Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

Eve

Paris, July 1946

I was too overwrought to sleep. I walked to Georges’s apartment and saw that the light was still on in his study.

‘Come in, Eve,’ he said. His face was pale with fatigue. He looked as exhausted as I felt.

‘You’re still up?’

‘Sleep and I are not seeing eye to eye,’ he answered, ushering me into his study. His desk was piled with teetering stacks of paper. ‘I have written to the president,’ he said. ‘I have interviews with Le Monde and L’Aurore tomorrow.’

That Georges was not giving up touched me. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Georges. No other man would have worked this hard to save him.’

He frowned. ‘Eve! You’ve gone as white as a sheet. Sit down.’ He led me to a sofa by the fireplace. ‘I think a drop of brandy is the thing,’ he said.

He went to his drinks cabinet and poured two glasses, setting one on the table in front of me. I took a sip, but to my mortification, tears started to fall down my cheeks and I was unable to make them stop. The last thing I wanted to do was blubber like a child in front of Georges.

‘I’m about to lose the only family I have,’ I said. ‘I’m all alone in the world.’

Georges sat down next to me and nursed his drink in his hands. ‘You’re not alone, Eve. You have me.’

Our eyes met. He put down his drink and tilted his head close to mine. Then on some impulse, which had no logical explanation, our lips met and we kissed. With hesitation at first, but when neither of us put up any resistance, our embrace grew more ardent. We pulled tightly against one another. I could feel the warmth of him through his shirt, his heart beating fast against my chest. Georges’s kisses moved down my neck and the sensation of his warm lips on my skin was heavenly. Then the realisation hit me. I was doing the same thing my mother had done with Serge. She had destroyed her friendship with him by trying to lose her wretchedness in lovemaking. I could not make that mistake with Georges.

‘No,’ I said, pushing him back.

He immediately broke away and almost leaped to the other side of the room.

‘Good god, I’m sorry,’ he said, running his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

My heart was pounding. But it would not be fair to let him take all the blame. ‘It wasn’t only you. It was me too. But I don’t want to lose the most loyal friend I have because of some foolish romantic impulse.’

Georges, normally so urbane and unshakeable, looked dumbstruck. ‘Your most loyal friend?’ He paced the room. ‘How very well I understand you,’ he said. ‘You’re my most loyal friend too. I am quite sure that even if I lived to the end of time, I’d never find another Eve Archer.’

‘And I would never find another Georges Camadeau,’ I told him.

A smile tickled his face. ‘A lovely young woman like you could have any man at her beck and call if she wanted.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s not true. I was very much in love once. But he didn’t want to marry me. Not a nobody without a family name.’

Georges sat down in the armchair opposite me. ‘You know, Eve, we do have an awful lot in common. Why do you think I had to leave South America in such a hurry? I fell in love with a beauty who kept begging me to rescue her from her “brute of a husband”. I nearly got shot by the man when it turned out he wasn’t really a brute at all, and she had no intention of leaving him for me. He was far too rich. We both know the hurt of being used.’

‘That woman was an imbecile, Georges,’ I said. ‘She might have been beautiful, but she had no sense if she didn’t run away with you.’

Georges laughed before turning serious again. ‘And in your case, Eve, whoever the man was, he was a stupid fool. He didn’t know what a treasure he had.’

Our eyes met, and I was sure we were in danger of losing our heads again when there was a loud knock at the door.

‘Who could that be at this hour?’ he exclaimed, looking irritated. ‘I’d better answer it. My maid has already gone to bed.’

Georges went out into the hall and opened the door. To my surprise I heard the voice of Odette, Lucile’s maid. ‘You must come as a matter of urgency, Monsieur Camadeau. I have a taxi waiting downstairs.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’ he asked.

‘Your aunt tried to kill herself.’

I went into the hall. Odette gave a start when she saw me, but her attention was on Georges whose face had crumpled with distress.

‘Was she serious?’ I asked Odette, not able to believe Lucile had any reason to take her own life. It seemed out of character for the woman I knew.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘The doctor said it was a lethal dose of Veronal and that if I hadn’t found her in time, she would most certainly be dead.’

