Into Temptation (Spoils of Time 03) (63 page)

‘It seems there is a valid will,’ he said, ‘made and registered after Mrs Patterson’s marriage.’

‘So Charlie Patterson won’t get his hands on the company,’ said Celia. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Charteris?’

‘Well – unless she decided to leave it to him.’

‘Absolutely out of the question,’ said Jay.

‘I – wouldn’t know,’ said Charteris carefully, ‘but it seems very unlikely.’

‘Did he give you any idea of the contents of the will?’

‘No. But he said he would as soon as possible. We may have to wait for probate to be granted unless the lawyers give us the details. They usually do. Probate will take a long time in my opinion, because of the complexity of the estate. And it’s always more difficult with privately owned companies, because it’s so much more difficult to establish the company’s value. Then the IRS have to move in—’

‘Who are the IRS?’ said Venetia.

‘The Internal Revenue Service. The US tax men. It’s going to take many, many months. A year, possibly longer. But your option is there to buy the shares in Lyttons London, that has nothing to do with the will. There is a time limit on the option, namely exactly one year from the date of Mrs Patterson’s death, and the American board must be notified that you wish to exercise your option, within that time limit. By my calculation, that takes us to the eighth of March 1959. After that, you have ten business days in which to pay for the shares. Failure to meet any of this timetable will mean you will lose the option. There is absolutely no leeway. I cannot stress enough how important this is. On the other hand, a year is a very generous timespan in which to exercise a share option.’

‘One would have expected generosity,’ said Celia, her voice just a trifle cool. ‘Barty was, after all, one of the family.’

‘Of course. Now, a notice in writing that you wish to exercise the option must be delivered to the company secretary of Lyttons New York; you can do that yourselves or our solicitors can do it for you. I would advise not delivering the notice until you are absolutely confident the funds are in place; after that, you will only have ten working days to obtain them.’

There was a silence; then, ‘Well, I think we should be able to find the money in that sort of time,’ said Giles.

‘I hope so. The first thing we must do is brief a firm of chartered accountants to put a value on the shares. They must be an independent firm, obviously, and will act as arbitrators between you and the trustees in America. Who of course, together with the existing directors, are now, for all practical purposes, running the company.’

‘What an appalling thought,’ said Celia. ‘What do the trustees know about publishing?’

‘Kyle Brewer knows a bit,’ said Venetia mildly. She couldn’t resist it; her mother’s antagonism towards the Brewers intrigued her.

Celia glared at her. ‘Very little, I do assure you,’ she said. ‘I have met him fairly recently, and I was quite surprised by his lack of grasp of some of the most basic things.’

‘I don’t think you need worry, Lady Celia,’ said Harold Charteris. ‘The editorial board in New York will still be in charge of editorial matters, I feel sure. It would be madness to change those arrangements.’

‘I’m sure Mr Charteris is right, Mother,’ said Giles, ‘and can I just say, Mr Charteris, we will work closely with you and the accountants. We’d better have a meeting with them as soon as possible.’

‘Very well. Now, you realise we could be looking at a very substantial amount of money here.’

‘Like – what?’ said Jay.

‘Obviously it’s very difficult to say. The shares are privately held, they have no published value. Normally, of course, a price is arrived at by comparison with the shares of a similar-sized company, but I would say, at a very rough estimate, we would be looking at not less than two million pounds. It could be more, the New York board will naturally want to talk the price up. You could be looking at a very high valuation indeed.’

There was another silence; then, ‘Well, we can raise that sort of money perfectly easily,’ said Celia. ‘There would be absolutely no problem.’

Charteris cleared his throat. ‘Hopefully not, Lady Celia, but there could be. The company has been doing pretty well over the past couple of years, but it is far from rich. In cash terms quite the reverse. The risks would be high. And—’

‘Mr Charteris,’ said Jay hastily, seeing Celia’s expression move from cold to icy, ‘what steps should we take, exactly? To raise the money? I know we’ve got twelve months, but what with the valuation and so on, we really can’t afford to waste any time.’

