The Writing on the Wall

One

WHEN ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON in February Judge HC Brandt, age seventy, was found dead in one of the better hotels in town, wearing nothing but flimsy women’s underwear, rumours soon began to spread.

Each fresh revelation brought bursts of raucous laughter from the press tables at Wesselsttien Pub, and there was no shortage of details embroidered beyond all measure. I too received my fair share of speculations from my old school friend, Paul Finckel, also a reporter, over a quiet beer and a sandwich at the Exchange a few days later.

The fact that the judge had been found in women’s underwear was bad enough in itself. There was no shortage of suggestions as to what colour the flimsy garments might have been. Pink and red were the firm favourites, although quite a few people stubbornly backed lime green. Yet in the end, the general consensus was that they were most likely black.

Who might have been with him in the hotel room was also the subject of intense speculation. Not a soul believed he’d been there alone.

One faction was convinced it must have been a man, since it was the judge himself who had been wearing women’s clothes. But as nobody had ever heard the judge’s name linked to the gay community, and as he was also married and a grandfather, if he did turn out to be gay, his cover as a closet queen was blown wide apart and no mistake. And who could say for certain that his putative partner didn’t belong to the same group? If he did, the press tables weren’t short of hunches as to who it might be but lacked any concrete proof.

Some were adamant that the judge had been having an affair for years with one of his female colleagues, and a whisper of hushed scandal ran through those present when the name was mentioned.

At tables with only male reporters a few women’s names from their own inner circles were mentioned, among them a prominent journalist from one of the Oslo dailies and another, not quite so well known, from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s Today programme.

Others merely shrugged their shoulders, suggesting that the judge had simply been there with a prostitute, male or female, who cared? Another half pint, please.

No one speculated any further as to the actual cause of death.

Most of them probably assumed it was heart-related.