The Paris Secret

by Karen Swan

  And now she was on a treasure hunt, a world-class quest to return a fine-art masterpiece to the public eye. But she wasn’t a child any more and this wasn’t a game. And when the first spot of sun appeared on the wall, a finger of light pointing her to her duties, she rose to her feet, walked out into the hall and with her camera and her clipboard, she set to work.

  First, she had to count. It took over an hour just to walk through the apartment and tally up the numbers of fine-art treasures in the space. In total, there were 203 paintings; 57 sculptures; 316 artefacts (including candlesticks, perfume bottles, lamps, ornaments, jewellery dishes) and 1 ostrich, whom she had taken to calling Gertie as she worked. (Where the name had come from, she had no idea. It just seemed to fit.)

  Next, she had begun to classify the pieces in order of value, and therefore importance, identifying them via a system of coloured sticky dots with red as the most esteemed, moving through orange, yellow, green and finally to blue for the minor pieces. According to her notes, there were two reds (the large Renoir which she double-dotted, and the Faucheux), 14 orange (some very charming but of minor importance, small sketch oils, lithographs and drawings by Matisse, Dalí and Pissarro amongst others), 266 yellow and the rest a mix of green and blue. She used a different room to ‘store’ each category – she left the Renoir on the bed and put the Faucheux beside it; everything with an orange dot stayed in the dining room, those with yellow were moved over to the drawing room, greens to the study and blues in the kitchen. After she had moved each piece, she numbered and photographed it extensively – front, back, sides.

  Finally, as lunchtime approached after already seven hours’ work, she began subdividing the dotted lists into schools – modernist, Impressionist, cubist, surrealist and so on – and then artists. Her pulse was quickening with every name she wrote and as she moved a Renoir sketch into the dining room (only experience told her who the artist was, for he never signed his sketches), another storm of dust swirled around her and she launched into a new sneezing fit. Her eyes were beginning to stream and as she saw the dust patches blackening on her knees she realized that her white boyfriend jeans, pulled on in the dark, had been a mistake.

  She sighed, weary and famished, setting down her work files and reaching for her bag. She needed something to eat. Art could only sustain her for so long.

  With her anxiety levels peaking again – it felt so wrong to leave it all – she turned the old lock on the door and left the treasures alone and unguarded, stepping out into the street. The sun was gentle on her face as she crossed the road, out of the shadows, an easterly breeze keeping the temperature down. Marching quickly, she watched her own shadow, lost in thought as questions clattered against each other in her head. What news would Angus have from the ALR? He must be in transit for she hadn’t been able to get hold of him all morning. What were the Vermeils going to do when she reported back to them – keep or sell? Had anyone in the neighbouring apartments heard the sounds or noticed the new activity in this one? She hoped to God not. Until they had moved the most valuable pieces or got the security guards installed, she couldn’t relax. This was on her watch. Her stomach growled – had she eaten dinner last night?

  She couldn’t remember. She crossed the street, heading towards a small pedestrianized square, a church with a leaded dome facing her; passing a dry cleaner’s and a tabac, an Italian restaurant and a shoe shop seemingly catering to the over-fifties. She wasn’t going to be fussy – usually she tried to be gluten-free but today she’d take the first café or boulangerie she came to, buying whatever she could take away.

  In the event, she found a sushi bar first and dived in, emerging four minutes later with a box of maki. She ordered a coffee to go from the café next door, just so she could use the loo, before hurriedly retracing her steps. She knew Angus was right – that after over seventy years’ obscurity, another night and day wouldn’t make a difference – but she couldn’t relax knowing that a significant, long-lost Renoir and Faucheux were just sitting there, propped on the bed, awaiting her return.

  Her phone rang and she pulled it hurriedly from her bag. Angus?

  ‘Freddie?’ she asked, her voice instantly tinged with anxiety. ‘What’s wrong? Is everything OK?’

  There was a brief pause. ‘Mum? Mum? Is that you?’

  ‘Oh, ha ha!’

