"It's all past history now," she said.
"Cold war and all that..
Thomas frowned.
"Cold war?" he asked.
"Yes she said casually.
"I should think so. I should think that had very much to do with it She added matter-of-factly,
"My father did intelligence work. Or didn't you even know that much?"
Thomas fumbled for a response but felt himself drawn into her story.
"My father handled the bulk of the Sandler business," he said.
"You didn't know, did you?" she asked, surprised.
"No.
"No matter. There's probably not much that's known, anyway.
Even I have never figured out for whom he was spying' "Which government, you mean?" he asked.
"That's right," she answered.
"I suppose there are only a few possibilities. He was on one side or the other. East or West, I mean."
Thomas's gaze, shrouded with curiosity, fixed upon the fair face before him.
"How do you know all this?" he asked.
"From the two times in my life that I saw him," she said.
"The rest of the time he was a nonperson. Officially no one would admit he existed." She laughed slightly.
"Don't worry. My mother revealed enough of the rest when I 'was a little girl. As an adult, I've drawn my own conclusions " "I'd like to hear them."
"My mother raised me until the time I was nine years old," Leslie said.
"She was a good mother. But embittered. She'd been abandoned by my father. An American man" "Your mother was British?"
Leslie nodded. She clasped her hands in her lap and sat a trifle stiffly on the wooden chair.
"A wartime romance," Leslie said.
"There were thousands of troops billeted near Exeter during the war.
British, American, Canadian, French in exile. And there were others, military and intelligence people who didn't wear uniforms. Our whole area later became a staging area for airborne troops immediately before the invasion of Normandy. But I'm skipping ahead " Leslie backtracked to wartime England. Her mother was working class. The daughter of an Exeter innkeeper. Elizabeth Chatsworth was twenty-one in 1942. She worked in an Exeter pub which, generally, was off limits to uniformed soldiers. But many foreigners did come by. Included among them was a cultured American man who gave his name as Arthur Sandler.
Sandler, unlike most of the pub's patrons, was a loner. He would be in Exeter for several weeks, be gone for several weeks, then return. His habit when in town was to kill his evenings in the pub, staying until closing time and sitting sullenly alone, lost in thought as he sipped warm beer.
Early in 1942, he began to chat idly with the barmaid, whom he knew only as Elizabeth. She too was lonely much of the time. Then one rainy February evening, as it approached the one-A.M. closing hour, Sandler asked if he could walk her home. She agreed. The walk was only four blocks. When they arrived at the stairs to her flat, she invited him up. He stayed the night.
They were two people of drastically different backgrounds. But the politics of the world had brought them together. And each needed the other, each initially fearing loneliness in that dark year rather than feeling any deep attraction to the other. But they soon discovered that they were compatible. They enjoyed each other's company and liked each other. When Arthur disappeared at the end of four weeks, he, promised her he would return. But he couldn't promise when.
Weeks passed, Elizabeth remained at her job, watching the days pass on the calendar, listening carefully to the censored war news, and starting to lose hope daily that her American admirer would ever return. Three months passed. It was June of 1942. On a sticky summer evening she looked to the end of the bar and saw him. He was smiling and watching her. She let out a loud gasp, dropped the tray she was carrying, and rushed to embrace him, he returning her warmth with equal enthusiasm.
He said he'd be there for three weeks. He was, seeing her each evening, staying with her each night and vanishing during the day.
Eventually he left again, only to return again. And so it continued, weeks there, weeks gone, for eighteen months. Finally she summoned the courage to ask what she'd been wondering all that time.
"When you're not here" she asked, 'where do you go?"
They both knew that he shouldn't answer. But he did.
"Austria," he said. She was staggered, and realized that he was telling the truth. She asked nothing further, not even which side of the war he was on. She did not want to know. Nor did she ask, at that point, whether or not he had a wife somewhere else. She considered herself lucky to have a man, even part-time. Most women she knew had none at all. 1943 passed, then the early half of 1944. On a visit in October, he grew increasingly despondent over a period of two weeks. She asked what was the matter. Initially he refused to discuss it. Finally he did.
