The Money Makers (76 page)

‘I think you’ll find it does.’

She was completely calm. Hadn’t she - a girl not out of her teens when all this began - coped for three long years with an ailing mother and too little money? What was before her today that was harder than that? She could be calm. She could have fun.

‘Josephine, I’m very positive that the will was drawn up to benefit your brothers only.’ Earle was insistent.

‘Then can you please tell me what words are used in article seven of the will.’

Earle found his copy of the will on his desk and turned through the dense pages. Article seven was the bit which dealt with this very moment: measuring the accounts and releasing the estate from trust. Earle mouthed the legalese as he read. ‘If the Account Balance of any Child contains the Requisite Amount at midnight on the Third Anniversary of the First Disclosure of this Will .. .’

The words ran on, but one stood out.
Child .
It said
Child,
not
Son.
Josephine was Gradley’s child.

‘Josephine, I see your point. The article says child. But, I don’t think ... I mean, it’s clearly against the intention of the will . . . I’m afraid it’s just a typo, an error ... your father’s intentions were absolutely clear.’

Josephine rose and stepped forward into the pool of light on the floor. Her head was in the light now and she was illuminated from head to foot, as though picked out by a ray from heaven.

‘I’m afraid I don’t care about my father’s intentions. I care about what the will says.’

‘The letter,’ gasped Earle. ‘The letter to you all. Bernard wrote a letter to you. In it, he said that you, Josephine, should have the money for secretarial college and all that. And it was for your brothers that he set up this awful challenge. I’m afraid in any dispute over interpretation, that letter will carry a lot of weight.’

Josephine nodded.

‘And do you remember the critical paragraph of that letter?’ she asked.

Earle looked around his desk for the letter. It would be there somewhere. But Josephine beat him to it.

‘The letter says:
If more than one of you kids has come up with the million, then the one with the most gets everything. I like winners, not runners-up.
You’re welcome to check, but that’s what it says. He used the word
kids,
not
sons,
not
boys,
not anything like that. And I am Bernard Gradley’s kid alright.’

Earle was dumbfounded. Josephine had an argument, of course, but surely it didn’t stand up. He couldn’t yet see the flaw, but it was there, he was certain of it.

‘And one other thing,’ said Josephine. ‘I have a legal opinion you may be interested in.’ She tossed a document across the table to Earle. He picked it up and flicked through it. He didn’t take much of it in, except the ending. The last sentence began, ‘I would emphatically support Miss Josephine Gradley’s entitlement to
compete for the estate on equal terms ...’ And at the bottom, the unmistakable signature belonged to one of London’s most respected barristers, well known for his expertise on matters to do with wills, and equally well known for his fondness for the courts.

‘I don’t know,’ said Earle. ‘I really hadn’t expected ... I’ll look at this carefully, of course. But I’m afraid I can’t promise ...’ He trailed off.

He couldn’t find the mistake in what Josephine was saying, and Earle knew full well that the legal expertise of the barrister she’d consulted was much greater than his own. It really seemed as though Josephine might be right.

Josephine saw his hesitation and decided to help him along.

‘Let me be quite clear,’ she said. ‘I believe in my case and my lawyers believe in it too. If you try to obstruct me, I shall be forced to go to court, where I am confident of success. That would be a difficult, painful and costly way of doing things, but I’m quite prepared to do it if need be.’ Her tone was hard, but then she mellowed and floated a warm smile across the room to the elderly solicitor. ‘And besides, I don’t see why you should wish to get in my way. I know that the way my father drew up his will was very painful to you. If you do need to use your discretion, I’m sure you’ll use it to benefit the family that you’ve served so well and for so long.’

Augustus Earle was charmed. He mumbled something. Something to do with due consideration, consultation with his fellow executors, needing to come to a sensible agreement - but everyone knew what he meant. Josephine had won. Gradley’s millions were landing up in the one place that no one had predicted.

