Free The Paris Secret by Karen Swan Page A

leaning on his elbows as he looked down at the
street below. A cat was prowling the pavement, and as a trio of men in shirts and ties were talking and walking quickly, one of the men forced was onto the road and the other had to step round the
cat which immediately shot away in fright, sheltering under the hulk of a parked car.
    Then he looked up.
    Flora stopped eating as she saw him stiffen. The way he stared at her – so shocked – she knew immediately that he knew no one was ever seen here; that her presence meant the
apartment had been opened. She watched him crane his neck, could see his features pleat together as he squinted, trying to get a better look. She got to her feet and scrambled away from the window,
closing the French doors behind her, shutting him out so that only his building was reflected back to him. But it was a pointless gesture. She had been seen. The neglected apartment reclaimed at
long last. The past was stirring and shaking off the dust. The neighbours would soon know, then the city, until finally, when the sale was announced, the entire world. After seventy-three years of
silence, the secret was finally slipping out.

Chapter Six
    Angus was in his best suit and favourite Lanvin tie – that alone had told Flora it was good news, although he’d said precious little himself and had been glued to
his phone ever since he’d arrived. He had been frustratingly elusive all day, not responding to her emails and merely texting her from the train instructing her to meet him at the
Vermeils’ at three o’clock, as though oblivious to the fact that she’d barely slept or eaten from nerves in the twenty-four hours since they’d unlocked that old door.
    They were waiting in the same room as before, Flora setting up the Renoir and Faucheux on easels, and shrouding them with spare sheets which she’d found, saved from the worst of the dust,
in the bedroom cupboard. It was hardly museum-quality protection, especially given that she’d travelled over with them by cab. Yet again, she had considered booking the security firm they
normally used to send a private car for her to transport the paintings, but it would have had blacked-out windows and a driver and escort and she was worried that would attract far too much
attention – she was already concerned enough by the curiosity of the man across the street and had spent the rest of the afternoon darting to the windows to check if he’d still been
looking (twice, he had). She didn’t want it to appear as though anything of significant value was coming out of, or worse, being left in, the apartment. She was barely consoled by the fact
that the most valuable paintings were in her possession.
    The door swung open and Madame Vermeil stood before them again, serene and elegant in a powder-pink linen shift dress and baroque pearls. Two men followed after her, one tanned, lean and lofty
at what must be nudging six feet four and the other almost comically short. The shorter man was carrying an attaché case; he had wire-framed glasses pushed up his nose, and grey hair rimming
his head, leaving a bald pate. The tall man was wearing a pale sand-coloured linen suit and brown moccasins, and Flora caught a flash of a Breguet watch that told her he was the client’s
husband and not the lawyer.
    ‘Lilian, Jacques,’ Angus confirmed, greeting them both with a confident smile. Lilian visibly relaxed at the sight of it. ‘
Monsieur.
’
    ‘Angus, Flora,’ Madame Vermeil smiled, shaking Flora’s hand and motioning towards the tall man a step behind her. ‘My husband, Jacques, and our notary, Monsieur
Travers.’
    ‘How do you do?’ Flora said to them all. She looked remarkably more polished than she felt, having almost jumped from the moving cab as she’d asked him to stop at Ines’s
apartment en route, so that she could dash in (a painting under each arm) and change. She hadn’t dared leave the apartment beforehand – not now she’d been