The Golden Calves (16 page)

“Well, would it really be such a great cost to the museum to make a compromise with Miss Speddon's relatives about the disposition of her things? I think you know, sir, that I have had doubts about your handling of that situation.”

Sidney, taking in the new air of resolution in those now unblinking eyes, reflected that perhaps this lawsuit had come in the very nick of time. The real enemy might not be Vogel or even Lucy, after all! "If we lose this case, my boy, there won't be any Speddon things to worry about. Or Speddon money, either. Except what the old girl gave us in her lifetime, and even that may be in question.”

“I don't follow you.”

"It's very simple. Mrs. Pinchet is trying to knock out her aunt's will. If she succeeds, Miss Speddon will have died intestate, which means that everything she owned will be divided between her niece and nephew. Which is why, incidentally, Tom Speddon, who has hitherto been my greatest ally, can now be counted on for the Judas kiss. Indeed, the case promises to be full of kisses.”

“But why is that? If a will goes down, isn't the previous will substituted? Don't you have dozens of earlier Speddon wills in your vault?”

Sidney made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. "Not one. Miss Speddon had a fetish about destroying the old will each time she executed a new one. She had a horror of legatees about whom she'd changed her mind—giving Cousin Harriet the lavalière she'd once given Cousin Tillie—finding out about it.”

“So even if you settle the case, you've got to save the will?”

"The very existence of the museum may depend on it. If that will goes down, Mark Addams, it will be you and you alone who will have struck the fatal blow at our beloved institution!”

"Aren't you going rather far there, Mr. Claverack?"

"Not an inch too far, Mr. Addams.”

“You would share none of the responsibility?”

"None. Because if undue influence is proved, it will be
your
undue influence, not mine.
You
were the man who talked her into signing that new will. You were the person who chose the means to do it. Had you not intervened, her will of a year earlier would have been probated, and the museum would have received the collection plus millions of dollars. Under onerous conditions, it is true, but that would be a hell of a lot better than zilch.”

The flicker now in those gray-green eyes was something like agony. "But do you deny altogether that it was your idea?”

"Why should I deny anything? I simply indicated to you that it would be a very agreeable thing if the museum were to receive its bequest unconditionally. What chairman of a board of trustees would have felt otherwise? It was
you
who undertook the project of implementing what had been a mere wish on my part. And in choosing your means you had to take the responsibility for their success or failure. I charge you, Mark Addams, with the moral duty of doing everything in your power to sustain that will!”

Mark sat still, brooding, and made no answer. Sidney rose and took his hat from the pole. "I shall tell Miss Norton to call you as soon as the
lis pendens
has been filed.”

M
ARK,
sitting in Chessie's bare, clean cell of an office, with its gleaming fresh gray paint and its sole ornament, a print of bland-faced, thinly smiling Lord Mansfield, proud in wig and robe, reflected ruefully that his one-time lover had the advantage of him. Her desk was clear of all papers but the court documents of
Pinchet v. Claverack et al,
neatly piled on the blotter before her and surely too well previously studied to be really needed. Over them her long Modigliani face and straight red hair presented an aspect as coolly judicial as the engraving above.

“Have you had any difficulty in being represented by me?”

“Not really. I know you're capable of separating yourself from any emotioned involvement in the past. If there
was
any.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

"Well, forgive me, Chessie, but you seem so—so legal, if that's the word, that I can hardly believe that some things ever happened.”

He suddenly realized that he meant it. Had he actually been in bed with this woman? It was as if he were a randy kid brought up on charges of playing dirty games in the barn before a stern teacher who in some mad fashion had also been the detective disguised as the lusty girl who had entrapped him.

“Oh, they happened all right.” The teacher was even smiling now. "And I don't regret them. I hope you don't?”

“Oh, no.”

"Then we can work together? With no reservations?”

“None. Except some people at the museum think it odd that Claverack should use his own firm for the defense.”

“It's unusual. But perfectly proper. And if the right detachment exists between Claverack and myself, there's nothing against it."

“You don't even much like the guy, as I recall."

"That is true. But I think I understand him, which is more important. And I have no doubt that you and he should win this case.”

He noted the flicker of a spark in her eye. "Which will be to your professional advantage?”

"It should make me a partner in this shop. Isn't that all to the good? Shouldn't your lawyer be strongly motivated?"

He considered it. “But do you really want to be a partner of Claverack's?”

"Does that matter? Once I'm a member of this firm I can go anywhere I want.”

"Then let me tell you this, counsellor. I intend to deny absolutely that I ever made any sort of a pass at Anita Vogel."

“Of course.”

The stare with which she met his was the signal that he was not to go on. A reputable lawyer could have nothing to do with perjury.

"Then that is understood. And knowing what Claverack knows about me—or thinks he knows about me—can't you imagine what my future at the museum is going to be? With him always able to mutter: ‘Remember the Speddon case, my boy. We got you out of that one with a fairly clean nose, but if you give me any trouble...'”

“But you know as much about him as he does about you.”

“Ah, but he doesn't care!”

Chessie frowned. She was not liking the turn of the conversation. “I wish you wouldn't fret about the future. These things will probably take care of themselves. A worried witness is going to be a bad one.”

"I won't be a worried witness, Chessie.”

"Can I count on that?”

"Oh, surely.”

"Why so surely?”

"Because I want you to win and be a partner.”

"But that's charming of you, Mark!” The quick smile made her look almost girlish. “I appreciate it very much.” She looked down for some moments at the papers on her desk, but he could see she was not thinking of them. She seemed to be concentrating on something quite different. When she looked up, her lips were pursed in doubt. Then she nodded in sudden decision. "All right, I'll tell you something. Something that may give you a bit of a hold on the great Sidney.”

“Is there a corpse he's hidden?”

