An Officer and a Gentle Woman

by Doreen Owens Malek

  “Yes, mum,” the girl answered in a Cockney accent.

  She curtsied to Hannah briefly, then left soundlessly.

  Lafferty felt like he had entered an episode of Masterpiece Theatre.

  “Mary is a good girl,” Hannah said. “I have been using a British domestic service for several years now.”

  Lafferty hoped they were not going to have a conversation about the difficulty of getting good help nowadays. He leaned forward with his hands clasped.

  “We came here today for a specific reason, Mrs. Green,” he said briskly, trying to get the old lady on track. Hannah apparently liked company and seemed prepared to drag this interview out until the cookies on her tray had turned to stone.

  “I am aware of that,” Hannah replied. “If Alicia had not called me earlier today I would have asked to see her, or both of you, very soon.”

  Lafferty waited.

  Hannah leaned forward and poured a cup of tea, filling the delicate Rosenthal china cup with a rosemary-scented brew. When Lafferty shook his head she handed it to Alicia and then poured another for herself.

  “I’m happy you are here for more than one reason, Detective,” Hannah said. “What I have to tell Alicia will be very difficult for her to hear.”

  Alicia and Lafferty exchanged glances. Hannah’s welcoming mood had changed with the sentence. She now looked sober and every minute of her age.

  “Every family has secrets,” she went on, sighing. “Wealthy families probably have more than most.” She added cream to her tea from a Waterford crystal jug and sat back in her chair. “I was determined to take this one to my grave.” She seemed to lose interest in her drink and held it untouched in her lap, staring straight ahead. Then she stirred. “I had hoped that I could see Alicia through this awful experience without breaking my silence. But it has become obvious to me that Sandler Woods intends to make an example of Alicia, and I cannot allow that to happen while I know something which may be pertinent to her case. I don’t know if it will be helpful or not, but I can’t keep it to myself any longer.”

  Alicia was leaning forward, her eyes narrowing. Hannah finally took a sip of her tea and then set the cup down; the saucer rattled in her shaking hand.

  “Come here, my dear,” Hannah said to Alicia.

  Alicia looked at Lafferty, then went to Hannah and sat on the leather ottoman at the old lady’s feet.

  “Do you recall how much your mother loved you?” Hannah said gently, smoothing Alicia’s hair back from her forehead.

  Alicia nodded.

  “From the moment she saw you, Margaret put you before everything and everybody,” Hannah said. “I never knew a woman to dote on a child that way. She took you everywhere with her, did everything for you, and adored you immoderately. My son followed her lead, and you were a most cherished, most beloved little girl.”

  “I know that, Granny,” Alicia whispered gently. “I know. I remember.”

  Hannah’s eyes were filling with tears. “I feel it is a betrayal of my late daughter-in-law’s dear memory to tell you this, because she never wanted you to know. But my son and his wife are dead, and I am the last person in this family who knows the truth.”

  The silence in the room was deafening as the old lady drew a trembling breath and took Alicia’s hand.

  “Alicia, you are not your mother’s natural child. You were adopted when you were ten days old.”

  Alicia stared at Hannah as Lafferty tensed to rise and go to Alicia.

  Alicia finally mumbled feebly the first fleeting thought that entered her head. “But I look just like Daddy...”

  Hannah nodded, biting her lip. “Yes. My son, Daniel, was your father. You are the child of my son and a girl who worked for the family thirty-five years ago. It was a secret adoption. Your biological mother was underage, and my son would have been guilty of statutory rape for having relations with a teenager. Daniel paid a fortune in blackmail for the rest of his life to conceal these facts, something I discovered after he was killed. I never did know all the details—I never wanted to—but I arranged to continue the payments to the numbered account Daniel had established. That was thirteen years ago and I have heard nothing since, so I assume that arrangement is still in place.”

  “Blackmail to whom?” Lafferty asked sharply, his eyes on Alicia’s white face.

  Hannah shrugged.

