Girl in the Blue Coat

by Monica Hesse

  “Hanneke, I’ve just talked to our friend in the country.” He sounds formal and strangely controlled. “The mutual acquaintance from school that you were trying to remember? She didn’t have a birthmark on her chin.”

  I keep my own voice as steady as his. “Interesting,” I say. “Perhaps we’re not thinking of the same person. Is she sure?”

  “She’s absolutely sure. The girl apparently had a small mole on her neck, and she had the scars on her knee, but she didn’t have a birthmark.” There’s a long pause. “Would you like me to come over for dinner tonight?” he asks, which is really his way of asking What’s going on?

  “Thank you for the offer.” I struggle for the same control he’s maintaining. “But no. I’ll be in contact soon.”

  I hang up the phone by depressing the button on the base, and immediately dial Mrs. Janssen’s house, my finger shaking as I rotate the numbers on the dial, silently hoping that she still has a phone line. It rings.

  What am I doing? A girl is dead. We buried her this morning. No matter who she was, it was sad and horrible and final. Maybe I should let it remain final. Maybe Mrs. Janssen has been through enough.

  She answers on the fourth ring, groggy like I’ve woken her; I tell her how sorry I am to have called her and that I have a question I know will sound odd.

  “Hanneke? Is that you?”

  “Some friends and I have a bet about our acquaintance, Miss R,” I say, waiting a beat to make sure she’s following. “The bet was over whether she had a birthmark on her chin. Do you remember it?”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  I close my eyes. “Please. Just answer. Did she have one?”

  “I don’t remember. No? I’m not sure. Yes? Can’t you tell me what’s happening?”

  “I’m going to come over later,” I tell her before hanging up. “I don’t know when, but I will.”

  Mirjam Roodveldt didn’t have a birthmark but did have scars on her knee. The girl on Mr. Kreuk’s table had a birthmark, definitely, but no scars. The girl in Mrs. Janssen’s pantry may or may not have had a birthmark; Mrs. Janssen doesn’t remember seeing one, but admits she could have been wrong. Now the girl is in the ground and it’s too late for me to get confirmation from any of the people who could identify her.

  Was I right all along, that day I told Ollie that it might not be Mirjam at the theater? Do I still have a chance to save the real girl?

  Back in the office, Mina sits where I left her. She doesn’t ask me who was on the phone. She’s obviously beyond the point of expecting answers. The slide is still projected on the wall. Everything looks the same as it did five minutes ago. Nothing makes any sense. There are the soldiers. There are the frightened people. The brown coats. The lavender hats.

  On my third pass, I see it. Something that all at once seems so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. “Something is off with this picture,” I whisper.

  “What do you mean? The color might be off; the film was developed in a hurry.”

  “Not that.” I move out of the way so Mina can see what I’m talking about. “Look at this closely. Really closely. Tell me if you notice anything about this girl’s face.”

  Mina wrinkles her forehead. “I already told you; it’s blurry, and it’s hard to see her face. But I think she looks scared. As I would expect.”

  “Not the expression. The direction.” I use the tip of my finger to draw explanatory lines in the air. “Here’s the soldier, to the left. Do you see? Giving instructions to the prisoners. And just in front of him is his partner.”

  “And?”

  “And every other person in the picture looks afraid of the soldiers. See the way this soldier is pointing? And how everyone else is looking in the direction he’s pointing? It looks like he’s telling everyone which way to go in the theater.”

  Realization begins to dawn on Mina’s face. “What is Mirjam looking at?”

  Mirjam’s face is pointed in another direction. She’s not paying attention to the soldiers at all. Whatever she’s looking at is far in the distance, out of the frame of the shot. It’s possible that it’s just a fluke, that she’d been looking at the soldiers, and a noise or a movement distracted her. That’s the most logical possibility and I know it. But I can’t get rid of another feeling.

  Mirjam doppelgänger, whoever you are. Is it possible that Nazis weren’t the only thing you were afraid of?

  THIRTY-ONE

  Mrs. Janssen doesn’t answer the door when I knock. I try again, as loud as I dare without drawing too much attention to myself. “Hello? Mrs. Janssen, it’s me, Hanneke,” I say softly.