"Not hidden; that's the point. Check the appraisals of all of the gifts that clients of his have made to the museum.”

He stared. “Do we have them?”

"Yes. He always sent copies to the museum files.”

"And what will I find?”

“Oh, that's your affair. I think I've done quite enough already. More than enough, as a matter of fact. Now let's get to work on your testimony for the examination before trial. For that's all we have these days, you know. The best lawyers never get to trial.”

Mark found himself, in the days before the hearing, in a strange, hollow state of mind. It was as if his life had become a kind of villa by the sea, fine and handsome but vacated and boarded up for the winter, in which he had been left behind by “others” to roam in solitude its unheated halls and corridors. Everything had been cleaned and put in order for the cold season, the rare books in old gold bindings neatly arow on their shelves, the Venetian lacquered chairs with their backs to the wall, but the objects seemed to be waiting for him to leave so that they could take up some strange life of their own. Yet he couldn't leave. He could only pace the floors and store out the windows at a bleak garden that didn't need him, didn't want him. Until a spring that might never come.

He wondered whether he had been too greedy about his life. He had chosen to enter the monastery of museum routine, but he seemed to have brought the world in with him, unless he had found it already there. He had had the temerity to worship success in the very temple of art, and Lucifer, in the fancy dress of Claverack, was laughing at him. Oh, screeching with laughter! He had everything he had asked for and didn't need to go to hell—he was already there! For what was hell but nothingness, deadness, the empty villa on the seashore? What else, in the name of all that was holy, if anything was, should he have expected?

The hollow days ended in the brown-paneled courtroom only faintly illuminated by the summer sunlight that peered in from high windows. Mark was conscious of nothing but the round features of the massive Harold Stein, whose shifting eyes seemed to bar forever the possibility of sympathy between men of Stein's rectitude and the witness's meanness. Mark knew that Chessie, sitting below him, was planning no objections. Her scheme, as she had told him, was to let the “great litigator” hang himself with his own oratory. Her client had been exhaustively coached. It was up to him now.

“On your visits to the late Miss Speddon, you had frequent occasion, did you not, to talk to Miss Vogel?”

“Certainly.”

“I believe you were sometimes alone with her?”

“I was.”

“And that you even took her out for dinner?”

“On one occasion.”

“On what is called a date?”

“What
is
called a date, Mr. Stein?”

“We'll pass that. What did you and Miss Vogel usually talk about?”

"Oh, general things. Miss Speddon in particular, I guess.”

"Not Miss Speddon's will?”

"No."

"Why not? That was the reason, was it not, for your visits to the decedent? To discuss the terms of a new will?"

"It was.”

"Would it not have been natural for you to enlist Miss Vogel's sympathy in seeking a grant of wider discretion to the decedent's executors?”

"I had reason to believe that Miss Vogel was opposed to such a grant.”

"I see. Then your relations with her were purely social?”

"We were associates at the museum.”

“Was it to discuss museum matters, then, that you took her out to dinner?”

"Not particularly.”

"Why then, if it was not to discuss either the museum or Miss Speddon's will, or, seemingly, for a ‘date,' did you make such a point of cultivating Miss Vogel?”

Mark decided it was now time for that prepared show of indignation. "Because we were friends, Mr. Stein! Because Miss Vogel had a weary time looking after a sick old lady, and I wanted to supply her with some diversion and relaxation."

But Stein, too, was ready for the change of tone. "And was it to relax Miss Vogel that you kissed her?”

“I never kissed her.”

“You didn't kiss her in the taxicab, coming home from the restaurant?”

"Certainly not.”

"And you never kissed her in your office at the museum?”

“Never.”

Mark was careful to make his tone plain, matter-of-fact, as if, anticipating this line of questioning, he was only doing his simple if tiresome duty of setting the record straight for a court that could not be expected to know how infamous the plaintiff's allegations were. Chessie had suggested that he taint his tone with a faint repulsion at the mere idea of physical intimacy with the plaintiff's witness, but he would not do that. He did not look at Anita, but he had seen her when he came into the chamber, sitting on a bench with Mrs. Pinchet, very stiff and still, her face a long blob of white with two deep black circles.

"What would you say, Mr. Addams, if I were to tell you that a stenographer in your office had wit nessed one such kiss and that we were on the trail of a taxi driver who had seen another?”

"I'd say you were bluffing, Mr. Stein.”

When he left the stand a few minutes later and took his seat beside Chessie, he could tell, by the very rigidity of her posture, that she was pleased by his performance.

Her turn came that afternoon when Anita was on the stand. Chessie seemed to tower over the hunched, nervous witness, her arms folded, a faintly sneering smile lurking about her lips.

"Miss Vogel, you have professed a great concern for the fate of the Speddon collection. Would you say that has been your principal interest in the past three years?”

“I think so."

"Could you please speak a little louder?”

“Yes, it has.”

"And of course you have felt that inadequate care and attention have been given this collection by the Museum of North America. But have you ever had occasion to consider what would happen to it if Miss Speddon's will were overturned?”

"Objection, Your Honor. Miss Vogel's speculations about the effect of intestacy on the decedent's possessions can hardly be relevant.”

"I am attempting to impeach the witness's earlier testimony. I contend it would have been different had she had knowledge of certain facts.”

Counsel were now summoned to the dais, where a whispered conference took place. Chessie evidently won her point, for when she returned to the witness stand she repeated her last question.

"I'm not a lawyer, Miss Norton. The estate would go to Mrs. Pinchet, would it not?”

“It would go to the heirs at law. Of whom Mrs. Pinchet is only one. Is that better, do you think, than having it go to a museum of which Miss Speddon was a devoted trustee and supporter most of her life?”

“Mrs. Pinchet has assured me that she would turn some of the collection over to the Colonial Museum."