It might be tempting, if not for Aviva. But it would never work. Because once the Gestapo believed that they’d found a spy in this apartment, they would tear it apart looking for more. And inevitably Aviva would be found. The airman would be found. It was far better to do what Estelle had always done. Invite the enemy in.

“No. Follow me and hurry.”

Estelle led them into her bedroom as silently as possible. With quick movements, she opened the wardrobe, swept the half-dozen hanging gowns to the side, and released the hidden door.

The little girl was sitting at the table, her pencils and paper in front of her. Estelle put her finger to her lips and offered Aviva a reassuring smile.

“Hello, darling,” she whispered. “I need your help.”

Aviva blinked at her.

“I have two friends I need you to help hide. Can you do that for me?”

Aviva nodded, her eyes wide.

“And I need you to be even quieter than a mouse.” A ridiculous thing to say because Aviva still hadn’t uttered a single word in almost a year. “Can you show them how?”

Aviva nodded again.

A fist crashed against her apartment door, making Estelle jump. She turned, pulled off her brightly adorned hat, and tossed it into the hidden room. “Get in,” she ordered the agent and airman.

Both climbed in without a word, and Estelle latched the hidden door, replaced the garments, and closed the wardrobe.

The harsh male voice in the hallway had been joined by a shrill feminine one and the wail of a baby. Estelle hustled back out past the gleaming dining table just as a fist crashed against her door again.

She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair, arranged her features into one of perplexed confusion, and went to the door.

Scharführer Schwarz was standing in the doorframe, one hand again resting on the pistol at his waist, the other suspended in front of him. Beside him, Frau Hoffmann hovered, her small daughter on her hip. The German wife of a French industrialist to whom the war and all its financial opportunities had been inordinately kind, she had moved into the empty apartment less than a week after Rachel had been dragged from it. Estelle had exchanged less than a dozen words with the vitriolic frau, who seemed to resent everything French, including Estelle.

The door to the Wylers’ old apartment was open, and Estelle could see into the space. Their once cherished bookcase was now filled with trinkets instead of tomes. The pretty carved rocking chair that Alain had made Hannah when Aviva was born was gone, replaced with a chunky cabinet filled with more baubles.

The rug that had lain at the entrance, once stained with Serge’s blood, was also gone.