Pandora

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How old was this man?’

  ‘Early forties, hard to tell, war ages people.’

  ‘Is this him?’ Naomi produced a grainy cracked photograph.

  Raymond put on his spectacles.

  ‘Again, hard to tell, his face was blackened with smoke.’

  Naomi took a deep breath: with her beaky nose and fierce eyes, a sparrowhawk poised to swoop.

  ‘Sir Raymond, ten days before your platoon captured Bonfleuve, the senior Nazi living in the château and in charge of the area, a Colonel Feldstrasse, had in fact moved on to a safe house, fleeing the closing in of the Allies.’

  Raymond looked at her in bewilderment.

  ‘No, no, my dear, you’ve got it wrong. If it wasn’t a Colonel – Feldstrasse, did you say? who gave it me, it must have been some other Nazi billeted there.’

  ‘All the other Germans billeted at the château had already fled,’ said Naomi triumphantly, ‘and were all captured. Colonel Feldstrasse, the only one who spoke English, had been sent to a POW camp for high-ranking officers by the time you reached the château. Far from dying, as you gave him a last glimpse of Pandora, he was released in 1946 and was killed in a car crash in 1970.’

  Peace ages men too. Raymond had gone grey; he seemed to shrivel. ‘This can’t be true,’ he stammered. ‘Another German must have sought refuge there.’

  The witness box had become the loneliest place in the world. Raymond had told his version so often, he’d almost come to believe it. Glancing round, Si Greenbridge noted the collective horror on the faces of press and public.

  ‘Dear God, poor Raymond,’ muttered Lily.

  ‘Dear, dear,’ sighed Anthea, not totally displeased that chinks had been found in Raymond’s breastplate of righteousness.

  Glancing up, Rosemary saw David with his head on one side, attempting to look shocked and concerned, but having difficulty hiding his delight.

  I loathe him, she thought numbly, and through my shameful indiscretions I have felled a dearest friend.

  Trapped in the gallery, Sienna was reminded of occasions when Grenville and Diggory had torn a rabbit apart before she could drag them off. Naomi was now ripping her father to pieces. The court was in uproar. Press, switching on their mobiles and stampeding the fire doors, met Jupiter running the other way.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  ‘I’m afraid your dad’s been blown out of the water.’

  After the adjournment, Naomi called her star witness. Major von Trebich was tall and willowy with smoothed-back silver hair, a Tunisian tan, and teal-blue eyes emphasized by a blue silk shirt, worn with a carefully arranged lilac silk scarf secured by a big pearl pin. His pale grey suit was exquisitely cut. As languid as Grenville, he moved with natural grace, wafting expensive lemony scent.

  ‘Germans do have style. What an attractive old boy,’ sighed Anthea.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ snorted an outraged Lily.

  You could have heard a spider tiptoe across the court.

  ‘Major von Trebich, how long did you know Colonel Heinrich Feldstrasse?’ asked Naomi.

  ‘Nearly thirty years.’

  ‘What was your relationship?’

  ‘Heinrich was my lover.’

  The court gasped with collective amazement. Willoughby Evans hit several wrong keys including the delete button.

  They had met, went on Trebich, during the fall of Paris, when Germans were in a state of euphoria.

  ‘We kept our love secret. The Führer disapproved of homosexuals almost more than Jews. Perhaps some rumours spread. Heinrich’s career advanced less dramatically than expected, and he was posted to le Château des Rossignols to oversee the area of France round Bonfleuve, an increasingly dangerous place after the Normandy landings. I begged him to leave.’

  Naomi then read extracts from Major von Trebich’s battered red leather diary:

  ‘“August 10, Heinrich telephones tonight, he is forced to leave Les Rossignols. He can hear enemy fire, they are sweeping across France. Will I ever see him again?”’ Naomi’s red talons flipped over several pages: ‘“August 18, Heinrich has been taken prisoner, and got word to me today, deliriously happy he is safe.”’

  Naomi put down the diary.

  ‘So he was captured at least six days before Sir Raymond’s platoon took the village?’ she asked Trebich.

  ‘Long, long before.’

  ‘What did he feel when he left the château?’

  ‘Heartbroken that he’d left in such a hurry he couldn’t take the Raphael. “Oh my Pandora,” he wrote in a later letter – you have it there, Fräulein Cohen – “how could I have left her to burn in the fire?”’

