[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris, Fliss Chester [free ebook reader for pc TXT] 📗

‘If you insist,’ James said, and Fen nodded.

‘I do. If you can’t carry it, don’t pack it, eh?’

‘Quite right,’ James agreed and deliberately dropped her case on the ground and strode off towards the station concourse.

‘How rude!’ Fen called out after him, but then she laughed; only a week or so ago, she really did think his personality ran no deeper than the gruff countenance he put on – another warm protective coat as it were – and would have genuinely thought him devoid of manners or civility. Now, however, his gruffness had become rather a running joke and she knew he’d take her in jest.

She was proved right when he turned around and winked at her. ‘Come on then, slowcoach, let’s find this lodging of yours.’

Two

Before they’d left Morey-Fontaine, Fen had written to an old family friend of hers, Rose Coillard, to ask if she and James could stay with her in her apartment near the École des Beaux-Arts. Fen had bunked down with her for one night last month as she’d changed trains in Paris on her way to Burgundy and they’d barely scratched the surface of what they wanted to catch up on. Madame Coillard – as she had first been introduced to Fen all those years ago – had been a colleague of Fen’s father, Professor John Churche, but more than that, she had been – and still was – her parents’ very good friend.

Fen would most likely lose count if she tried to remember all the times her family and Rose had dined together, or spent afternoons in the Louvre, the Tuileries Gardens or paddling on the sandy shore of the Seine at Île de la Jatte to the north of the city. Rose had tried, on those occasions, to teach the two unruly English children the wonders of the Impressionists, showing them with her own easel and brushes how those turn-of-the-century artists had marvelled at the dappled light and swiftness of moving time. More often than not, she’d come second in the race for their attention, narrowly pipped by the ice cream cart, but as Fen had matured from a young girl to an insightful and diligent teenager, she had grown closer to the mildly eccentric art teacher and even attended a few of her classes at the école, despite being by far the youngest in the studio. So, it was no surprise that Rose’s apartment was the first place that Fen thought of when she realised they would be passing through Paris again.

Sadly, the postal system being not quite as efficient as it once was meant that Fen hadn’t received a reply from Rose before they’d left Burgundy after bearing witness at the murderer’s trial. With Arthur gone and his disappearance solved there had been no point in staying on at the vineyard, and James had offered to chaperone her to Paris. So here they were, walking together towards Madame C’s apartment on the Rue des Beaux-Arts, with Fen hoping their early-morning arrival wouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

The apartment was on one of the upper floors of a six-storey building. The road itself was an elegant, if not particularly long, one. At one end stood the famous college of fine art itself, its imposing stone gateposts topped with oversized busts of artists Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Puget. Fen had been through those gates a hundred times or more in her youth, going to see her father in his study and listening in to lectures on every aspect of art, from Byzantine icons to modern topics, such as the Fauves and Cubism.

The ground floors of most of the street’s buildings were given over to shops and, due to the artistic nature of the neighbourhood, art galleries too. The war had taken its toll and some were now boarded up and others empty, while the lucky few still traded and displayed one or two decent-looking paintings in ornate gold frames in their windows.

There was a dressmaker on the street, too, with two lively-looking mannequins in the window wearing what must have been the latest in post-war fashions – cinch-waisted skirts and delicate swoop-necked blouses. Gold lettering above the door announced the services of a Dufrais et Filles – Dufrais and Daughters – and Fen wondered if the dressmaker and his or her daughters were there now, needles in hand, discussing trends for the autumn and winter season and planning spring fashions for 1946. She had a little money with her, and Fen knew the temptation to spend it all on something fabulous, rather than the more practical option of an overcoat, may well bring her back to that delightful-looking tailor as soon as she had a spare hour or so.

Each building on the street had a slightly different character, some with more ornate Juliet balconies, others with shutters at their windows or fancy classical-style podiums to their doors. They were all in what you’d call the French Imperial style, similar to many buildings built in the time of the great reformer Haussman, and, although suffering from a few years of neglect, elegant to the last.

Fen walked down the street a few steps ahead of James, clutching the handle of her suitcase in one hand, and the other she let trail along the rough, rusticated stone walls of the buildings. It was her way of connecting with her surroundings, ‘seeing’ something with her fingertips, almost as if she was reading the buildings as Braille. Stone would give way to glass, which would in turn change to wood… and even though she could see the street had shopfronts and doorways, she could feel it this way, too. Arthur hadn’t laughed at her when he’d caught her doing this one afternoon down Midhurst’s High Street (although Mrs Simpson from the bakers had given her a very strange look), as he said it all tied in with her love of cryptic crossword clues. ‘Seeing’ something in