The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  He nodded, leaned forward and kissed both of her cheeks softly. ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Safe travels,’ she called to his back and he lifted an arm in farewell before hurrying towards his taxi.

  Katerina waved again as he got into the cab and waited until the vehicle had turned out of her street and Daniel was gone. For someone who was used to being alone most of the time, she felt strangely deserted as she turned to go back inside.

  She didn’t notice the man who’d been watching them step out of the doorway of the pub up the road, lift his collar and walk down the street towards her flat.

  Katerina used the time alone to write two letters. One was brief and affectionate, which she dashed off while smiling. The other took nearly two hours to craft. She then changed for the cooler evening. The garment was her usual clean, narrow line with no embellishments other than neat front pockets that sat symmetrically at her hips. The dress was invisibly darted from breast to pocket, with three-quarter-length sleeves. Three aspects made it eye-catching: the first was its provocative scarlet, the next was its daring hemline that grazed mid-knee and when she sat would reveal enough leg to be arresting, and finally its scooped neckline. It didn’t dip enough to be considered in any way bold, but it did show off her angles spectacularly and with no jewellery to detract attention, anyone looking at her would first notice her long neck. Her chin-length hair flicked out and bounced with good health rather than hairspray. She paired the dress with dark court shoes, hid her outfit beneath the familiar dark mustard coat and stepped out to find a letterbox where she posted her single-sheeted letter before hailing a cab.

  ‘Lincoln’s Inn Fields,’ she said, hauling the heavy door closed behind her and sinking into the vast rusty-red leather seats. She would never lose the novelty of riding in a big black London taxi.

  As she’d anticipated, the friendly cockney driver couldn’t help but glance in the mirror and catch her eye.

  ‘You in trouble, miss?’ He winked. ‘Need a lawyer? Wouldn’t bother, if you ask me; they’re all about the money.’

  She grinned. ‘I’m meeting a friend,’ she lied.

  ‘Oh, well, that’s different, then. Must be handy having a solicitor for a friend.’

  ‘He’s a solicitor advocate, actually. Means he can represent his clients in court.’

  ‘Cor, blimey. Lucky you don’t have to pay for one of those. I’ve carried a few in my time and when I hear them discussing their rates … well, makes me eyes water, miss.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to read something quickly.’ She had to cut off the chat or the conversation was going to stretch and she had already lied enough.

  ‘Go right ahead, miss. I’ll get you safely to your destination. You want the Chancery end?’

  ‘Archway. Yes, please.’

  ‘Traffic will be murder but that’s my problem, miss.’ He mercifully stopped talking while she pretended to read over her letter to Edward Summerbee. This had to work. Surely, he wouldn’t be able to resist …

  It was odd that she thought about Otto Schäfer in this moment. There was a quality to Mr Summerbee that she recognised as belonging to Otto as well. She frowned as London rumbled by, reaching for it, dismissing the obvious similarity of empathy – she hoped that was a given in most people who were old enough to remember the war. No, it was something else, but it eluded her as she noticed they’d entered High Holborn.

  ‘Anywhere here is fine,’ she said, and after tipping him well, she returned once again to the green door, took a breath, and rapped using the brass knocker.

  John Honeywill opened the door, beaming as he recognised her. ‘Mademoiselle Kassel.’

  She was impressed he remembered her name but then she remembered his. ‘Hello again, Mr Honeywill.’

  ‘Are you expected by …?’

  ‘No, I won’t disturb Mr Summerbee again. I just wondered if you’d do me a good deed?’

  ‘I’d like to help,’ he said.

  She removed a thickish envelope from her bag. ‘This is a letter that I’d be grateful to have delivered into Mr Summerbee’s hands … not Miss Bailey’s, not just into his office, but handed to him personally with the message that I implore him to read the contents this afternoon and to meet me in the tearooms – the address is there.’ She pointed to where she’d scrawled the teashop’s details on the back of the envelope. ‘I’ll wait for him – until it closes, and beyond if necessary.’ She watched the clerk lick his lips as though sensing that what he was weighing up doing was perhaps inadvisable. She pressed her case. ‘Nothing in here can hurt anyone in the law firm, John. Nothing in here in fact can hurt anyone outside of it except, perhaps, bring attention to a war criminal.’

