Night Train to Paris
An unputdownable historical murder mystery
Fliss Chester
Books by Fliss Chester
The Fen Churche Mysteries
A Dangerous Goodbye
Night Train to Paris
Moonlit Murders
The French Escapes Romance Series
Love in the Snow
Summer at the Vineyard
Meet Me on the Riviera
Available in Audio
A Dangerous Goodbye (Available in the UK and the US)
Night Train to Paris (Available in the UK and the US)
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
A Dangerous Goodbye
Hear More from Fliss Chester
A Letter from Fliss
Books by Fliss Chester
Moonlit Murders
Acknowledgements
‘Creativity takes courage.’
Henri Matisse
One
Almost in Paris, October 1945
Dear Mrs B, Kitty and Dilly,
I’m writing this on the train, so please excuse my appalling handwriting. Our carriage rattles so much, I’m wielding this pen with all the elegance of a sledgehammer! But – good news – I’m almost in Paris, although it has taken rather a long time to get here, due to the timetables being up the spout still and, of course, more importantly, trains of returning troops and prisoners of war taking priority on the lines. We’ve had so many delays, what should have taken us a few hours has stretched out throughout the whole night now. When some bright spark tells me there’s no such thing as a night train from Dijon to Paris, I shall beg to differ, though, sadly, this one has none of the comforts of the couchette, more’s the pity.
Still, I mustn’t grumble, and I have just seen the most glorious sunrise over the fields and I hope a week or so in Paris might help me put the adventures of the last few weeks behind me. Although I miss Arthur and will love him for as long as I live, I hope to find a small part of me again here, in the City of Lights. (Remember that crossword clue I sent you a while ago, Kitty? Well, that’s the answer – Paris! Let’s hope it’s the answer to my problems, too.)
I’m travelling with Arthur’s friend, James Lancaster. I feel like he’s a bit ‘all at sea’ now he’s in this limbo that is demobilisation, so I can see why Arthur wanted me to look out for him. I hope he can stay with my friend Rose with me in Paris, but we’ll see. And perhaps, if we travel to England together after this, you’ll get to meet him, too.
I can picture you all, either sitting round the kitchen table, the kettle whistling on the stove, or, Kitty, you cross-legged in front of the open fire while Mrs B and Dilly are on the armchairs, but all listening to the wireless together.
I do miss you and hope my spare suitcase of summer clothes isn’t too much in the way. I’ll be back for it soon.
Anyway, I hope you’re all well and the rationing isn’t still biting too hard (bad pun, sorry!).
Here’s another clue for you, Kitty: This Pullman took tea before his shower (5)… Here’s a hint… I’m sitting on it right now!
Thinking of you all,
Fen xxx
Fen stepped off the train at Paris’s Gare de Lyon station and walked forward a few steps to allow others off the train behind her. She took a deep breath and swiftly regretted it, as the mingled aromas of engine grease and coal smoke struck her lungs. She coughed into her hand and moved further onto the platform, away from the engine and its belches of steam and smoke.
The fresh air she had taken for granted in the countryside of Burgundy was sorely missing from this hub of movement and chatter, but the polluted air brought with it some compensation – this was Paris; dynamic, exciting Paris.
Fen tentatively breathed in again, this time accustomed to the tang of metal in the air, and a flood of memories washed over her. She may not yet be home, but Paris and its particular aromas was almost as good as.
The letter she’d written to her former landlady – the indomitable Mrs B – and good friends was clasped in her hand. It was marked for West Sussex in southern England, which had been her base when she had worked for the Woman’s Land Army in the war. Lots of young women from all walks of life had become land girls, as they’d been called, and meeting young Kitty, who was local to that part of England, and clever, kind Dilys, who had been posted there from Wales, had been light relief to the hard graft of field work. They’d been through so much together and, now, just holding their names in her hand, helped her feel close to them again.
Fen stifled a yawn and wiped the sleep from her eyes. It was early morning and the light from the sun, which was stubbornly showing itself time and again from behind equally as persistent clouds, was diffused through vast panes of glass, hundreds of feet above her.
Externally, the Gare de Lyon was one of Paris’s most expressive stations, with its monumental arches, mansard roof windows and traditional continental clock tower, but here on the platform there was less ornamentation, and function trumped form, with only wooden benches and newspaper kiosks as decoration.
