[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris

by Fliss Chester

  Fen held her tongue from saying something about Rose not meaning to get herself killed, but it was as if Joseph was reading her mind.

  ‘Look at me, thinking only of myself and my paintings when our dear friend has died.’ Joseph accepted the cup of weak tea from Fen and carried on. ‘It’s appalling of me. But it’s Magda I feel so sorry for now. She was so looking forward to spending more time with wonderful Rose.’

  Fen nodded and then turned to him again. ‘Joseph, I wonder if I might be able to help?’

  ‘Well, Magda will love to spend time with you, too.’

  ‘Oh, well, yes, of course, me too. But I meant about your paintings.’

  ‘Really?’ Joseph looked at her keenly.

  ‘I think her solicitor should possibly go through Rose’s things first, but after that, well, we can have a jolly good go at trying to find the cipher and start decoding the list ourselves. Think about it, it was only Henri and Rose who knew about the list and her code. Rose was keen for them to be kept separate… and we know Henri had the list, so that suggests to me that the cipher is in this apartment somewhere.’

  ‘You might be on to something there.’ Joseph sucked his teeth, but looked brighter and reached across the chaise for his hat. ‘Thank you, Fenella.’

  ‘Don’t thank me too soon, I have no idea who her solicitor is yet, but don’t worry, I’ll do whatever I can to help.’

  Fen saw Joseph out and walked back into the studio, letting Tipper down as she entered the room.

  Simone had reappeared and was painting her nails a wonderfully vibrant shade of red. She held the freshly glossy tips of her fingers up to Fen. ‘Urgh, Tipper, non… non!’ She tried to bat the frenetic little dog away with her elbow and Fen ended up picking him up and taking him back into the hallway.

  ‘Slave to fashion, huh, Tipper? We better find those solicitor’s details by ourselves,’ Fen whispered into his ear as she carefully opened the door off the hallway that led into the box room. Squirmy as he was, holding the warm little body of the dog close to her was a lovely reassurance for Fen as she stood on the threshold of her murdered friend’s bedroom. It was untouched since the police had been in to take fingerprints, and of course she’d had a look around too in the commotion to try to see if anything had been taken by the supposed thief.

  The room was smaller than either hers or Simone’s, but it was lit by another of the vast floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over the street at the front of the building. The light was marvellous, with a clarity to it that so often comes when rain has passed and the sun is gently suffused by scudding clouds. Rose would have loved this light, Fen thought. No wonder she chose this smaller room over the other spare one.

  She caught sight of the upturned jewellery box on the small dressing table and a pang of grief stopped her in her tracks. Long strings of beads bled out over the side, while brooches littered the floor around the dressing table. Fen instinctively raised her hand to touch her own brooch, which had been stolen – but thankfully returned – in Burgundy. Having one’s belongings turned over like this was such a violation…

  Not as violating as death, she thought, shaking her head and dispelling the maudlin thoughts. ‘We’re more sensible than this, aren’t we, Tipper,’ Fen told the small dog as she wiped a tear away from her eye.

  Tipper didn’t answer but did poke his nose under the bed, nudging the floor-skimming quilt as he did so, and Fen followed his lead and started to look under there for anything that might point her in the direction of her friend’s solicitor.

  ‘Perhaps there was no will?’ Simone’s voice gave Fen a start and she looked up from rummaging under the bed to see the younger woman, resting her hip against the door jamb, her hands still splayed out in front of her as her nails dried.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Fen pushed a box of dried oil paint tubes back under the bed and sat back on her heels. ‘But she was a woman who made lists, we know that much for sure, and it makes me suspect that, far from being the scatty artist, she was in fact a meticulous record keeper.’

  ‘If you say so. Oh, one moment…’ Simone flapped her hands to help dry the polish and disappeared out of view.

  Fen had just sat herself down on the bed and spread out a box of paperwork on the counterpane when Simone reappeared holding a thin piece of paper carefully between her thumb and forefinger.

  ‘It wasn’t like we had a formal agreement or anything, but when I moved in, madame did want a reference from me sent to a Monsieur Blanquer…’ She held out the piece of paper to Fen, who reached out and took it from her.

