Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune

by Jeffrey Archer

  “Ah, Mr. Kane,” said Thomas Cohen, “how nice to see you again. Would you care for some coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Shall I send someone out for a Coca-Cola?”

  William’s face was expressionless.

  “To business, to business,” said Mr. Cohen, slightly embarrassed. “We have dug around a little on your behalf, Mr. Kane, with the help of a very respectable firm of private investigators to assist us with the questions you asked that were not purely academic. I think I can safely say we have the answers to all your questions. You asked if Mr. Osborne’s offspring by your mother, were there to be any, would have a claim on the Kane estate, or in particular on the trust left to you by your father. No is the simple answer, but of course Mrs. Osborne can leave any part of the five hundred thousand dollars bequeathed to her by your father to whom she pleases.”

  Mr. Cohen looked up.

  “However, it may interest you to know, Mr. Kane, that your mother has drawn out the entire five hundred thousand from her private account at Kane and Cabot during the last eighteen months, but we have been unable to trace how the money has been used. It is possible she might have decided to deposit the amount in another bank.”

  William looked shocked, the first sign of any lack of the self-control, which Thomas Cohen noted.

  “There would be no reason for her to do that,” William said. “The money can only have gone to one person.”

  The lawyer remained silent, expecting to hear more, but William steadied himself and added nothing, so Mr. Cohen continued.

  “The answer to your second question is that you have no personal or legal obligations to Mr. Henry Osborne at all. Under the terms of your father’s will, your mother is a trustee of the estate along with a Mr. Alan Lloyd and a Mrs. John Preston, your surviving godparents, until you come of age at twenty-one.”

  Thomas Cohen looked up again. William’s face showed no expression at all. Cohen had already learned that that meant he should continue.

  “And thirdly, Mr. Kane, you can never remove Mr. Osborne from Beacon Hill as long as he remains married to your mother and continues to reside with her. The property comes into your possession by natural right on her death. Were he still alive then, you could require him to leave. I think you will find that covers all your questions, Mr. Kane.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cohen,” said William. “I am obliged for your efficiency and discretion in this matter. Now, perhaps you could let me know your professional charges?”

  “One hundred dollars doesn’t quite cover the work, Mr. Kane, but we have faith in your future and——”

  “I do not wish to be beholden to anyone, Mr. Cohen. You must treat me as someone with whom you might never deal again. With that in mind, how much do I owe you?”

  Mr. Cohen considered the matter for a moment. “In those circumstances, we would have charged you two hundred and twenty dollars, Mr. Kane.”

  William took six $20 bills from his inside pocket and handed them over to Cohen. This time, the lawyer did not count them.

  “I am grateful to you for your assistance, Mr. Cohen. I am sure we shall meet again. Good day, sir.”

  “Good day, Mr. Kane. May I be permitted to say that I never had the privilege of meeting your distinguished father, but having dealt with you, I wish that I had.”

  William smiled and softened. “Thank you, sir.”

  Preparing for the baby kept Anne fully occupied; she found herself easily tired and resting a good deal. Whenever she inquired of Henry how business was going, he always had some answer plausible enough to reassure her that all was well without supplying her any actual details.

  Then one morning the anonymous letters started coming again. This time they gave more details—the names of the women involved and the places they could be seen with Henry. Anne burned them even before she could commit the names or places to memory. She didn’t want to believe that her husband could be unfaithful while she was carrying his child. Someone was jealous and had it in for Henry and he or she had to be lying.

  The letters kept coming, sometimes with new names. Anne still continued to destroy them, but they were now beginning to prey on her mind. She wanted to discuss the whole problem with someone but couldn’t think of anybody in whom she could confide. The grandmothers would have been appalled and were, in any case, already prejudiced against Henry. Alan Lloyd at the bank could not be expected to understand, as he had never married, and William was far too young. No one seemed suitable. Anne considered consulting a psychiatrist after listening to a lecture given by Sigmund Freud, but a Cabot could never discuss a family problem with a complete stranger.

  The matter finally came to a head in a way that even Anne had not been prepared for. One Monday morning she received three letters, the usual one from William addressed to Mrs. Richard Kane, asking if he could once again spend his summer vacation with his friend Matthew Lester. Another anonymous letter alleging that Henry was having an affair with, with … Milly Preston; and the third from Alan Lloyd, as chairman of the bank, asking if she would be kind enough to telephone and make an appointment to see him. Anne sat down heavily, feeling breathless and unwell, and forced herself to reread all three letters. William’s letter stung her by its detachment. She hated knowing that he preferred to spend his summer with Matthew Lester. They had been steadily growing further apart since her marriage to Henry. The anonymous letter suggesting that Henry was having an affair with her closest friend was impossible to ignore. Anne couldn’t help remembering that it had been Milly who had introduced her to Henry in the first place, and that she was William’s godmother. The third letter, from Alan Lloyd, who had become chairman of Kane and Cabot after Richard’s death, somehow filled her with even more apprehension. The only other letter she had ever received from Alan was one of condolence on the death of Richard. She feared that this one could only mean more bad news.