He said that his participation in the war was reaching its final and most dangerous-stages.
"There's a strong chance," he said, 'that I might not see you again until the war in Europe is over." He paused and then with faltering calm added,
"I'm trapped in the center of a treacherous game. I suspect that I'm going to be killed before the war ends. By one side or the other."
They embraced each other. His face was away from her but she wouldn't look at him. She didn't want to let him know that she knew he was crying. When he was able, he spoke again. For the first time, he told her that he loved her. He said he didn't wish to leave her, but he'd have no choice.
"I want to do what's best for you," he said.
"If I'm lucky enough to survive the war, I'm going to come back and take you to America."
He hesitated, then added,
"If I don't come back, I want you to be provided for." Then for the first time he spoke of his origins. He stated without elaborating that back in New York he was a man of considerable wealth. On the next day, October 20, 1944, they drove from Exeter out into the countryside.
There, among green hedgerows in a small rural churchyard in the township of North Fenwick, they were married.
Thomas Daniels glanced down at the threadbare Bible in his hand.
"Ten days later," said Leslie, 'he departed during the night. He never returned, even after the war. Nine months later, I was born "And at the conclusion of the war..?" asked Thomas.
"My mother waited. Nothing. No communication. No letters.
No messages. No Arthur Sandler."
"Did she attempt to trace him?"
"Of course," said Leslie.
"But she ran into two walls of resistance.
One British, one American. The British authorities maintained that no such man could ever have been on English soil. Then my mother tried to trace him through the American Embassy and the United States Army Headquarters in London. Again, nothing."
"Did she show the marriage certificate and explain that she was searching for her husband?"
"Yes" she said.
"But the Americans were worse than recalcitrant.
They ere outright secretive and un trusting Do you know what they said?
They said that no such man ever existed. And they told her that if a bar girl such as she continued to make these wild accusations about marrying an American millionaire they would turn her over to the local police or a London mental hospital."
"And so?"
"And so that's how it stood. My mother raised me herself. And as the years passed she became more convinced that a cruel hoax had taken place, with her at the center. She was stuck in her job as a barmaid in a section of Exeter which declined after the war. She was a woman without any education. She couldn't do anything to support us except work in that bar, subjected to dirty labouring men whose drunken hands wandered nightly."
"She never married?"
"She never trusted another man in her life, Mr. Daniels" she said.
"Given her situation, I'm not sure that it was a bad idea' ' Thomas fidgeted uncomfortably. He glanced away from Leslie.
Outside it was dark now, almost six in the evening.
Leslie skipped to 1954, the year of Arthur Sandler's death.
It hadn't exactly been of natural causes. Arthur Sandler had been walking on Eighty-ninth Street, where three gunmen had been waiting for him. Victoria, with him at the time, screamed hysterically when she saw him being shot. She dropped the shopping bag she'd been holding and out tumbled no less than a thousand crisp, new one-dollar bills.
The assassins ignored the money and were never found.
"The murder of an American millionaire like Sandler was newsworthy throughout Europe," said Leslie.
"A shooting on the street like that, a prominent man executed, would find its way into most newspapers. The British news journals carried it. All of them' She took a breath.
"My mother saw a picture of him. Recognized him.
And of course she recognized the name. She had always felt that somewhere he was still alive."
"What did she do?"
Elizabeth Chatsworth, Leslie explained, went to half a dozen solicitors each of whom dismissed her as a fortune-hunting fake. She went to a local petitioner who said he'd look into her claim. He may or may not have, but he quickly reported back to her that she had no case at all.
Then she tried the American Consulate in London.
After a few days of investigation, the Americans icily informed her that she was a fraud.
She took the only course left. She sent several letters to the Sandler address in New York.
"Did she get a response?" asked Thomas.
