Pandora (78 page)

‘I’m extremely sorry. The claimants have unearthed new evidence. I need to confer with both sides. As you’re under oath and in the middle of your testimony, Sir Raymond, perhaps you could have a cup of coffee in one of the witness rooms, and please do not discuss the case with anyone, while I call a brief adjournment.’

‘Of course.’ Raymond smiled happily. He could finish ‘Ulysses’: ‘Some work of noble note, may yet be done,’ and the
Times
crossword.

The moment he left the court, both sides pitched in.

‘M’lord,’ spluttered an outraged Sampson, conveniently forgetting he had whipped more rabbits out of hats in his time than Paul Daniels, ‘it’s highly irregular to produce new evidence at this late stage in the proceedings.’

‘I appreciate my learned friend’s misgivings,’ said Naomi patronizingly, ‘but we would like to call Major von Trebich, m’lord, a friend of Colonel Feldstrasse, who was the senior German officer at Le Château des Rossignols in 1944. He has crucial evidence about the Raphael. We didn’t know his whereabouts until last night when he returned from six weeks in Tunisia. He was anxious to fly straight here this morning.’

‘The timing seems singularly inappropriate, m’lord,’ snapped Sampson, ‘just when my client, who’s an old man, easily confused, is in the box and I cannot confer with him.’

‘I’m afraid you can’t, Mr Brunning. As an even older man . . .’ said Willoughby Evans drily.

‘Sorry, m’lord.’

‘My job is to find out the truth,’ continued Willoughby Evans. ‘If this witness has something important to say, let us hear it.’

‘I’d like to call Major von Trebich, immediately after I’ve finished cross-examining Sir Raymond,’ said Naomi.

Belting out the moment the arguments had started, Rosemary rushed to the Ladies to have a cigarette to calm her nerves and powder her shiny face. It was so hot in court.

As she applied a very becoming new pinky-brown lipstick appropriately entitled Lust instead of her usual dash of scarlet, she saw a disapproving Anthea’s reflection beside her own.

‘You’re not meant to smoke in here, Rosemary, that’s what gives you all those little lines round your mouth, although I read of a wonderful new lipstick that doesn’t creep down wrinkles, called “No Wander”.’

‘Pity I can’t use it on David,’ giggled Rosemary, who’d had too many nips of Lily’s flask on an empty stomach.

Anthea’s lips tightened.

‘You missed another Borochova Memorial meeting last Friday.’

‘Oh hell, did I? Geraldine and David seem to have hijacked the whole thing.’

‘It was your idea to involve them and Lottery money in the first place.’

‘But none of the Belvedons has been consulted.’ Rosemary drenched herself in Trésor given her by Si last week.

‘Excuse me, Rosemary, Ay’m a Belvedon. I also saw you wavin’ at Si, I’d watch him if I were you.’

‘I find him absolutely charming,’ snapped Rosemary.

‘Well, he’s no friend of ours.’

‘Why ever not? He buys enough pictures.’

‘Because he’s bankrolling Zac with all the dirty money he gets arms-dealing. You don’t think that little Ess Haitch One Tee could have afforded to bring a case like this on his own? Si’s just turned up with some Nazi to rattle Sir Raymond.’

Oh my God. Rosemary felt an icicle being dropped down her spine. She’d been too overjoyed to make the connection. Si had never told her he knew Zac. What terrible incriminating details had she let slip in bed with him? Ve have vays of making you pillow talk.

Back in court, Naomi straightened her black gown and flicked her shiny dark hair behind her ears before replacing her wig.

‘Sir Raymond,’ she asked gently, ‘according to your statement, your platoon took the village of Bonfleuve on the twenty-fourth of August and you found an unknown Nazi dying in the burning Château des Rossignols nearby and he gave you the Raphael.’

‘That’s right.’

‘How old was this man?’

‘Early forties, hard to tell, war ages people.’

‘Is this him?’ Naomi produced a grainy cracked photograph.

Raymond put on his spectacles.

‘Again, hard to tell, his face was blackened with smoke.’

Naomi took a deep breath: with her beaky nose and fierce eyes, a sparrowhawk poised to swoop.

‘Sir Raymond, ten days before your platoon captured Bonfleuve, the senior Nazi living in the château and in charge of the area, a Colonel Feldstrasse, had in fact moved on to a safe house, fleeing the closing in of the Allies.’

Raymond looked at her in bewilderment.

‘No, no, my dear, you’ve got it wrong. If it wasn’t a Colonel – Feldstrasse, did you say? who gave it me, it must have been some other Nazi billeted there.’

‘All the other Germans billeted at the château had already fled,’ said Naomi triumphantly, ‘and were all captured. Colonel Feldstrasse, the only one who spoke English, had been sent to a POW camp for high-ranking officers by the time you reached the château. Far from dying, as you gave him a last glimpse of Pandora, he was released in 1946 and was killed in a car crash in 1970.’

Peace ages men too. Raymond had gone grey; he seemed to shrivel. ‘This can’t be true,’ he stammered. ‘Another German must have sought refuge there.’

The witness box had become the loneliest place in the world. Raymond had told his version so often, he’d almost come to believe it. Glancing round, Si Greenbridge noted the collective horror on the faces of press and public.

‘Dear God, poor Raymond,’ muttered Lily.

‘Dear, dear,’ sighed Anthea, not totally displeased that chinks had been found in Raymond’s breastplate of righteousness.

Glancing up, Rosemary saw David with his head on one side, attempting to look shocked and concerned, but having difficulty hiding his delight.

I loathe him, she thought numbly, and through my shameful indiscretions I have felled a dearest friend.

