by Karen Swan
‘Even after I’d told you what had been done to my family by that man?’ Noah’s sudden anger was chilling and even Jacques shifted in his chair, picking up on the animosity vibrating across the table, knowing ‘that man’ was his father. ‘You still chose to keep quiet?’
Flora swallowed. ‘I had no choice. At that point, no one knew the truth about Von Taschelt’s real identity. I was simply searching for proof of another sale between Von Taschelt and the man we believed to be Jacques’ father, François Vermeil. That was my focus. We believed the sale to be genuine, we had no idea they were . . .’ Her voice trailed off.
‘One and the same man?’ Noah finished for her, glancing at Jacques who had dipped his head and was staring at the table.
‘As soon as the truth became known, Jacques took proactive steps to ensure he made what amends he could,’ Flora said protectively. ‘You’re absolutely right, it’s exactly why you’re sitting here today. We’re not trying to hide anything. The advert in LAPADA is going to bring in thousands of potential claimants.’
Noah sat back in the chair, looking for all the world as though this study was his and they his guests. He shrugged. ‘Well, I haven’t seen any ad in LAPADA. I’m here because when I saw the headlines about this family, I worked out what was going on. I told you in Vienna you weren’t the only one who’d hit a wall with Von Taschelt’s paper trail, so those headlines were a God-given gift! Finally, everything made sense – a long-lost apartment with all those paintings in it and then suddenly you’re on my doorstep representing clients with the Renoir my family once owned, snooping around my great-aunt’s portrait . . . ?’
His choice of words left her in no doubt that he’d uncovered her error in putting back the file incorrectly when she’d crept from his bed in the middle of the night to read it, and she wondered how long he had known, or at least suspected her hidden intentions. God, had he known at Chantilly? Was it why he’d been so bilious to Xavier, why he’d made such a show of ‘claiming’ her? Or had that just been male pride, plain and simple? Was that what was happening here now – her two-word text – ‘Please, don’t’ – after he’d sent the yellow roses to the office the final rejection that had curdled his feelings for her into something darker? There was no doubt he was enjoying this revenge scenario on more than one level – restitution of his family’s property and one-upmanship over her.
‘Mr Haas, however it was you came to find us, I am very glad that you did. I don’t want to keep anything that my father stole from your or anyone else’s family,’ Jacques said strongly. ‘Rest assured, I know quite well that it amounted to theft and it sickens me.’
Noah looked surprised – and, Flora thought, almost a little disappointed – by this response. ‘Good. Well, this should be simple then,’ he said after a moment, reaching into his suitcase and pulling out the file with all the original paperwork for the painting. ‘I have photographs too, showing the portrait hanging in my great-grandparents’ house in 1911, 1917. And then in 1926, 1933 . . . Well, you get the picture.’
He tossed it over to them as Flora shot him a look, unamused by his pithy pun, but knowing he was telling the truth. She had proof of the painting in his family’s possession too – she’d just been looking at the orange photo album in the next room.
Jacques skimmed the paperwork, then passed it over to Flora: a receipt from the artist Gustav Huber to Natalya’s husband Juls – a wedding gift perhaps? – and then the recognizable oval logo on the Von Taschelt receipt, acknowledging Franz’s purchase from his friend, Noah’s great-uncle, Juls Haas. She had seen all this before, naturally, but she took her time to study it anew; last time she’d looked, she hadn’t been looking at it with an eye as to its authenticity and – although highly unlikely – it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that these papers had been faked. It was amazing what you could achieve with tea-stained paper and a grudge.
‘We would need to get these verified by an independent expert,’ Flora said, handing them back to him.
Noah looked surprised. He had assumed his self-righteous sleuthing was a slam-dunk. ‘You’re going to do that with every single one of the claimants, are you?’
‘We’ll have to. This sort of approach tends to attract opportunists, people willing to give it a go.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what you think I am?’
‘No,’ she said briskly. ‘But we need to be thorough. I’m sure you can appreciate that.’