"Yes. But it wasn't in the mail' On an afternoon in 1954, two weeks before Christmas, Leslie returned to the small four-room row house where she and her mother lived, opened the front door, and shouted that she was home, just as she'd done countless other days. There was no response. Leslie called a second time. Odd, the girl thought. The door unlocked, yet her mother not home. She stopped in the kitchen for cookies, and a few minutes later climbed the stairs.
Her mother's bedroom door was open. And beyond, the room was a shambles. Clothing, dresser drawers, and bedding were all over the floor.
The girl's voice broke now.
"Mo?"she called plaintively.
She stood at the doorway. The bed had been turned over. She walked past the half-open door, and saw the bedraggled, bloodied sheets. With another step she saw her mother.
Elizabeth Chatsworth Sandler. The body was lying face up on the floor, broken and fully clothed, the face contorted. Below her mother's chin was a messy line across the throat, where the neck had been severed.
The girl bellowed, nearly felt her heart stop. The door behind her crashed shut.
Terrified, she whirled. He was a large man with a powerful build, his suit and tie black, his skin sallow and white. There were heavy black rubber gloves on his hands.
"You must be Leslie," the man said evenly. His accent was American.
"Your mother wrote about you" A second or two slipped by as the man started slowly toward the cornered girl. He pushed back his sleeves.
"Come to me, Leslie' he said.
"I'm your father."
Sandler fumbled wil something in his other hand, a pair of silver rings with several inches of wire strung between them. He quickly looped the wire over her neck. She kicked.
Her foot cracked directly into his kneecap. He yanked at the wire. The wire tore the flesh across her throat. But he was unsteady. She pulled away. He lost his grip on the wire and it fell as she rushed by him and down the stairs, shrieking, the deep red gashes dripping blood to her dress and coat.
Exactly how Sandler escaped Leslie never knew. When the police returned to the house Sandler was gone. He'd left behind no trace of himself just the body of Elizabeth Sandler. A thoroughly professional killing.
"I have an instinct for self-preservation, Mr. Daniels" she explained.
She continued calmly, with only the slightest quaver in her voice.
"At age nine I learned. I've never forgotten. I remember him grabbing my wrist so tightly that it hurt. I remember how his face looked. I was paralysed with fear. But I knew I had to do something to protect myself."
Leslie's left hand played with a strand of her hair. She noticed Thomas watching her hand.
"I have something else to show you," she said.
"This is something you can keep' She opened her purse and pulled from it a small envelope, the size used for personal letters. She reached into the envelope and pulled out a small glossy black-and-white photograph. She held it by her thumb and forefinger, considered it for a moment, then handed it to Thomas.
"My father," she said without emotion.
"Arthur Sandler."
Thomas took the photograph by the edges and looked into the face.
"What year?"
"It was Mother's photograph. 1942. Maybe 1943. Probably not much use now."
Thomas shrugged noncommittally. He tucked the picture into another envelope.
"So you were a nine-year-old orphan' he said.
"What next?"
"Mother hadn't any relatives. Normally that would have put me in a children's home in Devon. But there was more to this case than that.
Scotland Yard was involved from London the next day. And they must have turned it over to British intelligence immediately."
"Why do you say that?"
She managed a sardonic smile.
"Because that's what happened" she said with sudden authority.
"I was driven to London by two plainclothes policemen whom I'd never seen before. I was taken to a large Government building which had Union jacks and official portraits of Churchill and the Queen on every wall. I may have been nine years old, Mr. Daniels, but never underestimate a child.
I knew what was happening. I was to be hidden away, shielded from the man who officially was already dead. They didn't even let me attend Mother's funeral ' "Who's they?" Thomas asked.
"A man named Peter Whiteside was in charge," she said.
"I liked him, actually. Tall, thin, very handsome. A sensitive, educated man, most unlike the crude working-class men I'd been exposed to all my life." She paused.
"Peter Whiteside was the only man who understood what it must have been like for me "This Whiteside " Thomas began, 'is-?"
"Long since retired from Government service" she said quickly.