‘You won’t get away with this,’ hissed Zack. ‘That’s not your money and you know it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Earle. ‘What are you alleging? Are you saying -’

‘I’m saying that Josephine stole the money from my account and Matthew’s. She’s a bank clerk isn’t she? She knows all about these money transfers. She knows the ropes. That’s what’s so bloody great about being a bloody settlements clerk.’ Zack was spitting his words now. ‘But it won’t wash, Josie. It’s not your money. And I - I mean we, me and Matthew - will sue you for our money. And I’ll sue you for Dad’s estate as well. You stole my money and you’re not entitled to the estate.’

‘Josephine! Is this true?’

‘It’s perfectly true. I stole the money. It wasn’t quite as simple as he makes out, though. It was a lot of hard work hacking into the bank systems and authorising the transfers. It’s a good job I’ve spent the last year and a half practising.’

Earle was dumbfounded once again.

‘But, Josephine, you can’t just steal money. Zack’s perfectly right, you know. He and Matthew can just recover the money and the estate too.’

‘I understand that. But I don’t think that Matthew or Zack will wish to sue. In fact, I rather think they’ll wish to let me keep the money.’

She looked squarely around the room, inviting challenges. George and Val sat there, like two plump Yorkshire chickens, impassive. As Earle looked at them, he suddenly wondered if they’d known all this in advance. Was that why there had been nothing in George’s account? Forewarned and forearmed?

George’s calmness couldn’t have been more of a contrast with his two brothers. Zack was standing up, quivering with fury, anger concentrated in his dark eyes and outraged mouth. Matthew was white, standing behind his brother. He wasn’t sure whether to be angry or not, but his mouth was screwed into a petulant sulk. Josephine looked at Matthew first.

‘Well, Matthew. Are you going to sue?’

Matthew licked his lips. He couldn’t sue anyone or anything. He couldn’t sue Belial. He couldn’t sue Josephine. He could no more withstand scrutiny of his financial affairs than a vampire could garlic. He shook his head.

‘I’m not suing, Josie.’

She smiled at him. ‘No, of course, not. How about you, Zack. Are you suing?’

‘Of course I’m suing, you fool. How on earth did you think you could get away with a stupid schoolgirl game like this? I’ll sue you for every penny.’ Zack was incandescent with anger. He shook his finger at her, furiously adding, ‘I swear to you, Josie, after I’ve got my money back and Dad’s too, you’ll have to crawl on your belly from here to London before you so much as smell a penny of it.’

‘You’re so kind,’ said Josephine. ‘It’s always nice to know where one stands.’

‘It’s mine, Josie. It’s all mine.’

‘Of course,’ added Josephine, musing, ‘if you did sue me, certain facts might get revealed.’

‘What facts are those?’ Zack snorted. He didn’t know why Matthew had backed down, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to.

‘Well, at your wedding, I had a most interesting chat with your friend Arabella Queensferry. She was telling me all about a certain ball a couple of years back. You remember the occasion, I’m sure. You knocked out Sarah’s fiancée and had Arabella set him up. Arabella didn’t know what she was doing and spoke to me because she was concerned about it. I told her not to worry, but Sarah might feel differently. You never can tell how people react to these things.’

Zack hesitated, but he was so incensed at Josephine that any hope of balanced judgement was gone. Sarah, for the time being, was nothing to him, nothing except another stepping stone on the road to his fortune. Zack hesitated, but not for long.

‘I’ll kill you if you tell her anything, but you’re not going to stop me getting my money.’

‘Really? And what about poor old Hal Gillingham? What a coincidence that he should find himself an alcoholic again, when he never even remembered touching a drink.’

‘What the hell do you know about that?’

‘Well, you told me about your promotion and the reason for it. I felt Hal was probably short of visitors so I decided to track him down. I rang round the most exclusive clinics in Britain and, lo and behold, there he was, being looked after for a few hundred quid a day at a posh clinic in Kent. I went to visit him. We became friends - he’s quite a nice man, actually - and he told me his life story. The bit involving you had a terribly familiar ring to it. I didn’t tell him anything about you, but I could. He’s getting married, by the way. Fell in love with a pretty nurse and seems happy as a songbird.’

