A Dangerous Fortune (57 page)

“Mr. Edward told me to draw up an underwriting contract.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Yes!” He gave Hugh another sheet of paper. This was a contract brief, a short note of the terms of an agreement, given by a partner to the clerk who was to draw up the full contract. It was in Edward’s handwriting and it quite clearly said that the loan was to be underwritten.

That settled it. Edward was responsible. There had been no fraud, and there was no way the money could be got back. The whole transaction was perfectly legitimate. Hugh was dismayed and enraged.

“All right, Oliver, you can go,” he said.

Oliver stood his ground. “I hope I may take it that no suspicion attaches to me, Mr. Hugh.”

Hugh was not convinced that Oliver was totally innocent, but he was obliged to say: “You are not to be blamed for anything you did under Mr. Edward’s orders.”

“Thank you, sir.” Oliver went out.

Hugh looked at his partners. “Edward went against our collective decision,” he said bitterly. “He changed the
terms of the issue behind our backs. And it has cost us one million, four hundred thousand pounds.”

Samuel sat down heavily. “How dreadful,” he said.

Sir Harry and Major Hartshorn just looked bewildered.

William said: “Are we bankrupt?”

Hugh realized the question was addressed to him. Well, were they bankrupt? It was unthinkable. He reflected for a moment. “Technically, no,” he said. “Although our cash reserve has gone down by one million four hundred thousand pounds, the bonds appear on the other side of our balance sheet, valued at nearly their purchase price. So our assets match our liabilities, and we’re solvent.”

Samuel added: “As long as the price doesn’t collapse.”

“Indeed. If something happened to cause a fall in South American bonds we would be in deep trouble.” To think that the mighty Pilasters Bank was so weak made him feel sick with rage at Edward.

Sir Harry said: “Can we keep this quiet?”

“I doubt it,” Hugh replied. “I’m afraid I made no attempt to hide it up in the senior clerks’ room. It’s gone around the building by now and it will be all over the City by the end of the lunch hour.”

Jonas Mulberry interjected a practical question. “What about our liquidity, Mr. Hugh? We’ll need a large deposit before the end of the week to meet routine withdrawals. We can’t sell the harbor bonds—it would depress the price.”

That was a thought. Hugh worried at the problem for a moment then said: “I’ll borrow a million from the Colonial Bank. Old Cunliffe will keep it quiet. That should tide us over.” He looked around at the others. “That takes care of the immediate emergency. However, the bank is dangerously weak. In the medium term we have to correct the position just as fast as we can.”

William said: “What about Edward?”

Hugh knew what Edward had to do: resign. But he wanted someone else to say it, so he remained silent.

Eventually Samuel said: “Edward must resign from the bank. None of us could ever trust him again.”

William said: “He may withdraw his capital.”

“He can’t,” Hugh said. “We haven’t got the cash. That threat has lost its power.”

“Of course,” William said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Sir Harry said: “Then who will be Senior Partner?”

There was a moment of silence. Samuel broke it by saying: “Oh, for goodness’ sake, can there be any question? Who uncovered Edward’s deceit? Who took charge in the crisis? Who have you all looked to for guidance? During the last hour all the decisions have been made by one person. The rest of you have just asked questions and looked helpless. You
know
who the new Senior Partner must be.”

Hugh was taken by surprise. His mind had been on the problems facing the bank, and he had not given a thought to his own position. Now he saw that Samuel was right. The others had all been more or less inert. Ever since he noticed the discrepancy in the weekly summary he had been acting as if he were the Senior Partner. And he knew he was the only one capable of steering the bank through the crisis.

Slowly it dawned on him that he was about to achieve his life’s ambition: he was going to be Senior Partner of Pilasters Bank. He looked at William, Harry and George. They all had a shamefaced air. They had brought about this disaster by allowing Edward to become Senior Partner. Now they knew Hugh had been right all along. They were wishing they had listened to him before, and they wanted to make up for their error. He could see in their faces that they wanted him to take over.

But they had to say it.

He looked at William, who was the most senior Pilaster after Samuel. “What do you think?”

He hesitated only for a second. “I think you should be Senior Partner, Hugh,” he said.

