And so I had to admit to myself, if no one else, that my theory that it was Synnøve Jensen who had paid a visit to Leonard Schelderup’s bed had come crashing down like a house of cards. Without any great hope of a breakthrough, I asked if they could examine the other rooms and also start to compare the new fingerprints with those registered in our archives. The former would take another day, the latter possibly more.
The time was no more than three in the afternoon. For want of more clues to follow up in relation to Leonard Schelderup, I turned to the questions Patricia had given me regarding his father.
Finding Magdalon Schelderup’s doctor proved to be as simple as finding his telephone number. I was given both in a two-minute telephone conversation with Sandra Schelderup. Getting through to the doctor was, however, not so easy. To begin with, the telephone was engaged for ten minutes, but the problems began in earnest when someone finally answered. It took me five minutes at least to convince the super-pedant of a nurse that I really was a detective inspector. Then it took a further ten minutes to persuade her that a murder investigation had to take precedence over a consultation with a patient, even when the patient was over forty-five and had a blood pressure that was several per cent more than average.
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.
