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

‘Didn’t she?’ Valentine downed his champagne in one swig and smacked his lips. Luckily, this calmed him somewhat. ‘I’m sorry, of course, for her death. She was murdered, they say?’

‘Yes, most violently.’

‘Well, I am sorry that you have lost your friend. But Paris will not mourn the passing of Le Faussaire, I tell you that.’

‘Was she…’ Fen still couldn’t believe that Rose had been the infamous forger, but she decided that Valentine wasn’t the man to have this reasoned debate with at this moment. After a brief hesitation, Fen carried on, ‘… so very awful?’ She could feel herself on the brink of tears. Here she was in these sublime surroundings, drinking champagne with Paris’s high society, a society Rose was very much part of, and yet in this gilded room were two upstanding people, Valentine Valreas and Adrienne Tambour, who were adamant that Rose was nothing more than a tuppenny forger. Perhaps Rose Coillard wasn’t the person Fen had thought she was after all?

Luckily Valentine pressed a hand to Fen’s arm, and although his fingers felt like warm sausages, she was pleased of the comfort. Perhaps he was going to tell her that he had made a mistake.

His voice softened. ‘No. She was not awful, as you say. But her paintings have caused quite the ruckus. There is not a dealer now between here and Marseille who is not cursing her name in case one of their precious, and valuable, pieces is a fake.’

At that, Valentine Valreas nodded a goodbye to Fen and left her as he merged back into the group of patrons and philanthropists, gallery owners and Louvre staff, who were all orbiting around Henri and his friends.

Valentine’s words, and sentiments, had knocked the wind out of Fen’s sails and her heart was no longer in the party. Noticing that the Dior siblings and Pierre Balmain had already gone, on to another more fashionable party perhaps, she decided to slip out, too. She whispered her goodbyes and thanks to Henri and crept out of the back of the room and into the vast atrium of the grandest art gallery in Europe.

There was no queue for the cloakroom and moments later she was back out into the chill of the autumnal night. An owl hooted from somewhere in the Tuileries and Fen sought out a bench on which to sit so that she could loosen the buckles on the velvet T-bar shoes she’d found in Rose’s closet. They’d matched perfectly with the cobbled-together outfit, but only now as she sat down did she realise quite how much they’d been pinching all evening. The relief was exquisite and she let her back rest against the bench as she massaged her blistered feet.

While I’m here… she thought to herself, allowing herself a few minutes’ more rest, and before I forget…

Fen reached into the small evening bag she had brought with her and pulled out the table napkin from the café on which she’d started to create a crossword-like grid. She found a pencil from an old dance card at the bottom of the bag and quickly jotted down a few more words as she thought of them. Why these words in particular struck her she didn’t know, but she kept writing until the grid looked like this:

Fen carefully folded the now quite tatty napkin, popped it back into her bag and put her shoes back on.

‘You’re meant to be able to solve your own puzzles,’ she grumbled to herself as she limped out of the Louvre’s main courtyard, and only made it twenty yards or so before she slipped the shoes off again, deciding that barefoot through the chilly streets of Paris was preferable to the pain. ‘No shoes and no clues,’ she sighed as she made her way back, the words of the grid tumbling like a waterfall through her mind. Somewhere in that grid was the answer, she was sure of it.

Fen made it home without stepping on anything too painful or foul, and appreciated Simone’s help in carefully unstitching her from the bodice she had created earlier that evening. Tipper was less than helpful, trying everything he could to get Fen’s attention until she picked him up and held him. She was rewarded by quite a few licks to the face while Simone worked around them both.

‘He’s still missing Rose, I think.’ Simone said, trying to pat the dog, who burrowed his way further into the nook of Fen’s elbow. ‘Tch, silly pooch. Oh, James says he’ll meet you in the Café Chat Noir tomorrow morning at nine,’ Simone told her as she unravelled the orange silk of the former turban.

‘Did you have a nice evening together?’ Fen could sense there was something at play here, Simone wasn’t her usual confident and opinionated self and she hadn’t asked Fen about the party at the Louvre at all.

‘James is a gentleman,’ was all Simone would say and from that Fen inferred that James hadn’t perhaps played into the younger woman’s waiting arms as much as she would have liked.

Fen changed the subject. ‘I met your friend Catherine, tonight. She must have been so brave…’

Simone brightened. ‘She was. Did they ask after me? I don’t know why Henri didn’t invite me, too,’ she said with a little huff.

‘I didn’t realise you were all so close. Henri with the Diors and Balmain, too.’

‘He’s been kind to me,’ Simone said and gave Fen a gentle push away, the bodice now completely undone and spooled on the parquet floor of the studio. ‘Time for bed. Don’t forget your date with James in the morning.’

‘No, rightio. And thank you, Simone. Goodnight.’

Thirty-Two

Fen awoke the next day with a clear head but still no idea as to why Rose was murdered, or who had done it. She did notice that the bells of Saint Sulpice were ringing out, welcoming worshippers on this fine Sunday morning, and her own watch confirmed