‘Did you meet them, Göring and the ERR officers?’
‘Many times, yes.’
‘What were they like?’ Fen knew her natural curiosity was dragging her off track, but she couldn’t help but ask.
Henri took his glasses off again and gave them another rub with his handkerchief. ‘Unimpressive, if you must know. Though intimidating, of course, as anyone is who holds the power of life and death over so many people.’
Fen took it all in. It really had been a daring and courageous plan. What had gone on afterwards, in the Jeu de Paumes gallery, was almost too tragic to contemplate. Stolen treasures picked over and judged merely on monetary value and racist ideals. No wonder Rose had tried so hard in her own way to make sure as much of it as possible could be returned to its rightful owners.
Rose… Fen brought her mind back to who might have killed her.
‘So why,’ Fen asked Henri once his glasses were back on and pushed up the bridge of his nose, ‘do you think the Arnault brothers would rob and kill Rose? You both trusted them.’
‘Ah, well… things had become a little strained between Rose and the Arnaults.’ He paused. ‘Gervais is what you might call the “enforcer” of the two, more clever with a wrench, if you catch my drift.’
‘Hence the nickname,’ Fen all but whispered, while Henri nodded.
‘And his adeptness with that tool, in all senses, led him into the path of some nasty people. I think the Americans would call them “gangsters” or “the Mob”.’
Fen frowned, she couldn’t quite tally the buffoonish man she’d met the other night with this new image of him being a Machine Gun Kelly-style operator.
‘Did he threaten Rose then?’ Fen wondered how she had possibly got caught up in all of this.
Henri just shrugged and then laid his hands down on the desk, almost in resignation. ‘I don’t know, Miss Churche, but I do know that she had spoken to me only a few days ago about how she worried that Gervais would be a problem when it came to helping find the paintings. He was no longer trustworthy and had succumbed to a life of crime.’
‘His brother too?’ she asked.
‘I do hope not, as he is my warehouse manager…’
Fen watched as he drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment, then he spoke again.
‘The more I think about it, the more I believe Rose must have said something. Threatened to shop one or both of them in, if only to stop them from revealing…’
‘Revealing what?’ Fen was alert again and wondered what Henri could mean.
‘Ah… I shouldn’t have spoken so carelessly. Never speak ill of the dead and all that.’
‘Please, Monsieur Renaud, if you know anything else about Rose that could help me find out who did this to her…’ Fen begged and then waited as Henri made up his mind.
‘You’re right. There’s no point in secrets now.’ He sighed. ‘Rose was a true and honest person. Her moral compass was unshakeable, but she did have that great talent for forging paintings.’
‘Forging is a strong word…’ Fen trailed off as Henri raised his hand. She let him continue.
‘Forgery is a strong word, but what is the difference between a copy and a forgery? How you sell them, that is what. One is the honest homage to a famous painter, the other a cheap attempt at making money. She had an unbelievably good eye for copying. But only her art dealer, Michel Lazard, can tell you if she benefited more than she should have done from selling them.’
‘Lazard… she told me about him.’
‘Yes, yes. He’s a friend of the Arnaults, you know? Antoine especially, I think. It’s clear to me that somehow the Arnault brothers found out about Rose’s paintings, perhaps they were even benefitting from Lazard without her knowledge? Believe me, somewhere between those two brothers and that two-bit dealer you’ll find your murderer.’
Henri sat back in his chair with a sort of finality. As if his own words had sunk in, he now looked utterly desolate. His skin looked grey and he seemed about ten years older than he had when Fen had first met him, here in this office with Rose just a few days ago.
‘To think,’ he said thoughtfully, and quietly, ‘I was going to surprise her with some good news yesterday, but I was caught up in my own gallery all afternoon.’
‘What was the good news?’ Fen asked.
‘Just that I heard on the art world’s grapevine that one of the paintings by Poussin stolen from Jacob Berenson was listed for auction in Westphalia, in Germany, this last week just gone. If I hadn’t been on the telephone to London organising delivery of a rather good watercolour yesterday afternoon, I might have been able to stop it.’ He took off his glasses again and rubbed his face in his hands.
