3. THE DAMSEL IS DISTRESSED
The two men stood at the edge of the helipad just down from the Institute and watched the helicopter come in. It was the company’s fanciest model, with all the luxuries and amenities of the very rich and well connected and jet powered, too.
“Well, here she comes.” John Medford Byrne sighed. At fifty-three he was director of the Institute, a post which also placed him on Magellan’s board of directors. He more than coped on his U.S. $157,000 annual salary with all the fringes thrown in. Tall, distinguished, gray-haired and tanned, he looked in his fancy tailored brown business suit like he should be on the cover of Business Week. In truth, he was by all accounts a genius at administration who earned every dime he made and then some, but he was uncomfortable now. At the moment, Magellan was running smoothly as usual, but eventually, when Sir Robert’s will was fully probated, there would have to be a board and stockholders’ meeting at which control would be passed.
“She’s the eight-thousand-pound gorilla, MacDonald,” Byrne added. “Anything she wants she gets, including me dressing up in a suit in this climate. You remember that.”
MacDonald, who was less formally dressed and far more comfortable, having not brought a suit or tie or anything resembling them when pulled to the island, nodded. Byrne had been after him on and off for several days on this. He was a little sour on the whole thing himself. I’m expected to save all their fat corporate asses, he thought, and if I do they might give me a thousand dollars bonus for Christmas, if they remember at all. If not—well, his job, low as it might be, was as vulnerable if not more so than theirs.
The thing that made them all uncomfortable was that not one of them had known that Sir Robert had a daughter or, for that matter, any other immediate living relatives. A long lost brother they might have at least accepted, but Sir Robert was always rather cold in all sexual matters, and those who had known him had considered him sexless or perhaps a self-repressed homosexual. All that anyone really knew about her was that her name was Angelique Montagne, that she was just barely old enough to inherit to the full without a conservator. They also know she was crippled in some way, for the company advance information warned them to provide for a wheelchair and a nurse.
That, and a couple of other things, not the least of which was that Sir Robert had made her sole and unequivocal heir to everything he had, including the controlling interest in Magellan. Lots of attorneys in many nations would be gearing up to contest or otherwise stall that part, but Sir Robert was a great businessman with the best attorneys money could buy. In the end, the will would stand, everyone seemed confident of that, and when it did anyone who contested would be on a particularly nasty enemies list. Nor would she be likely to be simply removed, even for the money at stake. Should she die before making her own arrangements, the will provided for such nasty things that all their jobs would go and it was quite likely that Magellan would be carved up and possibly dissolved.
MacDonald was there at her request, and feeling a bit uncomfortable because of that. His command appearance suggested that, other than burying her father, she had made solving the mystery of his death her only other immediate priority.
The helicopter landed, and several staff members went to it, opened the door, and provided a small set of steps for disembarkation. First off the plane was Derek Meadows, Sir Robert’s private solicitor and, like the dead man, a Canadian. Harold McGraw, Magellan’s chief counsel and an American, had already arrived and was at the Lodge. Next out was an elderly Anglican clergyman whom they took to be Father Dodds, an old and close friend of the dead man who would, by Sir Robert’s written orders, preside over the funeral.
Now two of the ground crew went to the helicopter as a wheelchair appeared at the door, and the two beefy men, aided by those still on board, lifted the chair and its occupant gently to the ground. Next out was a fortyish-looking woman who had to be the nurse, and, by her attire, was also quite obviously a Catholic nun.
MacDonald looked at the girl in the wheelchair and sighed. Why do the paralyzed ones always seem to be extraordinarily beautiful? he wondered.
Angelique was in fact a stunner, with lush reddish-brown hair, big green eyes, and the face and body of a very young Brigit Bardot. She was petite, beautiful, and she was, from all appearances, a quadriplegic.
The totality of her disability, particularly when coupled with her radiant, almost charismatic beauty, shocked both men, and for a moment both just stood there, not moving.
The wheelchair, however, was no ordinary wheelchair, as she proved, spotting the two standing at the edge of the tarmac. It had considerable bulk below and behind and might have weighed a ton. Without any assist from anyone, it started up and glided towards the pair.
As she reached them, both men saw that she was wearing some sort of headpiece plugged into the chair which included a tiny microphone. It resembled the communications gear of a modern telephone operator. The helicopter was completely switched off now, and they heard her say softly, “Arret!” The chair halted immediately. The nurse and Meadows had followed her and now stood behind, although it was Meadows who took the lead.
“Mademoiselle Montagne, let me present Mr. Byrne, the Institute’s director, and Company Investigator MacDonald, who is in charge of our own inquiry into the facts of your father’s death and is a fellow Canadian, I might add.”
She looked at them rather nervously. “How do you do, sirs,” she managed, in a pleasant, French accented soprano.
“Welcome to our island,” Byrne managed, trying to sound both fatherly and formal at the same time and coming off mostly stuffy. “Actually, it’s your island now, too, of course. You must be fatigued by your long journey. Would you care to come up to the Lodge right now and get settled in? Weighty matters can wait.’’
“I am feeling fine, Monsieur, and not at all out of sorts. I did little on the journey but sleep and think. I have not as yet had time to get used to all this.”
“Well, we understand that it must have been a shock to learn of your father’s death—” Byrne began, but she cut him off.
“No, no! You do not yet understand, I fear. Until only four days ago I did not know that he even was my father.”
That startled them both once again. It was a day for shocks. MacDonald’s curiosity broke through the ice.
“Um, you mean that you didn’t know Sir Robert at all?”
“Oh, oui, I knew him as ‘Uncle Robert,’ and I knew who he was, but all that I knew, all that my records ever said, was that I was the orphaned child of two people I thought were my parents, and that my father had been killed while serving with Sir Robert in Korea. I was raised mostly in a convent in the Gaspe, with Sir Robert a frequent visitor. I knew he had set up a trust fund for me, and this chair is the product of one of his companies, but that he was actually my real father— mon Dieu!—1 wish I had known!”
Byrne looked even more uncomfortable. “I suggest we still go up to the Lodge and get out of the sun. It’s air conditioned there, and we can have some tea or whatever and talk more comfortably. We have a small tram over there with a wheelchair lift—a few of the Fellows of the Institute also have need of wheelchairs—and we can be up there in no time at all.”
She nodded. “Very well.”
She commanded the chair, he noted, with simple commands in French in a very definite and slightly unnatural tone of voice. It was an amazing device to him, and one that, he knew, would be beyond the financial reach of many others who could use it. She could even make very small adjustments in its steering by uttering sharp nonsense syllables or clicks with her tongue.