1974.
'It was at about that time' she said, gazing at Whiteside, 'that British intelligence washed their hands of me! Her voice contained residual resentment, not at all tempered by the passage of years.
'Decisions made higher up' he offered plaintively.
'Leslie, dear, honestly, I had nothing-.
'You'll have your opportunity to speak, Peter,' she snapped brusquely.
'Allow me. Please.'
He nodded. She went on.
'I wasn't considered important anymore' she said.
'There'd been no threat on my life for several years, the counterfeitings of the pound by my father had ceased many years previously, I was considered… expendable Whiteside shook his head sorrowfully. Not expendable, he was telling himself Merely lower priority. The Sandler case had been considered closed by M.I. 6. But Whiteside was too well-mannered to interrupt again.
Thomas watched both of them. Silently. Hunter gazed at Hammond and Daniels steadily, his thick bulk wedged into the narrow dining chair once favored by Victoria Sandler.
Sounds of concrete chipping rose from the basement. To Whiteside, for a fleeting moment, the sounds conjured up an image of Verdi's anvil chorus. He, too, was tired. Physically and emotionally.
'It was about this time in 1974 ' she said, 'that a man named Robert Lassiter approached me in London' Hammond's eyes came alive. He was the only one at the table who knew the name.
'Lassiter said he was from the United States Treasury Department'
Leslie explained.
'He'd been dispatched by a man named Merritt, who was said to be the Director of U.S. Treasury Intelligence'. Whiteside frowned, perplexed. Hammond nodded. Hunter was impassive, Thomas so intrigued that he hardly breathed.
Leslie told her story.
Lassiter was completely familiar with her case, he'd said. He approached her in a London restaurant near Cheapside. He'd asked if he could make a 'business' proposition to her, one which would guarantee her safety in the future.
'After all' he'd said, 'your father is still very much alive ' It had taken no more than those words, plus a convincing explanation of Lassiter's own identity, to move Leslie McAdam. The two memories of her father were like wounds which festered, pained, but never healed.
There was always that threat, the deathly fear that he could always be standing behind her, going for the throat a third time.
Leslie McAdam, hater of violence, expert on impressionistic art, devotee of Brahms and Vivaldi, was practically obsessive on the subject of Sandler.
'What I'd like ' she'd told Lassiter, 'is seeing my father dead. Can you provide that?' she'd challenged.
His answer surprised her, astonished her, in fact.
'With your help' he'd said simply, 'yes. Can do.'
Already notified that she'd soon be losing her British protection, Leslie had little choice. She'd leaped from British arms to American arms, desperate for protection and willing to take it from whatever quarter offered it. And none too soon.
The forces protecting Arthur Sandler made a rare mistake, but a fatal mistake for an innocent English girl. They thought that a stenographer who worked for the Foreign Office was Leslie under a different name.
They came calling on her toward five A.M. one morning. The usual routine with the piano wire. They left her quite dead, her head almost completely severed.
'They never knew their mistake,' said Leslie, 'until I surfaced after Victoria Sandler's death.'
'And that other girl was the body we put in Leslie's grave in London' muttered Whiteside.
'We knew we weren't burying the real Leslie. We didn't have any idea where the real Leslie was. Not until just now. But back then, back in 1974, we took the chance that Sandler and Company had thought they'd executed the right girl.
We wanted as many people as possible to believe that she'd been killed 'Including me,' said Thomas, thinking back to the churchyard.
'Of course' said Whiteside, his eyebrows raised.
'We didn't know who you were. We only knew that you had bloody good information.
No way in the world we wanted an enlightened stranger to think the real Leslie McAdam was still alive.' Whiteside pondered it for a moment, then continued.
'Similarly, Daniels, we've been following you ever since, which hasn't been easy. We wanted to look at your 'Leslie' before anyone else got too close a look.'
'And equally you wanted me to think my'Leslie'was an impostor,' said Thomas.
'We didn't want you spreading the word that the real Leslie was alive,' countered Whiteside tersely.
.I was thinking of attending the interment,' Leslie backtracked sourly.
'I was curious who'd care enough to come. But Mr. Lassiter insisted.
I left the country the night the murder was discovered. I went back to Montreal. As far as everyone was concerned,' she said, 'I was dead'
She reflected happily.
'It was marvelous. For once no one was looking for me. If you're already dead, no one bothers you.'
'Usually. Not always said Thomas, arms folded, looking her in the eye.
He could hear the chipping downstairs. The dead would rise in more ways than one before the next sunset. He was c@in.
'Perceptive, Thomas,' she answered 'You're catching on' 'It's about time, don't you think?'
Intense hammering and chipping rose from below.
Leslie concluded.
'Months passed. Mr. Lassiter told me to live as quietly and normally as I could. What they were waiting for was a natural and infallible way to smoke out Arthur Sandler. They were waiting for-' 'Victoria to die' said Thomas triumphantly.
'May I continue?'
A portrait of Victoria from forty years earlier gazed down from the wall, a tart sneer of disapproval on her lips, the usual vacuity through the eyes.
'Continue,' said Whiteside, trying to calm Leslie.
'They were waiting for Victoria to die said Leslie. They had a pretty good idea where these counterfeits were coming from, who was making the flawless engravings, and who had concocted a formula to provide the perfect paper. Sandler.' She paused.
'So when Victoria died, they asked me to come forward, to put in a claim against the will. That would force the Sandler estate, including this building, to be closed by the State of New York. And, they hoped, it would force Sandler to come forward' 'In one form or another,' said Whiteside.
'Correct,' she said.
'I was to lure the fox from the thicket. That was one role. The other was to get as close to Thomas Daniels as possible' She looked at him.
'I was to discover how much collusion there'd been between him and his late father.'
'And?' asked Whiteside, raising his thin white eyebrows, hoping for a revelation.
'I haven't uncovered any. Yet' Whiteside appeared modestly disappointed. So did Hunter.
The chipping downstairs intensified. Thomas was so engaged in what he was hearing that he nearly leaned forward out of his seat to push the conversation onward.
'That brings her to the present, doesn't it?' he asked.
Hammond nodded. So did Leslie. Thomas turned quickly to address Whiteside.
'And it kicks the ball into your zone, doesn't it, Whiteside?'
Again the raised eyebrows, accompanied by a nod.
'You're going to have to cough up that one bit of the story that you've withheld so far, aren't you?' pressed Thomas, trying valiantly not to gloat.
