Page 42 of The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #5)
Jeremy Jenkins never takes his work home with him.
He knows some solicitors who drive home, passenger seat groaning with files, and work till all hours.
But if Jeremy Jenkins is to answer your correspondence, it will be between the hours of nine a.m. and five p.m. Four p.m., if he’s honest – you don’t want to start anything new too near to home time, do you?
In case it spills over past five. The worst is house sales.
You get an email at one minute past four from a buyer who needs to exchange before the end of play that day and you could be there till six.
No, thank you: the office hours of Rochester, Clark, Hughes are on the website for everyone to see, and it takes just a modicum of common sense to understand one mustn’t get in touch within an hour or so of home time.
If he’s being entirely honest, he doesn’t get an awful lot done between nine a.m. and ten a.m. either, because it’s important to have a coffee and really think about the day ahead before you get stuck in.
But between ten and four, Jeremy likes to think he does a pretty good job. Are there better solicitors in Kettering? Possibly. Are there better solicitors in Kettering who still retain a healthy work-life balance? Jeremy doubts that very much.
There was a time when it was floated that Rochester, Clark, Hughes might become Rochester, Clark, Hughes, Jenkins, but in the end that was put on the back burner. And that was fair enough if you really took the time to think about it.
Today, however, he has a file with him. Belonging to a Ms Holly Lewis.
She deposited some documents with the company some years ago.
Jeremy didn’t deal with her personally, he’s sure of that, but whoever did deal with her has obviously either left or died since then (in the past ten years, four solicitors have left the firm and two have died, including the original Rochester, who fell off a ladder in Mykonos), and Jeremy’s name has found itself attached to the file.
It was placed on his desk at three p.m., well within the statute of limitations, so he took a look. The file contained two envelopes. One was marked IN THE EVENT OF THE DEATH OF HOLLY LEWIS and the other IN THE EVENT OF THE DEATH OF NICK SILVER .
His secretary, a man but actually not at all bad when you got used to it, had forwarded an email from Kent Hospital – this Holly Lewis had named the firm as her next of kin in an emergency – saying she had died. Which happens in the solicitor business. Would that it didn’t.
Jeremy Jenkins’s job, then, was to track down Mr Nick Silver. To let him know that he, Jeremy Jenkins, had a package in his care with his, Nick Silver’s, name on it.
They had a number for Nick Silver. His secretary had tried but received no answer. Jeremy then watched as his secretary tried the number again, because secretaries often dial numbers incorrectly if you don’t watch them like a hawk. Nothing doing.
You often found these ‘Open in the event of the death’ letters attached to people’s estates, but this was a single file, containing only the two envelopes and three phone numbers. And that is unusual. No record of any correspondence other than the initial request to have the file stored.
It piqued Jeremy Jenkins’s interest. He wasn’t allowed to open the envelopes, naturally, but he would be interested to know what was in them. Engage this Nick Silver in a conversation, see what was what.
If Nick Silver is a working man, such as Jeremy himself, perhaps it is difficult for him to answer the phone during the day? Social calls are frowned upon at Rochester, Clark, Hughes too.
He has already rung the number twice, with no joy. He will try a final time just before nine, and then call it a night.
And, if all else fails, there is the third number in the file. He could ring that tomorrow.