[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris

by Fliss Chester

  Henri veered left into another narrow road, but by the time Fen had trotted along the pavement for the last few yards before the turning, and then subtly poked her head around the corner, he was gone. There was no sign of him at all. Instead, she found herself staring at the entrance to the elegant Hotel de Lille. It was a double-fronted building, with a large door in between windows; one on the left-hand side and two to the right. Fen sheltered under one of the canopies out front as the rain had become persistently heavier.

  The Hotel de Lille… why did its name ring a bell? Fen puzzled it over, knowing that she’d heard talk of it recently, while also trying to peer into one of the windows to see if it was where Henri had ended up.

  The inside of the window had started to mist up, and Fen could barely make out the internal layout of the reception area of the hotel. She peered closer and caught movement inside and wondered if it might be Henri and if this was her chance to see what he was up to with the painting-shaped parcel. She took a deep breath and decided to go for it – she’d come this far and there was no point standing out in the rain wondering who or what was going on inside. If Henri caught her following him she’d just have to think on her feet.

  Fen pushed the hotel’s door open and cringed slightly as the bell above it gave a little tinkle, like entering a boutique. She quickly took in the scene. There was a desk in front of her and to the left, with a few sofas in front of it and a well-dressed receptionist sitting behind it, and disappearing up the staircase behind the desk, Fen caught sight of the tail of Henri’s overcoat.

  ‘Dash it all.’ Fen stood, dripping wet. She pulled off her beret and then looked apologetically at the receptionist as water dripped off it, and the parcel of clothes for Magda, onto the patterned tiles of the vestibule.

  Fen turned to leave, she couldn’t very well follow Henri up the stairs without a very good reason to give both him and the receptionist, and was just about to pull the beret firmly back onto her very damp and frizzy curls when she saw two people she could have sworn should be the other side of Paris.

  James and Simone were sitting on a velvet sofa in the bar area of the hotel, half shielded from view by a higher bar table and the stools around it. Simone’s cheek was leaning into one of James’s hands as he stroked her hair with the other.

  Fen flushed and gave an involuntary gasp, which had the unfortunate effect of alerting James to her presence.

  He looked up from where he was about to kiss Simone and then narrowed his eyes and withdrew from her. ‘Fen?’

  ‘Oh gosh, so terribly sorry. Had no idea, can’t think what I’m doing here now. Must dash. Cheerio, carry on, etcetera!’ Fen could feel the blush in her cheeks reddening as she wedged the hat down onto her head. She was out of the door and running through the rain before you could say ‘caught in the act’ and once again thanked her former self for knowing the route back to the Rue des Beaux-Arts so she could at least get home and dry quickly, if not ever shake off the embarrassment of catching James and Simone smooching in the bar of what must have been – she remembered why she knew it now – his hotel.

  Thirty-Six

  Fen woke the next morning still feeling as embarrassed as she had been the night before. She slipped her hand up from under the eiderdown and touched her own cheek and wondered if the heat she felt was pure shame or if running around in the rain had brought on a fever.

  She thought back to last night and how she’d left James and Simone in a flurry of apologies and blushing and had run out onto the street. Fen couldn’t be sure, but she thought she might have heard her name being shouted down the road behind her, but she had absolutely not been about to turn round and have that conversation with James. The one where he would ask her what the blazes she thought she was doing spying on him and then she’d have had to bluster her way through some sort of explanation that would eventually result in her having to admit that she was jealous of the time he was spending with Simone.

  For that, she realised, was a little to do with all of this. Not because she had any sort of feelings other than platonic ones for James himself; she was still in mourning for her Arthur, after all – but because she had liked having a friend and James reminded her of Arthur in some ways. They looked completely different and there was no way that Arthur had been hiding a title and various country houses under his hat, but they were both intelligent, decent men who had bravely fought for their country.

