Night Train to Paris by Fliss Chester (best romantic novels to read txt) 📗

all over again to tell him of her terrible news. She sat herself down in one of the gold-edged fancy chairs the other side of his vast desk and recounted the recent, awful, events.

‘Oh dear, oh dear indeed. Oh dear, dear, dear.’ Henri was visibly moved and distracted himself by taking his glasses off and giving them a long and thoughtful polish as he muttered ‘Oh dear’ over and over again.

‘I’m so sorry, Monsieur Renaud, I know you two were close.’

‘We did some excellent work together.’ He replaced his glasses onto his nose.

‘The police think it was a burglary gone wrong, but I’m not so—’

‘Oh yes, yes. Possibly possibly. She gave out that key of hers to every former pupil, lodger and art enthusiast.’ As Henri spoke, Fen felt her own key to Rose’s apartment in her pocket and had to admit that it had been given freely. But they were old friends…

‘I don’t know…’

‘And I think I can count on one hand the times it’s even been locked,’ he continued, then he paused to think. ‘I’ll tell you who the police should be interviewing. That set of useless men who hang around in the bar at the end of the road!’ Henri looked rather triumphant with his suggestion.

‘Who do you mean?’

‘Oh, I don’t know their names… let me think… Louis something and Jacques…’ he scratched his forehead as he tried to remember. ‘The Arnault brothers, they’d be a good bet, too.’

‘Gervais and Antoine?’ Fen thought of James and Simone’s slightly buffoonish friends. Then she remembered Gervais’s boasting from a couple of evenings ago. Of course Henri knew him.

‘Yes, yes. Fat little Gervais with his gap teeth and constant cheroot. He drove lorries for us in the war. Gervais “The Wrench” we called him. Antoine looks after my warehouse in St Denis, and I know he worries about his brother.’

‘Gervais mentioned he drove lorries for you the other night…’

‘Did he now? So much for confidentiality. But I suppose none of us has secrets any more. What’s the point?’

‘So what was he actually doing?’

‘This place,’ he waved his hand in the air, ‘we knew it would be a target for the Nazi trophy hunters. Yes, they were interested in the “legitimate”, or so they called it, stealing from the Jews, but they wanted the real masterpieces. The Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa. We had to remove as much art as possible before the occupation. Countless masterpieces driven to châteaux around the country. The Mona Lisa was moved several times in an attempt to hide her from Herr Hitler.’

Fen sat back and took it all in. ‘Rose said as much, but I didn’t realise that the greatest treasures of the art world were left in the slightly grubby hands of a lorry driver like Gervais.’

‘Indeed. All hands on deck at the time.’

Even though Fen hadn’t exactly warmed to Gervais, something nagged at her. ‘If he was deemed responsible enough only, what, a year or so ago—’

‘Six years now. September 1939 we moved the Mona Lisa.’

‘And he worked for you after that too?’ Fen remembered now that Gervais had spoken about working for the Germans emptying Jewish apartments.

‘Yes, he did. I needed someone I could trust to work with me and Rose on the moving of the artwork. You see,’ he sat forward and addressed her more seriously, ‘the way it worked was that Gervais would take the contents of the apartments to the warehouse where his brother worked.’

‘You said it was your warehouse, yes?’

‘I lease it, yes, for my own collection that won’t fit into my gallery in the Palais du Jardins.’ He sat back again. ‘In any case, we needed a team we could trust. They would deliver the crates of artwork to the warehouse and unpack them. Then, using Rose’s list and her encoded names, they would carefully mark up the paintings in some way – chalk on the back of the frames or a pencil on the back of the canvas – and then repack the paintings ready for delivery to the auctioneers or the Jeu de Paumes gallery.’

‘I recognise that name.’ Fen thought back to her life in Paris in the 1930s.

‘As a good friend of Rose, so you should. She exhibited there alongside Matisse and Picasso, though perhaps that was after you left Paris? In any case, the ERR, the official looting squad of the Nazis, requisitioned it as the holding post for their plunder. Göring himself visited it, ooof, twenty times at least, to cherry-pick his favourite pieces for his and Hitler’s collections, and of course those for the German nation.’

‘Did you meet them, Göring and the ERR officers?’

‘Many times, yes.’

‘What were they like?’ Fen knew her natural curiosity was dragging her off track, but she couldn’t help but ask.

Henri took his glasses off again and gave them another rub with his handkerchief. ‘Unimpressive, if you must know. Though intimidating, of course, as anyone is who holds the power of life and death over so many people.’

Fen took it all in. It really had been a daring and courageous plan. What had gone on afterwards, in the Jeu de Paumes gallery, was almost too tragic to contemplate. Stolen treasures picked over and judged merely on monetary value and racist ideals. No wonder Rose had tried so hard in her own way to make sure as much of it as possible could be returned to its rightful owners.

Rose… Fen brought her mind back to who might have killed her.

‘So why,’ Fen asked Henri once his glasses were back on and pushed up the bridge of his nose, ‘do you think the Arnault brothers would rob and kill Rose? You both trusted them.’

‘Ah, well… things had become a little strained between Rose and the Arnaults.’ He paused. ‘Gervais is what you might call the “enforcer” of the two, more clever with a wrench, if you catch my drift.’

‘Hence the nickname,’ Fen all but whispered, while Henri nodded.

‘And his adeptness with that tool, in all senses, led him into the path