Again I nodded to show my understanding. It all sounded believable enough.
‘So no one in his family knew about this?’
He shook his head, tentatively.
‘Not as far as I know. Some of them may have had their suspicions, but Leo thought that they still knew nothing. He was afraid that someone might discover us, and that his siblings and stepmother might even use their suspicions to turn his father against him. And he was worried that his mother would find it hard to accept. I am absolutely certain that he told no one, not even his mother. It was largely because he could not bear the thought of the pressure from his family – he feared that more than losing the money.’
He gave a deep sigh, and looked longingly out of the window as he carried on. Suddenly, despite his size and muscle, he reminded me of a small caged bird.
‘Leo commented only a few weeks ago that if he only inherited a third of the money when his father died, then we could let the world think what it liked and escape to a more tolerant city in a more tolerant country for a few months. Somewhere where we could walk hand in hand in the streets, like other couples who are in love, and not worry what other people thought of us.’
He still had a dreamy look in his eye when he turned back from the window. Then he recognized the danger and had to backtrack.
‘Please don’t misunderstand. I think it was never more than a romantic dream for him to comfort himself with when life got too demanding. If he had inherited the money, we could both have left our jobs easily enough, but it would still have been very hard to leave our families and sports, certainly if we ever wanted to return. I am absolutely sure that Leo did not kill his father. Off the tracks, Leo was the kindest man on earth. I remember the qualms he had after killing a wasp in the window last autumn. That is what I liked most about him. He was a good, kind man through and through, whose only wish was to be allowed to live his life in peace without creating problems for others.’
I slipped in a quick question as to whether, only hours before his own death, Leonard Schelderup had said anything about his father’s murder. His guest shook his head in apology.
‘I told him last night that I would always love him, even if it turned out that he had killed his father. But all he said was that it was not him and that he had no idea who put the nuts in his father’s food. He stood there in the middle of his living room and repeated it again and again, for the last time just as I left. They were the last words I heard him say.’
