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

‘I know all of that. Except that paintings by Degas, Cezanne and Gainsborough certainly weren’t classed as “degenerate”, were they? They should have gone straight to Berlin or the new Führermuseum that was being talked of, or dare I say it, to the Eagle’s Nest itself.’

‘Gainsborough…’ Joseph said and whispered something to Magda. Fen caught his eye and nodded to him.

‘Well, perhaps I made the odd mistake…’ Henri stared at Fen.

‘There was no mistake.’ Fen fixed Henri with a steely glare. ‘Valentine Valreas is willing to go on record to say that not only did you ask him to consign those paintings to auction, but you asked him to rig the sale so that you bought them back at far below their market rate. To all intents and purposes, they were fake lots. Once you had bought them back, for peanuts, you could sell them, or keep them. Your theft had been legitimised, without anyone knowing and certainly without incurring the wrath of the Germans.’

‘You mean our paintings were never sent to Germany?’ Joseph asked.

‘I think some of them were, I’m sorry to say. But Henri traded on the fact that the overseeing Nazi officers here in Paris couldn’t tell a Cezanne from a Christmas card and would do no more than glance at a list of paintings, bowing down to Henri’s superior knowledge, and rubber-stamp the list. Rose herself said they were remarkably trusting at times.’

‘This is preposterous!’ Henri stood up and thumped his fist on the desk.

‘Sadly, it’s not. Valentine Valreas also put a call into Claude Leflavre for me.’ Fen took her eyes off Henri and explained to the rest of the room, ‘He’s one of the patrons of the Louvre who Henri introduced me to.’ She looked back at Henri, who was looking exceedingly uncomfortable. ‘He confirmed that he was very happy with the Degas you sold him. “You’ve brought me another dancer”, do you remember Claude saying that to me when I met him at the Louvre? He was alluding, of course, to Degas’s favourite subject matter of ballerinas, and one of the paintings you’d stolen and then sold to him, no doubt for a small fortune.’

‘Where’s the proof, eh? He said this, they said that… you could be spinning lies!’ Henri looked agitated.

‘Henri, the game is up,’ Fen said, as gently as she could, aware Henri could make another, more deadly, sudden move. ‘Rose discovered that you had stolen paintings from your own warehouse and, under the noses of the Nazis as well as her and the Arnault brothers, sold them. But she only guessed at it once she’d received the list back from you and started decoding it. She had stopped at the Bernheim Cezanne and it must have looked very strange to her, someone who did know her artists, to see written in German next to it “for auction”. She knew full well that that sort of painting would have been on the next train out of town.’

Fen glanced down at her grid and then continued, ‘When she told you about the blackmail letter and you showed her you had one too, far from reassuring her that it was just a speculative shot in the dark, she realised the blackmailer was only speculating between you two. They had narrowed it down to Henri or Rose as the only two who would have been able to manipulate the list like that, and were just trying to flush out the right person. And she sure as hell knew that she wasn’t responsible for stealing from the Jewish families. I think she confronted you with all of this, and you killed her.’

‘What rot! I told you that on the day of the murder I was here, on the telephone, negotiating with a dealer in London about some watercolours.’

‘Impossible to check…’ James whispered to Fen, ‘unless you did?’

‘I haven’t checked up on your alibi, no. But I don’t buy it. And here’s why. You also claimed never to have heard of The Chameleon, even though you were in the Resistance. Plus, as a trusted friend of Rose’s, Tipper wouldn’t bark at you coming to the door, and we know Tipper only barked once that afternoon.’

‘At me.’ Joseph nodded.

‘The evidence of Tsarina…’ James concurred.

‘Exactly. The countess’s Persian cat only noticed Tipper barking when Joseph came to visit, and that was after Rose was murdered. You’ve told me before that you knew that she never locked her front door and you also knew that someone as principled as Rose would never let you get away with the thefts of those artworks.’

‘As I said,’ Henri tried to look nonplussed as he shuffled more papers around his desk, ‘I was on the telephone at two o’clock.’

‘How did you know she was killed at two o’clock?’ Fen asked Henri, and every other pair of eyes in the room followed her gaze as she looked at the accused. ‘Henri…’ Fen held his gaze. ‘Are you The Chameleon?’

In an instant, Henri was standing. ‘I have alibis, I made sure of it…’

‘You’ve made sure of it?’ Then Fen followed up more gently, aware that Henri was unravelling in front of them, ‘You killed them, didn’t you, Henri? Rose and Gervais?’

‘For the paintings, do you see? The paintings…’ Henri looked crazed all of a sudden ‘I had to have them. They couldn’t go to Germany, to those philistines. Gainsborough and Cezanne, Degas and Matisse! Masterpieces! Do you know what Müller said, the imbecile? “Pretty little things, aren’t they?” Pretty? How could we let them have them? They’d treat them like wallpaper! But Rose would never understand, oh she would want those paintings back for the Jews, but they’re mine now, you see… and she was so close to finding out… she had to die…’

He turned to look at Fen and suddenly she realised. ‘Henri—’

‘I didn’t kill them, not by my own hand, but—’

All of a sudden, darkness enveloped them, the