  Incredulity rippled round the court. Raymond was turned to stone. Zac couldn’t look at the Belvedons. He felt utterly sick relying on the evidence of a Nazi.

  ‘When did Colonel Feldstrasse acquire the picture in the first place?’ smiled Naomi.

  Trebich seemed to grow inches taller with pride.

  ‘In early 1941. It was a gift from the Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering, at that time a hugely popular and admired figure, as a mark of his affection – and admiration,’ said Trebich warmly. ‘Heinrich knew a great deal about art and had great charm. He was so proud to be singled out by the Reichsmarschall.’

  ‘He never thought to search for the picture after the war?’

  Trebich shrugged. ‘What for? He know the château burn to the ground.’

  ‘Would he have given it to an English soldier?’

  ‘Nevair.’ Trebich’s shudder was like Grenville’s after a bath.

  ‘Did Colonel Feldstrasse know it was looted from the Abelman family?’

  ‘Certainly not. He was merely overjoyed to own such an exquisite picture.’

  ‘Who was his heir?’

  ‘I was. He had a charming wife, who died before he did, but no children. He left me everything.’

  Oh Christ, thought Jupiter.

  ‘How, as a German,’ asked Naomi idly, ‘do you feel as the owner of a looted picture?’

  ‘I feel ashamed,’ said Trebich quietly, bowing his silver head. ‘Even if I have title, there is a moral obligation to return such a picture to its rightful owner. I couldn’t hang a stolen picture on my wall,’ he added sanctimoniously. ‘And I know if Colonel Feldstrasse were alive today and he knew the history of the painting’s confiscation, he would want it returned to Zachary Ansteig.’

  Major von Trebich smiled at Zac, who was gazing at the floor.

  ‘It’s only because Zac’s so bloody good looking,’ hissed Sienna to Archie from the Mail. ‘Si Greenbridge probably bribed that Nazi woofter and faked all the documents.’

  ‘Thank you, Major von Trebich,’ said an overjoyed Naomi.

  Sampson did his best. If it were such a treasured possession, why didn’t Feldstrasse take it with him?

  ‘Not being a dealer,’ replied Trebich haughtily, ‘Heinrich didn’t know you could cut a painting out of its frame and conceal it rolled up in a shell case.’

  ‘Honi soit qui mal y ponce’, wrote Sienna furiously. Where the hell did this put her poor father?

  Raymond was recalled briefly to the witness box, and, capitulating faster than the French in 1941, broke down and wept, admitting he had stolen the painting from the deserted château.

  ‘We detested the Nazis. They’d just killed my brother Viridian. I was twenty. It was the most beautiful painting I’d ever seen. How could I leave it to burn? I’m sorry I lied,’ he added despairingly. ‘I’m just a foolish, fond old man who loved his picture.’

  ‘You’re just a very greedy old man,’ said Willoughby Evans sternly, ‘who wanted to hang on to something that wasn’t his.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ screamed Sienna, suddenly galvanized in the gallery. ‘Anyone who loved pictures would have done the same thing.’

  A couple of officials frogmarched her outside, and Willoughby Evans agreed to an adjournment until the following day, so
that everyone could get their breath back.

  Leaving the court, Zac bumped into Sienna.

  ‘How dare you humiliate my father?’ she screamed and, before Si’s guards could stop her, slapped him viciously back and forth across the face. ‘I see you manage to conquer your loathing for Nazis when you need their help, you fucking hypocrite.’

  Back at Foxes Court, the Belvedons spent a dreadful night. Raymond gazed into space, shuddering with horror.

  ‘How could I have let you all down? I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No good being sorry,’ snapped Anthea. ‘You’ve brought shame on all of us telling porkies at your age. I’ve just had poor little Dicky on the phone in floods.’

  Guilt that he’d sloped off to the auction made Jupiter crueller than usual.

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell the truth in the first place, Dad? We might have stood a chance.’

  And where the hell was Jonathan? All Jupiter’s jealousy spilt over. The only thing Jonathan was any good at was cheering up Raymond, and he wasn’t even here to do that.

