“Yes, of course, we’re not allowed locks. I don’t trust that damned Nazi Ella Fiesler across the passage, and there are three children downstairs who stain everything they touch. They’re not Nazis—they’re just children. I cannot keep their sticky paws off my gramophone. If that martinet of a commander would allow us to listen to the radio, they might be less trouble, but as it stands, my gramophone is the only entertainment in the house. Open the wardrobe—you’ll see. Go on, girl, don’t stand there staring.”

Not only could she speak English, but her English was flawlessly proper. She sounded like a radio announcer. Like a duchess. Like the Queen.

She watched me as a cat watches a bird, hungrily. I opened the wardrobe.

There was the gramophone, and next to it was a stack of records higher than my knees. Gowns bloomed like hibiscus and oleander on the rail, pushed to the back so she could reach the gramophone.

“Well, Louisa, now you’ve met Johanna von Arnim, help her to her feet,” said the young woman from the camp headquarters. I thought she must be evaluating me.

I clasped Frau von Arnim by the forearms and braced my heels while she pulled herself up. She was a good deal heavier than she looked.

“The coat, and then the sticks—ugh, dreadful things, I look like an old spider,” said Frau von Arnim. “And my bag beneath the pillow. The passbooks are behind the notes for one of the Django Reinhardts, I forget which.”

“Pardon?”

“In the record album,” she explained impatiently. “At the bottom, beneath the frocks. That damned Nazi Ella Fiesler would never pick up a jazz record.”

Frau von Arnim got down the stairs by herself. I was relieved that she could manage stairs, but goodness, they seemed to take forever—she did them one at a time. The volunteer and I came down behind her. I carried her walking sticks, wondering if I should have gone first to break her fall if she went plummeting forward.

“You must have very strong arms,” I said.

“I have, girl,” she agreed.

And then a long plod to the bank, where we collected a mountain of furs. The Society of Friends woman came with us, watching how I got on. Frau von Arnim, frowning with hostility, examined each piece of fur and signed for it.

“I shall be withdrawing my savings, as well,” she announced with queenly pomp.

That was more complicated, and the bank manager took her into a private room to sort it out.

This left me alone with the detainment camp volunteer.

She grasped my arm and pulled me away from the bank manager’s office. She glanced about to be sure none of the clerks were listening, and then she spoke to me quickly, with her voice carefully lowered.