by Renee Ryan
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 château, 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 château 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 château.
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.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gabrielle
Gabrielle delivered the provisions to an exasperated Marta.
“He has added another person to his guest list,” the housekeeper muttered, shaking her head in disgust. “A very important man. This is what he emphasizes over and over. Very important, he says. The food is to be perfect. I am not to disappoint him. He will have no excuses from me. The German...” She slapped at the pile of dough beneath her hands. “He is a tyrant.”
Gabrielle agreed.
“The very worst of his kind.”
This, Gabrielle could not agree with. After her trip into Reims she knew there were worse men than von Schmidt. Men whose gazes missed nothing and who were very clever with their questions. Men who knew her name and where she lived. She shut her eyes and tried to shed her unease. “Did von Schmidt make any special requests for champagne?”
Marta paused in her kneading. “Aside from a rosé, he wants to serve the 1928, no less than ten bottles. Ten! He is a greedy man.”
The LeBlancs’ personal stock had been depleted weeks ago. Gabrielle would have to go into the caves to fulfill this demand. She did a quick mental calculation. She’d left more than enough of the 1928 on the right side of her fake wall to accommodate von Schmidt’s insatiable desire for several months, perhaps even a year. There were many cases left, cases that should have been sent to Berlin per order of the weinführer. Somehow, von Schmidt had managed to circumvent this request. And, if caught, he would somehow lay the blame at Gabrielle’s feet.
It was a worry for another day. “I’ll pull the bottles myself.”
“I have already sent François.”
This was an acceptable alternative and so she let the matter drop. “Thank you, Marta.”
“Gabrielle, before you go. I was told to remind you to dress appropriately for dinner, no men’s trousers or bulky sweaters.”
“Von Schmidt said this?” Of course he had. Nothing was more certain to rouse Gabrielle’s ire than for von Schmidt to suggest she didn’t know how to dress like a woman.
“Do not scowl at me,” Marta warned. “I am only the messenger.”
Although she considered several small ways to aggravate von Schmidt, in the end Gabrielle dressed appropriately for dinner. She even took a few moments to twist her hair into an elegant chignon and swipe a modicum of makeup on her face. Satisfied she looked acceptable, she went in search of her grandmother. The night always went better when the two of them presented a united front.
She found Josephine in her room, already dressed for dinner, sitting in a chair by the window, a leather-bound book in her lap, her head bent over the pages. Gabrielle had to breathe through a wave of great affection for this woman. If anything happened to her...
Gabrielle would lay down her life before she allowed any harm to come to her grandmother. On that note, she should warn her about the Gestapo agent. “Grandmère, I have something I want to share with you before we head downstairs.”
Josephine placed a hand on the open book
, then looked up. She blinked several times, as if focusing through a haze. “Is it that time, already?”
“Nearly.” Gabrielle moved deeper into the room. The toe of her shoe caught on a loose floorboard and she nearly tripped. She looked down, gasping at the sight beneath her foot.
So, this was where Josephine kept her secret journal. It was good to know, but also troubling. If von Schmidt had been the one to seek out her grandmother, if he had taken the same route and hooked his toe on the floorboard...
What would he have found?
Gabrielle dropped to her knees and dug around with her fingertips. With very little effort, she freed the loose slab of wood. The shallow hole was empty. Her relief was short-lived because Josephine flashed a shrewd smile. “It’s not in there.”
“Where is it?”
She patted the book in her lap.
The emotion that swept through Gabrielle was like an afternoon summer thunderstorm. Quick, violent, startling in its ferocity. “Grandmère, you must be more careful. If von Schmidt had been the one to come into your room, he could have—”
“He never comes into my room.”
Gabrielle put a hand to her forehead, pressed hard for several seconds. “What you mean to say,” she corrected, lowering her hand, “is that von Schmidt hasn’t come into your room yet.”
“This is not a concern.” She waved her hand. “Your mother keeps him occupied.”
Gabrielle couldn’t bring herself to respond. It was just too awful to have her own suspicions confirmed. Frowning, she fit the wooden slat back into place, stood, then stomped down to make sure it was securely set. “It would take only a small hint of suspicion for von Schmidt to come searching for the secrets you write in that book.”
She understood why her grandmother kept the journal. The pages were her memory. And possibly could get her grandmother killed if the book fell into German hands.
“Gabrielle, chérie.” Josephine set aside the book in her lap. “This is not my first war. I know what I am doing.”
Her own hands clenched into fists. “You keep your journal under a loose floorboard.”
For several seconds, she held Gabrielle’s stare, saying not a word. Then, “Do I?”
Had her grandmother’s mind slipped behind a curtain of confusion? It was hard to tell in the dim light. “It’s the most obvious of places.”
Josephine’s answer was to tap her fingers on the book she’d set on the table beside her chair. “What did you find when you pulled away a piece of the floor?”
“I found an empty hole,” she replied. “I assumed you’d retrieved your journal before I arrived and had failed to secure the floorboard properly.”
“You also thought you’d come upon me reading it by the lingering afternoon light.”
That was exactly what she’d thought.
Josephine offered her the book. Gabrielle took it, read the title on the spine, shook her head in sudden relief. Prometheus by Goethe. She opened to a random page. Not in its original German but translated into French. Well, well, her grandmother’s mind was still sharp. Even her choice of reading material was selected with purpose.
