The Paris Apartment, page 2
She slid the top one to the side. The issue beneath, devoid of dust, was easy to read. Signal blazed from the upper left corner in bold red text, the cover beneath dominated by an image of a Nazi soldier with an intense expression. A strip of the same bold red color ran down the spine of the magazine, September 1942 easily visible at the top. Lia snatched her hand away.
“This is not happening,” she said into the silence, as if saying it out loud would make it true. Because she already knew without opening the magazine what she’d find. German propaganda and glossy pro-Nazi photos, all published at a time when Nazis had overrun and occupied this very city.
Lia stared again at a young Estelle Allard laughing from her Mercedes and the nameless German officer before she turned away from the photos and the magazines and all their ominous implications. With a queasy dread settling into her gut, she made her way past the ornate hearth mantel and around the corner. Here, the space narrowed into a formal dining room. The center was dominated by a rosewood table surrounded by eight matching chairs. On the wall to her right, a cabinet taller than she was filled the space, rows of crystal, silver, and porcelain dinnerware displayed on the shelves.
On the wall opposite the cabinet was another collection of paintings, striking and arresting portraits of men and women in clothing from centuries past. Lia bit her lip hard enough to hurt as the dread intensified. Art had been a desirable souvenir for the Nazis during the occupation, entire collections stolen—
“Stop it, Lia.” She shook her head, not caring how foolish she sounded, talking to no one. “Don’t be absurd.”
Yes, there was Nazi propaganda in the apartment. But a single photo and a handful of magazines did not mean that the paintings on these walls had been stolen or otherwise illicitly obtained. It did not mean that her grandmother had deliberately kept this collection here, in this apartment, for any reason other than that she had liked art when she had been younger. Conjuring conspiracy theories was best left to Hollywood. And radical zealots.
Lia tore her gaze from the paintings and continued through the dining room, stepping into a hallway. On her right, a doorway opened up into a kitchen with a tiny stove, a small refrigerator, and a deep sink set into a countertop free of clutter, save for a single crystal tumbler.
Just to her left, a set of French doors stood open, the dim outline of a four-poster bed identifying this last space as a bedroom. As in the living room, lines of sunlight from tall windows were visible on the far wall. Lia entered the room, skirted the bed, and, with a great deal more care than she had taken earlier, eased the heavy curtains open.
In the light, the room was a decidedly feminine space, the walls papered in a shade of rose, the edges near the ceiling only slightly yellowed and discolored. The room consisted of a double bed, a dressing table and chair, and an enormous wardrobe, all carved with a provincial flair. The bed was neatly made, and the linens, once washed, would likely be the same rose hue as the walls.
The room was impeccably tidy save for a garment that had been tossed carelessly on top of the smooth coverlet, crumpled and forgotten and dulled by dust. It was an evening gown, Lia realized, moving to lift it by its thin straps. A stunning creation of lemon-yellow chiffon and crepe, beaded with crystals, and something that would have been obscenely expensive no matter what century it had been purchased in. Not something one would toss aside like an old pair of socks.
Bewildered, she let the dress drop back to the bed and eyed the narrow, arched doorway in the corner beside the wardrobe. It led into what looked like a modern walk-in closet. A dressing room, Lia guessed, though there was almost no space to walk in. On both sides, dresses and gowns and furs and coats hung crammed together, spilling out on top of one another in such numbers that Lia couldn’t even see the back wall. Shoes lined the floor, dozens and dozens of pairs, and along a shelf at the top, hat boxes were stacked. Smaller jewelry boxes, some of them covered in leather and satin, were piled in front.
“Good Lord,” Lia mumbled, the excess hard to comprehend.
She backed away and cautiously opened the wardrobe next, expecting to be inundated with another jumble of extravagance. But the wardrobe was almost empty, the cavernous interior yielding only a half-dozen gowns.