  His gaze snapped away from the envelope to her face.

  She nodded. ‘Did you lose anyone to the war, John?’ She was betting he had – hadn’t everyone?

  ‘My sister. She died of a fever – she was just twenty. She was a nurse in one of the military field hospitals. She was braver than I.’

  ‘I think you might have been too young to go to war,’ she chanced. He blushed. ‘Then for your sister and for all the other sisters now dead – I lost three of them to this war criminal I speak of … and not one of them had got past their first decade of life.’ She had struck a chord: John looked mortified. ‘Would you deliver this for me?’

  ‘And Mr Summerbee can help?’

  ‘I think Mr Summerbee can give me some advice that will help.’

  ‘Well, then, I can do that.’

  ‘Don’t let Miss Bailey know,’ she warned.

  He grinned, took the letter and pushed it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

  ‘And the message.’

  ‘I won’t forget.’

  ‘John, I don’t know how to thank you.’

  ‘It’s a simple task, mademoiselle. It requires no more thanks. I’m … I’m very sorry about your family.’

  She smiled her appreciation. ‘I won’t forget your kindness,’ she said and squeezed his arm before turning and leaving, once again deliberately passing the solicitor’s window, hoping he would look up to see her moving through his day again.

  Katerina sighed to herself. Now it was a waiting game. Would Summerbee take the bait? She left the attractive square as the afternoon light was failing and the shadows lengthened across the lawns. She shivered beneath her coat, which was not doing a very good job of keeping her warm, designed more for a late Parisian spring than a gloomy early spring in London.

  A wispy drizzle began to encourage people to open brollies and step up their pace as peak hour drew closer. Katerina didn’t for a moment anticipate that the solicitor would keep strict office hours – he looked like someone who would continue working if the job was important or had a tight deadline. The firm was Summerbee & Associates, so his practice depended on his diligence. She would wait. The invitation was there.

  Katerina found the tearooms, ordered a pot that she didn’t feel like drinking and toyed with the inevitable cup that ended up steaming in front of her. An hour passed and the clock on the wall told her it was nearing a quarter past six; she ordered a second pot she also had no intention of drinking, apologising for letting the first go cold and only now noticing how crowded the café had become. The drizzle had presumably turned into a shower and as she looked up it became a downpour. People scurried in to escape the rain, steaming up the windows and bringing the smells of the city with them. She’d arrived before the crush and been able to sneak a table for two by the window. She stared out now and hoped for a glimpse of a familiar tall figure.

  ‘May I?’ someone said, and didn’t wait for the response.

  ‘Oh, I’m waiting for someone,’ she declined, fully anticipating the Englishman to apologise and move on. He didn’t and instead sighed as he made himself more comfortable. He was a stocky, darkish man; not really English-looking, now she thought about it, but with a fine southern accent that she imagined her friend Catherine wou
ld say was ‘straight off the Kent Weald’ or ‘right off the Sussex Downs’. Katerina’s ear for language and music gave her an equally well-honed sense for picking out accents.

  ‘Forgive me for barging into your space. I’ll leave once your companion arrives, I promise, but as you can see there’s nowhere else to sit and …’ He trailed off apologetically, indicating that there really wasn’t space in the busy shop and definitely no more seating.

  She tried not to show her exasperation and gave a tight moue of assent.

  ‘Do you come here often?’ he said, untucking a damp newspaper from under his arm.

  ‘You’re joking me, aren’t you?’

  He looked offended. ‘Actually, no. Just being polite, having gatecrashed your table.’

  ‘No, I have never been here before,’ she replied, her tone brisk. She began digging in her bag for something to look at or read. Her fingers landed on a pencil and she clutched at it, searched for a receipt to scribble on and look busy.

  ‘Well, I hear they do a fine brew. How’s yours?’

  ‘A fine brew,’ she replied, unable to mask the sarcasm.

  ‘Do you work around here?’

  She decided he was too dull to catch on to any of the signs, from tone to body language. ‘I don’t, no. And I might suggest you stand and let that lady behind you sit down instead.’