Fen took it as her cue to leave, and she bid Henri goodbye with his endorsement to carefully look into the affairs of the Arnault brothers ringing in her ears and the address of his warehouse in the suburbs should she want to talk to Antoine.
Just as she was leaving, a thought occurred to her and she popped her head around the door to ask Henri. He was still looking dejected and only raised his head again when he heard her soft knock at the door.
‘What is it, Miss Churche?’
‘Just a thought really. But did you ever hear of a secret agent called The Chameleon?’
Henri stared at her and then shook his head. ‘The Chameleon? I think you’ve confused real life with some American superhero comics. Now, please, I must make arrangements for some of the paintings in my warehouse. Goodbye, Miss Churche.’
Fen nodded and closed the door softly behind her, noting that Henri had not only provided some very good clues for her “two down” but during the conversation had also given himself an alibi for the time of the murder.
Twenty-Two
The rain had, thankfully, lessened to no more than a drizzle as Fen left the Louvre, but there was a definite chill to the air and she pulled her still damp collar up around her neck. She crossed the Seine and popped into a café near the École des Beaux-Arts. She couldn’t quite bring herself to head back into the apartment yet, the image of Rose lying in a pool of blood still so real and visceral in her mind. The smell of brewing coffee and cigarette smoke helped bring her back to the present and she ordered a coffee from the waiter who was wiping glasses behind the bar.
Fen found herself a small table near the window and absent-mindedly pulled a paper napkin out from the dispenser on the table. She had started fiddling with it and curling its edges when an idea occurred to her. Reaching down to her bag, she drew out a pen and then started to write out a few words that stuck in her mind, sliding them together like a grid. There was something, she found, about seeing the words linked like this that helped her sort out the facts and clues in her head and how they might intersect in real life, too.
She had just finished writing out the final word in block capitals when the waiter brought her coffee over. Sitting back and sucking her pen, Fen then took a sip of her coffee. She stared at the grid, which looked like this:
The word, as much as the image itself, of PAINTBRUSH stuck in her mind. It was the brutality of it. It was so forceful, yet also silent. Silent… There would have been no sound of a pistol to alert the neighbours, but it also didn’t feel like the weapon of choice for a premeditated murder. A paintbrush… It was so pertinent to the woman herself, too. Like a writer being killed with a pen, or a lorry driver being killed with a wrench.
Gervais ‘The Wrench’… perhaps Henri had a point after all.
The rain started up again and, with little motivation to leave the café, Fen decided to order a late breakfast of simple baguette and jam and wait out the storm until it, hopefully, passed.
Pass it did and Fen followed the now familiar route back towards the large grey doors of Rose’s apartment building. She turned the cast-iron handle and let herself into the communal hallway. The rank of mailboxes caught her eye, and before she headed up the stairs, she walked over to them and paused to look at the names.
‘Aha. Md
e Coillard, Apt 5,’ she read out from the card slipped into the slot on the front of one of the boxes.
The box had a simple but effective lock, like that of a safety deposit box, and apart from the narrow slit at the top of the door, there was no way to get into it, or see what might be inside.
There must be a key upstairs somewhere, Fen thought to herself as she gave the mailbox’s door one more rattle just to make sure, before she carried on up the stairs.
‘Hello! Simone!’ Fen called as she opened the front door. ‘Oh hello, Tipper.’
The dog jumped up at her and she picked him up, and was rewarded with a quick few licks to her nose.
‘Oh Tipper.’
Dog breath aside, she was relieved that the essence of Rose was still very much apparent in the apartment. However, the familiar smell of ylang-ylang and turpentine, with some cigarette smoke thrown in, was now tinged with the throat-burning smell of bleach.
