The British were already calling it the Bore War; the French, La Drôle de Guerre, the Phony War. ‘This business seems so far from it,’ I said weakly.
‘Oh, my goodness, no. We reinsured the policies on the Lutoslawski collections back in ’38. They were shipped here from his estates in eastern Poland last summer, as per the conditions of our agreement. Out in the nick of time only to be stolen, madame. Stolen. A good bit of them at any rate.’
‘How much of a bit since that tiara was a fake?’
I think then that he suddenly realized I might not be so easy. ‘Four-and-a-half million pounds. Priceless objects of virtù. A terrible shame, what with this war and all. Still in their crates and only just off-loaded. Whisked away, shipped back to the continent, no doubt, and quickly sold off to be quietly hidden. God only knows. Need I say, the war has put us in a very difficult position? The firm has always backed its colleagues. There are no risks in this business, only bad rates. Still, it’s not going to be easy. It certainly isn’t. Carrington is one of our fast-dwindling links with the Continent. Most of our chaps have already been called up. Tom has an American passport, the eye and mind of a hunter. Go and see Lutoslawski for yourself. Let me ring Tom and tell him you’re coming. Yes, I think that would be best under the circumstances. We’d like to have you on our side.’
* * *
Lowestoft is on the Suffolk coast. Tommy stood at the far end of that platform in the greying light of a grey day in that third week of November 1939. I remember that his overcoat was of a flecked beige tweed, that the collar was up, the fedora pulled well down against the wind, and that his hands were in the pockets. I think then that he thought he had lost me. I knew I feared I’d lost him.
‘Lily, it’s good of you to have come. Did the kids mind it very much? They’re okay, by the way. I’ve only just spoken on the phone to Arthur Martin and his housekeeper.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken that box? Oh, for sure, I can understand why you took that tiara, Tommy, but Jules … Did you not ask yourself what he would do to me when he found out, even though he must have stupidly bought it on the sly?’
‘I’ll take it back to him. We’ll let him keep it because it’s not the one we want.’
He took the shopping bag from me-I’d managed to buy a few things in London. Still distant from each other, we walked into town. Lowestoft was a seaside town, though not so popular as Blackpool or Brighton, but the war was everywhere in signs, warnings, places one could no longer go, shore batteries, too, the Royal Navy. We finally found a small restaurant. Over chowder, bread, and tea, I still couldn’t face him.
‘Lily, please. If I could have told you, I would have.’
‘When did you first know I might be connected to that thing?’
The breath went out of him. ‘At that shop on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. There was a ring from the Lutoslawski collection in that grab bag of stuff Langlois had placed in the window.’
The things in that silver tazza. Breaking bread into my soup, I nodded curtly. ‘So you used me, is that it?’
‘I didn’t know you then, or even if we’d ever meet again. It was business, Lily. What else was I to have done?’
Business … How many times is that excuse given? ‘Then after having said we must always be straight with each other, you admit you lied to me?’
He set his spoon down. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’
‘Arthur mentioned a secret compartment in that car of yours, a smuggler’s hideaway. I’ve not yet had a chance to ask my son where it is.’
Tommy caught up with me. I had even left my purse behind. ‘The compartment’s under the rubber mat in the trunk. You have to take the mat out first. There’s a spring release at the side of one of the rear lights. The left one. You push it in and the lid pops open. It’s an old rum runner’s trick, but lots of custom’s clerks search like crazy, so I always have a wad of cash handy.’
‘And the available space?’ I asked angrily.
‘Enough to hold several paintings in their frames. Lily, they didn’t just steal the tiara. The firm stands to go into bankruptcy unless we can recover the goods.’
‘Use a thief to catch a thief, eh, is that it? And what am I supposed to do if Jules tells the Sûreté I ran off with his fake and all those other bits and pieces of his father’s mistress?’
‘He won’t for that very reason. Come and meet Nicki. He’s not just anybody. He wants to tell you his side of it. At least do that before you make up your mind.’
It was sad to see a proud man in defeat, too old to fight a modern war, too young to die without caring. Even at the age of sixty-two, Alexis Nikolai Ivanovich was still extremely handsome. One automatically thought of kings at court and of men in uniform. My first sight of him, however, was through the mizzle down a forest lane that was flanked by fir trees. There were two greyhounds with him, and these had lifted their heads to stand sculpted at our approach.
Caught in that moment, Nicki was totally unaware that he was no longer alone. He wore the high black boots of a cavalry officer, the tucked-in, rough brown corduroy trousers, coarse linen shirt, and open leather jerkin of a peasant. No hat, no cape-I don’t think he ever cared much about the weather, certainly not in the years I was to know him.
His fist closed about a branch. He broke off a bit, crushed the needles, and brought them up to his nose, a man remembering. A pea cast out of its jar to roll uneasily on the floor of England.
The fens, the bogs, and the forests of Suffolk did little to ease the isolation but only served to give poignant reminders of home, of a place I’d never heard of-lands halfway between Biala Podlaska and Pinsk, to the east of the Bug. A place of forests and marshes, of mud, horses, and few if any roads. One of sleighs and sleigh bells in the frozen night of a river’s meandering.
Of wolf hunts that were terrifying.
Nicki had the warm grey eyes of a man who had lived and suffered much. They were widely spaced beneath a strong, wide brow and dark, wide eyebrows. The curly black hair was touched with iron grey and beaded by the rain. The beard and moustache had been carefully trimmed.
He wasn’t tall, nor short-of about my height. Yes, exactly it. Eye to eye, with slightly pinched cheeks, high cheekbones, a full, broad nose and half-hidden lips. A hand whose grasp, like the rest of him, betrayed an iron will.
I remember that he held my hand for what seemed an eternity. He had a lovely wife, not much younger than myself, and his third, I think. Six children, two sons who had been killed in the war, one who was in the RAF, two who were now at boarding school in England, and one who was still at home with them, a girl of five.
He didn’t speak English, only Russian, German, and French, in addition to his native Polish. Though I didn’t know it then, this was to be the first of several such meetings, but in the forest, in the rain as he gripped my hand, he looked right into me.
In silence, Tommy watched the two of us.
‘Now I know why he’s so taken with you, Madame de St-Germain. Please, a welcome to my humble estate. Was your journey tiring?’
I remember thinking then that his French was very good, very Parisian. Hands in the pockets of my overcoat, I shook my head. ‘Only strange. In France, there are so few signs of the war. In London, and in every little station I passed through, there were posters, regulations, arrows pointing to the air-raid shelters, men in helmets, people carrying their gas masks, antiaircraft guns in the parks.’
‘Yet in London, the restaurants and theatres have reopened, and some of the evacuees have begun to trickle back to their homes in the city. This is a war that has only just begun, madame. The worst is yet to come. You’re very lucky to be out of France. If I were you, I’d let Tom get you and the children to Montana. That would be by far the wisest choice. Distant from the madness that has yet to come.’