*

We arrived at the apartment to find Lucile’s physician, Docteur Vadim, and a nurse in attendance.

‘We pumped Madame Damour’s stomach,’ Docteur Vadim told us. ‘It wasn’t pleasant, but she will survive.’

‘Why did she do it?’ asked Georges.

Docteur Vadim shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t say. She is in good health and is a woman of means. Perhaps it was the result of a personal crisis. I believe she had a significant birthday this year.’

I was only half-listening to the conversation. I was too occupied looking at the apartment’s décor. Simulated leopard fur carpeted the floor, and the walls were papered in blue foil. My gaze travelled from the furniture, which had been upholstered in red velvet, to the alarming sight of a stuffed Australian emu by the fireplace.

‘It’s hideous,’ I said out loud.

Georges nodded, grim-faced, thinking I was talking about the situation with Lucile when in fact I was wondering how she’d managed to turn the beautiful apartment I had created into a showy bordello in such a short space of time. Then I noticed the art. It was everywhere. Some of it good and some of it terrible. But it was the sheer amount of it that was shocking. There had to be over five million francs worth of artwork hanging on the walls, busily arranged like a jigsaw puzzle so that it was impossible to take in the details of one painting at a time.

‘Odette,’ I said under my breath, ‘what happened here? Has Lucile gone mad?’

‘It’s terrible—’

But before she could continue, the nurse came out of Lucile’s bedroom. ‘You may see her now,’ she said.

Docteur Vadim urged Georges and me to go into the room. ‘I’ll be waiting out here if you need me.’

The first thing I noticed about Lucile’s room was that all the walls were mirrored. It made it seem that the profusion of objets d’art had multiplied themselves. Everywhere I looked there were Venetian masks, crystal sconces and giant seashells. In the middle of this hell, raised on a bed on a pyre-like platform and covered in scarlet chintz, lay Lucile.

‘Oh!’ said Georges, finally noticing the change in interior design for himself. He warily picked up an African chief chair and placed it next to the bed. ‘Aunt Lucile?’ he said, taking her hand. ‘You’ve given us a terrible scare.’

‘We had no idea you were so unhappy,’ I added.

Lucile didn’t seem surprised to see me. If anything, she looked relieved.

‘I’ve been foolish,’ she said. ‘I thought he loved me.’

Georges and I exchanged a glance. Lucile had a

lover?

‘Who is this cad?’ asked Georges. ‘What is his

name?’

‘I can answer that,’ I thought, sure it was the insipid Cyrille de Villiers who had seduced Lucile. No doubt Marthe had tried the same trick on her that she used on me to destroy my ambitions in society.

Lucile squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. She looked so vulnerable that, despite the fact she had mercilessly thrown me out on the streets, I felt pity for her.

‘Martin La Farge,’ she said so quietly it was almost a whisper.

‘Martin La Farge!’ I repeated, flabbergasted. If Lucile had said she’d had a tryst with His Highness the Aga Khan, I would have been no less surprised.

Tears came to her eyes. ‘He made me feel beautiful. Loved.’

At least I understood that sentiment, but still, I wouldn’t have touched Martin La Farge with a barge pole for all the love in the world.

‘Aunt Lucile,’ Georges asked, becoming less emotional and more like a lawyer, ‘did you give him money?’

She nodded sheepishly. ‘I bought all these paintings from him. He promised me he would make me the “Queen of Paris Salons”. Then he brought his friend Sonia Vertinskaya to decorate the apartment.’

‘With every piece of junk she couldn’t sell from her warehouse,’ I said.

Georges sent me a reproachful look and I decided I would bite my tongue.

‘Then,’ said Lucile, her voice trembling, ‘I went to surprise him one afternoon with a gift of a Mauboussin tie-pin he had admired. I found him... well, I found him with Madame Vertinskaya.’

‘We will go to the police,’ said Georges. ‘This matter can be handled discreetly.’

Lucile suddenly looked alarmed. ‘No, you don’t understand,’ she said. ‘He’s dangerous.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Georges.