  She had imagined this trip to Paris would be the two of them spending afternoons walking along the Seine, reminiscing about Arthur, and James telling her more about him and the work they’d done in secret in the war. She hadn’t imagined herself to be sitting up in bed, alone in an apartment where a dear old friend of hers had recently been murdered, passing the time of day talking to a small, yappy dog.

  ‘Oh and Magda,’ she winced as she remembered that not only had she interrupted James and Simone in a clinch, but she had let down her old friend, too.

  As soon as she opened her bedroom door, Tipper nosed his way in, and by the time she’d put in a call to Magda’s building and left a message to let her know that she’d visit her that very morning, the little dog had nestled himself in her still warm sheets.

  Fen slipped back in under the eiderdown and reached over to her bedside cabinet where the slightly torn and grubby napkin containing her grid was sitting. She stared at it and jotted down another couple of words that sprung to mind, so that a little while later, it looked like this:

  Once dressed, Fen carefully folded the napkin up and slipped it into the pocket of her trench coat. She felt that somehow these murders were linked to some, if not all, of those words, and that connecting them in a grid could perhaps help her see how they might intersect in real life. But did the degenerate art have any relation to the warehouse or Tipper to the forgeries? It was a puzzle all right, and one she was scared of not being able to solve.

  ‘I wish I could solve these too,’ she grunted, pulling a brush through her unruly curls. The drizzle and rain last night had sent her neatly rolled hair into wayward tendrils and there wasn’t much else Fen could do except tie the Atelier Lelong scarf over the lot of it. ‘There, fixed,’ she said as she knotted it under her chin and dabbed some lipstick on.

  There was no sign of Simone in the apartment – perhaps she’d never come home last night? And if not, had James indeed popped the question? Fen was about to leave when Tipper nuzzled his little nose into her ankle.

  ‘Fancy a walk too, old chap?’ Fen asked and at the ‘w’ word, his tail started wagging at such a pace she wondered if he might take off. ‘All right, all right, steady on,’ Fen laughed and hooked his lead up to his collar, picked up her handbag and the parcel of clothes she’d put together for Magda and started out towards the Marais. ‘You shall be my accessory today, Tipper, and please,’ she knelt down and held his little fluffy head in her hands, ‘if I start to follow totally innocent strangers around the place, stop me!’

  Fen knew the way to the road where the Bernheims were lodging and as she and Tipper neared the down-at-heel neighbourhood, she thought again about how much as a family they had lost. Rose had reminded Fen about the Bernheims’ former apartment near the Champs-Élysées, with its artwork and Persian carpets, its rooms flooded with light from elegant windows twice the size of her own. Fen remembered evenings when crystal chandeliers did a merry job of illuminating their many soirées and parties. Magda and Joseph’s wedding had been one of those glittering affairs and Fen thought back to that first taste of champagne and the weight of the lead crystal glass in her hand.

  That night, the apartment had glowed with wealth and opulence, the marble finishes and polished wood reflecting all that glorious light onto the masterpieces on the walls. And now Joseph and Magda were reduced to living in a small tenement in the Marais district. Hundreds of years ago, Fen remembered from her history lessons, the Marais, and the grand Place des Vosges within it, had been the centre for French and Parisian nobility. But it had fallen into
disrepair after the revolution in the eighteenth century and had become the home instead to shopkeepers and refugees, among them many Jews. Over the years, the Marais had become the Jewish quarter and because of this it was constantly raided during the occupation, with apartments and shops either locked-up, empty and disused, or with extended families crammed into inhumanely small spaces for them all. Fen shuddered to think where their occupants might be now.

  She looked down at the piece of paper she had brought with her on which the Bernheims’ address was written and walked the last few streets towards it. The building itself wasn’t dissimilar to Rose’s, but instead of one apartment per floor, there were three or four, and the communal staircase of this one was dirty with children and animals playing listlessly on it.

  Fen picked Tipper up as she climbed towards the second floor, where the Bernheims lived. She jumped a few times as voices shouted out of nowhere and it took Fen a moment to realise that it was just because so many people were now living cheek by jowl. Refugees and displaced families were squeezed into tiny apartments; voices raised and shouting at each other, babies crying and the wireless playing jazz music while dogs barked at each other through the thin walls of the building.

