Chapter 24

It was with more than a dash of good luck that Monsieur Blanquer’s assistant was available to schedule in an appointment for eleven o’clock the following morning, and Fen made the arrangements on the telephone accordingly. She then put a call into Joseph Bernheim, catching another of his building’s tenants on the communal telephone who promised to leave him the message that he should call round to Rose’s apartment at around noon the next day. With those tasks done, Fen decided that a visit to one or other of the Arnault brothers was in order.

Gervais sounded like he might have the most to gain from killing Rose, if indeed she had threatened to turn him in to the police for his Mob connections, but Antoine seemed like the brother with the most brain cells, and perhaps he’d be able to shed some light on what shady business his brother Gervais was caught up in. And if Rose was caught up in it, too.

But the rain that had been on and off that morning had settled in properly for the afternoon and Fen didn’t think her poor trench coat would keep her dry if it had to take another soaking. And as much as she had admired Rose’s sense of style, she wasn’t sure she could pull off wearing one of her flamboyant patchwork overcoats around town.

Instead, Fen settled down to write a letter home, telling her parents the sad news of their friend’s death. She wiped away tears as they now fell onto the page, as persistent as the long drips that raced down the unshuttered windows of the apartment. She wondered if she should try to contact her brother too, still serving as the army gradually demobbed in North Africa, but she wasn’t sure she had the emotional strength to write the words Rose is dead one more time.

Just as she was sealing the envelope to her parents, there was a knock at the door that sent Tipper into paroxysms of barking.

‘Oh they’re so beautiful! Such colours!’ Fen could hear Simone, who had rushed to answer the door this time – obviously all thoughts of murderers coming back to stalk them gone from her mind – talking to James in the hallway.

Tipper scampered back into the studio and Fen scooped him up, smiling as he writhed in happiness at the attention. She put him down and he soon went back to licking the small pieces of toast, with a thin scraping of paté on them, that Fen had been feeding him before James’s arrival. They both looked up though as Simone led James into the room. It was hard to see Simone through the size of the bouquet she was holding.

‘Look, Fenella, see what James has brought me!’

‘It’s just a little token, to brighten up the apartment somewhat. Afraid I had to drop a few francs in the local tailor, no sign of that shirt of mine turning up. And the florist was next door, so…’ James said and then wrinkled his nose. ‘Bloody hell, what is that smell?’

‘Bleach,’ Fen said as she quickly withdrew her fingers from Tipper’s sharp little teeth.

‘I had a whim,’ Simone explained, cocking her head on one side. ‘I could not bear the thought of dear Rose’s blood being here, so I scrubbed and scrubbed.’ She placed the bouquet on the chaise longue and showed James her hands. ‘They are better now, thanks to Fen and her hand cream, but I will be in trouble at work tomorrow if they think I can’t model like this.’ She scooped the bouquet up again and took it into her bedroom. Fen watched her as she went, wondering if the flowers would make it back out to help brighten up the whole apartment, or just her room.

‘And how are you?’ James asked Fen as he took the seat opposite her.

‘Oh, you know, coping.’ Fen let Tipper lick some of the meat paste off her fingers. ‘How did you get on with canvassing the other residents?’

‘Ah, yes. Well, interesting bunch. Afraid I didn’t get a chance to talk to them all, several unanswered doors and all that. The countess, though, she was a card. Dressed like an Edwardian grande dame and dripping in diamonds. I had to answer about forty questions about who I was and what I wanted before she opened the door even an inch. Eventually, she let me in and told me that she’d decided to wear all of her jewels as she felt safer with them on her, now that there’s a burglar on the loose.’

‘Oh dear, the police are definitely going down that route then, telling everyone that this was just a robbery gone wrong?’

‘Seems so. She did say something interesting though.’

‘Oh yes?’ Fen’s curiosity was piqued.

‘Yes, she said every time someone comes to call on Rose, she can hear Tipper barking. She says it upsets her Persian cat. Funny snouty-nosed thing it is too. Called Tsarina. Anyway, I digress. She said that yesterday afternoon she only heard Tipper bark once at about two o’clock.’

Fen sat up and Tipper jumped off her lap. ‘Once?’

