The Sandler Inquiry Part 43

They pa.s.sed back through the small stone chapel. Thomas was reminded of the church in North Fenwick. The image of the marble tomb flashed before him, the Devonshire priest entombed beneath his own likeness in iron. Thomas couldn't shake the image.

He was aware of being watched. Two old women were in the pews, one with wrinkled lips moving above a prayer book, the other silent and motionless on her thick, aged knees. The parson watched Thomas with more than transient curiosity. Thomas glanced back at him and had the distinct impression that the man's face evoked Central Europe-perhaps the Alps or the Tyrol-more than the m island of fog, d.i.c.kens, and gin.

Whiteside spoke again when they reached the wet sidewalk.

"Tell me, are you planning to pursue this affair?"

Thomas looked into Whiteside's cunning eyes.

"I've come this far, haven't I?"

Whiteside was thoughtful as they approached the Rover.

"This is just a suggestion:' he offered, 'but you might give some thought to discovering who was running him."

"Running him?"

"Yes. Who was controlling him." Whiteside looked to Thomas and realized he was drawing a blank.

"An agent might operate for totally self-centered reasons," he elaborated.

"Money. s.e.x. Power.

But he doesn't operate by himself Sandler had to have had a case officer, a superior in control who was, as we say, running him. Has that occurred to you?"

Thomas shook his head.

"No, it hasn't."

"It should have. Give it some thought' He paused, then added as the chauffeur unlocked the Rover,

"If you're able to arrive at any conclusions, do let me know. Her Majesty's Government should be most grateful."

They reentered the car and it slowly pulled away from the chapel, moving toward Westminster. Thomas was deeply in thought. The only words on the return trip were Whiteside's after another long pause.

"I like to think of myself as a career servant with unimpaired honor, Daniels. So trust me on one further point. There's a further aspect to all this. But I'm absolutely forbidden by ethics, English law, and propriety from divulging it at this time. Terribly sorry."

Daniels looked at Whiteside, as if to see within the man. He couldn't.

"Does it affect my ... my search?" he asked.

"Not in essence said Whiteside. He sighed, as if he wanted to say more. Thomas had a slightly disgusted look on his face. He was thinking of the graveyard as much as anything. Whiteside read him perfectly.

"This whole thing has a rather repellent smell, doesn't it?" asked Whiteside.

"Killing young girls, and all that." His smile to Thomas Daniels was bittersweet.

"People genuinely stink. Myself included."

Part Four t Chapter 16 At first he thought the letter was from Leslie, or rather the woman who claimed to be Leslie. Then Thomas Daniels recognized the blue personal stationery of Andrea Parker.

Tom, dear, I tried desperately to get in touch with you. I wanted you to know I'll be out of town. A fabulous, fabulous man and I are going to Martinique for a week of sun. Please don't be jealous. I am sure you'll live a lot longer than he will, anyway.

I'm thinking of you always.

Love, love, Andrea Such expertise. He crumpled the blue paper in one fist and sent it airborne toward the kitchen garbage can.

He kicked the door shut behind him and stalked into the bedroom, still in thought: He tossed his suitcase onto the ragged bedspread, stood there a moment, returned to the kitchen, and retrieved the crumpled blue paper. It had been beside a dust bah at the base of the stove.

He pulled the note open and looked at the date on top. The note was already a week old. He tossed it to the garbage can, accurately this time, where it could now remain.

Augie Reid. He'd suspected it all along. Well, he reconciled himself, at least today was Sunday and the week in the sun was over. He wouldn't have to think of it while it was still in progress.

Eight months earlier his wife had left him. Now Andrea, traveling her own road with a new companion. To lose one woman is a tragedy. To lose two in a year is plain carelessness. Was that Oscar Wilde?

Carelessness? Or a form of failure?

He tried to push the thought aside. He hated the word failure, hated it because it slipped into his thoughts so often. Besides, law hadn't been his chosen profession. He'd been pushed, seduced. By his father. His only real failure, he told himself, was not having gotten out sooner. Better late than not at all. And soon it would be over, years wasted on a career he hated. Better mere years than a lifetime.

By ten that night he was gloriously tired, his body still on European time. He fell asleep on the living-room sofa, reaching up and turning the light out, too tired to move. His last thought as he drifted off concerned the last woman to have come to his office.

If she wasn't Leslie McAdam, who was she?

What she was was punctual, among other qualities. Thomas had spent most of that next day looking at the clock, often noticing that only a few minutes had pa.s.sed since he'd looked last. He was anxious to see her, or at least to see if she'd be where she'd said she'd be.

Eighty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, appropriately across the street from the aging Sandler mansion, that sealed mausoleum of a house in front of which someone had been murdered in 1954. Why, Thomas wondered as he stood across the street at two minutes to four, looking up at the shuttered windows, the corroded green roof, and the impregnable brick walls, did appearances have to be so deceiving?

He glanced at his watch. Then he looked down the street. He saw her rounding the corner from Park Avenue, walking boldly toward him, dark gla.s.ses shielding her eyes and a scarf surrounding her scarred throat.

She was smiling. So he smiled, too. Sure, his better instincts told him that Leslie McAdam was in a churchyard in London. But he was glad to see her anyway.

He let her walk all the way to him before he spoke, and even then it was simply

"h.e.l.lo." He reached out and took her hand.

She looked at him oddly as if to correctly sense his hesitancy.

"For G.o.d's sake" she chided, 'we've been in bed together. You're allowed to kiss me He leaned forward and did kiss her. And against his better judgment-or against any kind of judgment at all-he felt himself drawn protectively toward her. Never get involved personally with a client, his father used to tell him. Never. Oh well, he thought, a lot of good the old man's advice had done for him so far.

She looked away from him for a moment, taking his hand and removing her dark gla.s.ses. Her gaze was on the bulwark of the building across the street. Her blue eyes were appraising, almost scheming and plotting.

He, too, glanced to the house. He thought of those fortress walls and the secrets they surrounded. Within, doddering old Victoria too frightened of water to even bathe -had entertained her succession of dogs named Andy, had interred them, and had doted with equal fanaticism upon dollar bills. Similarly, this had been the very house from which Adolph Zenger had emerged in 1955 changed and shattered, a sh.e.l.l of the man he'd once been.

"A different man'" as William Ward Daniels had described it to his son.

"How can we get in there she asked.

"In the Sandler house?"