Trapped in the gallery, Sienna was reminded of occasions when Grenville and Diggory had torn a rabbit apart before she could drag them off. Naomi was now ripping her father to pieces. The court was in uproar. Press, switching on their mobiles and stampeding the fire doors, met Jupiter running the other way.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’

‘I’m afraid your dad’s been blown out of the water.’

After the adjournment, Naomi called her star witness. Major von Trebich was tall and willowy with smoothed-back silver hair, a Tunisian tan, and teal-blue eyes emphasized by a blue silk shirt, worn with a carefully arranged lilac silk scarf secured by a big pearl pin. His pale grey suit was exquisitely cut. As languid as Grenville, he moved with natural grace, wafting expensive lemony scent.

‘Germans do have style. What an attractive old boy,’ sighed Anthea.

‘Heil Hitler,’ snorted an outraged Lily.

You could have heard a spider tiptoe across the court.

‘Major von Trebich, how long did you know Colonel Heinrich Feldstrasse?’ asked Naomi.

‘Nearly thirty years.’

‘What was your relationship?’

‘Heinrich was my lover.’

The court gasped with collective amazement. Willoughby Evans hit several wrong keys including the delete button.

They had met, went on Trebich, during the fall of Paris, when Germans were in a state of euphoria.

‘We kept our love secret. The Führer disapproved of homosexuals almost more than Jews. Perhaps some rumours spread. Heinrich’s career advanced less dramatically than expected, and he was posted to le Château des Rossignols to oversee the area of France round Bonfleuve, an increasingly dangerous place after the Normandy landings. I begged him to leave.’

Naomi then read extracts from Major von Trebich’s battered red leather diary:

‘“August 10, Heinrich telephones tonight, he is forced to leave Les Rossignols. He can hear enemy fire, they are sweeping across France. Will I ever see him again?”’ Naomi’s red talons flipped over several pages: ‘“August 18, Heinrich has been taken prisoner, and got word to me today, deliriously happy he is safe.”’

Naomi put down the diary.

‘So he was captured at least six days before Sir Raymond’s platoon took the village?’ she asked Trebich.

‘Long, long before.’

‘What did he feel when he left the château?’

‘Heartbroken that he’d left in such a hurry he couldn’t take the Raphael. “Oh my Pandora,” he wrote in a later letter – you have it there, Fräulein Cohen – “how could I have left her to burn in the fire?”’

Incredulity rippled round the court. Raymond was turned to stone. Zac couldn’t look at the Belvedons. He felt utterly sick relying on the evidence of a Nazi.

‘When did Colonel Feldstrasse acquire the picture in the first place?’ smiled Naomi.

Trebich seemed to grow inches taller with pride.

‘In early 1941. It was a gift from the Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering, at that time a hugely popular and admired figure, as a mark of his affection – and admiration,’ said Trebich warmly. ‘Heinrich knew a great deal about art and had great charm. He was so proud to be singled out by the Reichsmarschall.’

‘He never thought to search for the picture after the war?’

Trebich shrugged. ‘What for? He know the château burn to the ground.’

‘Would he have given it to an English soldier?’

‘Nevair.’ Trebich’s shudder was like Grenville’s after a bath.

‘Did Colonel Feldstrasse know it was looted from the Abelman family?’

‘Certainly not. He was merely overjoyed to own such an exquisite picture.’

‘Who was his heir?’

‘I was. He had a charming wife, who died before he did, but no children. He left me everything.’

Oh Christ, thought Jupiter.

‘How, as a German,’ asked Naomi idly, ‘do you feel as the owner of a looted picture?’

‘I feel ashamed,’ said Trebich quietly, bowing his silver head. ‘Even if I have title, there is a moral obligation to return such a picture to its rightful owner. I couldn’t hang a stolen picture on my wall,’ he added sanctimoniously. ‘And I know if Colonel Feldstrasse were alive today and he knew the history of the painting’s confiscation, he would want it returned to Zachary Ansteig.’

Major von Trebich smiled at Zac, who was gazing at the floor.

‘It’s only because Zac’s so bloody good looking,’ hissed Sienna to Archie from the
Mail
. ‘Si Greenbridge probably bribed that Nazi woofter and faked all the documents.’

‘Thank you, Major von Trebich,’ said an overjoyed Naomi.

Sampson did his best. If it were such a treasured possession, why didn’t Feldstrasse take it with him?

‘Not being a dealer,’ replied Trebich haughtily, ‘Heinrich didn’t know you could cut a painting out of its frame and conceal it rolled up in a shell case.’

‘Honi soit qui mal y ponce’, wrote Sienna furiously. Where the hell did this put her poor father?

Raymond was recalled briefly to the witness box, and, capitulating faster than the French in 1941, broke down and wept, admitting he had stolen the painting from the deserted château.

‘We detested the Nazis. They’d just killed my brother Viridian. I was twenty. It was the most beautiful painting I’d ever seen. How could I leave it to burn? I’m sorry I lied,’ he added despairingly. ‘I’m just a foolish, fond old man who loved his picture.’

‘You’re just a very greedy old man,’ said Willoughby Evans sternly, ‘who wanted to hang on to something that wasn’t his.’

‘No, he’s not,’ screamed Sienna, suddenly galvanized in the gallery. ‘Anyone who loved pictures would have done the same thing.’

A couple of officials frogmarched her outside, and Willoughby Evans agreed to an adjournment until the following day, so that everyone could get their breath back.

Leaving the court, Zac bumped into Sienna.

‘How dare you humiliate my father?’ she screamed and, before Si’s guards could stop her, slapped him viciously back and forth across the face. ‘I see you manage to conquer your loathing for Nazis when you need their help, you fucking hypocrite.’

Back at Foxes Court, the Belvedons spent a dreadful night. Raymond gazed into space, shuddering with horror.