by Sarah Rayne
Prague
January 1944
Dear J.W.
As part of our search for the twins, Schönbrunn is going to put out discreet enquiries among jewellers and dealers in England, to see if the Reiss golem is offered for sale anywhere. I shall be helping him with that – I have a few contacts in England in that field.
The figure was not found among the possessions the twins left, and Schönbrunn believes this to be hopeful – indicating they were able to take it with them when they vanished, which does not suggest force. If we can trace the golem, that may provide the start of a trail that could lead us to them. Both those figures are distinctive and the hallmarks recognizable.
It is possible the family with whom the girls lodged have lied to our agents, and are keeping the Reiss golem in secrecy, intending to sell it for themselves. Schönbrunn thinks that unlikely, though. Our information is that the girls were with an English couple who had lived in the same small market town all their lives, and were known and respected. It seems unlikely that they would realize the worth of such an item or, indeed, know how to go about selling it.
We have never heard of Mengele’s agents casting their net as far as England, but our information was very clear that the doctor wanted Sophie and Susannah Reiss for his evil work. That intelligence came from Schönbrunn and I have never known him to be wrong. This may sound harsh, but truly I would rather think of those two girls begging in the streets of England – of any country – than to think of them in Mengele’s laboratories.
I will not believe that Mengele’s people found Sophie and Susannah Reiss, and took them to Auschwitz, though. I will not.
Good wishes to you, as always,
M.B.
The School House, Nr Warsaw
January 1944
My dear M.B.
We trust Schönbrunn to be careful, and to do nothing to draw attention to himself or, of course, to the twins.
I was glad, though, to have your more recent letter, with the news that Leo Rosendale is safe, although I fear the disappearance of the twins is likely to distress him. Those three were extremely close, and at times Leo seemed almost to share the twins’ disconcerting gift for sensing the thoughts and emotions of others.
I have made the decision not to tell the Reiss family yet that their daughters have vanished. Letters are almost impossible between this country and England now, and I believe the Reisses will not be overly concerned if they do not hear from their daughters for a little time. This is a decision I may regret, but at the moment the deceit seems justified. It will be a heavy secret for me to bear, but I will spare them the pain and the fear as long as I can.
Kindest regards, as always,
J.W.
SEVEN
Nell thought the trouble with becoming extremely close to another person was that you started to sense that person’s thoughts and emotions. She was finding she was doing so with Michael, more and more. On the whole, this pleased her. She had had something similar with her husband – almost a subliminal sensing of emotions. On the day he died in the motorway pile-up, Nell, alone in their house, had felt a sudden overwhelming sensation of panic and immense confusion before the phone rang. In the crashing pain and anger that followed Brad’s death, she had thought she would never experience that shared understanding with anyone again. She had not, in fact, wanted to experience it, because it had been something between her and Brad exclusively. And then Michael had walked into her antiques shop. Nell smiled, remembering. ‘Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight,’ he had once said, hiding behind a quotation, as he often did when he was feeling deeply emotional. But the meeting had been a happy one, and it had led to delighted intimacy. She thought Brad would not have minded her closeness with Michael, not after four years, and she liked to think he would have approved of Michael.
But that mental closeness meant you sensed the other person’s thoughts and sometimes that could make for a difficult situation. Particularly if there was something you wanted to keep to yourself.
‘I’ll be devastated to leave Quire Court,’ Godfrey Purbles, from the antiquarian bookshop adjoining Nell’s shop, had said, two days earlier. ‘But I’ve always wanted to have a shop in Stratford – well, who hasn’t? It’s going to cost me an utter fortune and I dare say I’ll end up in a debtors’ gaol – do they still have debtors’ gaols nowadays? – but the premises are quite near the Rose Tavern, which couldn’t be much better, on account of the tourists flocking and cavorting everywhere. And as a hunting ground for rare books and theatrical memorabilia it’ll be tremendous.’
‘You’ll probably end up discovering the famous unknown play,’ Nell said, smiling.
‘Yes, and I’d probably pay several fortunes for it, only to find afterwards that it’s a Victorian fake.’
‘I’m glad for you, but I’ll miss you.’ Nell liked Godfrey and found him companionable.
‘Oh, you’ll visit me, of course. And I’ll come back to Oxford. But here’s the thing, Nell. The shop.’ He looked at her hopefully, clearly wanting her to voice an unspoken thought.
Nell said, ‘The shop? Your shop, d’you mean?’
‘Yes. It’ll have to be sold, because I can’t afford both places. At least, the lease will have to be sold. Assigned, they call it, I think. How would you feel about taking it over? I mean in addition to yours, not instead of.’
Nell was very aware that life often presented you with odd twists, and quite often you had long since seen or suspected what those twists might be. But this was not a twist that had ever occurred to her.
‘The lease is probably the same as your place as far as ground rent and repairing obligations and whatnot,’ said Godfrey. ‘But there’s about thirty years left to run on mine. And the two shops adjoin – I’ll bet you could knock them into one.’
‘The freeholders would have to approve that,’ said Nell, looking round Godfrey’s shop with the rows of bookshelves, and the lovely old tables for customers to consider the wares and discuss them in leisurely fashion.
