What happened was that three days later, the bell on the front door of the château rang at nine o’clock in the morning. And when Sarah went downstairs, she found a woman standing there, in a shiny black dress that looked as though it might have been expensive, and worn shoes, and an Hermès bag Sarah recognized at once. But she did not recognize the woman.

“Oui …? Yes …? May I help you?”

“En effet … je m’excuse … I …” She looked frightened, and she kept looking over her shoulder as though she expected someone to grab her. And as Sarah looked at her more closely, she suspected she might be Jewish. “I must apologize … a friend of mine suggested … I have a terrible problem, Your Grace, my family …” Her eyes filled with tears as she started to explain, and Sarah gently invited her into the kitchen, and gave her a cup of tea. She explained that her family had all been deported to concentration camps during the war. To the best of her knowledge, she was the only one left. She had been hidden for four years in a cellar by her neighbors. Her husband had been a doctor, the head of an important hospital in Paris. But he had been deported by the Nazis, as had her parents, her two sisters, even her son…. She began to cry again as Sarah fought back tears of her own as she listened to the story. The woman said that she needed money to find them. She wanted to go to Germany and Poland, to the camps there, to see if she could find any record of them among the survivors.

“I think the Red Cross would help you, Madame. There are organizations to do this for people all over Europe.” She knew William had already donated quite a lot of money to them in England.

“I want to go myself. And some of the private organizations are very costly. And after I find them, or …” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “I want to go to Palestine.” She said it as though it were truly the promised land, and Sarah’s heart went out to her, as the woman drew two large boxes from her handbag. “I have something to sell … Emanuelle said you might … she said that you are very kind.” And that her husband was very rich, but Mrs. Wertheim was polite enough not to say that. What she brought out of her purse were two boxes from Van Cleef, one with an enormous emerald-and-diamond necklace, the other with the matching bracelet. The pieces looked like lace. They were beautifully articulated, quite astonishing, and most impressive.

“I … good Lord … ! They’re really beautiful! I don’t know what to say. …” She couldn’t imagine wearing anything even remotely like them. They were both important pieces, and certainly worth whatever she wanted, but how did one begin to put a price on something like that? And yet, looking at them, for reasons she couldn’t explain, Sarah had to admit she found the idea of buying them exciting. She had never owned anything like them. And the poor woman was shaking in her shoes, praying they would buy them. “May I show them to my husband? I’ll only be a moment.” She ran up the stairs then with both boxes in her hands, and burst into their bedroom. “You’ll never believe this.” She was breathless as she told him. “There’s a woman downstairs….” She opened the boxes and tossed the contents into his lap. “And she wants to sell us these …” She shook the magnificent emeralds at him and he whistled.

“Very pretty, darling. They’d look lovely on you in the garden. Go wonderfully with green …”

“Be serious.” She told him the woman’s story then, and he felt sorry for her too.

“Can’t we just give her a check? I feel like a scoundrel taking these away from her. Even though I must say they’d look very pretty on you.”

“Thank you, my love. But what are we going to do about her?”

“I’ll come down and talk to her myself.” He had already shaved, and was wearing trousers and his shirt and his dressing gown. He was getting very good at dressing himself in spite of his limitations. He followed Sarah out of the room, and worked his way downstairs on the ramp they had had made for him.

Mrs. Werthéim was still waiting nervously for them in the kitchen. She was so frightened, she was almost tempted to flee without her jewels, for fear they would do something terrible to her, but Emanuelle had insisted they were nice people. Emanuelle knew the people who had hidden Mrs. Wertheim in the cellar, she had met them in the Resistance.

“Good morning.” William greeted her with a smile, and she tried to look relaxed as she waited to hear about her emeralds. “I’m afraid we’ve never done anything like this before, and it’s a bit of a novel idea to us.” He decided to put the woman out of her misery and go right to the point. He had already decided he wanted to help her. “How much do you want?”

“I don’t know. Ten? Fifteen?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

She quaked, and spoke in a whisper. “I’m sorry, Your Grace … five?” She would have sold them for next to nothing, she was so desperate for money.

“I was thinking more like thirty. Does that seem reasonable? That is, thirty thousand dollars.”

