Meet Fen Churche, as she steps off the night train with the sun rising over Paris. Cat whisperer, crossword puzzler… accidental detective? Autumn, 1945. Fen cannot wait to see her beloved godmother Rose, who has invited Fen to stay with her in the city of lights. As she arrives, Fen is dreaming of strolls by the Seine, taking tea at the Eiffel Tower and above all French feasts with Rose where they can trade stories of how they survived the terrifying war years. But Fen has barely made friends with Rose’s bad-tempered poodle when she returns to the apartment to find her godmother murdered, a paintbrush stuck in her neck. Suddenly Fen is thrown into the middle of a truly puzzling mystery. Who on earth would want to murder Rose, a gentle artist and generous friend? A blackmail letter convinces Fen that the police have got everything wrong and Fen knows she has to solve the case just like one of her crosswords, one clue at a time. As she meets her godmother’s friends, she makes a surprising discovery: Rose was part of the Resistance during the war… When a second body turns up, another of Rose’s wartime contacts, Fen must act fast. But as the killer turns their sights on Fen, does she have what it takes to solve this mysterious murder and get justice for her darling godmother? You won’t be able to put down this utterly addictive historical cozy mystery! The absolutely perfect treat if you love Agatha Christie, Rhys Bowen and Jacqueline Winspear. Readers are totally addicted to Night Train to Paris! ‘ I was hooked from page one!… I felt like I was right there in 1945 Paris. The descriptions were so vivid, the dialect, the sights, the sounds, the aromas and the fashion!’ Goodreads Reviewer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘Truly an entertaining murder mystery that was difficult to put down. Fliss Chester has a talent for capturing your attention and holding it right till the end… Dotted with lies, spies, murder, romance, mystery, and everything nice!!! A definite page-turner.’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘ Captured me within the first few pages as I was instantly transported back to memories of travels to Paris… An exciting read. I devoured it in one sitting!… I’m hooked.’ Goodreads Reviewer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘A very readable cozy mystery with likeable characters… A page-turner.’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘ I really liked this book… I felt like I was there experiencing the sights and sounds of Paris. Fliss Chester kept me guessing throughout the book on the identity of the murderer (or maybe murderers) up until the very end. Honestly, the ending was unexpected… Can't wait to read more by this author.’ Goodreads Reviewer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ‘The sights and sounds of Paris were so very well depicted and the mystery kept me hooked until the very end and now has me looking forward to book 3!’ Goodreads Reviewer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Release date:
November 26, 2020
Publisher:
Bookouture
Print pages:
350
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I’m writing this on the train, so please excuse my appalling handwriting. Our carriage rattles so much, I’m wielding this pen with all the elegance of a sledgehammer! But – good news – I’m almost in Paris, although it has taken rather a long time to get here, due to the timetables being up the spout still and, of course, more importantly, trains of returning troops and prisoners of war taking priority on the lines. We’ve had so many delays, what should have taken us a few hours has stretched out throughout the whole night now. When some bright spark tells me there’s no such thing as a night train from Dijon to Paris, I shall beg to differ, though, sadly, this one has none of the comforts of the couchette, more’s the pity.
Still, I mustn’t grumble, and I have just seen the most glorious sunrise over the fields and I hope a week or so in Paris might help me put the adventures of the last few weeks behind me. Although I miss Arthur and will love him for as long as I live, I hope to find a small part of me again here, in the City of Lights. (Remember that crossword clue I sent you a while ago, Kitty? Well, that’s the answer – Paris! Let’s hope it’s the answer to my problems, too.)
I’m travelling with Arthur’s friend, James Lancaster. I feel like he’s a bit ‘all at sea’ now he’s in this limbo that is demobilisation, so I can see why Arthur wanted me to look out for him. I hope he can stay with my friend Rose with me in Paris, but we’ll see. And perhaps, if we travel to England together after this, you’ll get to meet him, too.
I can picture you all, either sitting round the kitchen table, the kettle whistling on the stove, or, Kitty, you cross-legged in front of the open fire while Mrs B and Dilly are on the armchairs, but all listening to the wireless together.
I do miss you and hope my spare suitcase of summer clothes isn’t too much in the way. I’ll be back for it soon.