There were times when Josephine’s confusion was real, but maybe not as often as she pretended. What other chances did the older woman take, besides recording her secrets in a single, leather-bound book? And who knew what else, things that could incriminate others in the house. Gabrielle thought, I must do something. She had to do something, before her grandmother made a false step that would get them all killed. “Where do you keep your journal?”
“It is better you don’t know.”
She felt the lump rise in her throat and pushed it down with a hard, silent swallow. “What if you forget where you put it?”
“I have a plan for that.”
“Grandmère—”
“You have your secrets, Gabrielle. And I have mine.” She went to the mirror, smoothed a perfectly steady hand over her hair. “Our system.” She turned away from her reflection. “It works. When I discover something that I think is important, I tell you. You relay it to your father-in-law. He takes it to the next person in the chain.”
She made it sound so simple. But she’d missed a very key component to the process. “You also write the information down in your journal.”
“I write many things in my journal.”
And if that single, leather-bound book was discovered? In a flash, Gabrielle saw the face of the man she’d met in Reims this afternoon. She heard his demand to see her papers, remembered his careful questioning of her name, her place of residence. The encounter had left her confused and off-balance. Von Schmidt was a common, ill-bred, grasping individual. He looked to others to feed his own sense of importance. And still, he’d stolen into the LeBlanc home and caught them by surprise.
Now, an even more dangerous opponent had moved into Reims. With far greater power than their houseguest. “Matters have changed, Grandmère. I met the Gestapo agent Berlin sent and he is...” She flung her hands in the air, unable to come up with a description. “He is...”
Where were the words to describe this new enemy? What were the words? Clever. Cunning. Cruel. He was all of those things, and more. All-knowing, all-seeing. He seemed to know more about the LeBlanc household than he should. But what really scared Gabrielle was her inability to read him, to know what was inside his mind, to unpack his agenda. She could usually look past even the most carefully constructed masks and see the true character of a person beneath. It was one of her gifts, and perfectly useless with him. “I believe,” she said, her hands trembling, “that he is the most dangerous German we have come across in this war.”
“You are afraid of this man.”
There were, Gabrielle knew, many ways to respond. She could ease her grandmother’s apprehension. She could tell a pretty lie. Or she could speak a small half-truth. But nothing would change the fact that she believed, deep in her soul, that Wolfgang Mueller was the worst thing that had happened to her family.
“No, Grandmère, I’m not afraid of him. I’m terrified.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hélène
Hélène sat at her dressing table and invested precisely ten minutes in front of the mirror perfecting her makeup. She kohled her eyes, rouged her cheeks, painted her lips a bold red—von Schmidt’s favorite color on her—then completed the transformation by pressing powder over her skin to give it a matte finish.
She would have liked to dawdle over this ritual, her favorite before a party. She did not deserve the joy. She groomed herself for von Schmidt, not for her own pleasure, not anymore. The woman she’d become was foreign to her, and she felt more isolated than she had in years.
Your own doing.
Encouraging von Schmidt’s affections necessitated pulling away from the people she loved. She’d always kept a certain distance, even from Paulette. But now Hélène added additional coats of aloofness that no one seemed to notice. That was, perhaps, the root of this new brand of loneliness. It was as if the women in her family didn’t miss her because they had never really known her.
Your own doing, she reminded herself, borne from years—decades—of hiding her true self behind a carefully painted mask. Anti-Semitism in France had existed long before Nazi occupation. But, oh, how tired she was of feeding the charade she’d started when she was still a girl. Fabrications, evasions, carefully placed lies, all to protect herself from judgment. The stakes were higher now, and her nerves were constantly on edge. She was afraid of making a mistake, of pushing too hard, of not pushing hard enough.
They received news of the war from von Schmidt and the wireless, all of it censored by the German propaganda machine. It was impossible to know what was really happening outside of France. The Nazis monitored the postal service, the telephones. Some claimed even the walls had German ears.
So, she continued livi
ng her lie, biding her time and fighting her own war, in her own way. The relationship she cultivated with her enemy was vile to her. He was vile to her. She knew he would use her for his own pleasure. And when he tired of her, he would toss her away like yesterday’s garbage.
That day could not come soon enough and, when it came, it would be too late.
She was already labeled a collaborator. She’d heard the whispers herself. She grooms herself for him. Wasn’t she doing so now? He clicks his heels, and she does his bidding. Either that, Hélène had learned the hard way, or suffer the back of his hand.
The worst of the comments, the very worst, had come from a woman she’d thought her friend. It appears taking a Nazi lover is all the rage these days.
Hélène’s reputation was sufficiently ruined.
There was nothing she could do now but endure the humiliation.
The door creaked on its hinges, pulling her attention away from her own scowling reflection to her youngest daughter’s devastated face. She was on her feet in an instant. “Paulette, what’s wrong?”
The girl collapsed into her arms, sobbing.
“Here, now.” She held her daughter close and smoothed a hand over her quaking back. “What’s all this about?”
“Oh, Maman, it’s just so awful. Lucien...” Her voice broke on another sob. “He...he’s been arrested.”
“Arrested?”
“By the...the Gestapo.”
This is not the way I wanted my daughter to understand the realities of war.
Hélène attempted to recall the boy. So many came and went in Paulette’s life, too many to remember them all. She gave up and asked, “Lucien is...?”
“A boy from school.” Still clinging, the girl took a shuddering breath. “He’s really quite wonderful. He is always telling me how much he loves me.”
“You feel the same for him?”
The question went unanswered. Paulette was too preoccupied with pulling back and placing a hand to her heart. “I don’t know what I’ll do without him. Lucien is the only reason I get up in the morning.”
