The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘No luggage, madam?’ the desk clerk enquired.

  ‘None.’ She sighed inwardly; best to lie. ‘I was supposed to be here just for the day but I became delayed. I’ll take the first train to York tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Ah, of course, it is very early too. Sign here, please. I’m not sure we’ll be open for breakfast by the time you’d need to leave, madam. I recall the first train is at ten to six, so you’d need to check out by around twenty past five.’ She was impressed by his knowledge. ‘Can we pack something for you?’

  ‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. Five-fifty, you say?’

  He nodded. ‘A strange talent to know the train schedule, I agree.’ They shared a smile. ‘But so many of our guests are either travelling to or from Yorkshire that it feels necessary to the job to know one’s way around the timetable.’ He turned away to fetch her room key. ‘Is there anything else we can help you with this evening?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you.’

  ‘Room 89. Good evening, madam.’ She knew he didn’t entirely trust her tale but she didn’t care and frankly it was clear nor did he.

  Katerina could still taste the tender kiss against her lips and hoped the novelty of the hotel room would create the distance she now needed. She took a shower after taking care to hang up her dress, which she’d have to wear again for the trip north, and rinsed out her underwear. She was fortunate that she’d left some travelling clothes on her last visit with Mrs Biskup.

  Katerina fell into an uneasy, irritated sleep where Edward roamed, muttering about needing to learn how to laugh and whether she would mind if he kissed her again.

  She checked the alarm clock at her bedside every hour, it seemed, and finally at nearing 4 a.m. gave up on her slumber and got dressed. She checked out and went in search of a chemist that opened by five for travellers and bought some make-up and toiletries, including a toothbrush that she used in the station bathroom.

  She would call Mr Partridge when she got into York in the hope she could ease from him the detail that might give her a different pathway to Ruda Mayek’s present whereabouts.

  Katerina purchased her ticket for the first train leaving for the northern capital. She made her way to the station tearooms for a cup of coffee she didn’t especially feel like, with her mouth still minty from the cheap toothpaste. She had twenty minutes before her train left. She reached for yesterday’s newspaper that was strewn on a nearby table; anything to blank her mind and not think of Edward Summerbee.

  The man she was trying not to think of could think of little else but Katerina.

  Although the bed looked carelessly rumpled, he had barely dozed. From before midnight, Edward had instead sat rugged up in his dressing-gown in an armchair near the window, counting through the hours, some of them with a brandy-laced malted milk, while he stared at the empty street that Katerina had exited from. It was not much past four-thirty when an eager blackbird began his first call out; Edward had noted over the years that the morning after rain prompted the sweetest song of these most favourite of English birds and in a few months this fellow would be singing for a mate.

  In the lonely hours of the night he had gone over the previous evening repeatedly. It was the letter – the brutal, factual, unelaborated explanation of her story in all of its tragedy – that had trapped him in the emotion of the Kassowiczs. His normally well-disguised vulnerability had caught him without much warning. His father had been right all those years ago when he’d suggested to Edward that he practise in the area of human rights.

  ‘Your empathy will get you into hot water otherwise,’ he’d counselled.

  Normally the civil cases he dealt with didn’t force him to confront the wetter side of people’s lives – mostly he worked within the confines of their business dealings. It had not occurred to him that the dry brief from the overseas law firm to be its conduit to the British Museum would embroil him in potentially criminal scandal by walking his firm backwards into the darkest period of Europe’s history. Edward had attempted to imagine but failed to touch what it must have been like to be that child and to undergo such torture. Given the composed woman he knew, it only added a fresh feeling of admiration but it brought with it a new layer of personal torment for him. Herein lay his dilemma. To help Katerina would be to ignore everything demanded by his role as a solicitor working on behalf of a client. To not help her contravened everything his role as a compassionate human being demanded. He’d wrestled with this and after finally stirring from his armchair to Mr Blackbird’s sing-song, he was no closer to a decision.