“Major Hartshorn?”

“I agree.”

“Sir Harry?”

“Certainly—and I hope you’ll accept.”

It was done. Hugh could hardly believe it.

He took a deep breath. “Thank you for your confidence. I will accept. I hope I can bring us all through this calamity with our reputation and our fortunes intact.”

At that moment Edward came in.

There was a dismayed silence. They had been discussing him almost as if he were dead, and it was a shock to see him in the room.

At first he did not notice the atmosphere. “This whole place is in turmoil,” he said. “Juniors running around, senior clerks whispering in the corridors, hardly anyone doing any work—what the devil is going on?”

Nobody spoke.

Consternation spread over his face, then a look of guilt. “What’s wrong?” he said, but his expression told Hugh that he could guess. “You’d better tell me why you’re all staring at me,” he persisted. “After ail, I am the Senior Partner.”

“No, you’re not,” said Hugh. “I am.”

 CHAPTER THREE

NOVEMBER  

1

MISS DOROTHY PILASTER
married Viscount Nicholas Ipswich at Kensington Methodist Hall on a cold, bright morning in November. The service was simple though the sermon was long. Afterwards a lunch of hot consommé, Dover sole, roast grouse and peach sherbet was served to three hundred guests in a vast heated tent in the garden of Hugh’s house.

Hugh was very happy. His sister was radiantly beautiful and her new husband was charming to everyone. But the happiest person there was Hugh’s mother. Smiling beatifically, she sat beside the groom’s father, the duke of Norwich. For the first time in twenty-four years she was not wearing black: she had on a blue-gray cashmere outfit that set off her thick silver hair and calm gray eyes. Her life had been blighted by his father’s suicide, and she had suffered years of scrimping poverty, but now in her sixties she had everything she wanted. Her beautiful daughter was Viscountess Ipswich and would one day be the duchess of Norwich, and her son was rich and successful and the Senior Partner of Pilasters Bank. “I used to think I had been unlucky,” she murmured to Hugh in between courses. “I was wrong.” She put her hand on his arm in a gesture like a blessing. “I’m very fortunate.” It made Hugh want to cry.

Because none of the women wanted to wear white
(for fear of competing with the bride) or black (because it was for funerals) the guests made a colorful splash. They seemed to have chosen hot colors to ward off the autumn chill: bright orange, deep yellow, raspberry-red and fuchsia-pink. The men were wearing black, white and gray, as always. Hugh had on a frock coat with velvet lapels and cuffs: it was black, but as usual he defied convention by wearing a bright blue silk tie, his only eccentricity. He was so respectable nowadays that he sometimes felt nostalgic for the time when he had been the black sheep of the family.

He took a sip of Château Margaux, his favorite red wine. It was a lavish wedding breakfast for a special couple, and Hugh was glad he could afford it. But he also felt a twinge of guilt about spending all that money when Pilasters Bank was so weak. They still had one million four hundred thousand pounds’ worth of Santamaria harbor bonds, plus other Cordova bonds valued at almost a million pounds; and they could not sell them without causing a drop in the price, which was the very thing Hugh feared. It was going to take him at least a year to strengthen the balance sheet. However, he had steered the bank through the immediate crisis, and they now had enough cash to meet normal withdrawals for the foreseeable future. Edward no longer came to the bank at all, although technically he would remain a partner until the end of the financial year. They were safe from everything except some unexpected catastrophe such as war, earthquake or plague. On balance he felt he was entitled to give his only sister an expensive wedding.

And it was good for Pilasters Bank. Everyone in the financial community knew that the bank was down more than a million on Santamaria harbor. This big party boosted confidence by assuring people that the Pilasters were still unimaginably rich. A cheap wedding would have aroused suspicion.

Dotty’s dowry of a hundred thousand pounds had
been made over to her husband, but it remained invested in the bank, earning five percent. Nick could withdraw it, but he did not need it all at once. He would draw money gradually as he paid off his father’s mortgages and reorganized the estate. Hugh was glad he did not want all the cash right away, for large withdrawals put a strain on the bank at present.