‘That’s what she said. I didn’t ask Tsarina.’

Fen ignored his joke. ‘Once…Two o’clock was when Joseph Bernheim was meant to call…’ Fen was lost in thought for a moment. ‘So there was a visitor? Now, does that explain the burglary-gone-wrong idea? Or…’

‘Or what?’

Fen brushed some of Tipper’s hairs off her knees and dislodged a few crumbs from the toast too. She wasn’t sure how James would take Henri’s theory about the Arnault brothers, since he was on relatively friendly terms with them, so she took a deep breath and came right out with it. ‘I spoke to Henri Renaud and he suggested it might be one, or both, I suppose, of the Arnault brothers.’

‘Really? What have they got against Rose? I thought they all worked together?’

‘He thinks Gervais might have fallen in with a bad lot and Rose might have forced his hand by threatening to shop him to the police.’

‘A bad lot?’ James furrowed his brow.

‘You know, gangsters and the like.’

‘Gangsters? What utter tosh!’ James clapped his hands down on his knees. ‘I don’t think Gervais could fight his way out of a croissant, let alone get involved with some sort of mafiosi.’

‘Henri called him Gervais “The Wrench”…’

This just made James laugh.

‘We should at least check their alibis,’ Fen suggested, and James, recovered from his laughing fit nodded, then shook his head.

‘I just can’t picture it…I suppose Henri had an alibi ready of his own?’

‘Yes. And he offered it most readily. In his own gallery apparently, on the phone to London, asking about watercolours. I suppose we could check that out somehow if we think we need to.’

‘No stone and all that. He shouldn’t slander Gervais, or Antoine, come to think of it.’ James shook his head. ‘Just because a chap’s not in a three-piece suit…’

‘I know, I know. You weren’t with them, yesterday afternoon, I mean? To provide an alibi?’

‘No…but that’s not to say they’re—’

He was interrupted by Simone coming back into the studio, changed and dressed ready for a night out. She looked demurely elegant, dressed in black to honour Rose, yet the flashes of red at the end of her nails kept her looking more glamorous than grieving. She began clipping two large pearls to her ears and clasped a neat little bag under her elbow. She closed her bedroom door behind her before Fen could see if she’d found a vase for the flowers.

‘Gosh, don’t you look pretty,’ Fen complimented Simone, relieved to have a change of subject – she hadn’t liked the tension that had building between her and James in regards to the Arnault brothers. ‘What super pearls.’

Simone finished clipping them onto her ears and smiled, meekly. ‘They were a present from dear Rose.’

‘How lucky the thief didn’t raid our rooms,’ Fen caught herself thinking out loud.

‘Yes,’ Simone agreed. ‘Ready, James?’

‘Yes.’ He got up to leave, but then hovered by where Fen was still sitting, Tipper now gently snoring on her lap. ‘I’ll come with you tomorrow. To go and question Antoine and Gervais. I don’t want you heading over to that part of town, and, well, especially not if Henri is correct.’

‘Thank you, James.’ Fen smiled up and him and then shooed him away. Personally she couldn’t contemplate a night out, not so soon after Rose had died, but then people grieved in different ways. Perhaps Simone needed the distraction to help her cope with the shock. With this in mind, Fen tried her best to sound jolly. ‘Now go and have fun, you two.’

Simone waved and was gone with barely a backward glance, while James hesitated just slightly before wishing Fen a good night. ‘Just you and me then tonight, Tipper,’ Fen said as she wandered through to the kitchen to see what else she could scrape together from Rose’s rapidly diminishing cupboards. The day had taken its toll on her, emotionally at least, and while they were gallivanting she was happy to have a quiet and early night.

Before bed, though, that evening she did find the napkin she’d been writing on and carefully printed out two more words on the grid.

She wasn’t sure why quite yet, but the little dog who was now curled up at the end of her bed kept coming to mind, and, of course, with the Arnaults possibly involved, it made her think of Rose’s list of paintings and how they all had a hand in the scheme. Fen also wondered, as she wrote the words down, if someone had had a hand in something altogether less virtuous to do with all that artwork, and if that had led to Rose’s death?