[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris Fliss Chester (essential reading .TXT) 📖

to dwell on my grief. No, now’s the time to continue Rose’s work, don’t you think? I received your message. Has the solicitor been?’

Fen nodded and showed Joseph through to the studio room. She then heaved Rose’s old carpetbag onto the coffee table along with the boxes of paperwork she’d found in the bedroom, glad that James had had the foresight to remove the blackmailer’s letter before Joseph had sat down on the chaise longue.

‘Here we go,’ Fen sighed. ‘Just about everything, I suppose, unless she has any loose floorboards around here.’

Joseph looked up at her as if she wasn’t joking, and she bit her lip and shrugged.

‘Well, let’s start here anyway,’ he said. ‘And I hope you don’t think me callous or opportunistic,’ he said as he started pulling out some of Rose’s personal belongings, including a spare paintbrush, some throat lozenges and a fabric tape measure, ‘but it’s because I feel that she was on the brink of finding something out about my family’s artworks that I want to keep going. Not let the trail go cold, as they say in the American films.’

‘We understand, of course, Joseph,’ Fen replied as she picked up the tape measure and wrapped it around her fingers, threading it through each digit as she watched Joseph now meticulously lay out the paperwork that had been languishing at the bottom of the bag, some of it stuck to a half-sucked boiled sweet.

‘Here we go,’ he said as he placed the bag back on the floor and started to read through the papers.

‘I know she had the original list back from Henri,’ Fen felt rather differently saying Henri’s name now, since he was mentioned, if only by his initials, in that ghastly letter. ‘Although I don’t know how far she’d got in decoding it.’

‘Let’s see, shall we…’

The three of them looked over the papers and slowly it became apparent that Rose had started to transcribe the original list, although none of the coding had had the benefit of her cipher – it was still unintelligible.

Fen noticed the colour pale from Joseph’s face, though, as he ran his finger down the list of the artworks.

‘What is it, Joseph?’

‘These descriptions… Rose has stopped transcribing her list here, at these paintings.’

‘Why was she transcribing the list at all?’ James asked, ‘If Henri had given her the original?’

‘I suppose just because there was only one copy and perhaps Rose wanted a more work-a-day one for her own scribbles,’ Fen answered and then turned back to Joseph. ‘What have you noticed?’

‘She’s stopped copying the list at my family’s artworks.’ Joseph sat back and rubbed his hand across his brow. ‘Look, this Degas that they describe, the ballerina at the barre, that was… is one of ours. And the Cezanne of the bowl of fruit against a grey background, that was always in mother’s salon.’

‘Perhaps she was interrupted?’ James ventured.

‘Or maybe these handwritten scribbles in the original have something to do with it.’ Fen pointed at a neatly written addition in the margin of the original list. ‘Anyone good with their German?’

‘Let me see.’ James took the list and held it close to his face. ‘This is a note to say that the painting was to be sent to auction, and the Cezanne too. Rather than go back to Germany, I assume.’

‘Henri said that was what they did to the “degenerate” art that was worth money but didn’t align to the Nazi ideals. But the Degas and Cezanne, they aren’t that sort of painting.’

‘Was there any sign of the cipher in the bag?’ James asked, while Joseph stared at the inscriptions alongside his family’s paintings. ‘With Joseph knowing that those paintings are his, there should be an encrypted BERNHEIM somewhere near them. It could be the key to cracking the cipher, if we had any idea what sort of cipher it is.’

Fen pulled out a length of string, some receipts from the grocer and a few more slightly grubby boiled sweets from the bag, but then shrugged. ‘Nothing I can see that looks like a secret code book.’

‘Hmm. Joseph, are you sure those are your paintings listed?’ James asked.

‘Of course I am!’

‘We believe you of course,’ Fen shot James a look. ‘But can we prove they’re yours without the code? I mean, if Rose was right and the Americans are starting to find whole caverns of the stolen artworks, then perhaps we could show this list to the authorities and use Joseph’s own testament that these are his?’

The three of them thought about this possibility for a moment. It was Joseph that broke the silence.

‘We have no proof though. The code is the proof. My family’s apartment was stripped, we escaped with what we could carry and, in hindsight, perhaps the receipts from the galleries would have been more useful than my pyjamas, but there you go.’ He seemed to physically deflate, but carried on, albeit in a much quieter voice. ‘Now everything is lost and we have no way of proving those paintings ever hung on my parents’ walls.’

‘I’m so sorry, Joseph. We will find that cipher and we will crack this code,’ Fen reassured him, and herself. She couldn’t have him face the horrible truth about his parents’ deaths and think that all hope of finding their stolen artwork was lost on the same day. ‘If those two paintings went to auction, there’s a good chance they’re still here in France. It might be easier to get them back.’

‘I don’t think any of this will be easy.’ Joseph wiped his brow again. ‘But I do appreciate your help.’

Twenty-Eight

A quick forage through Rose’s kitchen cupboards later and James and Fen had found something to stave off the stomach rumbles. It was gone 3 p.m. by the time they had finished, and Fen decided that she should go and tell Henri the news of his inheritance. James thought it an opportune moment to head back to his hotel, so it was Fen alone who had donned her hat and coat again