  Tipper buried his head into her armpit as she stepped over a pile of old newspapers and cardboard, and Fen herself had to keep her nerve as she saw something dart suspiciously quickly across the landing in front of her, its little tail the last thing that caught her eye as it disappeared into a hole in the skirting board.

  Fen knocked at the door and Magda soon appeared, unchaining the lock and letting her in.

  ‘Magda, hello.’

  ‘Fen, come on in.’

  The Bernheims’ apartment might have been small, but it was immaculate inside. The door opened into a narrow hallway that dissected the apartment in half. Magda led Fen through to a room on the right that was the bed-sitting room, the double bed the couple shared was neatly made up but semi-hidden behind an upholstered fabric screen. The rest of the room consisted of just enough space for a small table and chairs and two armchairs. There was a wireless on the table and a small cupboard for their crockery and linens.

  ‘I’m so sorry about last night…’ Fen started, aware now more than ever of how frightfully she’d behaved. And Magda didn’t even know the half of it.

  ‘Oh please, don’t worry.’ Magda pointed to one of the chairs and Fen sat down.

  ‘I can explain… I think.’

  ‘I assumed you had a better offer.’ Magda reached down and received a few licks from Tipper.

  ‘No, it was nothing like that. I was on my way over and I spotted Henri Renaud, oh I don’t know, it sounds even sillier now that I say it out loud, but he was acting furtively, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Fenella dear, I think maybe the stress of Rose’s murder is getting to you. Henri is our friend, he was helping Rose.’

  ‘I know… And I’m sorry, again. Can I at least give you this as an apology?’ Fen handed over the parcel of Rose’s clothes and explained that Henri had asked her to clear out the closet. ‘I thought you’d look lovely in some of these tea dresses, though I dare say they might be a little out of date.’

  ‘Thank you, Fen.’ Magda turned to where they had a small gas burner and a kettle. ‘Tea? Or whatever approximates for it these days.’ She gave a nervous laugh as she lit the stove. Fen wondered if she really was forgiven for last night; Magda didn’t seem herself at all and had barely acknowledged the hand-me-downs. Fen hoped she hadn’t offended her, adding insult to injury on top of standing her up last night.

  As they waited for the kettle to boil, Magda didn’t chat away as she might have done and Fen watched as she ran a tea towel through her fingers, then folded it and unfolded it again and again. Fen pulled Tipper up onto her lap and made a few throwaway comments about her walk over until finally Magda had made the tea and sat down on the other armchair herself.

  ‘Magda, is there something wrong?’ Fen decided to just ask.

  ‘Well, you see…’ Magda started and then chewed her cheek as she thought. Finally, she spoke again and said something that Fen wasn’t expecting to hear at all. ‘You see, Fen, well, I’m afraid it’s about Rose. I have a confession to make.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Magda sat back and took a sip of her tea. ‘Please don’t be cross.’

  Fen, who had for just the most fleeting of moments, feared the worst, let out a sigh. ‘Of course I’m not cross. In fact, it clears up something that’s been troubling me. Ever since James said that the countess downstairs, or at least her pampered puss, had heard Tipper bark just the once that afternoon, I’d wondered who it might be.’

  ‘I’m afraid it was Joseph. He’d kept his appointment, you see, and let himself in. He said Tipper here,’ Magda leaned forward and stroked the dog’s head, which made Tipper jump up and scramble off Fen’s lap and onto Magda’s, much to her joy, ‘well, he said Tipper was beside himself and going crazy, barking and chasing his tail, weren’t you, poppet?’

  ‘So Joseph was the first to find Rose. Oh, Magda, I do feel sorry for him. I know how it feels, really I do.’ Fen thought back to when she asked him about it. ‘Why didn’t he tell me though, he said he’d missed his appointment with Rose, that he was never there that day at all.’