  What he had come to realise was that at no point during his recriminations did he regret the impulse to kiss her. It was hard to believe that his was her first romantic kiss. Edward stood and stretched, half shaking his head in wonder; he should have worked harder at it! But what kept him unable to sleep was that on the one occasion she’d handed over trust and allowed a man to become intimate, he’d treated her carelessly.

  ‘No,’ he said to the wardrobe mirror he found himself standing dishevelled before. ‘That’s not how it was. It was about being careful, not careless,’ he assured his reflection.

  Semantics, the inner Edward sneered. You let her down.

  ‘I’m not her solicitor,’ Edward reminded himself.

  Yes, but you regard yourself as a gentleman. You let her down as a man.

  ‘Heaven help me, now I’m arguing with myself,’ Edward admonished himself, turning away and heading for the bathroom.

  His conscience had the last word: Otto Schäfer was German and he didn’t let the young Jewish girl down.

  ‘Fuck Otto Schäfer,’ he growled through the needles of hot water that washed away the soap and, he hoped, his vacillation. Swearing made him feel better momentarily, yet in the next moment he knew he was lying to himself. Otto Schäfer was Katerina’s hero and rightfully so. Edward Summerbee, whom she’d hoped might be her shiny knight, had turned out to be a coward, hiding behind a code of practice instead of favouring one of chivalry.

  The thought of cowardice arriving in his mind shocked his angry towelling to stillness; water ran from his head to form bigger droplets and ultimately rivulets that made their path down to his ankles to create soggy patches on the bathmat. Damp and dark of mind, Edward tested the notion and felt he couldn’t tolerate living with it.

  ‘Right!’

  It was said with finality but it felt like a new beginning.

  24

  As the woman he couldn’t shake from his thoughts was waiting for a train to Yorkshire at King’s Cross Station, Edward Summerbee was asking the international operator to put him through to a number in Switzerland. He hadn’t fully completed his path of thought last night and they’d become distracted. However, he was now of the belief that if Katerina could establish that the Ottoman Pearls were recorded in her parents’ wills, copies of which might still be held by Levi Körbel’s affiliate, then a case might be built for proof of ownership. That could be all that would be required to bring criminal charges and hunt the bastard down if he was still alive. It would also release his firm of any further obligation to the negotiation of those wretched Pearls and perhaps allow him to help her more fully. That idea felt heartening.

  He couldn’t remember feeling this galvanised in years; Katerina Kassowicz brought problems to his life, there was no doubt, but she also brought something fresh and invigorating … she brought hope to an otherwise hollow existence that was not unhappy but mostly lonely.

  ‘I have the Geneva number,’ came a voice out of the void.

  ‘Thank you, operator,’ he replied and waited for the beeps and pops of the operator at her work and heard the phone ring nearly five hundred miles away. It wasn’t answered and the operator came back to him.

  ‘Try again, please,’ he instructed.

  This time the call was answered almost immediately.

  ‘Marco?’

  ‘Yes?’ said a familiar but vexed voice.

  ‘It’s Edward Summerbee.
’ He heard the curse in French and laughed. It didn’t need translation.

  ‘Edward, it’s …’ He imagined his friend squinting at the clock. ‘It’s not even six!’

  ‘Sorry, old chap. I’ve got a question that could save a friend a lot of time and expense if you could answer it. It’s a bit urgent, or I wouldn’t …’

  He heard Marco unsuccessfully stifle a yawn. ‘All right, I have to be at the office early today anyway. How can I help?’

  Edward explained, keeping it short and simple and his tone light so he didn’t sound as anxious as he was feeling.

  ‘Körbel and Associates, you say?’

  ‘Yes, contact was lost during the German occupation but my friend is trying to settle an estate, actually, and she believes that company to be holding the most recent documents.’

  ‘Contesting a will?’

  ‘Yes, the usual mess.’

