The Pursuit of Pearls Page 5

  THE BRITISH WOMEN’S LEAGUE OF HEALTH AND BEAUTY

  AT HOME

  CLARIDGE’S HOTEL

  Clara had heard of the British Women’s League of Health and Beauty. It was an organization dedicated to improving the health of England’s young women. It regularly held outdoor galas, where groups of trim girls in navy gym shorts performed synchronized athletics. Photographs of these events frequently appeared in the press, not always for the reasons the organizers imagined.

  “Do you know Claridge’s Hotel?” asked Udo Franke. “It’s very grand. As big as the Paris Ritz and almost the equal of the Adlon. Marble everywhere, our Lottie said. And beautiful food, much better than you expect English food to be.”

  “The people were charming,” added Marlene. “The dinner was given by something called the Anglo-German Fellowship. That sounds like a nice group of people.”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  Clara had more than heard of it. Her father, Sir Ronald Vine, and her elder sister, Angela, were two of its most trenchant supporters. It was the last outpost in England of sympathy for the Nazi regime. With a jolt Clara realized that if the fellowship had organized the dinner, there was every chance that Angela would have been there. Angela might even have met Lottie, without knowing that her own sister knew her, too. Clara shivered as she felt the tectonic plates of her existence shifting beneath her, the two parts of her life clashing unawares.

  “They said a visit to London would be valuable for her education. She would meet educated people, and converse with them about high-minded subjects. London!” The way Marlene spat the word out, the city might have been a sink of unimaginable depravity. “It must be a dreadful place. I wouldn’t be surprised if she met the madman there!”

  She burst into a torrent of sobs and buried her face in the sodden handkerchief.

  “Now then, Marlene.” Udo Franke roused himself from his trance and placed a hand on his wife’s juddering arm. “You’re imagining things. Nothing happened in London. Lottie loved that trip. It was a big opportunity for her. How many girls get to visit London?”

  “So much promise, and a few months later she’s dead!”

  Udo trained his weary gaze on Clara. “Fräulein Vine. My wife and I are touched by your visit. It’s a great comfort to hear how talented our daughter was, and we would like to hear more. But I implore you, if you hear anything which could help us find the monster who killed her—anything, no matter how small—you will come back and let us know.”

  Clara took his large, moist hand. She knew there was no possibility that she would be privy to any information that could help catch Lottie’s killer, yet she also knew how unbearable she would find the grief if anything befell her godson, Erich, and he was not even her flesh and blood. Could people ever be truly happy again after the death of a child?

  “I promise I will.”

  On the way to the door, her attention was caught by a small, framed photograph of Lottie.

  “It’s special, that one,” Udo Franke told her. “It’s from the dinner in London. It’s only a snapshot, but it’s the last one we have of our little girl, which is why we put it by the door.”

  The photo was entirely different from the artfully posed and backlit studio portraits on the other walls. In it, Lottie sat beaming at the camera across a snowy tabletop, a picture of composure between the crystal decanters and silver bread baskets, surrounded by a gaggle of Faith and Beauty girls. Although it was a group photograph, the eye was instantly drawn to Lottie, the candlelight forming a dazzling halo that accentuated the flawless complexion and the perfect proportions of her face. Next to her, leaning into the picture, was a much plainer girl, with a round face and unbecoming braids.

  “Who’s that?” Clara asked.

  “That’s her best friend, Hedwig. They knew each other since they were tiny,” said Marlene. “Hedwig looked up to our daughter because Lottie was so good at everything, and so much prettier, of course. But Hedwig’s a nice girl. Very upset, too.”

  Clara stared at the picture for some minutes, far longer than she needed. It was full of the terrible poignancy that freights photographs of the past. Those smiling faces, so joyful in the present, so optimistic for the future, and so innocent of what was to come. A sadness washed over her as she realized she was really searching for another image—the face of her own sister, Angela.

  She didn’t find it.

