Vanessa looked around her. “Could we sit somewhere?”
“Well, we’ve got company . . .” she said dubiously.
A man appeared in the doorway opening onto the living room. He looked about a hundred, his skin a landscape of delicate wrinkles, his snowy hair drifting across his half-bald head. “This is about Edith, isn’t it?” he said gently. Laura looked bewildered, but when Vanessa nodded silently, he said, “Laura, this may take a bit of time. Would you mind making us some tea, and maybe we could enjoy some of your sugar cookies?” Even though his request was polite, there was a hint of steel behind it. Laura, after a bewildered look at the three of us, retreated to the kitchen.
“Please, come in and sit down. I’m Edward Fairfield. And you are?”
“Vanessa Hutchins. Chief of police.” Van kept her tone carefully neutral, neither friendly nor aggressive.
“And I’m Sarabeth Dodson. I was a friend of Edith Hathaway,” I added. I watched for a reaction from Edward, and I got one: he shut his eyes briefly. He knew. “I was the one who found her up on the hill yesterday.” Was it really only yesterday?
“Ah. I asked Laura to make some tea because she hasn’t heard the story yet, and she may feel that I wasn’t fully truthful about why I’m here.” The man turned carefully and made his way into the formal living room, where someone else waited: the young man I had seen so briefly earlier today, his eyes wide and confused. “This is my great-grandson, Philip.”
“Hello, Philip,” I said. “Thank you for returning the book. Edith would have been pleased that you brought it back.”
“Uh, no problem.” He looked between his great-grandfather, me, and Vanessa. “What’s going on? Where’s Mrs. Hathaway?”
“He doesn’t know?” Vanessa asked Edward.
“No. He had nothing to do with it, and I haven’t told him.”
“Guys, what are you talking about?” Philip asked, clearly spooked by the undertones of our cryptic conversation.
“I’m sorry, Philip,” Edward said softly, “but Edith is dead.”
Philip jumped out of his chair. “What? No way! She was just here . . .”
“Please, sit, all of you, and I’ll try to explain.” Edward gestured toward several overstuffed armchairs, whose floral patterns suggested they had been chosen to hide the wear and tear inflicted by an active family, rather than for their style. Philip dropped into a chair, looking shocked. Edward peered at the door we had just entered. “Laura should . . . ah, there you are, dear.”
Laura came in from the hallway carrying a tray laden with teapot, creamer, sugar bowl, and multiple teacups, along with teaspoons and a plate of cookies. The whole tray clattered as she struggled to balance it, and her relief was clear when she set it down on a coffee table in front of the settee. “Would you like me to stay, Uncle Edward?”
“If you don’t mind, I need to talk with these ladies first. I’ll explain later, I promise. Please don’t worry.”
“Okay, but call if you need me.” Laura cast a dubious glance at Vanessa and me, then retreated. I wondered if she would listen from outside the door, something I might have done if the chief of police had appeared unexpectedly at my house and I’d been shooed out. How did Edward come to be here, and how did he know her?
Philip stayed with us, his eyes on the old man. Edward carefully filled four teacups, using both hands to steady the teapot, then gestured toward us to help ourselves. Philip waited until Vanessa and I had our cups before darting forward and cautiously taking one for himself; he was clearly unfamiliar with the intricacies of balancing a cup and saucer.
When we were all settled once again, Vanessa began, in her “official” tone, “Mr. Fairfield, I take it you knew Edith Hathaway?”
He nodded. “I did, a long time ago.”
“Do you live in Ohio?” Vanessa went on.
“I do now. Please, would you permit me to tell this story in my own way? My young great-grandson here can help out with those parts he knows of.”
Vanessa glanced briefly at me, and I was surprised when she told Edward, “Sure, no problem. Please, go on.” Not standard interview procedure, as far as I knew; she was the one who was supposed to ask the questions.
Edward sipped his tea. “If you don’t mind, could you first tell me how you knew Edith?”
Van nodded at me, indicating that I should go first. I said, “She lived in Strathmere most of her life. I work part-time in the library, and she came in two or three times a week to take out books.”
“Did she share anything of her history with you?” Edward asked.
“Not personally, but many people in the town knew her background in a general way. She was married but her husband died a few years ago. They never had children, and I don’t think she had any surviving relatives—at least, she never talked about any. She taught school here for years, fourth grade, and retired over a decade ago. Since then she lived simply and enjoyed reading. She was involved in a number of community activities, as far as her health and mobility would permit. She was well liked by many people, and respected by most. Is that what you want to know?”
“Would you say she had led a good life?”
I wondered where he was leading us with his questions. “I think so, yes. Why are you asking this? What does it have to do with her death?”
“I’m sure she would disapprove of my adding some pertinent details, but they are essential if I’m to explain what happened. I ask only that you don’t share them too widely among those who knew her.”
Vanessa was clearly getting impatient. “Mr. Fairfield, we aren’t in the habit of sharing confidential information around here. If you have something to tell us that will help us understand Edith’s death, could you please get to the point?”
