Page 22 of The Widows of Champagne

Chapter Twenty-Two

Josephine

J osephine forgot what it meant to be warm. This winter was harsher than most, though perhaps not the harshest she’d ever experienced. Surely, there had been worse. At least once in her childhood. She remembered being very small and trying to climb into the crackling fire, desperate for its heat. Her father had caught her up against his chest and held her close, softly admonishing her in a gentle voice. “This is not the way to escape the cold, mon chou .”

His strong arms had been enough to warm her. She wished for them now.

Per Marta’s instructions, she dressed in multiple layers and stayed that way for hours. Or possibly minutes, sometimes the passage of time was an unsolved mystery. She knew this additional clothing was supposed to help combat the cold. It did not. The extra garments only managed to weigh her down and made even the simplest of movements difficult.

Enough. She shed the top layer and left her room.

In the kitchen, Marta looked at her, eyebrows raised, as if she’d committed some unforgivable act of rebellion. “What?” she asked.

“You’re shivering.”

This was not news to her. “I’m cold.”

“Then you should wear more clothing.” Marta’s tone contained the scold that had been absent from her father’s voice.

Josephine shrugged and looked out the window. The vines slept under a thick layer of frost and the sun had traveled deep across the sky to a point far past the halfway mark. Another day vanishing too quickly. Behind her, Marta moved around the kitchen in a frantic rush. Josephine remembered von Schmidt had decided to throw another one of his pompous parties.

With her right hand, she reached out to clasp her friend’s arm. Marta came to an abrupt stop. “Tell me,” Josephine began. “What can I do to ease this burden he has put on you?”

The question seemed to surprise the other woman. Her mouth strained for a response. “You have done it already. You remember, non ? You hired the Trevon sisters to assist with the last-minute preparations and the serving. They are to arrive within the hour.”

Although Josephine wanted to ask for more details about these unknown sisters, she did not want to reveal the depth of her forgetfulness. “Très bien.”

She left the kitchen, knowing that once again she had lost entire hours of a day and the events that had occurred within them. Tense and resigned, she walked through the chateau, without any kind of aim, and when she came to one of her favorite rooms she paused. She felt a rush of cold air and thought of her father’s warm arms, which brought to mind the painting he’d given her on her wedding day.

She went into the room.

The interior was dark and empty and fragrant with the peculiar scent of lemon oil mixed with decades of mold hidden inside the walls. Sitting on a wooden bench beneath a row of paintings, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the poor light.

Minutes passed, perhaps more than a few. She didn’t know how long she stayed. She may have dozed off, because she jolted upright. Moved by an impulse, she looked to her left, then to her right, then straight ahead. Time had escaped its formal structure. Josephine remembered very little of her journey through the chateau to get here, just that she had kept to the outer rooms, never penetrating the interior ones, and had stopped briefly in the kitchen to speak with Marta.

Maybe, deep inside her brain, she had planned to come here all along, where the Renoir hung. The Renoir. It was missing. She gasped, then jumped to her feet. Her stiffened leg muscles nearly gave way beneath her. She shook herself free of the discomfort and rushed to stand before the empty space. She stared, without moving. The Renoir— her Renoir—it was gone.

At first Josephine was too shocked to move. She just stood there staring, her eyes tracing the rectangular spot where the painting had once been. The plaster within the rectangle was several shades darker than the wall surrounding it, a sure sign her memory was clear on this point. The painting had been there once. And now was gone.

Had she done this?

Marta would know.

Josephine hurried to find her friend, taking the most expedient route. Marta was not alone. Two dark-haired teenage girls dressed in identical black dresses and white aprons worked alongside her. They were both unfamiliar to Josephine, but she thought she should know them.

This was not the moment for awkward introductions.

“Marta,” she huffed, her breathing raspy from exertion. “I need you to come with me.”

The housekeeper brushed the back of her wrist across her forehead. “Now?”

“Immediately.”

“But I’m busy. I...” She must have seen something of the worry in Josephine’s eyes, because she made a small nod and set down the spoon in her hand. “All right, yes.” Out in the hallway, she asked, “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” Josephine maneuvered around Marta and took the lead. At the vacant spot where the Renoir had always hung, she asked, “Did we do this? Did we hide it from the Germans?”

Marta sighed a little. “ Non. We did not hide the Renoir.”

“You are certain?”

“Absolument.” There was a sad lilt to her voice. “We argued. I wanted to include it with the others. You thought the absence of such a well-known masterpiece would be too conspicuous.”

She remembered saying that now, remembered arguing, remembered making the decision despite Marta’s protests. She pointed to another spot farther down the wall where an unfamiliar painting now hung. “What about the Degas that used to be there?”

“That one, we took.”

As they toured the room, Josephine’s heart beat strong and wild in her chest. She and Marta had hidden many treasures, including several valuable paintings. But they had not taken all that were currently missing from the chateau.

Someone else in the household, then. Not Hélène, she would not be so bold. Gabrielle, perhaps? Possible, quite possible. But, non . There was a flaw in this thinking. Von Schmidt would have noticed the absent masterpiece. Hadn’t he commented on the Renoir on more than one occasion? Hadn’t he shown it off to his friends and colleagues? He would have demanded an explanation for its disappearance.

He had not.

There was but one explanation. The German was stealing from them.

Marta must have come to the same conclusion. “What can we do to stop his thieving?”

They could do nothing until after the war. In the meantime...

“I will make a list of everything missing.” In her journal. Josephine would keep the record in her journal. “You will place a mark next to what we hid ourselves, and then we will know what he has stolen.”

The list was long and took her nearly two hours plus several passes through the house to complete. When she was through, she had a single thought. No one steals from Josephine Fouché-LeBlanc, not even a greedy, arrogant German dog with his teeth clasped on her neck.