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

too true. ‘They were linked. Rose was being blackmailed by Gervais.’ As Fen spoke, there was a murmur through the room.

‘Why was this Gervais fellow blackmailing Rose?’ Joseph Bernheim asked, while Fen fished around in her pocket and retrieved the now very scruffy napkin on which she’d been writing out her crossword-style grid.

‘Henri might want to answer that,’ Fen replied, ‘as Gervais was blackmailing him too.’

Henri replaced his glasses and then opened his desk drawer. ‘It’s true, I was being blackmailed. But there was nothing in it. Here, the note is the same as the one you said Rose received.’

Henri passed it to Fen, who quickly scanned it, noting that it was written on the same blue writing paper as they found in the garage.

Henri continued, ‘You see, Gervais, was after a quick buck or two, I should imagine. He was speculating. Who knows how many other dignitaries he was sending these notes to? One in ten might yield him a franc or so to cover a guilty conscience, but not me. And I told Rose to ignore it too.’

Fen nodded, then turned to the other art dealer in the room. ‘Someone does have a guilty conscience, though, isn’t that right, Monsieur Lazard?’

Michel Lazard looked up at Fen as if she’d just struck him. ‘Me? I didn’t kill Rose! And I barely knew Gervais. I wasn’t being blackmailed!’

‘No, but you were getting Rose into considerable trouble, selling her beautiful homages as forgeries. I saw you both arguing on the Pont des Arts the day before she was murdered. Did she threaten to turn you in to the authorities?’

‘On the Ponts des Arts? Ah, no, no, no. Arguing? No, you see, Rose and I had a wonderful business relationship and what you saw would have just been a healthy debate.’

‘A healthy debate?’ Fen couldn’t help but dislike the man, cause as he was of most of Rose’s troubles before she died.

‘Yes…’ he drew the word out and then licked his lips as he was thinking. ‘It’s true that she was cross with me for perhaps over-marketing her paintings, but we reached an agreement. And, mademoiselle, I can assure you, I would not kill her!’ Lazard had started to sweat a little and he quickly wiped his forehead with a spotted handkerchief.

‘I know,’ Fen grudgingly had to agree with him. ‘To you, she was the goose that laid the golden eggs. Killing her would be the death of your own very lucrative business.’

Lazard looked relieved and slumped back in his chair.

‘Mademoiselle Churche,’ Antoine interrupted. ‘Why have you dragged me here? I had no motive either! One of the dead was my own brother!’

‘And don’t you want to know who killed him?’

‘Of course, I—’

‘Unless the method, a single gunshot wound, at night in his dark garage, rings any bells with you?’

‘The potshots in the warehouse…’ James chimed in.

‘Exactly. We know you have your own weapon and we know you can shoot a target in the dark, and we also know that you and your brother were involved with Rose’s scheme during the war.’

‘Why would I kill my own brother?’ Antoine was getting quite irate and the words were all but spat out at Fen and the gathered suspects. ‘We worked as a team, we risked our lives storing those paintings in Henri’s warehouse, we risked them even more chalking up Rose’s code on the back of them. You’ve got a screw loose, you have. Hey, and don’t forget, I have an alibi for Rose’s murder, you know that. I was in the warehouse on the other side of town when she was killed.’

‘Antoine, you’re right,’ Fen said, noticing that James had already clasped a hand on the warehouse manager’s shoulder, whether to stop him from fleeing or to calm him down she didn’t know.

‘I’m just a warehouse manager, I’ve got nothing to do with these murders.’ Antoine shrugged his shoulders and James let go of his grasp on him.

‘I’m sorry, Antoine,’ Fen said, as calmly and in as measured a way as possible, ‘but what happened in that warehouse during the war has everything to do with Rose’s murder, and your brother’s, and here’s why…’

Forty-Three

‘Before I came here, before I collected Joseph and Magda from the Marais, I visited Valentine Valreas at his auction house to the north of the city.’

There was an audible groan from Lazard.

‘Yes, you’re not his favourite person, Monsieur Lazard, but that’s not why I went or what I need to tell you all. When I met him at the party you very kindly invited me to, Henri, he was as cross as two sticks when I mentioned Rose’s name. But he did say something that occurred to me later. He mentioned that he had “sent her packing, never to darken his door again with her fakes”, but also that she had come on some sort of errand, an “excuse” he called it. I went to visit him to ask what that excuse was, and he told me.’

‘Are we nearly done with this, Fenella?’ Henri asked, shuffling some of the papers on his desk. ‘I really would like you all to leave now.’

‘In some ways, I’m only just getting started – sorry, Henri. But you might like to take a look at this.’ Fen reached into her pocket and pulled out the signed testimony from Valreas. ‘He is willing to testify that you, Henri Renaud, came to him to ask a favour.’

‘And what was that?’ James asked, trying to peer over Fen’s shoulder and read the statement.

‘Apparently, Henri here asked Valentine to “sell” at auction several paintings for him, paintings that had been stolen from the Jewish families.’

Henri sighed and gave Fen a withering look. ‘As I have explained before, the Germans weren’t interested in what they called the degenerate art, so they wanted many of the paintings sold and the funds sent back to Berlin for their war effort. I was merely carrying out orders, despicable as they were. You think Rose would have got away with