  He chuckled lightly. ‘You deserved that.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ she said, rolling her eyes. She pressed one hand to her ear to try to drown out the background drone of traffic. She could just imagine him now, noise-reducing headphones clamped round his neck, a coffee in one hand. As an assistant director, he was climbing steadily towards the top of the tree in the British film industry and she knew he was currently filming some adventure movie with a hefty dose of irony at Elstree Studios. No one at work knew yet and he was insisting on continuing to live his life as normal, at least for as long as he could. ‘Innocent until proven guilty, right?’ he’d said bravely, as they’d all huddled around him that Saturday afternoon in the shaded house.

  ‘Really, though – how are you?’ she asked. They hadn’t spoken for several days; at his insistence, he just wanted to try to keep everything as it always had been.

  There was another pause. ‘Knackered.’

  ‘You do sound tired.’

  ‘Well, that’s probably more to do with the fact that Troy was waging war with our resident bike snatchers again last night.’

  ‘They haven’t nicked another one, have they?’

  ‘I hope not but I didn’t stick my head out to see. It’d be the fifth this year if they did, though.’

  ‘But surely he locks them up properly?’

  ‘Course he does, but I think they enjoy taunting him as much as anything. I mean, I know his bikes are seriously hardcore but no one else’s seem to get nicked. He reckons it’s personal.’

  ‘Poor guy.’

  ‘Poor them, you mean. If he ever gets his hands on them, he’ll be six feet two of sheer Aussie rage.’

  ‘Ha! He’s a neighbour you’d better keep on the right side of, then.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They fell into an easy silence, both thinking about the same thing.

  She was the first to break it. ‘And how are things otherwise? Are you sleeping OK?’

  He made a non-committal sound that she took to mean ‘no’.

  ‘But you’re eating, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’ Which also meant ‘no’.

  ‘Any word back from the CPS?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I promise you, they won’t press charges,’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s too tenuous. They’d never be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  They fell quiet again.

  ‘. . . You still in Paris?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Coming back soon?’

  ‘I can come back any time you need me to,’ she said quickly. ‘You just say the word and I’ll be there, Freds. I’m three hours away.’

  ‘I know, that’s not what I . . . It’s not what I meant. I was only calling to check in with you. Just give me a bell when you’re next back in London town, OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Thanks, Batty. Love you.’

  ‘Backatcha, Ratfink.’

  He hung up and she pushed open the front door, trudging up the stairs and letting herself into the apartment again. Everything was exactly as she’d left it twenty minutes earlier – the dust still spinning through the air from all her rearrangements, the artworks now organized in tidy groupings in every room. She checked in on Gertie but then made her way straight to the bedroom where she opened the French doors which looked onto the street – present-day Paris pushed its way into the preserved apartment once again and released the past’s hold on it. She sat on the small balcony, her back against the wall, her legs propped up on the railings, and began to eat her lunch, twiddling the chopsticks between her fingers as she thought about her beleag
uered brother.

  The apartment wasn’t high enough for her to see over the neighbouring rooftops to the horizon and she was forced to look down for a view – the street was seemingly a quiet one as hardly anyone was about, just a young couple walking at an idle pace, holding brown grocery bags in their arms as they chatted.

  Flora watched as they drew closer and then stopped outside the building opposite, the woman leaning back to balance the bags against her torso as she reached into her boyfriend’s shorts for the keys. They disappeared from sight a moment later, the wooden door closing behind them with a slam.

  Flora deliberated between a salmon nigiri and a tuna maki, finally choosing the salmon on account of its prettier colour. When she looked up again, the couple had reappeared in the apartment directly opposite, one level down, and she realized that although she couldn’t see their faces because of the lowered blind, this woman was the same one she’d seen lying on the bed, listening to music, the previous afternoon. It was odd to have this dual-aspect perspective on her life: the public and private sides.

  Flora watched intermittently – more interested in her lunch – as the woman shrugged off her T-shirt and stepped out of her jean shorts, laying the clothes on the bed and padding out of sight in her underwear.

