Final Paradox

Chapter 3

Back from Norma’s, Harry hurried through the atrium of his office building. As always, the plush, blue carpeting and the marble, with its gold fittings, enlivened his step. He entered the glass elevator and rose through a profusion of greenery and flickering light and shadow. It was a huge change from the dark, dank offices he had inhabited less than a year ago, where the sight of chipped windowsills and rusted fire escapes depressed him. The wash of sunlight from the skylight banished for a moment his dark thoughts of Norma and Katrina.

Sarah, the receptionist, welcomed him. Her warm voice and smile further raised his flagging spirits. But the grim staccato of Miss Giveny’s typewriter, blasting from her office, set him on edge. Clearing his throat, he stood at her door. She scarcely took time to nod in his direction.

“You know, this Dinnick business is very strange,” he began. “She’s hallucinating that there are tenants above her.” He sighed. “God save us from the vagaries of old age.”

The typewriter ribbon broke. Miss Giveny, hunched over the machine, muttered under her breath.

“Why don’t you use the computer?” Harry asked. “Then you wouldn’t have to mess with ribbons.”

She glared at him over the tops of her glasses, which had slid to the tip of her nose. “This is a form. I can’t do it on a computer. Besides, is my work not satisfactory?”

He shrugged. Although her stubborn resistance to technology annoyed him, he backed off. “Do as you please.” Still compelled to talk about Norma, he added, “She says she hears them only at night and that they listen on her phone.”

“How do you know they’re not?” Miss Giveny asked crossly.

With strained patience, he said, “Because I went up to look and there wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place.”

“Maybe someone is playing tricks on her. I can think of one person who wants to see her gone.” She tapped out an impatient rhythm on her typewriter. “Maybe you should take her complaints more seriously. That Archie Brinks is up to no good.”

“That much is obvious!” He began shuffling through the mail.

She stopped her typing. “Mr. Jenkins, why would Jeremy want a copy of Mrs. Dinnick’s will?”

Harry paused. His junior, Jeremy Freemantle, appeared highly competent, yet something about the boy him nagged at him. “No idea. Did you ask him?”

“Yes. I found him rummaging through your filing cabinets. He said he needed it for a precedent.”

That’s probably the reason.” Harry turned to go.

Miss Giveny said, “Did you check his references when you hired him?”

“Yes, of course.”

She glanced at him balefully as she adjusted her glasses. “Well, I wouldn’t trust him to look after a goldfish.”

Harry shrugged. “I’ll ask him about the will myself.” He started down the hallway.

Miss Giveny called after him. “But about Archie Brinks. Mr. Crawford always said he was trouble. Mr. Crawford would have …”

Harry did not wait. He could fill in the blanks. Mr. Crawford was an excellent judge of character. He would put a stop to such nonsense.

Richard Crawford was Harry’s deceased law partner, who lived on in Miss Giveny’s mind as the paragon of virtue, intelligence, and wit. Undoubtedly she thought the firm was sliding into a yawning void without Mr. Crawford at the helm. Of course, she overlooked the fact that he was an unrepentant womanizer and had dropped dead at Harry’s feet, overcome with lust for his client, Marjorie Deighton. It seemed no female was entirely safe alone with him. Muttering, Harry marched into his office and firmly closed the door.