The Paris Secret (10 page)

‘Follow me,’ Natascha ordered, jumping out and sweeping into the building as though she owned it, which – who knew? – perhaps she did.

Flora followed behind, confusion making her compliant as she tried to work out what was going on and exactly how cross she ought to be.

Natascha was holding the lift for her but she ignored Flora’s question, again asking where they were and why, as they travelled up two floors. Natascha strode out the second the doors
pinged open again. The girl behind the reception desk sprang to standing and was already shaking her head apologetically by the time Flora joined them all of three seconds later.

‘Well, then, where is his assistant?’ Natascha was asking furiously.

The receptionist nodded her head and quickly escorted them through an open-plan room populated by people in sober suits to an office at the back of the building. Flora had no idea where they
were – an accountant’s? an undertaker’s? – but she knew that she and Natascha, in their preppy culottes and trashy hot pants respectively, made an odd couple.

Natascha was shown into an office (Flora being told by her to ‘stay outside’, as though she were the dog) where a young man – mid-twenties, Flora guessed – was working at
a screen. Just like the receptionist, he jumped up deferentially and offered Natascha a seat, some coffee, but she just shook her head, speaking to him and holding out her hand as though she was
expecting to be given something.

The man looked embarrassed and Natascha’s hand dropped down, her agitation increasing as he spoke. Flora, watching through the glass, couldn’t decipher the conversation – she
couldn’t hear a thing and certainly couldn’t lip-read French – when suddenly Natascha turned and motioned to her through the glass, telling her to come in. Flora complied again,
too bewildered not to.

‘Tell him who you are,’ she commanded.

Flora looked between Natascha and the man. ‘Uh . . . I’m Flora Sykes, Head of European Operations for Beaumont Fine Art Agency,’ she said tentatively, offering a hand.

The young man shook it warily. He looked harassed – much like her, actually. ‘Claude Descalier.’

‘You see?’ Natascha said. ‘I don’t see why you have a problem. She just had the meeting with your boss and my parents. This is all completely authorized.’

What was?

‘Do I need to point it out to you that your firm has represented my family for almost eighty years now? Your boss is like a brother to my father. Why do you insist on acting as though
there are secrets? Unless you have something to hide?’

The young man, his skin now almost grey, looked between them both before turning and walking towards a painting on the back wall. He pushed down on the right-hand side of the frame and the
entire thing swung back, as on a hinge, revealing a safe. He entered a code and, opening the door, returned a moment later with a long white envelope which he handed to Natascha.

‘Thank you,’ she said, taking it from him and stuffing it into her bag. She laughed. ‘You can stop looking so scared, you know. You have done nothing wrong.’

Flora looked at him, expecting an explanation at least – what had been in that envelope and why had Flora been required to be present to get it? – but Natascha had left the room
again and was already halfway across the office.

‘You are going with her,
non
?’ the man told, rather than asked, Flora, hurrying her along with an urgent tone as he saw her standing motionless. ‘You must go.’

He almost pushed her out the door and she had to jog to catch up with Natascha who was already back at the lift. Only as the doors closed and she looked back did Flora catch sight of the name of
the company etched in gold across the front of the reception desk. The receptionist had a smile frozen to her face that Flora had no doubt would fall off the moment the doors closed.

‘Natascha, what did that man just give you?’ she asked, her voice rising an octave.

‘What concern is that of yours?’

‘Well, given that you just used my name and presence to get hold of it, I would say quite a lot, actually.’

The lift doors pinged open and they walked back out and into the waiting car again.

‘
Natascha?
’ Flora persisted, more stridently this time. Professional courtesy would only last for so long. ‘You’ve just barged into your family’s
notary’s and somehow used me to get something you wanted. What was it?’

Natascha glanced up at her. ‘It is no big deal. He just gave me the spare keys to the apartment.’ And she quickly fired off the now-familiar address to Pascal who silently nodded and
pulled out into the traffic.

‘But you can’t do that! You’re not supposed to go there!’ Flora cried. ‘Your grandmother has specifically barred you from doing so – she has the legal
prerogative to do that.’

