The Sandler Inquiry

by Noel Hynd

  .-was the sole inheritor," he finished. He picked up the paper.

  "What's this?"

  "I assume you can read." He opened it and examined it. She spoke as he read.

  "It's my birth certificate. I was born at Exeter in England in 1945.

  See for yourself." The document had the appearance of what she claimed.

  "The marriage was a secret," she added.

  "A hell of a secret. His own sister didn't know about it."

  "Victoria didn't know about anything. She didn't even know what year she was in."

  "Uh huh" he said.

  Studiously, she drew back her head and looked at him.

  "Skeptical, aren't you?"

  "I'm afraid so, Miss… or Mrs… "McAdam. Leslie McAdam. And if it' matters, I'm unmarried "What you're here to claim is that you're an heiress to the Sandler estate. Or at least part of it. Correct?"

  "All I want is what's due to me," she said.

  "I can have this certificate checked," he said.

  "We both know that.

  But by itself it won't be enough. Can you prove who you are? Can you prove who your parents were? Can you prove they were married?" He paused for a moment, trying to be tactful.

  "What you're embarking on will take years in the courts. It's bound to be challenged by hundreds of other people, some with verifiable claims, others who are merely crackpots. It will be difficult enough to convince an attorney-including myself-to take on a case like this.

  Then it will be twenty times more difficult to convince a court that your claim is justified-" "I know."

  He said nothing. She understood the skepticism evident within the silence.

  Leslie spoke.

  "I have spent my life being brutalized by the facts surrounding my birth. I'm not afraid of Arthur Sandler anymore.

  Whether he's dead or alive. I only want what I deserve' ' With perfect composure she unpacked a riboned group of letters from her purse.

  She laid them on the desk in front of him.

  "Letters, Mr. Daniels. From my father to my mother. 1942 to 1944. You may look through them now. Eventually you may have the handwriting verified. But at no time do these letters leave my possession' He glanced at the letters. Then, with interest, he fingered the stack, examining the browned envelopes, the return address and the old postmarks over British wartime stamps. If Leslie McAdam was an act, he began to concede, she was a good one. And if she was not an act, he wondered.

  "There's more " she said. He looked up.

  From her purse she pulled a small aged black book.

  "The frayed leather cover and gold-edged pages were well worn. Thomas recognized the book for what it was even before he saw HoLy BI] amp;LF embossed in gold on the binding.

  "Open it to the inside front cover," she said. And she handed him the Bible.

  Thomas took the book with his right hand. His eyes left Leslie.

  He examined the Bible with genuine interest, opening it as she had instructed. He could in no way stifle the deep chill he suddenly felt when he read what was before him.

  Bound into the Bible's front cover was a marriage certificate.

  Enscrolled, embellished, and fully notarized, it was dated October 20, 1944, Arthur Sandler of New York and Elizabeth Ann Chatsworth of Tiverton, bound in holy matrimony at St. George's Chapel in the Devon township of North Fenwick. The names of two witnesses were signed to the certificate. A third signature appeared at bottom, to the far right. The signature was that of Jonathan Phillip Moore, D.D." the pastor.

  Thomas examined the document for almost a full minute. Then, with increasing intrigue, he glanced through the Bible. He noted the Roman numerals on the title page.

  ANNO DOMINI MCMXLII, it said. Printed in Great Britain, 1942.

  He looked up at her. His skepticism was diminished, but not dismissed.

  "Anything else?" he asked.

  "You're probably wondering why I didn't come forward in 1954" she said.

  "It crossed my mind-' he said.

  Leslie McAdam pus@ed back the light-brown hair which almost touched her shoulders. She pushed the hair behind her ears, then unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse. She reached to the at her throat, untied it, and pulled it away with one graceful motion.

  "Lean forward, Mr. Daniels. The light here is not the best She looked directly at him and opened the collar of her blouse.

  She exposed the bare white flesh of her throat, the area formerly covered by the pale-blue scarf. She craned her head slightly to allow him a clear view of her neck.

  Thomas could see a long thin line of reddish-pink scar tissue which circled the midpoint of her throat. It was readily visible against her delicate skin.