  He glanced behind his shoulder. ‘She’s busy talking to some-one; I think I’d be a nuisance.’

  ‘Do you? I can’t imagine why,’ she remarked. ‘I just want to be quiet, actually.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Quiet? In a busy café? Why come in here if you want quiet?’

  She sighed. ‘Please. Either drink your tea in silence or give your seat up. I really don’t want to talk to anyone.’

  ‘But you said you were waiting for a friend. I don’t see —’

  ‘He’s here,’ said a new voice. ‘I’m her friend.’

  Katerina looked up into the earnest face of John Honeywill and although it was not the person she’d hoped would come, she nevertheless wanted to hug him for the rescue. She realised all she was doing was giving him a crooked smile of relief.

  ‘Shall we step outside?’ he offered, thumbing to the door.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she mouthed. She didn’t care if she got soaked. ‘I don’t have an umbrella but let’s go anyway.’

  He not only held the door but he managed to also expertly flick open a large black umbrella that she was sure could engulf three people. ‘Here,’ he offered, ‘share mine.’

  ‘Oh, are you sure?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Kassel, Mr Summerbee always says an Englishman never leaves home without his brolly, although I can see a Parisian lady takes her chances,’ he said in a mildly admonishing tone.

  ‘Then I am a lucky Parisian.’ She waited beneath a dome of black, the rain beating a steady rhythm against it like a thousand heartbeats. Glad to be leaving the chatty stranger behind, she was nevertheless having to come to terms with the fact that Summerbee had refused her invitation. ‘Thank you for meeting me,’ she said into the awkward pause.

  ‘Mr Summerbee asked me to.’

  ‘And what else did he ask of you?’

  ‘That I apologise to you on his behalf.’ At the sneer she couldn’t hide, he leapt to his superior’s defence. ‘He does have another appointment this evening. It’s been in his diary since the beginning of the week.’

  Poor Honeywill; he thought that might reassure her. Well, it was not this fellow’s fault that she was getting damp at her ankles and cold, feeling bereft of ideas. Katerina hadn’t realised how uncomfortable her silence was making him. He began to offer information he perhaps shouldn’t.

  ‘Of course, it is a social engagement, but all the same, getting to Piccadilly from here at this time of day can be murderous.’

  Murderous. The very word seemed to sum up not only her anguish but also her mission and her mood. His uttering galvanised her: if Edward Summerbee was going to avoid her, then she would go to him. ‘Oh, yes? Was there any other message he sent, John? He has information that can help me.’ She watched him roll his lips with warring thoughts. ‘Perhaps I could go to him, as his time is stretched?’

  ‘Oh, mademoiselle, I don’t think turning up at the Café Royal is wise.’

  The Café Royal? ‘I just need to talk with him briefly.’

  ‘Perhaps I might suggest you ring the office tomorrow?’

  Hmm, yes, and face the sour response from Miss Bailey? ‘Maybe I will do that,’ she lied, uncomfortable about tricking Honeywill but knowing her next move. ‘You’ve been very kind to me, John, thank you.’

  ‘May I hail you a taxi, Mademoiselle Kassel?’

  ‘You may.’ She smiled.

  Her unwitting accomplice let out a piercing whistle to the one taxi that everyone seemed to be hoping to hail. The driver could hardly ignore that sound.

  ‘I wish I could do that!’ she admitted as the black car slowed for them.

  He grinned, opened the door and helped her in. ‘Good evening, mademoiselle. I hope …’ He looked lost for what he hoped.

  She shook his hand. ‘I know. Good evening, John.’ When the door closed she glanced at the man watching her in the mirror. ‘The Café Royal in Piccadilly, please.’

  ‘Righto, miss. It’s going to be murder getting there.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  21

  ‘That wasn’t so bad,’ the taxi driver admitted, nodding towards the familiar semicircular canopy of the famed Café Royal with its spotlights illuminating people moving past it in the now mercifully light drizzle.

  ‘Thank you, driver.’ She handed over the money. ‘Keep the change.’

  ‘Obliged, miss, thank you.’