‘
Non
, she forbade my mother – not me, not my brother.’ Natascha sounded bored again. ‘Why shouldn’t I go, anyway? It belongs to our family.’

Flora didn’t know what to say. She had no idea of the specifics of Magda Vermeil’s diktats to her family or the legalities of the codicil. She was just a fine-arts specialist, there
to record, preserve and classify what they found. ‘Listen, the scene is sensitive at the moment. There are a lot of valuable artworks just lying on the floor.’

‘Which is why I’m taking you with me. You can make sure I don’t do any damage. Be my witness, in case I need it.’ A hint of a sneer curled her lip.

‘Look, the fewer people going in there the better. If you want to see the paintings, of course, you can – but in a protective environment. Once we’ve moved everything
to—’

‘I want to see my grandparents’ home, my heritage,’ Natascha said unconvincingly. Flora suspected the only heritage Natascha cared about was her trust fund.

‘But—’

Natascha stopped Flora in her tracks by holding up her hand, inches from Flora’s face. ‘Stop talking now.’

Flora stared at her in disbelief but Natascha was already oblivious, pressing Buy Now on the Net-A-Porter app for a punky orange-striped Fendi fur jacket from the pre-fall collection. Flora
turned away in a fit of anger, her cheeks flaming with humiliation. But Natascha was oblivious – 5,000 euros and six minutes later, they pulled up outside the apartment and she ripped the
keys from the envelope before bounding out of the car like an excited puppy.

‘Coming?’ she asked disingenuously, as Flora remained where she was in the car.

‘No!’ Flora pointedly turned the other cheek but she could see Natascha shrug in the window’s reflection and disappear into the building.

Flora managed to hold her ground for all of twelve seconds before she followed. It was more than she could bear to think of Natascha bulldozing through the apartment – supposedly in search
of her heritage – and potentially damaging the artworks within. This was still her watch, at least until the security company moved the rest of the contents into proper storage tomorrow.

She could hear Natascha climbing the stairs on the storey above her; fitness didn’t seem to be her thing, unless running to the fridge for more vodka counted as exercise in her world.

Flora, ascending the stairs two at a time, caught up with her on the third floor. Or rather, she saw Natascha disappear into an apartment on the third floor, her long legs scissoring out of
sight down a long, dark, dusty hall.

What?

She braked to a stop. No. How? This wasn’t right.

But the door was open, Natascha out of sight.

‘Natascha?’ she called after her. ‘You can’t go in there.’

No reply.

‘Natascha! Get back out here now!’

Silence.

‘For God’s sake,’ Flora muttered, taking a single step over the threshold, as though afraid to follow, her hand tracing the number
6
on the open front door, her fingers
finding the key in the lock . . .

Wait, what? The key fit? It was the key for this door?

She could hear Natascha’s footsteps on the stripped floors as she barged from room to room. ‘Natascha!’

Slowly, she began to walk down the hall, sure she must be tripping. This made no sense. She doubted her own mind. Was
she
the one mistaken? She stared back at the door – at the
brass
6
– and then back down the empty hall; she passed bare rooms, thick with dust and nothing else. She found Natascha in the bedroom at the front of the building. A wooden bedstead
– no mattress – stood in the room, beside a crate.

‘Is that
it
?’ Natascha demanded, her hands on her hips.

Almost as though in slow motion, Flora looked at the painting lying face up on the slats of the bedstead. What was going on? Was this some kind of game? She walked towards the bed, noticing a
toy on the floor beside the crate.

But that wasn’t what she was interested in. Her eyes were almost immediately drawn back to the solitary painting lying on the bones of the bed. Its beauty was luminous and all the more
startling for being found here, alone – a portrait of a woman, Edwardian period, her green eyes shaped like pear-cut emeralds, her russet hair twisted and fashioned into an intricate topknot,
the exquisitely rendered silk of her peacock-blue dress modulating through teal to turquoise to sea-green, with top notes of gold flecks. On one elegant hand was a gold signet ring, on the other a
ruby, the vermilion scratch shocking against the creaminess of her skin, like blood in the snow.

