Madame Florence Bisset was not one of them. Her landlady had directed the pair of policemen to a Catholic church nearby, where they found her reciting the rosary and kneeling on a prayer bench in a pew with others who apparently believed that a house of worship was the place to be upon such a joyous occasion. Spotting her from the back of the church, Maurice whispered to his assistant to wait while he took a seat in a pew behind her and gently tapped her shoulder. Recognizing him, she nodded when he said quietly, “Madame Bisset, will you kindly come with us?”

They took her to Maurice’s office at the headquarters of the Prefecture of Police, located on its natural island in the River Seine, quiet after the chaos of the day before.

After Madame Bisset had been seated in a chair to derive the most benefit from a rotating floor fan and served a glass of iced lemonade, the lemons confiscated from an arrested black marketeer, Maurice said, “Madame Bisset, will you still testify in court to what you saw and overheard in Colonel Albrecht’s office on October thirty-first, 1942?”

“What I overheard, not saw,” Madame Bisset corrected him.

“But you have no doubt that the voices you heard belonged to Colonel Derrick Albrecht and his aide, Karl Brunner?”

“Non.”

Maurice slipped pen and paper across his desk. “Will you please write out your statement for purposes of securing a court order for the arrest of Standartenführer Derrick Albrecht?”

After arrangements were made for Madame Bisset’s return to her apartment and the warrant secured, Maurice and his assistant drove through the throngs to the Hotel Crillon. The Nazi banners once draped imperiously from its façade and the red flags of white discs and black swastikas flown along Avenue Foch had been pulled down and left burning in piles on the street. Maurice returned the salutes of the members of the police force stationed on the premises, instructed them to come with him, and took the stairs to Derrick Albrecht’s suite of rooms.

*  *  *

From one of the open windows of his upper-story hotel suite overlooking the Place de la Concorde, Derrick observed the crowds of Parisians walking the width of the avenue arm in arm and singing “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, heedless of the Third Reich’s symbols smoldering at their feet except to stamp them into further oblivion. In his room, ceiling fans at full spin brought some relief from the sultry heat and smoke-laden air that mingled with the rich fragrance of his Montecristo.