  She called the bank. The operator put her straight through.

  “Alan, you wanted to see me?”

  “Yes, my dear, I would like to have a chat sometime. When would suit you?”

  “Is it bad news?” asked Anne.

  “Not exactly, but I would rather not say anything over the phone. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Are you free for lunch by any chance?”

  “Yes I am, Alan.”

  “Well, let’s meet at the Ritz at one o’clock. I look forward to seeing you then, Anne.”

  One o’clock, only three hours away. Her mind switched from Alan to William to Henry but settled on Milly Preston. Could it be true? Anne decided to take a long warm bath and put on a new dress. It didn’t help. She felt, and was beginning to look, bloated. Her ankles and calves, which had always been so elegant and so slim, were becoming mottled and puffy. It was a little frightening to conjecture how much worse things might become before the baby was born. She sighed at herself in the mirror and did the best she could with her outward appearance.

  “You look very smart, Anne. If I weren’t an old bachelor considered well past it, I’d flirt with you shamelessly,” said the silver-haired banker, greeting her with a kiss on both cheeks as though he were a French general. He guided her to his table.

  It was an unspoken tradition that the table in the corner was always occupied by the chairman of Kane and Cabot if he was not lunching at the bank. Richard had done so and now it was the turn of Alan Lloyd. It was the first time Anne had sat at the table with anyone. Waiters fluttered around them like starlings, seeming to know exactly when to disappear and reappear without interrupting a private conversation.

  “When’s the baby due, Anne?”

  “Oh, not for another three months.”

  “No complications, I hope. I seem to remember—”

  “Well,” admitted Anne, “the doctor sees me once a week and pulls long faces about my blood pressure, but I’m not too worried.”

  “I’m so glad, my dear,” he said, and touched her hand gently as an uncle might. “You do lo
ok rather tired—I hope you’re not overdoing things.”

  Alan Lloyd raised his hand slightly. A waiter materialized at his side and they both ordered.

  “Anne, I want to seek some advice from you.”

  Anne was painfully aware of Alan Lloyd’s gift for diplomacy. He wasn’t having lunch with her for advice. There was no doubt in her mind that he had come to dispense it—kindly.

  “Do you have any idea how well Henry’s real estate projects are going?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Anne. “I never involve myself with Henry’s business activities. You’ll remember I didn’t with Richard’s either. Why? Is there any cause for concern?”

  “No, no, none of which we at the bank are aware. On the contrary, we know Henry is bidding for a large city contract to build the new hospital complex. I was only inquiring because he has come to the bank for a loan of five hundred thousand dollars.”

  Anne was stunned.

  “I see that surprises you,” he said. “Now, we know from your stock account that you have a little under twenty thousand dollars in reserve, while running a small overdraft of seventeen thousand dollars on your personal account.”

  Anne put down her soup spoon, horrified. She had not realized that she was so badly overdrawn. Alan could see her distress.

  “That’s not what this lunch is about, Anne,” he added quickly. “The bank is quite happy to lose money on the personal account for the rest of your life. William is making over a million dollars a year on the interest from his trust, so your overdraft is hardly significant; nor indeed is the five hundred thousand Henry is requesting, if it were to receive your backing as William’s legal guardian.”

  “I didn’t realize I had any authority over William’s trust money,” said Anne.

  “You don’t on the capital sum, but legally the interest earned from his trust can be invested in any project thought to benefit William and is under the guardianship of yourself and of myself and Milly Preston as godparents until William is twenty-one. Now, as chairman of William’s trust I can put up that five hundred thousand with your approval. Milly has already informed me that she would be quite happy to give her approval, so that would give you two votes, and my opinion would therefore be invalid.”

  “Milly Preston has already given her approval, Alan?”

  “Yes. Hasn’t she mentioned the matter to you?”

  Anne did not reply immediately.

  “What is your opinion?” Anne asked finally.

  “Well, I haven’t seen Henry’s accounts, because he only started his company eighteen months ago and he doesn’t bank with us, so I have no idea what expenditure is over income for the current year and what return he is predicting for 1923. I do know he has made an application for the new hospital contract and rumor suggests he has been taken seriously.”

  “You realize that during the last eighteen months I’ve given Henry five hundred thousand of my own money?” said Anne.

  “My chief teller informs me any time a large amount of cash is withdrawn from any account. I didn’t know that was what you were using the money for, and it was none of my business, Anne. That money was left to you by Richard and is yours to spend as you see fit.

  “Now, in the case of the interest from the family trust, that is a different matter. If you did decide to withdraw five hundred thousand dollars to invest in Henry’s firm, then the bank will have to inspect Henry’s books, because the money would be considered as another investment in William’s portfolio. Richard did not give the trustees the authority to make loans, only to invest on William’s behalf. I have already explained this situation to Henry, and if we were to go ahead and make this investment, the trustees would have to decide what percentage of Henry’s company would be an appropriate exchange for the five hundred thousand. William, of course, is always aware what we are doing with his trust income, because we saw no reason not to comply with his request that he receive a quarterly investment program statement from the bank in the same way as all the trustees do. I have no doubt in my own mind that he will have his own ideas on the subject, which he will be fully aware of after he receives the next quarterly report.