There was a small pause. They both knew she was being unnecessarily officious, her own petty retaliation. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose it’s not like you can go anywhere with it. Your secret is out now. Everyone knows who you are. There’s no hiding behind fake names any more.’ He was looking defiantly at Jacques, who didn’t try to dignify the barb with a comment, but Flora wanted to smack Noah on his behalf. She understood why Noah harboured such bitterness towards Jacques’ father – he was thoroughly entitled to despise him – but Jacques wasn’t Franz! Why was that so hard for people to see?
‘Well, I don’t think there’s anything mo—’
The study door opened and Lilian walked in.
‘Gentlemen, Flora,’ she said, serenely breezing into the room and heading straight for Noah. She stood before him in a cloud of Estée Lauder Linen and he automatically rose in greeting. ‘Enchantée,’ she said, shaking his hand. ‘I hope I am not too late?’
The tilt of her head – though her eyes remained on their guest – suggested the question was directed at Flora.
‘We’ve discussed preliminary evidence but that’s all that can be established at this stage until we get independent verification. But certainly everything is looking positive,’ Flora said evenly.
‘Good, I’m glad. There was something I wanted to add.’ She turned to her husband who was looking ashen and standing stooped. ‘Jacques, darling, I thought it would be beneficial for all concerned if your mother were to meet some of the claimants.’
Jacques’ face dropped but Lilian didn’t see; she was already looking back at Noah. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I think it’s important to try to get some formal closure on this once and for all.’
‘Actually, I do mind! I think that’s in very poor taste,’ Noah said brusquely, his colour heightening. ‘Are you aware of the number of people sent to their deaths by your father-in-law’s actions? He put greed above humanity. He chose to save himself by condemning others. He blocked their passage for flight from the regime. He double-crossed them in deals where as soon as they had signed on the dotted line, they were stripped of everything and sent in cattle-trains to the labour camps. People like my family.’
Contempt dripped from every word, Jacques almost bent double from the accusations. Noah’s breath was coming hard but he couldn’t – wouldn’t – be stopped.
‘I am sorry if this is distressing for you to hear, Monsieur Vermeil, but make no mistake – your family profited from my family’s extermination. You have this house because my family were robbed of theirs. Why on God’s earth would you think I would want to meet the woman married to him?’
Just at that moment, Genevieve came into the room holding Magda by one arm, Xavier holding her by the other as she walked unsteadily in pigeon steps, her cane swinging on her forearm, her face a picture of studied concentration as she stared at the floor. The dogs scurried at her feet, running in circles.
Flora found herself holding her breath as the old woman stopped before their group. Talk about timing . . .
Noah and Xavier saw each other first, their eyes narrowing in recognition before they both looked across at Flora. Instinctively, her eyes met Xavier’s – her eyes would always look for, find, him first – but she swung her gaze away quickly to Noah, watching as she saw him register what no one else had: that they both wore devastation on their faces, their sleepless night as visible as a rash on their skins.
His eyes narrowed and she knew he knew. Or maybe he’d already known – even before them. That day at Chantilly, wh
en three had been a crowd . . . Had he sensed what surged between them, though neither of them wanted it?
Magda looked up, at least a foot shorter than them all, and the energy in the room shifted.
‘Magda,’ Lilian said graciously, determined not to be denied, in spite of Noah’s vehement protest. Charm would always blunt rudeness. ‘This gentleman is Noah Haas.’
‘. . . Haas?’ Magda repeated, her voice a croak, but it wasn’t Noah she was looking at. Her gaze had fallen to the painting on the easel behind him – that sublime rendition of femininity captured so perfectly in a blur of brushstrokes. Her jaw dropped down, the colour from her face drained and in the next instant, her knees gave out from beneath her.
Xavier had gone behind the armchair, propping his grandmother’s walking stick against it and crossing the room to pour her a drink, but Genevieve, who was still holding her lightly under the arm, almost toppled as the old woman’s weight pulled her downwards, and she only just stopped Magda from falling to the floor.
