‘Did you have a nice evening together?’ Fen could sense there was something at play here, Simone wasn’t her usual confident and opinionated self and she hadn’t asked Fen about the party at the Louvre at all.
‘James is a gentleman,’ was all Simone would say and from that Fen inferred that James hadn’t perhaps played into the younger woman’s waiting arms as much as she would have liked.
Fen changed the subject. ‘I met your friend Catherine, tonight. She must have been so brave…’
Simone brightened. ‘She was. Did they ask after me? I don’t know why Henri didn’t invite me, too,’ she said with a little huff.
‘I didn’t realise you were all so close. Henri with the Diors and Balmain, too.’
‘He’s been kind to me,’ Simone said and gave Fen a gentle push away, the bodice now completely undone and spooled on the parquet floor of the studio. ‘Time for bed. Don’t forget your date with James in the morning.’
‘No, rightio. And thank you, Simone. Goodnight.’
Thirty-Two
Fen awoke the next day with a clear head but still no idea as to why Rose was murdered, or who had done it. She did notice that the bells of Saint Sulpice were ringing out, welcoming worshippers on this fine Sunday morning, and her own watch confirmed it; it was 8 a.m. already.
The apartment was quiet and still now. Perhaps Simone had gone to church? Fen ticked herself off for not finding the local Anglican one. What would Mrs B and Rev Smallpiece say? What with one thing or another, it had been weeks since she’d been. She said a few prayers next to her bed and then dressed and fussed over Tipper, who had made his bed for the night in the crumpled silk of the old turban.
‘I’m sure that’s a dreadful waste on such a hound as you, young sir,’ Fen tutted while stroking his head. ‘But enjoy it while you can. Got to dash. It’s back to the dog basket for you though later!’
She checked the mailbox at the bottom of the apartment building’s staircase as she left and, to her joy, there was a letter addressed to her in it.
‘Kitty!’ Fen exclaimed out loud, recognising the handwriting on the front of the envelope. She glanced at the large clock that hung above the mailboxes, however, and saw she was running late for her appointment with James. ‘Later…’ she whispered and tucked the letter into her trench coat’s pocket, tapping it and holding her hand over it protectively as she walked along the few streets to get to the café.
‘You look well,’ James said as he stood and pulled out a chair for Fen in the café. ‘Not such a raucous night as it might have been in Elsie de Wolfe’s day?’
‘Elsie de who? I heard that name mentioned several times last night.’
James laughed. ‘De Wolfe. Society hostess with the mostest before the war.’
‘I suppose you would know all about that, Viscount Lancaster…’ Fen cocked an eyebrow at her friend, who laughed in return. ‘Speaking of which, thank you for inviting me to breakfast via Simone. I’m not sure she’s wholly thrilled at our little date though.’ Fen blushed a bit as she said those last few words. ‘Not that it is, by any stretch of the imagination, a date, as it were.’
James just smiled at her and raised his hand to call the waiter. ‘Simone’s a charming young woman, but, well, I’m feeling more and more like a lion tamer every day,’ he joked as the waiter approached. ‘Breakfast? Coffee?’
‘Oh yes, rather. I felt tickety-boo first thing, but perhaps I did have one too many glasses of fizz last night.’ She rested her forehead in her hand. ‘I’m getting away with it at the moment, but something to take the edge off wouldn’t hurt.’
‘Another drink?’
‘No, James! I meant just a coffee. And maybe an omelette…’
James chuckled and ordered them both a simple herbed omelette and a coffee each.
‘Well,’ he sighed. ‘This is very civilised.’
‘As was last night, it really was a super do. The gallery is simply divine by night. And I met Christian and Pierre from Simone’s atelier again and Christian’s sister Catherine. They were a really fun bunch and Christian took me for a couple of turns around the dance floor. I hadn’t realised Henri Renaud knew them all so well. Apparently he was responsible for getting Simone the job there after the war.’
A couple of coffees appeared between them and Fen took a sip before carrying on.
