“Now look what you’ve done, you idiot,” I said to myself. The fur tickled my nose. The unpleasant smells added to my discomfort and I was terrified I’d do what I had done before and give away my presence by sneezing. I pressed my nostrils firmly shut and kept them clamped until I had to breathe. There was no sound in the room and I suspected Irmtraut had gone downstairs with her letter. But that was of little comfort. I was trapped in a wardrobe until Irmtraut came up to change for the theater. And then she’d find me and I’d have to come up with some kind of plausible excuse for hiding in her wardrobe. Another English joke, maybe? In England we always hide in wardrobes on a special saint’s day and leap out to scare the occupants when they are changing for dinner. It might just work. She might just be gullible enough to believe it. But I didn’t think I could bear to be trapped with the smell of mothballs and lily of the valley scent for that long. I felt along the surface of the door. There was a plate but no handle inside. I was indeed in a pickle. Then I remembered the hairpins in the coat pocket. I retrieved them and poked hopefully into the hole on the plate. I’d read about opening locks with hairpins but unfortunately I hadn’t actually been given the specifics of how to do this. Had there been a key in the lock? Had she turned the key? Perhaps the door automatically locked itself, in which case I was definitely doomed. I started to go through other pockets, mostly empty. Really, what was this woman thinking? How could she exist with no makeup or coins or anything else useful? Then finally I found something—at first I thought it was a nail file, until I recoiled in pain and examined it more carefully. It was a little knife, rather sharp. What on earth was that doing in a jacket pocket?