‘Do you want me to do it for you, Maxim?’
‘We’ll see.’
He motioned to one of the waiters, ordered two more drinks, then turned to her, put his hand on her arm. ‘I’m not staying in London for the weekend after all, Grae.’
‘That’s no problem. I can be ready whenever you say. I’m half packed. When are we leaving? Tomorrow or Saturday?’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow. On the morning Concorde.’
From his emphasis on his first word she knew he was leaving alone. He rarely did that when they were together on business, and unable to disguise her surprise she stared at him. ‘Oh,’ was about the only word she could muster.
‘Normally I would say come back on Concorde with me, but I’d like you to stay in London this trip, to follow through on a few things for me, Grae. You should be able to finish up by the end of the day tomorrow. You can fly back to New York on the company jet whenever you wish. Tomorrow night, Saturday, Sunday or even Monday. The plane’s at your disposal.’
‘London at the weekend doesn’t appeal to me especially,’ she murmured, ‘but maybe I will stay in Europe. I could go to Paris for a couple of days. It might be fun.’ There was a moment’s hesitation on her part before she leaned across the table and said in a low conspiratorial voice, ‘No problems at the New York office, I hope, Boss?’
‘No, no, of course not! You’d be the first to know. I’m going back a little earlier than I’d planned because there’s a personal matter I must attend to, and I want to get it out of the way this weekend.’
Instantly she thought: It’s a woman and he’s got trouble with her. She said, ‘What is it you want me to do for you here in London?’
‘There’re a couple of banking matters you’ll have to attend to, also, rather than cancelling it, I’d like you to take my place at the meeting with Montague Reston and Gerald Sloane. There’ll be no problem, you’ll handle yourself well.’ A faint smile touched his mouth. ‘And handle them well, I might add.’
‘Okay, whatever you say, Boss. But I’d like a briefing about the Reston deal.’
‘Of course. We’ll discuss it later. Now, shall we order dinner? I see Louis heading in our direction.’
It was one-fifteen in the morning by the time Maxim got back to his house on the corner of Chesterfield Hill and Charles Street.
He had escorted Graeme to the Ritz Hotel after their dinner at Annabel’s, and had then walked home, crossing Piccadilly and heading through Half Moon Street into Mayfair. There was no longer any hint of rain, the air was crisp and dry and usually he would have enjoyed the short walk. Yet all evening he had been fighting this feeling of weight, almost of oppression.
He let himself in, locked the front door behind him, hung his black trenchcoat in the hall cupboard, and paused for a moment, listening.
Nothing stirred. The house was quiet, perfectly still. The staff had gone to bed, were no doubt already fast asleep, and the only sound was the hollow ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the imposing marble foyer where he stood.
Turning off the light, Maxim went up the curving staircase more slowly than usual to the second floor. He crossed the landing, went into the master bedroom where he shed his clothes and put on pyjamas and a dressing gown. He did everything with swiftness before hurrying through into the study which was part of the master bedroom suite, wishing he felt better.
Marco, the butler, aware of Maxim’s nocturnal habits of working late, studying documents and balance sheets well into the early hours, had turned on the lamps and banked up the fire before retiring to his own quarters. The silk-shaded lamps cast a roseate glow throughout and the logs burned brightly in the grate behind the mesh fire screen, threw off welcome warming heat. Maxim seated himself at the French bureau plat, glanced at the telephone messages Marco had placed under a glass paperweight and put them to one side. None were of any great importance, could be dealt with before he left for the airport in a few hours or so. Picking up a pearl-handled paper knife, he slit the manilla envelope which John Vale had dropped off earlier and took out the sheaf of papers.
It was with only the smallest degree of interest that he looked over the accounts of Lister Newspapers which he had fanned out on the desk in front of him. One of Maxim’s greatest assets was his ability to read a financial statement well, and to size up a company quickly with his own special brand of business acumen. This he did now, understanding at once that Lister Newspapers was indeed a good buy, by anybody’s standards. Excellent, in fact. And yet he felt no quickening of his pulse, no excitement in his veins, no thrill at the thought of going after it. Indisputably, his attitude had not changed since the meeting in Alan Trenton’s office. He simply was not interested in making a play for this company. Or was that true for any company?
It struck Maxim, with some force, that he was not particularly interested in the Winonda Group either, and this brought him up in the chair with a small start, instantly made him scrutinise his sudden change of mind.
He had told Graeme to go ahead earlier for a variety of reasons. It was one of her bigger deals; he knew how much it meant to her, he had no wish to disappoint or discourage her. Also, right at the outset he had recognised that Winonda would be an important acquisition for them, an enormously valuable asset to West International when it came to the overall picture of the conglomerate. But he had to admit that he much preferred her to handle the deal herself – with the help of Peter Heilbron and the financial team in the New York office. Certainly he did not want to be the chief combatant in the actual battle, had no interest in being out there on the front line. He would give advice from the trenches. His troops would have to do the hard hand-to-hand fighting.
Maxim frowned intently, wondering about his reluctance to put himself in the middle of the action. He had always been a big part of it in the past, the pivotal point. Surely business wasn’t beginning to bore him, was it? How could that be? Business was his life, wasn’t it? Anastasia had always said so. He winced at the thought of his first wife
A weary sigh escaped, and he ran his hands through his hair distractedly, conscious that he had not been himself of late. He kept up the facade, of course, the facade of charm and magnetism that the world had come to expect. But inside, at the very core of his being, he felt empty. There was a bleakness in his soul, he was joyless for most of the time, and increasingly he was held in the grips of a terrible melancholia he could not fully comprehend. Nor, indeed, explain.
A peculiar feeling began to settle over him, one of claustrophobia. No, oppression. He felt as if he was gagging, suffocating, and he had the most pressing urge to get out of the room, a compulsion to run and not stop running until he had put great distance between himself and this place. He wanted to be far, far away.
A chill coursed through him, and he shivered; it was as though someone had walked over his grave. With this strange thought, goose flesh speckled his arms and his face and he was startled at himself, unaccustomed as he was to feelings of discomfiture, of uneasiness.
Maxim swung his head, glanced around the study, asked himself why he wanted to escape this room. He did not understand. It was his favourite spot in the entire house, filled as it was with treasures from which he had constantly drawn enormous pleasure. Each item had been so lovingly placed here by Anastasia and himself, and he recalled the satisfaction they had derived when they were searching out the antiques, the objects of art and the paintings in England and on the Continent.
The ancient oak boiserie that panelled the walls had been found in an old manor house in Normandy. The French writing desk where he now sat was discovered in an antiquaire’s shop in the Rue du Bac on a weekend trip to Paris. The wall sconces were picked up when they had been travelling through Tuscany, while the remarkable horse paintings by Stubbs had been bought from a peer of the realm whose