I write on behalf of my late mother, Helen Sonnegaard, who died four months ago at age 97. In her will she left five thousand pounds to her son Anders Sonnegaard or, in the event of his death, his heirs. Along with my older brothers, Charles and Antony Sonnegaard, I began a search for Anders. We have good reason to believe he was your late husband, Rupert Falkes.
On March 1, 1934, my parents Bastian and Helen Sonnegaard, gave up a one-month-old baby boy, called Anders, to St. Pancras Orphanage in Chichester, England, run by the Reverend Henry Falkes. My father, a schoolteacher, had lost his job six months earlier. My mother, also a schoolteacher, had not worked since my oldest brother, Charles, was born. I was 10 months old, Anders was 20 months, Charles was 31 months. My mother’s parents, old and ill, had taken in our family in the New Year. It fell to my mother to keep house for everyone. She could not manage with a brand-new baby and three other small children. The times were desperate.
My parents kept track of Anders for the next twenty years. They knew he had been renamed Rupert Falkes. They knew he had gone to the Prebendal School, Longleat and Cambridge. The Reverend Falkes died in 1954. At that point, they lost the connection. Anders/Rupert disappeared. My mother on her deathbed asked that we find him. We didn’t remember him. Our parents had never spoken of him. The Internet made a search possible. We found Rupert Falkes’s obituary in the New York Times. The details of his life, as described in the obituary, correspond to what we know of our brother. There is no making amends for what was done to Anders, but the family wishes to honour our mother’s will and provide his family with knowledge of his parentage. Anders was born January 30, 1934. My parents did not register his birth, knowing they would have to give him up. The enclosed photograph of our family was taken on the day Anders was left at St. Pancras. The church is behind us.
If you sign the enclosed affidavit, we will notify our solicitors and provide you with a copy of the will.
Yours,
Hannah Sonnegaard Bigelow
c/o PO Box 45655, Havant PO9 7AE England
“I didn’t so much mind the Wolinskis. They were Rupert’s doing, or not,” Eleanor said. “But these people, making themselves known now, after he’s dead…” She looked to Carlo. “They’re seventy years too late. May I throw out the letter?”
“No. You need to stop them. You need to disavow the connection and disclaim the bequest. Anything else opens the door. Signing the affidavit would be acknowledging the relationship. Before you know it, they’re on a plane over here, ready to move into the Hotel, threatening to sue for a share of Rupert’s estate.” Carlo stopped. “It’s a lawyer’s letter,” he said. “I wonder why the solicitor didn’t send it.”
Eleanor called a family conclave. They thought Hannah Bigelow might be a fraud; still, they’d have liked to meet her and her brothers.
“The children are towheads,” Tom said, pointing at the photo, willing to give money to almost anyone.
“All English children are,” Sam said.
“They could have reconstructed his history from the obituary and then got hold of his birth certificate. Basic sleuthing,” Harry said.
“How did they know about Reverend Falkes?” Jack asked.
“I think his name was on Dad’s birth certificate, as guardian or some such,” Sam said. “But he was the local priest in Chichester, the head of the orphanage, with, lo, Dad’s name.”
“Enough money to make the bequest plausible, though not up to the Nigerians,” Will said.
“Good letter, dignified with a hint of stoical grief underneath, good photo,” Harry said. “If it’s really them.”
“Do they exist, these Sonnegaard Bigelows?” Sam said.
“There is a Hannah Bigelow in Havant, at 16 Fairfield Road. Carlo found the address,” Eleanor said. “I don’t know why she only gave a PO.”
“Let’s call her,” Jack said.
All five looked at their mother, their faces full of innocent expectation, as if they were boys again, imploring her to let them stay up past midnight, “Can we, can we? Please, please, please?” Years spent reading Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boys, and Encyclopedia Brown had prepared them for this moment.
“Carlo will handle this for now, for me,” Eleanor said. “I can’t answer for you. Dad never wanted anything to do with them.” Disappointment hung in the air.
“We’re not Dad’s heirs anyway. We’re yours. We only have the trusts,” Harry said.
“Only?” Tom said. “I can’t get rid of the money, it’s like sin, ‘a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing.’?”
Carlo had a paralegal find Hannah Bigelow’s number in Havant. The paralegal called three times a day for a week. No one answered.
“I ran the letter by an ADA in the Financial Fraud Bureau in the Manhattan DA’s Office,” Carlo said to Eleanor. “He recommended we CC the Hampshire Constabulary in Havant. Not that they’ll do anything, but it should stop the Sonnegaards.”
“Why did they do this?” Eleanor asked.
“If they did their research, they might know about the Wolinskis and think, Ha, a helpless widow, a patsy. They might think the Wolinskis were frauds too. There’s a reason why people tread beaten tracks.”
“I want a designated mail opener, someone like the king’s food taster,” Eleanor said. She tucked the photo into her wallet.
—
Eleanor wrote a letter to Hannah Sonnegaard. She didn’t want to write the lawyer’s letter Carlo recommended, but a widow’s letter. She showed a draft, stiff and correct, to Will and Sam. “Do you want to say that?” Will said. “Awfully brisk,” Sam said, raising his eyebrows. Eleanor revised the letter, unstiffening it a bit, politening it some. “Better,” Will said. “Third time will be the charm,” Sam said. Eleanor started from the beginning. She never shared the final version, the letter she sent, with any of her sons. “I wrote only on my own behalf,” she said to them. “You must do as you like.”
May 21, 2004
Dear Ms. Bigelow,
I write as Rupert Falkes’s widow and heir. If Rupert was Anders, he is no longer able to claim the family connection or the gift. On a matter of this seriousness and importance, I cannot speak for him but only for myself.
Your parents didn’t register Anders’s birth. They never spoke of him. They acted as if he’d never been born. I think it monstrously self-serving and cowardly of your mother on her deathbed to ask you and your brothers to find him. I understand that you would wish to fulfill her final wishes but I cannot forgive her or your father for abandoning him so completely. I disclaim the bequest, if it is mine to disclaim.
Yours,
Eleanor Phipps Falkes
I don’t believe Rupert could have been ruder, she thought. I will stop now. She would miss him every day. She would be all right.