Alberte Goldschmid–David Goldschmid Relationship

Alberte Goldschmid and David Goldschmid are presented as unusually close twins, separated in age by only seven minutes. Their relationship is remembered differently by their parents, but its intimacy also survives in Alberte’s postcards to David. One of those cards, found among his possessions, gives the investigation a glimpse of an encounter in Alberte’s life that her family may not have known about.

Twin bond and family memories

When Carl Mørck asks whether David was Alberte’s older brother, Rachel Goldschmid explains that he was her twin and the elder by seven minutes. She tries to smile as she answers, an effort that registers the pain bound up in the family’s recollection. Asked whether the twins were close, Rachel raises two crossed fingers and says they were “Like peas in a pod.” She insists that David was crushed by what happened to Alberte, telling Eli Goldschmid that he cannot deny it.

Eli’s account is sharply different. He interrupts Rachel to say that David died of AIDS, rejecting her description that he simply faded away because he could not bear Alberte’s fate. He adds that it remains hard for both parents to accept what David stood for. The exchange establishes grief as a point of disagreement between the couple: Rachel emphasizes David’s response to his twin’s suffering, while Eli names the illness and the difficulty of accepting his son. The passage does not resolve that difference, and it does not specify what Eli means by what David stood for.

A bond carried in postcards

The investigators’ interest in David’s possessions follows directly from Rachel’s account of the twins’ closeness. Carl suggests that Alberte might have kept in touch with David while she was at the folk high school and might have written to him. Rachel’s expression changes as though the possibility has reached her painfully; she says she must ask her husband before agreeing to let them examine the belongings. Her reaction leaves open whether the correspondence had simply gone unconsidered or whether the suggestion touches a more difficult recognition.

In David’s room, the investigators begin searching through boxes of his effects. The third box contains a cigar box of postcards. Many are from a man called Bendt-Christian; Alberte’s cards, by contrast, include ordinary descriptions of her days and repeated assurances that she misses her brother. Their contents make the sibling relationship more than a family’s retrospective claim: the cards show Alberte actively addressing David and telling him that she misses him. The fact that they are among his belongings also makes the correspondence part of the surviving record the investigators can examine.

The Østerlars Round Church card

Among the postcards, Carl finds one bearing a picture of Østerlars Round Church, with a red heart drawn above the cross on the spire. The message is more revealing than the brief accounts of daily life described in the other cards. Alberte tells David that she has met a young man who knew more about the church than the guide, calls him attractive, and says she is meeting him outside school the following day. She signs off as his sister and sends him hugs and kisses, keeping the romantic disclosure within an affectionate sibling exchange.

The card links the closeness Rachel describes to a specific confidence Alberte chose to share with David. It also changes the investigators’ understanding of what the family papers might contain: her communications with her twin could preserve details of her life that were absent from the material the investigators had encountered elsewhere. But the postcard has no date. Carl turns it over looking for one, and Assad asks when it was sent; without that information, the planned meeting cannot yet be placed precisely in the case chronology.

What the relationship establishes

The surviving evidence gives the twins’ relationship two complementary forms. Rachel and Eli remember David’s reaction to Alberte’s fate, though they disagree over how to describe his death and suffering; Alberte’s cards provide a more immediate trace of their connection, preserving her everyday messages as well as a personal disclosure. The contrast matters to the investigation because the family’s account establishes the importance of David to Alberte, while the postcard supplies a concrete lead about a man she met at the church.

The card does not identify the young man by name, and its missing date prevents the investigators from fixing the encounter in time. Its significance is therefore both evidentiary and relational: David was not merely Alberte’s twin in the family’s description, but someone to whom she could write about an exciting new acquaintance. The correspondence helps turn their closeness into a route toward information about Alberte’s life, while leaving the identity and timing of the encounter unresolved.