‘Well it isn’t entirely straightforward. If it was a public company, of course, there ought to be no problem finding a bank, to underwrite a rights issue. Small private companies such as this are in a much more difficult position. My advice would be to go to one of these outfits like ICFC. They—’

‘I do so loathe this fashion for using initials instead of proper names,’ said Celia. ‘So sloppy, so—’

‘Mother, please!’ said Giles. ‘Let Mr Charteris finish.’

‘ICFC stands for the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, Lady Celia.’ Harold Charteris smiled at her.

He’s got the patience of a saint, thought Jay, and just as well. He could see Celia scuppering any attempts at a deal if they weren’t all very careful.

Celia nodded graciously at Charteris. ‘Do go on.’

‘They were set up with the precise purpose of encouraging entrepreneurial activity. To help small companies acquire capital. I would suggest a meeting with them at the earliest possible opportunity. They’re very helpful, very helpful indeed. Although – ’ he hesitated, glanced at Celia rather warily, ‘they will inevitably look at us with quite a beady eye. All money is loaned with a view to return on investment. And of course they want security.’

‘Well, we can offer them that. Lyttons itself represents a great deal of money.’

‘Not in terms they would understand, I’m afraid. A publishing company doesn’t have any assets, you see, and—’

‘No assets!’ said Celia. ‘Of course Lyttons has assets, this is one of the most successful publishing houses in the world—’

‘By assets, Lady Celia, I mean tangible ones. Properties, equipment, machinery, that kind of thing.’

‘He’s right, Celia,’ said Jay, ‘our assets are our authors. Apart from this very nice building and the warehouse in Kent, a few typewriters and so on, we don’t have anything we could actually put a price on. The true value of our company is impossible to calculate. It’s angels on the head of a pin stuff.’

‘I have never heard anything quite so absurd in my life,’ said Celia. ‘And I’m very surprised at you, Jay, even voicing such a view. Lyttons is a venerable publishing house, how can you possibly dismiss it as worthless?’

‘Mummy he’s talking about hard cash,’ said Venetia, ‘not our literary heritage. Please, Mr Charteris, do go ahead and arrange a meeting with these people. As soon as possible.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Jay, ‘we’ll make ourselves available whenever you need us. Now we have another immediate problem, in my view. Who are we supposed to report to?’

His answer came a week later, in a letter from Marcus Forrest to Giles.

‘I think we should meet as soon as possible to establish a chain of command. Perhaps you or Jay Lytton might come to New York, or, if you prefer, members of our board and editorial staff could come to London.’

‘Chain of command!’ said Celia. ‘Dreadful expression. I trust they are not going to try and suggest we are to be anywhere but at the front of such a thing.’

‘I think they might,’ said Jay.

Celia was at home having breakfast when the jewellery box arrived from Claridges. She nodded, took it from Mrs Hardwicke, and went upstairs to her room, where she sat looking at it for some time through a haze of tears. She had given it to Barty herself; it was very pretty, quite small, a travelling case, really, made of cedarwood. She tried to open it; it was locked. Just as well. Looking at Barty’s jewellery, some of which she had undoubtedly given her, lying there unworn, in some strange way abandoned, would have been extremely painful. Odd how it was these small things which hurt the most. Well, there was no rush. She would put it in her own safe, and give it to Jenna, the next time she saw her. That was what Barty would have wanted. And maybe there would be a key at the American house; it would be a pity to force the lock. ‘Oh Barty,’ she said aloud, smoothing the inlaid lid with her hand very tenderly, ‘oh Barty, I miss you so.’

Venetia looked at Adele, sipping tea and nibbling at cucumber sandwiches as if she was at a garden party, and thought how incredible it was that she should remember nothing of what she had been through during the last few hours.