‘Help me to get her lying down!’ Jacques shouted to Noah, who – after a moment’s hesitation – helped take Magda under the arms and carry her to the sofa. ‘Genevieve, water, now.’
Genevieve darted out as Lilian retrieved a decorative antique fan from the wall and began wafting air over her mother-in-law. She was revived a few moments later but her colour was still peaky, though she insisted, via a series of irritable slaps on any arms that tried to keep her lying down, on moving to a seated position.
‘Mother, I think we should get you up to bed,’ Jacques was saying, looking not much better himself.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘. . . I should go,’ Noah said to Jacques. ‘Clearly your mother needs to rest. I’ll wait to hear, but please – don’t test my patience.’
Magda turned to look at Noah, hearing the arrogance in his voice. ‘Haas.’ The name, a question before, was like a bark now, and she stared at Noah with the sharp-eyed scrutiny Flora herself had had the misfortune to endure. She stared at him for minutes, her eyes examining every part of him – his hair, his eyes, his brow, his nose, his hands, his feet, his stance, his build . . . ‘I knew Natalya.’
Noah stiffened, his briefcase held in front of him as though it was bulletproof. ‘My great-aunt. Yes. I know.’ He was polite, just.
‘And her husband Juls.’
‘Yes.’
‘You look like her father. Same profile.’
Noah looked surprised by the observation. ‘Thank you. I didn’t know that.’
She settled her hands upon her lap. ‘They were our best friends. Did you know that?’ Her eyes were challenging him, just as they’d challenged Flora, daring him to say it – put voice to the horrors meted out by her husband.
But Noah, as cocky as he’d been with Jacques, didn’t take the bait. ‘I knew you were acquainted.’
She snorted derisively at the word. ‘How?’
‘Photographs.’
Magda nodded, looking away for a moment. ‘And you believe my husband betrayed your family.’
‘I know he did.’ Noah’s voice was flinty, his tolerance for the elderly woman clearly paper thin.
‘You know nothing,’ Magda spat, undiminished by age and staring at Noah so hard, Flora was amazed he wasn’t beginning to melt. ‘They were our closest friends. Franz didn’t betray your family, he helped them.’
‘No.’ Noah’s rebuttal was absolute. ‘He double-crossed them – robbed them and then served them up on a platter to the SS who were waiting for them.’
Magda stared at him with withering disgust. ‘“Art is the lie that tells the truth” – so Picasso said anyway,’ she spat. ‘But you see nothing.’
There was another silence as Lilian tried to calm her down, Noah clearly refusing to be drawn into an argument. It wasn’t dignified to quarrel with a ninety-nine-year-old, for one thing, even if she had been married to a Nazi.
‘What does it even matter any more? I am an old woman,’ Magda said, stating the obvious. ‘I will be dead soon enough. I did what I had to do and we’re all safe.’ She looked at her son, taking his limp hand in hers and fiddling with the signet ring on his little finger, like a pilgrim with prayer beads. ‘I kept you safe.’
Flora jolted as Magda’s words chimed an echo from the letter she’d just read – Franz’s orders for them to flee, to hide, to keep safe. But from what? If Magda and Jacques were already in Geneva by then, they were safe already, surely? It was Franz who had been in danger. She remembered his paranoia in the letters that the SS were having him watched. He couldn’t trust anyone. Hundreds are leaving . . .
Something shifted in her brain, like a jammed cog suddenly lurching forward. The wheels weren’t spinning yet but something had been dislodged, freed . . .
They know.
What had the SS known? Why were they watching him? And where? Like every cinéma noir film she’d ever seen, she imagined their spies on the streets outside the apartment, recording his movements in and out of the—
She blinked. Of course! From the street, anyone seeing him going in and out of the building would naturally assume that he was travelling to and from his own apartment, Number 8. But . . . but if he had two apartments, if he wanted to hide something, in the apartment below, who would ever know?
