nodded. “David likes to have her around when things get tense. He knows she’s a damn sight smarter than he is.”
“How do she and Donna get along?”
“All right, as far as I know. I think Donna s happy to have her on the scene, too, as a steadying influence on the turkey.”
“What is the cousin’s attitude toward Carolyn?”
“Scott? Oh, I think he resents her. He detests anything to do with David—guilt by association.”
Wolfe pondered the desk blotter for several seconds, then leveled his gaze at Bishop. “I would like to have Carolyn Haverhill come here tomorrow with her husband and his sister. Is it too great an imposition to ask you to arrange that?”
“Not at all. I was going to suggest it myself when we talked on the phone. I’ll try to reach her tonight. Actually, David would probably welcome having her along.”
“Back to the Gazette Building,” Wolfe said. “Was Mr. MacLaren still there when the body was discovered?”
“I’m not sure—I think he’d gone. I do know that after he talked to Harriet, he went off looking for Elliot.”
“And found him?”
“Uh-huh. Dean has a private law practice, but as Harriet’s counsel he also has an office in the building. MacLaren apparently met with him there after he left Harriet.”
“May I assume you are familiar with the terms of Mrs. Haverhill’s will?”
“Yes. At one time, she was going to divide her Gazette holdings among her stepchildren and Scott, with David and Donna each getting forty percent of her stock and the other twenty going to Scott. But in recent months, she decided to will her shares to a trust—are you aware of that?”
“She touched briefly on it when she was here.”
Bishop studied the ice in his glass. “The bottom line was that she felt none of the kids was up to running the operation. Rather than turn it over to them when she died, she would sink her holding into a trust, with the trustees being me, Elliot, and a banker.”
“Mr. Fitzpatrick,” Wolfe put in.
“Right. And all the papers—God, there were a lot of them—got drawn up a couple of months ago. What a lawyer’s dream.”
“And what were the reactions of the younger Haverhills?”
Bishop decided another Scotch would be okay after all, and I went to the table with his glass. “From what I heard, some of it from Harriet and some second-hand, they didn’t like it very damn much—especially David, who went on a two-day binge when he found out. Scott apparently did some whining too, but I’m not sure about Donna, who’s more removed from the scene.”
“With this action, was Mrs. Haverhill not cutting herself off from possible rescue from a takeover? Either one of her stepchildren’s shares, coupled with her own, would ensure absolute control of the newspaper.”
“Of course I’ve thought about that myself—and I came close a couple of times to asking Harriet about it,” Bishop said. “For what it’s worth, I have two theories: One, at the time the trust instrument was being drawn, there was no hint whatever of a MacLaren takeover. He was rumored to be more interested in a Chicago paper and had pretty much publicly stated the New York newspaper market was too fragmented for him—despite all that publicity about his wanting a paper in the biggest city of every English-speaking country. Second, if the idea of a takeover did occur to Harriet, I suspect that she felt somehow she could play on the family angle to convince one of them—probably Donna—to sell to the trust.”
“What about the trio trying to take over?” Wolfe posed. “The two stepchildren’s shares together would effectively checkmate Mrs. Haverhill. Add the nephew, and you’re at forty-five percent.”
Bishop shook his head. “David and Scott didn’t get along very well—ever. It’s hard to visualize them in bed together.”
Wolfe winced at the figure of speech. “Are the Arlen Company and Mr. Demarest committed to Mr. MacLaren?”
“Oh, you know about them? As far as I know, they are. On several occasions through the years, Harriet tried to buy them both out, but no sale. They each said they liked the idea of owning part of a newspaper, which really means they were waiting for a big-bucks buyer to come along someday. They knew damn well that in a closely held setup like the Gazette, their relatively small holdings could turn out to be critical.”
“To your knowledge, had Mrs. Haverhill had recent conversations with either party?”
“Not that I was aware of,” Bishop said. “I think she’d pretty much given up on