  "Piano wire, Mr. Daniels," she said.

  "It can make rather a mess of a nine-year-old girl's skin."

  Thomas looked at her without speaking.

  "It's something else my father gave me," she said.

  "My best memory of him. 1954. Alive enough in that year to attempt to garrotte mee."

  She let Thomas gaze at her damaged throat. He could envision the razor-sharp wire digging into her flesh, savaging the jugular vein and unleashing a red torrent of blood. He no longer wondered if she was telling the truth. He wondered why she was alive.

  She let the collar fall into place again, gently retied the scarf, and modestly rebuttoned her blouse. She hadn't lost her composure in the slightest. Thomas was able to regain his.

  Several seconds passed. She looked to the birth certificate, the Bible, and the timeworn letters on his desk. She did not exude patience. Nor did she appear to be a woman who'd be in any way swayed from her appointed mission. She was again conscious of the faint, stale smell of smoke as she broke the silence.

  "I'm here to collect my inheritance, Mr. Daniels" she said.

  "And I'm afraid you're the only one who can help me."

  "Why me?"

  "Because of your father. And his relationship to my father."

  "There are other attorneys in New York," he said.

  "Men much better than I."

  She was already shaking her head, shaking it with a definitiveness and a finality which did not suggest-it stated. The decision was made. To look at her one saw delicacy and perhaps what might be mistaken for a feminine form of tenderness. But within there was a spirit as resistant as an anvil, as insistent as a hammer.

  "You see," she began,

  "I'm a scholar and an artist. I have the inquisitive temperament of one, the creative instincts of the other.

  But I'm also the daughter of a vicious man. Arthur Sandler. I have some of his blood, too. I know how to hate."

  "I hope you also know how to explain," he said.

  "I'm not following this. I'm sorry." And, seeking now to keep an emotional and intellectual distance between them, he tried to tell her of his decision to leave the practice of law.

  She interrupted.

  "I'm here to ask you to fulfill two roles" she said.

  "Attorney and detective."

  "Neither suits me ' "Don't be too certain. People's marks in life have a way of finding them" "Do they?"

  "That's what I've always observed. What is it that Camus said?A man gets the face he deserves'? I've always thought a man or woman also gets the mother he or she deserves' ' He shook his head.

  "Very, very wrong" he said.

  "I've spent the last eight years resisting this profession. Want to know the truth?

  I've been burned out here. Want to know the real truth? Secretly I'm happy about it!"

  "Happy?"

  "It's my out. These files, these records which my father and Adolph Zenger spent a lifetime building. They're nothing now.

  Nothing. Wiped out." An elusive smile crossed his face.

  "It's like a clean slate" he said.

  "It's like being liberated. You see, I can do what I want with my life. It doesn't include practicing law or playing detective' "What does it include?"

  "I'll deci
de" he said.

  "Eventually. You know what? I looked in the mirror this morning and I looked younger than I have for years. As if a burden had lifted. It has been "Don't be too sure," she said.

  "Of what?"

  "That it's lifted."

  "Your tone of voice," he said.

  "It sounds like either a threat or a warning. Which is it?"

  "Neither, really. But one's fate often comes looking for him, not the other way around. That's what I've always found. You didn't happen upon a fire. It found you."

  He gave her a look which mixed suspicion with intrigue, a look which seemed to ask a deeper explanation of who she was, what she wanted, and from where she'd materialized.

  "You seem to know a lot," he said, feeling very much on the defensive now. "I know arson when I see it" she said.

  "Or smell it." She smiled.

  His own smile was gone.

  "I'm sure you have a theory," he said.

  "Of course. That's why I'm here."

  "I hate theories" he said.

  "I like facts. That's why I hate law. Law deals with permutations of truth and misrepresentations. Obscuring of facts " "You want facts, do you?" she said.

  "I'll give you facts. I'll tell you a story which has a direct bearing on why I'm here. And why you had a fire."

  "All right," he said, easing back in his chair.

  "I'd love to hear it."

  Chapter 5

  "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.