  —

  OPPOSITE THE TRAM STOP outside the Frankes’ block, as if in direct mockery of the commuters shuffling their aching feet, was a poster featuring a gleaming new Volkswagen car with the slogan: “Save five marks a week and you will drive your own car.” Most people in the queue looked as likely to buy a rocket to the stars as a Volkswagen car. Erich’s grandmother, Frau Schmidt, a nurse at Berlin’s biggest hospital, the Charité, was saving from her meager salary and had worked out that it would take her five years before she could afford one. After another few minutes shuffling alongside the others in the queue, Clara decided to walk.

  Berlin was changing. It still looked like Berlin, but every day it was a little different, as subtle as fashion that shifts from one season to the next, raising hemlines, adjusting shoulder pads, and tightening waists. It even smelled different. People used to talk about the famous Berliner Luft, the fresh air that blew into the city from the Grunewald, but now the city reeked of sour breath, bitter cigarettes, and stale, unwashed bodies. The only soap available was gritty and impossible to lather because there was no fat in it. People had taken to carrying their own soap with them, if they had any, because leaving it lying around risked finding it missing.

  Clara’s mind went back to the photograph of Lottie Franke, and the certainty that Angela would have been at the same event. Yet again she regretted the estrangement between her and her sister. She thought of the last time they were truly close, when she was sixteen and their mother had died. They’d been standing in a ragged group around the graveside, and Angela had hissed the reminder Dig your nails into your hands to stop yourself crying. Repressing emotion was an article of faith for Angela. Concealment was more than courtesy, it was a way of life.

  Behaving properly. Being properly British. That was Angela’s code. Yet surely the quick, intelligent sister Clara knew was still there—buried beneath the visits to Harrods and bridge nights and society teas. Angela’s letters tended to focus on the interminable round of charity events that she conducted, the deaths of relations, and the relentless progress of her husband’s political career. Gerald is in line for a big promotion. Chamberlain is so impressed with him. Clara responded with a dutiful list of parties, premieres, and work reports. Nothing intimate. Nothing political. Nothing real.

  Right then she resolved that she would write to Angela very soon, and attempt something they had not managed for ten years. Communication.

  —

  CLARA PASSED A LOUDSPEAKER lashed to the side of a building, blaring out “Deutschland über Alles” and obliging everyone to give a perfunctory right-armed salute. She generally avoided giving the Führer Gruss by ensuring she was carrying something in both hands, but that day, distracted by thoughts of Lottie, she failed to comply.

  A hand on her shoulder made her jump like a coiled spring. A man was standing in her path.

  “Documents please.”

  He had a complexion the color of concrete and an expression that epitomized the Berliner Schnauze, the direct, graceless, skeptical manner so many of the city’s inhabitants perfected. He flicked the lapel of his jacket to reveal the aluminum disk marking him out as Gestapo.

  Clara handed over her ID and watched the stupidity and aggression warring in his face as he scrutinized it. Although the small piece of card was beginning to fray at the edges, she never had any doubts about the quality of her identity documents; such was the skill of their forgery. All the same, even if papers were in order, a policeman or Gestapo official could confiscate them if he didn’t like you. Clara wondered what this man saw in her. The usua
l Berliner, cowed in the face of authority and determined to keep a low profile? How much did her face give away? Into her head floated the remark of Conrad Adler.

  Like fire behind ice.

  “Alles in ordnung.”

  Gracelessly, the man returned her identity card, and she stuffed it back in her bag.

  She walked on, remembering Mary Harker’s warning. We have one minder each. They’ve been appointed to keep an eye on us. Might that apply not only to foreign journalists but to actresses as well? She thought again of the man in the lobby of her apartment block: the lean, expressionless face, the trench coat belted loosely, the way he avoided her eyes.

  In the fortnight before he had disappeared, Leo had talked a lot about the techniques of espionage. One afternoon he had told her about a list that all agents were being trained to memorize, to be used if they believed they were being followed.