Flora gasped as it suddenly became clear why he’d had both apartments in the same building. Apartment Number 6 wasn’t Von Taschelt’s overflow storeroom – it was his secret. He had been double-crossing the Nazis! But what could he have been hiding from them back then that still needed to remain hidden, over seventy years later? Why the codicil?
She thought of Travers, the keeper of these secrets. He had lied when he’d told her the explorers had broken into Number 8. She knew that – the photos on the web proved they’d found the apartment downstairs, not the one upstairs. So why divert the family by handing over the keys to Apartment 8? It had made life inordinately more difficult for him exposing that apartment to the family’s collective gaze – he’d already admitted to having to sneak in after she and Angus left, in order to remove all the paperwork in the apartment that would link Von Taschelt to the Vermeils. It had been a hell of a gamble. He’d had to hope that they would be so distracted by the art haul that they would focus on the artworks and not the paperwork – and they had been. But why go to all that trouble if not to avoid a greater risk? Something greater even than exposing Von Taschelt’s true identity? What was in Apartment 6 that Travers – following instructions – had to hide above all else? There had been nothing in there apart from the portrait facing them all now.
‘We’re done here.’ Noah looked at Jacques. ‘Call me when the test results are in.’ He began to walk across the room.
Flora didn’t hear him. She was deep in her own thoughts, mentally retracing her route through the apartment. Why did a secret need to be kept for over seventy years?
In her mind’s eye, she conjured the empty rooms, the bed, the crate, the painting. And something else . . . Suddenly she remembered what she’d found on the floor by the crate. Something so small and innocuous and covered with dust . . .
Over seventy years . . .
Noah’s hand was on the door when Flora gasped, her head jerking up to find Magda already staring at her, the alarm in her face confirming Flora’s hunch. Flora’s gaze fell to the old woman’s hand – or rather, the hand she held. The signet ring on Jacques’ finger had been turned inwards, the stamped seal now palm-side so that it looked like an ordinary wedding band.
‘It was never about the paintings,’ she whispered, feeling the floor rock beneath her.
Noah turned.
‘That’s why there were so many in there.’
Magda stared back at her, defiant in her silence but quivering with rage as Flora shone a ray of light onto the darkest corners of her past, the suspicions hardening into facts one by one. She knew she was right.
‘Franz didn’t betray them – it’s like you said,’ Flora said quietly.
‘Were those paintings just the ones the Nazis didn’t want? The ones they allowed him to keep for himself?’ she needled. ‘And sell on for his own profit?’
‘He couldn’t even bear to look at them!’ Magda spat, provoked. ‘He never would have sold them!’
Noah came further into the room and as Magda’s eyes slid between him and the portrait, something in her slackened. Jacques saw it too, covering his mother’s hand more closely again and unwittingly bringing the ring into the light.
Magda watched as Flora’s eyes fell to it again and she knew the game was up. She had run out of time, lived too long to outrun her past. She was quiet for a long time then, but nobody spoke to or harried her along, sensing somehow that the truth was finally pushing its way to the surface.
‘What else could he do?’ she said in a barely audible voice. ‘He had to disguise himself as one of them in order to help his own – getting them the best price he could without attracting attention, negotiating border passes for art.’ She gripped Jacques’ fingers tightly. ‘Do you know what it took for him to do that, right under their noses? The constant fear, the paranoia, the agony of the pretence? He couldn’t sleep at night. He had to endure the disgust of people who had once been his friends, his blood. He was a Jew himself! Art was the only thing that kept him alive – his expertise was the only power he had. It was the only way he could help, even if those people he was helping despised and cursed and condemned him as he did it.’ Her eyes blackened as she pinned a look on Noah. ‘And still do.’
Noah swallowed, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. ‘My grandfather told me he betrayed them.’
‘Then he was wrong. He bought the act,’ Magda sneered. ‘Franz did everything he could to try to save your family. He sold what he could for them in exchange for those border passes. He tried to help make them look obedient to the Reich, compliant, but there was a limit to his influence. They already suspected him. He had tried to help too many others, that was his downfall.’