Two Women Read online

  Not hurt, thought Carver. Killed. If there’d been a caretaker – despite whatever had been published in the newspapers – who’d emerged at whatever period of the invasion, he or she would have been killed. Feeling he should contribute, Carver said: ‘That’s absolutely right: we – you’ve – been lucky, by not being there …’

  ‘Like I said,’ Jane cut him off. ‘That’s the first thing. Here’s the second. It gets rid of the place, which I would obviously have done anyway …’ The pause was perfectly, theatrically, timed. ‘You’re here to hear my father’s gratitude, which I want to extend. Thank you for looking after him as well and as faithfully as you did, for so many years. He loved you all as much as you loved and cared for him …’ The next pause was just as well staged. ‘Now we come to the third point I want to make. No one’s job goes. You’re all going to be absorbed between our place here, in Manhattan, and our place in Litchfield. We all stay together, OK …?’

  The relieved acceptance was as palpable as the earlier ambience.

  ‘That’s how it’s going to be. But if any of you wish to leave, after today, then of course you go with our love and best wishes. And with the best references it’s possible for me to give you …’

  Before there could be any response Burt Elliott’s secretary appeared to usher them into a room in which chairs were already set out in rows. The lawyer came forward at once to greet Carver and Jane and personally led them towards two larger, wide-armed and high-backed chairs which segregated them from everyone else. Carver sat self-consciously. Jane showed no discomfort.

  Elliott, a large, bulbous-featured man, began with the prepared expressions of sympathy and regret, to which Carver closed himself off, not hearing the words but watching the man and his attitude, particularly towards Jane. Burt Elliott could be the person with whom Northcote had deposited the firm’s escape. Nothing Elliott could read, obviously. A discreet sealed envelope or package. That’s what lawyers were for, discreet exchanges of discreet information. Jane would demand to know what it was if he were handed something today. There would be an evasion of sorts in his dismissing it as something involving the firm, although logically that would have been deposited with the firm’s lawyer, not Burt Elliott. Personal insurance that protected the company, mentally snatched Carver: it wasn’t good – hardly good enough at all, confronted by Jane’s newly emerged attitude – but he arranged such schemes every week and he was sure he could talk convincingly enough to satisfy Jane’s curiosity.

  Elliott had got to the bequests now, itemizing the individual legacies. The housekeeper and the cook were already crying and Jennings broke down too when the amount of his gift was declared.

  ‘There are individual, personal letters of gratitude to each of you, from Mr Northcote,’ said the lawyer, offering envelopes to each. There were still some remaining when he finished and the lawyer said to Carver: ‘There are also some bestowals for his personal staff at the firm, with instructions that they should be handed to you to be dispersed.’

  ‘Of course,’ accepted Carver, needing physically to stop himself grabbing out for the envelopes and further restraining himself from at once searching through for one addressed to him. He delayed until a disruption was caused by the staff withdrawing, at Elliott’s suggestion, to the ante-room while the family details of the will were read. There were envelopes for Janice Snow and Northcote’s secretarial staff but nothing in Carver’s name.

  The rest of the meeting was brief. Jane, who already knew, accepted without any reaction whatsoever that she was a millionairess in her own right. Carver’s instinctive thought at the declaration of his gift was that Northcote, the consummate accountant, had taken every measure to prevent either he or Jane paying more than the absolute minimum in tax.

  Carver seized his opportunity when Jane preceded him out into the ante-room, to more tears and individual thanks from the still-assembled staff. He stopped at the communicating door of the office, blocking the escorting Elliott, and said: ‘Wasn’t there anything else for me?’

  ‘Anything else?’ frowned the lawyer.

  ‘A package maybe? An envelope?’

  Elliott shook his head. ‘You’ve got all there was. What were you expecting?’

  ‘Something to do with the firm,’ said Carver, using the avoidance he’d planned for Jane.

  Elliott shook his head again. ‘Sorry.’