  “It may amuse you to know that since the beginning of his sixteenth year William has been sending me back his own opinions on every investment we make. To begin with, I looked on them with the passing interest of a benevolent guardian. Of late, I have been studying them with considerable respect. When William takes his place on the board of Kane and Cabot, this bank may well turn out to be too small for him.”

  “I’ve never been asked for advice on William’s trust before,” Anne said forlornly.

  “Well, my dear, you do see the reports that the bank sends you on the first day of every quarter, and it has always been in your power as a trustee to query any of the investments we make on William’s behalf.”

  Alan Lloyd took a slip of paper from his pocket and remained silent until the sommelier had finished pouring the Nuits-St.-Georges. Once he was out of earshot, Alan continued.

  “William has a little over twenty-one million invested by the bank at four and a half percent until his twenty-first birthday. We reinvest the interest for him each quarter in stocks and bonds. We have never in the past invested in a private company. It may surprise you to hear, Anne, that we now carry out this reinvestment on a fifty-fifty basis: fifty percent following the bank’s advice and fifty percent following the suggestions put forward by William. At the moment we are a little ahead of him, much to the satisfaction of Tony Simmons, our investment director, whom William has promised a Rolls-Royce in any year that he can beat the boy by over ten percent.”

  “But where would William get hold of the ten thousand dollars for a Rolls-Royce if he lost the bet—if he’s not allowed to touch the money in his trust until he is twenty-one?”

  “I do not know the answer to that, Anne. What I do know is he would be far too proud to come to us direct and I am certain he would not have made the wager if he could not honor it. Have you by any chance seen his famous ledger lately?”

  “The one given to him by his grandmothers?”

  Alan Lloyd nodded.

  “No, I haven’t seen it since he went away to school. I didn’t know it still existed.”

  “It still exists,” said the banker, “and I would give a month’s wages to know what the credit column now stands at. I suppose you are aware that he now banks his money with Lester’s in New York and not with us? They don’t take on private accounts at under ten thousand dollars. I’m also fairly certain they wouldn’t make an exception, even for the son of Richard Kane.”

  “The son of Richard Kane,” said Anne.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound rude, Anne.”

  “No, no, there is no doubt he is the son of Richard Kane. Do you know he has never asked me for a penny since his twelfth birthday?” She paused. “I think I should warn you, Alan, that he won’t take kindly to being told he has to invest five hundred thousand dollars of his trust money in Henry’s company.”

  “They don’t get on well?” inquired Alan, his eyebrows rising.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Anne.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It certainly would make the transaction more complicated if William really stood against the whole scheme. Although he has no authority over the trust until he is twenty-one, we have already discovered through sources of our own that he is not beyond going to an independent lawyer to find out his legal position.”

  “Good God,” said Anne, “you can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, yes, quite serious, but there’s nothing for you to worry about. To be frank, we at the bank were all rather impressed, and once we realized where the inquiry was coming from, we released information we would normally have kept very much to ourselves. For some private reason he obviously didn’t want to approach us directly.”

  “Good heavens,” said Anne, “what will he be like when he’s thirty?”

  “That will depend,” said Alan
, “on whether he is lucky enough to fall in love with someone as lovely as you. That was always Richard’s strength.”

  “You are an old flatterer, Alan. Can we leave the problem of the five hundred thousand until I have had a chance to discuss it with Henry?”

  “Of course, my dear. I told you I had come to seek your advice.”

  Alan ordered coffee and took Anne’s hand gently in his. “And do remember to take care of yourself, Anne. You are far more important than the fate of a few thousand dollars.”

  When Anne returned home from lunch she immediately started to worry about the other two letters she had received that morning. Of one thing she was now certain after all she had learned about her own son from Alan Lloyd: she would be wise to give in gracefully and let William spend the forthcoming vacation with Matthew Lester.

  The possibility that Henry and Milly were having an affair raised a problem to which she was unable to compose so simple a solution. She sat in the maroon leather chair, Richard’s favorite, looking out through the bay window onto a beautiful bed of red and white roses, seeing nothing, only thinking. Anne always took a long time to make a decision, but once she had, she seldom reversed it.

  Henry came home earlier than usual that evening and she couldn’t help wondering why. She soon found out.

  “I hear you had lunch with Alan Lloyd today,” he said as he entered the room.

  “Who told you that, Henry?”

  “I have spies everywhere,” he said, laughing.

  “Yes, Alan invited me to lunch. He wanted to know how I felt about permitting the bank to invest five hundred thousand dollars of William’s trust money in your company.”

  “What did you say?” asked Henry, trying not to sound anxious.

  “I told him I wanted to discuss the matter with you first, but why in heaven’s name didn’t you let me know earlier that you had approached the bank, Henry? I felt such a fool hearing the whole thing from Alan for the first time.”

  “I didn’t think you took any interest in business, my dear, and I only found out by sheer accident that you, Alan Lloyd and Milly Preston are all trustees and each has a vote on William’s investment income.”