“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