The Last of the Stanfields(66)
We were directed to a lecture hall, where Morrison was just finishing a seminar, and watched from the back as he gathered up his notes and the small group of his students rose from their seats and shuffled out. The professor cleared his throat and stepped down from the lectern, grimacing with each step. He wore a humdrum three-piece suit and had a rim of white hair encircling his scalp, a heavy gray beard hanging from his face. Despite his age, there was still a certain class to the old man. Seeing us approach, the professor let out an exasperated sigh and, with a flippant wave of his eyeglasses, motioned for us to follow him.
The professor’s stuffy office smelled of dust and wax. He took a seat at his desk and gestured for the two of us to sit across from him. Then, he opened a drawer, took out a bottle of painkillers, and swallowed two of them dry.
“Goddamn sciatica,” he growled. “If you’ve come seeking pearls of wisdom, I’ve got one at the ready: better to die young!”
“Well, thank you, I guess,” said George-Harrison. “But don’t you think we’re a bit old to be students?”
“Speak for yourself!” I chimed in.
Morrison leaned forward and stared at us over the rims of his glasses, sizing up his two visitors. “Your friend does have a point,” he concluded, rubbing his chin. “If you haven’t come seeking help for your dissertation, just what can I do for you?”
“We’re here to ask about the Stanfields.”
“I see.” The professor straightened his back, his face twisting in pain once more. “Often the smallest fragments of history can present a historian with the greatest of challenges. It all begins with cracking open a book, as I’m apt to repeat to my students. If you’re interested in learning about Frederick Stanfield’s life, why not try the library before wasting my time?”
“The Stanfields we’re interested in are Hanna and Robert, as well as the last of the family line,” I explained. “We can’t find a thing on them. Believe me, I’ve scoured the internet far and wide, stayed up half the night, and came up with barely a mention.”
“Ah, glorious. The internet. How lucky am I to find myself face-to-face with a great historian of tomorrow! She actually went so far as to stay up ‘half the night’ searching through her precious encyclopedia of nonsense. When are you people going to stop being so daft? Anyone can write anything in that dismal and intangible catchall. One moron after another vomits words onto the page, posting whatever thoughts come to his head without the smallest shred of integrity. No wonder your great ‘web’ is such a tangled mess of fantasies and falsehoods. Go ahead. Tomorrow, post about how George Washington was a master tango dancer, and a hundred cretins will start repeating the tall tale. Soon, we’ll all be asking Google what time we should take a leak to avoid prostate cancer. In any event, the two of you were sent by someone to whom I am greatly indebted, thus I have no choice but to help you. But let’s try to waste the least amount of time possible, yes? What do you wish to know about the Stanfields?”
“What happened to them, for a start.”
“Like anyone who reaches a certain age, they died, the very same fate that will befall the lot of us, sooner or later.”
“When did they die?” asked George-Harrison.
“Robert Stanfield died in the eighties, I don’t know when, exactly, and his wife not long after that. They found her car on the seafloor, right off the pier, leaving little doubt that the woman’s agony had become unbearable, and she had at last given in and taken her own life.”
“Can you provide any documentation? Any proof of your claims?” asked George-Harrison. “Or did you just read that on the internet?”
The professor was speechless. It took backbone to put an old grouch like him in his place like that, and George-Harrison suddenly shot up at least ten points in my book.
Morrison glared at him, eyes sharp and beady like a trial lawyer. “My, my, you’ve got some nerve talking to me like that.”
“Must be a lot of that going around . . . judging by how you’ve treated us from the moment we walked in,” George-Harrison retorted, without missing a beat. Another ten points.
“I haven’t exactly given you the most cordial greeting, I’ll grant you that. Try five minutes with a hip like mine, we’ll see how friendly you behave. But, to answer your question, no, I don’t have any sort of formal proof. Mind you, there was no streaming video of the First Continental Congress in 1774, yet we can rest easy knowing the founding fathers accomplished great feats during that time in Philadelphia. History is set into stone through deduction and cross-referencing of facts and events. And as far as the late Mrs. Stanfield is concerned, all I can tell you is she summoned all her staff, settled their wages, and left her home, never to return. Unless you think that someone of her stature would go hitchhiking cross-country, I’d say suicide is a safe enough conclusion to draw.”
“What was the tragedy that befell the Stanfields?” I asked.
“Make that tragedies, plural. First came the trauma of the war. Then the disappearance of their daughter, followed by the loss of Edward, ending their bloodline and the dynasty. Like many mothers, Hanna loved her son very deeply. He was her whole world. In the span of just a few short months, the glory of the Stanfield name was scattered to the wind. Rumors flew about town that the Stanfields had been the victims of a massive theft, and some even made the sordid accusation they had committed insurance fraud after the fact. There were whispers about Edward’s ‘accident’ not being quite so accidental, considering it occurred mere weeks before his own wedding. Finally, the Stanfield gallery canceled an auction at the last minute, leading some to suspect the catalog had been a sham—a veritable faux pas in the art world. Quite a host of rumors flying about for such a small town. The Stanfields led a lavish lifestyle in the heart of high society, and suddenly no one wanted anything to do with them. Their coffers were soon empty. I’m convinced that Hanna Stanfield chose death in the face of solitude and disgrace. In the blink of an eye, she lost everything—family and fortune. Robert was first to go after a fatal heart attack, and there were even some who believed he had been poisoned. A foul lie, masking an even fouler truth—he dropped dead in the arms of his mistress!”