Simonsen gave up the topic of the brothel owner then and asked, “What about the other housemaids? I assume they weren’t quite as impossible as Agnete Bahn.”
Pauline Berg answered tonelessly, “No, they weren’t. The majority remember their time with the Falkenborg family well, and paint quite a uniform picture of the household. Alf Falkenborg, Andreas’s father, was a domestic tyrant, in a big way. He and he alone ruled the home, and the mother was completely cowed. He didn’t hesitate to give her a good thrashing occasionally, whereas he never laid a hand on his son. He also degraded his wife by openly having relationships with other women, even in their home, including with at least three of the maids we contacted, but I’ll return to that later. Elisabeth Falkenborg was hardly a lovable person either. Her husband’s infidelity, and perhaps simple jealousy too, resulted in her taking out her anger on whichever maid was employed at the time. Nothing they did was good enough. She’d peck around after them, just to find something to complain about.”
Troulsen asked, “Why didn’t they leave? It must have been unbearable.”
“There were a few who did. But for many of them it was not that easy. Two, for example, came from Funen and had no desire to go home any time before they had to. Besides, the Falkenborgs paid well, at least fifteen per cent above the norm for those days, and beyond that several of the maids were duped.”
She took a sip of water from a bottle, glanced through her notes and continued.
“Andreas Falkenborg feared his father but at the same time looked up to him. He was what the boy aspired to be, but also a potential threat—first and foremost to Andreas’s mother. At school Andreas got by reasonably well, but no more than that. He often brought friends home to play but the maids describe him as prissy, soft and childish for his age. In other respects the boy’s treatment of the maids was arrogant and snooty, a reflection of his parents’, and he told tales on the women to his mother at the slightest excuse. In general he was most attached to Elisabeth and slept in her bed until he was almost eight years old. The parents had separate bedrooms, by the way, I forgot to mention that.”
Troulsen said, “Yes, it sounds like a recipe for a psychopath.”
“And it gets worse. If Andreas did not live up to the demands his father placed on him, especially when it came to doing well at school, Alf took it out on his wife. He considered their son’s schoolwork to be her responsibility, so she had to pay when Andreas did badly. On at least two occasions the boy had to witness his mother being punished after he came home with mediocre marks in a couple of subjects.”
Pauline Berg stopped speaking briefly and took another sip of water.
“Yes, there are certainly goodies here for the psychologist. But I have another little gem too—Elisabeth Falkenborg was obsessed with the household staff having short nails, and if they couldn’t keep them in check themselves, then she did it for them. One of Andreas Falkenborg’s favourite tricks, which he learned as a little boy, was to maintain that they’d scratched him, and then his mother was right there with the scissors, to his great delight.”
Simonsen looked at his watch, a sure sign for them to speed things up. “A picture is beginning to form, you might say. How were the maids duped?”
Pauline Berg closed her notebook. She knew that part by heart.
“Into having sex with their boss. Well, that applies to three of them, and possibly more. None of them was specific about it over the phone so we’ll go out and visit them to get the whole story. Maybe Agnete Bahn was also taken in.”
“We’ll have to find that out on Monday,” said Simonsen, disappearing from his office without so much as a goodbye.
CHAPTER 25
Pauline Berg was enjoying her dinner with the psychologist. His surname was Madsen, but for some reason he would not reveal his first name. She got no further with him than E. Madsen, and as the evening progressed was running out of Christian names starting with E. During dessert she thought of two more.
“Ebert or Esben?”
“Why don’t you just enjoy your ice cream while you tell me a little more about yourself?”
“But is that correct?”
“No.”
“Neither of them?”
“Neither of them.”
“Hey, what about Emmerik?”
“Good Lord, you can’t be called that unless you’re a canary.”
“I promise not to laugh.”
“People always say that, and then they laugh anyway.”
“Not me. I won’t laugh, no matter what it is. I swear by all that’s sacred.”
“Forget it, I don’t think you’re particularly religious. What was it you wanted to ask me about?”
Pauline Berg set down her spoon.
“Listen now, you’re really sweet, but I can’t date a man I can only call Madsen. It sounds like something out of a nineteenth-century play. Tell me now, then I’ll tell you what my question is.”
“That’s an unreasonable trade, you’ll have to think of something better.”