the summer of 1968, which provided a credible explanation as to the origins of his first will. However, any deeper significance in relation to his dramatic death in May 1969 was still unclear to me, to say the least.
My ponderings on the cases from the war were suddenly interrupted by a heavy pounding on the door. A breathless constable came into the room and, obviously impressed, informed me that they had just received a phone call from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The foreign minister, Jonas Lykke, was leaving on a trip to Eastern Europe the following morning, but would take the time to see me this afternoon if I could go there immediately.
X
The foreign minister, Jonas Lykke, was smaller than he looked on the television, but otherwise more or less as I expected.
The former Resistance fighter and prime minister was what could be described as corpulent with greying hair. But his gaze was still intense, his voice was dynamic and his handshake was firm. Sitting behind a large desk in his office, Jonas Lykke radiated precisely the calm and dignity that one would expect of a foreign minister.
There were two tall piles of paper in front of him. To my surprise, they both appeared to be about the mandate possibilities in the up-and-coming general election, rather than the day’s foreign policy issues.
‘I must say that I am not entirely sure how I can be of use with regards to your ongoing murder investigation. But I will of course do everything I can to help you,’ he said after a couple of moments, in his characteristic dialect.
I took the hint that the foreign minister’s time was limited and promptly launched into a hastily improvised list of questions.
In answer to my first question about the treason trials after the war, the foreign minister apologized that he unfortunately knew nothing about them. He had spent the final years of the war in Sweden. He denied any knowledge of operations carried out by Resistance groups in Oslo during that time, and he had only heard about the ‘tragedy on Liberation Day’ after the event. From what he had read, there was something very odd about the circumstances surrounding Ole Kristian Wiig’s death. But legally the case appeared to be cut and dried and had quickly been overshadowed by the trials against leading Nazis.
Lykke sat lost in thought fora few moments after he had mentioned this, but then quickly returned to the present. He concluded in a grave voice that he unfortunately could not be of much help to me with regard to the war either. He had met both Magdalon Schelderup and Petter Johannes Wendelboe several times later, but did not know either of them particularly well and had never discussed with them what went on in the war. At the time, Schelderup had been more interested in the Cold War and contingency plans for a possible Soviet invasion. Even after fifty, he seemed to be a man who preferred to guard against possible future scenarios rather than dwell on the past.
Jonas Lykke became obviously more animated and informative when the subject turned to the Conservative parliamentary group after the war. In fact, I thought to myself that he was remarkably informal given that he was still a senior politician. He remarked with a quiet, dry chuckle that Magdalon Schelderup had come across as ‘unusually intelligent, unusually clear-sighted, unusually conservative and unusually cynical, even for a Conservative member of parliament for Akershus or Oslo!’
I ventured to ask why, then, Schelderup’s career in national politics had been so short-lived. Lykke answered with another gentle smile that that problem had in fact been Magdalon Schelderup’s clear-sightedness. He quite obviously preferred to be in a position of power and was realistic enough to admit that it would be many years before the Conservatives would ever form a government. When he stood down in 1953 he was fifty-four years old and had decided to concentrate on his extremely successful business empire.
It had become standard practice that the war was not mentioned unnecessarily when Magdalon Schelderup was present. But the court case from 1945 had been mentioned now and again when he was not there. Lykke added with a dry laugh that the Conservatives had a habit of dealing with sensitive issues in this way. However, he did not remember the issue from the war being raised in connection with the question of Schelderup’s renomination in 1953. Lykke had certainly never mentioned it himself at that time.
Continuing in this jolly and frank vein, the foreign minister added that he had not been sorry when Schelderup decided not to stand again in the general election.
‘We needed a right-wing coalition, and he was not someone who promoted that. He was far too conservative for those on the left, and too urban for members of the Centre Party. And the Christian Democrats strongly disapproved his divorces.’
I understood what he was saying and had to reluctantly concur with Jonas Lyke that there was not much of relevance to the murder inquiry here either. As a politician, Magdalon Schelderup had been respected, but not liked, not even within his own party. He appeared to have left politics of his own volition, and if it was the case that he was pushed, it certainly seemed to have nothing to do with events during the war. I did not think that Jonas Lykke knew anything more of importance about the war, and was fairly sure that if he did, I would not be able to wheedle it from him.