  “She went out,” a voice calls, a middle-aged woman standing on the stoop across the street. Mrs. Veenstra, the woman whose son was missing in the country on the day Mirjam disappeared. Or not-Mirjam.

  “Mrs. Janssen never goes out on her own.”

  “I know that, but she did, about ten minutes ago. I told her I could pick up anything she needed, but she said she needed to go herself.”

  “Did she say where?”

  “No, but she looked upset. I figured she’d had bad news about one of her sons. Do you want to wait in my house until she comes back?”

  “I’ll just wait—” I’m about to say that I’ll just wait on her steps when I realize I never tried the doorknob. I surreptitiously twist it now, and the door pops open. Next door, Fritzi starts barking. “I’ll just wait inside. She’s expecting me anyway.”

  Mrs. Veenstra looks uncertain. “I wanted to make sure I came today,” I babble pleasantly, trying to think of an excuse that will convince her I belong in this house. “You know, with Jan’s birthday. It’s probably why she’s so upset. I bet she’s at church.” I have no idea when Jan’s birthday is, but I doubt Mrs. Veenstra will remember any better than I do, and I hope she can’t sense how uncomfortable I am. A week ago, I was at this house, reminding myself how to behave on a social call. Now I’m reminding myself how to tell lies and excuses again. “Would you like me to pass on your thoughts as well?” I ask.

  Finally she goes back into her own house, leaving me alone. Inside, Mrs. Janssen’s is quiet. A clock ticks. A half-drunk cup of ersatz tea sits on the kitchen table, next to a half-eaten slice of bread. Those are the only signs of human activity. I walk quickly through the rest of the house to be sure: the lonely bedrooms belonging to Mrs. Janssen’s sons; Mrs. Janssen’s own bedroom, smelling of rose perfume and something musty; Mr. Janssen’s home office, unused since his death. She’s nowhere.

  My knee throbs. I still have Willem’s handkerchief tied around it, and drops of red have seeped through the white cotton. I rinse off the handkerchief in the kitchen sink and reapply it. I wonder if Mrs. Janssen has any aspirin powder and where she would keep it. Mama keeps ours in the pantry. The door to Mrs. Janssen’s is already ajar, and the secret latch is open, revealing the hiding place from behind the jars of pickles and radishes. Inside, the quilt on top of the opklapbed is wrinkled, with a faint depression in the middle. Mrs. Janssen must have come in here last night.

  No amount of searching for aspirin powder or performing other menial tasks is going to be enough to distract me.

  The timeline doesn’t reveal anything, no matter how many times I go over it. Four weeks ago, a girl appeared at the front door of this house, who may or may not have been Mirjam Roodveldt. One week ago, the same girl disappeared, and Mrs. Janssen hired me to find her. Two days ago, a girl was found in a raid and taken to the Hollandsche Schouwburg. I tried to help her escape. She was shot and killed. Was that girl the same one who knocked on Mrs. Janssen’s door? Or was it a different girl, one who had acquired Mirjam’s clothes and papers during the five days that Mirjam went missing?

  Does any of this even matter anyway? There’s a girl who is dead.

  “Hello?” Through several walls, I hear the front door creak open and someone call out. “Hello, Mrs. Janssen?”

  I rush out of the pantry, hurling the door closed behind me
. A young blond woman I’ve never seen before stands in the parlor, dressed in the clothes of a shopgirl or store clerk.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Oh!” She theatrically puts her hand to her chest. “Where’s Mrs. Janssen?”

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” I say, deciding the best way to avoid answering her question is to ask a ruder one of my own.

  “I’m Tessa Koster. I work—I worked—for Mr. Janssen in the furniture shop. The door was ajar. Are you… Mrs. Janssen’s companion?” she guesses.

  “Yes. Mrs. Janssen’s not here. Can I help you with something?”

  “Oh, no. I came by to drop some things off for Mrs. Janssen, but I’ll come back later when she’s home.”

  Tessa Koster smiles, flustered, and as she heads for the door again, I piece it together. The furniture shop employee. The one who was leaving on her honeymoon the day after the raid. “Photographs,” I say. “You brought photographs for Mrs. Janssen, from Mr. Janssen’s back room.”