These gowns, protected from the years of dust, were a collection of couture silks and satins, each one exquisitely embroidered, appliquéd, and detailed. Lia ran her fingers along the length of a sapphire-colored skirt before pulling her hand back, afraid that she would soil the fabric. She closed the wardrobe and rested her forehead against the double doors. The gowns, the shoes, the furs—there was a fortune in clothing here. Just like there was a fortune in fine furnishings and fine art.
All of it hidden for over seventy years.
Lia had fallen down a rabbit hole. An overwhelming, insane rabbit hole that made a jump to abhorrent conclusions far too easy. She lifted her head and took a steadying breath. Assumptions never ended well—a career dedicated to science had taught her that. She would give her grandmother the benefit of the doubt. She would not believe the worst until such time as she was presented with irrefutable proof.
For right now, she would put conjecture aside. Instead, she would make a list of things that needed to be done, tasks that required her attention immediately. Lists were made of numbers and needs, and not speculations and suppositions. Lists were ordered and rational, and they had always helped her focus on what she could control when presented with disorder and uncertainty. Yes, a carefully curated collection of lists was exactly what she needed right now.
Feeling a little better, Lia headed back toward the bedroom doors but stopped abruptly as she caught sight of her reflection. A little tarnished and spotted, the mirror mounted above the dressing table nonetheless revealed the troubled lines that still suffused Lia’s features. Almost involuntarily, she sank onto the little chair, ignoring the dust, not taking her eyes off her reflection. Had her grandmother been the last to be reflected in this mirror? And if Lia could go back in time, what would she have seen? Whom would she have seen?
Her eyes dropped to the surface of the dressing table. A collection of decorative glass bottles huddled in the center. A pair of women’s gloves lay discarded beside them, abandoned where they had been dropped. Beside the gloves, propped up against the bottom of the mirror, was a small card. A postcard of some sort, Lia thought as she reached for it.
It was a black-and-white photo of a long, looming building, a row of Roman columns lining the entire façade like an ancient temple. An impressive display of architecture, marred only by the Nazi flag snapping proudly in the wind in the foreground. Dread returned and manifested into something far more sinister. Very slowly, Lia turned the postcard over.
For the lovely Estelle, it read in scrawled, faded ink. With thanks, Hermann Göring.
Lia dropped the postcard as though it had bitten her and stumbled to her feet, knocking the little chair to the side. Despair warred with revulsion, leaving her nauseated. She was such a fool. Only a fool would have clung to hope. Only a delusional fool would have refused to truly accept the evidence scattered all over this apartment. As far as irrefutable proof went, Lia couldn’t imagine anything more damning.
She still had no idea why her grandmother had chosen to leave her this apartment but the reason that she had kept its existence a secret was abundantly clear. Because her grandmother, a woman who had hung the French flag out every May in celebration, a woman who had repeatedly declared her love for her country, hadn’t been a patriotic citizen at all. Her grandmother had been a liar and a traitor and a fraud.
Her grandmother had been a Nazi collaborator.
Chapter
2
Sophie
Wieluń, Poland
31 August 1939
Sophie Seymour had been eight years old when she’d first heard someone refer to her as unnatural.
It had been at Heloise Postlewaithe’s birthday party, an event that Sophie had attended only because Mrs. Postlewaithe had invited the entirety of her daughter’s summer Sunday school class. The party had been an affair marked by fancy frocks with copious ruffles, rich cakes and tepid tea, and games that had bored Sophie to death, quite frankly. She’d wandered away from the shrill fracas of musical chairs and pass the parcel without anyone noticing and made her way to the Postlewaithes’ library that was up on the first floor.
The Postlewaithes’ country manor was impressive, their library equally so. Here, amid the blessed silence and the soft afternoon light, Sophie had found a Latin primer, no doubt a leftover from a previous Postlewaithe’s Eton days. At eight, Sophie was already fluent in French, Spanish, and Italian, though she’d never seen the root language from which all of those had been derived. She’d been instantly captivated and settled down in a warm corner of the room to read.