Everyone knew about Dotty’s huge dowry. Hugh and Nick had not been able to keep it completely secret, and it was the kind of thing that got around very quickly. Now it was the talk of London. Hugh guessed it was being discussed this very moment at half the tables at least.

Looking around, he caught the eye of one guest who was not happy—indeed, she wore a miserable, cheated look, like a eunuch at an orgy: Aunt Augusta.

“London society has degenerated completely,” Augusta said to Colonel Mudeford.

“I fear you may be right, Lady Whitehaven,” he murmured politely.

“Breeding counts for nothing anymore,” she went on. “Jews are admitted everywhere.”

“Quite so.”

“I was the first countess of Whitehaven, but the Pilasters were a distinguished family for a century before being honored with a title; whereas today a man whose father was a navvy can get a peerage simply because he made a fortune selling sausages.”

“Indeed.” Colonel Mudeford turned to the woman on his other side and said: “Mrs. Telston, may I hand you some more red-currant sauce?”

Augusta lost interest in him. She was seething at the spectacle she had been forced to attend. Hugh Pilaster, son of bankrupt Tobias, giving Château Margaux to three hundred guests; Lydia Pilaster, widow of Tobias, sitting next to the duke of Norwich; Dorothy Pilaster, daughter of Tobias, married to Viscount Ipswich with the biggest
dowry anyone had ever heard of. Whereas her son, dear Teddy, the offspring of the great Joseph Pilaster, had been summarily dismissed as Senior Partner and was soon to have his marriage annulled.

There were no rules anymore! Anyone could enter society. As if to prove the point she caught sight of the greatest parvenu of them all: Mrs. Solly Greenbourne, formerly Maisie Robinson. It was amazing that Hugh had the gall to invite her, a woman whose whole life had been scandal. First she had been practically a prostitute, then she had married the richest Jew in London, and now she ran a hospital where women who were no better than herself could give birth to their bastards. But there she was, sitting at the next table in a dress the color of a new copper penny, chatting earnestly to the governor of the Bank of England. She was probably talking about unmarried mothers. And he was listening!

“Put yourself in the position of an unmarried servant girl,” Maisie said to the governor. He looked startled, and she suppressed a grin. “Think of the consequences if you become a mother: you will lose your job and your home, you will have no means of support, and your child will have no father. Would you then think to yourself: ‘Oh, but I can be delivered at Mrs. Greenbourne’s nice hospital in Southwark, so I may as well go ahead and do it?’ Of course not. My hospital does nothing to encourage girls into immorality. I just save them from giving birth in the gutter.”

Dan Robinson, sitting on his sister’s other side, joined in. “It’s rather like the banking bill I’m proposing in Parliament, which would oblige banks to take out insurance for the benefit of small depositors.”

“I know of it,” the governor said.

Dan went on: “Some critics say it would encourage bankruptcy by making it less painful. But that’s nonsense. No banker would want to fail, under any circumstances.”

“Indeed not.”

“When a banker is making a deal he does not think that he may make a widow in Bournemouth penniless by his rashness—he worries about his own wealth. Similarly, making illegitimate children suffer does nothing to discourage unscrupulous men from seducing servant girls.”

“I do see your point,” the governor said with a pained expression. “A most … ah … original parallel.”

Maisie decided they had tormented him enough, and turned away, letting him concentrate on his grouse.

Dan said to her: “Have you ever noticed how peerages always go to the wrong people? Look at Hugh and his cousin Edward. Hugh is honest, talented and hardworking, where Edward is foolish, lazy and worthless—yet Edward is the earl of Whitehaven and Hugh is just plain Mr. Pilaster.”

Maisie was trying not to look at Hugh. Although she was glad to have been invited, she found it painful to see him in the bosom of his family. His wife, his sons, his mother and his sister made a closed family circle that left her outside. She knew his marriage to Nora was unhappy: it was obvious from the way they spoke to one another, never touching, never smiling, never affectionate. But that was no consolation. They were a family and she would never be part of it.

She wished she had not come to the wedding.

A footman came to Hugh’s side and said quietly: “There’s a telephone call for you from the bank, sir.”

“I can’t speak now,” Hugh said.

A few minutes later his butler came out. “Mr. Mulberry from the bank is on the telephone, sir, asking for you.”