Bitter Business

asked as she dabbed the comers of her eyes with a lacy handkerchief that she fished from somewhere within her ample bosom.
    “It’d be thirty years this June. I came to work for the firm in the typing pool straight out of high school. In those days the firm used to look for girls from smaller towns downstate—they thought we weren’t as coarse as the city girls, and would make better wife material. Back then, it was quite usual for a young lawyer to marry one of the secretaries. It was almost expected.
    “So I came up here from Savoy—that’s my hometown—and took a job with my friend Lucille. We lived in a ladies-only residence on Belmont, with no gentlemen visitors allowed beyond the front parlor. You girls have no idea how much the world has changed in the past thirty years.
    “When I first came to work at the firm there was a secretary named Bernice Simmons who was a fully trained lawyer. She’d fought tooth and nail to get into law school at Northwestern—the only woman in her class. But after she graduated, the only job they’d give her was typing for Mr. Ross. She retired five or six years ago, just before you came. My friend Lucille ended up marrying a young man in the tax department, but it turns out secretaries were a hard habit for him to break and they ended up divorced. I worked for two years in the typing pool before I was assigned to Mr. Babbage. I’ve worked for him ever since. God knows what I’ll do now.”
    “You didn’t have to come in today,” I told her. “I can’t imagine that there’s anything that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
    “Oh, I’m not doing anything that couldn’t wait until a year from tomorrow,” Daniel’s loyal secretary replied. “But when I got through with church this morning, I didn’t want to go back to my empty apartment. Somehow it seemed better to come in here and get a start going through his papers. There’s quite a bit of old material that will need to be put with the newer sections of the files. It’ll take weeks to get it all sorted out. Besides, this was his favorite place,” she said, indicating the office. “It just seemed right to be here today.”
    “Madeline, can I ask you something?”
    “Of course.”
    “You probably knew Daniel better than anybody and I know he discussed his cases with you. Did he ever talk to you about why he decided to give certain files to certain lawyers after he learned he was ill?”
    “You mean, did he ever tell me why he chose you for Superior Plating?”
    “Yes. Why me?”
    “There were a number of reasons,” she replied. “For one thing, he thought you and Dagny Cavanaugh would hit it off. Mr. Babbage believed that more than anything else when you were dealing with a family business, it was important that the lawyer and the decision-making family member have a good relationship. Over the years he and Jack Cavanaugh became very close. Mr. Babbage thought over time the same kind of relationship would grow between you and Dagny.”
    “But when you say decision-making family member, wouldn’t that mean he’d want someone who’d get along with Philip Cavanaugh? After all, it’s Philip who’s going to succeed Jack as head of the company.”
    “Mr. Babbage told me that would never happen. He was convinced that Dagny would find some way to take over the company—or at least the main plating business. He assumed that after Jack died, Philip would spin off the specialty chemicals business—he never has had any real interest in plating, and according to Mr. Babbage, he has a real flair for the chemical business. He said you were the perfect person to structure that kind of transaction.”
    “He was probably right,” I replied grimly. “Unfortunately, things haven’t turned out like anyone expected. Dagny’s dead and my relationship with the rest of the Cavanaughs feels suspiciously like a group-therapy session from hell. With Dagny out of the picture I honestly don’t see what I bring to the party that’s going to be of any use to the Cavanaughs.”
    “I know that Mr. Babbage wouldn’t have agreed.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “He said there was something else that you had that the other lawyers he was considering for the Superior Plating file didn’t have.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Forgiveness.”
     

22
     
    All through the afternoon, as I worked at my desk, what Elliott had said about the police investigation gnawed at a part of me. I have been a lawyer long enough to