‘I don’t care what he knows,’ rasped Zack, but his voice was unconvincing even to himself.

‘No, I bet you don’t. But your employers? Oh, I know I can’t prove anything, but things don’t work on proof in your world, do they? You have to be whiter than white or they’ll drop you quicker than hot coal. Conning your wife into marrying you, nudging your boss into alcoholism - well, they’d be nuts to let you continue, wouldn’t they?’

‘Why would I care about them? I’ll have the money, won’t I?’

‘Really? You won’t mind losing wife and job and reputation just for the sake of Dad’s fortune? Are you sure?’

Zack wasn’t sure. Everyone in the room could see he wasn’t sure. But he hated losing, and losing publicly he detested.

‘Damn right I’m sure. It’s not your money, Josie. It’s mine.’

‘Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe you really won’t mind hugging your fortune to yourself and ignoring the whispers which say, “There goes Zack Gradley, the man who swindled his way to a fortune”.’

‘Don’t push it.’

‘On the other hand, maybe you wouldn’t even get the money, after all.’

‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘Well, Dad’s will is pretty clear on this point, Zack. You have to have made the million pounds outright. You can’t owe any of it to anyone.’

‘It is mine, you idiot. The million pounds is mine. I made it. It’s mine.’

‘Really? Well, do you know what, as I was hacking my way through the bank’s computer systems last night, I got curious. I decided to have a look at the recent transactions on your account. That’s the beauty of hacking, Zack. You can see whatever you want. I must show you some time. I think you’d enjoy it.’

‘What about my account?’

‘Oh yes, sorry. Well, I noticed something rather peculiar. I noticed that until the day before yesterday you only had seven hundred and seventy-six thousand pounds in your account. That’s well short of a million.’

‘So what? That was the day before yesterday.’

‘Well, the interesting thing to me was where the missing two hundred and thirty-four thousand pounds came from. It was a direct transfer from an account at another London bank. I guessed that would be Sarah’s account, in which case there wouldn’t be a problem. After all, there wouldn’t be anything peculiar about a wife giving her husband money. Now, it was naughty of me, I know, but I just thought I would take a look at that other account. And what do you think I saw? It wasn’t Sarah’s account at all. I’m sure she’d have given you the money if you’d asked for it, but then I remembered that you’d all but bankrupted her and her family. Maybe she had a hard time scraping together that kind of money. Or maybe she was feeling peeved with you. I don’t know, but anyway, that’s not the point. No, the interesting thing was that the missing money came from a chap called Dixon Banderman, who seems to be a Weinstein Lukes employee, judging by the monthly salary payments into his account. I think I remember you mentioning that he’s your boss.’

‘So what?’ said Zack, sneering. ‘Dixon gave me the money, because Sarah was hard-pressed to find it at short notice. Who cares who gave it to me?’

‘Gave it, Zack? Gave it? Are you sure he gave it? I can understand your wife giving you money. That’s the sort of thing that wives do. I could even understand it if your father-in-law, Lord Hatherleigh, gave you the money. God knows why he should after what you’ve done to him, but he seems like a nice chap. But Dixon Banderman? Your boss? Why on earth would he
give
you nearly quarter of a million pounds?’ The room was silent, waiting for her conclusion. She let the words tiptoe out into the deafening quiet. Are you sure it wasn’t a loan?’

‘It was a gift.’

Everyone knew what they were talking about. The will was absolutely clear. The million pounds had to be made without borrowing. If even a penny of the million pounds was borrowed, then none of it was allowed to count. Josephine continued.

‘It was a gift, I understand that. Your boss just decided to say, “Hell, I love this chap Gradley so much I’m going to give him quarter of a million without expecting a penny of it back”. I believe you. After all, you’re my brother. But what do you think they’ll make of that in a court of law?’