Page 50

Before Colette left Paris with Uncle Leo, she went to see Le Paon one last time.

She had been startled to learn, a month earlier, that the Resistance leader, who had seemed to her to be a shadowy, invincible superhero, was, in reality, Docteur Robillard, a mild-mannered pediatrician who had come out of retirement after the war due to the enormous need for those equipped to deal with childhood trauma.

He specialized now in treating children who had returned from the camps or had suffered malnutrition during the war, and when she walked into his waiting room on the Avenue Parmentier, she was startled to see it packed with gaunt toddlers and hollow-eyed schoolchildren.

It seemed she wasn’t the only one for whom the war was still ongoing.

She approached the receptionist and felt her jaw drop when the young woman looked up and blinked at her.

It was Marie, the one she’d followed to Le Paon’s meeting two years before, the one with the red coat.

“Colette?” Marie asked now, staring as if she might be seeing a mirage. “Whatever are you doing here?”

“I need to see him,” Colette said. “I need to see… Docteur Robillard.” It was still strange to speak the man’s real name. To her, he would always be Le Paon.

“The doctor is with patients now, Colette.” There was sympathy in Marie’s gaze.

“I’ll wait.”

“He’s quite busy. And he doesn’t like to be reminded of—”

“I said I’ll wait.”

Marie sighed in resignation. “Very well. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

It took two more hours before the waiting room cleared out and Marie reluctantly waved Colette through a door to the back.

Inside an exam room, she found the man she’d known as Le Paon wearing a white coat and glasses and looking much smaller and slimmer than she’d remembered.

Had she built him up in her memory to be something he wasn’t?

Or had he actually wilted upon returning to a mundane life?

She hadn’t seen him in more than a year, since the celebration the group had held on the 26th of August, 1944, the day General de Gaulle led a victory parade down the Champs-élysées.

“Colette,” he said, his voice flat. He seemed to be considering something, and then, he closed the distance between them in two long steps and pulled her into a tight hug. “Colette,” he said again, and this time, his tone was tender. “It is very good to see you well.”

“And you,” she said as he pulled away. “I didn’t realize, during the war, that you were a doctor. The clinic where we had our meetings—”

“Belonged to an old medical school colleague of mine,” Le Paon supplied with a weary smile. “He fled south and stayed there for the duration of the war. Giving us the space to meet was his contribution to the cause.”

“That was kind,” Colette said, feeling awkward and stiff with this man she’d once known so well. Now, in his lab coat and his spectacles, he looked like somebody’s kindly grandfather. He looked like a stranger.

“So many of us,” Le Paon said, “played an unsung role in bringing an end to the war.”

Colette bowed her head. She wished she had been older, that she could have done more. She felt a sting of regret at not being braver.

“Colette,” he said after a moment. “I hope you realize that I am including you in that statement.”

When she looked up, there was warmth in his gaze. “But I didn’t do enough.”

He chuckled. “You funded our entire movement almost single-handedly. Do you know how many Jewish refugees we were able to save because of you?”

She shook her head. He hadn’t been able to tell her much during the war; he’d been firm about keeping everyone’s responsibilities separate, so that if one of them was arrested, he or she could not betray the others.

“Perhaps five or six?” She felt a surge of pride to think that she had played a role in helping at least a few people to safety.

Le Paon laughed again. “One hundred fifty-eight,” he said, holding her gaze.

She felt the breath go out of her. “One hundred fifty-eight?”

He nodded. “From the time you joined us in 1943 to the time the war ended, we were able to buy false papers and arrange safe passage and lodging for one hundred fifty-eight people, including sixty-four children, Colette. Because of you .”

Tears stung her eyes. “Oh.” It was all she could manage, for there was suddenly a lump in her throat.

“Your mother would have been very proud,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“My mother is the reason I have come. You see, I am leaving for England with my uncle in two days.” She took a deep breath. “But I couldn’t leave without…” She trailed off, for he was already nodding in understanding.

“Without trying to find out one last time what happened to your family.”

She nodded. “Two years ago, you said that the man who betrayed my mother—and killed my sister—may have been a policeman. I want to find out who’s responsible for their deaths. Will you help me?”