Fen looked at the other disembarking passengers around her, shielding themselves from the belches of steam and scurrying along with suitcases or unruly children grasped by their wrists. They seemed more solemn than Fen remembered the citizens of Paris to be. Had the gaiety she remembered from her childhood packed up and left as the first wave of enemy soldiers had arrived?
Fenella Churche, known to most as Fen, had had a rather unusual upbringing for a middle-class Englishwoman, in that she had grown up here in Paris, due to her father accepting a job at the world-renowned École des Beaux-Arts back in 1924. The family – that being her parents and older brother, plus the small menagerie of two cats, a dog, a tortoise and a gerbil – had left the leafy suburb of Oxford where they had lived and made their home in the artistic Left Bank area of Paris. And there she had grown up, in the somewhat louche world of artists and writers, until her father had moved them all back to Oxford to take up a new professorship in 1935.
She found herself back here now, in the city she had lived in until she was eighteen years old and had always loved, as it pulled itself back together, following the occupation and subsequent routing of the German army from its streets. This wasn’t her first stop in post-war France. For the last few weeks she had been living and working in a small vineyard in Burgundy, on the trail of her fiancé, Arthur Melville-Hare, who had left her various coded letters that had helped
her solve the mystery of his own disappearance.
It was never far from Fen’s mind, however, that those clues were all she had left now of her clever, brave fiancé. He had been killed in the war, and although it broke her heart whenever she thought of him, at least she had found her answer. He was at peace now, the horrors of the war could no longer haunt him, as they did so many other men and women, and for Fen it had been not knowing if he was alive or dead, captured or wounded, that had been the very worst. In some way, slowly, now she could start to find her own peace, too.
Fen placed her sturdy brown suitcase down on the platform and waited for her travel companion to join her. Captain James Lancaster had been a huge help to Fen in solving the crimes they’d stumbled across in Burgundy and, what’s more, he had been a good friend to Arthur. Fen felt comforted by his presence, and all the way since changing trains at Dijon, he had been telling her what he was allowed to about his and Arthur’s certain style of war work. As members of the highly secretive Special Operations Executive, they had been parachuted in to aid the local Resistance cells, sabotaging the advancing and occupying German army in any way they could. Heartbreakingly, this brave work had cost Arthur his life.
‘Here we are,’ James pulled his own kitbag off the train and came to stand next to Fen. He stretched his long limbs out, reaching his arms up and ruffling his straw-like blond hair with one of his hands on its way down.
The journey had been a long one compared to pre-war speeds; as Fen had reported back to her friends, military trains took priority over civilian trips, and there were also still craters in some of the lines, due to either the retreating Germans or guerrilla-style subterfuge of the Resistance during the occupation. It was a stark reminder that although the war had officially been declared over in May, France was still very much feeling the after-effects of it all.
‘Hats, gloves and coats?’ Fen said, parroting the sort of thing her mother used to say whenever they’d travelled.
‘Check, check and check,’ James replied, holding up his long khaki-coloured dispatch rider’s coat while checking its pockets for his leather gloves.
‘You’ll be pleased of that now the weather’s on the change,’ Fen remarked, wondering if her own thin cotton trench coat would suffice, and if she had sufficient funds in her pocketbook to afford a new, slightly warmer one. At least she had her thick wool jumpers: one was standard War Office issue from when she had been farming in the fields to help the war effort, and one had been hand-knitted by Mrs B and it had kept her warm on many a cold and muddy morning in West Sussex. À la mode they may not be, but the one from Mrs B now carried with it the distinction of not just being warm but having recently saved Fen from the worst effects of a bayonet.
She shuddered at the memory of that night up in the attic rooms of the château in Burgundy and pulled her trench coat around her, tightening the belt a notch. Using the glass windows of one of the kiosks as a mirror, Fen checked that her hair was still as neatly curled and styled as it could be after a night on the train – her chestnut locks were not known for their obedience to hairpins – and pursed her lips to apply some lipstick in lieu of a decent wash and brush-up.
Popping the tube of Revlon back into her bag, she turned to James again and said, ‘I just hope I pass muster among the fashionable ladies of Paris!’
Her comment made James look down at his own outfit. He’d spent most of the war working undercover in the vineyard where Fen had met him, and his clothes hadn’t been any smarter than they’d needed to be for that. She now noticed him frown slightly at his own woollen trousers and ill-fitting waistcoat, worn over a button-up shirt. He’d spent a few hundred francs at the local tailor in Morey-Fontaine, the small town they’d been staying in, but the result wasn’t exactly high fashion either. Fen had to remind herself that ‘a few hundred francs’ wasn’t worth that much these days, barely a pound, more like twelve shillings or so.
