Jordan said, ‘Looks like an argument. As well as a telephone call that didn’t connect.’
‘I’d say so,’ agreed Beckwith.
Jordan turned away at the arrival of the wine waiter. As the host he tasted and agreed to the Napa Valley burgundy, although he would have preferred a French wine. Coming to the second point he wanted to establish, he said, ‘Let’s talk about something you might be able to speculate on. The way it’s going I don’t think it’ll get anywhere near your estimate.’
‘No way,’ agreed Beckwith, at once. ‘We’ve got Leanne tomorrow. Maybe some recalls, although I’m not going to apply for any at the moment. I don’t think Bob has got anyone else, now that his enquiry people have been cut off by Pullinger. I don’t think he needs anyone else.’
‘So what’s your new estimate?’
‘Middle of next week, tops.’
Everything was definitely moving faster – coming up to the speed of light – than he’d expected, acknowledged Jordan, ‘I know it will only be a ballpark figure. That’s all I’m asking for. Keeping everything else out of the equation, how much am I into for costs?’
Beckwith waited for their meal to be served, cut into his inevitable steak but held it on the fork before him, as if examining it. ‘We got a problem here, Harvey?’
‘Absolutely not, apart from moving necessary funds across from England,’ assured Jordan. ‘Which is why I’m asking the question. I may need to go back to withdraw some more… make plane reservations, stuff like that.’
‘Ballpark?’ heavily qualified Beckwith.
‘Ballpark,’ confirmed Jordan.
‘Two hundred and fifty thousand,’ estimated Beckwith. ‘And don’t even think of anything extra for an appeal.’
From his conversations in London with Lesley Corbin, Jordan had imagined it would be much higher. ‘Maybe I won’t need to go back to England.’ Just hit Appleton far harder, after making room in the open-mouthed accounts, he thought.
With a better view of Bartle’s table from where he was sitting, Beckwith said, ‘And baby makes three!’
Jordan turned again to see Peter Wolfson approaching Bartle’s table. At something that Bartle said the other lawyer looked across towards them before he sat. Beckwith gave another hand gesture, which Wolfson did not acknowledge.
Beckwith said, ‘Like the wise man said, shit happens! They go to all the trouble of finding a little, out-of-town hideaway for their council of war and we walk in. No wonder they look so pissed off.’
‘You think Wolfson’s come straight from seeing Bob?’
‘Hardly need the help of Sherlock Holmes, do we?’ said Beckwith. ‘I can hardly wait for tomorrow.’
But they had to, longer than they’d expected. After rigidly sticking to his early morning routine, which produced nothing beyond what he’d already read on Appleton and Drake’s computers, Jorden went down for breakfast to be told that by the time Beckwith called him, Reid had already left to collect Alyce from the Bellamy estate.
‘Earlier than usual?’ queried Jordan.
‘Two hours earlier than usual,’ agreed Beckwith. ‘They obviously had things to talk about.’
And they were still talking, already at their table, when Jordan and his lawyer arrived at court. There was only the briefest moment, before the judge’s entry, for any conversation between Alyce’s lawyer and Beckwith, before Peter Wolfson called Leanne Jefferies to the stand. Jordan managed eye contact with Alyce as the other woman was being sworn. Alyce looked back at him blankly. On his pad Jordan wrote, ‘What?’
Beckwith scribbled back: ‘Leanne’s ours!’
Led by Wolfson, with Appleton and Bartle both intently forward over their separate table, Leanne confirmed her age to be thirty and described herself as a senior partner in the Wall Street commodity firm of Sears Rutlidge. Not once looking at him, Leanne testified she had known Alfred Appleton by reputation over a period of five years as the senior partner of Appleton and Drake, a rival firm of commodity dealers. Thirteen months earlier she and Appleton had begun a brief relationship, which she estimated to have lasted no longer than two months. At that time she had understood Appleton to be coming to the end of an unopposed divorce. Her relationship with Appleton had ended when she contracted a sexually transmitted disease, which Appleton told her he had, in turn, caught from his wife during a failed reconciliation before their relationship began. She would not have engaged in such a relationship if she had known that divorce proceedings had not, at that time, even been initiated. She had not regarded their affair as a serious commitment on either side and now deeply regretted it.
‘How many commodity firms are there in Wall Street?’ demanded Reid, as he rose to cross-examine. As always, when he was on his feet in court, there was no trace of asthma in his voice.
‘I’m not sure.’ There was a discernible uncertainty from how she had responded to this questioning.
‘Ten? Twenty? Thirty?’ suggested Reid.
‘I really am not sure,’ Leanne insisted.
‘Would you say it was a comparatively limited community, most dealers knowing other dealers?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘But you knew Alfred Appleton for what, almost four years, before your affair began?’
‘Yes.’ When she wasn’t talking Leanne had her lips drawn in tightly between her teeth.
‘Wasn’t he someone particularly well known in Wall Street because of his family antecedents?’
‘Not particularly,’ she repeated.
‘Did you know of the family history?’
‘I may have heard something of it.’
‘Did you or didn’t you?’ demanded Reid, brusquely.
‘I’d heard something about it,’ conceded Leanne, defensively.
‘What about the historically well known Bellamy family?’
‘I didn’t know anything about a Bellamy family,’ protested the woman.
‘You didn’t know that your lover, Alfred Appleton, was married to Alyce Bellamy, uniting two of the best known families in America’s founding history?’
‘No,’ said Leanne. Before every answer she looked hopefully towards Wolfson although still steadfastly refusing to look at Appleton, so close at the adjoining table.
‘When did you discover the identity of Alfred Appleton’s wife?’
‘I don’t remember. Not until we became close, I don’t think.’
‘How did you become close? When did it happen? Who approached whom?’
Leanne took several moments to reply. ‘It was at a seminar in New Jersey. Went over two days.’
‘When did it begin, the first night or the second night?’
There was another pause. ‘The second night.’
‘Before you went to bed with Alfred Appleton the second night, you knew he was a married man, didn’t you?’
‘He told me he was divorced.’
Appleton thrust sideways to talk to his lawyer at Leanne’s answer.
‘ Was divorced? Or getting divorced?’ pressed Reid.
‘Was divorced,’ insisted Leanne. ‘Just waiting for the decree to become absolute.’
‘That’s exactly what he said, that he was waiting for the decree to become absolute?’
‘Yes,’ blurted Leanne, before seeing Wolfson shaking his head. ‘I mean… I think… yes…’
‘By then you knew who Appleton was… the history, didn’t you?’
‘Something had been said… I had an idea,’ the woman stumbled on.
‘You saw yourself as the second Mrs Appleton, didn’t you, marrying into one of America’s oldest families?’ pounced Reid.
‘No!’ Leanne denied, flustered. ‘That wasn’t how it was… what it was… I told you, it wasn’t a commitment.’ She looked at Alyce, beside her interrogator. ‘Like her’s wasn’t a commitment. Didn’t mean anything. Just something that happened…’ She twisted, looking for the first time to Appleton and managed, ‘You… you bastard…’ before collapsing back into her chair, sobbing.
To Jordan, Beckwith finally said, ‘If I can only get the chance!’
First Bartle and then Wolfson objected to Beckwith taking up the cross-examination, Wolfson even pleading
