‘What is it, Fen?’ James asked, lowering the newspaper from in front of his face.
Fen was speechless, but James followed her eyeline down to where the letter had floated gently to the floor. Then she picked up the envelope again, reminding herself that preserving the sender’s fingerprints would be no use as countless postal workers must have touched it. It was only as she was staring at it, reading the handwritten address, that she realised that there was no stamp, no postmark. It had been hand-delivered.
Twenty-Seven
‘Whoever this is from,’ Fen could feel herself shivering slightly as she held the letter between her forefinger and thumb, subconsciously distancing herself from its filthy contents, ‘is more than likely our prime suspect now.’
James nodded. ‘Lazard?’
Fen thought back to the words. I know you’re no better than a dirty thief… ‘If it was Lazard, wouldn’t he blackmail her on her forging rather than collaborating or stealing?’
‘True, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But then…’
‘What?’
‘Well, it doesn’t make sense to us as we – you – very much believe that Rose was this wonderful person, an angel of the arts.’
‘She was.’ Fen put the letter down on the coffee table and braced herself for a mini war of words with her friend. ‘And Henri said so too.’
‘HR…’ James pointed towards the letter, while Fen frowned at him. ‘All I’m saying is that the blackmailer seems to think there’s something even Henri didn’t know about his dear friend.’
‘No, no…’ Fen shook her head. ‘It just doesn’t make sense. Forging, fine, I can get my head around that, though I still don’t think she miss-sold any paintings on purpose. But it’s a grey area morally and I think Rose was in need of a few extra francs. But stealing? No. And she definitely wouldn’t collaborate. You saw her passion when she talked about her cipher and her list. She was desperate to help the Jewish families get what’s rightfully theirs back. No, I’m sorry, James, but, whoever this blackmailer is, he or she has it quite wrong.’
Before James could play devil’s advocate one more time, the doorbell buzzed and Tipper, who had curled up again in the warm armchair seat while Fen and James had been standing looking at the letter, jumped into action and yapped his way to the door.
Fen pulled her cardigan tight around her and left James mulling over the hateful letter.
‘Oh, hello, Joseph.’ She kissed him on both cheeks.
‘Good day, Fenella.’ Joseph Bernheim paused before he entered the apartment. ‘You look upset, are you quite well?’
Fen wasn’t sure if she was ready to share the secrets of the blackmailer’s letter with anyone else yet, not even Joseph, so quickly thought on her feet and replied, ‘Quite well, thank you. It’s all just becoming more real, I suppose, the sense that Rose is gone forever.’ It may have started out as a cover for her current upset, but Fen had to admit that as she said the words she felt them very keenly too.
‘Gone, but not forgotten.’ Joseph took a moment, then, as was his habit, started passing the brim of his hat through his fingertips as he spoke. ‘When we realised that my parents hadn’t made it, it didn’t seem real at first. How could two such lively, musical and artistic people be silenced? But the days wear on and the grief thickens until you feel like you will drown in it. Then, very slowly, if you are lucky, it lifts, just very slightly, and you can catch a breath. You will find that happens too, I hope.’
‘Thank you, Joseph.’ Fen stood back and let him into the apartment. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard what became of them, yours and Magda’s parents, I mean?’
‘Just this morning…’ Joseph shook his head, and reached his hand up to squeeze the bridge of his nose.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Joseph, I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘No, no. We mustn’t skirt around this as if we’re in polite society and what happened to them was merely unfortunate.’ He took a deep breath and regained his composure. At that moment, Fen thought that she had never seen a braver man stand in front of her. He continued, ‘Just this morning, we had confirmation from the Red Cross of what we believed to be the case anyway; that my parents are dead. Magda’s we still have hope for, if there could be anything as beautiful as hope ever whispered in the same breath as those death camps.’
‘I’m so sorry, Joseph,’ Fen replied, touching him briefly on the arm.