‘He tried to blackmail me,’ I said. ‘I don’t blame Lucile for feeling frightened.’

‘Is that what happened to you, Aunt Lucile? Did La Farge blackmail you over something?’

Lucile grimaced. ‘Last week, before everything unfolded, I went to a dinner at his home in Neuilly. Madame Vertinskaya was there, along with Marthe and Cyrille, the Fouquets, Judge Clouzot—’

‘The presiding judge of Serge’s court case?’ I asked.

Lucile nodded and then continued, ‘There were two Germans there as well. Martin referred to them as Herr Roth and Herr Schwarz, but I sensed those weren’t their real names. They were heavily bandaged, and Marthe explained they’d just had plastic surgery. Then at the end of the evening Martin proposed a toast to “the Führer and the Fourth Reich”.’

‘A Fourth Reich! They were fascists?’ asked Georges, frowning.

Lucile bit her lip. ‘I didn’t quite understand until afterwards that they were using my money to get high-profile Nazis out of Europe and to South America.’

‘Did they threaten you?’ Georges asked.

‘Only after I caught Martin and Madame Vertinskaya together. I burst into a tirade of jealous anger, and Martin grabbed me by the throat and said if I told anyone about what I’d seen at the house, he would have me killed and fed to the crocodiles at the zoo.’

My mind was working overtime, and I could see Georges’s was too. There was some connection between this fascist group, and Serge being framed for stealing the Foulds’ art collection and for their murder.

‘Aunt Lucile, I will organise police protection,’ said Georges. ‘But you must tell me everything.’

Lucile burst into sobs. ‘No! I’m so ashamed.’

‘Tell me,’ he urged.

‘All right,’ said Lucile, kneading the bed clothes with her fingers. ‘One night, when Martin thought I was asleep after we... well, he took a phone call downstairs. It was Sonia Vertinskaya he was speaking to, and I heard him boast to her that he made a fortune during the war informing Hermann G?ring where to find hidden Jewish art collections. G?ring would pay him by letting him choose any modern art in the collections he wanted. But then, when G?ring started to fall out of favour with Hitler,’ Lucile looked from me to Georges, ‘he decided to go it alone one time. To take an entire collection for himself.’

Lucile reached to her bedside table and passed Georges the copy of Le Monde that was lying there. On the cover was a story about the court case and a picture of édouard Fould, standing in his private gallery next to a work by Manet, A Portrait of a Woman Reading .

‘What are you trying to say, Aunt Lucile?’ asked Georges.

With a grim expression on her face, Lucile pointed to something across the room. We turned to see the same portrait hanging on the wall opposite her bed. All the pieces of the puzzle were coming together. Martin La Farge was responsible for the death of édouard and Beatrice Fould and the theft of their collection.

‘I paid nine hundred thousand francs for it. I sold my house in Chantilly to buy it,’ Lucile said.

Georges stood up. ‘I’ll need you to make a statement to the police first thing in the morning.’

Lucile’s eyes flew open with alarm. ‘I can’t,’ she said tearfully. ‘I couldn’t bear the scandal.’

Georges’s face turned stern. ‘You will have to, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘A man’s life is at stake.’

*

‘What do you want at this time of the morning?’ asked Judge Regis when he walked into his drawing room. ‘It’s just past sunrise. Couldn’t it wait?’

‘My apologies, Monsieur Judge, but I’m afraid it couldn’t,’ said Georges. ‘The matter has become more than an innocent man wrongly found guilty. It is a matter of French security.’

Judge Regis invited us to sit down. I watched his round face go from interested to perturbed to shocked at what Georges explained to him.

‘And Madame Damour is willing to give testimony to these claims?’

‘She is,’ said Georges.

Judge Regis sat back and drummed his fingers on his knee as he considered the matter. ‘I’ve always harboured doubts about Judge Clouzot but I never had proof. But this is corruption at the highest level. If you want a warrant to have La Farge’s house searched for other paintings from the Fould collection, which he may not even be hiding at his residence, the only one who can grant it is the president. As you say, this matter now involves French intelligence. It’s beyond the powers of the Ministry of Justice.’

