PART 19 – Northbridge Claimed My Father Had Approved the Agreement, but His Final Letter Contradicted the Company’s Entire Account

Helen responded to Northbridge's assertion by demanding the execution record, the identity of the witnesses, and the original document bearing the parties' signatures. She also requested any electronic audit trail showing when the agreement had been created, amended, or uploaded to the company's records system.

The company's solicitor replied that the matter was under review and that the requested materials would be provided when available. He did not withdraw the claim that the agreement had been executed.

Helen advised me not to assume that the statement was false merely because it contradicted my father's letter. The company might be relying on another version, a mistaken record, or a document whose status had not been properly checked. We needed the evidence before reaching a conclusion.

I understood the caution, but I could not stop thinking about Dad's final instructions to Mr. Bennett and the notary. He had gone to considerable lengths to ensure that no new agreement affecting the property would be signed without his presence and independent advice.

If Northbridge now claimed that the agreement had been executed, someone would have to explain when and how that had happened.

Mr. Bennett searched the estate records again. He found a copy of the letter my father had sent to the notary, along with a reply confirming that the notary had not witnessed any supplementary agreement involving the Mercer Street property.

The reply was dated after the last meeting between Dad and Richard.

I read it in Helen's office.

“Does this prove Dad never signed the agreement?” I asked.

“It supports the evidence that this notary did not witness a signature,” Helen said. “It doesn't establish that no one else witnessed or recorded a document. We need to examine the company's claimed execution record.”

She asked Mr. Bennett to provide a formal statement confirming that the estate file contained no executed copy of the supplementary agreement and that my father had instructed him to seek independent review before any such document was signed.

The statement was completed two days later.

Meanwhile, Northbridge's records specialist had located a digital log showing that the incomplete scan was uploaded to the company's archive several months after my father's death. The file metadata indicated that the document had been processed by an account associated with the former finance department.

The log did not identify who had scanned the pages, and the metadata could not establish whether the paper document had been signed before the scan was created.

Helen requested the original file history and any retained paper records associated with the upload.

The company's solicitor said the original could not yet be located.

I began to feel as though we were chasing a shadow. Every time we found a record that seemed important, the next document was missing, incomplete, or stored under another reference number. Yet the gaps themselves were becoming harder to dismiss as ordinary administrative mistakes.

Patricia's statement added another piece. She recalled that Richard had told her to separate the supplementary agreement from the ordinary project files because it was “not ready for circulation.” She had never seen my father sign it, and she had not been asked to witness any execution.

Her statement was careful and limited to what she remembered. It did not establish that no signed version existed, but it contradicted the idea that the document had been routinely completed in the ordinary course of business.

Helen included the statement in her request for further disclosure.

At home, Daniel seemed increasingly unsettled by the dispute over the agreement. He asked whether Northbridge was claiming that my father had signed it, and I told him what the company had said.

He sat down abruptly.

“Richard told me the agreement was complete,” he said.

“When?”

“After your father died.”

“What did he show you?”

“A set of pages. He said the company had the necessary authority to protect its position if the debt remained unpaid.”

“Did you see Dad's signature?”

Daniel rubbed his forehead.

“I saw a signature on one of the pages, but I couldn't tell whether it was his. Richard didn't let me keep the documents.”

“What about my signature?”

“I don't remember seeing yours on that copy.”

I watched him carefully.

“Did Richard say the agreement had been signed before Dad died?”

“He said the paperwork had been finalized earlier. He didn't explain when.”

The answer made me uneasy.

“Why didn't you tell Helen this?”

“Because I wasn't sure what I had seen. I thought it was part of the original financing arrangement.”

“Then you need to tell her now.”

Daniel agreed to speak with his solicitor and provide a statement. He did not claim to know whether the document was genuine, and he acknowledged that he had never seen a complete executed copy.

I informed Helen of the conversation. She asked Daniel's solicitor to arrange a formal interview, making clear that Daniel should describe what he remembered without guessing about the document's authenticity.

