“But you said she was hit often.”
“Yes, she really was. At least once a month, but why I don’t know. Maybe he simply liked hitting her, who cares? I never thought that much about it, either then or later.”
“Why didn’t she leave him?”
“No idea. But where could she go?”
Simonsen shrugged and dropped the subject.
“You didn’t like Elisabeth Falkenborg?”
“I didn’t like any of them, not the husband, the wife or the son.”
“Because?”
“She was so unbelievably arrogant, along with the fact that nothing I did was good enough. I had to pay the price for her beatings. Among other things. And Andreas was a quick learner. Sometimes he sneaked up behind me to see whether I was cutting corners on the cleaning, for example, and then he tattled to his mother. That was one of his favourite pastimes.”
“What happened then?”
“She yelled at me. Yes, it doesn’t sound that bad, but she would degrade me so that I almost cried. She was also after me constantly about my appearance. I was supposed to wear this maid’s uniform with a silly little apron tied around my waist, and it was supposed to look laundered and ironed the whole day, even after I’d had it on for eight hours, and that was practically impossible. My hair was supposed to be set neatly, she checked that too.”
“What about makeup?”
“Totally forbidden.”
“And nail polish?”
“The same. That sort of thing was completely forbidden.”
Simonsen tried pausing in the hope that he had put relevant associations in motion. Agnete Bahn continued speaking.
“She was completely hysterical about my nails. They had to be cut short and completely clean, I had to show them to her often. That’s one of the things I remember best about the wife, how I stood in front of her looking down and showing my spread fingers for judgment. It was so humiliating.”
“Did she cut your nails if she wasn’t satisfied?”
“No, that wasn’t necessary, but she probably would have if she’d thought of it.”
“Did Andreas Falkenborg watch when you were being inspected?”
“He might have occasionally. It wasn’t something she tried to hide, if that’s what you mean.”
“You mentioned that you were sexually abused. I assume that it was by Alf Falkenborg.”
“Yes, that’s correct. The wife was not active in that way, but she knew what was going on. To that extent she was also involved in deceiving me, but I only understood that when I was older. Although—well, she was probably forced to, otherwise he would have beaten her.”
“How were you deceived?”
“I forged cheques, but not to steal. I didn’t swipe so much as a krone for as long as I was there. That would have been impossible anyway, because every ?re was accounted for when I was done shopping, the wife made sure of that.”
She stopped talking then and Simonsen said, “You forged cheques?”
“Yes, eleven to be exact. On Fridays I was supposed to do the grocery shopping for the week, and the husband always wrote a cheque to me—for four hundred kroner, I recall, and that was a lot of money back then. The wife was gone that day. I don’t remember why, but that’s how it was. So one Friday he forgot to write the cheque, and he called from the factory and told me, but to avoid having to come all the way home, he asked me to write one myself. The first time he had to instruct me thoroughly, over the phone that is, about where the key to his desk drawer was, about the fountain pen and how to do it in general. But he took his time, the piece of shit.”
“What about his handwriting?”
“It wasn’t hard. He wrote in block letters, and his signature was neat cursive, probably for the same reason. Obviously I didn’t think for a moment that what I was doing was illegal. I mean, when he was the one who asked me to do it.”
“It wasn’t either, not something you would be convicted of.”
“Shut up! I was so naive. Well, I can’t do it over now, and later I learned a few tricks myself.”
“I believe that. Then I suppose at some point he accused you of forgery?”
“No, she did. The wife, that is.”
“She was the one who accused you?”
“Yep. She was the instigator. She had lined up all eleven cheques on the dining-room table and carefully ordered them. Well, all in all it added up to almost five thousand kroner, and that was a real fortune, don’t you follow me?”