The Sandler Inquiry

by Noel Hynd

  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.

  Part Two

  Chapter 6

  The small eleven-passenger de Havilland STOL belonging to Air New England left New York's Marine Air Terminal at nine forty-five A.M. Thomas Daniels was one of the nine passengers. For most of the flight, he was deep in thought,!

  Strange about old Zenger, he mused. The man had once been close to a legend in New York legal circles. Bill Daniels's partner.

  Or "Shifty Little Adolph' as his detractors called him. Once he'd been brilliant. Once he'd been a firebrand. But then, abruptly in the mid- 1950s, he'd lost his stomach for law. One day his desire was gone and courtroom machinations no longer interested him. He w
as, as William Ward Daniels described it at the time, 'a different man' a man far more concerned with a leisurely and reclusive retirement than with the daily torment of a Manhattan legal practice.

  Privately, Bill Daniels had explained it to his son. Zenger's retirement was somehow connected to the Sandler estate. But it never really made much sense. A visit or two by Zenger to the Sandler mansion and the attorney had decided it wasn't for him after all.

  Now, two decades later, who cared anymore? Who even remembered? Thomas had never known his father's partner well.

  The small airplane arrived in Nantucket at twelve fifteen. From the airport Thomas took a taxi to the residence of the long-retired attorney.

  The taxi found Zenger's home with little difficulty. Zenger lived in a rambling, white-shingled old house on a promontory which dramatically overlooked the ocean. Thomas saw a curtain move near a downstairs window as he stepped from a long blue Chrysler taxi and paid the driver. Thomas glanced around as he passed through a gate and followed a flagstone path across a brownish green lawn. A comfortable site to spend one's later years, he thought. Free from crime, pollution, and the real world.

  Beyond the old house, and to the side of the promontory, a path led down to the ocean. The surf broke briskly against the sand beach which bordered Zenger's land. A sturdy wooden pier jutted out into the water.

  Curiously, Thomas noted that two large pleasure boats-Chris Craft they appeared to be, the type used by sportsmen for deep water fishing -were tied up to the pier, rocking somewhat with the waves. Obviously somebody, Thomas thought, liked to venture into the deep waters beyond the Nantucket shore. Obviously Zenger, his father's former partner, since the boats were tied to Zenger's pier.

  Zenger's daytime housekeeper, a dowdy dark-haired woman named Mrs.

  Clancy, opened the solid oak front door.

  "Mr. Daniels?" she asked.

  Thomas nodded. He was taken to a downstairs sitting room congested with old overstuffed furniture. There sat Adolph Zenger.

  The old man, considerably whitened and wrinkled since the last time Thomas had seen him, sat in a large leather armchair. An afghan covered his lap. Before him was a paneled window overlooking Nantucket Sound. Zenter's gaze did not leave the Water.

  "Come in," he said as Thomas stood somewhat uncomfortably after walking a few feet into the room.