The Paris Secret (42 page)

She thought of Travers, the keeper of these secrets. He had lied when he’d told her the explorers had broken into Number 8. She knew that – the photos on the web proved they’d
found the apartment downstairs, not the one upstairs. So why divert the family by handing over the keys to Apartment 8? It had made life inordinately more difficult for him exposing that apartment
to the family’s collective gaze – he’d already admitted to having to sneak in after she and Angus left, in order to remove all the paperwork in the apartment that would link Von
Taschelt to the Vermeils. It had been a hell of a gamble. He’d had to hope that they would be so distracted by the art haul that they would focus on the artworks and not the paperwork –
and they had been. But why go to all that trouble if not to avoid a greater risk? Something greater even than exposing Von Taschelt’s true identity? What was in Apartment 6 that Travers
– following instructions – had to hide above all else? There had been nothing in there apart from the portrait facing them all now.

‘We’re done here.’ Noah looked at Jacques. ‘Call me when the test results are in.’ He began to walk across the room.

Flora didn’t hear him. She was deep in her own thoughts, mentally retracing her route through the apartment. Why did a secret need to be kept for over seventy years?

In her mind’s eye, she conjured the empty rooms, the bed, the crate, the painting. And something else . . . Suddenly she remembered what she’d found on the floor by the crate.
Something so small and innocuous and covered with dust . . .

Over seventy years . . .

Noah’s hand was on the door when Flora gasped, her head jerking up to find Magda already staring at her, the alarm in her face confirming Flora’s hunch. Flora’s gaze fell to
the old woman’s hand – or rather, the hand she held. The signet ring on Jacques’ finger had been turned inwards, the stamped seal now palm-side so that it looked like an ordinary
wedding band.

‘It was never about the paintings,’ she whispered, feeling the floor rock beneath her.

Noah turned.

‘That’s why there were so many in there.’

Magda stared back at her, defiant in her silence but quivering with rage as Flora shone a ray of light onto the darkest corners of her past, the suspicions hardening into facts one by one. She
knew she was right.

‘Franz
didn’t
betray them – it’s like you said,’ Flora said quietly. ‘Were those paintings just the ones the Nazis didn’t want? The ones they
allowed him to keep for himself?’ she needled. ‘And sell on for his own profit?’

‘He couldn’t even bear to look at them!’ Magda spat, provoked. ‘He never would have sold them!’

Noah came further into the room and as Magda’s eyes slid between him and the portrait, something in her slackened. Jacques saw it too, covering his mother’s hand more closely again
and unwittingly bringing the ring into the light.

Magda watched as Flora’s eyes fell to it again and she knew the game was up. She had run out of time, lived too long to outrun her past. She was quiet for a long time then, but nobody
spoke to or harried her along, sensing somehow that the truth was finally pushing its way to the surface.

‘What else could he do?’ she said in a barely audible voice. ‘He had to disguise himself as one of them in order to help his own – getting them the best price he could
without attracting attention, negotiating border passes for art.’ She gripped Jacques’ fingers tightly. ‘Do you know what it took for him to do that, right under their noses? The
constant fear, the paranoia, the agony of the pretence? He couldn’t sleep at night. He had to endure the disgust of people who had once been his friends, his blood. He was a Jew himself! Art
was the only thing that kept him alive – his expertise was the only power he had. It was the only way he could help, even if those people he was helping despised and cursed and condemned him
as he did it.’ Her eyes blackened as she pinned a look on Noah. ‘And still do.’

Noah swallowed, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. ‘My grandfather told me he betrayed them.’

‘Then he was wrong. He bought the act,’ Magda sneered. ‘Franz did everything he could to try to save your family. He sold what he could for them in exchange for those border
passes. He tried to help make them look obedient to the Reich,
compliant,
but there was a limit to his influence. They already suspected him. He had tried to help too many others, that was
his downfall.’

Jacques fell to his knees beside his mother’s chair. ‘Why did you never say this?’ he cried. ‘How could you let us – let the whole world – think that he was a
traitor?’

Magda raised a hand to his cheek. ‘To keep you safe, my boy. Let them tell lies. I would have weathered anything to keep you with me.’