‘How soon do you think you can speak to the president?’ Georges asked. ‘We only have forty-eight hours to appeal. And as there has been little respect for the due processes of the law so far, I am concerned that Serge Lavertu’s life is in imminent danger if he is held captive in Fresnes.’

‘Indeed, he appears to have been this organisation’s scapegoat,’ agreed Judge Regis. ‘But the president is currently in Spain and will not return until tomorrow. Meanwhile, we need to gather as much additional evidence as we can. La Farge may try to argue that the Manet painting came to him through another dealer.’ He turned to me. ‘It would certainly help if that letter édouard Fould wrote entrusting his collection to Monsieur Lavertu could be found. Does Madame Bergeret still not know what happened to it?’

‘It seems it disappeared when the Germans occupied her villa,’ I told him.

‘Well, let’s do what we can without it for now,’ said Judge Regis, ‘and pray that God helps us.’

*

Georges and I went straight from Judge Regis’s home to Inès’s apartment. To our surprise, it was Kristina who opened the door and invited us inside.

We explained to her what we had found out from Lucile and that we’d taken her statement to the examining judge in Serge’s trial.

‘It’s going all the way to the top,’ I told her. ‘To the president.’

She looked from me to Georges. ‘I woke up early this morning and couldn’t sleep. You see, I think Frenchman with a Rabbit is still at the villa. I dreamed of Max, and he told me I must go back there to get it, that the painting will save Serge. But I don’t know how.’

‘But didn’t you say you and Lorenzo searched the villa everywhere?’ I asked.

‘Everywhere except the cellar, which the sappers told us was probably mined. They said it would be a complex job to clear it and that they would come back to do it. But they never did.’

We had very little time, and I didn’t think Kristina’s dream of some mystical message was going to be a strong enough reason for Georges agreeing we should go to Nice and possibly waste our efforts on a futile mission. But as the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures.

He looked at his watch. ‘There is a train leaving for the south in an hour,’ he said. ‘We can’t afford to leave any stone unturned.’

*

The cellar of the Villa des Cygnes was dim and neither Georges nor I dared touch the light switch. The only source of illumination was a narrow, frosted-glass window. But as our eyes adjusted to the gloom, certain objects stood out – overturned wine racks and old armchairs covered in layers of dust. Cobwebs dangled from the ceiling, and I wondered what creepy-crawlies were hiding under the rubble. As if to answer my question, a rat appeared from a crevice and scurried up a plank before disappearing through a broken pane in the window. Georges directed his torch towards the far end of the room where a large cupboard stood. I could see why the Germans had left it. It was too big to move and too ugly to covet. Kristina, who was at the front gate waiting for the Nice police lieutenant to arrive, had told us it had been used to store empty wine bottles.

‘What time is it?’ I asked Georges.

He glanced at his watch. ‘Just after four o’clock.’

‘The police lieutenant was supposed to be here two hours ago. We’ll miss the train back to Paris if he doesn’t come soon.’

The lieutenant in question had been a sapper with the French army during the war and was supposed to be an expert in defusing booby traps left by the Germans. The British sappers who’d hurriedly cleared the villa after the war, had only said it was a possibility that the cellar was boobytrapped as well. But even the slightest chance of being blown to smithereens should have been enough to deter us. Still, my mind travelled to Serge sitting in Fresnes, waiting for his execution for all he knew. We were dealing with far darker forces than we had imagined, including a corrupt judge, and time was of the essence.

An anxious thought jabbed at the edge of my mind. What if those fascists got wind of what we were up to and hastened Serge’s execution? A dismal picture of Serge being led towards the guillotine filled my mind with such revulsion that my fear of being blown to pieces all but vanished.

‘I’m going to open the cupboard myself,’ I said, climbing down the steps.

Georges tugged me back. ‘Don’t be a fool, Eve.’

‘But we don’t even know if the cellar is booby-trapped,’ I protested. ‘We might be scaring ourselves over nothing. Serge’s life is at stake.’

I tried to move forward again but Georges held me even tighter. ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘You go outside and wait with Kristina.’

