Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

“I’m trying to do a little research on a fellow countryman of mine called Harvey Metcalfe. He’s a substantial benefactor of Harvard, and I want to flatter the old boy by knowing all

about him when I return.” Stephen didn’t care very much for the lie, but these were strange circumstances he now found himself in.

“Hang on here and I’ll go and see if we have anything in the cutting room on him.”

Stephen amused himself by reading the headlines pinned up on Compton-Miller’s board—obviously stories he had taken some pride in: “Prime Minister to Conduct Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall,” “Miss World loves Tom Jones,” “Muhammad Ali says ‘I will be Champion Again.’”

Richard returned fifteen minutes later, carrying a thickish file.

“Have a go at that, Descartes. I’ll be back in an hour and we can have some coffee.”

Stephen nodded and smiled gratefully. Descartes never had to solve the problems he was facing.

Everything Harvey Metcalfe wanted the world to know was in that file, and a little bit he didn’t want the world to know. Stephen learned of his yearly trips to Europe to visit Wimbledon, of the success of his horses at Ascot and of his pursuit of Impressionist pictures for his private art collection. William Hickey of the Daily Express had on one occasion titillated his readers with a plump Harvey clad in Bermuda shorts and a report that he spent two or three weeks a year on his private yacht at Monte Carlo, gambling at the Casino. Hickey’s tone was something less than fulsome. The Metcalfe fortune was in his opinion too new to be respectable. Stephen wrote down meticulously all the facts he thought relevant and was studying the photographs when Richard returned.

He took Stephen off to have some coffee in the canteen on the same floor. Cigarette smoke swirled mistily around the girl at the cashier’s desk at the end of the self-service counter.

“Richard, I don’t quite have all the information I might need. Harvard wants to touch this man for quite a large sum: I believe they are thinking in terms of about $1 million. Where could I find out some more about him?”

“New York Times, I should imagine,” said Compton-Miller. “Come on, we’ll give Terry Robards a visit.”

The New York Times office in London was also on the fifth floor of The Times building in Printing House Square. Stephen thought of the vast New York Times building on 43rd Street and wondered if the London Times had a reciprocal arrangement, and was secreted away in their basement. Terry Robards turned out to be a wiry American wearing a perpetual smile. Terry immediately made Stephen feel at ease, a knack he had developed almost subconsciously over the years and which was a great asset when digging a little deeper for stories.

Stephen repeated his piece about Metcalfe. Terry laughed.

“Harvard isn’t too fussy where they get their money from, are they? That guy has discovered more legal ways of stealing money than the Internal Revenue Service.”

“You don’t say,” said Stephen innocently.

The New York Times file on Harvey was voluminous. “Metcalfe’s Rise from Messenger Boy to Millionaire,” as one headline put it, was documented admirably. Stephen took further careful notes. The details of Sharpley & Son fascinated him, as did the facts on some wartime arms dealing and the background of his wife Arlene and their daughter Rosalie. There was a picture of both of them, but the daughter was only fifteen at the time. There were also long reports of two court cases some twenty-five years past, in which Harvey had been charged with fraud but never convicted, and a more recent case in 1956 concerning a share transfer scheme in Boston. Again Harvey had escaped the law, but the District Attorney had left the jury in little doubt of his views on Mr. Metcalfe. The most recent press stories were all in the gossip columns: Metcalfe’s paintings, his horses, his orchids, his daughter’s success at Vassar and his trips to Europe. Of Prospecta Oil there was not a word. Stephen had to admire Harvey’s ability to conceal his more dubious activities from the press.

Terry invited his fellow expatriate to lunch. Newsmen always like new contacts and Stephen looked like a promising one. He asked the cabby to go to Whitfield Street. As they inched their way out of the City into the West End, Stephen hoped that the meal would be worth the journey. He was not disappointed.

Lacy’s restaurant was airy and bedecked with clean linen and young daffodils. Terry said it was greatly favored by press men. Margaret Costa, the cookery writer and her chef husband, Bill Lacy, certainly knew their onions. Over delicious watercress soup followed by Médaillons de veau à la crême au Calvados and a bottle of Château de Péronne 1972, Terry became quite expansive on the subject of Harvey Metcalfe. He had interviewed him once at Harvard on the occasion of the opening of Metcalfe Hall, which included a gymnasium and four indoor tennis courts.

“Hoping to get himself an honorary degree one day,” said Terry cynically, “but not much hope, even if he gives a billion.”

Stephen noted the words thoughtfully.

“I guess you could get some more facts on the guy at the American Embassy,” said Terry. He glanced at his watch. “No, hell, the library closes at 4 P.M. Too late today. Time I got back to the office now America’s awake.”

Stephen wondered if press men ate and drank like that every day. They made University dons look positively celibate—and however did they manage to get a paper out?

Stephen fought his way onto the 5:15 train to return with the Oxford-bound commuters, and only when he was alone in his room did he begin to study the results of his day’s work. Though exhausted, he forced himself to sit at his desk until he had prepared the first neat draft of a dossier on Harvey Metcalfe.

Next day Stephen again caught the 8:17 to London, this time buying a second-class ticket. The ticket collector repeated his piece about leaving the restaurant car after he had finished his meal.

“Sure,” said Stephen, as he toyed with the remains of his coffee for the rest of the hour-long journey, never shifting from first class. He was pleased with himself: he had saved £2, and that was exactly how Harvey Metcalfe would have behaved.

At Paddington he followed Terry Robards’s advice and took a taxi to the American Embassy, a vast monolithic building which sprawls over 250,000 square feet and is nine stories high, stretching the entire length of one side of Grosvenor Square. It was not, however, as elegant as the American Ambassador’s magnificent official residence, Winfield House in Regents Park, where Stephen had been summoned to drinks last year, which was once the private home of Barbara Hutton before it was sold to the American government in 1946. Certainly, either of them was large enough for seven husbands, thought Stephen.

The entrance to the Embassy Reference Library on the ground floor was firmly shut. Stephen was reduced to a close study of the plaques on the wall in the corridor outside, honoring recent Ambassadors to the Court of St. James. Reading backward from Walter Annenberg, he had reached Joseph Kennedy when the doors of the library swung open, not unlike a bank. The prim girl behind a sign marked “Inquiries” was not immediately forthcoming on the subject of Harvey Metcalfe.

“Why do you require this information?” she asked sharply.

This threw Stephen for a moment, but he quickly recovered. “I’m returning to Harvard in the fall as a professor and I feel I should know more about his involvement with the university. I’m at present a Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford.”

Stephen’s answer motivated the girl to immediate action and she produced a file within a few minutes. Though by no means as racy as the New York Times’s, it did put figures on the amounts Harvey Metcalfe had donated to charity and gave precise details of his gifts to the Democratic Party. Most people do not divulge the exact amount they give to political parties, but Harvey only knew about lights—no one seemed to have told him about bushels.