Chapter 21

The next day brought it with it more rain and squally winds and Fen wondered if her old trench coat would suffice for the early-morning walk across the Pont des Arts to the offices of the Louvre. She and James had talked last night before he headed back to his hotel, and they had realised that Henri Renaud might not even know that Rose had been killed. Plus, due to their clandestine war work, he more than anyone would know who might want her dead.

Although the police had done a fair sweep of the apartment for clues, their insistence that it must ‘just be a burglary gone wrong’ had meant they hadn’t taken away personal items such as Rose’s carpetbag full of papers or her diary. Fen had found it open on the coffee table, untouched by the uninterested gendarmes, and had seen she was due to visit Henri today at the Louvre – or at least that’s what she thought the big red HENRI encircled several times on today’s page meant. She had been looking at it when a knock at the door, followed by Tipper’s usual tirade, had startled her. That it was only James was a relief, and Fen let him in, while scooping up the squirming little dog before he tripped either of them up.

‘How are you this morning?’ James asked.

Fen sucked in her breath and exhaled, staring at the ceiling, trying to find the right words to describe her grief. How could she burden James, who she really didn’t know terribly well, with her feelings of loss? First Arthur and now Rose, not to mention all the acquaintances and friends she and her fellow land girls had lost over the last few years. She rested her face against Tipper’s neck before putting the dog down.

‘Fine,’ she said and smiled at James, who just nodded.

The knocking and Tipper’s barking was enough to rouse Simone, who groggily opened her bedroom door. James had the decency to avert his eyes from her state of undress, and Simone closed it again, emerging a few moments later in a floor-length silk dressing gown. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and asked for some coffee, before dissolving into tears at the sight of the broken easel and stained floor.

‘Come now, Simone.’ Fen let her sob on her shoulder for a bit, while James fiddled around in the kitchen, finding the coffee pot and heating the water.

Fen always felt terribly awkward comforting people, especially such overtly emotional ones. Now was not the time for weeping and she said as much, in a gentler way, to Simone and settled her down on the chaise longue. It didn’t help that Tipper kept jumping off her every time Fen tried to leave the small dog on Simone’s lap, a warm little pup to snuggle would have been just the ticket. Still, once she was quite sure that Simone’s sobs had eased, she tracked down James in the kitchen as he was filling up the coffee pot.

‘She’s a bit calmer now,’ Fen said, finding three cups in the cupboard.

‘It’s been a shock for her.’

And me, Fen thought to herself, but just nodded. ‘I’ll go and see Henri this morning, as discussed, and let him know. Would you be able to keep an eye on Simone and possibly go door-to-door around the other apartments in case anyone saw or heard anything suspicious? I know the gendarmes did a quick whip around the building, but I still can’t believe this was just a burglary. Maybe you could ask more, I don’t know, illuminating questions rather than just the old “did you get burgled last night, too?”.’

‘Absolutely,’ James agreed and Fen felt happier leaving the weepy Simone with him in charge.

After a quick slug of coffee, she collected up her coat and bag and headed out.

Fen was bracing herself to break the news to Henri that the woman he worked so closely with during the war was dead. By the time she arrived at the side door of the mighty Louvre, she was wet through and shivering. It’s as if the weather knows… she thought to herself.

As Rose had done just a few days ago, Fen let herself in, wondering at the ease of it. So much for saving the works from the Nazis, when anyone could just waltz in and steal them now… With that in mind, she carefully closed the door behind her and retraced the steps she had taken to Henri Renaud’s office.

‘Come in!’

‘Bonjour Monsieur Renaud,’ Fen felt it necessary to be reasonably formal, given the circumstances.

‘Ah, Miss Churche, hello.’

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, it’s just I—’

‘Madame Coillard sent you on a mission, eh? Too immersed in her paintbrushes to come herself? Or rather you than her in this rain, eh?’

He seemed so jovial and oblivious as he joked about Rose, it almost broke Fen’s heart 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 chateaux 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. G?ring 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, G?ring 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 of some nasty people. I think the Americans would call them “gangsters” or “the Mob”.’

Fen frowned, she couldn’t quite tally the buffoonish man she’d met the other night with this new image of him being a Machine Gun Kelly-style operator.

‘Did he threaten Rose then?’ Fen wondered how she had possibly got caught up in all of this.

Henri just shrugged and then laid his hands down on the desk, almost in resignation. ‘I don’t know, Miss Churche, but I do know that she had spoken to me only a few days ago about how she worried that Gervais would be a problem when it came to helping find the paintings. He was no longer trustworthy and had succumbed to a life of crime.’

‘His brother too?’ she asked.

‘I do hope not, as he is my warehouse manager…’

Fen watched as he drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment, then he spoke again.

‘The more I think about it, the more I believe Rose must have said something. Threatened to shop one or both of them in, if only to stop them from revealing…’

‘Revealing what?’ Fen was alert again and wondered what Henri could mean.

‘Ah…I shouldn’t have spoken so carelessly. Never speak ill of the dead and all that.’

‘Please, Monsieur Renaud, if you know anything else about Rose that could help me find out who did this to her…’ Fen begged and then waited as Henri made up his mind.

‘You’re right. There’s no point in secrets now.’ He sighed. ‘Rose was a true and honest person. Her moral compass was unshakeable, but she did have that great talent for forging paintings.’

‘Forging is a strong word…’ Fen trailed off as Henri raised his hand. She let him continue.

‘Forgery is a strong word, but what is the difference between a copy and a forgery? How you sell them, that is what. One is the honest homage to a famous painter, the other a cheap attempt at making money. She had an unbelievably good eye for copying. But only her art dealer, Michel Lazard, can tell you if she benefited more than she should have done from selling them.’

‘Lazard…she told me about him.’

‘Yes, yes. He’s a friend of the Arnaults, you know? Antoine especially, I think. It’s clear to me that somehow the Arnault brothers found out about Rose’s paintings, perhaps they were even benefitting from Lazard without her knowledge? Believe me, somewhere between those two brothers and that two-bit dealer you’ll find your murderer.’

Henri sat back in his chair with a sort of finality. As if his own words had sunk in, he now looked utterly desolate. His skin looked grey and he seemed about ten years older than he had when Fen had first met him, here in this office with Rose just a few days ago.

‘To think,’ he said thoughtfully, and quietly, ‘I was going to surprise her with some good news yesterday, but I was caught up in my own gallery all afternoon.’

‘What was the good news?’ Fen asked.

‘Just that I heard on the art world’s grapevine that one of the paintings by Poussin stolen from Jacob Berenson was listed for auction in Westphalia, in Germany, this last week just gone. If I hadn’t been on the telephone to London organising delivery of a rather good watercolour yesterday afternoon, I might have been able to stop it.’ He took off his glasses again and rubbed his face in his hands.

Fen took it as her cue to leave, and she bid Henri goodbye with his endorsement to carefully look into the affairs of the Arnault brothers ringing in her ears and the address of his warehouse in the suburbs should she want to talk to Antoine.

Just as she was leaving, a thought occurred to her and she popped her head around the door to ask Henri. He was still looking dejected and only raised his head again when he heard her soft knock at the door.

‘What is it, Miss Churche?’

‘Just a thought really. But did you ever hear of a secret agent called The Chameleon?’

Henri stared at her and then shook his head. ‘The Chameleon? I think you’ve confused real life with some American superhero comics. Now, please, I must make arrangements for some of the paintings in my warehouse. Goodbye, Miss Churche.’

Fen nodded and closed the door softly behind her, noting that Henri had not only provided some very good clues for her “two down” but during the conversation had also given himself an alibi for the time of the murder.