‘It would double your present floor area,’ said Godfrey. ‘It might even more than double it – I think this shop is a bit bigger than yours.’
‘Godfrey, I don’t know if I could afford …’ But Nell was already remembering the insurance payout from Brad’s death, some of which the bank had invested in various funds and bonds, most of them incomprehensible, but all of them paying reasonable dividends, even in the current depressed and depressing market. If she called them in, would there be enough to take over Godfrey’s shop? And even if there was, would she want to use all of that money, which she had meant to keep for Beth? But then she looked round Godfrey’s shop again – yes, it was larger than hers – and she found herself thinking that she could turn the annexe behind her own shop, where she and Beth currently lived, into a big workshop which would allow her to return to renovating furniture, which she loved doing.
‘Come and see the rest of the place anyway.’ Godfrey was already leading the way. There were two more book-lined rooms, and a large alcove for prints. The living part at the rear had a beautiful large sitting-room looking on to a paved courtyard, with a small dining area leading off. There was a big square kitchen. Everywhere was immaculate – Godfrey was inclined to be fussy in a slightly old-maidish way – and the place would not need so much as a lick of paint.
‘Two huge bedrooms and bathroom up here,’ said Godfrey, starting up a spiral staircase. ‘From the main bedroom you can see across to All Saints Church.’
For a wild moment Nell saw herself waking in this room – Michael would be there on some mornings – and seeing the misty silhouette of All Saints against the dawn with him next to her. This was such an alluring prospect that she thought she had better slow down before she got carried away.
‘And a couple of storerooms at the top of these steps,’ said Godfrey, going across a small landing and up four more stairs. ‘I’ve never really used them – except for storing old stock. This one’s directly under the roof, as
you can see. But I should think you could make two more bedrooms up here, or a study, if you wanted.’
‘Yes,’ said Nell, looking about her. ‘Yes, you could.’
But as they went downstairs, she said, ‘Godfrey, we have to be very straight with each other about this. I’m attracted to this, but I’ve only got a certain amount of money, and it really is all there is. I’m not going to start borrowing from banks or building societies.’
Godfrey beamed, and pattered into the little office to put the kettle on. When he came back, he was wearing the rimless spectacles which he always donned for serious work, and which made him look like a pleased owl.
‘Let’s work out some figures over a cup of coffee,’ he said.
The figures worked out surprisingly well.
‘We’re making a few assumptions,’ said Godfrey. ‘And we don’t know how much it would cost to knock the two shops into one. But I don’t think we’re very far out.’
Nell hoped they were not, because it was looking as if this really would be affordable. It would be a bit of a risk, because it would take most of the squirrelled-away investments, but it would not take all of them. The money earmarked for Beth would not need to be touched. She promised Godfrey that she would give him her decision within the next two days after she had talked to the bank and perhaps to a builder as well, then she went back to her own shop. Awaiting her was a message from some Japanese customers who wanted to buy a pair of Regency sofas which Nell had been trying to sell for six months. This was so encouraging, and would replenish the coffers so well, that Godfrey’s project looked even more promising.
After supper, when Beth embarked on her music practice, Nell caught herself thinking that if she took on Godfrey’s shop, Beth could have a bedroom in one of those unused upper rooms, and one of the present bedrooms could be turned into a music room. She was immensely proud of Beth’s progress and pleased with Beth’s continuing interest in the lessons, but it had to be acknowledged that the annexe was a bit small when it came to the practising of scales.
‘Would you like a proper music room, Beth?’
Beth’s small face, so heartbreakingly like her father’s at times, lit up. ‘I’d utterly love it. Where could I have it? Here somewhere?’
‘No, not here. But if we were to move to a bigger shop you might. It’s only an idea at the moment.’
‘We wouldn’t move away from Oxford, though? We couldn’t move away from Oxford, and leave Michael.’
Beth sounded anxious, and Nell said, ‘No, not away from Oxford.’ Certainly not away from Michael, she thought. ‘But perhaps to a bigger shop here in the Court.’
‘That’d be lavishly good,’ said Beth, and by way of expressing her approval, started in on a lively Mozart piece which her teacher had transposed and simplified for her.
‘It hasn’t happened yet and it might not happen at all. So don’t say anything to anyone,’ said Nell. ‘Understood?’
‘Um, yes, OK. Not even to Michael?’
‘No, I’ll tell Michael myself. And isn’t it your bedtime? In fact, isn’t it past it?’
‘One more Mozart. You like Mozart,’ said Beth, hopefully.
‘Yes, but if you play any more tonight you’ll never sleep – your mind will be too active.’
‘I bet Mozart wasn’t made to go to bed when he didn’t want to.’
‘Mozart didn’t have double geography and an arithmetic test in the morning. Yes, you do have,’ said Nell, as Beth opened her mouth to protest.
‘I hate geography.’
‘Well, how about if we just do a few capitals of countries. And afterwards you can play one short Mozart.’
‘Um, OK.’