  ‘Well, would you look at that! Thank you, Simone. Monsieur Blanquer, notary etcetera, etcetera. Paris 8659. Perfect.’

  Simone smiled and left Fen to telephone and make the appointment with the solicitor.

  Twenty-Four

  It was with more than a dash of good luck that Monsieur Blanquer’s assistant was available to schedule in an appointment for eleven o’clock the following morning, and Fen made the arrangements on the telephone accordingly. She then put a call into Joseph Bernheim, catching another of his building’s tenants on the communal telephone who promised to leave him the message that he should call round to Rose’s apartment at around noon the next day. With those tasks done, Fen decided that a visit to one or other of the Arnault brothers was in order.

  Gervais sounded like he might have the most to gain from killing Rose, if indeed she had threatened to turn him in to the police for his Mob connections, but Antoine seemed like the brother with the most brain cells, and perhaps he’d be able to shed some light on what shady business his brother Gervais was caught up in. And if Rose was caught up in it, too.

  But the rain that had been on and off that morning had settled in properly for the afternoon and Fen didn’t think her poor trench coat would keep her dry if it had to take another soaking. And as much as she had admired Rose’s sense of style, she wasn’t sure she could pull off wearing one of her flamboyant patchwork overcoats around town.

  Instead, Fen settled down to write a letter home, telling her parents the sad news of their friend’s death. She wiped away tears as they now fell onto the page, as persistent as the long drips that raced down the unshuttered windows of the apartment. She wondered if she should try to contact her brother too, still serving as the army gradually demobbed in North Africa, but she wasn’t sure she had the emotional strength to write the words Rose is dead one more time.

  Just as she was sealing the envelope to her parents, there was a knock at the door that sent Tipper into paroxysms of barking.

  ‘Oh they’re so beautiful! Such colours!’ Fen could hear Simone, who had rushed to answer the door this time – obviously all thoughts of murderers coming back to stalk them gone from her mind – talking to James in the hallway.

  Tipper scampered back into the studio and Fen scooped him up, smiling as he writhed in happiness at the attention. She put him down and he soon went back to licking the small pieces of toast, with a thin scraping of pâté on them, that Fen had been feeding him before James’s arrival. They both looked up though as Simone led James into the room. It was hard to see Simone through the size of the bouquet she was holding.

  ‘Look, Fenella, see what James has brought me!’

  ‘It’s just a little token, to brighten up the apartment somewhat. Afraid I had to drop a few francs in the local tailor, no sign of that shirt of mine turning up. And the florist was next door, so…’ James said and then wrinkled his nose. ‘Bloody hell, what is that smell?’

  ‘Bleach,’ Fen said as she quickly withdrew her fingers from Tipper’s sharp little teeth.

  ‘I had a whim,’ Simone explained, cocking her head on one side. ‘I could not bear the thought of dear Rose’s blood being here, so I scrubbed and scrubbed.’ She placed the bouquet on the chaise longue and showed James her hands. ‘They are better now, thanks to Fen and her hand cream, but I will be in trouble at work tomorrow if they think I can’t model like this.’ She scooped the bouquet up again a
nd took it into her bedroom. Fen watched her as she went, wondering if the flowers would make it back out to help brighten up the whole apartment, or just her room.

  ‘And how are you?’ James asked Fen as he took the seat opposite her.

  ‘Oh, you know, coping.’ Fen let Tipper lick some of the meat paste off her fingers. ‘How did you get on with canvassing the other residents?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, interesting bunch. Afraid I didn’t get a chance to talk to them all, several unanswered doors and all that. The countess, though, she was a card. Dressed like an Edwardian grande dame and dripping in diamonds. I had to answer about forty questions about who I was and what I wanted before she opened the door even an inch. Eventually, she let me in and told me that she’d decided to wear all of her jewels as she felt safer with them on her, now that there’s a burglar on the loose.’

  ‘Oh dear, the police are definitely going down that route then, telling everyone that this was just a robbery gone wrong?’

  ‘Seems so. She did say something interesting though.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Fen’s curiosity was piqued.