  He heard his friend sigh. ‘How are you, Edward, anyway?’

  ‘Old … cold. Business goes well, though.’

  ‘I’m happy for you. And before you forget to ask, Helena misses you and so do the children. You were meant to visit last year. Come soon.’

  ‘I promise to make amends.’

  ‘Good. Give me until nine-thirty – I’ll ring you when I get into the office and have done the digging you need.’

  ‘Thanks, old friend. Talk shortly.’ When he replaced the receiver, his heart felt lighter because now at least he’d done something positive behind the scenes for Katerina. If it turned out that the interests of Körbel & Associates were still with its affiliates in Europe, then he would hand over the information to Katerina or her representative and it would be up to her and her supporters to take the next logical step. He could do no more.

  Or could he? He stood. There was one more thought that had snagged in his mind last evening when she’d spoken. The mention of the Kindertransports had taken purchase and only because he’d met the stockbroker and humanitarian Nicholas Winton, who had saved so many young lives through his efforts. Winton had visited Edward’s university just as his final exams were completed. He was one of the lucky ones to get his finals finished while he was juggling his military cadet training. He hadn’t been old enough to vote but he’d leapt at the chance of joining the RAF for fear of being considered ‘essential services’ because of his family’s extensive farming expertise. The fear was unfounded; his brother had been called up and joined the army, distinguishing himself, while his father had been drafted into the Home Guard. Edward had been keen to train as a pilot but whomever the decision-makers were, his seniors had seen fit to preserve him as ground crew. It was during this time he’d offered his services, as immature as they were, to the evacuation of children, whether it was out of London to the safer countryside, or from places like Czechoslovakia into Britain. While he did not have a hand in the Kindertransport effort, he’d been on the rim of it, aware of those making the rescue trains happen, and after meeting Winton, he’d offered to help with any legal paperwork.

  Edward set off for his office while it was still dark, well aware of Violet and Pansy’s disapproval of the early start, but barely noticing the morning’s chill as he walked briskly to Lincoln’s Inn. By the time he arrived his thoughts were burning with the idea that just maybe he could leverage some of those old rescue train contacts and, if nothing else, he might be able to put Katerina in touch with other Jewish people her own age who had survived the occupation of Czechoslovakia. It was a small gesture but it was something to ease his consternation at not being able to give her what she really wanted.

  ‘Good grief, Mr Summerbee. I didn’t expect you yet,’ his secretary remarked as she blew the fresh steam off her cuppa.

  ‘I could say the same to you, Miss Bailey.’

  ‘No, sir, I’m always here before eight,’ she said.

  He cleared his throat at the error. Obviously he was the one who was uncharacteristically early. She was really quite pretty, in a schoolmarmish way. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he admitted.

  ‘Tea’s still hot in the pot. Can I fetch you a cup?’

  ‘You can, thank you. Oh, by the way, I’m expecting an urgent call from Geneva. Interrupt me if you must. It’s important I speak with the caller.’

  ‘Very good. You go in, sir. Fire’s on.’

  He shook his head as he entered the warm cocoon of his quiet offices, which overlooked the main square of Lincoln’s Inn. Life had been neat and ordered and really quite pleasant. Now Katerina Kassowicz had arrived into his orbit to stir it up. Damn her, he thought, not meaning it for a second.

  He shed his coat and took a few moments to warm himself in front of the fire. Miss Bailey knocked and didn’t wait for his answer before pushing through with his steaming cup. ‘Here we are, sir. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Not right now, thank you. I’ve got some files to read, so if you could keep the wolves at bay, I’d appreciate it.’

  ‘No one’s getting past me, Mr Summerbee,’ she assured him, and he believed her. ‘I’ll buzz through that Swiss call as soon as he rings.’