Anyway, I hope you’re all well and the rationing isn’t still biting too hard (bad pun, sorry!).
Here’s another clue for you, Kitty: This Pullman took tea before his shower (5)… Here’s a hint… I’m sitting on it right now!
Thinking of you all,
Fen xxx
Fen stepped off the train at Paris’s Gare de Lyon station and walked forward a few steps to allow others off the train behind her. She took a deep breath and swiftly regretted it, as the mingled aromas of engine grease and coal smoke struck her lungs. She coughed into her hand and moved further onto the platform, away from the engine and its belches of steam and smoke.
The fresh air she had taken for granted in the countryside of Burgundy was sorely missing from this hub of movement and chatter, but the polluted air brought with it some compensation – this was Paris; dynamic, exciting Paris.
Fen tentatively breathed in again, this time accustomed to the tang of metal in the air, and a flood of memories washed over her. She may not yet be home, but Paris and its particular aromas was almost as good as.
The letter she’d written to her former landlady – the indomitable Mrs B – and good friends was clasped in her hand. It was marked for West Sussex in southern England, which had been her base when she had worked for the Woman’s Land Army in the war. Lots of young women from all walks of life had become land girls, as they’d been called, and meeting young Kitty, who was local to that part of England, and clever, kind Dilys, who had been posted there from Wales, had been light relief to the hard graft of field work. They’d been through so much together and, now, just holding their names in her hand, helped her feel close to them again.
Fen stifled a yawn and wiped the sleep from her eyes. It was early morning and the light from the sun, which was stubbornly showing itself time and again from behind equally as persistent clouds, was diffused through vast panes of glass, hundreds of feet above her.
Externally, the Gare de Lyon was one of Paris’s most expressive stations, with its monumental arches, mansard roof windows and traditional continental clock tower, but here on the platform there was less ornamentation, and function trumped form, with only wooden benches and newspaper kiosks as decoration.
Fen looked at the other disembarking passengers around her, shielding themselves from the belches of steam and scurrying along with suitcases or unruly children grasped by their wrists. They seemed more solemn than Fen remembered the citizens of Paris to be. Had the gaiety she remembered from her childhood packed up and left as the first wave of enemy soldiers had arrived?
Fenella Churche, known to most as Fen, had had a rather unusual upbringing for a middle-class Englishwoman, in that she had grown up here in Paris, due to her father accepting a job at the world-renowned École des Beaux-Arts back in 1924. The family – that being her parents and older brother, plus the small menagerie of two cats, a dog, a tortoise and a gerbil – had left the leafy suburb of Oxford where they had lived and made their home in the artistic Left Bank area of Paris. And there she had grown up, in the somewhat louche world of artists and writers, until her father had moved them all back to Oxford to take up a new professorship in 1935.
She found herself back here now, in the city she had lived in until she was eighteen years old and had always loved, as it pulled itself back together, following the occupation and subsequent routing of the German army from its streets. This wasn’t her first stop in post-war France. For the last few weeks she had been living and working in a small vineyard in Burgundy, on the trail of her fiancé, Arthur Melville-Hare, who had left her various coded letters that had helped her solve the mystery of his own disappearance.
It was never far from Fen’s mind, however, that those clues were all she had left now of her clever, brave fiancé. He had been killed in the war, and although it broke her heart whenever she thought of him, at least she had found her answer. He was at peace now, the horrors of the war could no longer haunt him, as they did so many other men and women, and for Fen it had been not knowing if he was alive or dead, captured or wounded, that had been the very worst. In some way, slowly, now she could start to find her own peace, too.
Fen placed her sturdy brown suitcase down on the platform and waited for her travel companion to join her. Captain James Lancaster had been a huge help to Fen in solving the crimes they’d stumbled across in Burgundy and, what’s more, he had been a good friend to Arthur. Fen felt comforted by his presence, and all the way since changing trains at Dijon, he had been telling her what he was allowed to about his and Arthur’s certain style of war work. As members of the highly secretive Special Operations Executive, they had been parachuted in to aid the local Resistance cells, sabotaging the advancing and occupying German army in any way they could. Heartbreakingly, this brave work had cost Arthur his life.
