The Art of Occupation – Chris Lloyd
The fourth book in the Eddie Giral series, The Art of Occupation, sees Eddie investigating the suspicious death of a dodgy art dealer, only to find himself drawn into the world of the surprisingly lucrative wartime art market and, even more reluctantly, into the theft of art – and books – by the Nazis, and the shocking scale and cynicism of their looting.
In the scene below, Eddie has tried to snoop around the Jeu de Paume, the museum where the stolen art is stored before being sent to Germany, and has inveigled his way into talking to Rose Valland, the only French curator allowed to work at the museum. Rose was a real person, so after the brief extract below, I’ll talk a little about the ups and downs of using real people in fiction. And about a surprising family connection I knew nothing about before writing this book.
I got to the Jeu de Paume in good time to see Rose Valland leave. I’d been working on the assumption that she’d go out of the museum for her lunch rather than be cooped up with her captors. I caught up with her as she turned off Rue de Rivoli into Rue Cambon. She didn’t look too pleased to see me. I’m used to that.
‘Did anyone see you?’ she asked, looking back towards the main street.
‘I’m a cop. I know when someone’s following me. Don’t worry, I wasn’t.’
She stopped in front of a small bistro before we’d reached the end of the first block. ‘In here.’
‘I didn’t think you were headed for Chanel.’
She gave me a look like a schoolmarm would to a generally disappointing pupil. Chanel had her plush establishment further down Rue Cambon. The street had once been the home to the Finance Ministry – old man Cambon had been president of the finance committee and was the last president of the legislative assembly at the time of the Revolution. I wondered what he’d find worse – Occupation or perfume.
‘I occasionally come here for lunch.’
‘Mind if I join you? I’m going to anyway.’
‘Then why ask?’
‘Out of politeness.’
We found a table as far from the front door as possible and sat down in silence until the owner came to take our orders. I watched him leave us and waited for Rose to be the first to speak. I had questions of my own, but I wanted to see what she would choose to talk about.
‘What did you hope to achieve with this morning’s antics?’ she asked me.
It was pretty much what I’d expected. She was still skirting around the edges with me, evidently unsure what to make of me and, crucially, if she could trust me. I’d quickly learned to be wary with seeing Hochstetter just a handful of times a week, so I imagined that working all day with the Occupiers would naturally instil a reticence in anyone.
‘As I said, I wanted to know what Bruno Durin was doing in the Jeu de Paume.’
‘And did you find out?’ Her question was evidently rhetorical, given the cynical look on her face.
‘No, but I didn’t really expect to. It was more a case of shaking the branches, see what fell out?’
‘And you find that works?’
‘Sometimes.’
Our food came and we were quiet for a moment. Just as she was wary of me, I had to know how far I could trust her.
‘The way in which Durin died is strange enough,’ I carried on, ‘but there appears to be a lot more going on here.’
‘Meaning?’
I decided not to tell her about Judge Rambert effectively forbidding me from investigating Durin’s death, or my visit from Klein from the Gestapo. I also had to gauge how much of what I’d learned about the art dealer she might already know or I might want her to know.
‘What can you tell me about Durin?’ I asked her. ‘I could see he wasn’t someone you admired.’
She almost choked on her omelette. ‘He was an opportunist before the war, and he was one of the first to take advantage of all the pickings the Occupation would afford someone like him. He traded in art stolen from French museums and private collections and profited from the misery and hardship they entailed. Another so-called art lover who loved what it could do for him, not what it could do for us all.’
She looked guiltily at me. Her distaste for Durin had made her angry, which had made her talk.
‘Don’t worry, I’m just good at what I do,’ I told her. I smiled but she didn’t smile back.
‘The German you saw me with,’ she said. She was back in control. ‘His name is Kurt von Behr. I was able to check his diary. No one in the museum had an appointment with Bruno Durin. He had no business there on that or any other day.’
‘Did anyone else have any business there yesterday? Someone Durin might have wanted to see?’
‘It is not somewhere people tend to visit freely, Inspector Giral. The Germans do not invite such a thing, to which I alluded yesterday.’
‘You said that this von Behr was the director of the operation. What is the operation exactly?’
‘The Germans are centralising all the art that they confiscate in the Jeu de Paume. That is the operation.’
‘And then what do they do with it?’
I could see she was still being very guarded about what she told me.
‘Then they do with it what they will.’
‘You can tell me. It won’t go any further.’
She broke a piece off the already tiny bit of baguette on the table. ‘I have just told you. How do I know I can trust you?’
‘Because I didn’t say anything at the museum about you understanding what the Germans are saying. Even though you pretend not to.’
‘I don’t understand German. That’s absurd.’
‘I spent nearly two years in a prison camp in the last war. I learned German while I was there, but I make out that I didn’t so I can eavesdrop.’
‘What does that have to do with me?’
‘I can tell when someone is doing the same. The absent stare into the middle distance. But thank you, it’s made me realise I have to be careful not to give myself away by doing the same.’
‘You are mistaken.’
‘I’m not. And we both know I’m not. But your secret is safe with me. I’ve just confessed to you that I do the same. You have that over me if you choose.’