“I … oh, my God …” She started to cry, unable to control herself any longer. “God bless you … God bless you, Your Grace.” She dabbed at her eyes with an old lace hankie, and kissed them both when she left with his check in her handbag. Even Sarah had tears in her eyes when she left.

“The poor woman.”

“I know.” He looked somber for a moment, and then put the necklace and bracelet on Sarah. “Enjoy them, my darling.” But they both felt good about the charitable deed they had done.

And before the end of the week, they had the chance to do another.

Sarah was helping Emanuelle clean up after dinner, and William was in his study, which still vaguely reminded Sarah of Joachim, when a woman appeared at the kitchen door. She was young and looked even more frightened than Mrs. Wertheim. She wore her hair short, but not as short as she had just after the Occupation. Sarah thought she had seen her with one of the German officers who had lived in the château and worked with Joachim. She was a beautiful girl, and before the war she had been a model for Jean Patou in Paris.

Emanuelle almost growled when she saw her, but she had told her to come. This time though, she promised herself, she would take a bigger commission. From Mrs. Wertheim she had taken almost nothing at all, but the old woman had insisted on at least something.

The girl glanced nervously at Emanuelle and then at Sarah. And it began again. “May I speak to you, Your Grace?” She had a diamond bracelet to sell. It was from Boucheron and it was very pretty. It was a gift, she told Sarah But the German who had given it to her gave her more than that. He had left her with a baby. “He’s sick all the time … I can’t buy him food … or medicine. I’m afraid he’ll get TB….” The words went straight to Sarah’s heart as she thought of Lizzie. She glanced at Emanuelle and asked her if it was true, and she nodded.

“She has a German bastard … he’s two years old, and always sickly.”

“Will you promise to buy him food and medicine and warm clothes if we give you some money?” Sarah asked her sternly, and the girl swore she would.

And with that, Sarah went to see William, and he returned to look at the girl and the bracelet. He was impressed by both, and after talking to her for a while, he decided she was honest. He didn’t want to find himself buying stolen jewels, but there seemed to be no question of that here.

They bought the bracelet from her for a fair price, probably what the German had paid for it, and she left them, thanking them profusely. And then Sarah looked at Emanuelle and laughed, as she sat down in her kitchen.

“Just exactly what are we doing?”

Emanuelle grinned broadly. “Maybe I’m going to get rich and you’re going to get a lot of very nice jewelry.” Sarah couldn’t help smiling at her. It was all a little mad, but fun and touching at the same time. And the next day they bought the extraordinary pearls from the woman in Chambord so she could rebuild her house. The pearls were fabulous, and William insisted that she wear them.

By the end of the summer, Sarah had ten emerald bracelets, three necklaces to match, four ruby suites, a cascade of beautiful sapphires, and several diamond rings, not to mention a very lovely turquoise tiara. They had all come to them from people who had lost fortunes or houses or children, and needed money to find lost relatives, or rebuild their lives, or simply put food on their table. It was philanthropy neither could have described to their friends without feeling foolish, and yet it helped the people they bought from, and Emanuelle was indeed growing rich from her commissions. She had begun to look very sleek. She was getting her hair done in town, and buying her clothes in Paris, which was more than Sarah had done since before the war. And next to Emanuelle, she was beginning to feel positively dowdy.

“William, what are we going to do with all this stuff?” she asked one day, as she upset the balance of half a dozen Van Cleef and Cartier boxes in her closet, and all of them fell on her head, and he only laughed at her.

“I have absolutely no idea. Maybe we ought to hold an auction.”

“I’m serious.”

“Why don’t we open a store?” William asked good-naturedly, but Sarah thought the idea absurd. But within a year, they seemed to have more inventory than Garrard’s.

“Maybe we really ought to sell it,” Sarah suggested this time, but now William wasn’t as sure. He was involved in planting extensive vineyards around the château, and didn’t have time to worry about the jewelry. Yet it kept coming to them They were too well known now for their generosity and kindness. In the fall of 1947, William and Sarah decided to go to Paris to be alone and leave Phillip with Emanuelle for a few days. They’d been home from England for a year and a half and hadn’t left the château, they’d been so busy.