She never did; this had been her third electric shock treatment, and each time Venetia expected her to come back from the treatment heavily traumatised, but each time she got the same rather vague smile, the same complaint of a ‘bit of a headache’, and then when they got home, the same polite acceptance of tea, of a piece of cake, and the same slightly vapid conversation.

Venetia always went with her; the first time Adele had been terrified, in spite of the doctor’s encouraging words. He had been franker, but equally reassuring, with Venetia.

‘Don’t look so anxious, Mrs Warwick. She’ll go into hospital – as my patient, into St Christopher’s – in the morning, at about nine. First we would sedate her, then give her a muscle relaxant and so on, she won’t even see the electrodes, they’ll be on the trolley behind her. As soon as the anaesthetic is effective, we place the electrodes on her head. What we’re doing is passing low voltage electricity through the brain, and the effect – to witness, anyway – is exactly like that of an epileptic fit.’

‘It sounds ghastly,’ said Venetia with a shudder. ‘Are you quite sure she won’t – won’t suffer?’

‘I’m quite sure. And please believe me, it should help her. Nobody knows quite how it works, but it does.’

‘And – how quickly?’

‘She’d have to have two, possibly three, treatments a week. Some people feel better immediately, some after four or five treatments. She’d probably have six altogether. After which most patients recover quite astonishingly from their depression, say they feel normal, in fact. It’s remarkable to witness. I really would advise it, she’s still very depressed, and she needs to face her past. It’s actually her past which I think is causing her greatest problems, not her present.’

‘Well – I’ll talk to her about it.’

She did; Adele was fearful, but resigned. She had great faith in Dr Cunningham, and if he thought ECT was going to help her, then she was prepared to be brave and submit herself to it.

And so they went: together, of course. They might now be two very different people, but they were still identical twins, still almost telepathically close, still uniquely able to understand and identify with one another. Adele clung to Venetia’s hand in the taxi, silent, white-faced with terror, and still begging that her sister be with her until she was unconscious. They agreed; Adele was wheeled away, and then returned to Venetia, and proceeded to sleep for a couple of hours. After that she was seen by Dr Cunningham and at tea time allowed to go home.

For poor Venetia, imagining her sister having wires attached to her head, then shocked into uncontrollable fits behind the closed door, the experience was far worse.

There was little effect the first three times; then after the fourth, Adele announced that she wanted to go to Woollands on the way home.

‘I’m so sick of looking like a fright. Do let’s. And have tea there.’

Venetia refused to allow that, but said they could go in the morning; Adele, a little subdued but otherwise cheerful, bought three suits, a dress and jacket and four pairs of shoes.

Dr Cunningham was delighted.

After the fifth session, she said she would like to take Venetia, her mother, Noni and Lucas out to dinner, ‘to say thank you’, and was able to discuss Barty’s death tearfully but easily; after the sixth and last, she announced what she wanted to do most in the world was go out with her camera and take some photographs.

A week later she said she wanted to go to Paris to see Madame André; would Venetia go with her?

‘I know that’s what I’ve got to do, Venetia. I should have done it years ago. I’ve got to – well, lay some ghosts. I feel as if I’ve been running away from it all, from the memories, and what really happened, from why I did it. I think if I go back there, face it all, I’ll feel better. I can’t see Bernard Touvier, who wrote to tell me Luc had been shot, he’s died. But Madame André is still there. Will you come, darling? Please?’

Venetia said she would; the next day Adele phoned her, her voice light with joy. Lucas wanted to go with them.

Jamie Elliott looked at Charlie, sitting in his office, clearly and genuinely distressed, his hands twisting together, his face pale and haggard, and felt considerable sympathy for him; while still noticing the perfectly cut suit, the fine lawn shirt, the Gucci loafers, the gold Rolex watch, and contrasting him with the Charlie Patterson he had first met, with his frayed shirt cuffs and down-at-heel shoes.