  Thank God for Hanna and Baby Viridian, thought Jupiter. Thank God he had at least bullied Raymond into making Foxes Court over to him seven years ago, so the bank couldn’t take that.

  Remembering the sleeper in the back of the car, which might after all be a Constable, Jupiter decided to escape from the wailing and teeth-gnashing and drive up to London, so the restorer could get to work.

  No-one slept at Foxes Court that night.

  Sienna tried to comfort a sobbing Dora.

  ‘Daddy’ll never survive prison, particularly if he can’t take Grenville with him.’

  Naomi Cohen, dining at the judges’ lodgings with Willoughby Evans and Sampson Brunning, was having a wonderful time. Rather like nurses able to switch off at a party after tending dying cancer patients all day, they managed not to discuss the case.

  There was only the final speeches by the two counsels to come in the morning, after which Willoughby Evans would probably postpone his judgement till Monday. Sampson was an old enough hand to congratulate Naomi warmly on the way home.

  ‘We’ll make our speeches. Willoughby Evans will give the picture back to Zac. End of story.’

  ‘I wish Zac was more kind of grateful,’ sighed Naomi, ‘he’s still furious we had to rely on Trebich’s evidence.’

  Over at the Old Rectory, Rosemary couldn’t stop crying. Thank God, David was out at some dinner giving prizes to achieving policemen. Si had utterly betrayed her. But she in turn had betrayed the Belvedons. Without her account of holidaying in Bonfleuve at Le Coq d’Or the first time she and Si had slept together, Si would never have been able to track down Major von Trebich.

  She jumped as the telephone rang. It was Si going against every rule and calling her on the house telephone.

  ‘You bastard,’ yelled Rosemary, ‘you’ve made me break the ninth commandment and bear false witness against my neighbour. I never want to see you again.’

  Haunted by Sienna’s anguished face, Zac paced up and down his room at the Black Swan. Naomi was fast asleep. She had come home drunk, euphoric at having smashed the Belvedons and watched herself walking prettily from court on Sky News. What a pity one wasn’t allowed to talk about ongoing cases to the press.

  She did however talk to Zac. Like a champion baseball player after a game, she took him through every triumphant sentence, every move. Now she was deservedly luxuriating in the sleep of achievement.

  Zac was in despair. He hadn’t really minded upsetting Anthea, nor Emerald. From what Si had said (who had got it from Rosemary who was helping Emerald with her maquette) Emerald was over him and now crazy about Jonathan. But he felt dreadful about Sienna. As she had led a tottering Raymond towards the car park, yelling expletives at the press, he’d been reminded of Cordelia and Lear: ‘So young, my lord, and true.’

  He could still feel her fingers on his cheek and he had to his surprise detested seeing Raymond so humiliated. The old guy had been really sweet to him, ordering in bourbon when he came to stay.

  He felt even worse on Friday morning when the papers crucified Raymond.

  ‘Mr Greedy,’ shouted the Sun.

  Mac of the Mail had drawn the Raphael on the wall of Raymond’s study, with all the seven Belvedon children asking: ‘What did you do in the war, Daddy?’

  The telephone rang at Foxes Court as the family were failing to force down any breakfast. It was Dicky’s headmaster.

  ‘Poor Dicky’s so terrified of being recognized by the press,’ Anthea reported back to Raymond indignantly, ‘that he’s shaved off all his lovely hair.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ stormed Dora, ‘Dicky just wanted any excuse to look like David Beckham. Why are they being so horrible to Daddy? He’d have been a hero in London’s Burning.’

  As he shuffled down the steps to the Bentley on Robens’s arm, Raymond crumpled and collapsed. Dr Reynolds, despite not being asked to Anthea and Raymond’s silver wedding, arrived in ten minutes. At the least, Raymond was suffering from shock and exhaustion, he said. There was no way he could go to court.

  ‘I must,’ whispered Raymond, ‘people’ll think I’m such a sissy.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ said Sienna. ‘If Willoughby Evans gives his judgement this afternoon, I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘I’ll stay home and look after you,’ announced Dora, who was avid to miss maths and scripture, having been far too upset last night to do any homework, ‘then I can walk Grenville.’

  ‘Viridian, Dora and I will look after you,’ said Hanna, who’d come over to the house to wish everyone good luck. ‘You must all go,’ she added, kissing Jupiter, who had just arrived back from London and the restorer.