  “The girl, I assume. Alicia’s birth mother, Deborah Lassiter. I found papers after Dan was killed when Alicia was in college. Apparently after some years the girl’s own mother, Nancy Lassiter, who had arranged the deal, died, and Deborah was alone. The original lump sum was not enough, and Deborah came back looking for more. Dan worked out a schedule of twice-yearly payments to keep her quiet. He did not want to go to jail, and he did not want Alicia to find out she was not her mother’s natural child. So he paid that Lassiter girl and bought her silence.”

  Lafferty noticed how she referred to Alicia’s blood mother as “the girl.” And that’s all she was to Hannah, a vessel who had provided her son with the commodity he most desired.

  As if she had read his mind Hannah said flatly, “Daniel and his wife bought his child with another woman, because Margaret was infertile and could not produce one. It was not legal, there are no court papers and there is no evidence of it today except for the memory of the survivors. The whole matter was handled by Ambrose Kirk-land, the lawyer, do you remember him?”

  Alicia nodded numbly, in shock. Lafferty got up and put his hand on her shoulder. She was the color of rice and unable to look away from her grandmother. This, on top of her recent experiences, might well be too much for her. How much more could she be expected to take? But despite his sympathy for his lover he felt a surge of excitement, a leap of hope. This revelation opened up possibilities he had not considered. If Hannah was right, and nobody but the participants knew about Alicia’s adoption, and there was blackmail and extortion involved, he had a whole new line of investigation to pursue. He wasn’t sure how it might be tied to Joe Walker’s murder, but like Hannah, he suspected strongly that it was relevant. Money was a powerful motivator. If Alicia hadn’t killed Joe Walker somebody else had, and the reason could very well lie in the secret the old lady had kept for over a generation.

  “Kirkland is still alive, though long retired. I have his address,” Hannah added wearily. “He can fill in the sordid details. I don’t have the full story. Daniel would never discuss it again after Alicia came to us, and truthfully I did not want to know. After Daniel was killed when Alicia was in college, I just authorized the money to continue.” She sat back wearily and closed her eyes.

  “How did it all happen?” Alicia asked.

  Hannah sighed and opened her eyes again, wiping them with a forefinger decorated by a huge amethyst surrounded by diamonds. Her other hand was still wrapped around her granddaughter’s.

  “I will tell you what I know,” Hannah said. She picked up her tepid tea and drank half of it. She looked exhausted, and Lafferty felt a flash of sympathy for her. She was an elitist old snob but she did love Alicia, and sitting on this secret for so many years could not have been easy. Now she was trying to do the right thing to save her granddaughter, but it was going against the habits of a lifetime for her to reveal the skeletons rattling in the Green closet.

  “Daniel and Margaret had been married for several years before Margaret started seeing specialists about her failure to become pregnant,” Hannah said. “Daniel wanted an heir, we all did, and Margaret was young and seemingly healthy. We were puzzled as month after month went by and nothing happened. Well, this was a long time ago and techniques were not what they are now, but Margaret’s trouble was not too difficult to fathom, apparently. A malformation of the uterus prevented the implantation of an egg. At that time there was nothing to be done. So no Green heir and no grandchildren for me. The marriage suffered as a result. Daniel began to cat around, Margaret began to drink. About two years after the infertility diagnosis Daniel told me he’d been bedding th
e daughter of Nancy Lassiter, the cleaning woman, who came here several times a week to do the floors. The woman had brought the girl with her on several occasions and Daniel had met her, then arranged to meet her elsewhere as the affair continued. By the time Daniel told me about it, the girl, Deborah, was pregnant”

  “How old was Deborah?” Lafferty asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  At the look on Lafferty’s face Hannah added, “I make no excuses for my son. He was hopelessly spoiled, saw the world as his playground and took everything that he desired from it. Rich people are accustomed to buying whatever they want, Detective, and when confronted with a problem they can’t solve with money some of them lose control. Margaret’s failure to become pregnant was a great blow to Daniel and he reacted badly to it. He did not want to divorce her and try again with someone else, as he might have. He loved Margaret, so he stayed with her. She drank and he looked elsewhere. He sought distractions. The girl was a distraction. She looked older, perhaps he assumed she was older. I doubt very much that he asked her age before he was confronted with the reality of her minority when she became pregnant.”

