The Sandler Inquiry Part 33

The light was dim, but he could see every bit of her perfectly. She slid the two short sleeves away from her arms. He was almost speechless.

"Leslie. . . ?" he stammered.

"It's my decision. Don't say no."

The thin gown slipped away, sliding to the floor. She stood before him, slim, delicate. He was no longer conscious of the scar across her throat. His eyes were elsewhere as she moved onto the bed.

He hesitated.

"I thought. . . ?"

"I changed my mind " she said spiritedly with her gentle British accent.

"Now. No more discussion."

As his anxious arms reached for her, her own hands, the hands that had left the fingerprints on the photograph, reached to him and formed an embrace.

Part Three

Chapter 11

Thomas Daniels arrived at London International, otherwise known as Heathrow, at nine PM." London time. He rented a car, stayed overnight in nearby Windsor, and the next morning drove southwest.

North Fenwick, where Arthur Sandlerthad married Elizabeth Chatsworth a third of a century earlier, was a quiet rural towns.h.i.+p of four hundred inhabitants. Much of the twentieth century, other than electricity, telephones, and automobiles, had been resisted. The air was clean, though damp and very cold that time of year. Houses were stone and had thatched roofs. Smoke from peat or wood rose from most chimneys. The atmosphere was rural without being provincial.

The brown-stone church by the town hall dated from the fifteen hundreds.

The church, St. George's Chapel, was open. Thomas parked his car on the village green and walked into the church. The interior was barely warmer than the outside. The pews were dimly lit, as the stained gla.s.s allowed only modest amounts of light to filter across the old wooden pews, the -center aisle and its same floor, and the deep plum-colored cus.h.i.+ons on the wooden benches. There was one hymnal per row.

But before even approaching the aisles or the pews, Thomas Daniels was struck dramatically by a large marble catafalque to the rear left corner of the wors.h.i.+p hall. He approached it, as its contours resembled that of a human body.

He stood before it. There he looked upon a marble tomb, that of the chapel's founder, a sixteenth-century cleric named George Lorrick.

Within were the remains of Lorrick, bones turned to dust over four centuries' repose. And along the top of the tomb, according to the custom of the day, was the likeness of the minister wrought in heavy iron. Head to toe, cap to boot, the iron image of the minister.

Along the side, beneath the man's name, were his earthly dates: 1470-1545.

Thomas gazed into the metal image of the face, wondering whether the death mask did the man justice; whether or not the image of the rural parson revealed or concealed anything of the soul of the man sealed within. The graven image told only what the man had looked like on the exterior. It said nothing of the man behind the facade. A side notation was more helpful. Lorrick had founded the chapel, it said, in 1501. Stone after stone, by hand. In 1847 he'd been canonized.

Thomas moved on. He looked around both curiously and anxiously: curious whether he'd happen upon the pastor, and anxious as he looked forty feet ahead of him to the altar. There Leslie Me Adam parents had been married, the barmaid and the spy, during a dark hour of the Second World War. Thomas walked slowly and inquisitively up the narrow center aisle until he stood where Arthur Sandler and Elizabeth Chatsworth must have. He looked around the chapel from that spot. Receiving no special inspiration, he turned and walked again toward the two heavy front doors.

In the vestibule he stopped, examining plaques on the wall. A pair of plaques remembered the sons of North Fenwick who'd fallen in the world wars. Another, smaller and older, plaque bore two lonely names, a pair of long-forgotten souls who'd died for a long-forgotten cause under the command of Lord Kitchener. Transvaal. 1901.

Thomas turned and examined the opposite wall. There, engraved on stone, was part of what he'd been seeking. A listing of rectors of the chapel. From 1501 to the present.

His eyes stopped on Jonathan Phillip Moore 1937-1949. A small cross by the name indicated that Reverend Moore, whose name appeared on the wedding certificate shown to Thomas by Leslie, had died while still the rector of that small parish. Another man had served from 1949 to 1957.

Another from 1957 to 1968, and still another, Moore's third successor, from 1968.

Thomas went next door to the town hall. An old woman with grayish-white hair, a wrinkled face, yellowed teeth, and two heavy wool sweaters allowed Thomas to examine the town records, the official entries of births, deaths, and weddings.

Thomas turned to 1944. He sat at a long table and felt the old woman watching him from across the small town clerk's office.

Thomas ignored her as best he could. He was on the page that included October in the heavy, leather-bound ledger. He ran quickly down the page with his finger.

Then he froze. Simply noted, no more than a single line, was: MARRIED -ARTHUR EDWARD SANDLER, New York, United States ELIZABETH ANN CHATS WORTH Tiverton, Devon. October twenty, ten A.M. Thomas examined the page of the book. Without question it was the original page. The entry was legitimate, Thomas looked up and found the old woman watching him.

"Where would I find deaths?" he asked.

"Deaths?" She nodded toward him with a rasping voice.

"Same ledger."

"But by specific names?"

She looked at him strangely.

"What names?"

Thomas removed from his pocket a photograph of Leslie's parents'

marriage certificate. He read the names of the two witnesses. After a cross-reference procedure in which the olct woman consulted a different town ledger, Thomas learned that both of the other witnesses to the marriage were also deceased. The most recent had died in 1953.

That evening Thomas drove back toward Exeter, Leslie's alleged birthplace. The town clerk's office was closed by the time he arrived.

He stayed overnight at a small hotel and examined the town's registry of births that next morning. As expected, a baby named Leslie Sandler had been born at Altingham Hospital. July 30, 1945. A strange urge fell upon Thomas. He wished he'd asked her more about her girlhood in Exeter. He would have liked to visit her old neighborhood, see her former home, if it still stood, or perhaps the pub where Elizabeth Chatsworth had toiled during the war. But he hadn't asked.

He returned to London by car. He was trying to piece together a life that had been spent in the shadows. Or was it two lives, actually?

George McAdam, Leslie's foster father, could piece together some integral pieces of the puzzle if he could be found. If he was still alive.

It was worth a try.

From his hotel in London, Thomas contacted an international operator.

He was connected to directory a.s.sistance for Switzerland.

He first tried Vevey, the town Leslie had described . No George McAdam listed there. Then, using a map in front of him, he tried the larger cities in French Switzerland -Montreux, Lausanne, Geneva -and then the smaller towns surrounding Vevey.

It took fifteen minutes. Finally at 16, rue de Paudax in Lutry - the same small wine-producing town east of Lausanne on the Lake of Geneva where Leslie had met her would-be a.s.sa.s.sin while working in a boat basin has uncovered a possibility. A listing for a

"G.

McAdam." Thomas obtained the number and asked that the call be placed.

He waited, quickly rehearsing his lines. Care had to be taken. McAdam was the only living man Thomas knew of who could confirm Leslie's story.

He heard the telephone ringing. Twice. Three times. Four, then five.

Thomas cursed quietly.

Then the unmistakable voice of an Englishman answered on the other end.

Thomas was almost tongue-tied for a moment.