  A worried Sienna knew she should stay behind but couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Zac one more time.

  In a day promising rain and sunshine, the pale acid-green spring leaves lay trustingly against a brooding purple-lake sky. The Belvedons found the court in an uproar. Peregrine, Sampson’s junior, had abandoned his Solitaire and was grinning from ear to ear:

  ‘Jonathan’ll be here in half an hour, with a sensational new witness.’

  ‘Who is it?’ demanded Sienna. Then, when Peregrine whispered in her ear: ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘As we speak,’ went on Peregrine, ‘Sampson is arguing in court that Jonathan didn’t get the breakthrough till late last night. Willoughby Evans can’t refuse, having given the fair Naomi free range yesterday. Thank goodness Sampson hadn’t begun his speech.’

  Next moment, Si Greenbridge, who’d been trying to get through to Rosemary all night and didn’t dare storm the Old Rectory because of David, shoved past them, ran out to the car park and roared off alone in his Mercedes. Feeling suddenly isolated, Naomi had just managed to keep down two Alka-Seltzers when Rupert Campbell-Black’s dark blue helicopter landed on the greensward.

  The pretty archivist at the Public Record Office in Paris the previous evening had felt so sorry for the handsome young Englishman. Every morning for the past month he had rolled up first thing to scour newly declassified documents on the Resistance and on the Nazis’ corrupt dealings in art, rootling frantically through yellowing documents written on ancient typewriters. Since Easter he had developed a dry cough not helped by the dust and grew hourly paler and more desperate. He was always the last to leave. It was now nearly six. Time to chuck him out. She longed to invite him for a glass of wine and a walk in the Bois where she would kiss away all his sadness.

  She jumped at the sound of a low whistle. The Englishman was excitedly smoothing out scrumpled-up papers which had been stuffed to the back of a buff folder. His dark eyes darted back and forth. Dropping the folder, he rushed to the counter.

  ‘What’s the French for “Bingo”?’ demanded Jonathan, then, over the striking clock, he begged, ‘Will you please make six copies of this letter for me?’

  ‘There are forms to complete.’

  ‘I’ll fill them in while you copy. Please.’

 
As she switched on the copying machine, the pretty archivist glanced down at the letter stamped with the Nazi eagle and read: ‘Our valuable agent “Le Tigre” has been murdered in Paris. The Gestapo is blamed, but suspicion falls on the degenerate artist Le Brun.’

  ‘It’s my last hope. I’ll buy you a drink next time,’ promised Jonathan as he vanished into the warm spring evening.

  Even though Raymond had shown Jean-Jacques Le Brun’s watercolours at the Belvedon in the Fifties and Sixties before the Frenchman became famous, Jonathan couldn’t get in to see him. The first call had been answered in a strained, cracked, shaky voice by Le Brun himself. After that the housekeeper answered both the telephone and the door, explaining in increasing disapproval that M. Le Brun was ill and couldn’t see anyone.

  Le Brun’s house in Montparnasse, lofty, semi-detached and with a pale green roof had one more floor, probably a studio, than the other houses in his street. In the gap between it and the house next door, Jonathan could see a garden, and then a garden beyond that belonging to a house in the next street. He might have given up, if at that moment Sienna hadn’t texted him.

  Dad’s been totally trashed. We’ve lost the Raphael. If you can’t come up with any evidence, at least come home and comfort him.

  Racing up Le Brun’s street, Jonathan turned left then left again into the next street, running down it until, over the roof of Number 20, he could see Le Brun’s pale green roof.

  The door, thank God, was answered by a couple of students, who thought it a great lark. M. Le Brun did indeed live in the house behind and on warm evenings sat in the garden. They hoisted Jonathan over the wall, which was covered in spikes more treacherous than any unicorn’s horn.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he muttered as he tore first his combats, and then Emerald’s blue shirt, and nearly lost his manhood before landing on some white irises.

  He was just unhooking Emerald’s shirt when he felt hard cold metal rammed into his bare back.

  ‘Es-tu un cambrioleur?’ demanded the voice that had cracked and quavered on the telephone.

  ‘No, I’m an artist but I don’t want to show you my pictures.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ The pressure of the gun eased.