‘But the war ended years ago.’

Magda shook her head. ‘Not for me.’ She fell silent, her eyes as gentle on her son’s as they had been hard on Flora and Noah.

No one said a word. Both Xavier and Noah had moved back to the centre of the room, standing, almost side by side, in front of Magda’s chair. But Flora didn’t see them – the
only person in her sights was Magda, still hiding the full truth.

‘Tell him.’

Magda glared at her. ‘I have! His father was a hero. What more do you want?’

‘I want you to tell him the reason why you’ve kept that a secret for all these years. Why you’ve remained silent and let your husband’s good name – and the
reputation of your family – be vilified. What could be worse than what you’ve endured?’

Magda said nothing, just gave a careless, dismissive shrug.

‘I know what.’

‘You know nothing!’

Slowly Flora raised her arm and pointed at the portrait. ‘There’s a very good reason why you collapsed when you saw this here. It tells the truth even if you stay silent.
You’ve done everything you can since you came into this room to keep attention off that painting and on you.’

Jacques’ expression changed as her words settled, his body stiffening as he stared at the woman in greater detail. Unthinking, he withdrew his hand from his mother’s, pulling a gasp
of anguish from Magda.

‘You should never have gone in there!’ she cried, directing her fury at Flora all over again, her voice as splintered as wood breaking beneath a great weight.
‘Never!’

The old woman began to sob.

Lilian looked over at her. ‘Flora? What’s going on?’

Flora’s voice was quiet. ‘The ring, Lilian. Look at her ring.’

She watched as the facts lined up like a slot-machine win in their minds, the reason why that particular woman had always seemed so familiar to her suddenly now so clear. She knew exactly what
Von Taschelt, and latterly Travers, had been trying to protect – and it had been smuggled out of the house in that big crate with the painting inside. It was the reason it had been found set
apart from the others, all alone in Apartment 6 – the secret room where the Nazis wouldn’t have known, or even thought, to look.

The room swelled with silence.

Jacques, who looked ashen, stared at the painting with dawning incredulity before looking down at his own hand. ‘. . . She’s my
mother
?’

‘No! I am!’ Magda cried, grabbing his hand again and clutching it so tight that her knuckles blanched, the ring hidden from view again. ‘
I
kept you safe,
I
raised
you. You’re mine. My boy.
My
boy.’

But Jacques couldn’t take his eyes off the woman in the painting, the woman with the same ring, the same eyes.

Magda slumped, the fight trickling out of her as she saw the truth settle on her son’s face, a truth she had hoped never to live to see.

‘He
stole
me?’ Jacques cried, sounding stricken.

‘He
saved
you. And many more besides! He worked for the OSE, don’t you see? He used his consignments to smuggle children to Switzerland and America. He had the perfect cover
story – packing every crate himself, giving the child a sedative that would make them sleep through the journey, accompanying them every step of the train journey and sitting in the cargo
departments with the crates in case they woke up or cried. And all the while, he was pretending he was safeguarding valuables of the Reich, lying to the faces of the Blackshirts.’

OSE? Flora had heard of it, of course. The Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, or the ‘Children’s Aid Society’ had been a French-Jewish humanitarian movement that worked with the
Resistance, going underground in the early forties. But to learn that Franz had been one of their number? She swallowed, feeling disorientated by the revelation. Where was terra firma with this
family? What was real and what wasn’t? Who was good and who bad? She looked across at Jacques and Lilian but it was clear they didn’t know the answer either.

‘But you, my darling? We couldn’t let you go to strangers. When he learned your parents – our dearest friends – were being set up, it was all he could offer. I was
already in Switzerland.’ Her voice was thin. ‘Your two brothers and your sister were too big . . . they had been seen,
counted,
on the first visit. But you weren’t in the
room, you were sleeping, not yet two . . . The Germans didn’t know you were there.’ Magda’s face crumpled, pleating into deep folds like an origami puppet and she covered her face
with her hands. ‘They were such beautiful children,’ she sobbed, her voice shredded now. ‘But the house was being watched. There was no other way to get you out. You were the only
one he could save. The only one.’