  The hotel’s doorman was at the taxi awaiting her exit and as she extended a long leg out to the damp thoroughfare, he shifted a voluminous umbrella over her.

  ‘Welcome to the Café Royal.’

  A newspaper seller half-heartedly offered her an Evening Standard out of habit. Horns blasted and a double-decker bus rumbled by, splashing water from a puddle onto a nearby pedestrian who squealed. Katerina sympathised, noting the woman’s stockings were now soaked with grimy water.

  ‘Good evening, madam. Let’s get you out of this mucky night,’ the doorman said, enveloping her in his welcome and his vast umbrella, emblazoned with the emblem of his establishment.

  ‘Thank you.’ To her right the neon lights of Piccadilly Circus yelled that Gordon’s Gin was doing battle with Martini for her attention, while Max Factor insisted its brand was the only lipstick a girl needed today.

  She gasped as she emerged into the reception hall of marble floors and walls, replete with stone fireplaces above which sat huge gilded mirrors. ‘I feel like I’ve stepped back into Paris,’ she murmured, pulling off her headscarf.

  ‘That’s the point, I think.’ The doorman grinned. ‘Built by a Frenchman and opened a century ago to bring the sense of a great Parisian salon to an otherwise stoic Victorian London.’ He flicked away the droplets from his umbrella before he tapped his nose conspiratorially. ‘Between you and I, these days I think it’s favoured too strongly by pop stars fuelled with hallucinogenic drugs than it is with its former patronage of royals, society doyennes and literati.’

  As she gazed back at the doorway with its vast bank of stained glass she shook her head in small wonder.

  ‘By day it’s spectacular, and inside is grander,’ he promised. ‘Are you meeting someone, madam?’

  ‘I am. A Mr Summerbee.’

  ‘Ah, yes, he arrived about half an hour ago. Through those doors. Enjoy your evening.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Katerina Kassowicz moved in the direction of the doors that she was determined would lead her straight to her planned and, she hoped, final meeting with Ruda Mayek. Whether it ended with his death or her own, she couldn’t control, but she was prepared to risk her life in order to end his.

  The doorman hadn’t lied. Kat
erina had arrived in a salon that she presumed was the main dining room. It was like entering a world of la belle époch, a different era that seemed to fling her back to childhood and the elaborate theatres and music halls of Prague. Gilding on every spare inch of wall glittered and wall lights twinkled their reflections in mirrors that lined the vertical spaces to make the salon seem ten times its true size. Velvet, heavy wood and a painted ceiling depicting naked nymphs and cherubs at play in the clouds tried to trick her into feeling as though all her worries were outside.

  She spotted the English solicitor leaning forward across a table from a blonde woman, who was coyly covering her mouth as she giggled helplessly. There was no doubting Summerbee’s charm; she’d fallen beneath its spell earlier in the day and had entertained hope that he would open himself up to helping her in any way possible. The negative outcome had felt like a slap. He was stronger than she’d anticipated and immune to both her persuasive skills and her usually reliably disconcerting presence. She watched him blaze a smile at his companion and press his amusing point; the woman’s laugh carried across the vast, still relatively empty space. It was early and they were one of two couples having cocktails.

  A waiter had approached, offering to take her coat, but Katerina wasn’t paying attention, not even as her coat was slipped off her shoulders; it was hard to concentrate amongst all the Second Empire surrounds that were so reminiscent of France, plus the realisation that she had no plan for this confrontation. It was her second ambush of Summerbee and she suspected he was not going to be easy to convince.

  ‘Good evening, madam. Er, can I show you to a table, or …?’

  ‘You can, thank you. That one over there.’ She gestured towards the laughing couple.

  ‘Mr Summerbee’s table?’

  ‘He’s an old friend. I’ll just stop by and say hello.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The man looked relieved. He gestured forward and she glided silently on the plush ruby carpet towards her victim.

  Katerina breathed deeply, hating to put herself in the situation of making a spectacle; she hoped the solicitor would suffer the usually dependable British trait of politeness in public overriding all other emotion. The waiter nodded at her as they approached and then cut away with her coat, leaving her to make the final few steps alone and the inevitable unhappy greeting. She was close enough now she could hear Edward’s conversation.