At the head of the stairs Colonel Derrick Albrecht demanded, “What is going on down there?” but a narrowed glance at Victoria’s unbuttoned blouse, the trickle of blood on its collar, and the bleeding nick in her neck gave him a quick answer. She stared up at him, adrenaline spent, with no breath, strength, or will to explain.

Hearing a voice and footsteps, Oberleutnant Peter Janssen scrambled, panting, to his feet, surprise overtaking his fury as a figure wearing the black leather overcoat of the SS and the rank of Standartenführer descended the stairs. His eyes widened further when the SS colonel reached the basement floor and he recognized that indeed the officer was Colonel Derrick Albrecht.

Instantly, the lieutenant pointed a finger at Victoria and screamed in German, “She attacked me, Colonel! That French bitch lured me down here on the pretense of requiring assistance with a washing machine, but her intent was to kill me—rid France of one more Wehrmacht officer, she said. She came at me with a rapier from one of those swords!” He swung his finger to the stack of cleaned and sanded blades. “I would be dead if I hadn’t knocked the rapier from her hand. It’s over there!” He directed the finger at the area where the sword had fallen. “Thank God for your arrival.”

“Yes, indeed. It appears that I arrived just in time,” Derrick agreed. “I can see what the death of an officer like you would have meant to the German Wehrmacht.” His gaze swept to Victoria’s lingerie hanging on the line, then settled on the sergeant’s half-unbuttoned jacket.

The lieutenant hastened to rebutton it, growing pink in the face. “I—I, it was so warm in here, I had to—to—”

“—remove your jacket. Just so. I quite understand.” He switched his attention to Victoria. “You are bleeding, Mademoiselle Colbert,” he observed calmly, reverting from German to French, and handed her his white handkerchief.

Victoria pressed it to her neck. The colonel could not have mistaken what had almost occurred, but would he take the word of a Wehrmacht officer over hers? She had followed the lieutenant and colonel’s dialogue in German, but she said in French, “I don’t understand what he said, Colonel, but it doesn’t sound like the truth.”

Derrick turned again to the lieutenant and spoke in German. “What is your name, Oberleutnant?”

The lieutenant snapped to attention and threw up a smart Nazi salute. “Oberleutnant Peter Janssen on the staff of Major Hartmann in the office of Wehrmacht communications, Herr Colonel!”

“How did you happen to be at L’Ecole d’Escrime Français on Sunday, Oberleutnant Peter Janssen?”

“I—I saw a light on in the salle. I tried the door and found it unlocked. I—I thought I might find one of the instructors or students at practice who would give me a bout.”

“Ah, so you fence?”