Iain Pears - The Last Judgement

He nodded again.

‘And you failed. As far as she was concerned, by that time it was too late. Even if the painting was recovered from Muller, there was no guarantee that its contents had not been removed. Muller was dangerous and had to be taken care of. And before you interrupt, I will tell you why in a moment.

‘It was a delicate matter, and she needed someone she could trust. So she called Ellman. Phoned him from her hotel, and told him what to do. He agreed.

‘Ellman arrived in Rome and went to Muller. Muller denied having the painting, and was tortured to make him reveal where it was; when he said Argyll had it, he was killed and Ellman left with the documents.

‘Ellman then met Madame Armand, who had stayed behind after Rouxel left for Paris. Perhaps he tried to be too clever; I don’t know. But she shot him with his own gun, then left with all the papers he had in his room. I assume she destroyed them.

‘A couple of days later, Jonathan Argyll returns the picture, free of charge, and Madame Armand, just to be sure, burns it.’

She looked around to see how the audience was taking what was, after all, a pretty weak account. Much supposition, little substance. She could almost hear Bottando grumbling in the background.

The reactions fitted well with her expectations. Argyll looked faintly disappointed; Janet surprised that he had been dragged out late at night for such stuff; Montaillou was contemptuous, and Jeanne Armand seemed almost amused. Only Rouxel himself was unmoved, sitting quietly in his chair as though he had just heard some junior but enthusiastic manager expound something truly outlandish.

‘You must forgive me if I say that this is very thin, young lady,’ he said after it became clear that no one else was going to break the silence. And he smiled, almost apologetically, at her.

‘There is more,’ she said. ‘Except that I don’t know whether you want to hear it.’

‘If it’s as feeble as the first part, I imagine we’ll survive,’ commented Montaillou.

‘Monsieur Rouxel?’ she asked with considerable reluctance. ‘What about you?’

He shook his head. ‘You are committed. You can’t stop now. You know that as well as I do. You have to say what you think, however foolish it may be. My opinion scarcely matters.’

She nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Very well. Now we turn to motive. Both of them. Montaillou for wanting to get hold of that painting so urgently. Jeanne Armand as well.

‘Madame Armand first. A cultivated, intelligent woman. Who went to university, began a promising career then, gave it up to help her grandfather temporarily. Except that he could never do without her again, and persuaded her to stay when she wanted to get on with her own life rather than looking after his. Despite her abilities, she was treated as little more than his secretary.

‘Monsieur Rouxel married in 1945, his wife died young and he never married again. His daughter died in childbirth. Madame Armand was his nearest relative, and was extremely solicitous of his welfare. Although how she managed it, considering the way she was treated I, for one, do not fully understand. But she worked for him, looked after him, kept the troubles of the world at bay. Is that correct?’

Rouxel nodded. ‘She’s everything an old man could want. Entirely selfless. She’s been wonderful to me, and I must say, if you are going to attack that, I shall begin to get angry...’

‘I presume she is also your heir.’

He shrugged. ‘Of course. That’s no secret. She’s my only family. Who else could possibly be?’

‘How about your son?’ Flavia asked quietly.

A silence so profound followed the question that she wondered if it could ever break. There was not even the slightest sound of breathing to disturb the quiet.

‘Arthur Muller, the first victim in this affair, was your son, monsieur,’ she went on after a while. ‘The son of Henrietta Richards, previously Henriette Hartung. She’s still alive. Your mistress for several years. Muller was born in 1940, at a time when, according to his mother, she and her husband had not had what she termed close relations for a couple of years. You had. She kept who his father was a secret. It would have damaged her son’s chance of inheriting and, by her own lights, she wanted to be a good wife. Which meant being discreet where she couldn’t be faithful. And she didn’t want you going to Hartung to demand that he give her up.’

Rouxel snorted. ‘There was no chance of that.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Me? Marry Henriette? The idea never crossed my mind.’

‘You were in love with her,’ said Flavia, the hatred mounting now.

‘Never,’ he replied contemptuously. ‘She was fun, and attractive and amusing. But love? No. Marry the penniless cast-off of Hartung? Absurd. And I never once told her that.’

‘She loved you.’

Even now, in these circumstances, Rouxel gave a little shrug that was almost vain. Of course, he seemed to imply. ‘She was a silly girl. Always was. And bored and wanting excitement. I gave it to her.’

Flavia paused and studied him more closely, breathing carefully to control herself. As he’d said, she was now committed. No holding back any longer. She owed Henriette Richards that. She’d promised.

‘But she didn’t tell anyone about you, except her son. When he was shipped out of danger to Argentina and then Canada, she told him his father was a great hero. He was only small, but he understood and clung to that belief; even when he was told what had happened to Hartung, he refused to believe it. His adoptive sister thought he was living in a fantasy world. But he believed what his mother had said. It was certain that even before he was accused of treachery Hartung himself was not the stuff of heroism. Therefore his father must be someone else. When he read the letters from his parents, he knew his long belief had been correct, and began to search.

‘He did the obvious thing; that is, wrote to people who were connected to his father and went looking around the archives himself; not that he was any sort of historian. He talked to the archivist in the Jewish documentation centre. His letters to Rouxel that Jeanne intercepted and read, other casual remarks she’d picked up over the years and a certain amount of reading the papers in your office to which she had free access allowed her to work out what he was after. She knew who he was; she knew he was after documents proving it; but she didn’t know where they were.

‘What Muller wanted was the evidence Hartung talked about. In “the last judgement.” He identified it, so he thought, and stole it. It was the worst mistake of his life.

‘When the painting was stolen, and Montaillou told her who had stolen it, everything fell into place. She moved fast. She killed your son, monsieur. Had him murdered in cold blood. Tortured to death by the same man who tortured and destroyed the life of your mistress. That is her repayment for the way you’ve treated her.

‘Do you believe me?’ she said after another, long silence.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head. He believed her. The way his shoulders had slumped demonstrated clearly enough that, even if Janet and Montaillou might remain sceptical, Rouxel knew perfectly well that what she was saying was true. No proof; but any trial and punishment the legal system could hand out would be minor in comparison anyway.

‘Henriette Hartung was your mistress around the time her son was conceived?’ she continued.

He nodded.

‘And you never suspected?’

‘I worried, yes. But she told me not to. I was a student, and a poor one. Hartung had been good to me. I owed him everything. And I was having an affair with his wife and didn’t want to stop. But I didn’t want him to find out, either. It wasn’t just that he could have destroyed my career before it had even started, I liked the man as well.’