  She looks unnerved that I know this; for all she knows, I’m a spy sent to trap her. “Is Mrs. Janssen coming back soon? I really should talk to her.”

  But I’m already shaking my head, looking as sympathetic as I can, because I want her to leave those photographs with me. “I don’t know when she’ll be back. I suppose you could come back tomorrow? You’re brave, walking around with those photographs, though. It sounded like they were sort of”—I bring my voice down to a whisper and continue—“illicit.”

  “I’ll—I’ll be fine.”

  “Did you ever meet the family who was in hiding?” I ask, letting her see I know more than she guessed I did. “The daughter? Mirjam.”

  “No, I didn’t. You knew about that?” She looks back toward the door.

  “Are you sure you never saw them? They were there for several months. You must have suspected something.” Mrs. Koster averts her eyes, staring down at the new wedding band on her finger, and I have a new, ugly suspicion.

  “Mrs. Koster. Were you the one who told the police that Mr. Janssen was hiding people in his back room? Did you report him to the Nazis?”

  “Listen.” Her eyes dart to the side. “I don’t approve of what Mr. Janssen was doing, but I didn’t tell on him. I didn’t even know about it. I came into work, and the raid had already happened. These were in the back room; they had blood on them, so I took them home to clean them up, and then Mrs. Janssen wrote me a letter saying she wanted them. That’s really all the involvement I want to have. Can I leave them with you? And then I don’t have to come back again.”

  She digs in her handbag, blond curls falling in her face, and eventually produces a paper envelope. “Here. Take them.”

  I pretend to consider it. “Are you sure? You’re not going to wait?”

  She thrusts the paper in my hand. “Take them.”

  Once I see her out the door, I take the packet of photographs back into the kitchen. I’m not rushing this time. I’m infinitely precise. I’m infinitely patient as I sit down at the table, lay the envelope squarely in front of me, moving with an emotion it takes me a while to identify. Dread.

  Most of the blood has been wiped from the photographs; only a few traces remain, making the corners of the pictures stick together when I peel them apart. I lay them one by one in front of me, a row stretching across the table, this gluey narrative of a family and life and death.

  Here are Mr. and Mrs. Roodveldt, I presume, cradling a baby in a white dress, behind a table with a cake on it. A birthday. Here’s one from a few years earlier: Mrs. Roodveldt’s bridal portrait, her eyes lowered, a lace veil covering her hair and a small bouquet of lilacs in her hands.

  The photographs skip back and forth in years, and the family marches across the kitchen table unstuck from time, beaming at me from their happiest moments. Parties. Holidays. A new apartment, a new baby, a different one from the first time.

  And here is one with two teenage girls with their arms around each other. The girl on the left has dark curly hair, a faint birthmark on her chin, and long, lush eyelashes. Her eyes—which I’ve only really seen closed, on Mr. Kreuk’s table—are large and expressive.

  The girl on the right is slightly taller, also with dark hair, her mouth open in laughter. She’s wearing a paper birthday crown. I’ve never seen her before.

  With shaking hands, I turn the picture over: Amalia and Mirjam at Mirjam’s 14th birthday.

  There are so many things I wish I could forget. The hard parts. The nasty injuries, beneath the scarred skin, the things I’d like to disappear by ignoring.

  The last time I saw Elsbeth, before I sneaked into her house:

  It was a few months after the day in my bedroom when I told her I wished Rolf were dead instead of Bas.

  She came to my house again. She had two wedding invitations, one for me and one for my parents. She awkwardly accepted tea from my mother and answered questions about her dress and the flowers at the church. When my mother left us alone “so we could catch up,” Elsbeth turned to me.

  “My mother said I should invite you,” she said finally. “She said weddings mend fences. But I’m guessing you won’t want to come.” I couldn’t figure out the emotion in her eyes: Hope? Anger? Was she wishing that I would come, or was she making it clear that she wanted my answer to be no?

  “No,” I said. “I don’t expect I’ll come.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “I guess this really probably is good-bye.”