  Carver got to Jane’s side as Jennings was announcing that with almost twenty-four hours before the funeral he intended returning to Litchfield, with the housekeeper and the gardener, to continue the clearing-out.

  When he asked if she were quite sure she wanted everything thrown away Jane said: ‘I never want to see the place again. Or anything that was in it.’

  As they drove back to Wall Street, Carver said: ‘You didn’t tell me we were going to take everyone on.’

  ‘I didn’t decide myself until we were on our way to hear the will. We’re stretched, with our own place at Litchfield as well as the apartment here.’

  ‘We’ve managed well enough so far.’

  ‘There’ll probably be a lot more entertaining, now that you’ve properly taken over. Before we were married and I was living at home there were times when we had people in every night.’

  Would Northcote’s real paymasters have been among the guests, wondered Carver. ‘They can’t all live in, here in Manhattan.’

  Jane turned more fully towards him. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘None. I just think you might have mentioned it to me first.’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t decide until we were on our way to Burt Elliott’s office. I’m sorry.’

  She didn’t sound it, thought Carver. ‘So where will they live?’

  ‘We keep on the apartments Dad set up for them here in Manhattan. It’s tax-deductible, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ll have to see the scheme he used.’

  ‘If Dad devised it, it works. So we’re agreed, there’s no problem.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What were you talking about to Burt as we left?’

  ‘Thanking him, that’s all,’ said Carver.

  Carver endured more tears and gratitude from Northcote’s office staff and asked Janice Snow to stay when everyone else began filing out of the office, their bequest envelopes in hand. Janice said: ‘I’m glad we can talk. The girls are worried about what’s going to happen to them … and I’d like to know what’s going to happen, too …’

  He should have anticipated it, accepted Carver. But it was a convenient opening. ‘I haven’t had time to discuss it with the other partners but I’m not planning to let anyone go. Most certainly not you. You’re going to have to help me a whole lot for the transition to be as seamless as possible.’

  ‘What about Hilda?’

  ‘We’ll have to work it out,’ improvised Carver. ‘Off the top of my head I don’t see why you can’t both work in tandem. The work’s going to be there.’

  ‘I’m grateful. Very grateful. The girls will be, too.’

  As she made to stand Carver said: ‘That’s not all I want to talk about …’ and placed Northcote’s three unidentified keys on the desk between them. ‘You recognize any of these?’

  The woman did get up, to pick through the tiny collection. She at once separated one and said: ‘That’s his personal safe key, in the vault downstairs …’ She isolated another. ‘And that’s my safe key, here in the office. I’d got another from security, thinking I’d lost it. I don’t know what he was doing with it …’ She smiled up. ‘He was getting very absent-minded about things lately … leaving things unlocked.’

  Didn’t he know it! thought Carver, feeling a warmth of satisfaction surge through him. Everything had to be in Northcote’s personal safe! That’s where he’d seen the inflated draft accounts for Mulder, Encomp and Innsflow and that’s where they’d still be. When he found … With difficulty Carver halted the thought, bringing himself back to the woman, who’d sat down again. What he’d imagined at Litchfi
eld to be a security key remained unidentified on the desk. ‘You don’t know that one?’

  ‘I’ve never seen it before,’ said Janice, positively.

  Genuine ignorance or what he’d suspected to be avoidance on the telephone? Carver breathed in deeply, preparing the new approach. ‘I want to talk some more about those three companies that George kept very much to himself.’

  ‘There were others,’ announced Janice at once. ‘One’s called BHYF, the other NOXT.’

  She wouldn’t have offered them like that, if she were part of it, Carver thought. ‘Five, in all?’

  ‘That’s all. I’ve checked.’

  ‘Anything retained, of George’s copies?’

  ‘Not on the computer: I did the computer filing for him, remember? I would have known.’

  ‘What about hard copies?’

  ‘They’d be in his personal safe, in the vault, if there are any. He would have run them off himself if he’d wanted to.’

  ‘You haven’t looked?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘With so much uncertainty now I waited for you to come back.’

