'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 was, 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