‘I’m not leaving you. I’ll shine my torch to help you find your way.’

Georges sucked in his lips as if to steady himself and began picking his way gingerly through the toppled racks. His foot struck a box of bottles that rattled on impact. The loud noise made both of us start.

‘Be careful,’ I said.

Georges continued with caution and after a few tense minutes, reached the cupboard. He shone his torch around the doors and hinges as well as behind and on top of it.

‘I can’t see any wires,’ he reported. He put his hand on the knob. I sucked in a breath, wondering if this might be our last earthly moment together. I was overcome by a sudden urge to set things right with him.

‘Georges?’

He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Yes?’

‘About last night. When we kissed, it was... nice.’

‘Yes, I agree it was rather pleasant, Eve. But perhaps we can talk about it another time?’

Given the circumstances, I saw the wisdom in his suggestion. ‘Ah yes, all right.’

Georges prised the doors open ever so slightly and peered into the cupboard. ‘So far so good.’

As Kristina had said, the cupboard was filled with crates of empty wine bottles. From the thick coat of dust that covered them, I held out hope that the Germans had never touched them. Georges took the crates out cautiously, placing them on the floor next to him before shining his torch into the cavernous interior. He tapped his knuckles against the back of the wardrobe.

‘There is something there!’ he said, reaching into his pocket and taking out a screwdriver.

‘I’m coming to help,’ I said, clambering over the rubbish in the cellar with a foolhardy eagerness.

Georges undid the screws that held the back of the cupboard in place, and together we lifted it out to reveal a large square object wrapped in burlap and tied with string.

‘Ah-hah!’ he said.

It was most certainly a painting. Georges took it out and carried it above his head as he made his way back towards the steps. ‘Follow my path exactly,’ he advised. ‘Don’t let your caution drop.’

But I was no longer watching him. I was looking at another object that had been placed at the back of the wardrobe. At first I thought it was a beach umbrella, but when I shone my torch over it, I saw it was something cylindrical wrapped in brown paper. I lifted it out and followed Georges.

In the dining room, Kristina and Georges carefully unwrapped the large painting. We all gasped when we found ourselves looking at the portrait of Serge with Tulipe. Despite having been hidden in less than ideal circumstances, the painting was undamaged. Kristina studied it as if she could almost see herself painting it.

‘Well, it’s a nice painting,’ said Georges, grimacing. ‘But I don’t see how it helps now. You’ve already convinced everyone of the fact you forged the paintings used in the trial.’

‘Let’s undo the frame,’ she said.

We left it to Kristina’s expertise to loosen the frame. In between the stretcher and canvas, she pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to Georges. He frowned at first and then his eyes opened wide.

‘“I, Edouard Fould, entrust my entire collection of artwork along with my wife’s collection to our good friend, Serge Lavertu...”’ he read.

He handed it to me. Age had turned the paper yellow but the writing was clear. ‘“If we should fail to return, we request that our collections, including Botticelli’s Flora , should be donated to the Louvre,”’ I read out.

I looked at Georges and Kristina. ‘If the Louvre believes it’s going to inherit the entire collection, they’ll start doing everything to track it down.’

Georges nodded. ‘It’s a good thing.’

Kristina’s eyes drifted to the other package I’d brought up from the cellar. A strange tingling feeling came over me. Georges reached for it and cut the string, while Kristina slowly unravelled it, revealing a goddess in a diaphanous gown. The three of us stared at it, bedazzled. It was the original painting, Flora .

‘Max must have put it there,’ said Kristina. ‘I never knew.’ She smiled. ‘That’s why I saw him in my dream.’

*

Although we caught the train on time, my heart was racing. My eyes constantly drifted to the luggage compartment, terrified someone would snatch away the two paintings. Serge had called Judge Regis from the station to tell him what we had found and that we were on our way back to Paris. Yet, as long as Serge remained in Fresnes, a sense of foreboding hung over me. Mentally I urged the train on, and each stop was torture.

Kristina stared out the window, looking upset and confused. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked her.

She turned to me, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘I remember what happened. I always knew the paintings were in that cupboard. I helped put them there.’