  The man was in the room too – only his feet visible at first, although he slowly came into view, walking around the bed whilst reading something on his phone. Only when he sank onto the side of the bed, texting a message on his phone, a loop of orange rope peeping out from the divan by his feet, could she see his face.

  What did he use the rope for? she wondered, starting on the tuna maki roll and watching dispassionately. Was he a climber perhaps? He had an athletic build, she supposed, her mind distracted, her eyes drawn to every car that rolled down the street, looking for Angus. He’d be back any minute now, surely? The man in the apartment opposite tossed the phone on the bed and walked over to the French doors. He was stocky but very muscular, his calf muscles well defined below his khaki shorts. He stepped into the sun, leaning on his elbows as he looked down at the street below. A cat was prowling the pavement, and as a trio of men in shirts and ties were talking and walking quickly, one of the men forced was onto the road and the other had to step round the cat which immediately shot away in fright, sheltering under the hulk of a parked car.

  Then he looked up.

  Flora stopped eating as she saw him stiffen. The way he stared at her – so shocked – she knew immediately that he knew no one was ever seen here; that her presence meant the apartment had been opened. She watched him crane his neck, could see his features pleat together as he squinted, trying to get a better look. She got to her feet and scrambled away from the window, closing the French doors behind her, shutting him out so that only his building was reflected back to him. But it was a pointless gesture. She had been seen. The neglected apartment reclaimed at long last. The past was stirring and shaking off the dust. The neighbours would soon know, then the city, until finally, when the sale was announced, the entire world. After seventy-three years of silence, the secret was finally slipping out.

  Chapter Six

  Angus was in his best suit and favourite Lanvin tie – that alone had told Flora it was good news, although he’d said precious little himself and had been glued to his phone ever since he’d arrived. He had been frustratingly elusive all day, not responding to her emails and merely texting her from the train instructing her to meet him at the Vermeils’ at three o’clock, as though oblivious to the fact that she’d barely slept or eaten from nerves in the twenty-four hours since they’d unlocked that old door.

  They were waiting in the same room as before, Flora setting up the Renoir and Faucheux on easels, and shrouding them with spare sheets which she’d found, saved from the worst of the dust, in the bedroom cupboard. It was hardly museum-quality protection, especially given that she’d travelled over with them by cab. Yet again, she had considered booking the security firm they normally used to send a private car for her to transport the paintings, but it would have had blacked-out windows and a driver and escort and she was worried that would attract far too much attention – she was already concerned enough by the curiosity of the man across the street and had spent the rest of the afternoon darting to the windows to check if he’d still been looking (twice, he had). She didn’t want it to appear as though anything of significant value was coming out of, or worse, being left in, the apartment. She was barely consoled by the fact that the most valuable paintings were in her possession.

  The door swung open and Madame Vermeil stood before them again, serene and elegant in a powder-pink linen shift dress and baroque pearls. Two men followed after her, one tanned, lean and lofty at what must be nudging six feet four and the other almost comically short. The shorter man was carrying an attaché case; he had wire-framed glasses pushed up his nose, and grey hair rimming his head, leaving a bald pate. The tall man was wearing a pale sand-coloured linen suit and brown moccasins, and Flora caught a flash of a Breguet watch that told her he was the client’s husband and not the lawyer.

  ‘Lilian, Jacques,’ Angus confirmed, greeting them both with a confident smile. Lilian visibly relaxed at the sight of it. ‘Monsieur.’

  ‘Angus, Flora,’ Madame Vermeil smiled, shaking Flora’s hand and motioning towards the tall man a step behind her. ‘My husband, Jacques, and our notary, Monsieur Travers.’

  ‘How do you do?’ Flora said to them all. She looked remarkably more polished than she felt, having almost jumped from the moving cab as she’d asked him to stop at Ines’s apartment en route, so that she could dash in (a painting under each arm) and change. She hadn’t dared leave the apartment beforehand – not now she’d been spotted – and she had changed into her baby-blue culottes, Miu Miu block heels and white cotton blouse in record time.

