Barkskins (86 page)

There were several unused rooms in the building, any one of which could be cleared out to become Sophia's office. She looked them over. Four dusty conjoined rooms, once the kingdom of Lawyer Flense, with a view of the lake would do very well—an anteroom for her secretary, her inner sanctum, two meeting rooms. They would have to be cleared, cleaned, repainted. She telephoned her son, Robert, who had recently opened his office, Harkiss Interiors.

“Robert, I need your help. Are you very busy?” Robert, who had had only a single commission—the guest room in the apartment of Mrs. Grainley Wiley, with whom he was having an affair—was sick with worry over his upcoming office rent. He needed another commission. He made the usual noises of “let me see” and “I think I can squeeze you in” before he agreed.

“This is rather good, Mother, a very workable space. Your renovation ideas are not bad but I would suggest opening out this wall”—he pointed at the separation between the two meeting rooms—“and giving yourself a really large office. Make that room you had picked for your office a meeting room. And we can put in carpet. You'll be amazed how much carpet softens the atmosphere.”

“I haven't been living under a stone for the past fifty years, Robert. I have actually heard about carpet.” But she liked the idea of a larger office. Together they shopped for Danish modern office furniture in oil-rubbed teak, beige wool carpet, a big leather Eames chair.

•  •  •

The day came when Sophia, installed in her new office, began reading through pages and pages of crabbed handwriting and atrocious spelling, trying to sort out mysterious characters whose connections to the family were unclear. She hired a secretary, a potato-faced blonde named Debra Strong (niece of Mrs. Garfield, the company secretary), who said her last job had been at a women's magazine. Debra sorted the papers into rough time periods, put them into neatly labeled folders. Sophia's plan was to tell of the early travails of a pioneer enterprise that became successful through hard work, and went on to enjoy the fame and fortune of being one of the oldest and most successful logging companies in the nation.

Obscurity, and French, like thick blankets, befogged the papers. Was Charles Duke the same person as Charles Duquet, whose name appeared on what might be a promissory note signed by someone named Dred-Peacock; it was signed with an X indicating Charles Duquet was illiterate—or was it Dred-Peacock? Later correspondence was clearly signed by Charles Duke. So she was sure Dred-Peacock, whoever he was, was the illiterate. There was too much French for her. She hired a student to translate the difficult pages but found the lists of old deals and accounts tedious and put them aside as immaterial.

After a year of scratching through the papers a story began to take shape. Charles Duke, a poor French boy, set out for the New World to escape a harsh life on a French farm. Once in North America he began to make his way by hard work and eventually, with the money he earned, bought timberland and opened a sawmill. The correspondence with Dred-Peacock ended abruptly, though in the next batch of material there were nearly forty letters to his sons. These made tiresome reading as they were loaded with advice and maxims and shed no light on Charles Duke's character beyond commanding his sons to do what he told them to do. He seemed a serious fellow, but one who doted on his children. She skipped over James Duke, a dull stick. Lavinia, alas, had left behind hundreds of boxes of business correspondence and notes on the lumber industry. Sophia did not understand most of Dieter's first wife's descriptions of inventions, meetings, numbers of board feet taken from various forests and shipped to distant destinations. It was enough to say she was a highly respected businesswoman. And, thought Sophia, an insanely busy scribbler.

She came on a folder that Debra Strong had labeled “Genealogy?” containing some torn and yellowed pages. This, she thought, might be useful. She matched the torn pieces together. A letter from R. R. Tetrazinni in Philadelphia said only that the investigation was complete to the point set out in his report and that if Lavinia Duke Breitsprecher wished to follow up with further investigation of the names and addresses of the heirs she should contact him as soon as practicable as he had other work to hand. The report puzzled Sophia. What heirs?

She telephoned James Bardawulf. “I've come on something that I don't quite understand. It's a report from a private investigator to Dieter's first wife, Lavinia Duke. I wish you would take a look at it. I think it says there are some unknown heirs. But I don't know who they are or what they have inherited.”