  It was so dignified. That was what made it so sad. To end a twelve-year friendship like this, while she sat in my kitchen with a wedding invitation in her hand. It was nearly unforgivable, and I’ve spent the past year wondering whether it was more or less unforgivable than the person Elsbeth wanted to marry, and which one of us should apologize to whom.

  There are so many ways to kill things, it turns out. The Germans killed Bas with mortar. Elsbeth and I killed our friendship with words.

  THIRTY-TWO

  My heart has come loose from my chest.

  Amalia. Amalia.

  Amalia was the girl who Ollie brought to Mr. Kreuk’s in the quiet of night. Amalia is the girl who is dead in the ground. The girl I have been looking for this whole time. The photograph of the birthday party is sticky in my hand; without meaning to I’ve left fingerprints all over it, touching the faces of these dead and disappeared girls.

  In the other room, I hear the front door open again, letting in a whistle of air. Mrs. Janssen? But I don’t hear the soft bump of her cane. It must be Tessa Koster again.

  “I’m back here,” I call out. My voice is a croak.

  “Mrs. Janssen?” a confused voice asks. “It’s Christoffel.”

  “Oh, Christoffel, it’s Hanneke.” Reflexively, I sweep the photographs off the table, folding them back into the envelope they came in. I’ve just stuck the packet under the tea set when Christoffel enters the kitchen. He’s still wearing the formal clothes he wore to escort Mrs. Janssen to the funeral earlier today.

  “Where’s Mrs. Janssen?” He uses his sleeve to wipe perspiration off his forehead. “When I stopped by a little bit ago, she said she needed me to take her somewhere. I told her I had to do another quick errand and I’d be right back.”

  “Mrs. Janssen…” I trail off. I’m having a difficult time finishing my sentences. Was Amalia imprisoned in the Hollandsche Schouwburg? Amalia, Mirjam’s best friend? Amalia, who was supposed to be in Kijkduin? Vaguely, I realize Christoffel is still waiting for me to finish my sentence. “Mrs. Janssen was gone when I got here, too. Did she tell you where she wanted you to take her?”

  He wrinkles his eyebrows. “She said she needed to go see you. But you’re here. It sounded urgent; she was upset when I told her I couldn’t go right away.”

  “Right. Right. I guess she and I got a little mixed up about who was coming to see whom.” Dammit. I should have told Mrs. Janssen on the phone to stay put, no matter what. But I don’t know how she would have gone to see me; Mrs. Ja
nssen doesn’t know where I live. I don’t even think she knows my last name. If Christoffel wasn’t here, I could go through the house to see if she left me a note somewhere, explaining more.

  “It sounded like she was really worried about something,” Christoffel says. “I’ll wait here until she gets back.”

  “I’m sure you have better things to do, Christoffel. Why don’t I give you some money for your trouble, and you can get back to your life?”

  But, irritatingly dutiful, he takes the other seat at the table, fiddling with one of the teacups. Minutes tick by. When Mrs. Janssen couldn’t find me, what would she do next? Something rash? Would she try to go find Mr. Kreuk? Or Ollie? How much have I told her about him, and the resistance?

  “Do you really think it’s all right if I leave? I do have another place I’m supposed to be,” he admits finally.

  “Of course you should leave. I’ll tell her you stopped by.” Even the scraping of my chair sounds eager as I usher him out of his seat.

  “Did I leave my hat?” he starts to ask, looking around his seat.

  “Here,” I say, exasperated, thrusting the gray cap at him that he’d set on the table.

  We’re almost out of the room when a squeak emits from the pantry, an un-oiled, plaintive sound. Verdorie. I remembered to shut the outer pantry door when Tessa Koster came in, but I don’t think I locked the secret shelf inside. It must be swinging, loose, behind the closed door. “Old houses make the strangest sounds,” I say.

  We’re at the front door now. All I have to do is shove him through it, and then I can figure out where Mrs. Janssen is. I’ll start with Mr. Kreuk. That’s who introduced us to begin with. Mr. Kreuk handled the memorial service for her husband.

  “Next time I come I’ll bring some oil,” says Christoffel as I open the door for him. “That shelf always squeaks when the latch is open.”