‘And, most importantly, I spoke to Henri about Michel Lazard. He couldn’t exactly deny that he had seen him, but he was very quick to tell me that he hadn’t been expecting him and he’d sent him packing pretty pronto. I really must try to find him and ask him what it was all about.’
‘Good luck with that one.’ James started fiddling with the cutlery on the table, obviously hungry.
‘Then there was a perfectly pleasant man, though very strange-looking, called Valentine Valreas, who’s an auctioneer. He almost bit my ear off when I said I was friendly with Rose, as if she were the Devil himself… or, worse than that even by his standards, Le Faussaire!’
‘Motive?’ James looked up at Fen. ‘And why didn’t he like her?’
‘I have a feeling it’s Lazard that’s the root cause, but the crux of it is, those “copies” of Rose’s really were starting to get her into a bit of hot water.’
‘An angry auctioneer, a dodgy dealer, an armed Arnault brother…’
‘An Henri with an inheritance and maybe a blackmailer with a bludgeon… I know, I know… the list of suspects is becoming impossibly endless! And I’m trying to approach the whole mystery like a crossword – you know, keeping an eye out for indicators and clues – but I’m pretty stumped.’ Fen sat back with her coffee and sighed. ‘So what’s all this about you being a lion tamer?’
‘Ah,’ James said as the omelettes arrived and he tucked in straight away. After a quick chew and swallow, he continued talking. ‘It’s Simone. She’s a great girl and all that, stunning and obviously very elegant, but, boy, is she headstrong.’
‘You’re not about to come over all misogynistic now, are you? Women are allowed to know their own minds. It is 1945 after all, not 1845.’
‘I know, I know,’ he waved his fork in the air, then skewered another bite of omelette. He popped it in his mouth and swallowed quickly. ‘And I think it’s a wonderful thing to know your own mind. Lord knows we’ve all been pushed and pulled and told what to do for so long by the powers that be… it’s just she really knows what she wants and she doesn’t mind telling me. All the time.’
Fen analysed his words as she chewed. ‘Rather forward in coming forward as it were, you mean?’ James nodded and Fen carried on. ‘Well, when a girl wants to be the future Lady Lancaster, can you blame her?’
‘Well, I don’t think Lady Simone will be happening any time soon, but yes, that’s what she’s got her eye on and it’s rather unattractive. Or am I being a spoon?’
‘A spoon?’
‘Yes, a fool, a fusspot. Perhaps an old bachelor like me shouldn’t be so choosy. So what? She wants a title, I have a title. Maybe it’s a fair trade to get a nice girl by my side?’
‘Title, yes. And don’t forget the land, houses, probably a rather spiffing motorcar…’ Fen teased, but in saying it did wonder if James, who in her mind wasn’t that old at all, was selling himself a little short, and she said as much.
‘Do you think she really only sees me as a meal ticket?’ James replied, before eating some more of his breakfast.
‘No.’ Fen acquiesced, and then thought about it before carrying on. ‘But I think she’s a girl who saw great poverty in her youth and doesn’t want to experience it again. She may well hitch her cart to you, James, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you, too.’
‘Hmm.’ James cleared his plate and sat back. ‘True, true. Still, it was all a bit much last night and I ended up leaving rather early to get back to my hotel. But enough of the nattering, are you finished eating? Let’s go and see Gervais, shall we, and at least clear that mess up before I make another one with Simone.’
Thirty-Thr
ee
Fen and James walked down the Rue de Seine, in the opposite direction to the river and towards the Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Parisians in their Sunday best nodded to them as they walked along and seeing them so neatly turned out made Fen pause in front of one of the shop windows to quickly check that her hastily done victory rolls were still in place and her lipstick was just so. I probably won’t be troubling the catwalks of Paris’s fashion houses, she thought to herself, but I’ll do.
The side streets around the church were older in style and without the grand Haussman architecture it felt more like they were in a rural town, such as the one in Burgundy they’d recently come from. The roads were narrow and turned suddenly around blind corners, so much so that it was hard to imagine the great boulevards only a hundred or so yards away.