She simply studied me for a moment. I think she knew that further denial was pointless.
‘You still have to gain my trust,’ she finally said.
‘I understand that.’ I took a bite of my own omelette. It was real, not cornstarch mixed with milk or water like in many other places, and I breathed in the taste. ‘What about the Bernard collection? What can you tell me about that?’
She paused to consider for a moment. ‘A very fine collection. Not all of it my specialism, but some good pieces nonetheless.’
‘And it’s being kept at the Jeu de Paume?’
‘No, not at present. Not as far as I know.’
That surprised me. ‘You said they were keeping confiscated work there.’
‘Not all of it. There is some division of the artworks confiscated. Between the embassy and the Jeu de Paume, before you ask, and that is all I can tell you.’
‘So the embassy and the Jeu de Paume are competing for the art they steal.’
‘Confiscate is the word they prefer to use. But yes, that about sums the matter up.’
My first thought went to Judge Rambert prohibiting me from investigating Durin’s death. I knew from past experience that the judge was firmly in the pocket of Otto Abetz, the German ambassador. That was a strand of thought I’d have to ponder at my own leisure. I changed tack.
‘I had a visit from the Gestapo about Durin’s death. What connection do they have with the museum?’
She looked surprised. ‘None. In these matters, they are hand-in-hand with the embassy, not the ERR.’
‘The ERR?’
She was momentarily startled, and put her knife and fork down. ‘I have to go. It doesn’t do to be late back at the museum.’
‘What do you mean by the ERR?’
She got up and put her coat on, hurriedly sorting through her ration tickets before paying for her meal.
‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’
I watched her leave. There was one mouthful of omelette left on her plate. You had to be rattled to leave a morsel like that these days. I wasn’t going to. I reached across with my fork and put it in my mouth, chewing it thoughtfully.
Although The Art of Occupation is a work of fiction, much of it is inspired by real events and real people. When you write historical fiction set in a relatively recent period, one of the decisions you have to take is whether or not to include real people in your books. Using real people, however, presents different challenges where you have to be as accurate, truthful and conscientious as possible, even more so when the real-life person is one of the good people! In my books, I try as impartially as possible to ensure that, even though the stories, scenes and dialogue that include these people are fictitious, the traits that I ascribe to them are as accurate as possible, based on descriptions of them by others who knew them.
This was particularly the case with Rose Valland. There are people you come across in your research who astound you for their courage and for the powerful and lasting effect that their actions had. Rose Valland was one such figure. I urge you to discover more about this remarkable woman and, if your French is up to it, to read Rose Valland, l’espionne à l’œuvre, by Jennifer Lesieur.
The most decorated Frenchwoman in history, Rose was the sole French curator allowed to work at the Jeu de Paume, where she witnessed all the stolen art being stored and where she witnessed not just senior Nazis, most notably Hermann Goering, taking their pick of paintings and sculptures but the astonishing scale of the looting.
As Eddie comments in this scene, Rose really did pretend not to understand German so that she could memorise and record where the stolen artworks were taken. She would go through wastepaper baskets and memorise gossip and conversations and then go home and record everything – the artworks stolen, their provenance, where they were being sent in Germany. It is thanks to her bravery and intelligence that so many French artworks were recovered after the war, and she eventually worked in Berlin cataloguing the art that she’d recorded as it left Paris. Rose said in her autobiography that she fully expected to be murdered by the Nazis because of everything she’d witnessed, and we can barely begin to imagine the courage it must have taken to go to the Jeu de Paume day after day, never knowing if she’d be going home again, and to risk her life by recording all the theft she witnessed.
And the family connection? I only learned while writing this book that Rose Valland’s partner, Joyce Heer, was my cousin Andy’s aunt. He used to stay with them in Paris in the school holidays and got to know Rose well. He also sent me some letters written between Rose and Joyce and Andy’s father, which gave me glimpses of her beyond the biographies and history books and brought her even more vividly to life.
After graduating in Spanish and French, Chris Lloyd lived in Catalonia, working as a teacher, travel writer, in educational publishing and as a Catalan and Spanish translator.
He writes the Eddie Giral series, about a French police detective in Occupied Paris. The first in the series, The Unwanted Dead, won the HWA Gold Crown for best historical novel of the year, was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger and was Waterstone’s Welsh Book of the Month. The second, Paris Requiem, was a Sunday Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2023. Third in the series, Banquet of Beggars, was shortlisted for the 2025 CWA Historical Dagger. The Art of Occupation, the fourth book in the series, was published in May 2026.
He has also written a trilogy set in present-day Girona, in Catalonia, featuring Elisenda Domènech, a police officer in the devolved Catalan police force.
Links:
Buy the Eddie Giral series: https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/contributor/chris-lloyd/
The Unwanted Dead: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-unwanted-dead/chris-lloyd/9781409190271
Paris Requiem: https://www.waterstones.com/book/paris-requiem/chris-lloyd/9781409190325
Banquet of Beggars: https://www.waterstones.com/book/banquet-of-beggars/chris-lloyd/9781409190370
The Art of Occupation: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-art-of-occupation/chris-lloyd/9781409190400
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