Edward nodded gently, then looked at each of us in turn. “I will trust to your discretion. There are a few facts that you did not know about Edith: she did have a child, and as a result, she had surviving relatives, although she was probably not aware of them until quite recently. Young Philip here is the youngest of that line.” He paused to gauge our reactions.
I had to say I was surprised and yet not surprised. Edith had always been a private person, polite and affable, but reluctant to share many personal details. I had written that off to the mores of an earlier generation, but it had never occurred to me that she had any secrets—certainly none as significant as an unmentioned child. “I hope you’ll explain?”
“Of course. I met Edith when she was seventeen, and she was lovely. She had just graduated from high school, and she had the world ahead of her. It was 1944, and the war was still going on. I know you’re too young to really understand the intensity of the time, but believe me, it was a very unusual time. I was about to be shipped overseas very shortly, and I was staying with my uncle in Strathmere for a couple of days. A friend in the same situation suggested I come along to a party that a friend of his was throwing in town. That’s where I met Edith. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we fell in love, but there was an undeniable attraction. For the next week we were inseparable, all the more so because we both knew it wouldn’t last. But that was how things were in those days.
“As you might guess, the inevitable happened. Neither of us regretted it, and we parted on good terms. We never corresponded, and I never thought to look her up when I returned, nor did she try to contact me. I filed our brief time together as a happy memory and went on with my life.”
“I assume she was pregnant when you left?” I asked the obvious question, although it was hard for me to reconcile the Edith I had known with Edward’s description of her.
“She was, though of course she didn’t know it then, and she never informed me. You younger people don’t know the stigma of an illegitimate child in the forties, although of course there were many conceived under such circumstances, especially during wartime. She did not seek my help, although I would most certainly have offered it had I known. Instead, I went on in happy ignorance until this young man here appro
ached me a month ago.” He nodded toward Philip. “Will you tell them how that came about?”
Philip blushed and cleared his throat. “I feel bad that I started all this, but here’s how it happened. I’m a senior in high school, outside of Cleveland, and we had a research assignment to put together a family tree. We were supposed to get an oral history—you know, talk to our families and see what they knew—and then add whatever we could find online. Part of the project was to see how oral histories differed from documented history; kind of cool, actually, because people’s stories get kind of garbled over time. Anyway, I asked my mom and dad to tell me about their parents—where they were born, where they met, that kind of stuff. My mom’s family was pretty simple, and I got copies of things like birth certificates and marriage licenses for them where I could. On my dad’s side, things were harder. My grandma Sylvia passed away a couple of years ago, from cancer, and when I talked to my grandpa George, he was kind of clueless. He knew she had been adopted, but back in those days nobody would let you look at the records, you know?”
I nodded my encouragement. “But things have become a lot more open recently, right? So I take it you followed up?”
He ducked his head. “Yeah. I like to finish what I start, and my teacher said it would be a good thing to follow through and tie up loose ends if I could. So I started looking online and writing people, and finally I found a record of who had adopted my grandmother, and then I got a look at her birth certificate.”
“I thought that was still difficult these days?” I said.
“It is.” He blushed again and twisted his hands. “It wasn’t totally on the up-and-up. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but I kind of talked with the people at the records offices and they let me sneak a peek. They wouldn’t let me make any copies, so I just took notes.”
I looked at him critically: he was a fairly attractive young man, and he came across as shy and polite. I could see how town clerks would feel sorry for a charming and bashful young man when he explained what he wanted. “That was nice of them. So, what did you find?”
“My grandma’s birth certificate—Sylvia Mercer. It listed both parents, Edward Fairfield and Edith Mercer, but since the Mercer name came from her mom I kinda guessed they hadn’t been married, particularly when I put that together with the adoption, and that was why Grandma had never talked about it. I’m not even sure what she knew—Grandma was given up when she was only a couple of days old.”
He really was a bright and enterprising young man, to have found so much, so quickly. “What did you do next?”
“Well, I had two names to work with from the certificate. I thought Edith Mercer had probably gotten married later, so she would have a different surname and be harder to find, so I went looking for Edward Fairfield. And I found him.” He glanced quickly at Edward, seated beside him. “I mean, I was really surprised, because they were so old. Who would have thought they’d both still be around?”
“Where do you live, Edward?” Vanessa asked.
“Not far from Cincinnati,” he said absently. “Go on, Philip.”
Philip complied. “I got lucky, because Mr. Fairfield here still lived in Ohio. It would have been harder if he’d lived in California or something, because no way could I get there and do this kind of searching.”
“I ended up in Ohio when I returned from the war,” Edward said to Vanessa and me. “I used the GI Bill for a few years of college, married, settled down, had a family. Young Philip here has more relatives than he expected.”
“How did your family take it, when this kid they didn’t know about showed up on your doorstep?” Vanessa demanded.
“I was as surprised as anyone, you know. But all this happened a long time ago, and they welcomed Philip—which I suspect has a lot to do with his charm.” He smiled fondly at his great-grandson, who blushed yet again and looked at his feet.
“Still, it must have been kind of a shock to you when he showed up, wasn’t it, Mr. Fairfield?” I said.