  ‘Yes, she said every time someone comes to call on Rose, she can hear Tipper barking. She says it upsets her Persian cat. Funny snouty-nosed thing it is too. Called Tsarina. Anyway, I digress. She said that yesterday afternoon she only heard Tipper bark once at about two o’clock.’

  Fen sat up and Tipper jumped off her lap. ‘Once?’

  ‘That’s what she said. I didn’t ask Tsarina.’

  Fen ignored his joke. ‘Once… Two o’clock was when Joseph Bernheim was meant to call…’ Fen was lost in thought for a moment. ‘So there was a visitor? Now, does that explain the burglary-gone-wrong idea? Or…’

  ‘Or what?’

  Fen brushed some of Tipper’s hairs off her knees and dislodged a few crumbs from the toast too. She wasn’t sure how James would take Henri’s theory about the Arnault brothers, since he was on relatively friendly terms with them, so she took a deep breath and came right out with it. ‘I spoke to Henri Renaud and he suggested it might be one, or both, I suppose, of the Arnault brothers.’

  ‘Really? What have they got against Rose? I thought they all worked together?’

  ‘He thinks Gervais might have fallen in with a bad lot and Rose might have forced his hand by threatening to shop him to the police.’

  ‘A bad lot?’ James furrowed his brow.

  ‘You know, gangsters and the like.’

  ‘Gangsters? What utter tosh!’ James clapped his hands down on his knees. ‘I don’t think Gervais could fight his way out of a croissant, let alone get involved with some sort of mafiosi.’

  ‘Henri called him Gervais “The Wrench”…’

  This just made James laugh.

  ‘We should at least check their alibis,’ Fen suggested, and James, recovered from his laughing fit nodded, then shook his head.

  ‘I just can’t picture it… I suppose Henri had an alibi ready of his own?’

  ‘Yes. And he offered it most readily. In his own gallery apparently, on the phone to London, asking about watercolours. I suppose we could check that out somehow if we think we need to.’

  ‘No stone and all that. He shouldn’t slander Gervais, or Antoine, come to think of it.’ James shook his head. ‘Just because a chap’s not in a three-piece suit…’

  ‘I know, I know. You weren’t with them, yesterday afternoon, I mean? To provide an alibi?’

  ‘No… but that’s not to say they’re—’

  He was interrupted by Simone coming back into the studio, changed and dressed ready for a night out. She looked demurely elegant, dressed in black to honour Rose, yet the flashes of red at the end of her nails kept her looking more glamorous than grieving. She began clipping two large pearls to her ears and clasped a neat little bag under her elbow. She closed her bedroom door behind her before Fen could see if she’d found a vase for the flowers.

  ‘Gosh, don’t you look pretty,’ Fen complimented Simone, relieved to have a change of subject – she hadn’t liked the tension that had building between her and James in regards to the Arnault brothers. ‘What super pearls.’

  Simone finished clipping them onto her ears and smiled, meekly. ‘They were a present from dear Rose.’

  ‘How lucky the thief didn’t raid our rooms,’ Fen caught herself thinking out loud.

  ‘Yes,’ Simone agreed. ‘Ready, James?’

  ‘Yes.’ He got up to leave, but then hovered by where Fen was still sitting, Tipper now gently snoring on her lap. ‘I’ll come with you tomorrow. To go and question Antoine and Gervais. I don’t want you heading over to that part of town, and, well, especially not if Henri is correct.’

  ‘Thank you, James.’ Fen smiled up and him and then shooed him away. Personally she couldn’t contemplate a night out, not so soon after Rose had died, but then people grieved in different ways. Perhaps Simone needed the distraction to help her cope with the shock. With this in mind, Fen tried her best to sound jolly. ‘Now go and have fun, you two.’

  Simone waved and was gone with barely a backward glance, while James hesitated just slightly before wishing Fen a good night. ‘Just you and me then tonight, Tipper,’ Fen said as she wandered through to the kitchen to see what else she could scrape together from Rose’s rapidly diminishing cupboards. The day had taken its toll on her, emotionally at least, and while they were gallivanting she was happy to have a quiet and early night.

