Jane was still in bed, propped up against the backboard, when Carver got to the room. Jamieson was in a chair alongside.
She smiled up wanly and said: ‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
‘You OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It all go OK?’
‘I guess.’
She nodded towards Jamieson and said: ‘There’s a helicopter coming?’
‘Everyone’s coming in for the conference.’
‘Sure.’
‘I don’t want to leave you here by yourself.’
‘I don’t want to stay here by myself.’
‘Take your time.’ There was at least an hour, Carver knew, without needing to consult his watch.
‘How was it?’
Carver instinctively looked to the doctor for guidance. Jamieson remained turned too far away for any facial hint. ‘I had to say it was George, that’s all. A formality.’
‘Would it have been bad?’ There were no tears and her voice was quite even. It almost sounded like a casual enquiry.
‘Pete Simpson was positive about that…’ Carver nodded to the half-turned figure of the local doctor. ‘Charlie thinks it’s possible your father had a stroke: that that’s how the accident happened. If it wasn’t that way, he would have been knocked out, hitting the cover guard of the mower. Either way he wouldn’t have felt a thing.’
‘It was blood pressure,’ came in Jamieson, supportive at last. ‘It was bad.’
‘I’m glad he wouldn’t have felt any pain.’ Jane straightened, against the headboard. ‘If I’ve got to get dressed I need space.’
Outside in the corridor, where they’d been the previous night, Carver said: ‘She seems OK. Looks OK.’
‘Remember what I said about denial.’
‘This it?’
‘I’d have liked her to be more obviously grieving.’
‘Maybe she’s more resilient than you guessed. Than any of us guessed.’
‘Maybe,’ said the doctor, doubtfully.
‘You examined her?’
‘Physically she’s fine.’
Jane came downstairs with the arrival of the helicopter. As they walked out towards it she said: ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about.’
With the exception of one subject, thought Carver.
Stanley Burcher had a trained lawyer’s objectivity and from every angle from which he examined the idea that had immediately come to him in the Queens restaurant the more he became convinced that it was perfect. He had actually raised with the consiglieri of the New York Families the problem of Northcote’s age and impending retirement. Now there was no longer a problem. Northcote’s informed and therefore complicit successor could simply continue to act as Northcote had acted for so long in the past. The man more than likely knew where Northcote had kept the withheld documentation, too.
It was tempting to tell the consiglieri how perfect his resolution was but Burcher decided to wait until he’d confronted Carver. He wondered if he would enjoy his association with the man as much as he had in the past with Northcote, until that very last meeting. Northcote had been stupid, imagining he could behave as he had.
Seven
It was not until Jack Jennings asked if he and the housekeeper were to fly back to Manhattan with him that Carver remembered that despite his earlier dismissal of there being any further possible hiding places apart from banks, George Northcote had another home in which the protective secrets could be concealed. That realization triggered more, the most pertinent a correction to another earlier misbelief. As George Northcote’s already acknowledged successor, he did have the right of access to each and any safe-deposit vaults in all – if any – company vaults or additional banks. In which – although he had not yet properly looked – it was inconceivable that Northcote would have deposited any incriminating material, aware it would be too easily discovered. But knowing, as Carver did know from the will he was taking with him back to the city, that Jane was the controlling beneficiary, Carver accepted that he had no legal right to access any private security facility in any personal bank account George Northcote held. The only person who held that right under the terms of the will was Jane. How much more convoluted, spinning in upon itself, could this become?
Carver told the man that of course they should come and thanked him for suggesting something that had not occurred to him. Accustomed to commuting back and forth between the city and the country, both Jennings and the housekeeper had clothes permanently in each so there were only a few things necessary for them to pack. While they did so, Carver assembled what he had put aside from his search of the Litchfield house.
As they walked out to the helicopter, Jane nodded to the valise into which Carver had packed his previous night’s discoveries and said: ‘What’s in there?’
‘Stuff I think I might need.’
‘Anything I should look at?’
‘Nothing at all,’ insisted Carver. She obviously knew of her inheritance. But not, he guessed, anything about the laughing, so-much-in-love photographs of her father and Anna which were in the case.
Inside the aircraft Jennings and the housekeeper determinedly placed themselves at a distance on the opposite side of the passenger cabin, an unnecessary but thoughtful courtesy. Directly after lift-off Jane said: ‘Tell me what I need to know: everything that’s happening.’ They were practically over the city before Carver finished his strictly edited account.
Calmly, with no catch in her voice, Jane said: ‘You haven’t spoken to the funeral director yourself?’
‘Hilda’s setting everything up for me.’
‘I’ll take over the funeral arrangements. All of it,’ announced Jane.
‘Are you sure…?’ started Carver, but Jane stopped him.
‘I’ll do it.’ Her voice was still calm, without a hint of hysteria, but at the same time positive, allowing no argument.
‘OK.’
‘What about Burt Elliott?’
‘He’s on my list for today.’ Elliott was the family lawyer. Another likely secrets repository, Carver thought. But one to which Jane again had access over him.
‘I’ll do that, too,’ declared Jane, in the same, no-argument tone.
Let it go, Carver decided, nodding in agreement. Better for Jane to occupy herself with as much activity as possible than to retreat within herself. Amateur psychology, he recognized. But it seemed to fit: to serve a purpose. ‘I’ve got Manuel and Luisa staying permanently at the apartment for a while,’ Carver said.
‘That’ll probably be useful, with everyone in town,’ accepted Jane.
‘And some nurses,’ he added, not looking directly at her.
‘Some what!’ Jane demanded, her voice rising for the first time.
‘Charlie Jamieson thought it would be a good idea.’
‘I don’t. Cancel it.’
‘It’s fixed now. Let’s see how it goes.’
‘I don’t want to see how anything goes. I’m OK. Really OK.’
‘I want them around,’ insisted Carver.
Jane turned more fully in her seat, to look at him. ‘Is it important to you?’
‘It’s important to me.’
