Chapter 37

Magda sat back and took a sip of her tea. ‘Please don’t be cross.’

Fen, who had for just the most fleeting of moments, feared the worst, let out a sigh. ‘Of course I’m not cross. In fact, it clears up something that’s been troubling me. Ever since James said that the countess downstairs, or at least her pampered puss, had heard Tipper bark just the once that afternoon, I’d wondered who it might be.’

‘I’m afraid it was Joseph. He’d kept his appointment, you see, and let himself in. He said Tipper here,’ Magda leaned forward and stroked the dog’s head, which made Tipper jump up and scramble off Fen’s lap and onto Magda’s, much to her joy, ‘well, he said Tipper was beside himself and going crazy, barking and chasing his tail, weren’t you, poppet?’

‘So Joseph was the first to find Rose. Oh, Magda, I do feel sorry for him. I know how it feels, really I do.’ Fen thought back to when she asked him about it. ‘Why didn’t he tell me though, he said he’d missed his appointment with Rose, that he was never there that day at all.’

Magda concentrated on stroking the very top of Tipper’s head, then looked up at Fen. ‘Well, of course, he didn’t know what to do. He feels rightly ashamed at his cowardice in not reporting it there and then, or in trusting you with the truth, but you see, when you’ve heard stories like the ones we’ve heard…’ Magda tailed off and Fen reached over and touched her on the knee.

‘No one would have thought he’d done it, surely?’ asked Fen.

‘The police might have suspected him…’ Magda looked pale and Fen realised that even voicing these concerns was paining her.

‘They didn’t suspect us…’ Fen trailed off, realised that wasn’t exactly reassuring. There was no reason why any Jewish person should trust the authorities after the horrors their people had been through. Fen rethought her words. ‘I mean, there is absolutely no way that Joseph could be suspected of killing Rose. She was helping him, he had no motive whatsoever. Please don’t distress yourself with it, Magda, but thank you for trusting me with it. I won’t tell the police. Those dunderheads think it’s all a burglary gone wrong anyway.’

‘And you don’t?’ Magda seemed visibly calmer after Fen’s reassurances.

‘No. And not just because of the rich countess downstairs, dripping in diamonds, mind, who seems to have mysteriously escaped the burglars. No, it was something Antoine Arnault said when we spoke to him. That the murder seemed like something The Chameleon would have done.’

Magda shuddered when Fen spoke the double agent’s code name.

‘The Chameleon…I would spit on the floor, if I hadn’t spent days scrubbing it clean.’

‘How did you know it was him who betrayed Joseph’s and your parents?’

‘Just whispers…but then that was all there ever was with those networks anyway. We made plans in whispers, we escaped in whispers, but Mama and Papa and Jacques and Selena…’ her voice faded as she said their names and Fen waited as she mouthed a quick prayer for her dead parents and in-laws. ‘They were ready to go and were expecting an agent to pick them up and transport them to the docks, where a boat was ready to take them out of the city and from there to the coast. But the lorry that turned up, it wasn’t the Resistance. It drove them to the Gestapo headquarters and we never saw them again.’

‘I’m so sorry, Magda.’ Fen, who was usually so awkward when it came to comforting people, was led by her heart and reached out a hand to Magda. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Rose wrote to us, did you know? In New York. She tracked us down and told us she was working on something on our behalf. It gave us hope when we were at our very lowest.’ Magda paused, then continued quietly, ‘Joseph would have died rather than see that dear woman hurt. Her friendship saved our lives in more ways than one.’

‘I will find out who did this to her,’ Fen said, more confidently than she felt. Her three downs were disappearing by the minute, but she knew she had to solve this murder, for all their sakes.

She stayed and chatted to Magda for a while longer, bringing the conversation back to more jolly subjects, such as autumn fashions and speculation as to whether James and Simone would wed. Then Fen took her leave with a meaningful kiss on each cheek and carried Tipper back down the crowded and noisy staircase and out to the street where the lime trees swayed in the autumn breeze.

The last twenty-four hours had certainly been illuminating, but Fen, for all the three acrosses and six downs she was being given, was still no closer to working out who had killed Rose Coillard.