‘Here we are,’ James pulled his own kitbag off the train and came to stand next to Fen. He stretched his long limbs out, reaching his arms up and ruffling his straw-like blond hair with one of his hands on its way down.
The journey had been a long one compared to pre-war speeds; as Fen had reported back to her friends, military trains took priority over civilian trips, and there were also still craters in some of the lines, due to either the retreating Germans or guerrilla-style subterfuge of the Resistance during the occupation. It was a stark reminder that although the war had officially been declared over in May, France was still very much feeling the after-effects of it all.
‘Hats, gloves and coats?’ Fen said, parroting the sort of thing her mother used to say whenever they’d travelled.
‘Check, check and check,’ James replied, holding up his long khaki-coloured dispatch rider’s coat while checking its pockets for his leather gloves.
‘You’ll be pleased of that now the weather’s on the change,’ Fen remarked, wondering if her own thin cotton trench coat would suffice, and if she had sufficient funds in her pocketbook to afford a new, slightly warmer one. At least she had her thick wool jumpers: one was standard War Office issue from when she had been farming in the fields to help the war effort, and one had been hand-knitted by Mrs B and it had kept her warm on many a cold and muddy morning in West Sussex. À la mode they may not be, but the one from Mrs B now carried with it the distinction of not just being warm but having recently saved Fen from the worst effects of a bayonet.
She shuddered at the memory of that night up in the attic rooms of the château in Burgundy and pulled her trench coat around her, tightening the belt a notch. Using the glass windows of one of the kiosks as a mirror, Fen checked that her hair was still as neatly curled and styled as it could be after a night on the train – her chestnut locks were not known for their obedience to hairpins – and pursed her lips to apply some lipstick in lieu of a decent wash and brush-up.
Popping the tube of Revlon back into her bag, she turned to James again and said, ‘I just hope I pass muster among the fashionable ladies of Paris!’
Her comment made James look down at his own outfit. He’d spent most of the war working undercover in the vineyard where Fen had met him, and his clothes hadn’t been any smarter than they’d needed to be for that. She now noticed him frown slightly at his own woollen trousers and ill-fitting waistcoat, worn over a button-up shirt. He’d spent a few hundred francs at the local tailor in Morey-Fontaine, the small town they’d been staying in, but the result wasn’t exactly high fashion either. Fen had to remind herself that ‘a few hundred francs’ wasn’t worth that much these days, barely a pound, more like twelve shillings or so.
He’s filthy rich… hadn’t those been Arthur’s words to describe his friend in the letter he left for her in Morey-Fontaine? Fen smiled as she thought about it – no man could look less like some wealthy heir than the one standing in front of her now.
‘They’ll just have to take us as they find us.’ James shrugged and picked up his kitbag, then, without asking, picked up Fen’s small suitcase too.
‘Thank you, but I can carry that myself.’ Fen stretched her arm out.
‘If you insist,’ James said, and Fen nodded.
‘I do. If you can’t carry it, don’t pack it, eh?’
‘Quite right,’ James agreed and deliberately dropped her case on the ground and strode off towards the station concourse.
‘How rude!’ Fen called out after him, but then she laughed; only a week or so ago, she really did think his personality ran no deeper than the gruff countenance he put on – another warm protective coat as it were – and would have genuinely thought him devoid of manners or civility. Now, however, his gruffness had become rather a running joke and she knew he’d take her in jest.
She was proved right when he turned around and winked at her. ‘Come on then, slowcoach, let’s find this lodging of yours.’
Before they’d left Morey-Fontaine, Fen had written to an old family friend of hers, Rose Coillard, to ask if she and James could stay with her in her apartment near the École des Beaux-Arts. Fen had bunked down with her for one night last month as she’d changed trains in Paris on her way to Burgundy and they’d barely scratched the surface of what they wanted to catch up on. Madame Coillard – as she had first been introduced to Fen all those years ago – had been a colleague of Fen’s father, Professor John Churche, but more than that, she had been – and still was – her parents’ very good friend.