  They all took their seats, Angus choosing to remain standing. Flora crossed her ankles, knowing her moment was coming.

  ‘Well, it’s been an eventful twenty-four hours,’ Angus began, clasping his hands together. ‘Flora’s been working for almost all of them.’

  ‘It is just as well then we don’t pay you by the hour,’ Jacques Vermeil said with a smile, looking across at Flora and prompting a laugh from the group. Angus’s notes had mentioned that he was an eminent cardiologist, retired now of course, and he wore the suavity that characterized most men in this elite tier – his movements both few and unhurried, an air of bemusement mixed with boredom just behind his eyes and lips. Flora guessed women loved him.

  ‘Well, you’d certainly be able to afford it,’ Angus continued, dipping his head. ‘There were quite a few surprises awaiting us in there.’

  ‘Had our kindly intruders damaged anything?’ Lilian asked, a sombre expression on her features.

  Angus shook his head. ‘On the contrary, from what we could see, there was no sign of any previous entry whatsoever. The door was locked and very stiff with a pile of post still in place behind the door, the windows were closed, and there were no footprints or hand marks in the dust. If you didn’t know for a fact someone had been in there, I would have said no one had.’ He shrugged.

  ‘It was all very odd. There was no obvious sign of theft either,’ Flora added. ‘Quite apart from the additional surprises awaiting us, the actual furnishings of the apartment were still intact – the pictures were still on the walls, desks and chairs in place, all the shelves filled with books. Either they didn’t realize the significance of what they’d stumbled into and mistook it all for dusty junk, or they’ve taken something specific, in which case, short of finding an inventory somewhere, we’ll probably never know what that was.’

  ‘Dusty junk?’ Jacques Vermeil echoed quizzically, as though something had been lost in translation.

  Flora went to reply but Angus cleared his throat and she stayed quiet. ‘Indeed. When we entered the apartment, there were literally hundreds of paintings stacked against the walls, many in the hall itself but mainly in the dining room.
The sheer volume of pieces in there could have persuaded them that none of it had any value. Else, why would the owners have left it?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘And is any of it valuable?’ Jacques asked.

  ‘See for yourself.’ Angus’s eyes brightened as, with a flourish, he pulled the first cloth down to reveal the Faucheux. Madame Vermeil gave a small gasp and leaned forward in her chair, her eyes expertly reading the painting, understanding its nuances and symbolism.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ she whispered. ‘She is beautiful.’

  ‘And rare,’ Angus added. ‘The artist Faucheux died just as he hit his prime. The last time one of his works came to open market was in 1951 in Berlin. Almost all his known catalogue is in private collections. Only a handful of museums worldwide boast a Faucheux.’ He held up his fingers on one hand and began counting. ‘The Prado in Madrid, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Uffizi in Florence and the Courtauld in London.’

  Just four museums. Jacques Vermeil’s eyebrows shot up his tanned forehead. ‘So if we chose to sell . . .’

  ‘You would in all likelihood find yourself with a bidding war from some of the biggest institutions in the fine-art world, not to mention the most serious private collectors who would like to add his name to their catalogues.’

  ‘How pleasing,’ Jacques replied coolly after a moment.

  ‘This is a particularly fine work,’ Angus said, looking back at the painting. ‘I think it would attract a lot of interest.’

  ‘How is its condition?’ Madame Vermeil asked, getting up to inspect the painting more closely. She pointed a manicured nail at the top-left corner where the craquelure was heavily crazed. ‘The colour is dulled. It has hardly been stored in an ideal environment.’

  ‘Not ideal, no,’ Angus conceded. ‘But looking at the positives, the apartment was sealed and watertight and being on the fourth floor helped – there was no mould or damp that we detected. Obviously humidity would have changed throughout the year as the space wasn’t climate-controlled but all things considered, not a disaster. If we’re lucky, I think a clean and some minor cosmetic work on the varnish will be all that’s required.’