Free McNally's Dilemma by Lawrence Sanders, Vincent Lardo Page A

saucer given me by our tea lady. Bless her. I vowed to remove my lunch with Connie (appearing as “Sgt. Al Rogoff PBPD”) from this week’s expense account.
    Our collective smiles departed along with Mrs. Trelawney. We were left holding steaming cups and saucers, our eyes looking at everything in the office but one another and the sheet of paper resting benignly before father.
    Placing my tea on the desk, I inched my fingers farther along and tried once more to get my hot hands on the epistle that had brought us together.
    “May I?” I repeated.
    Father nodded. Fairhurst sipped rather noisily for one of genteel birth. I retrieved the letter and my tea, quickly downed the two aspirin while my cohorts examined the ceiling, and leaned back in my chair to read. Typewritten on a sheet of very ordinary white paper was the following:
John Fairhurst III
    The Fairhurst Foundation states with each grant, “Given in memory of John Fairhurst who died April 15, 1912. A passenger on the ill-fated Titanic, John Fairhurst courageously assisted women, including his wife, and children into lifeboats, giving them hope when, for him and his peers, all hope was gone.”
    This is a lie. Your grandfather, dressed in one of his wife’s gowns and hat, was himself assisted into a lifeboat and ultimately returned to the safety and comfort of his home.
    In return for $25,000 your secret will remain a secret. I will contact you again with instructions for delivery of the money. If you do not agree to these terms, I will provide the press with proof of my allegation.
    There was no signature.
    The account of a man fleeing the Titanic in drag was not a new one. It has long been alluded to in books and films—the latter dramatically portrayed in Fox’s 1953 Titanic, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. In this, the best Titanic film ever made, it is the versatile character actress Thelma Ritter who unmasks the skirted pretender.
    I put the letter back on Father’s desk and asked to see the envelope it came in. As I thought, it was posted in Miami, the biggest city within an easy drive from Palm Beach. I waited a respectable minute for the head of McNally & Son to speak, but when our silence segued from a meditative pause into gross embarrassment, I began to suspect that Father refused to even think what had to be said. I had no such compunction.
    “Is this true, Mr. Fairhurst?”
    John Fairhurst lowered his teacup and dabbed at his lips with the linen napkin supplied by Mrs. Trelawney. “May I speak in complete confidence, Mr. McNally?”
    “Our name is discreet, sir, and please call me Archy.”
    Fairhurst once again applied the linen to his lips. “It’s true,” he stated.
    Father looked as if John Fairhurst III had just shouted, “No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, now shut up and deal.”
    “I don’t understand how...”
    “How we got away with it?” Fairhurst finished for me. “I’ll explain.” He returned his cup to the trolley and proceeded to let us in on the Fairhurst family secret.
    “As the letter says, Grandfather got off the Titanic dressed as a woman, with Grandmother’s help I’m sure. Naturally, no one asked for names or identification of the people transferred from the lifeboats to the rescuing ship. Remember, confusion reigned ashore as well as at sea and the world was horrified, or perhaps mesmerized, by the disaster. When the surviving passengers sailed into New York Harbor, the newspapers had already assumed that John Fairhurst had done the noble thing and reported him dead.
    “My grandparents went directly to their home in Hyde Park in upstate New York. They were neighbors of the Roosevelts, don’t-you-know. The Roosevelt Democrats, that is. They spoke, of course, only neighborly thing to do, but I never heard it said that they had broken bread with them.”
    Father was nodding as if he knew the consequence of breaking bread with the wrong Roosevelts.
    “I’ve always assumed my grandparents