Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 1991
Henry Griswold knocked on the door of the hotel suite. He was bearded and imposing, gray-haired, formal in deportment.
Reuben quickly got down to business. It helped that the room was fusty Victorian. The curtains were full and ancient, the table was massive, and the sunlight was dimmed by the thick glass. Reuben cleared his throat. “Mr. Griswold, I wish that the business between us should remain entirely confidential. As you know, I am in politics, and have attained some prominence. For reasons I do not have to expand upon, what I am here to discuss with you is personal and is to remain personal. Is there any problem with that?”
“None whatever, Senator.” Griswold’s voice had just enough animation to denote to Reuben that he was not speaking to a stuffed dummy. Griswold bent his head just a degree or two. Middle-class Canadian deference—it crossed Reuben’s mind—to a live United States senator.
“On the matter of fees, in this envelope you will find $5,000. That is a deposit on your consultancy. I will get to you anything in excess of that which I eventually owe you.”
“How am I to be in touch with you?” In Griswold’s hand a leather pad materialized, a gold pencil attached.
“You have my private telephone number. If you wish to send a letter by post, here is how to do it.” He gave Jim Stannard’s address. “Just put ‘For Reuben’ on the envelope.”
Griswold nodded and pocketed the envelope Reuben handed him. “How shall I make out a receipt?”
“Don’t bother. I don’t feel I need to protect myself. At that level.”
“So, what can I do for you, Senator?”
“Here is a summary of the relevant events. I was a student at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. In October 1969, I learned that my girlfriend was pregnant. We discussed various options but did not come to a conclusion. Then in November she asked me to drive with her to her hometown, which is the village of Letellier, south from here about—”
“I know the town. As a child my wife attended the convent school there.”
That news was not happily greeted. Reuben was not in search of orthodoxy from his lawyer.
“It turned out that her destination was the rectory of the Catholic church there. She introduced me to the priest who had baptized her twenty-one years before.”
“This priest, is he alive?”
“I don’t know. He was already elderly in 1969. Anyway, after reminiscing with him for a few minutes, my lady—she is called, was called, Henrietta Leborcier”—he waited while Griswold wrote on his notepad—“told the priest that she wished him to proceed to marry us. I remember protesting, in some way or other, but she was very determined and most anxious that her child—”
“Your child?”
“Yes, our child—should at birth have both a mother and a father.” He paused.
Griswold sat in his armchair, motionless.
“I simply have no memory of other details—I was pretty much overwhelmed by the whole thing. I do remember that we knelt for the priest’s blessing after exchanging vows, and then there was the church ledger, which she signed, and I signed—I think. I must have.”
“On your return to your university, did you discuss your marriage?”
“No. We agreed that we would not speak of it to anybody. My closest friend knew about the pregnancy, but not—or so at least I believe—about the marriage, or pseudo-marriage.
“Anyway, Henrietta and I agreed that she would, at the end of the term, leave for Paris, where her father was a university professor. I would proceed to graduation at Grand Forks.”
“And then?”
“I came to my senses in the spring, and got word to her that I did not wish to continue our liaison.”
“And the child?”
“I was penniless, Mr. Griswold. Her father had a university position and, I thought, savings.”
“Did you ever hear from her again?”
“No. Not from that day to this.”
“You proceeded with your life and your career?”
“Yes. I went to Vietnam as a soldier. I was discharged in 1972 and went to law school at the University of Illinois. I did not finish. I had come to the attention of the North Dakota Democratic Party, and I was quickly drawn into politics.”
“You married?”
“Yes. In 1975. I was by then actively involved in politics, and the next year I was elected to Congress, as the sole member from North Dakota in the House of Representatives. North Dakota, like Wyoming and Montana and a couple of other states, gets two senators but only a single congressman.
“When I married, our wedding was amply noticed in the press, in part because I was already being spoken of as a congressional candidate, in part because my wife had been Miss America two years earlier.”
“Who else knew of your liaison with Ms. Leborcier?”
“There were several classmates who knew us to be together a great deal at college. One of them, as I say, was an especially intimate friend. He and I are estranged, because he took offense at my breaking it off with…Henrietta. He is now a successful attorney in Grand Forks.”
“Name?”
“Eric Monsanto.”
“I know the name.”
“But even he—on this I am not absolutely certain. We had been in the habit of sharing our secrets but I didn’t want to tell even him of the marriage—alleged marriage.”
“But he knew of the pregnancy?”
“Yes. It happened, so to speak, under his auspices. He and his girlfriend, and Henrietta and I, spent the night at his father’s duck blind on Devil’s Lake. And it was Monsanto who passed on the news to Henrietta that I had decided to end the…courtship. I have no reason to believe that she ever told him that—in her opinion—we had actually been married.”
“You wish to know how that…marriage, or whatever one calls it, appears in Manitoba records?”
“Yes. Here is what, using my own resources, I have established. The church registry at Saint Anne’s in Letellier records that on November 18 Henrietta and I were ‘married.’”
Griswold made another note.
Reuben went on. “One point occurs to me, having to do with the civil authorities. I remember when I was really married, to Priscilla. We needed to apply for a marriage license a few days ahead of time. I certainly didn’t do that with Henrietta. Surely any marriage performed by a priest without a valid marriage license from the Province of Manitoba would have been illegal, and therefore null?”
Griswold made a note: “So the first thing to find out is whether, at the Vital Statistics Agency in Winnipeg, there is any record of a marriage license having been issued, in November 1969, to…Leborcier and Castle.”
“Yes.”
Griswold looked up from his notepad. “If it does…if such a document exists…other than to advise you that it exists, what more would you seek, Senator?”
“Its destruction, Mr. Griswold.”
Reuben had thought this out. Perhaps Griswold would simply leave the room.
But he didn’t.
Bill Rode had done good work.