  Magda concentrated on stroking the very top of Tipper’s head, then looked up at Fen. ‘Well, of course, he didn’t know what to do. He feels rightly ashamed at his cowardice in not reporting it there and then, or in trusting you with the truth, but you see, when you’ve heard stories like the ones we’ve heard…’ Magda tailed off and Fen reached over and touched her on the knee.

  ‘No one would have thought he’d done it, surely?’ asked Fen.

  ‘The police might have suspected him…’ Magda looked pale and Fen realised that even voicing these concerns was paining her.

  ‘They didn’t suspect us…’ Fen trailed off, realised that wasn’t exactly reassuring. There was no reason why any Jewish person should trust the authorities after the horrors their people had been through. Fen rethought her words. ‘I mean, there is absolutely no way that Joseph could be suspected of killing Rose. She was helping him, he had no motive whatsoever. Please don’t distress yourself with it, Magda, but thank you for trusting me with it. I won’t tell the police. Those dunderheads think it’s all a burglary gone wrong anyway.’

  ‘And you don’t?’ Magda seemed visibly calmer after Fen’s reassurances.

  ‘No. And not just because of the rich countess downstairs, dripping in diamonds, mind, who seems to have mysteriously escaped the burglars. No, it was something Antoine Arnault said when we spoke to him. That the murder seemed like something The Chameleon would have done.’

  Magda shuddered when Fen spoke the double agent’s code name.

  ‘The Chameleon… I would spit on the floor, if I hadn’t spent days scrubbing it clean.’

  ‘How did you know it was him who betrayed Joseph’s and your parents?’

  ‘Just whispers… but then that was all there ever was with those networks anyway. We made plans in whispers, we escaped in whispers, but Mama and Papa and Jacques and Selena…’ her voice faded as she said their names and Fen waited as she mouthed a quick prayer for her dead parents and in-laws. ‘They were ready to go and were expecting an agent to pick them up and transport them to the docks, where a boat was ready to take them out of the city and from there to the coast. But the lorry that turned up, it wasn’t the Resistance. It drove them to the Gestapo headquarters and we never saw them again.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Magda.’ Fen, who was usually so awkward when it came to comforting people, was led by her heart and reached out a hand to Magda. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Rose wrote to us, did you know? In New York. She tracked us down and told us she was working on something on our behalf. It gave us hope when we were at our very lowest.’ Magda paused, then continued quietly, ‘Joseph would have died rather than see that dear woman hurt. Her f
riendship saved our lives in more ways than one.’

  ‘I will find out who did this to her,’ Fen said, more confidently than she felt. Her three downs were disappearing by the minute, but she knew she had to solve this murder, for all their sakes.

  She stayed and chatted to Magda for a while longer, bringing the conversation back to more jolly subjects, such as autumn fashions and speculation as to whether James and Simone would wed. Then Fen took her leave with a meaningful kiss on each cheek and carried Tipper back down the crowded and noisy staircase and out to the street where the lime trees swayed in the autumn breeze.

  The last twenty-four hours had certainly been illuminating, but Fen, for all the three acrosses and six downs she was being given, was still no closer to working out who had killed Rose Coillard.

  Thirty-Eight

  Fen walked slowly back along the Seine from the Marais district and the Bernheims’ tiny apartment there. Tipper obediently padded along beside her, sniffing at whatever the pavement had to offer as she walked along the quayside. Her mind was alight with theories and ideas and she tried to make sense of what she had just found out. She spotted an empty bench that overlooked the river and beyond it the Île de la Cité and its most famous landmark, the cathedral church of Notre Dame.

  She had to tug Tipper away from a particularly interesting pile of leaves, but he came easily enough and jumped up on her lap. As she sat, she mulled over what Magda had said to her. The Chameleon had betrayed her family at the eleventh hour with devastating and tragic consequences. And yet Rose had been in touch with the younger Bernheims all the while they were in New York. Could Rose have known who The Chameleon was? Perhaps that was the reason for her argument with Lazard on the embankment?