  ‘Good,’ nodded Carver. ‘To do the independent audit George would have needed the books … invoices … how did they get here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’

  ‘You don’t know! You dealt with all his mail … all his deliveries, didn’t you?’

  ‘I never received anything in the mail. Or by personal delivery. Mr Northcote met a lot of clients personally. I told you that on the telephone. I always assumed that’s how he got the accounts, handed over personally.’

  ‘You handled his appointments diary – which I need to go through with you – so how often did the Mulder people come here to see George?’

  ‘I don’t remember anyone actually coming here, to the office. Although it could easily have happened. People often gave just their names, without saying who they represented.’

  Or even initials, like S–B, and rarely lunched with Northcote in the same place twice, thought Carver.

  ‘Why are you asking me about these special clients?’ Janice demanded, abruptly.

  ‘Because they are special: different from the rest,’ said Carver, deciding he was giving nothing away by being honest. ‘I need to know why they were dealt with like this, which isn’t usual.’ He hesitated. ‘I got the impression that George was thinking of ending the firm’s association. He say anything about that to you?’

  ‘Never,’ said Janice.

  He was trying too hard, too quickly. Unless, that is, Janice Snow was part of the conspiracy. It would make sense to have someone else in the firm, ensuring Northcote stayed in line. And explain her vagueness now, despite her earlier giving him the names of the last two companies. Who had been Northcote’s PA before Janice? And how had Janice Snow come to be employed? Personnel would have her records. Maybe even those of her predecessor. And if … Carver once more consciously halted the drift, realizing how easy it was becoming to make shapes out of shadows. George Northcote’s personal office safe wasn’t in the shadows any more. The key was right there in front of him on the desk, waiting to be used. He said: ‘It’s going to take a while for me to understand how George worked: to understand his special relationship with his special clients. Time we haven’t got today. Why don’t you go and tell the girls that they’re all OK? And try to remember some names. You think you could do that?’

  ‘I’m sure I could,’ promised Janice. ‘And thank you again.’

  It was not until he actually got to the gates of the vault that the analogy occurred to Carver. They were exactly that, floor-to-ceiling metal-barred gates that looked, unnervingly, like the cell doors in every prison movie he’d ever seen, quite often with a man shouting through them that he was innocent or had been framed. For the first time Carver realized that George Northcote’s personal safe was an old-fashioned, key-operated twin to that in Litchfield, differing only in the shape and cut of the key that opened it. All the other safes worked by combination – standing like an honour guard beside it in the vault.

  Carver had every right to be going through Northcote’s personal records but he still looked uncertainly around the vault, even though he already knew himself to be alone, and even turned to the similarly empty corridor before turning back to the heavy safe casing secured to the floor. The door swung easily, soundlessly, open to reveal a half-filled interior, the shelves much more tidily arranged than he remembered from his accidentally stumbled-upon discovery a few short days ago. The files then for Mulder Inc., Encomp and Innsflow International had been strewn haphazardly upon the uppermost shelf. They weren’t now.

  Carver worked his way methodically through everything, page by individual page, to ensure a cover or a section hadn’t been utilized to hide what he was looking for. None had. Refusing to accept defeat – refusing in his switchbacking desperation to accept Northcote had denied him yet again – Carver went just as carefully through every manila folder, binder and paper yet again, recognizing each totally legitimate client.

  Carver slammed the safe door closed so violently that it bounced open again, unsecured, and was at once embarrassed at his own petulance, although the fury still burned through him. As he closed and locked the door more properly he thought, why? Why, having promised – given an undertaking at least – to provide the documentary protection, had Northcote reneged, exposing them all to danger? Because he’d thought he had time, Carver supposed. Insufficient. Everything was insufficient. What he knew – or didn’t know – was insufficient and ways to find what he didn’t know and how to protect the firm and Jane and himself were insufficient. Alice, too, he supposed, although she was not directly in danger. What about the handwritten, still unread notes in Northcote’s nightstand? Hurriedly, angered at himself for not including it in his previous searches, Carver went yet again through everything in the safe, seeking references to companies named BHYF and NOXT. Once more, there was nothing. Nothing, that is, in this half-filled safe. There might – just might – be in the firm’s records, though. There were still places to look, computer avenues to follow, and a computer in Northcote’s office along which to travel them.