As absorbed in her newfound study and tucked away upstairs as she was, she hadn’t heard the discovery of her absence. She hadn’t been aware of the uproar and panic when it was finally discerned that an eight-year-old girl was missing or hearkened to the fears that, as the initial search had turned up nothing, she might have fallen into one of the manor’s ponds and drowned.
It wasn’t until a frantic Mrs. Postlewaithe had finally discovered Sophie in the library an hour later that Sophie had any indication that anything was wrong. She’d yanked Sophie to her feet, relief dissolving into fury, and snatched the primer out of Sophie’s hands.
“What is wrong with you?” she’d demanded, her face flushed an alarming shade beneath a stylish coiffure that was still perfectly in place.
“Nothing,” Sophie replied, blinking with incomprehension.
“You left the party.”
“The noise was hurting my ears,” Sophie explained, trying to be polite.
“You ruined Heloise’s party,” the woman hissed. “Ruined it all.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We all had to look for you. We thought you’d drowned.”
Sophie shook her head. “I know how to swim,” she tried to reassure her hostess. “My mum made both my brother and me take lessons before we were allowed to go exploring on our own.”
The woman’s lips curled in disgust. “Perhaps your mum should have also taught you that stealing is rude. Taking things that aren’t yours.”
“I wasn’t stealing,” Sophie told her. “I was just reading. And I was going to put it back when I was done.”
Mrs. Postlewaithe looked down at the Latin primer. “And you’re a liar too,” she sneered. “You can’t read this.”
“I can.” Sophie had never been called a liar by a grown-up before. It made her stomach feel awful. “It’s just Latin,” she tried to explain. “And this book starts with basic grammar in tables and uses that to build up more complex sentences. It’s not that hard. I could show you.”
“I don’t need you to show me anything. I know my place in this world. You need to learn yours.”
Mrs. Postlewaithe stared at Sophie and Sophie had stared back.
“You are an unnatural creature,” the woman continued, her expression as hard and cold as the diamonds that hung from her neck. “No one will ever want you. There is something wrong with you.”
That conversation had been thirteen years ago, but Sophie had never forgotten it.
“Am I unnatural?” Sophie asked, staring up at the ceiling.
Beside her, Piotr rolled over in bed. His dark hair was thoroughly tousled, eyes the color of the Baltic Sea thoroughly amused. “Is this a trick question? A test for new husbands?” He propped his head up on his hand.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“You deserve it with questions like that.” He reached over and stroked her bare shoulder. “You’re not having regrets, are you?”
“I regret we did not do this sooner.”
“That makes two of us.” Piotr Kowalski was smiling as he said it. “If I had known that you would have said yes, I would have asked you to marry me the day you ran me over with your bicycle.”
“I did not run you over. I avoided you and hit a tree. Mostly.”
“No, I think you ran me over on purpose. You couldn’t help yourself,” he teased.
“I ran you over because I was late for work. And you should know that I did my best not to fall in love with you.”
“Mmm.” Piotr leaned forward and kissed her with a thoroughness that curled her toes. “You never stood a chance, wife.”
Sophie managed to nod because he was right. Love had been wearing the green-brown uniform of a Polish cavalry officer and had not cursed or seethed when he’d been sent sprawling by her inattention and haste. Instead, love had gently helped her stagger to her feet, her hose torn and beyond salvage, her knee scraped and throbbing, and her lip split and bleeding. He’d righted her bicycle with easy motions before turning back to her, concern stamped across his features.
She’d made a cake of herself after that, in the face of his kindness and his devastatingly vivid blue eyes, babbling apologies and stammering something about needing to get back to the embassy. He had only wet a linen kerchief with his canteen and wiped the blood from her lip with a tenderness that had suddenly made her want to burst into tears. She’d fled, clambering back on her bicycle and pedaling away, realizing only when she’d reached the embassy that she was clutching his kerchief, now stained and crushed.