‘Thank you, Fenella. But now is not the time to dwell on my grief. No, now’s the time to continue Rose’s work, don’t you think? I received your message. Has the solicitor been?’
Fen nodded and showed Joseph through to the studio room. She then heaved Rose’s old carpetbag onto the coffee table along with the boxes of paperwork she’d found in the bedroom, glad that James had had the foresight to remove the blackmailer’s letter before Joseph had sat down on the chaise longue.
‘Here we go,’ Fen sighed. ‘Just about everything, I suppose, unless she has any loose floorboards around here.’
Joseph looked up at her as if she wasn’t joking, and she bit her lip and shrugged.
‘Well, let’s start here anyway,’ he said. ‘And I hope you don’t think me callous or opportunistic,’ he said as he started pulling out some of Rose’s personal belongings, including a spare paintbrush, some throat lozenges and a fabric tape measure, ‘but it’s because I feel that she was on the brink of finding something out about my family’s artworks that I want to keep going. Not let the trail go cold, as they say in the American films.’
‘We understand, of course, Joseph,’ Fen replied as she picked up the tape measure and wrapped it around her fingers, threading it through each digit as she watched Joseph now meticulously lay out the paperwork that had been languishing at the bottom of the bag, some of it stuck to a half-sucked boiled sweet.
‘Here we go,’ he said as he placed the bag back on the floor and started to read through the papers.
‘I know she had the original list back from Henri,’ Fen felt rather differently saying Henri’s name now, since he was mentioned, if only by his initials, in that ghastly letter. ‘Although I don’t know how far she’d got in decoding it.’
‘Let’s see, shall we…’
The three of them looked over the papers and slowly it became apparent that Rose had started to transcribe the original list, although none of the coding had had the benefit of her cipher – it was still unintelligible.
Fen noticed the colour pale from Joseph’s face, though, as he ran his finger down the list of the artworks.
‘What is it, Joseph?’
‘These descriptions… Rose has stopped transcribing her list here, at these paintings.’
‘Why was she transcribing the list at all?’ James asked, ‘If Henri had given her the original?’
‘I suppose just because there was only one copy and perhaps Rose wanted a more work-a-day one for her own scribbles,’ Fen answered and then turned back to Joseph. ‘What have you noticed?’
‘She’s stopped copying the list at my family’s artworks.’ Joseph sat back and rubbed his hand across his brow. ‘Look, this Degas that they describe, the ballerina at the barre, that was… is one of ours. And the Cezanne of the bowl of fruit against a grey background, that was always in mother’s salon.’
‘Perhaps she was interrupted?’ James ventured.
‘Or maybe these handwritten scribbles in the original have something to do with it.’ Fen pointed at a neatly written addition in the margin of the original list. ‘Anyone good with their German?’
‘Let me see.’ James took the list and held it close to his face. ‘This is a note to say that the painting was to be sent to auction, and the Cezanne too. Rather than go back to Germany, I assume.’
‘Henri said that was what they did to the “degenerate” art that was worth money but didn’t align to the Nazi ideals. But the Degas and Cezanne, they aren’t that sort of painting.’
‘Was there any sign of the cipher in the b
ag?’ James asked, while Joseph stared at the inscriptions alongside his family’s paintings. ‘With Joseph knowing that those paintings are his, there should be an encrypted BERNHEIM somewhere near them. It could be the key to cracking the cipher, if we had any idea what sort of cipher it is.’
Fen pulled out a length of string, some receipts from the grocer and a few more slightly grubby boiled sweets from the bag, but then shrugged. ‘Nothing I can see that looks like a secret code book.’
‘Hmm. Joseph, are you sure those are your paintings listed?’ James asked.
‘Of course I am!’
‘We believe you of course,’ Fen shot James a look. ‘But can we prove they’re yours without the code? I mean, if Rose was right and the Americans are starting to find whole caverns of the stolen artworks, then perhaps we could show this list to the authorities and use Joseph’s own testament that these are his?’