Flora’s eyes flicked to the bottom corners, looking for a signature, but there wasn’t one that she could see and she turned it over and checked the back – nothing. No gallery
sticker or dealer name, no exhibition number, no clue to reveal who this woman was, nor who had immortalized her. Immediately Flora knew this rendered the painting almost worthless on the open
market but she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a more beautiful portrait.

‘You said there were hundreds of paintings here!’ Natascha shouted, dragging her from her immersive thoughts. ‘I heard you. I stood behind the door and I heard you!’

But Flora wasn’t interested in Natascha’s confession. All her concentration was folded inwards as her brain tried to process what her eyes were showing her. It wasn’t just that
the apartment was almost entirely empty . . . ‘I don’t understand. You had a key?’

‘Don’t try and play the innocent with me! What have you done with them?’

‘Done with what?’

‘My family’s paintings! Where have you hidden them?’

‘I haven’t hidden anything!’

‘Then explain to me where are the
hundreds
of paintings in my grandparents’ apartment,’ Natascha said sarcastically, holding her arms out wide and indicating the empty
space. ‘What have you done? Where are they?’

Flora blinked back, understanding precious little more than Natascha did. But without saying a word, she unfurled her index finger and pointed to the ceiling.

Flora stood by the front door, refusing to play ball. She wouldn’t be part of this; she wouldn’t be Natascha’s tour guide. It wasn’t as though she knew
what the hell was going on anyway. She couldn’t make sense of what had just happened: another key, another apartment, another painting?

Her finger traced the brass figure
8
on the door as Natascha prowled the rooms, sated now by the haul – her heritage – before her, idly flicking through the stacked paintings
like someone at a retro vinyl store.

Her face upon first entering the apartment had been a picture itself – for a girl born into a life of mirrored hallways and twenty-foot ceilings, it had been a shock for her to see the
reality of her grandparents’ early lifestyle: dark wood panelling, stripped pine floors, low ceilings. They had been by no means poor but it was a far cry from the rarefied echelons the
family inhabited now. If Natascha felt dismay, however, she didn’t show it, instead laughing at everything – the ragged silk curtains, the fusty coats in the cupboard, the pickle jars
in the larder.

Only when she nonchalantly went to light a cigarette in the hall was Flora forced to abandon her post and act, snatching it away from her and sending up prayers of relief that the Renoir and
Faucheux were already in safekeeping, far away from this spoilt girl’s pithy curiosity.

‘You can’t smoke in here,’ she cried, scarcely able to believe anyone could be so stupid, her eyes falling to a stack of canvases – now flicked to the floor – in
the dining room over Natascha’s shoulder. ‘And don’t touch anything,’ she said testily as Natascha walked off again with a careless shrug. Didn’t the girl have any
clue about the value of these pieces? Their fragility after over seventy years in seclusion?

Flora was replacing the canvases against the wall when she heard Natascha’s throaty screech of delight come from the drawing room and knew that she had found Gertie.

‘Flora!’ Natascha called, her tone almost friendly, as though she’d completely forgotten that she’d driven Flora across the city against her will, made her complicit in
(possibly illegally) gaining access to the property, held a hand up to her face to silence her. ‘Look at this!’

Flora walked in and almost fainted on the spot. Natascha was sitting astride the ostrich, her long, bare legs wrapped around the bird’s neck as though she were Miley Cyrus on a wrecking
ball. ‘Now this I’ve got to have!’ she shrieked, wiggling her shoulders and throwing her head back. ‘My mother will detest it!’

‘Get off it, Natascha,’ she said firmly. Though she herself was only six years older than Natascha, she felt as though she had to be mother. This girl was like a toddler, with no
sense of boundaries.

‘Why?’

Why? Flora wanted to scream. Had there ever been a more stupid question? ‘Because your parents have entrusted the care and safekeeping of everything in this apartment to the agency, and
until we have signed it all off, the ostrich is strictly off limits. So I’ll say it again – get off the ostrich.’

‘
Non,
’ Natascha said defiantly, a bead of light dancing in her eyes. She lived to defy, it seemed.

Flora sighed, marched across the room and stood in front of her, hands planted firmly – and warningly – on her hips. ‘Natascha, get off Gertie. I mean it.’