She’d locked herself in the loo and unsteadily put herself back together as best she could, thoroughly mortified. The practical part of her knew she’d likely never see the kind blue-eyed officer again but instead of relief, she’d felt an intense regret.
“Why did you come back that day?” she asked suddenly. “To the embassy?”
“Because the extraordinary, beautiful blond girl who kept apologizing in at least four languages stole my only kerchief, and I wanted it back.”
“You brought flowers.”
“Because she had also stolen my heart. Though I never got that back, nor do I want it returned. That will be yours forever, moja kochana.”
Sophie glanced down at the band around her finger. In the long rays of the sun that was beginning its descent over the roofs and spires of the city, the ruby and tiny pearls gleamed with a lustrous glow. “You, Piotr Kowalski, are a shameless romantic.”
“Guilty.” He flashed her a roguish grin. “It’s why you love me.”
“I love you because you are kind and brave and honourable. Because you are patient and gentle and smart.”
“What about handsome?”
“The most handsome man of all.” Sophie smiled.
“Indeed. Do go on. What else do you love about me?”
“Now you’re just fishing for flattery.”
“Yes. You can have a turn later. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
Sophie laughed before sobering. “I love you because the day I told you that I would become a professor of languages at Oxford, you asked why I hadn’t already applied. And where we would live.”
“Perfectly reasonable questions.”
Sophie toyed with the edge of the sheet. “Most men wouldn’t think so.”
Piotr caught her hand. “And I am not most men. Where is this coming from?”
“Childhood insecurities,” Sophie mumbled. “I’m sorry. This is embarrassing and not at all a romantic topic on our wedding night.”
Piotr sat up, the hotel bed protesting the movement. He slid an arm under her shoulders and hauled her up against him. “Any man who would wish to extinguish the fire that burns so bright in you is no man at all. Whatever dreams you wish to chase, I will chase them with you.”
“I am the luckiest girl in the world right now,” she whispered, looking up at him.
“Careful,” he replied, his eyes dancing. “You might be accused of being a shameless romantic.”
“I’ll have you know that the women in my family are not romantics, shameless or otherwise,” she sniffed. “We leave that to our menfolk.”
“I can’t wait to meet them.”
“You will.”
“They will not be angry? That I married their daughter without even meeting them?”
Sophie bit her lip. For as long as she could remember, marriage had ever been an enemy to her ambitions and dreams and an adversary to her independence and freedom. Her antipathy toward the institution had increased each time some meddling matriarch told Sophie that it was well past time that she abandon her frivolous studies and do what was natural—marry well and settle down.
A thousand times she had sworn to her family that she would never fall in love. Never marry. A thousand times she had sat down at her writing desk to tell her family that she’d been a liar. And each time, the words hadn’t come. She would remedy that as soon as she got back to Warsaw tomorrow.
“They will love you,” she told him. That was the truth.
“I wish my parents were still alive and could have known you,” he said, his finger tracing patterns along the top of her arm. “Though they would have been appalled that I did not marry you in front of a hundred people, in a church filled with flowers, with a brass ensemble to serenade us out. Or that I did not take you to Paris or Vienna for our honeymoon and sleep on silk sheets.”
“That all sounds complicated.” Sophie squeezed his hand with hers, twining her fingers through his. “This world is complicated enough.”
“I didn’t even manage a proper photographer.”
“I didn’t particularly want to marry a proper photographer.”
“Very funny.”
“I love you,” she said simply, those words seemingly inadequate for the storm of emotion that was constricting her chest.
He glanced over at her, holding her eyes with his own, the smile slipping from his lips, his expression intense. “I love you too,” he replied.
“I wish your leave wasn’t so short. I wish you didn’t have to go back to your regiment tomorrow. I don’t want to lose you again so quickly—”
“This was the best leave of my life.” He cut her off. “And you can’t lose me. You’re stuck with me for good. Your last name is now the same as mine. You are wearing my grandmother’s ring. I’m well and truly yours.”