Edward nodded, with a small smile. “Of course. I’m already a great-grandfather several times over, but Philip’s arrival was indeed a surprise. But a happy one, let me assure you. He’s met the rest of my family—I live with one of my daughters now—and they have been quite welcoming.”
Vanessa cleared her throat. “So, the kid here talked you into coming to look for Edith?”
Both Edward and Philip nodded. “As he told you, Philip had her maiden name Mercer from the birth certificate,” Edward said. “I told him where she had been living when I knew her, and Philip was able to track down a Pennsylvania marriage license for Edith Mercer and Robert Hathaway. I gather she and her husband remained here after they married.”
I nodded. “They did, and she stayed on after he . . . was gone.” Why are there no terms for death that sound neither silly nor cruel? “She was a very independent person, you know.”
Edward smiled sadly. “She always was, else we would not be here now.”
Laura Johnson poked her head in anxiously. “Everything all right in here?” she said.
“Just fine, my dear. We were explaining to these ladies how Philip found me. And we were just getting to the point of how we located Edith.”
Laura looked blankly at him. “Edith?”
Edward looked distressed. “Oh, dear—I hadn’t realized . . . perhaps you could explain?” He looked at Vanessa.
Vanessa once again assumed her professional voice. “Mrs. Johnson, the purpose of our trip here today was to find out if you knew anything about the death of Edith Hathaway on the hill behind your property.”
“What? Oh my goodness!”
“You weren’t aware of this?” Vanessa pressed.
“No, I hadn’t heard . . . When did this happen?”
“Yesterday afternoon, when you said you were at the mall. I assume the coroner and his crew had left by the time you and your family returned home?”
Laura was clearly having trouble processing what she was hearing. “There was nothing unusual here when we came home, and then I sent the kids upstairs and we sat in the living room . . . Uncle Edward, did you know? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Edward had aged perceptibly, and I felt sorry for him. “I was so stunned by what happened that I didn’t know what to do. This community is unfamiliar to me, and I had Philip here to consider. I owe you an apology, Laura. But may I complete this interview and fill you in on the details later?”
“All right, I guess,” Laura muttered. “But I’m staying. I’ll let you speak.” She looked at Vanessa to see if she would challenge her right to be here, but luckily Vanessa only shrugged. The so-called interview was already so far from standard that one more participant wouldn’t make a lot of difference, I figured. “How are you related to Laura, Mr. Fairfield?” Vanessa asked.
“She is a first cousin, twice removed, descended from that uncle that I mentioned. Her grandmother inherited the house from my uncle, and the family has lived here all along. I’m afraid we’ve rather imposed on her, especially since we’ve really only met once or twice over the years.”
“And you were staying in this house while you waited to ship out?” Vanessa asked, making a note in her notebook.
“Yes. In 1944 it belonged to my uncle. It was more convenient to the Philadelphia Navy Yard than my parents’ home in Pittsburgh. That’s how I happened to be here when my friend threw that party—sort of a farewell event.”
“And how did you talk Laura into letting you stay here now?” Vanessa demanded.
Edward sighed. “If you’re asking, no, I didn’t tell her the full story. I said that at my advanced age, I wanted to visit all my far-flung relatives one last time, and revisit places I had once known. I suppose I made her feel guilty, but she was kind enough to invite me to stay. I do apologize for misleading you, Laura,” he said to her. She just shook her head.
“How did you explain Philip?” I asked.
“I told Laura that Philip was one of my great-grands
ons, which is true, and said we could share a room.”
“You two couldn’t have stayed in a motel?” Vanessa asked.
“I had a particular reason for wanting to stay here, as you’ll see,” Edward replied.
“Laura didn’t know about Edith?”
“That we were once lovers, or that she died up on that hill?”
Laura’s eyes widened at that, but she held her tongue.
“Either. Both.” Vanessa definitely appeared frustrated at the slow pace of Edward’s replies.
“No, not yet. I would have explained the connection to Laura, were it not for unexpected events. I wanted to make sure Edith didn’t object.”
“Where were you yesterday?” I asked Philip.
“I picked up Mrs. Hathaway at her house and brought her here. Then Mr. Fairfield asked if maybe I might like to do some sightseeing, since I’ve never been to Pennsylvania before. But I knew he really wanted some time alone with Mrs. Hathaway, and I wanted to give them some privacy.” The poor boy looked miserable; obviously his high school project hadn’t turned out the way he had expected.
“Hold on,” Vanessa said. “You’d already met Mrs. Hathaway? Because I don’t see her getting into a car with some kid she’s never seen before.”
Edward interrupted, “Chief Hutchins, please, may I go on with the story?” “Your questions will be answered, I promise.”
“In a minute,” Vanessa said. “Why’d you bring Edith here? Why not just go to her house and talk with her there?”
“A fair question. This was where I was staying when Edith and I . . . came together. So many years ago . . .” He seemed to be drifting into memories, and I had to wonder how much stamina he had.
I could tell that Vanessa was getting more and more impatient. “Okay, so you two show up here in Strathmere. Did you go straight to Edith and introduce yourselves?”
An Open Book Page 4