The three of them thought about this possibility for a moment. It was Joseph that broke the silence.
‘We have no proof though. The code is the proof. My family’s apartment was stripped, we escaped with what we could carry and, in hindsight, perhaps the receipts from the galleries would have been more useful than my pyjamas, but there you go.’ He seemed to physically deflate, but carried on, albeit in a much quieter voice. ‘Now everything is lost and we have no way of proving those paintings ever hung on my parents’ walls.’
‘I’m so sorry, Joseph. We will find that cipher and we will crack this code,’ Fen reassured him, and herself. She couldn’t have him face the horrible truth about his parents’ deaths and think that all hope of finding their stolen artwork was lost on the same day. ‘If those two paintings went to auction, there’s a good chance they’re still here in France. It might be easier to get them back.’
‘I don’t think any of this will be easy.’ Joseph wiped his brow again. ‘But I do appreciate your help.’
Twenty-Eight
A quick forage through Rose’s kitchen cupboards later and James and Fen had found something to stave off the stomach rumbles. It was gone 3 p.m. by the time they had finished, and Fen decided that she should go and tell Henri the news of his inheritance. James thought it an opportune moment to head back to his hotel, so it was Fen alone who had donned her hat and coat again and headed out into the streets of Paris.
By now Fen knew her way through the labyrinthine corridors of the Louvre palace rather well. She was still astounded, though, that the little door at the side of the vast building was never kept locked. Using people like Gervais to cart their treasures around the châteaux of France to save them from the Nazis was one thing; just letting someone walk out with them via the back door was quite another.
Fen fantasised for just one moment about nonchalantly walking out of the museum with her own stolen masterpiece… a Vermeer perhaps or a small Byzantine icon? Either would look super above the mantelpiece in Father’s study. The notion made her smile, but then she frowned. How easy it was to imagine these things… how easy would it actually be to follow through on an idea like this? And take your opportunity when it was presented?
Fen still felt uncomfortable doubting the integrity of her friend, but she had to get to the bottom of who killed her and she felt that Henri, despite needing to know about his inheritance, might be able to shed some light on her questions. But how much should she reveal to Rose’s partner? The worry being that if Rose was being blackmailed, was Henri being targeted too?
Sadly for Fen, her trip to the Louvre was a waste of time. The secretary who sat in the office next to Henri’s informed her that it wasn’t his day to be in the gallery and that he was no doubt at his own premises. The secretary handed Fen a note of the address and wished her good day.
Luckily, the address of Henri’s gallery, the eponymous Galerie Renaud, was in the arcades of the Jardin du Palais Royale, only a few hundred yards from the Louvre.
Fen walked the route confidently and navigated her way through the colonnaded gardens, remembering her history lesson on how the arcades had been some of the first in Paris to have glazed windows, to help the emerging middle class of the eighteenth century to window-shop. The area had always been associated with luxury goods, and a high-end private art gallery like Henri’s fitted right in with the feel of the area.
Fen, like many Parisiennes before her, couldn’t help but be attracted by the expensive wares in the windows and wondered how these shops had kept their doors open during the occupation. James’s words about his new friends and some of their black-market dealings echoed in her mind. Before she could ponder too long on the provenance of a rather lovely pair of red leather gloves, Fen saw the shopfront she was looking for. Like the others in the arcade, the Galerie Renaud had one large deep-silled window with a door next to it. In the window, there were various watercolours, framed in thin gold frames and hung, suspended in the air, by wires.
Fen took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
‘Ah Fenella,’ Henri greeted her from behind a desk at the back of the gallery. ‘I must say it is a pleasure to see you. You remind me of my dear friend, even if you have decided not to carry on the tradition of those flamboyant turbans of hers.’
Fen smiled, Henri’s stab at humour had hit the spot and relaxed her somewhat. ‘I don’t think they’d look so chic on Midhurst’s High Street. We’re more tweed skirt than silk turban there, I’m afraid.’