“It's probably a fraud letter. People claiming to be heirs to fortunes and long-lost cousins are not uncommon. Can you send it over to me?”

“I'd rather show it to you here. Why don't you come over this afternoon and look at it? And we can go have a drink and talk. Some outdoor place on the lake—it's so hot this summer. I haven't seen you for months.”

I
t was Breitsprecher-Duke's most peculiar meeting, so divided in content it was as though strangers had been swept up from the hot streets and ordered to conduct business. They sat around the mahogany table in Breitsprecher-Duke's meeting room with a portrait of Lavinia Duke on the south wall and one of Dieter on the north. The old air conditioner was gasping as though fighting off its own heatstroke. On the table was a tray of cream cheese sandwiches with the bread curling up, paper napkins from the old days stamped with the letters
DUKE LOGGING
and the image of an ax. Although the room was swollen with August heat, a coffee urn hissed on the side table.

Sophia, in the grey wool Chanel despite the heat, made a rambling speech about the company history and passed out copies of the fruits of her labors—sixteen pages of company fantasy bound in leather and stamped
Breitsprecher-Duke, the Story of a Forest Giant.
She waited for congratulations, but James Bardawulf had already told the others of the old Tetrazinni report and his own weeks of dead-end work to prove it a hoax. The company's legal adviser, Hazelton Culross, was present. James Bardawulf, in an acid-tinged voice, went straight to the problem.

“Mr. Tetrazinni is long gone. His son, Chandler Tetrazinni, with whom I spoke at length, inherited the business. He is a lawyer.”

Raphael, who knew his father well, recognized the danger signal. If James had respected Tetrazinni he would have said “attorney.” “Lawyer” meant something with greater elements of python. The room was hot and the August sun eating at the begrimed window glass seemed to have found a way through it.

James Bardawulf's harsh voice continued. “Frankly, I wish I hadn't contacted him. He heads up Tetrazinni Search Services, which specializes in tracing missing and unknown heirs. He was surprised to hear from me and said he would look in the files. Two days later he called and said he had found the relevant papers and that the case was far from dead. I'm afraid my questions led him to this almost forgotten affair and he smelled the possibility of money. I regret to say that I think that if I had not called him he would never have heard of Breitsprecher. But we can't undo the situation. I learned from Hazelton that Tetrazinni's outfit works for a percentage of the inheritance, and to me that means that he now intends to go to the heirs and offer them a contract. A champertous contract, which is, unfortunately, quite legal these days. Lavinia Duke initiated this search decades ago”—he glanced up at her portrait—“just why she did this is far from clear as she should have been advised to ignore sleeping dogs. Tetrazinni, the man she hired, claimed to have found legitimate heirs to the Duke fortune, heirs who actually had a more valid claim than Lavinia herself—that is if blood relationship is the criterion.”

“How can that be?” said Sophia, pushing the extra copies of
The Story of a Forest Giant
away. “Surely it can't mean anything. Breitsprecher and Duke have owned the business for generations! It's accepted, it's known.” She patted her forehead with one of the napkins. “This air conditioner is useless.”

“A suit may be forthcoming if those heirs proceed,” said James Bardawulf morosely.

“Proceed! Have they begun an action?” Andrew Harkiss got up and poured his sixth cup of coffee since breakfast. Coffee gave him jitters and palpitations, forcing him to drink gin at night to calm down. “And are you going to tell us who these ‘putative heirs' might be?”

“Believe it or not, they are some Indians up in Canada.”

“Oh no, oh no,” said Conrad Breitsprecher suddenly, his face so drained of color that his black eyebrows seemed drawn on his forehead with charcoal. “That could break up the company.” James Bardawulf was surprised at his agitation. What did
he
have to worry about? The seedling nurseries were making money as though they had a printing press in the cellar. No red ink there, no covetous Indians with their hands held out. And Conrad took no profits, but poured every penny back into his damn seedlings. His obsession.