He’s filthy rich… hadn’t those been Arthur’s words to describe his friend in the letter he left for her in Morey-Fontaine? Fen smiled as she thought about it – no man could look less like some wealthy heir than the one standing in front of her now.
‘They’ll just have to take us as they find us.’ James shrugged and picked up his kitbag, then, without asking, picked up Fen’s small suitcase too.
‘Thank you, but I can carry that myself.’ Fen stretched her arm out.
‘If you insist,’ James said, and Fen nodded.
‘I do. If you can’t carry it, don’t pack it, eh?’
‘Quite right,’ James agreed and deliberately dropped her case on the ground and strode off towards the station concourse.
‘How rude!’ Fen called out after him, but then she laughed; only a week or so ago, she really did think his personality ran no deeper than the gruff countenance he put on – another warm protective coat as it were – and would have genuinely thought him devoid of manners or civility. Now, however, his gruffness had become rather a running joke and she knew he’d take her in jest.
She was proved right when he turned around and winked at her. ‘Come on then, slowcoach, let’s find this lodging of yours.’
Two
Before they’d left Morey-Fontaine, Fen had written to an old family friend of hers, Rose Coillard, to ask if she and James could stay with her in her apartment near the École des Beaux-Arts. Fen had bunked down with her for one night last month as she’d changed trains in Paris on her way to Burgundy and they’d barely scratched the surface of what they wanted to catch up on. Madame Coillard – as she had first been introduced to Fen all those years ago – had been a colleague of Fen’s father, Professor John Churche, but more than that, she had been – and still was – her parents’ very good friend.
Fen would most likely lose count if she tried to remember all the times her family and Rose had dined together, or spent afternoons in the Louvre, the Tuileries Gardens or paddling on the sandy shore of the Seine at Île de la Jatte to the north of the city. Rose had tried, on those occasions, to teach the two unruly English children the wonders of the Impressionists, showing them with her own easel and brushes how those turn-of-the-century artists had marvelled at the dappled light and swiftness of moving time. More often than not, she’d come second in the race for their attention, narrowly pipped by the ice cream cart, but as Fen had matured from a young girl to an insightful and diligent teenager, she had grown closer to the mildly eccentric art teacher and even attended a few of her classes at the école, despite being by far the youngest in the studio. So, it was no surprise that Rose’s apartment was the first place that Fen thought of when she realised they would be passing through Paris again.
Sadly, the postal system being not quite as efficient as it once was meant that Fen hadn’t received a reply from Rose before they’d left Burgundy after bearing witness at the murderer’s trial. With Arthur gone and his disappearance solved there had been no point in staying on at the vineyard, and James had offered to chaperone her to Paris. So here they were, walking together towards Madame C’s apartment on the Rue des Beaux-Arts, with Fen hoping their early-morning arrival wouldn’t be too much of a surprise.
The apartment was on one of the upper floors of a six-storey building. The road itself was an elegant, if not particularly long, one. At one end stood the famous college of fine art itself, its imposing stone gateposts topped with oversized busts of artists Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Puget. Fen had been through those gates a hundred times or more in her youth, going to see her father in his study and listening in to lectures on every aspect of art, from Byzantine icons to modern topics, such as the Fauves and Cubism.
The ground floors of most of the street’s buildings were given over to shops and, due to the artistic nature of the neighbourhood, art galleries too. The war had taken its toll and some were now boarded up and others empty, while the lucky few still traded and displayed one or two decent-looking paintings in ornate gold frames in their windows.
There was a dressmaker on
the street, too, with two lively-looking mannequins in the window wearing what must have been the latest in post-war fashions – cinch-waisted skirts and delicate swoop-necked blouses. Gold lettering above the door announced the services of a Dufrais et Filles – Dufrais and Daughters – and Fen wondered if the dressmaker and his or her daughters were there now, needles in hand, discussing trends for the autumn and winter season and planning spring fashions for 1946. She had a little money with her, and Fen knew the temptation to spend it all on something fabulous, rather than the more practical option of an overcoat, may well bring her back to that delightful-looking tailor as soon as she had a spare hour or so.
Each building on the street had a slightly different character, some with more ornate Juliet balconies, others with shutters at their windows or fancy classical-style podiums to their doors. They were all in what you’d call the French Imperial style, similar to many buildings built in the time of the great reformer Haussman, and, although suffering from a few years of neglect, elegant to the last.
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