The telephone rang for a long time in Sørum. However, Synnøve Jensen managed to pick it up on the seventh ring and sounded so out of breath that I immediately imagined she had rushed down the stairs from the bathroom to get it. Even when she managed to catch her breath, she knew nothing about any letters that Magdalon Schelderup had planned to send on Monday. She had only written two letters for him last week and both were standard letters of congratulations that she had sent the same day. If he had any letters pending that he had written himself, they would normally be left on or in his desk.
I immediately picked up on the formulation ‘would normally be left’ and in a slightly sharper tone asked where else such letters might be left if he did not want to leave them on or in his desk. Her voice seemed to fade as she answered. The feeling that I was on to something got stronger.
‘Well, then they would be locked in the metal box that he kept here.’
She almost whispered the last words, before she mustered her courage and continued in a louder, faster voice.
‘But I have not opened it and have no idea if there is anything in it right now, or what on earth it might be. He made a point that the box should always be locked and that it should never be opened unless he was here. So I have done as he said,’ she added, timorously.
She was undoubtedly thinking the same as me. In other words, that the ground was about to collapse beneath her. Following a few seconds of intense silence she spoke again, with rising desperation in her voice.
‘Goodness, how silly I am. I should of course have mentioned the box to you yesterday. The death was such a shock. I really did not think I might have anything important in my house, and nor did you ask…’
I did immediately ask, however, when Magdalon Schelderup had last been there and who had keys to the box. She replied, tearfully, that he had last been there on Friday. And, as far as she knew, there were only two keys to the box. One had been on his key ring, and she had the other one in her hand.
She offered to open the box straight away, if that was what I wished. Instead, I asked her to stay at home and not to touch the box until I got there.
