Schwarz was running his long fingers through the silk of a sapphire gown, embroidered and edged with tiny pearls at the bodice. “Fit for a princess, no?” He yanked the couture gown from the wardrobe.

“It’s what I sing in,” Estelle said, and the tremor in her voice wasn’t altogether manufactured. She needed to get him away from the wardrobe before he completely emptied it. A cough, a sneeze, a pencil rolling to the floor, the creak of the cot—there were a hundred different things that might betray them all.

“Mmm.” He tossed the gown on the bed and reached for another, the confection of lemon-bright crepe. “My wife would have liked to wear such things,” he said. “I would like to have bought her such things. But I could never afford it, no matter how many hours I worked. Yet here, in Paris, a cabaret whore dresses like a queen. Lives like a queen.” He was stroking the yellow-crepe gown with the muzzle of his gun. “Perhaps I might take her a gift. So many fine things in this apartment. So much to choose from.” The yellow dress joined the sapphire one on the bed. He reached for another gown, this one the color of fresh cream and embroidered with yards of gold thread.

“Choose, then,” Estelle said loudly as his hands closed over the cool silk. “Those dresses are all gifts from Reichsmarschall Göring. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

The sergeant snatched his hand away as if he’d been burned and stared at Estelle.

She smiled prettily back. “The Reichsmarschall is very fond of couture,” she told him. “And he said he thought I looked like an angel in that dress. Perhaps your wife will too. Look like an angel, that is. I will tell him that.”

He closed the wardrobe with jerky movements. Colonel Meyer’s name had merely given him pause. The mention of Göring had had the intended effect.

Amid all the lies, sometimes the truth was the most useful.

The officer slid his pistol back into its holster. He retraced his steps through the apartment, Estelle trailing after him.

Frau Hoffmann was still skulking in her doorway, bouncing her fussing daughter. She glanced up, seemingly crestfallen when Schwarz returned empty-handed. “Did you find where she’s hidden them?” she demanded. “The traitors? Because I know she has.”

“There is nothing here.” The sergeant stared hard at Estelle, as if trying to understand what she was. Socialite, singer, whore, mistress, German sympathizer, or all of the above. Or maybe something else entirely. “But I won’t stop looking. Traitors will always be traitors. People don’t change.”

Chapter ​16

Chapter
​16

Gabriel

Norfolk, England
8 July 2017

Millbrook House hadn’t changed in two hundred years.