The interview took place the following week. Daniel confirmed that Richard had shown him a set of pages after my father's death and had described them as a completed agreement. He could not identify the signatures with certainty, and he had not seen the first page.

His statement was useful because it established that Richard had represented the agreement as complete after my father died. It did not establish that Richard had forged anything, but it gave Helen a reason to investigate the timing and source of the document.

She requested the names of everyone who had handled the agreement and asked Northbridge to preserve any records associated with its preparation.

The company responded by offering another settlement meeting. It said that, regardless of the dispute over the supplementary agreement, it was willing to withdraw the claim against me if I accepted a revised release.

Helen declined to discuss settlement until the company provided the execution records.

“Your offer does not resolve the contradiction,” she wrote. “My client cannot make an informed decision while the company maintains that an agreement was executed but cannot produce the original or identify the witnesses.”

I was relieved that she had taken such a firm position. I had begun to fear that the pressure to settle would eventually force me to choose between financial safety and finding out what my father had tried to protect.

A few days later, the forensic document specialist completed a preliminary examination of the incomplete scan. The specialist could not determine whether the pages belonged to an executed agreement, but identified inconsistencies in the document's formatting and pagination.

The pages appeared to have been assembled from more than one version of the agreement.

Helen explained that this could have an innocent explanation. Documents were sometimes revised during negotiations, and copies could contain pages from different drafts. But it also meant that the scan could not reliably establish the existence of a single, completed contract.

The missing first page remained essential.

That evening, I returned to my father's house and searched the study for any reference to the agreement's final wording. I did not remove the original documents; instead, I photographed the contents of each folder and checked the reference numbers against Helen's list.

In a folder containing correspondence from the last month of Dad's life, I found a letter addressed to Mr. Bennett. It had been written only days before Dad entered the hospital.

He stated that Richard had continued to refer to the supplementary agreement despite Dad's refusal to sign it. Dad instructed his solicitor to challenge any claim that the agreement had been completed and asked that the original financing contract be kept separate from all later drafts.

I sent a photograph of the letter to Helen.

She asked Mr. Bennett to verify the original and provide a formal copy for the case file.

The letter did not prove that the disputed agreement was forged, but it made my father's position unmistakable. He had rejected the proposed terms and anticipated that someone might later claim otherwise.

I sat in the study until the light faded, thinking about the last time I had spoken to Dad. He had asked whether I was eating properly and whether Daniel was still working too hard. I had told him not to worry about us.

He had looked at me for a long time before changing the subject.

Now I wondered whether he had been trying to find the courage to tell me what he had discovered, and whether he had decided that protecting me from the truth was kinder than allowing me to see the danger.

The following morning, Helen received a call from the independent records specialist. During the review of the second archive box, the specialist had found a reference to a physical document that had been checked out of storage shortly after my father's death.

The checkout record identified the person who had collected it as Richard Cole.

The document's description was incomplete, but the file number matched the supplementary agreement.

Helen requested the original checkout register and the date on which the document had been returned.

The register showed that the file had not been returned.

I read the entry in Helen's office.

“Does that mean Richard still has it?”

“Not necessarily,” she replied. “It means the archive record does not show a return. He may have transferred it elsewhere, or the record may be incomplete. We need to establish where the document went.”

I felt a surge of anger.

The original agreement had been checked out after my father's death, and the company was now claiming that it had been properly executed. Richard had handled the file, but no one could produce the original.

Helen sent a formal request to Northbridge's solicitor seeking an explanation and asking that Richard be required to preserve any relevant documents.

The response arrived late that afternoon.

Richard's solicitor stated that he no longer possessed any Northbridge records and had returned all company property when his employment ended.

The letter did not explain the missing checkout entry.

I sat at my desk, reading the two statements side by side.

The company said the agreement had been executed. Its archive showed that Richard had removed the file. Richard's solicitor said he no longer possessed the records.

Someone's account was incomplete.

And until the original document was found, we could not know whether my father had been misrepresented, whether the agreement had been assembled from separate drafts, or whether someone had deliberately created a false record of his consent.