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

James shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t have mattered.’ His voice was low and barely audible. ‘But betraying your friends and murdering Rose, that is unforgivable.’

Simone didn’t have the chance to reply as the gendarmes reached them and after a quick discussion with the stricken Magda and protective Joseph picked up the young model under the armpits and carried her back down the passageway to the waiting motor.

Forty-Five

Fen poured the steaming tea from the pot and passed the teacups around. Magda was sitting elegantly on the chaise longue in Rose’s apartment and Joseph was next to her, Magda’s bandaged leg raised up on his lap. She’d taken quite a tumble when she’d tripped up Simone and it had done her ankle in something rotten. James, who had been exceedingly downcast since Simone had been revealed as the murderer, sat on the saggiest of the armchairs, with Tipper curled up on his lap, nibbling at his sleeve.

Fen sat down opposite him on the other chair and blew over her cup. ‘Reverted to the mint concoction, I’m afraid. It seems you might be inheriting this place with the cupboards rather bare.’

‘We are just grateful to Rose, and Monsieur Blanquer, for gifting it to us,’ Joseph said, as he rubbed his wife’s back.

The four of them were gathered in the studio, having paid their respects at Rose’s grave in the Père Lachaise cemetery. She had been buried close to the Jewish graves, a nod to the families that she had died trying to help.

A few days before the funeral, Monsieur Blanquer, Rose’s solicitor, had come to the apartment and interpreted her will, now that the main beneficiary, Henri Renaud, was dead.

‘She had willed it to Henri, in its entirety, but she had acknowledged that both of them might have been exec…cuted by the Nazis if they had been c…caught.’ Blanquer had explained to them all over a cup of proper tea, made with the last few leaves Fen had foraged in the tea caddy. ‘But she made provision that in the event of Henri pre-deceasing her – and I feel that his recent death c…can be treated in that manner legally – that her estate should go towards helping those families who have lost everything. As her solicitor, I am happy to will the Bernheims the apartment and then we will decide later how the c…contents should be sold to provide monies for other families on hard times.’

The news had been greeted with tears of joy from Magda, and a very warm handshake from Joseph. Even James had smiled, his first for a few days. Fen couldn’t have been happier with the solicitor’s news and had thanked him profusely as she’d shown him out.

And so now the four of them were taking tea again, even if it was of the mint variety, and deciding how next to proceed.

‘We can’t thank you enough, Fenella,’ Magda said, as she held her teacup up to her lips.

‘I can’t accept your gratitude, Magda, I feel like I’ve failed you all, and Rose in particular.’

‘How so?’ Magda asked and Joseph raised a questioning eyebrow too. ‘You got her justice and even found two of Joseph’s parents’ paintings for us.’

Fen nodded. She had had the idea that Lazard, being the man Henri had been meeting that night she’d followed him, might have been the fence Henri had used to sell some of the paintings he had stolen. Lazard had accepted Fen’s deal of her silence about his part in illegally selling paintings in exchange for the whereabouts of the stolen art. He handed five paintings over to her, having not had a chance to find buyers yet. They had been discovered, oddly enough, in the hotel room next door to James’s and he had helped her carry them back to the apartment, just a few blocks away.

The problem was, apart from the Gainsborough and a Cezanne, which Fen knew belonged to the Bernheims, she couldn’t work out who the other pictures belonged to. There was a sketch by Matisse, a study of boats in the water by Signac and even a small bronze figurine by Rodin. She felt very uneasy about sitting on these valuable artworks and just wished that she could work out to whom they belonged.

Fen looked over to where the two other brown paper–wrapped canvases were, and the small statuette. ‘How can we decipher those codes on them if we don’t know how Rose did it?’

‘We can ask around the community,’ Magda ventured, ‘we may find that families have proof from old photographs that they owned those lovely pieces.’

‘We can, and I can’t think of better people than you two to do that,’ Fen agreed. ‘But what about Rose’s mission? She wanted all of the art restored. Without her code, we can’t even start to carry on her work, let along finish it for her. Those American chaps are finding more hidey-holes full of stolen art all the time, we have to be able to prove who they belong to.’

‘Where would she have hidden it?’ James asked, and Fen looked over to him, glad he was at least taking part in the conversation. She had been so worried about him after Simone was arrested, and had tried to talk to him, but he had refused to be drawn on the matter.

‘Where indeed,’ Fen thought out loud. ‘The fact that she even used a code means she loved a puzzle at heart.’

‘Didn’t she mention something about puzzles, Fenella, when we first met?’ Magda shifted her ankle slightly and sat up more on the chaise. Fen looked at her, as if studying her face would help her conjure up the memories of that first meeting.

‘You’re right… what was it she said… “The Impressionists were the finest puzzlers” or something.’

‘Yes!’ Magda looked more animated than Fen had ever seen her. Joseph and James suddenly looked a little more alert, too. ‘Remember we all laughed about the pink splodges