Returning to the front of the flat, she searched the gaping, jumbled drawers of Serge’s desk but could find no papers for any of the family. Someone had gone through the contents in a hurry. Whether it had been Serge or the police was impossible to tell. But whatever documents they’d found had clearly been taken or destroyed.

She listened for noises or voices, but the building seemed to have descended into an unnatural hush. Estelle picked her way back to the doorway but stopped just short of it to retrieve a stray photo that lay creased near the door. It was a photo of Rachel and Aviva that had probably been taken just before the war, her friend sitting on the sofa, the little girl in her lap, both laughing at the camera.

She slipped the photo into her pocket, next to the little box, and then left the Wylers’ apartment, closing the door noiselessly behind her. Estelle didn’t fool herself into thinking that they wouldn’t be back. The French police or the Nazis or maybe both. All of them scavenging vultures, looking to seize what treasures might have been left behind. Looking for opportunities to destroy more lives. And she wouldn’t be able to stop them.

But they would never take the lives and the secrets concealed in her apartment.

Chapter 9

Chapter
9

Gabriel

Paris, France
28 June 2017

The collection that Gabriel and Lia pulled out of the concealed space at the rear of the dressing room was humbling. And thrilling and astonishing, and Gabriel was quite sure he would never in his life see anything like it again.

He had no way of knowing if the paintings now arrayed in the bedroom had belonged to a single individual but if they had, that person had had an eye for brilliance. Currently, there was a Pissarro leaning up against the foot of the bed and a Morisot languishing beside it. There was a work by Kirchner resting on the dressing table and what Gabriel suspected would prove to be a Heckel propped below on the chair.

Gabriel glanced at the woman standing in the center of the bedroom, looking around her with an expression that was difficult to read. Worry, maybe. Apprehension, perhaps. Both of which no doubt were making it impossible for Lia to share the thrill of discovery that was still buzzing through his veins.

“Again, I see nothing here that is ringing any alarm bells,” he told her, straightening from where he had been crouched in front of the Pissarro. “Nothing that I’m aware has been reported stolen or looted.”

“Thanks. But you don’t have to keep trying to make me feel better.”