Fen would most likely lose count if she tried to remember all the times her family and Rose had dined together, or spent afternoons in the Louvre, the Musée D’Orsay or paddling on the sandy shore of the Seine at Île de la Jatte to the north of the city. Rose had tried, on those occasions, to teach the two unruly English children the wonders of the Impressionists, showing them with her own easel and brushes how those turn-of-the-century artists had marvelled at the dappled light and swiftness of moving time. More often than not, she’d come second in the race for their attention, narrowly pipped by the ice cream cart, but as Fen had matured from a young girl to an insightful and diligent teenager, she had grown closer to the mildly eccentric art teacher and even attended a few of her classes at the école, despite being by far the youngest in the studio. So, it was no surprise that Rose’s apartment was the first place that Fen thought of when she realised they would be passing through Paris again.
Sadly, the postal system being not quite as efficient as it once was meant that Fen hadn’t received a reply from Rose before they’d left Burgundy after bearing witness at the murderer’s trial. With Arthur gone and his disappearance solved there had been no point in staying on at the vineyard, and James had offered to chaperone her to Paris. So here they were, walking together towards Madame C’s apartment on the Rue des Beaux-Arts, with Fen hoping their early-morning arrival wouldn’t be too much of a surprise.
The apartment was on one of the upper floors of a six-storey building. The road itself was an elegant, if not particularly long, one. At one end stood the famous college of fine art itself, its imposing stone gateposts topped with oversized busts of artists Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Puget. Fen had been through those gates a hundred times or more in her youth, going to see her father in his study and listening in to lectures on every aspect of art, from Byzantine icons to modern topics, such as the Fauves and Cubism.
The ground floors of most of the street’s buildings were given over to shops and, due to the artistic nature of the neighbourhood, art galleries too. The war had taken its toll and some were now boarded up and others empty, while the lucky few still traded and displayed one or two decent-looking paintings in ornate gold frames in their windows.
There was a dressmaker on the street, too, with two lively-looking mannequins in the window wearing what must have been the latest in post-war fashions – cinch-waisted skirts and delicate swoop-necked blouses. Gold lettering above the door announced the services of a Dufrais et Filles – Dufrais and Daughters – and Fen wondered if the dressmaker and his or her daughters were there now, needles in hand, discussing trends for the autumn and winter season and planning spring fashions for 1946. She had a little money with her, and Fen knew the temptation to spend it all on something fabulous, rather than the more practical option of an overcoat, may well bring her back to that delightful-looking tailor as soon as she had a spare hour or so.
Each building on the street had a slightly different character, some with more ornate Juliet balconies, others with shutters at their windows or fancy classical-style podiums to their doors. They were all in what you’d call the French Imperial style, similar to many buildings built in the time of the great reformer Haussman, and, although suffering from a few years of neglect, elegant to the last.
Fen walked down the street a few steps ahead of James, clutching the handle of her suitcase in one hand, and the other she let trail along the rough, rusticated stone walls of the buildings. It was her way of connecting with her surroundings, ‘seeing’ something with her fingertips, almost as if she was reading the buildings as Braille. Stone would give way to glass, which would in turn change to wood… and even though she could see the street had shopfronts and doorways, she could feel it this way, too. Arthur hadn’t laughed at her when he’d caught her doing this one afternoon down Midhurst’s High Street (although Mrs Simpson from the bakers had given her a very strange look), as he said it all tied in with her love of cryptic crossword clues. ‘Seeing’ something in a different way, that was how puzzles were solved.
She pulled her hand back as they approached two large grey-painted doors, each eight or nine feet tall and easily three feet across. Together they made up one massive doorway. To either side of the building, there were private art galleries, the one to the left was already open for business, but sadly the one to the right was boarded up and closed. The name painted in beautiful gold curling script above the window was Jacob Berenson… a Jewish name, if Fen wasn’t mistaken. Was that why this gallery, and not the one next door, was empty? Fen said a silent prayer for the absent owner, hoping that he hadn’t been driven too far from his premises by the Nazis, or for too long.
James set his kitbag down and looked to Fen for confirmation before pressing his shoulder to one of the large grey doors, while turning the sturdy-looking cast-iron ring.