Flora felt her own tears come, her hands at her mouth as she watched Jacques fold in half as the loss of his family was laid bare – his beautiful mother, his father, his older siblings
whose only crime was to be Jewish, whose fate was sealed by their age and size. It was that simple and that tragic. He sobbed, heavy retching sounds that came from a primal source, Lilian wrapping
herself over him like an exoskeleton and weeping too at the sight of her broken husband, Magda like a prisoner in the dock, awaiting the judge’s verdict.

Noah sank into the opposite fireside chair, looking thunderstruck. Jacques was his cousin? ‘I . . . I’m so sorry.’ He looked sick.

Flora went and sat beside him, feeling a certain sympathy for him. He’d been so self-righteous in his loss, so certain he was the only victim. How could he possibly have known the truth?
He looked at her, guilt ringed with devastation. ‘Flora, I didn’t know.’

‘No,’ she said sadly, watching Jacques and Lilian huddle together like wounded animals, a look of desolation on Xavier’s face, Magda as alone and silent in her suffering as
she’d ever been; after all, she’d had seventy-three years of practice. ‘No, you didn’t. That was the point.’

The cloudburst was fierce, hurling down stinging rain in torrents, but Flora was glad of it. The thought of walking into that courtroom on a bright, shiny day would seem
perverse, to be surrounded by office workers in shirtsleeves on their way to have lunch in the park, women trying to tan their legs in their lunch hour, whilst her family were cloistered in an
airless, sunless room being torn apart by lies.

Flora turned away from the window as she heard someone come into the kitchen. Her father was opening his briefcase and shuffling through the papers inside, a fixedly impassive expression on his
face.

‘Goddammit!’ He slammed the lid down hard, a fist pressed to his forehead. ‘Where the hell is it?’ he said to himself.

‘Where’s what?’

He looked up, surprised to see her curled on the windowsill, her knees tucked up by her chest.

‘My BlackBerry. I can’t find it anywhere. I swear I had it last—’

‘It’s in the fridge.’

Her father looked dumbfounded. ‘F . . . ?’ He couldn’t get the word out.

‘I know. I thought it was weird too,’ she shrugged. ‘But I didn’t know if it was some techno thing you do – you know, to improve battery life or
whatever.’

‘No. No,’ he mumbled, baffled and walking over to the fridge to see for himself. ‘It’s not some—’ He lifted it out, looking worried.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said gently. ‘There’s a lot going on.’

‘Yes, but there’s being busy and there’s being
mad
, Floss. I may be getting on but I am not so doddery that I put my own BlackBerry in the fridge.’

She rested her head against the cold glass of the window and smiled kindly. ‘If you say so. Is Mummy ready yet?’

‘Drying her hair,’ he mumbled, still staring at the chilled phone. He looked up at her.

‘Any sign of him?’

She shook her head, biting her lip as she looked back out at the dreary street scene. Freds’s street was always quiet during the weekdays. Parking was residents only, and the
right-turn-only sign at one end meant it wasn’t used as a rat run by taxi-drivers trying to get to the river.

‘He should be back by now,’ her father murmured, checking his watch. ‘He’s been gone – what? Nearly two hours now?’

‘I know but . . .’ Her voice trailed off; she understood exactly why he’d needed to be alone. He was due for the preliminary hearing at the Crown Court in an hour, and the
dismantling of his life would begin. The press – entitled to be there – would, with minimal digging, soon realize he was tabloid gold: the son of the man who brought down the hammer on
the
Sunflowers
, an arrogant posh boy not used to being told ‘no’. His name would be splashed everywhere, there were no rights to anonymity for him. ‘He’ll be
here.’

‘But the car’s coming in twenty minutes.’

Actually, it was already parked outside – she’d watched it pull up a few minutes ago – but Flora kept that to herself. It wouldn’t do for everyone to start getting
fractious about Freds’s whereabouts when they were, officially, ahead of time. ‘Don’t worry, Daddy. Freds knows what he’s doing.’

‘You don’t think—’

‘No,’ she said quickly, knowing he was worrying that Freddie had done a runner. ‘I really don’t. He wouldn’t do that. Freds will face up to this.’

They were quiet for a moment. ‘Do you want a drink?’ her father asked, desperation in his voice.