Thomas nodded.
"You sound like you were close to him' ' "For a brief part of my life" she said.
"He was the only man I could trust." She allowed her eyes to stare into his for a moment, as if trying to read them.
"May I continue?"
"Please."
"Peter Whiteside said he'd take care of me," she said.
"Said he'd put me in a new home. A good safe home. He did. He sent me to live in Vevey, Switzerland, with an older British couple, a man and his wife. George McAdam was his name. I adopted the surname immediately, of course" "Ordinary British subjects?" Thomas asked.
"No one in my life is ever ordinary," she intoned.
"McAdam had recently been 'retired' from Government service due to a 'caring I always suspected that the truth was being withheld. Ye jury. ars later I put together the correct story. It was 1955. McAdam had been a British operative in the Middle East. Suez. He'd been shot in the lower back by an Arab. He'd never walk properly again. So he'd been 'retired "And they became your surrogate parents?"
"So to speak. Actually, I was happy there. While it lasted it was the happiest part of my life. I was in a private school which overlooked the Lake of Geneva and the French Alps. I had good clothes, a nice home, and friends. Girl friends and boyfriends. I learned to speak French and German."
"Sounds idyllic' said Thomas.
"My father found me she said.
"Ten years. But he found me It was 1964, summer. Her school year ended; she had finished gymnase. In July she took a job working in a boat basin in Lutry, on the Swiss side of the Lake. On the job she met a young man named Roberto Gicarelli. He was dark-haired and handsome, and said he was the son of a manufacturer in the Italian Swiss canton of Ticino. He seemed to have money.
She saw him each evening. He was assertive, athletic, older than she, and, after a week, began asking her to sleep with him. At first she declined. Gradually, she changed her mind. Having known him for about a month, she spoke to him one evening when she was leaving work.
"My family is away," she said.
"The flat is empty."
They returned to her home and, inevitably, after sipping wine and listening to jazz during the evening, went into her bedroom.
Without speaking they began to undress. She was excited. She liked Roberto-his firm body, the wide muscular shoulders. The anticipation of a strong young man in her own bed aroused her.
She'd never done it there before.
Then they lay back, enjoying each other passionately. He was good to her. Rarely in her life had she enjoyed such unrestrained physical pleasure. When it was over, she nuzzled against him, pressing her breasts to him and relaxing in the warmth of his body.
"You were gorgeous'" she said. Then, looking at him, she asked eagerly,
"Want to do it again?"
"No," he said.
"I don't think so."
She frowned, sitting up in bed by leaning on her elbow. The only light was from the window.
"Did I do something wrong?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"It's me."
"What are you saying;" "Look out the window, Leslie."
Naked, she went to one knee on the bed. Outside there was nothing as she peered out the window. An empty street. Moonlight. A man standing in the shadow of a streetlamp across the cobblestones at a trolley stop.
"You're being silly," she said.
"I don't see anything."
She felt his hands on her shoulders.
"Don't you see the man?" he asked.
She looked again. The man below was gazing up at her. She couldn't clearly discern the face. But suddenly, in a hot flash, she knew. Her hand shot to her face while one arm covered her breasts.
Roberto smothered her scream.
"I'm sorry, Leslie," he said.
"I have my instructions."
As she turned toward him his hands went tightaround her neck.
The hands, moments ago affectionate, were now murderous. He was shaking her viciously and squeezing her throat at the same time.
Oh, God, she thought. He's done it. He's succeeded! My father's having me killed!
She struggled wildly, but was no match for him. He forced her flat on the bed. She groped for the sewing shears that she'd always kept beneath the mattress.
She was losing consciousness. Her fingertips skimmed the handle of the shears. But Roberto yanked her. Her fingertips slid away.
She groped for them a final time, clenched them in her fist; and the fist was out from under the mattress and slamming into his back.
He bellowed with pain. The twin blades dug deeply below the left shoulderblade. His grip was suddenly gone from around her throat. She coughed painfully. He bent back and tried to get off her. But she stabbed the shears even deeper into his left side.