Claude Breitsprecher also noticed Conrad's anxiety. Pure ego, he thought. Conrad believed the reputation of Breitsprecher-Duke rested entirely on the seedling nursery division, which wasn't even part of the company. As a young man Dieter had set it up with his cousin Armenius Breitsprecher and made it into a hobby that he fondly believed was an innovative business. But Conrad had, for all his eccentricities and peculiar ways, turned it into a success. How did
that
happen?

“Break up the company? I doubt that. In any case your nursery business is and always has been quite separate.”

“Of course. But—it's the thought that someone you don't know can come in and take all you've built up. Once they get their hooks into you they'll keep on until they've got everything. They'll come after my nurseries! They carry the name Breitsprecher!” Conrad was clenching his fists.

Conrad is really upset, thought Sophia. She made a suggestion. “Can't we just rip up the report and forget we ever saw it? Actually part of it
was
ripped when I found it.”

Hazelton Culross laughed. “Not now. James Bardawulf contacted Mr. Tetrazinni and they discussed the report, so Mr. Tetrazinni knows and he knows James Bardawulf and all of you also know. You are no longer ignorant of the report's existence.”

James Bardawulf gave his copy of
The Story of a Forest Giant
a little dismissive flick with his finger. Sophia clenched her fists.

“We can sell, can't we?” asked Harkiss. “International Paper has been after us for a year. Shouldn't we accept their offer, divide the money and reorganize our lives? Most of us active in the company are near retirement age in any case. To me it seems a good time to sell.”

James Bardawulf stuck out his lower lip. “Doing so will not stop Tetrazinni and the so-called heirs. Even if we sold, those heirs could still come after each of us.”

Sophia began to snivel.

But Hazelton Culross asked the big question. “How much do you know about the assumed heirs?”

“According to Tetrazinni's report to Lavinia Duke the heirs would be Mi'kmaq Indians. Canadian Indian. We do not have the names of the present-day descendants.”

“Well, none of those people were in the company papers,” said Sophia. “How was I expected to know? I only saw something about a large table in the Penobscot Bay house. No idea what that referred to.”

“In fact,” said Andrew Harkiss, ignoring her, “the line may have died out? The problem may have solved itself? That report is old.”

“Perhaps. We just don't know. And the original report found that the Duke descendants as
we
know them”—he touched his copy of
The Story of a Forest Giant
—“were only through Charles Duquet's
adopted
sons. His only legitimate son was Outger Duquet, Beatrix's father. That's where the trouble comes. So Lavinia herself had no direct claim to Duquet ancestry.” There was a touch of triumph in James Bardawulf's voice.

“Before you start to worry,” said Hazelton Culross, sensing the waves of anxiety crashing around him, “consider that Tetrazinni himself may not know if there are any current presumed heirs. He would have to do the legwork to establish names and whereabouts. And if and when he finds them he would have to persuade them that they have a claim worth pursuing. He would likely get them to sign a contract with him and only then would things go forward. If these heirs are Canadian it is another layer of difficulty for Tetrazinni to work through. All those things take time and money and
the lawyer
would have to bear the cost. And
then
he would come up against a company that for centuries has been directed and led first by the Dukes, then by the Breitsprechers, accepted as the legitimate owners of the properties and the operators of a legitimate business for almost three hundred years. Even if he put the effort and money into finding any living heirs, Tetrazinni would have the slimmest chance of getting anywhere with this. I would put it out of my mind and continue as you always have.”

There was a silence, a grateful silence. Andrew took a deep breath and said, “But we have discussed selling the company. International Paper is interested. Except for the seedling division,” he added hastily as Conrad half-stood.

“But there's still a chance the heirs could sue us, right?” he asked, fixed and tense.

“Well, yes. Anything is possible. But I don't think any court would give them the time of day.”

“Well,
I
give them the time of day,” said Conrad. “I find all this very disturbing.” And he rushed from the room.

Hazelton Culross looked at James Bardawulf, at Sophia and Andrew. “He really seems to see this as a threat. He is overreacting.”

Claude said, “He has never been right since his war experience. It may sound far-fetched but I have heard of delayed reactions to war experiences.”