  She left behind a trail of rose and other exotic notes that he didn’t particularly like. He’d smelled it rising off the cardigans of other female staff and in the streets when people oozed out of the tube stations. It was obviously popular. He blinked as he sipped, trying to capture the name. Ah, that’s it …

  ‘Chantilly,’ he murmured, unimpressed. He’d seen it on the counters in department stores. It made him think of how Katerina smelled. He didn’t know the perfume she wore. There was something dark and peppery about the fragrance that lifted from her skin and as they had talked and she waved those long hands around to accentuate her explanations, the pepper sweetened to spicy petals as though he were walking across a mossy pathway littered with geraniums as brightly scarlet as that dress she wore.

  He put the cup down noisily to clear his mind of her image; this really would not do. Edward flicked through his address book; he could ask Miss Bailey but her inquisitive nature would prod around and work out why he was making the call. Then her disapproval would arise because it was connected to ‘the French woman’. No, better he did his own sleuthing. He found the number he needed and placed the call, going through the process of small talk before he arrived at his topic.

  ‘Oh, well, you’re testing me now. We’ve only got the original old files in archives.’

  ‘Perhaps a couple of names from 1941 of Prague-based children who may have been around the same age as my friend – perhaps thirteen to fifteen – when they left. This woman is all alone with her traumas and I think to speak her own language with people of a similar age could be helpful.’

  He heard the sigh at the other end. ‘I’ll see what I can dig up, Edward, but it may take a while.’

  ‘That’s fine, no hurry; it’s just a kindness. So you’ve retired now, Jim?’

  ‘Yes, about five years ago. Oh, I see, is that your way of reminding me I don’t have anything else pressing?’

  Edward hadn’t meant it that way, but it made him laugh. ‘No, nor would I suggest it,’ he said, feigning soft indignance. ‘I hope you’re enjoying life?’

  ‘Not in winter but I love the garden in the summer and Shirley and I have a time share now in Cornwall, so we like to get down there as often as we can.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘What did you say this woman’s name is?’

  ‘Kassowicz.’ He spelled it.

  ‘Well, I used to know those files intimately and I can tell you there are no children of that name that I recall.’

  ‘I didn’t expect there to be. She can account for her four siblings,’ he said. ‘None of them survived.’

  ‘That’s …’ Jim struggled to think of a word that conveyed how he was feeling. ‘Just terrible.’

  ‘Hence my hope that we can link her up with some survivors.’

  ‘For sure … I will look, but I’m just thinking that the person you should talk to is Lilian Jeffers.’
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  Edward frowned. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, she was on those transports with the children. She was on the ground in Prague and her famously brilliant memory when I last met her – not even two years ago – was still as keen as ever. She knew those files better than all of us. But the reason I mention her is that she might be able to think of someone who would fit together with your friend. I can only give you names but as these children were mid-teens, I think she’d be better placed to be helping with such an emotional connection. Lilian can probably give a better fit, if you catch my drift.’

  ‘I do. Jim, that’s a good idea, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll have to find her number. I’ll call you back – same place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Two returned calls later Edward sipped his cooled tea and felt the best he’d felt all morning. He had made surprising progress. Marco assured him he would be calling back with proper news shortly but he had put enquiries into motion, plus Edward was now staring at the residential number of Lilian Jeffers. Two leads that made the fitful night and no sleep worthwhile.

  Katerina had watched the city skyline edge away into countryside as she drifted into sleep. She’d bought a first-class ticket to avoid the general noise of people and she shared her carriage with a single gentleman who had been lost in his morning newspaper moments after taking off his overcoat, bowler, scarf and gloves.

  ‘Good morning’ were his only words and she matched them with an identical pair.

  Beyond that she hadn’t turned his way but had stared out at London’s sky while it dissolved into daybreak and then sleep had found her. She woke at the screech of wheels and the harsh sound of a whistle pierced a dream she couldn’t touch again now that she was stirring and instead she saw only Edward Summerbee’s generous mouth shaping to whistle for a taxi.

  She blinked into full consciousness. ‘York … already?’ she said, her voice raspy.