Page 26 of The Widows of Champagne

Josephine

J osephine was glad to be sent to her room like a naughty child. She’d pushed von Schmidt nearly past his limit tonight, and in front of a powerful guest who’d also, rightfully so, found her tedious. No woman in her right mind would do such a thing as to encourage both men’s irritation. Which, of course, was why she’d done so.

Things were going according to plan. She was thinking clearly, coolly, her mind firmly in the present tense. It would not last long. This illusion of a confused mind was becoming too easy to maintain. Her world was disappearing, the blankness rising, her grasp on reality at risk.

Repeating stories from the past helped ground her. But also made her long for a time that could never be relived.

She was cold.

She needed heat, needed it more than air. It was all she could do not to hurry up the stairs and crawl under a sea of blankets. She had to get rid of her granddaughter first. Gabrielle, after all, had a Gestapo agent to cajole and needed these extra minutes to prepare herself.

Out of habit, as much as need, she reached to the banister for support, something she hadn’t needed to do until recently. Her body grew as weak as her mind. She shrugged off Gabrielle’s assistance. “I prefer to go up to my room on my own.” She said this in an imperial tone, keeping her eyes on the railing beneath her hand.

“You’re unsteady.”

“Fetch Marta, then.”

She might as well have slapped her granddaughter. She disliked hurting the younger woman, but she didn’t want another lecture, or another warning. She wanted to be warm. She also wanted to be alone. Sorrow slashed across her heart and there was nothing to do to stanch the bleeding. Her closeness with her granddaughter was yet another casualty of this new and brutal war they fought in the confines of their own home. “Please, Gabrielle.”

Her granddaughter surprised her by relenting to the request. “I’ll get Marta.” Her voice held defeat. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is what I want.” Josephine turned off her mind while she waited for Gabrielle to return with the housekeeper. Marta then accompanied her to her room. As the other woman fussed over her, they spoke of inconsequential things. The weather, the meal itself, nothing of Nazis or Gestapo agents or Waffen-SS units. Her friend’s voice brought Josephine comfort over the clamor of the commotion in her head, like a long-forgotten lullaby.

She allowed Marta to help her into bed. The moon was full, a bright, round ball in the sky. “There is too much light in my eyes.”

“I’ll draw the curtains.” Before she crossed to the window, Marta reached to take Josephine’s hand, a silent show of support. Josephine was the first to pull away.

And then, the light was gone, and she could think better.

Marta touched her hand again. “ Bonne nuit , Josephine. Doux rêves. ”

Doux rêves. Sweet dreams. Impossible when a Gestapo agent wanted Gabrielle to show him the caves. Josephine squeezed her eyes shut. “ Bonne nuit , Marta.”

She kept her eyes shut until she heard the door close. She could see nothing but the sliver of moonlight flickering through the gap in the drawn curtains. She heard a small sound and listened. Nothing but the steady rhythm of her own breathing. She threw aside the covers and felt her way through the darkness. She needed to retrieve her journal from its hiding place behind her nightstand. Feeling her way down the wall, her fingers stopped at the baseboard. She quickly worked away the slab of wood, slid the book out, then returned the plank to its original position and climbed into bed.

A terrible silence descended over the room. Josephine could feel her pulse thudding in her ears, in the hollow at her throat. Was the party still going on?

Of course it was. Von Schmidt had Germans to impress.

She lay awake for at least an hour, possibly two, holding her journal tightly against her chest, listening for footsteps in the outer hallway.

Something about today—or was it tonight?—kept nagging at her, right there in her mind, shimmering just out of reach. Something in von Schmidt’s behavior. His deference to the Gestapo agent, yes, obviously, but more than that. He’d been unusually nervous, his gaze darting from Detective Mueller to his food and back again. He’d behaved like a man hiding something. The 1928? No, she decided. Something else had been nagging at him. And now it nagged at her.

When are you coming home, Josephine?

The question came at her as she stared at the cracked plaster of the ceiling overhead. It was Antoine’s voice, as clear as if he were sitting on the edge of her bed. His face was not so clear. No matter, she had his features memorized. Handsome, rugged, muscled from the many hours he spent in his vineyard, gloriously larger than life. He’d been smart, quietly funny, a man of integrity who loved the Lord as much as his vines.

Not yet, Antoine. I can’t come home yet.

She swung her feet to the floor and climbed out of bed. Journal in hand, she moved to the window and spread the curtains apart to let in the moonlight. She caught a movement below—somewhere in the darkness—at the edge of the vineyard.

There. A silhouette. No, two people. One of them wearing clothes that blended with the night, the other...a woman. In a gown that glittered in the moonlight, keeping her distance from the man in black. A third figure joined the duo, a man, sent away almost immediately. The woman reached out a hand to the door of the wine cellar. Twisted a key in the lock. Swung open the door. Paused to let the other figure enter first, then followed.