She had hurt him. Badly. He arched back, straddling her, and looked as if he were trying to reach the open wound in his back. He looked at her with crazed eyes, not comprehending how a naked woman could harm him.
She threw her arm forward a final time. He curled forward on the bed and struggled for life…
It grew quiet in Thomas Daniels's office.
"There's not much more to say. Whoever he was, he died. His identity was false. My only regret was that it hadn't been my father. Arthur Sandler escaped again. It was the last time I saw him."
"What about-?"
"The police in Switzerland?"
"Yes he said.
"It was taken care of. My foster parents flew home from Majorca immediately. They contacted London. My foster father had, shall we say, friends in the usual places. The British Consulate in Geneva straightened things with the Swiss. But I had to leave the country. My identity was worthless. And besides, the Swiss don't like people who import trouble."
"Of course," he said in a low voice.
"I had a British passport, so I used it. I relocated to Canada, where I continued my education. Before I left, my foster father gave me the Bible and the letters. Said they'd been given to him to hold for me until the proper time. I guess that was the proper time."
She shrugged.
"That brings us to the present, actually."
She fell silent. Thomas searched for the words.
"You don't look like someone who's actually killed a man," he said.
"Don't deceive yourself, Mr. Daniels" she warned.
"I'm not helpless."
"I can see that" She paused. She shifted her position slightly and seemed to try a tack that was almost totally contradictory, almost as if a different person were speaking.
"Look," she said,
"I'm coming across all wrong." Her manner was sweeter now, less abrasive, less harsh.
"You can see what I've contended with all my life. I do value human life, just as much as any other civilised person. But I want to live without fear. And I can't do that with uncertainty."
"Uncertainty…?"
"About my father. I want to know that he's dead. He dealt with your firm. You must have had records Thomas glanced toward the charred remains of the files, but said nothing. Facts. All the facts were gone, he thought. Destroyed.
Where else could they be found?
"What if I find your father?" he asked.
"Alive."
"I hope you don't she said.
"But if I do?"
"I've told you' she said.
"For me to live, he must be dead." There was a long awkward pause.
Then the tension in her face melted and she seemed to relax again.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I know how that must have sounded.".
"But it's your basic position" he assessed.
"Yes she said.
"I'm afraid it is." She offered him an agreeable smile. He recognized it for what it was, one of her more subtle weapons. Meanwhile she appraised him carefully, wondering if he'd believed her story.
"You will be able to produce a Sandler file?" she asked.
"Of course" he said, marveling at the ease with which he could lie.
"It might take a few days. And I might speak with my father's former partner, Mr. Zenger."
"Good," she said pensively.
"Now, your fee…?"
"My normal hourly rate," he began to explain slowly, 'is-" "I have no money," she said, "other than what's due to me from the Sandler estate.
I'm willing to offer you twenty-five per cent of what you eventually collect. In the meantime, I can't pay you anything."
Thomas agreed with little hesitation.
"Why don't I contact you Wednesday of next week" she said. She glanced around the burned office.
"By the way. Where will you be?"
Thomas thought for a moment.
"I have an office in my apartment. You can contact me there." He wrote his telephone number on a sheet of paper and handed it to her. He looked up.
"There's one thing you didn't explain'" he said.
"There is?"
"From what you tell me your father and mother had a nice enough romance during the war. He loved her enough to many her. What happened that made him want to come back a decade later and kill both of you?"
"Maybe you can help me find out," she said.
She stood, straightened her skirt, and appeared thoughtful as she saw him watching her.
"I suppose I should add one thing," she said.
"Yes?"
"You might be wondering. Men unnerve me. So I never sleep with them."
There was a long silence.
"I thought I'd mention this'" she said.
"If you're like most men, you were probably wondering."
"It never crossed my mind," he said, lying again.
He watched her close the door. She was gone before he realized that she'd left him no way to contact her.