The Last Judgement

‘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.’

‘Did you, indeed?’ she said. ‘You have an odd way of showing your affection.’

Argyll, sitting quietly and watching the proceedings, looked up at this comment. There was an edge to it: a tone of bitter sarcasm that was quite out of character for her. He studied her carefully; her face was quite impassive and controlled, but he — and knowing her best, he was the only one who was aware of it — was fairly certain that something nasty was about to happen. And it was all bad enough already, in his view.

‘Considering he was someone who had helped you so much, whom you admired so greatly, you betrayed him pretty comprehensively.’

Rouxel shrugged. ‘I was young and foolish. It was a bizarre time in Paris then.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘What did you mean, then?’

‘Monsieur Montaillou knows, I think.’