Once again it was Sandra Schelderup’s voice I heard at the other end. At first I feared that there had been another death, this time involving Maria Irene. But there was no mention of catastrophe and no angry outburst. Her voice was controlled and in no way unfriendly.
She apologized for calling me so late. But she was suddenly unsure about something that was potentially of great importance, so she simply wanted to check whether we had found her husband’s sizeable key ring, either in his pocket or his office.
I replied, as was the truth, that we had not found a key ring of any size, and that she would of course have been told if we had removed anything from the house.
There was silence on the line between us for a moment. Total silence.
‘But…’ Sandra Schelderup eventually said, when the silence became unbearable. Then she went on in a hesitant voice.
‘But it is not here. So someone must have taken Magdalon’s key ring. And it has keys to all the rooms, cupboards and cars here at Schelderup Hall on it, as well as keys to several other people’s homes. Magdalon liked to have keys to the homes of as many of those close to him as possible; it was part of his need to control.’
I felt a chill spread through my body and straight away asked which other keys were on the ring. Sandra Schelderup said that she believed he had the keys to both his sons’ homes, his sister’s and his ex-wife’s, possibly also Herlofsen’s, but probably not to his mistress’s and almost certainly not to the Wendelboes’.
I promised to follow this up immediately, and the first step in doing this was to ask Sandra Schelderup if she would like police protection at the house. She wavered, but then said that it was not urgent. It was perhaps more important to warn the others as soon as possible. I agreed with her and therefore finished the conversation. I did, however, add that she should give my regards to Maria Irene, which she promised to do.
I still did not trust Sandra Schelderup. Though she did seem to be getting better as the investigation went on. But I was by now already dialling the first number.
It did not take long to phone around. Mr Wendelboe confirmed that Schelderup did not have a key to his house – ‘not even during the war did he have one’. He denied any knowledge of the missing key ring on the part of himself and his wife.
Synnøve Jensen stated simply that her dead lover had not had a key to her house. Magdalon had at one point asked to have a key, but had unexpectedly backed down when she explained that she only had one and reassured him that her door would always be open for him: all he had to do was knock.
Ingrid Schelderup was at home and sounded relatively calm when I spoke to her. She confirmed that her former husband had a key to her flat. He had asked for it shortly after their divorce and she had not wanted to say no. For many years, she had hoped that he would one day use it but, alas, that had never happened, she added with a mournful sigh. Ingrid Schelderup promised to put on the safety chain, and, if possible, to change the lock in the morning. In the meantime, she would be very grateful for police protection. She was still shaken by the events of the past few days, so I arranged fora policeman to go to her house before I phoned anyone else.
Magdalena Schelderup was, understandably enough, not so pleased to hear my voice, but thawed as soon as she realized that I had phoned to warn her that the keys had been lost. About which she seemed to be remarkably calm. Her door was already reinforced by a security lock and an extra latch and padlock. It would appear that Magdalena Schelderup was the only one who was cheered by the disappearance of the keys.
Hans Herlofsen was curt and bitter in his reply that Magdalon Schelderup had always had a key to his house. It was the symbolic subjugation that pained and frustrated him most, but he was sadly in no position to oppose it. He did not trust what Magdalon Schelderup might do in a crisis, and had also secured his door with an extra padlock. Now that his son’s family were living on the ground floor, he reckoned the risk of any danger to be ‘well under 10 per cent’. Even if you disregarded Leonard Schelderup and the murderer, he was still one of eight possible victims should there be any more attacks. And in any case, he could not fathom who would be interested in killing him, now that Magdalon Schelderup himself was dead. In short, Hans Herlofsen also seemed to take the news with relatively good humour, given the circumstances.
Fredrik Schelderup, however, was in a foul mood, even given the circumstances. He sounded as though he had had a glass or three to steady his nerves already, even before I phoned. Whether it was the number of glasses, a late reaction to his brother’s death, or whether it was because there was a threat to his own safety was hard to say – though I strongly suspected it was the latter. He certainly lost his self-control when I told him that the keys were missing. It was a violent and in part incomprehensible outburst, the gist of which was that the police should have discovered this before and that surely, in 1969, a man should be able to feel safe in his own home, especially in Bygdøy. There was a loud bang when he threw the receiver onto the table.
He was, however, more subdued when he picked it up again a few seconds later. Despite the alcohol in his blood, Fredrik Schelderup was almost his usual self-centred and relaxed self. When he heard my offer of police protection until he got a new lock, he immediately accepted, but then added that the policeman standing guard must not stop two beautiful young ladies who might drop by, as they had nothing whatsoever to do with the case. I mentioned that there were a couple of other things that I would like to ask him about, but that it would perhaps be better to talk tomorrow when he was more sober. He laughed and signed off with a cheerful, ‘Here’s to that.’
After I had arranged for a policeman to go to his house, I sat there deep in thought. It was not hard to understand that Fredrik Schelderup was under enormous stress following the murders of his father and brother. But it felt as though I had seen a glimpse of another even more egotistical and slightly less jolly Fredrik Schelderup on the phone. All of the nine remaining guests from Magdalon Schelderup’s last supper had now been informed about the missing key ring. They had all denied any knowledge of its whereabouts. It seemed highly improbable that none of them knew. But when I eventually went to sleep around midnight on Wednesday, 14 May 1969, I was no closer to knowing who of the nine had the keys and what they planned to do with them.
DAY SIX: Long Day’s Journey Into Night
I
My start to Thursday, 15 May 1969 was certainly far from the best. I had scarcely got into the office before the phone began to ring. It was my boss, who asked me to come to his office immediately. I knew straight away that something was wrong. As 17 May was Norway’s constitution day, the day’s newspapers were, in preparation for the national holiday, dominated by advance reports about the launch of Apollo 10 in the USA and the launch of Thor Heyerdahl’s Ra expedition in Morocco. The short, concerned notices that stated there were still no developments in the ‘difficult and important’ investigation into the murders of ‘multi-millionaire Magdalon Schelderup and athletics star Leonard Schelderup’ did, however, warn that a possible media storm might be brewing.
Even though my boss was in the better of his two possible moods, this was, as anticipated, not a pleasant conversation. I understood that he and the rest of the station were, following the murder of Leonard Schelderup, under mounting pressure to get some concrete results. This in turn meant that there were others internally who were also increasingly impatient to have the case solved. The question as to whether there was anything new to report was therefore becoming urgent. If there was still nothing concrete, then there might be a need to increase the number of people involved in the investigation.