As Fen walked with a squirming Tipper in her arms through the darkness of the hallway to the light-filled studio, she saw Simone on her hands and knees, scrubbing the wooden parquet floor, a bundle of dust sheets next to her that looked ready for the rubbish bin.
‘Simone, oh dear. Here, sit up,’ Fen put the little dog down and went over to the weeping girl.
‘Someone had to do it,’ she sniffled as she scrubbed, not even looking up from the floor. ‘Oh… Rose.’
Mrs B would tell me to get a good strong brew on, Fen thought, remembering her old landlady. ‘Simone, come and sit over here and I’ll pop some tea on. You’ll hurt yourself with all that bleach and no gloves on, gosh your poor hands. What’s come over you?’
‘I just couldn’t bear it! How could you bear it?’ Simone let herself be helped up by Fen and sank into one of the armchairs.
‘The police cleaner had done a very good job, don’t you think? Now, look at your hands, you silly thing.’ Fen reached over and took Simone’s red, sore-looking hands in hers. ‘If only I had some decent hand cream. Here, let me pop the kettle on and then I’ll raid Rose’s room. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.’
When Fen returned, with a teapot of Lipton’s finest and a tub of aqueous cream from Rose’s dressing table, she sat down opposite Simone and started to pour.
‘I’m sorry, it should be stronger really, but I’m too impatient to let it brew.’
‘I don’t mind, thank you. And for this.’ Simone started rubbing the white cream into her hands.
Fen sipped her own tea and then the thought occurred to her about James.
‘I’m so sorry, I thought I was leaving you in good hands with James here this morning. I would never have left you alone after, well, after last night, if I thought he wouldn’t be on hand to… to stop you from getting upset.’ Fen glanced over to where the bleach and scrubbing had left the old parquet floor in a terrible state.
‘James was here for a bit, yes.’ Simone shifted in her seat, then reached down for her own cup of tea. ‘But he wanted to start talking to the other residents before they left for work or out for the day. Then he said he had some errands of his own to run. I’m afraid I was quite alone.’ She sniffed and Fen fished around in her pocket for a hanky.
I’d hoped of better from him, she thought, sighing out a long breath as she handed over her handkerchief to sniffling Simone. She would have to have another word with him about leading the poor girl on; he really shouldn’t just be present for the fun bits. But she did appreciate his help with canvassing the other apartments. Hopefully his interviews would turn up some useful clue, such as ‘man seen running away clasping a wrench’ or ‘sound of newly tuned engine running outside’. She could but hope.
Simone started weeping again, but with tea and hanky administered, Fen wasn’t sure of what else she could do. She took in a deep breath. ‘This isn’t what Rose would have wanted,’ she said, leaning forward and gently wobbling one of Simone’s angular knees. ‘Why don’t you go and get washed and brushed and I’ll pack away all this bleach. Then we can have another pot of tea and work out what to do next.’
‘Rose always said you had more of a practical head than an artistic one,’ Simone said, through her sniffles.
‘As much as I’d love to have been the next Michelangelo, I fear she was right, Simone.’ Fen got up and squeezed the younger woman’s shoulder as she walked past her. ‘Give me a puzzle over a paintbrush any day of the week!’
Twenty-Three
The two women sat opposite each other on the armchairs in the studio room, which now reeked of bleach. Fen had helped Simone rinse off as much of the caustic solution as possible from the varnished wood, saving it from being permanently damaged. The dust sheets were bundled up and taken out to the rubbish bins at the back of the building and Fen had spent a quiet, contemplative hour packing away Rose’s oil paints and cleaning her paintbrushes. She and Simone had made conversation throughout the rest of the morning rather sporadically, but now they were nibbling on some toast and butter that Fen had scratched together for a bit of lunch and talking more seriously about what they should do.
‘It’s not that I’m altogether happy here…’ Simone cast her eyes over to where the body had lain. ‘But it’s like I said earlier, I just don’t have anywhere else to go.’