She nodded and the massive door shuddered open, scratching its well-worn arc across the encaustic tiles, and revealed the communal hallway behind. The daylight helped show the intricate patterns of the floor tiles, and as Fen’s eyes adjusted to the darkness of the vestibule, she noted the set of tidy mailboxes, all named and numbered for the apartments and their occupants. A door the other side of the hallway led to a courtyard, which she remembered from her youth and attempts Rose had made to get her to ‘draw from nature’ by studying a bit of bark of one of the old lime trees. Now, though, Fen pointed James towards the cantilevered stone staircase, with its ornate cast-iron handrail that swirled and seemed to grow organically from the tiled floor.
‘Ready for the climb?’
She picked up her suitcase and led the way, James following on behind as she swiftly made it up the first few storeys. By the fourth floor, she had started to slow down, and she was gratified to hear James’s breathing deepen and quicken too as they climbed.
‘A few more to go, I’m afraid,’ Fen pointed up to where a ceiling lantern illuminated the landings of the uppermost floors.
By the time they reached apartment five, they were both a little out of breath. Fen paused before pressing the white button next to the door, wondering how old Madame C managed this climb every day. A moment later though they both heard the flat buzz of the electric doorbell sound in the apartment, followed by a rapid barking that was, in its turn, followed by a shushing and a voice calling out in a melodious tone, ‘It’s open!’
Fen pushed the door open and had barely got her foot over the threshold when the scampering sound of claws over wood parquet floor greeted them. She looked at James. ‘Ah, yes, I forgot. I hope you’re at home with dogs?’
‘Dogs I’m fine with,’ James muttered as the miniature poodle-like thing jumped up and clawed his knees, ‘rats less so.’
‘Bonjour, Tipper,’ Fen leaned down and picked up the squirming little ball of fluffy energy. ‘You’re not a rat, are you, little one? Don’t listen to the frightful man.’ She was rewarded by a swift few licks to her nose, which made her laugh and James recoil in disgust. ‘Tipper here is some sort of poodle crossed with… well, with whatever fancied his mother in the back alley. Maybe a Cavalier King Charles? He’s a sweetie, though, you’ll get used to him.’
‘I’ll probably end up sitting on him…’ James was interrupted by the sight and sound of Rose, who appeared in the hallway to greet her guests.
‘Fenella!’ She approached, and Fen caught the familiar aroma in the air that she so associated with the older woman, that of floral ylang-ylang perfume teamed with turpentine and oil paint, and just a hint of some aromatic tobacco. ‘Welcome, welcome.’
‘Rose, it’s so lovely to see you again. I’m so sorry we’re so terribly delayed.’ Fen met her hostess with a kiss on each cheek and then turned to introduce James. ‘This is my friend Captain Lancaster.’
‘James, please.’ He stuck out his hand and was slightly nonplussed when Rose cocked her head on one side and proffered her hand as if to allow James to kiss it.
Fen noted how quickly James adapted to Rose’s left-field greeting, bringing her hand close to his lips, but not too close, before gently letting her go. He has been brought up the right way, Fen thought to herself, as Rose arched her neck and brushed some unseen speck of dust off the front of her housecoat. She also couldn’t help but observe how masculine and large James appeared in comparison to the supremely feminine apartment. The hallway was narrow and his frame seemed to take up most of its width. Just next to him was a spindly console table, painted white with delicate gold ring handles on its drawers, its puny legs like matchsticks compared to his bulk. The walls were painted a soft shade of pink and a delicately patterned Persian carpet covered a short length of the geometric parquet flooring.
‘Do come through to the studio, my dears,’ Rose beckoned them as she wafted off down the corridor, her voluminous velvet housecoat in the most jewel-like shade of amethyst purple, flowing out behind her.
Fen looked back at James and gestured for him to leave his kitbag with her suitcase where the hall widened.
‘Quite the welcome,’ James whispered to her, his eyes twinkling.
Fen raised a brow. ‘Oh, James, you just wait.’ She winked at him as they followed Rose into the light-filled room at the front of the apartment.
In most apartments of this size and style, the room they entered would have been a spacious salon or parlour. Here, however, the light streaming in from three floor-to-ceiling windows meant it was the perfect place for an art studio. Canvases were stacked up against the wall behind two large easels that faced one of the windows, while in between them sa. . .
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