  But Jane was waiting there when he got back upstairs. She said: ‘I’ve gone through everything for tomorrow with the funeral director, arranged for the insurance company to send their inventory for Litchfield and arranged a meeting there with the loss adjuster the day after tomorrow. I’m seeing the realtor then, too. And I’m up to date with the condolence letters.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should slow down just a little?’

  ‘I’ll slow down when everything’s done. We should leave now if we’re going to be on time for tonight.’

  He’d forgotten the rescheduled dinner, Carver realized. ‘I’m ready when you are.’

  As they got into the elevator Jane said: ‘Janice told me you’re keeping all Dad’s office staff on.’

  ‘They can be absorbed through the firm easily enough.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve done that.’

  It was almost as if Jane saw herself with a place in the firm. Carver said: ‘I thought you would be.’

  Jane came to an abrupt stop at the door to their car that the driver held open on the pavement outside the Northcote office block. ‘I forgot! Janice said she didn’t know what to do with the valise you’d left in Dad’s office. I told her to put it in her own office safe. Was that right?’

  Carver’s sensation was of his stomach being hollowed out. ‘Fine,’ he managed.

  ‘That the one you brought back from Litchfield?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You never did tell me what was in it.’

  ‘Some stuff he’d taken home to work on.’ Would it still be there if Janice Snow was involved in it all?

  Alice Belling didn’t have it all – didn’t think she had half of it – but she had the exhausted satisfaction of believing that she had almost enough to understand. And the other linked companies. She’d abandoned the repeated efforts to
get into the Mulder Inc. subsidiaries spread throughout America, instead using the local tax offices and local company registers in twenty-six of the states she’d so far covered. In Abilene, Kansas, she’d found another reference to the Rome-based BHYF International. Independence, Missouri, had given her NOXT, again headquarters in Cheapside, London, England. And as with BHYF it defeated her attempts to hack into it.

  As she paid, the persistent manager said: ‘Changed your mind about that drink, Alice?’

  She shook her head, smiling. ‘Got a big day tomorrow.’

  ‘More to do here?’

  ‘A funeral.’ She had every reason to go. She’d met George Northcote. And liked him. She supposed she should have warned John, but she hadn’t decided when he’d called from East 62nd Street and now there was no way she could call him back.

  ‘Anyone close?’

  She shook her head again. ‘Someone I thought I knew.’

  ‘Thought you knew?’ queried the man, frowning.

  ‘Mis-spoken,’ she said. It actually wasn’t mis-spoken at all, she thought.

  Stanley Burcher decided it was time to identify John Carver, who shortly was to become his obedient marionette, dancing whenever he pulled a string. And what better – and more unobtrusive – way than becoming a mourner at a funeral that would be attended by so many. It was even right that he should attend. Burcher decided he had known – properly known – George Northcote better than anyone who would be there.

  Ten

  Alice was at the rear of the cathedral and Carver saw her the moment he entered, Jane at his side disdaining his supporting arm as she’d rejected Dr Newton’s offer of tranquillizers, either for the earlier private entombment or for this very public ceremony. Alice smiled faintly. Carver showed no recognition, although he could have done: they’d officially – publicly – met, more than once, during her article preparation on Northcote. He realized it was the first time that the two women he loved had been together in the same place. The first time, also, that Alice had seen Jane, although that might be difficult, through Jane’s dark veil. Despite the rationalizing, he waited for the discomfort. There wasn’t any. He wished he’d responded to Alice’s smile but it was too late now. He was long past her pew, more than halfway along the nave. An estimate was difficult but Carver guessed there were at least a thousand mourners. Maybe more. Maybe among them were …