‘I understand. I suppose we need to speak to Rose’s solicitor, but for now I can’t see there being a problem with the both of us staying on while things are sorted out.’ And while I get to the bottom of all of this, Fen thought to herself. ‘Plus, someone needs to look after Tipper. The poor little chap will be grieving in his own way and I don’t think we can just biff him off to the dogs’ home just yet.’
‘Ooh la la, no! I will have him. Little dogs like him are all the rage and I think Christian could make a wonderful little coat for him.’
Simone’s flippancy made Fen smile. It was light relief to be talking fashion again.
‘Of course,’ Simone carried on, ‘perhaps I will return to England with you and James?’
‘Oh really? Have you both, well, discussed that? I’m not sure he wants to go back to London just yet.’ Or at least he hasn’t mentioned it to me, Fen thought. ‘Has he said otherwise?’
‘Not in so many words, but what is there in Paris for us both?’ She shrugged. ‘And I think James has a house or two in England. It could be very comfortable.’
‘House or two?’ Fen hadn’t really thought what being filthy rich might actually mean.
Simone looked at Fen, examining her. Then she laughed. ‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘I hadn’t really thought about it. What don’t I know exactly?’ Fen was genuinely puzzled.
‘James. Viscount Lancaster… His London house was bombed, I think, which is a shame, but the land itself – Knightsbridge perhaps, or Kensington – you must know these areas better than I do, well, it must still have value, you know? And the country house in Sussex is apparently vast.’
‘How do you know all of this?’ Fen was aware she didn’t know much about James – finding out about his aristocratic connections had been a surprise enough the other night – but she did know he was a taciturn sort of chap and not one to spill the family secrets, or jewels, in idle conversation. Or was he seriously thinking Simone was the future Mrs Lancaster, or Lady Simone even, and he needed to show off to her?
At that moment, there was a loud rapping on the door of the apartment. The two women looked at each other and frowned.
‘Who could that be?’ Simone whispered, pulling her cardigan closer around her. ‘You don’t think it’s the murderer, do you?’
Any chance the women had of pretending not to be there until the visitor went away was ruined by Tipper barking like crazy and scampering towards the door.
‘I’m coming,’ Fen called into the air, hoping the person in the vestibule could hear her. ‘Who is it?’ she called out when she was closer to the door.
‘It’s Joseph Bernheim,’ the voice called back from the other side of the door.
Simone
, who had followed Fen into the hallway made some excuse about being too unsightly to be seen and disappeared back into the studio and from there into her room, leaving Fen to unlock the door.
‘Oh, Joseph, come in, come in.’ She was pleased he was here, although she wasn’t sure if she was looking forward to breaking the bad news about Rose’s death to another of her friends on the same day.
As he entered the small hallway, Joseph took off his hat but hadn’t got much further before Fen continued.
‘It is lovely to see you, but I’m afraid I have something terrible to tell you.’
‘I’m so used to the door being unlocked.’ The frazzled man sat on the edge of the chaise longue, running his Homburg hat through his hands. ‘Even after she… I mean, before the war when I would meet Magda here, we would just walk in.’
‘I just thought for security…’ Fen murmured as she poured him a cup of tea, the pot now refreshed several times and the loose leaves of the tea running slightly out of oomph.
‘Of course, of course,’ he nodded, ‘and this happened… yesterday?’
‘Yes. I remember Rose saying you were due to come and see her. What time was that?’
‘Just after lunch, about two o’clock,’ he paused and threaded his hat brim through his fingers again. ‘But I was held up and never made it.’
‘You may have stumbled on her killer if you had.’ Fen then explained to Joseph, ‘I overheard the police saying she had been killed in the early afternoon.’
Joseph sighed. ‘I don’t suppose you know what she had found out, do you? About our paintings, I mean.’ Joseph looked keenly at Fen, who could only shake her head.
‘I’m afraid not. Just that she thought she had tracked down one of them—’
‘Ah, such bad luck!’ Joseph tossed his hat across the chaise longue and hung his head down, with his hands hanging between his knees. ‘So close yet so far.’
[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris Page 12