Le Paon studied her face for a long time. “What would you do if you found him?” he finally asked with a frown.

“I don’t know,” she said, looking at the floor, but when she finally raised her gaze to meet his, she could see in his expression that he had correctly read between the lines.

“Colette,” he said gently. “You have a bright future ahead of you. Your mother would have wanted you to live it looking forward rather than looking back.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. Not without knowing.”

“And will you continue to steal, then? After you leave Paris?”

“I think so.” She drew a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking—I’d like to start an organization one day to make sure that people never forget what happened. To make sure it never happens again.”

He wiped his eyes, suddenly emotional. “Your mother would be very proud of that, too, I think. But this quest for revenge—”

“It’s not revenge,” she said quickly. “I don’t plan to harm the man if I find him.

That would go against everything my mother raised me to be.

But I do want to bring him to justice. The last thing my mother asked of me was to bring my sister home, and I couldn’t do that.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself, but at the very least, I can make sure the man pays for his crimes. ”

Le Paon sighed. “There’s no guarantee of that, you realize. I can’t begin to count the number of people across France who did terrible things during the war and will never see the inside of a courtroom.”

“But if I can make sure that this man is held to account…”

“Then, what, Colette? Do you think it will bring you peace?” She could hear the doubt in his tone.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But please, I must try.”

He studied her face for a long time, as if trying to discern whether she was hiding murderous intentions beneath a placid surface.

Finally, he nodded slightly to himself. “I know a policeman who might be of some help. He tends to… know things about his colleagues, which he is sometimes happy to share for a price.”

Her heartbeat accelerated. “A policeman? You think he knows something about what happened?”

“He might.”

“And your friend would be willing to speak with me?”

“He’s not my friend,” Le Paon said sharply. “But he is a man whose cooperation is easily bought, and he has a particular affinity for jewels. Do you have anything to trade?”

Colette hesitated and nodded, pulling a diamond choker from her pocket.

She had nicked it just that morning from the neck of a woman who had lived during the war in the opulent apartment of the German military governor of Paris.

She had planned to pawn it later that day and to give the proceeds to a group working to resettle Jewish children whose parents had been murdered—but there were plenty more jewels where this piece had come from.

Le Paon shook his head and chuckled. “Good. Greed will get the best of him, and he’ll tell you what he knows in exchange for those diamonds.”

Colette stared at the piece of jewelry. Was it possible that it was the key to unlocking secrets that had haunted her for the last three years? “Where will I find him? Who is he?”

“I’ll arrange a meeting,” Le Paon said. “His name is Verdier.”

Colette and the policeman met, as arranged by Le Paon, at a table outside a café on the rue Saint-Sébastien.

Verdier was a slight man with a flat nose, pale skin, and mud-brown eyes that seemed to be arranged in a permanent squint.

He was out of uniform, but Colette recognized the rigid posture of a policeman when he slid in across from her, and the way he nodded stiffly, almost obsequiously, to a trio of French military officers two tables away.

“You are the girl Le Paon sent?” he asked with no preamble after he ordered a coffee. “The Marceau girl?”

“I am. And you are?”

“Verdier, of course. I understand you have something for me?”

The choker felt like a lead weight in her pocket. “In exchange for information.”

He frowned at her, as if disappointed that she wouldn’t just hand over the jewels and let him be on his merry way. “Information about the arrest of your mother, I understand?” There was neither warmth nor sympathy in his tone.

“And the death of my sister. Her name was Liliane. I—I believe she was murdered by a policeman.”

He snorted. “That’s absurd.”

“I saw a man in uniform hurrying away with her on the night she was taken.”

“That’s proof of nothing.”

“Then give me proof,” she said, leaning forward, “and the piece I have in my pocket is yours.”

He seemed to be considering something. Finally, he spoke. “There was talk about your mother just before her arrest. Someone had knowledge that she had stolen something from a German. A pair of bracelets, very valuable. Hundreds of diamonds.”

“Who?” Colette demanded. “Who knew she had stolen the bracelets from a German?”

Verdier leaned back in his chair. “What did she do with the bracelets?”

“That’s hardly—”

“ What did she do with the bracelets ?”