James guided them both through the labyrinth and arrived at an archway that was barred by double doors. Unlike the ones that led into Rose’s apartment building, these were curved to match the stone arch above them and had a single small door cut into one of them. It was this door that James pounded with his fist to announce their arrival.
‘That’s odd,’ James remarked. ‘I passed Gervais on the road last night as I was leaving your apartment and he said he’d be in this morning. There’s a car he’s working on for some Italian chap; he said he’d be under the bonnet all day and sprucing up the paintwork. “Working all hours on a Sunday, for an Italian!” he’d moaned.’
‘An Italian chap? Perhaps Henri was right about gangsters?’
Fen didn’t mind the pause too much. She and James had been idly chatting as they’d walked to the garage and she hadn’t had the chance to think properly about what questions she might pose Gervais. Blurting out ‘are you a blackmailer?’ probably wasn’t going to cut the mustard, but it was what she so desperately wanted to know.
James pounded on the door again and called out Gervais’s name.
‘This is very odd,’ he finally conceded. It looked as though he was about to try ramming the door with his shoulder, until Fen reached over and turned the handle on the smaller cut-out door. It opened with ease and she raised an eyebrow at James. ‘Fine, fine,’ he muttered, but his eyes suggested that he saw the funny side to the situation too.
Once inside, with the door softly clicked behind them, Fen realised that the arch would have originally led to the stables of a coaching inn or similar, but now the familiar smell of engine grease and fuel suggested that this was a garage for motorcars. It reminded her of the tractor shed on Mrs B’s farm, damp and earthy but spiced with the smell of petrol and oil.
James found a light switch and Fen’s eyes confirmed what her nose had guessed. It was a fully functioning mechanic’s set-up, with metal shelves of gasoline cans, spare parts and boxes of fuses and spanners, wrenches and wires. There was a pit in the floor, and above it a hydraulic ramp, upon which was a smart black car that looked new and in excellent condition, except for the spray of bullet holes that peppered the paintwork.
Fen pointed at them and James nodded, he’d seen them too. Behind the car there were piles of tyres and beyond them more double doors. The smell of white spirit and oil also reminded Fen of Rose’s apartment and she was just about to point out that fact, as well as comment on the rather interesting addition to the car’s paintwork, when James gave a cry of shock.
‘Fen, stand back.’ He placed his hands on her shoulders and tried to turn her around to face the car again, but it was too late. There, in a small office area, which was crudely made from old window frames atop cinder blocks, was Gervais. Despite James’s efforts, Fen had already seen the pool of congealed blood on the floor by where his shattered head had fallen and above it the splatter of red across the wall, crudely vandalising the pictures of showgirls from the Moulin Rouge that were adorning it.
Fen held her hand up to her mouth and stood there silently. She knew she had to collect her thoughts pretty darned quick if she was going to be of any use to James, but the sight of the body, its blood and other unspeakable matter was truly shocking.
‘We should call the p…police,’ James stuttered slightly, but his voice strengthened as he asked, ‘Who would do this? This is… well, this is an execution.’
Fen shuddered and wanted very much to stop looking at the body of Gervais crumpled onto the floor, his knees bent beneath him as if he had been shot in a firing line. Just like Arthur…
She covered her eyes with her hands and shook her head to try and dislodge the image in her head. ‘James, this can’t be a coincidence, it just can’t be.’
‘I only saw him… He seemed so full of life…’ James’s sentence just faded away.
‘James, I’m so sorry.’ Fen turned away, finally, from the dead body and looked at her friend. They both stood there in silence for a few moments more, taking in the fact that another body was now lying in front of them.
‘So, you don’t think this is a coincidence?’ James was the first to speak, his voice steadier now.
Fen took a deep breath. ‘No. How can it be?’
‘Well, in that we only have Henri’s word that Gervais was blackmailing Rose.’ James looked up at the shiny black car on the ramp. ‘Perhaps it’s a gang thing after all and that Italian chap didn’t like the look of the bill for the paint repairs?’
‘James, be serious.’
‘I am. It’s far more likely that Gervais had got himself involved with some sort of criminal gang than started blackmailing Rose, don’t you think?’