  Number One: look out for the unobtrusive. A shadow could be anyone. The young woman who clicked her painted fingernails on the counter beside you in a shop. The newspaper seller who slipped you a friendly remark each day with your change. The runner at the studio, or the parking attendant who joked about how he would always save the best space for you. Or a head-scarfed Frau, like the one a few steps behind, gray-skinned and footsore, weighed down by the kilo of potatoes in her shopping basket.

  Number Two: watch for anyone walking at a steady pace. A shadow would be neither nonchalant nor too purposeful, though as far as vehicles went, the opposite applied.

  Number Three: listen for a car that moves either too fast or too slow.

  If surveillance was suspected, there was Number Four: change your appearance. Find a fresh coat, ditch your jacket, remove a hat. The slightest change could help to evade detection.

  But whereas it was simple to put on a head scarf, or abandon a briefcase, a mustache could not easily be shaved off, nor hair color disguised. Thus Number Five: check for distinguishing features. A shadow rarely had time to change his shoes. There was also Number Six: listen for what you don’t hear. And if surveillance was certain, there was Number Seven: stick to public places. Finally, in case of arrest or capture, Number Eight: stay calm. Don’t react instinctively.

  There were a couple of other points on the list, and Leo had made Clara commit them to memory and recite it back to him. “That list will keep you safe, Clara,” he’d told her. “It’ll be more use to you than any creed.”

  That was one relief about the trip she was about to make. In London, there was no chance of being followed. And it would not be the Gestapo she had to worry about but Captain Miles Fitzalan, whoever he might turn out to be.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Of all the beautiful places in Berlin, could there be any lovelier than the sunlit drawing room of the Faith and Beauty community building, with its marzipan-yellow walls, icing-sugar plaster whipped like a meringue, and tall windows propped open to allow a freshening waft of pine from the woods beyond? Outside, a flock of hens pecked in the shade of the orchard and horses were being saddled up for riding lessons. A group of rowers were preparing for an outing to the lake, and on the lawn, two girls in face masks were taking instruction from the fencing master, their bodies as quick and flexible as the sleek silver foils they wielded. The quiet of the morning was punctuated by the solid, comforting clunk of the grandfather clock, and the faint scrape of a violin issued from the music room on the other side of the house. It was impossible to imagine that near this idyllic place just a few days earlier, a crumpled body had been found beneath a heap of leaves.

  When Hedwig Holz first saw the Faith and Beauty home, she was openmouthed with amazement. She had grown up in a drab apartment, with nothing but a window box to tend and a dank cobblestone courtyard below. Even though their apartment was slightly better than their neighbors’ on account of her father’s managerial job, it had still taken weeks to accustom herself to the refinement of the Faith and Beauty home. When she told her parents about the classes in Art, home décor, fashion design, needlework, flower arranging, and conversation, her mother could barely contain her amazement. Conversation! Who needed classes in that?

  Hedwig felt much the same about Art. Sitting in front of her easel, she sighed, squinted at the life model, made some further experimental cross-hatching, then rubbed out the face she had drawn. Already a murky patch testified to the number of times the sketch had been erased—the model was beginning to look like something from one of those old horror films, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, starring Conrad Veidt, with nothing but a shadowy void where her features should be. Hedwig dreaded the moment Herr Fritzl, the art master, turned up to linger at her easel, twirling his mustache while he tried to think of something constructive to say. Their portraits were supposed to mirror the correct proportions of the Nordic form—every figure must have broad shoulders, a long body, and slender hands—but Hedwig’s sketch could have been straight out of Grimms’ fairy tales.

  The Saturday life drawing class had been Lottie’s idea. Hedwig didn’t have an artistic bone in her body and would gladly have signed up for skiing, rowing, even high-board diving rather than humiliate herself with Art. Her younger brothers would actually beg her not to sketch them. Hedwig’s father, a stolid production line manager at the AEG engineering works, thought art training, like everything else on the Faith and Beauty curriculum, was a lot of effete nonsense, but he deferred to her mother, who had ambitions for her only daughter. Privately Herr Holz told Hedwig to concentrate on her job and think about her promotion prospects. If indeed she had time for promotion, before marriage and motherhood came along and put an end to all that.