  Before bed, though, that evening she did find the napkin she’d been writing on and carefully printed out two more words on the grid.

  She wasn’t sure why quite yet, but the little dog who was now curled up at the end of her bed kept coming to mind, and, of course, with the Arnaults possibly involved, it made her think of Rose’s list of paintings and how they all had a hand in the scheme. Fen also wondered, as she wrote the words down, if someone had had a hand in something altogether less virtuous to do with all that artwork, and if that had led to Rose’s death?

  Twenty-Five

  Fen woke up with the napkin stuck between her cheek and the pillow. She peeled it away from her skin as she blinked her eyes open and then looked at the words again. There was definitely something ringing out at her about them… Paintbrush, cipher, forgeries, chameleon, Tipper, list… Why had those words stuck out to her in particular? She recited the words over again and then put the napkin to one side and slipped out of the blankets.

  She had barely opened her bedroom door when she was met by a soft wet nose and a ball of fluffy energy and Fen leaned down and picked up Tipper.

  ‘Good morning and goodbye Fen,’ Simone called out from the hallway and Fen called back a goodbye as she carried Tipper to the kitchen, where she found some meat scraps for him for his breakfast.

  ‘Looks like I’ll have to sweet-talk the butcher this morning for you,’ she said as she stroked the little dog between the ears as his muzzle was deep in his food bowl. Fen’s own stomach rumbled and she added, ‘And for me, too, I think.’

  With thoughts of crispy bacon sandwiches and a proper roast leg of lamb milling around her head, she washed and dressed and then took Tipper out to the courtyard garden so he could uncross his legs. She was back up in the apartment and ready in good time for James’s arrival. He knocked on the door at 8.30 a.m. sharp and was heralded by Tipper yapping.

  ‘Calm down, fella,’ James knelt down and played with the dog, winding it round in circles as it followed his hand.

  ‘You’re just winding him up, James,’ Fen ticked him off as she led him through to the studio.

  ‘You’d think he’d know me by now, wouldn’t you?’

  Fen laughed, not unkindly, but she teased him with the thought that perhaps Tipper knew exactly what he was doing, protecting the ladies of the house…

  ‘I’ll have you know that I left Simone chastely untouched and by this very front door by eleven o’clock last night.’

  Fen chuckled again. ‘I know! I heard you both not very chastely saying goodbye
in the corridor!’

  James blushed slightly and shrugged his shoulder and murmured something about the ‘heat of the moment’ and ‘best intentions’.

  ‘Anyway, you’ve already missed her, I’m afraid – she headed off at the crack of dawn to get to work.’

  ‘Did Tipper alert you to that fact?’ James crouched down and started playing with the miniature poodle again.

  ‘No, Simone and I obviously pose no excitement whatsoever for the little beast.’ Fen grinned indulgently at the dog, then sighed. ‘And I’ll have you know I was up and about in time to say goodbye to her. Sort of. Anyway, I suppose we better get this visit to Antoine over with. I have Monsieur Blanquer the solicitor arriving at eleven, so we better get a move on.’

  The two of them took the bus to the north of the city, where the ancient Gothic cathedral of St Denis stood in what was now an area of small residential streets and industrial warehousing. Fen had studied the great cathedral church under Rose’s supervision during her art lessons and knew all about the beautiful stained-glass windows that would apparently bring the congregation closer to the light of heaven.

  It was a lovely thought, and no doubt the birthplace of what became the Gothic style of architecture, but St Denis held a darker secret too. The old barracks in the neighbourhood had been an internment camp during the war, for political prisoners and citizens of Allied countries caught in the crossfire of the occupation. Fen shivered a little as the bus dropped them close by to where thousands of innocent people had been sorted and labelled and sent on to perhaps even less desirable places.

  The address of the warehouse was just around the corner and a few minutes later they stood in front of what looked like a large farm building, similar to the cinder-block winery they had both worked in in Burgundy last month. The blocks made up the first ten foot or so of external wall, and then corrugated metal took over. There were no windows, but there was a large grey door, which James pushed open.