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

arrived, Fen and James had decided they had unearthed all they could about Gervais – they’d found inventories and itineraries, logbooks and manifests… basically all the paperwork you’d expect from a lorry driver-turned-mechanic. Before they’d even had a chance to show what they’d found, including the manifests, to the gendarmes, the officer in charge had declared this a murder between underworld gangs and questioned James intently about what he might know regarding Gervais’ various contacts and where they could find his brother.

Fen decided at that point that their own findings would only muddy the waters and slipped the envelope containing the manifests, the example of Gervais’s handwriting and the invoice to Michel Lazard into her bag.

After what seemed like hours of waiting around and questioning, the police finally allowed them to leave. Having to wait so long for them to finish questioning James did have one advantage though. As he was stating time and again that he was nothing to do with Gervais’s underworld dealings and just a new friend, Fen had eavesdropped on the police surgeon’s dictation to his assistant.

Turns out they hadn’t stumbled on a recently deceased body at all, and poor Gervais had been lying in his own blood in the cold, dark, stench of the garage since eleven o’clock the night before.

‘Now don’t think I’m trying to encourage you into bad habits,’ James said as they finally ducked through the small door out into the daylight, ‘but I think I need a strong drink.’

‘I’m not going to argue there.’ Fen pulled her lightweight trench coat around her, suddenly quite chilled from the cool of the garage and most likely from the shock of finding another dead body. She shivered and then had to admit that the warmth of James’s arm, which had slipped around her shoulders, was not unwelcome at all.

Thirty-Four

‘I can’t help but think that finding mention of all those paintings in those manifests in Gervais’s garage means the murders are linked, don’t you?’ Fen said between mouthfuls. The pair of them had decamped to the café at the end of the road and a strong drink had turned into lunch. Fen had been untowardly delighted when she’d seen that coq au vin was on the menu and ordered it. James had followed suit, and asked for a portion of potato tartiflette too, which had arrived, hot and steaming, in a heavy black cast-iron dish.

‘They were so different though. In their modus operandi,’ James argued. ‘One a paintbrush to the neck and the other an execution-style gunshot to the head. And you couldn’t get more different people than Madame Coillard with her eccentricities, and salt-of-the-earth, lorry-driving Gervais.’

‘Yes… true… but those itineraries and manifests – all to do with art. I mean, that has to be a connection. Plus, we know they knew each other and the murders happened so soon after one another.’ Fen spoke, but she also watched as her hand still trembled as she reached for the carafe of wine. James must have noticed it too and got to the wine first, taking the carafe and pouring some into her glass. ‘Thanks, James.’ Fen sipped it and thought again about what they’d just discovered. She cleared the final few pieces of chicken from her plate, still grateful to be eating such succulent meat after the austerity of the war, and sat back.

‘I agree, there’s a connection all right,’ James said, sitting back too and then reaching forward for his own glass of wine. He cradled it in his hand and swirled the red liquid around. ‘So Gervais was blackmailing Rose, and Henri.’

‘I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking.’ Fen looked at James. ‘If Gervais was the blackmailer, was he Rose’s murderer too?’

‘Not quite,’ James corrected her. ‘Gervais may have been the blackmailer, and he may even have murdered Rose, though I doubt it. No, the pressing question now is… who killed Gervais?’

Fen took a sip of her wine and then looked James in the eye. ‘And is Henri next?’

After the lunch had been chased down by a brandy, on James’s part at least, the pair of them set off in the direction of Rose’s apartment.

‘It’ll always feel like Rose’s apartment,’ Fen mused as they walked along. ‘I can’t think of it yet as Henri’s.’

‘While her belongings are there, I suppose it must feel like she’s still very present,’ James agreed.

‘That reminds me, Henri asked me if I could start clearing out her clothes. I don’t suppose you have anything better to do this afternoon, do you? I can’t see Henri wanting to inherit a section of colourful turbans and housecoats along with his property.’

‘As long as I don’t have to rifle through any knicker drawers, then yes. Though I feel as if I should try and find some of Gervais’s friends in the bars and tell them about his, well… his murder.’

‘Yes of course. Some of them might know something about who could have done it. See if they know of anyone who wasn’t in the bar at ten o’clock last night.’

‘I wouldn’t hold out any hope. Snitches aren’t looked upon fondly these days.’

They walked on in silence until they arrived at the large double doors of Rose’s apartment building. Fen turned to James. ‘Good luck. It never gets any easier, does it. Giving bad news, I mean.’

‘Especially not to family. I don’t suppose anyone has told Antoine yet.’

Unless he did it…? The thought flashed through Fen’s mind, as suddenly as those gunshots had rung out in the warehouse the day before, but she kept quiet. There was no reason for Antoine to murder his brother, and he had an alibi for Rose’s death, too. Fen waved goodbye to James and headed up the cantilevered staircase to the apartment.

A few hours later and Fen and Simone were hard at it, clearing out Rose’s bedroom. Simone had greeted Fen’s idea of going through Rose’s belongings with a squeal of excitement.

‘I don’t think there’ll be much of any value there, the thief saw to that,’ Fen said, rather guardedly,