‘Nothing wrong at all,’ said Carver. ‘With everyone here in New York – with meetings and discussions to be held – I’m trying to bring myself as fully up to date as possible, as quickly as possible.’
‘I’ll have it done by the time you get here tomorrow,’ promised the woman.
Now with increasing impatience Carver endured fifteen minutes going through what the firm’s lawyer thought important to emphasize in the death notices and obituaries, which mostly concerned the assurance that Carver’s already agreed succession would ensure the uninterrupted business continuity of George W. Northcote International. Manuel said he and his wife would return to East 62nd Street that night, to ensure that everything would be ready before anyone arrived. He was very sorry about Mr George. It was terrible.
Alice started lightly: ‘I thought you’d forgotten me…’ But at once became subdued when he talked over her to tell her what had happened. She said: ‘Shit,’ and then: ‘An accident?’
‘That’s what it’s going to be described as.’
‘Do you really think he was killed?’
‘The doctor says he could have suffered a stroke, from high blood pressure: that it could have been the cause of his falling into the blades.’
‘I asked what you thought,’ persisted Alice.
‘I don’t want to, but I think he was killed,’ said Carver, hearing the casual, conversational tone of his own voice. He was talking of murder as if it was a normal topic, like the weather or some commuter gridlock and wasn’t Manhattan a shitty place to try to get around in.
‘This doesn’t seem real: sound real,’ said Alice, matching his thinking, which she often did.
‘No.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I can’t think of anything to do.’
‘He didn’t give you what you asked for?’
‘No. But it should be here somewhere.’ Carver was impatient to get off the line.
‘How’s Jane?’
‘Sedated.’
‘It won’t be easy for us to meet?’
Now it was Alice who sounded remarkably sanguine: unmoved. But then although she’d been impressed by the man – wrongly as it transpired – she’d only met George Northcote two or three times. ‘Not over the next few days,’ he agreed.
‘Call me, when you can.’
‘When I can.’
‘And be careful, darling.’
‘I will,’ said Carver, wishing he knew how to be.
Carver pushed the chair slightly back with the same motion of replacing the telephone, momentarily looking between the desk and the workstation before deciding he couldn’t wait for Janice’s search the following morning: that he had to look – try to look – for himself. The moment he booted up he recognized the duplication with the Manhattan office, curious that Northcote had required the copies here in the country in view of his operating difficulties. Carver scrolled his way through every one of Northcote’s personal files and accessed every password and entry code, each time carefully entering the names of the three hovering, criminal and incriminating companies. None registered.
He turned, hurriedly, to the desk. The top left-hand drawer contained receipted bills, each annotated with the number and date of the cheque that had settled it, the one below that cheque books with the stubs meticulously completed and coordinated with the invoices above. The bottom drawer held only stationery. The diary, a duplicate of the appointments book from which they all worked in Wall Street, was in the top right-hand drawer. Carver momentarily hesitated before picking it up, aware as he did so of the shake in his hand, reminding himself how important it was going to be when he reached the office the following day to retrieve Northcote’s office copy.
Carver initially held it up by its spine, hopefully shaking it, but it concealed nothing loose. After that he turned at once to the day Northcote had been in New York for the supposedly severing encounter with his mob controllers. The entry read: ‘S-B. Dinner. Harvard.’ There was a dash between the two letters and against the name of the club there was an asterisk. There was also an asterisk against today’s entry, which simply read: ‘J. 2.30.’ When, according to Jennings, Northcote was on his tractor, hauling across a field completely hidden from anyone’s view the cutting machine beneath which he’d fallen.
It took Carver more than an hour painstakingly to go through every entry, which Northcote appeared always to do by initials, never recording a name. Those of S-B appeared a total of six times, always marked by asterisks, and by carefully going back through the marked pages Carver calculated the meetings were regularly once a month, nearly always the last Tuesday. They were always for lunch and never at the same restaurant. This week had been the first time the Harvard club was mentioned. Where would Northcote’s diaries for the previous years be? Carver wondered. The man’s personal safe in the vault? Another check, for the following day.
In another right-hand drawer Carver found a cuttings book of newspaper and magazine articles on Northcote. The long, admiring feature by Alice was quite near the top. Even more recent was a Wall Street Journal interview in which Northcote had urged tighter financial supervision by the SEC and all the other authorities governing accountancy, both locally in New York as well as federally.
Neatly arranged in a multi-sectioned tray in the bottom right-hand drawer was a selection of keys, some – the country-club locker and spare sets for the cars, for instance – clearly labelled, others not. The age and model – and insecurity – of the safe surprised Carver when he found it. It was floor-mounted inside one of the cupboards beneath the bookcase and was key, not combination, locked. It took Carver less than fifteen minutes to find the key that fitted from among those unmarked in the bottom drawer.
The safe was only about a quarter full, all of it easily carried in a single trip back to the desk. Carver began to go through the contents in the order in which they had been stored, which was with the money on top of the pile. He didn’t bother to count but guessed there were several thousand dollars in newly issued, uncreased one- hundred-dollar bills. There were three personal insurance policies, in total with a face sum of $3,000,000 but in the one he glanced through there was an endorsement increasing the value in the event of accidental death. There was a stock portfolio of perhaps twenty certificates, which Carver scanned through not even registering their valuations, interested only in any possible mention of the three companies. Once more there was none. George Northcote’s will was unexpectedly brief. Apart from bequests to the staff – $50,000 for Jack Jennings – the bulk of Northcote’s entire estate went to Jane, passing to Carver if she predeceased him in Northcote’s lifetime. The only exception was a single legacy of $100,000 to Carver if she did inherit. In the event of their both predeceasing Northcote, the estate was to be divided equally between any surviving children. The will had been made soon after their marriage, Carver saw from its date, long before the difficulty of Jane conceiving had been realized. There was a codicil, attested just one week after the partners’ meeting at which Carver had been proposed by Northcote and unanimously approved by the partners as Northcote’s successor, appointing Carver the sole and absolute executor of the will.
The only things remaining in front of Carver when he put the portfolio aside were a small selection of photographs, the first easily identifiable as Northcote with Jane, when she was a child, and with his wife – one showing Muriel actually on their wedding day, in her wedding dress – which had to have been taken at least thirty if not more years ago.
Carver didn’t recognize the woman in the last four photographs, although it was very clearly not Muriel Northcote. Each was inscribed on the back with a date – a two-week period in 1983 when Carver knew Northcote to have been married and Muriel to be still alive – and locations, Capri and Madrid. There was also a name, Anna. One showed she and Northcote openly embracing, two more with their arms entwined, the fourth holding hands.
Each was a picture of two very happy people, very much in love.
George Northcote’s bedroom was once again heavily furnished, the bed and dressing-room wardrobes thick, dark wood, although Carver didn’t think it was mahogany. He imagined he could detect the smell of the man, a musky cologne mixed vaguely with cigars, but decided in the pristine surroundings that was what it had to be, imagination. He supposed the neatness was not Northcote’s but one of the staff, maybe even Jennings. There was what was clearly pocket contents in a segregated tray on the nightstand, house keys, a cigar cutter and lighter, a wad of money, hundred-dollar notes on the outside, in a silver clip and a snakeskin wallet. One half of the wallet was a personalized, week-by-week diary. The entries for that week were identical to those in the larger version