‘I understand what you’re saying, but… two bodies, one so soon after the other? Both connected to the Louvre and artworks in some way, even if Gervais wasn’t blackmailing Rose.’ Fen thought for a second. ‘And, personally, I’m inclined to believe Henri and say that he was. Look, James, this is going to sound terribly callous, but once you’ve phoned the police, we should spend the time before they arrive searching this place for clues.’
‘No three down then yet?’
‘Well, he was it – so no, not any more. But we might at least find something that could tell us who did this to him.’
‘Fine. I’ll call, and you can start with those drawers.’ James nodded to a filing cabinet in the office, which thankfully hadn’t been splashed with any blood from Gervais’s grizzly end.
Fen thought the desk might yield some clues, too, as to what Gervais might have been up to, but she felt understandably squeamish about disturbing the remains of what lay on top of the papers there. One piece of paper, partially hidden under a telephone exchange directory, caught her eye though. Fen waited for James to finish his telephone call and pointed it out to him.
James had a cursory glance at the manifest, holding it between finger and thumb in his left hand.
‘Do you see what I see?’ Fen asked him.
‘A lot of crates of paintings going to the Jeu de Paumes?’
‘And to Valreas & Co auctioneers, by the looks of it.’ Fen thought back to meeting Valentine Valreas at the party the night before. He had known Rose, too, and was perhaps another connection between the murders.
James handed back the manifest to Fen. ‘Well, Henri and Rose told us that the Nazis liked to auction off the art the Führer didn’t want back in Germany, so your new friend Valentine must have been the auctioneer they used.’
Fen frowned and looked at the papers. ‘It’s something else. I don’t know, maybe what isn’t here is as important as what is.’
‘What do you mean?’
Fen shook her head. ‘I don’t know, something Joseph said about the codes being the proof. This list doesn’t have any of Rose’s code on it. And look, the paintings are listed… a Cezanne, a Degas… It’s terrible, isn’t it. Those poor families, robbed and then murdered most likely. No wonder Rose and Henri were doing their utmost to restore what they could to the rightful owners, or their heirs at least. Could this have been what Gervais was blackmailing them for?’
James shrugged his shoulders. He slipped the manifest into a plain envelo
pe he found in the filing cabinet and the two of them carried on their search.
The garage was filthy, but that hadn’t surprised Fen much and, in fact, rooting around the spare parts and cans of oil and lubricant had been a good distraction from the two rather gruesome murders that had happened so close together. All this one needs is a whiff of ylang-ylang, Fen thought to herself as she recoiled from a particularly potent jar of turpentine.
‘Ah,’ James was still at the filing cabinet, coping better it seemed with searching the area closest to the dead body.
‘What is it?’ Fen asked, hoping she wouldn’t have to come too close to see.
‘More lists. Manifests, itineraries, that sort of thing. Hmmm.’ James picked up a document and read it through before reading it aloud to Fen. ‘Invoice to Monsieur M. Lazard, for transporting three crates of paintings to Valreas & Co Auctioneers, Paris.’
‘He knew Lazard, of course,’ Fen stated. ‘Antoine told us that.’
‘And by the looks of some of these chits, he knew the Germans just as well, and Henri Renaud, too. Here, look at this invoice: for transporting one marble bust and three oil paintings to Strasbourg – five hundred francs.’
‘Crikey, that’s a tidy sum. He certainly had his finger in quite a few pies.’ Fen looked up at the black motorcar with its decoration of bullet holes. ‘Do you think these were done at the same time?’
James looked up from the filing cabinet and across to the car. He thought about it. ‘No. It looks like Gervais was killed with a single gunshot to the forehead. That’s a machine gun, like you see in the films.’
‘James…’ Something clicked into place in her head and Fen suddenly pointed to the papers James was holding. ‘I think we might have our answer.’
‘About who killed him?’
‘No, as to whether he was the blackmailer. Look at the piece of paper you’re holding. It’s the same colour as the letter Rose received – blue! And that one has his handwriting on it, does it?’
[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris Page 18