‘True, true. Come, sit yourself down. What can I do for you?’ Henri gestured to a chair in front of his desk. Unlike the ones in his Louvre office, these were modern and far less fussy. In fact, the whole gallery, even though it was situated in an old building, had a real air of modernity to it. The walls were painted white and the paintings were mostly very contemporary: works by the Fauves, Cubists and abstract artists hung from thin chains and made striking statements against the stark white of the walls.
Fen glanced around and then addressed the matter at hand. ‘Monsieur Renaud, Henri… I come bearing news in a way. About Rose, actually. You see, I hope you don’t mind, but I called her solicitor, a Monsieur Blanquer, who was able to come over to the apartment pretty smartish and let me know the contents of her will.’
‘Ah…’ Henri pressed his hands together and rested his chin against his fingers for a moment. Then he said something that surprised Fen a little. ‘The apartment that is now mine, I take it.’
‘Oh. You knew?’
‘As I said before, Rose and I had no secrets, well, until recently it seems. When you lived like we did, on a knife-edge, you have to absolutely trust the other person. We decided, during the war and at the height of our work, that we would bequeath each other our estates. It was the ultimate sign of faith in each other. Of course, it helped that neither Rose or I have any immediate family.’
‘I see. Well, there you go. I’m sure Monsieur Blanquer will be in touch officially, but, Henri, may I ask you a small favour?’
‘Of course, dear girl, what is it?’
‘It’s not so much for me, I can be on the next train out of here, if I must, although I do want to find out what happened to Rose… but me aside, would you allow Simone to carry on living in the apartment? I know she hasn’t much in the way of family left and, from what she’s said, they never had more than a bean to rub together anyway…’
Henri pressed his chin to his hands again, so that he could have been mistaken for praying as much as thinking. He barely took a moment’s contemplation, however, before replying, ‘I see, I see. Yes, she must stay on. A young woman like that cannot be ousted onto the streets. I shall speak to Blanquer and arrange an agreement with her, some sort of rental contract. Dear Rose, she was always so kind and I feel like I should do my best to honour her – in all aspects of her work.’
Fen smiled in relief. She would be able to tell Simone the good news this evening at least now. And from what Henri was saying about Rose, how kind and generous she was, well, it sounded like she really couldn’t have been implicated in what the blackmailer
had written about. Fen made a hasty decision to talk to Henri about it. ‘One more thing, while I’m here. Henri, I have to admit something to you.’
‘Taking that hideous carpetbag of hers home with you after all, dear girl?’
Fen smiled again, and carried on, reassured that Henri’s good humour would help them both to come to terms with what she was about to say. So she told him about finding the letter from the blackmailer as he sat there, his hands pressed against his chin again in his prayer-like pose. He listened carefully as Fen described not only the contents of the letter but the envelope in which it had arrived.
‘So, you see,’ Fen finished explaining, ‘I just couldn’t equate it in my head with the woman I knew. And I wondered, assuming you’re the “HR” the author is referring to, if you knew anything about it?’
‘I’m afraid I did, yes. But I can tell you absolutely that it is unfounded lies. As I said, Rose and I had no secrets, but I must own up to keeping this little one from you last time we spoke.’
Fen frowned a little in consternation, but didn’t interrupt Henri.
‘You see, she came to me when she received a similar letter a week or so ago. I advised her we should both do the same: ignore them.’
‘You received one too?’
‘Yes, about a week ago and again today in fact.’ He sat upright and then pulled one of the desk drawers open. From it, he retrieved an envelope that looked identical to the one that Fen had found in Rose’s mailbox. It was slightly grubby and had a handwritten address on the front. Most notably, it had also been hand-delivered as there was no stamp or franking mark on it at all. Henri carried on talking, ‘It’s nothing but a work of fiction from a racketeer who thinks he can extract a fast buck from us.’
‘I get the impression you have an idea who it’s from?’
[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris Page 15