Beth diligently chanted a few capitals, identified one or two outlines of countries in Google Earth, then enthusiastically banged out a truncated version of a rondo. She finally went happily to bed, and burrowed down into sleep straight away. Nell, following some time later, found her own mind was too active for sleep. The prospect of taking over Godfrey’s shop was becoming very enticing. She was already thinking how she would retain part of the book section for Godfrey’s Oxford customers, and how she would have the space to hold small antique events and weekend courses for eager amateurs, as she had in Shropshire.
Punching the pillow for the tenth time, and trying not to look at the beside clock ticking through the small hours, she thought she would phone Michael early tomorrow, and ask him to supper so she could tell him about the project. She considered this to see if it fell into the category of not being able to make her own decision without his approval, and concluded it did not. Then she spent a further half hour wondering how much she ought to take into account Michael’s presence in her life in reaching a decision about the shop. But this opened up such a complicated tangle of emotions that Nell put the problem away, sat up in bed, switched on the bedside light, and reached determinedly for her book. She fell asleep before she had read two pages of it.
The next morning brought a large envelope from Ashby’s Auctioneers in London. Inside was a sheaf of photocopied letters, with a covering note from her contact in the sale rooms. He wrote, cheerfully, that they were looking forward to dealing with the silver golem for her client, and that he had been doing a little research of his own.
‘I’m fairly sure that it’s one of the pair I mentioned to you. They both disappeared around 1942 or 1943, but interestingly and rather intriguingly Ashby’s archives have some correspondence relating to one of them. (We have archives going back to the company’s inception in 1853, would you believe?)
‘I thought it might interest you, and your client as well, to see these letters, so I’m enclosing photocopies. And if the figure you’ve been offered really is one of that vanished pair, what we’d like to know, of course, is where the other one is!’
Nell did not dare immerse herself in the photocopied letters yet. She oversaw Beth’s breakfast, then bundled her into the car and whiled away the short journey by chanting through the capitals of the world once more. Beth went happily into school, prophesying she would be top in the geography test, and Nell drove back to Quire Court, forcing herself to keep to the speed limit.
It was ten minutes to nine, and she did not usually open the shop until ten, so she had a clear hour to read the material from Ashby’s. She poured a cup of coffee, carried the envelope into the small office behind her shop, and slid the contents out. There were only four sheets, and with a pleasurable sense of anticipation, she began to read the first.
It was not quite what she had expected. The phrasing – even allowing for the stilted formality of correspondence in the 1940s – was awkward, and Nell thought the letter struck an odd discord.
Department for Criminality and Theft
Post Box No B7921
London
February 1944
Sir
I act for a private firm of investigators who try to trace two silver figures, of Jewish workmanship, in the form of the Jewish emblem, the golem. Both figures were taken illicitly from a synagogue just outside Warsaw several months since, and enquiries inform us that they were smuggled to England by the thieves.
Please could you tell us if you have been offered such a figure, and if so, the present owner’s identity. I remind you that it is a duty of all citizens to assist in cases where crimes may have been committed.
Yours respectfully.
The signature was indecipherable, and across the foot of the letter, someone who was clearly an Ashby’s employee had written, ‘No such department exists. Treat this one with caution – recommend advising Inspector George Fennel at New Scotland Yard. He will know how and if this should be investigated.’
New Scotland Yard,
London
February 1944
Dear Sirs
I am most grateful to you for notifying us of the contents of the somewhat curious letter regarding the apparent theft of two silver golem figures. As you surmised, there is no ‘Department of Criminality and Theft
’ here.
Enquiries with our Warsaw people reveal that two silver figures of this description did indeed vanish from a small synagogue in a village just outside Warsaw. However, no formal report seems to have been made of any theft, although you will appreciate that it is difficult to obtain information from that part of Europe at present.
At first look, there seemed no reason to suspect any espionage activity. However, the post box address has proved to be an accommodation address in London’s East End – a small general shop, which we have had under what we term ‘light’ surveillance for some months.
It seems unlikely that enemy agents would go to such trouble to trace the whereabouts of two Jewish objects, however valuable. It is more probable that it is the ‘singer not the song’ that interests them – that it is the present owner or owners of the silver golems they wish to find. We cannot hazard a guess as to why they might be going to all this trouble to find the whereabouts of one or two people, but that is our conclusion.
I advise you to send a polite acknowledgement, saying you have no record of these figures. If you receive any reply, I would be very glad if you would notify me at once.
If, of course, you do hear of such figures being sold, either by your auction house or by any other similar establishment, I would be glad if you would send word to me without delay.
Yours faithfully,
Inspector Geo. Fennel.’
Carbon copy of letter sent by Ashby’s of London to Post Box B7921.
February 1944
Dear Sir
We have to hand your enquiry regarding two silver golem figures, but have not, at this present, been commissioned to deal with anything matching your description. However, should we be requested to handle such a sale, we will be very happy to advise you.
Yours faithfully,
for and on behalf of Ashby’s of London.
Department for Criminality and Theft
Post Box No B7921
London
February 1944
Sirs
We thank you for your prompt reply.
The golem figures are ones we are anxious to trace. If you hear of their whereabouts, or of any persons trying to dispose of them, we will be most grateful to know.