  “Did ‘the girl’ have a father?” Lafferty asked dryly.

  “Her name was Lassiter but the girl’s father was never mentioned. Daniel dealt solely with Nancy. I think the girl’s parents were divorced. Or maybe Nancy had never been married, I don’t know. They lived in Bridgehampton and Nancy came here to clean. They disappeared with the money, and I never heard about them again until my son was killed. At that time I learned that Nancy had died, and Deborah, Alicia’s mother, who was at that time about thirty-seven, had come back to Daniel and demanded more money. He arranged the payments and she disappeared again.”

  “We can find her,” Lafferty said to Alicia quietly, squeezing her shoulder. “We have a name to trace, and she has to be collecting and depositing the checks somewhere.”

  Alicia nodded dumbly.

  Hannah waved her hand in a resigned fashion.

  “You can guess the rest,” she said, as if Lafferty had not interrupted. “Adopting the child seemed the perfect solution. Even I thought so at the time. Daniel and Margaret wanted a child, and Daniel would have been prosecuted for statutory rape at the very least if word of your true parentage had gotten out, Alicia. So Kirkland arranged it all. He paid off the Lassiters and we got the baby. Daniel and Margaret went to their place in Jamaica for a year and then came back with the child—you, Alicia. Margaret said she had been pregnant while she was in the islands. Nobody disputed her, no one suspected a ruse. And the most poignant part of this whole charade is that it worked. Margaret was thrilled with Alicia and sobered up as she made the baby the focus of her life. Daniel got the child he wanted, not a stranger’s child but his blood, and they were able to patch things up between them and make Alicia their whole existence. It worked out for everybody.”

  “Except for Deborah Lassiter, whose child was taken from her,” Lafferty said flatly.

  Hannah was silent.

  “Well?”

  “She gave up the child. She took the money,” Hannah finally answered. “Then and later.”

  “What choice did she have?” Lafferty asked.

  A tear slipped from Alicia’s lashes and ran down her cheek, into her mouth.

  Lafferty snorted derisively. “A teenager and her scared single mother up against the Green millions? That sounds to me like no choice at all.”

  “I can never make amends for what we did,” Hannah said wearily. “I am merely reporting what happened then, in the hope that it will help Alicia now.”

  Lafferty produced a handkerchief and gave it to Alicia. The old lady got up and went to a sideboard, where she poured an inch of whisky into a crystal glass from an amber bottle.

  “Have this, my dear,” she said gently to Alicia, handing her the tumbler.

  Alicia obediently swallowed half of the whisky and made a face.

  “You’ll feel better in a minute,” Hannah said, patting Alicia’s arm. Lafferty watched as Hannah went over to the fire and stirred it with a poker, her face pensive. It was easy to see that she was lost in the past.

  “Do you want to go now?” Lafferty inquired in a low tone to Alicia.

  Alicia nodded, putting the glass on the tea tray next to the silver pot.

  Hannah turned and saw Alicia picking up her purse.

  “Oh, please don’t go,” she said to her granddaughter. “Stay and have dinner with me.”

  Alicia looked pleadingly at Lafferty.

  “I think Alicia has had enough, Mrs. Green,” he said firmly. “This is a lot to take in, and I imagine she needs some time to digest it.”

  “You won’t stay the night, then? Your old room is ready, Alicia. I include you in the invitation, Detective Lafferty, since you seem to be speaking for my granddaughter these days.”

  Alicia bristled at that, as Hannah had known she would.

  “Don’t get uppity, Granny, this is not the day to test my familial devotion,” Alicia said sadly, sniffing and wiping her nose with Lafferty’s handkerchief.

  Hannah faced them down. “So you’re a duo now,” Hannah said. “As fast as that.”

  Lafferty took Alicia’s hand and she curled her fingers around his.

  Hannah nodded. “I see, and maybe that’s a good thing. This is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better,” she said to Lafferty.

  “I’m aware of that,” he replied.