Be smart, Gabrielle. Be wise as serpents and as gentle as doves. The Lord is with you. Josephine lifted up another prayer for her granddaughter’s safety then moved to her writing desk, her feet knowing the way better than her mind.

She turned on the light and opened the journal, quickly scanning the contents. She reviewed her notations. Reading the entries sharpened her memory but was also a sort of bloodletting, painful and yet necessary. She stopped at something she’d jotted down the week of von Schmidt’s arrival. Hélène has taken over the German’s social calendar.

Whose idea had that been, hers? Or Hélène’s?

She flipped pages, again stopping to read the news of the wine levy. Three million bottles a month was an impossible request. But like the bread and fish that fed the five thousand, the Lord would provide.

Josephine found a running tally of the items she and Marta had hidden from the Germans. With her friend’s memory stronger than her own, Marta had placed marks beside the treasures they’d personally squirreled away.

Odd. Only half the list had received a mark. And then, she remembered. The Renoir. The other missing valuables. Von Schmidt was stealing from her family. Statuettes, paintings, silver serving dishes, a Ming vase. Tapping her chin with her forefinger, she forced herself to concentrate, to think.

The sound of approaching footsteps and low conversation had her quickly dropping her hand and shutting off the light. She strained to hear over the drumming of her heartbeat. Two voices, one masculine. One feminine. A man, a woman. Von Schmidt and Hélène. The flirtation turning into something more? Something indecent?

How quickly Josephine wanted to judge the other woman. Yet, deep in her soul, where a woman must be brutally honest, Josephine knew this was her fault. She’d insisted Hélène make herself indispensable to the German.

She put her ear to the door and listened to the muffled conversation. The back-and-forth turned her blood cold. Your fault , she reminded herself. The voices faded. She could sense, rather than hear, the two moving across a threshold.

Heart in her throat, she waited for the snick of a lock that would seal her daughter-in-law’s fate. When it came, the sound reverberated in Josephine’s ears, pounded in her soul. Pushed guilt into her stomach. Tears filled her eyes. Then resolve. Hélène had given her the window of time that she needed.

Josephine opened her door and peeked out. The hallway was empty. She took a few hesitant steps. The gloom concealed her progress. No one saw her descend the stairs or move toward the library. The door was locked.

She had the key, of course she had the key. Von Schmidt had confiscated what he thought were the only two copies. Josephine had kept the third.

Smiling, she stepped into the library, pausing inside the bright shaft of moonlight. The German had dared to set himself up at Antoine’s massive desk, which had been hers after her husband’s death. Another mistake on von Schmidt’s part, assuming Josephine would not wish to work in such a masculine setting. He could not have been more wrong. She’d never cared for frills. She only wanted to be close to her husband. After all these years, she still found Antoine here in this room, with these books, at this desk.

She sat in the chair that still held the mold of her husband’s larger frame. For a moment, she let the worn leather wrap her in its sweet embrace. She thought of Antoine. Then, she went to work. She shoved the chair back and knelt down, sent her fingers roaming across the panel beneath the drawer. She felt the latch’s release, smiled at her own resourcefulness as she drew out another key, another unknown copy, this one for the desk itself.

Von Schmidt was not so clever.

Josephine opened the locked drawer and quickly rifled through the contents. She discovered a list of names that sent chills through her. She knew these people. Most were friends. Her contempt for von Schmidt could not be stronger. He’d subdivided each person via their nationality and profession, French Jews, foreign Jews, business owners, men in powerful positions, men who made important decisions, then he’d sorted them alphabetically from there.

“You horrible, awful man,” she whispered into the dark, still air.

There were other notations by some of the names, as well as dates. She looked over her shoulder, considered, then made her decision. She would share this with Gabrielle. She would trust her granddaughter to know what to do with this information.

Josephine copied the list of names quickly into her journal, her hands steady despite her rising fury. She paused, lost her way for a moment. Her thoughts tried to bleed into one another. No, this was not a time for her mind to play its tricks. Why had she come to Antoine’s study? Looking down at the names, she knew this was not the reason.

She searched her journal, discovered her answer three pages later. The missing LeBlanc treasures. She returned to the desk and found what she was looking for without much trouble. Von Schmidt had made a detailed list of the items he’d confiscated from her home. Her home.

In a fit of rage, Josephine checked his list against the items in her journal that hadn’t received Marta’s special mark. A perfect match. But where was he hiding the stolen goods?

This time, she went back to the desk for the answer. She easily located shipping receipts. A particular destination caught her eye. Lisbon, Portugal. A neutral city in a neutral country where German authorities had no jurisdiction. Where a man like Helmut von Schmidt could store his stolen treasures without raising questions from his superiors.

Was it any wonder Josephine felt nothing but disgust for the man?