"I guess the way I've always felt about her," Angus replied. "Removed. You and I were always closer than Mom and I."

"Did you resent being sent away to Exeter at fourteen?"

"No, not really. It seemed like the thing to do, I guess; so many other guys I knew were going off somewhere to school. Isn't it a little late to be asking me?"

Sandy shrugged. "From the moment you were born, Joan wanted you to go to Exeter. I'm not quite sure how she settled so firmly on that school. Over the years she would talk about it, and it became a done thing without any argument."

"I remember her talking about it. It's so strange; I'm not exactly sad about her death. I mean, I'm sorry that she had to go through that, but I'm surprised at how little effect it's had on me."

Sandy felt exactly the same way, but he didn't say so. "You may feel differently after a little time has passed; or, on the other hand, you may go right on feeling the same."

Angus nodded. "What are you going to do now?"

"Well, Joan's death changes quite a lot in my life. Or rather, it keeps my life from being changed the way it would have, if she'd lived. I'll see Laddie tomorrow, and we'll come to some sort of accommodation. Laddie has never liked confrontation, and he'll want to settle everything as quickly and as amicably as possible."

"I always felt kind of sorry for Uncle Laddie," Angus said.

"Why?"

"Well, he seemed so much under Granddad's thumb."

"Believe me, Angus, we were all under Jock's thumb. To tell you the truth, I never minded that much. I had a rather weak father myself, and having a man of such authority over me was something I didn't dislike. In fact, I think it made me better at my work. If I had an idea I wanted to try out, I thought about it very carefully before I broached the subject to Jock. I knew I'd have to be ready to defend it on all sorts of grounds, and it made me do my homework and not go off half-cocked." He stopped and looked at his son. "You never needed second guessing, you know."

"I didn't?"

"Not from somebody like Jock. You always knew exactly what you wanted to do. You resisted the idea of joining the company long before Jock or anybody else had even raised the subject. You wanted medicine, and all of us knew that it would do no good to try and persuade you to do anything else."

"I guess that's true."

"Fortunately, the idea of your being a doctor appealed to Joan. I can't tell you what hell she could have put us both through if she'd had her heart set on your doing something else."

"I can believe that," Angus said. "Well, I guess we'll lay her to rest in Scotland and try to get on with our lives."

"I guess we will," Sandy replied. And the two strolled on through the spring morning.

The calls began on Monday morning and continued throughout the day. How awful! So sorry to hear it! Anything we can do? Sandy accepted them politely, but by noon he was weary of them. The Monday morning Times had the story and was clinical with the details. God knew what the Daily News had to say about it, and Sandy didn't want to know. Late on Sunday afternoon he and Angus had visited Albert at Lenox Hill and had found the old man sitting up in bed, watching a movie on television. Sandy felt grateful that Jock's driver had not been seriously hurt.

In the early afternoon, Sandy asked Angus to man the phone, and he went to the office-not his own office over the shop on Madison Avenue, but the company's headquarters in the Seagram Building. He kept a small room there. He got off the elevator and headed toward his desk, and he nearly ran head on into Laddie, who was coming out of his own office.

"Oh, Sandy," Laddie said, and he seemed a little flustered. His shoulders sagged. "I think you'd better come in here; there's been a development you have to know about."

Sandy followed Laddie into his office. A man in his shirtsleeves was seated opposite the desk, and he rose as Sandy entered.

"Sandy," Laddie said, "I don't know if you know Walt Bishop, from our legal department."

"No," Sandy said, offering his hand.

"Sit down, both of you, please," Laddie said. "Sandy… well, Walt, perhaps it would be better if you told Sandy what you've just told me."

"Of course, Mr. Bailley," Bishop said. "First of all, Mr. Kinsolving, I want to apologize for not being able to tell you this sooner. I was on vacation in the Caribbean, and, because of the airline schedules, I wasn't able to return to the office until just a few minutes ago."

Sandy shrugged. What was the man on about?

"You see," Bishop continued, "the week before last, I came into the office on Saturday morning to write some instructions for my secretary before I left town. I ran into Mr. Bailley, the elder Mr. Bailley, when I went to use the copying machine."

"Father often worked on weekends," Laddie said.

"That was when Mr. Bailley asked me to do it," Bishop said.

"Do what?" Sandy asked.

"Write his will."

Sandy froze. "Jock Bailley asked you to write his will?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand. Why didn't he just call his lawyer?"

"My impression was that it was a spur-of-the-moment thing," Bishop said. "But he was very insistent; he wanted it done that minute, and he wanted to sign it before the day was out. Anyway, he dictated some provisions to me, and I went back to my office to prepare the document."

Sandy looked at Laddie. "You didn't know about this?"

Laddie shook his head. "Remember, he had the stroke on Sunday night. I suppose he would have mentioned it on Monday morning, if he had made it to Monday morning."

"Fortunately," Bishop said, "we have a software package in the legal department that includes a sample will, so all I had to do was add the relevant paragraphs on the word processor, and inside half an hour, I had a will for Mr. Bailley to sign."

"And did he sign it?" Sandy asked.

"Well, we had some trouble finding witnesses. It was a Saturday, after all, and no one else was in the office but the two of us, and we needed three witnesses."

Sandy was having trouble containing himself. "And did you find them?" he asked, as calmly as he could.

"Well, what we finally did was, Mr. Bailley and I took the elevator downstairs to the Four Seasons."

The restaurant was in the lowest level of the building.

"Two of the restaurant's owners, a Mr. Margittai and a Mr. von Bidder, were there, and they and the bartender on duty witnessed the will."

Sandy's heart would not stop hammering against his chest.

"Then Mr. Bailley bought me the best lunch I ever had," Bishop said. "He said it was a load off his mind and his conscience. I put the will in my files and went off on vacation; I didn't hear of Mr. Bailley's death until I returned to work today."

Laddie held up a sheaf of papers. "I have the will here," he said. "I have no doubt that it's legal and proper and that it fully expresses Father's intentions."

"Thank you, Mr. Bailley," Bishop said.

"It's pretty much like the one we read last week," Laddie continued, "except Father increased the sums for the servants and for Angus's trust-that from five to ten million dollars."

Sandy wanted to hammer on the desk and scream at Laddie to tell the rest.

"And he left the wine division to you," Laddie said, finally. "Joan got a third of the remainder of the business, and I got the other two-thirds. That's it."

Sandy let out the breath that he had been holding, as slowly as he could. "Thank you, Mr. Bishop," he said. I would have thanked you a lot more last week, he thought, before I instigated the death of my wife. Christ, if I'd known, none of this would have happened. Joan and I would have been divorced, and I would have had the wine division.