Page 76 of Marble Hall Murders

‘I only became aware of Werner-Waysmith very recently, when I received a tip-off from someone connected to the family,’ Scott explained.

‘And who was that?’ Pünd asked.

‘You’ll have to forgive me, Mr Pünd, but I might get them into serious trouble if their name were to become known.’

‘And you will have to forgive me, Mr Scott, but I am investigating what may turn out to be not one but two murders. If we are to help each other, I must know everything that you know, and you must trust me to keep this information to myself.’

‘What about Voltaire?’

‘Monsieur Voltaire and I are equal partners and I will haveto inform him of anything that is relevant, but I can assure you he is entirely discreet.’

Scott scowled briefly, then came to a decision. ‘Very well, Mr Pünd. I will tell you the name, but I would ask you – all of you – to protect my source.’

He drew a breath.

‘The lady I’m talking about, Béatrice Laurent, was working for a Jewish family in Paris at the start of the war and was present on the day their house was raided. The family was arrested and their extensive art collection seized. One painting in particular she remembered clearly. It showed a vase of tulips on a table. She didn’t know the artist’s name or the title of his work, but she recognised it instantly when she saw it again, thirteen years later, on the wall of thegrand salonin the home of Elmer Waysmith, where she is now employed as thefemme de ménage. As you can imagine, the sight of it filled her with horror. She felt powerless. What should she do? To go to the police was unthinkable. She didn’t even know if a crime had been committed, and anyway, she liked Lady Chalfont and didn’t want to hurt her. Elmer Waysmith is a wealthy, respectable art dealer. There were all sorts of different ways to explain how the painting could have landed in his hands.

‘This all happened a few weeks ago, just after the family arrived at the chateau for the summer season. As it turned out, Béatrice knew somebody who had worked as a secretary for the MFAA and she had the good sense to tell her friend what had happened. The MFAA has been disbanded, like I said, but the friend had my telephone number and put her in touch with me. It took me very little time to work out theconnection with Erich Werner and to identify the painting: a masterpiece by Paul Cézanne painted in 1890 and titledSpring Flowers.

‘So, a couple of weeks ago, I visited the Werner-Waysmith Gallery and managed to talk my way past the old dragon who guards the place. Elmer Waysmith wasn’t in that day, but I spoke to his son, Robert, who runs the place with him. I was in a tricky position. There are still hundreds of thousands of stolen objects scattered across Europe and, by and large, the galleries, museums and dealers don’t want to talk. They’ll pretend they don’t know where the pictures came from or they’ll say they bought them in good faith. And I’m not a policeman. I’m not a detective. I don’t have any authorisation to go blundering around the place, making accusations that I may not be able to prove. At the end of the day, I just have to get people to cooperate. If a man like Elmer Waysmith is found to have been in cahoots with the Nazis, it’s not going to look good on his résumé. The original owners ofSpring Flowers, Mr and Mrs Steiner, were gassed to death. That’s not something you want on a painting’s provenance.

‘Anyway, I spoke to Robert Waysmith, who was completely shocked by what I had to say. Either that or he’s a first-class actor, but I’d like to think I’ve conducted enough interviews to know when someone is pulling my chain. He told me that he had no dealings personally with Erich Werner, but that his father would never have gotten his hands dirty with stuff like that. He invited me to meet Elmer Waysmith at the Chateau Belmar, where the Cézanne was temporarily on display. He was sure it was all a misunderstanding and that it could be sorted out.’

‘He invited you to his home?’ Pünd was surprised.

‘It’s like I said, Mr Pünd – he seemed a decent sort. I was a bit surprised myself, but it’s not every day someone walks into your gallery and accuses your dad of being a crook. We made an appointment for the very next day and I turned up at eleven in the morning, as agreed.

‘The meeting did not go well. Elmer Waysmith was nothing like his son. He was polite for approximately five minutes, defensive for another five and then outright aggressive. We met in their grand saloon and sure enough, the picture was on the wall. If I’d been him, I might have tried to hide it. But he was shameless. He accused me of being a crook, trying to blackmail him, threatening to damage his reputation if he didn’t pay up, that sort of thing. He was shouting at me and Robert had to calm him down … It wasn’t easy.

‘In the end, it was Elmer who threatened me. I had no right to be in his house, asking him these questions, and if I didn’t back off, he’d have his lawyers onto me before I could blink. He said that it was Werner who had bought the painting and that he had no reason to doubt his partner’s word. Then he started quoting Swiss law. After five years, if a dealer has bought a painting in good faith, the painting is his – and if the family wants it back, they have to pay for it. Not easy when the whole lot of them are dead! He had never been so insulted in all his life and all the rest of it. And with that, he threw me out.’

‘And that was the end of it?’ Pünd asked.

‘I don’t give up that easily, Mr Pünd. Since then, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the Werner-Waysmith Gallery,at the same time looking at some of the major sales they’ve made in both London and Nice in the last few years. The art world is a closed circle. There are good dealers and bad dealers, but it helps me that most of them know each other. I’ve already found two other paintings that definitely have Nazi connections, and only last week, Waysmith delivered a landscape by Alfred Sisley to a collector in Antibes. I followed him there and I got to see the canvas. I recognised it straight away. Fortunately, there are photographic records and it was stolen from the collection of Paul Rosenberg, a prominent Jewish dealer in Paris who managed to flee the country after the invasion. Göring was very fond of Sisley.’

‘Did you follow Robert Waysmith when he left Antibes?’

‘No. It would be too easy for him to spot my car. Anyway, I was more interested in the painting. I managed to get Lucas Dorfman – the collector – to show me the work and I’ve already contacted the Rosenbergs in New York. I’m waiting to hear back from them.’

Pünd thought for a moment. ‘You said that we might be pursuing the same investigation, Mr Scott. Are you suggesting that the art thefts – if that is how they can be described – and the death of Lady Chalfont may be connected?’

‘Art thefts are definitely what they are, Mr Pünd, and you could add that Elmer Waysmith and his partner in Switzerland are complicit in war crimes. As to Lady Chalfont, when I heard that the police had begun a murder investigation, of course it occurred to me that there must be something in the timing. I also wondered if it was something connected to art that had brought you to the South of France.’

‘There I must disappoint you,’ Pünd replied. ‘I knew nothing of the Cézanne before I arrived in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, but from what you have told me, it is almost certain that Lady Chalfont heard the conversation between you and her husband and it was for this reason that she turned to me.’

‘Her balcony is just above the room where Mr Scott met Elmer Waysmith!’ Fraser exclaimed.

‘That is correct. And you will recall, when we were in her bedroom, we were able to overhear the child, Cedric Chalfont, arguing with his father,’ Pünd reminded him.

‘So Margaret Chalfont heard them …’

‘And that is why she wrote to me: “I overheard something that shocked me to my core.” She was accusing her second husband of being at the very least a collaborator in an act of great wickedness.’

‘Did he kill her?’ Harlan Scott asked.

‘Everything would suggest so, Mr Scott.’

‘It was the reason she was going to change her will,’ Fraser said. ‘She’d been married to him for six years without realising he was a crook.’

---