  Hedwig agreed. She had never imagined getting a job as a librarian, and she loved it. Although her most taxing duty involved looking interested while doing very little, she enjoyed sitting at her desk, greeting visitors, and being the only female in the building. She could think of a thousand better ways of spending her weekends than attending Faith and Beauty art classes, but Lottie had set her heart on it.

  It was agonizing to think that Lottie had sat in this class only two weeks ago, sketching costumes, her bold, confident lines delineating impossibly glamorous women, their outfits carefully annotated in her flowing handwriting. Hedwig could picture her now, high, plucked eyebrows arched above aquamarine eyes, chin jutted forward as if she was born to it all. As if, indeed, it was all slightly beneath her.

  Hedwig knew Lottie only wanted company, yet where Lottie was concerned she could never say no. Faith and Beauty girls were encouraged to think of themselves as a spiritual sisterhood, but Lottie was more like an ordinary sister. When they were children their two families had sometimes taken holidays together in the countryside outside Berlin, and Hedwig and Lottie had shared a room. Hedwig recalled Lottie’s grave face, reciting German poetry or expounding on her ambitions for life, requiring only that Hedwig be a devoted listener. And when Hedwig had confided her most precious memory, of the first time a man kissed her, Lottie had burst into peals of most unsisterly laughter.

  Sister or not, she was dead now, and Hedwig felt an utter desolation.

  The murder had sent shock waves through the Faith and Beauty community, but although no one could talk of anything else, they were forbidden to talk about it at all. That was useless when it was all over the newspapers and a pair of steel-helmeted soldiers were shuffling their feet on permanent guard outside the front gate. A new set of regulations had been hastily formulated for the girls. Shooting was curtailed for as long as the killer was at large and replaced with rowing. No girl was permitted to walk alone the short distance from the Griebnitzsee S-Bahn through the forest, though that was quite unnecessary advice because being alone was frowned on. The Party disapproved of solitude on the grounds that faithful citizens would always prefer communal life, and privacy in all its forms was strongly proscribed for Faith and Beauty girls.

  Hedwig stared out the window and wondered if her mother would agree to her leaving now. Etta Holz adored the idea o
f her only daughter being here. Faith and Beauty training gave German girls such an advantage. No going to the Nuremberg rally and getting pregnant by the first Hitler Youth you encountered! Hedwig would be invited to parties with senior Party members. She would be cultivated and polished and pass into the top echelons of society with ease. Once you’ve finished you’ll hold dinner parties for all the top SS men and you’ll be able to talk about…Here Frau Holz had paused, having no idea what top SS men might possibly talk about. The Merry Widow, she’d finished lamely, recalling the Führer’s favorite operetta. “It will pay for itself, you’ll see.”

  But the real reason that her mother favored the Faith and Beauty curriculum was that it meant her daughter would grow out of Jochen.

  Jochen Falke did not have the kind of looks deemed handsome among Hedwig’s friends. His high, Slavic cheekbones and skinny frame were far from the muscular athletes modeled by the Führer’s favorite sculptor, Arno Breker. But he had lively hazel eyes that missed nothing and a swagger about him that reflected his inner confidence.

  He was an artist, too—in a way. He worked at an art manufacturing plant in Kreuzberg, a humdrum place that carried out all forms of printing and publishing, as well as commercial artwork, signs, and advertising. But the real money-spinner was merchandising the Führer. Hitler souvenirs were big business. Birthday figurines, postcards, ashtrays, medallions, posters, cocktail forks, and bottle stoppers. There was a whole variety of jewelry, and cameo brooches were especially popular because every woman wanted her Führer close to her heart. Jochen’s specialty was pictures. On a good day he could reproduce Adolf Hitler a hundred times over.

  “What takes the Fräulein’s fancy?” he would ask with a laugh, parodying an unctuous shop assistant. “We have Hitler in a gilt frame, Hitler with children, Hitler at the Berghof, Hitler with Bismarck, or would Fräulein prefer the Führer’s hands alone?”