  “You’re going to track down every lead and expose every dark corner of our lives, aren’t you, young man?”

  “That’s right. And it’s exactly what you want me to do or you wouldn’t have revealed this secret. We both know it’s the only way to keep Alicia out of jail.”

  Hannah walked over to her granddaughter and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry for the years and years of lies, my dear,” she said softly. “I’m sorry for all the trouble a past deception may have brought you. Can you forgive an old woman for the mistakes of previous generations? Can you get past this and go on?”

  Alicia looked at Hannah and then shook her head slowly, lifting her shoulders slightly.

  “I don’t know, Gran. I don’t know. I have to think. I feel somehow that I should be angry or indignant or disgusted, and maybe some of those emotions will come later. Right now I have to deal with this new information and see how it fits in with Joe’s death. You think it does or you would not have exposed this truth after thirty-five years, and Mike thinks it does, I can tell that much just from looking at him. So let me go and mull this over, and I’ll call you in a few days.”

  Hannah watched Alicia warily. “You won’t disappear, will you?” the old lady finally said fearfully, and Lafferty saw the uncertainty and loneliness behind the matriarch’s polished, controlled facade. She was afraid her last-remaining relative would desert her and leave her alone in her magnificent mansion with her guilty memories and her tattered conscience.

  “We’ll be back,” he said, surprised at how much the old lady’s fear touched him. He didn’t much like her but he could feel sympathy for her, which surprised him.

  Hannah met Lafferty’s direct gaze and nodded. “Thank you, Detective.”

  “Don’t thank me. Your granddaughter is the forgiving one,” Lafferty said.

  Hannah smiled sadly. “Perhaps you’ll be less judgmental when you need that forgiveness yourself someday.”

  Lafferty looked at Alicia, who nodded and moved toward the door of the library.

  “We’ll say good-night, Mrs. Green,” Lafferty said.

  Gibbs was waiting for them in the hall and fell into line behind them.

  “What is he, psychic?” Lafferty said in an undertone to Alicia as the butler opened the door for them.

  “I’ll take it from here, buddy, thanks,” Lafferty said and shut the door in the butler’s face.

  Dusk was becoming night as they stepped out onto the portico and stood on the top step. An orange sun was disappearing below the horizon, night birds were c
alling, and the exotic scent from the spring lilacs in the garden filled the rain-washed air.

  Lafferty glanced at Alicia standing next to him. He wasn’t sure what to say to her.

  “It’s all right, Mike,” Alicia said quietly. “I am not going to have hysterics. I feel more drained than anything. At this point it’s just one more bombshell So what else is new?”

  He touched her hair gently, and she turned immediately into his arms.

  “I know this is tough on you emotionally, but this could be a good bombshell, try to remember that,” he said. “What we need for your case is an explanation of the unexplainable—how people could have seen you shoot your husband at the Plaza Hotel when you weren’t even there. Anything previously unknown can help solve that puzzle, and what Hannah told us tonight is a lot of new information, the type of information people pay a lot of money for and commit crimes to keep quiet. I’m going to run this thread right back to its source, and see if maybe, just maybe, we’re starting to get somewhere.”

  Alicia nodded against his shoulder. She had never known a haven as comforting as the circle of this man’s arms.

  Lafferty glanced over the top of her head at the house behind them.

  “Now let’s get out of here before Lurch reappears,” he said, and took her arm, leading her back to the car. Alicia leaned on him heavily, content to let him take over as her mind drifted and childhood memories overwhelmed her. As he handed her into the car and started the motor she saw her mother as she had first known her, a smiling young woman filled with hope and promise, delighted with her little girl. Alicia’s vision blurred as Lafferty negotiated the long drive and returned to the municipal road.

  Oh, Mommy. Alicia was an adult herself and a mother, but she still missed the woman who had raised her, every minute of every day. And now to find out the secrets Margaret had lived with in order to keep her...it was too heartbreaking to absorb.

  “Are you okay?” Lafferty asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I just...I loved my mother.”

  “I know. She must have been young when she died.”