Read Chapter 4: The Neighbor's Alibi

The church bell had barely finished ringing for Lauds when Élise heard the knock—three quick raps, then two slow ones. Not the code. Not Marcel. She pressed herself against the doorframe of the bookshop’s back room, listening.

“Mademoiselle Dubois?” Antoine’s voice came through the wood, light and practiced. “I saw you return last night. I thought you might like to know—I believe I saw your little thief.”

Élise’s hand went to her collarbone, where the locket’s absence still ached. She considered pretending she wasn’t there. But the shutters were open. The lamps were lit.

She unlocked the door and opened it a crack.

Antoine stood on the landing in a charcoal suit, his hair combed neat, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked like a man who had never once slept badly in his life.

“My thief?” Élise said.

“The boy who took your necklace. Yesterday afternoon, near the Place Saint-Michel. I happened to be walking home from a meeting with the German cultural attaché—” he let the words hang, watching her face—“and I saw him run past. Small, dark-haired, with a patched coat. He ducked into the alley behind the butcher’s.”

Élise’s heart flickered. “You were watching me?”

“I was watching the street.” Antoine smiled. “I told you before, Élise—I notice things. And I noticed you were most distressed when that boy collided with you. I assumed he’d taken something precious.”

“It was nothing,” Élise said quickly. “Just an old keepsake. Not worth your trouble.”

“Keepsakes are never about worth.” Antoine tilted his head. “Shall I accompany you? The urchins of this quarter know me. They tend to cooperate when I ask questions.”

Élise studied him. There was no menace in his posture, no glint in his eye that suggested he was playing her. He seemed, almost, genuinely helpful. That was worse.

“I’ll handle it myself,” she said.

“Of course.” Antoine stepped back, hands open. “But if you change your mind, you know where I live. Apartment 3B. Right above you.” He paused. “I’m usually home in the evenings. Though I do keep irregular hours, these days. Many meetings. Many obligations.”

He said it like an invitation. Or a warning.

Élise nodded and closed the door. She waited, heart hammering, until she heard his footsteps climb the stairs and his door click shut above.

Then she moved.

She pulled the spare key to Antoine’s apartment from its hiding place beneath the loose floorboard in her stockroom. She’d taken it three days ago, when he’d left it hanging in the lock like a fool. A different kind of fool might have overlooked it. Élise had been trained to notice such carelessness.

She crept up the stairs, pausing at each landing, listening. The building was quiet. The clack of Antoine’s typewriter had begun through the ceiling—a steady, rhythmic sound. He was writing something. Perhaps letters to his German friends.

Her hand shook as she slid the key into his lock. She turned it slowly, praying the mechanism wouldn’t click too loudly. It didn’t. The door swung open.

Antoine’s apartment was sparse in a way that felt deliberate. A narrow bed, neatly made. A single bookshelf filled with German philosophy and French poetry. A desk against the wall, where a typewriter sat, a half-finished page rolled into it. No photographs. No personal effects. Nothing that said *someone lives here.*

Élise moved quickly. She checked the desk drawers first: notebooks, fountain pens, a stack of blank paper. Nothing incriminating. She ran her hands along the underside of the desk—nothing. The wardrobe held two identical suits, a coat, and a pair of polished shoes. She felt through the pockets. Empty.

She was about to give up when her eye caught on the floor beneath the radiator.

The boards there were slightly newer than the rest. A shade paler. She knelt and ran her fingers along the seam.

It lifted.

Élise’s breath caught. She slid her fingers into the gap and pulled up the board. Beneath it lay a shallow compartment, lined with dark cloth. Inside, pressed flat and orderly, were the following:

A French identity card in the name of *Pierre Marchand*, born 1912, with Antoine’s photograph.

A travel pass issued by the Wehrmacht, stamped twice with the eagle and swastika, bearing the name *Feldwebel Anton Weber*.

A German officer’s uniform jacket, grey wool, with lieutenant’s pips on the collar. It smelled of cigarette smoke and leather.

And a photograph, face-down.

Élise reached for it, her pulse roaring in her ears. She turned it over.

It was a woman. Young, dark-haired, standing before the Eiffel Tower. Written on the back, in a neat hand: *To my Anton, forever. — M.*

Élise stared. The woman’s face was familiar—not from any personal memory, but from the kind of face that appears in a particular era and becomes emblematic. The face of a resistance courier who had been arrested last spring. She’d been executed at Mont Valérien. Her name had been Marianne Bisset.

And on the back of the photograph, in the same slick hand as the identity cards, someone had written a name: *M. Lenoir.*

Élise’s blood went cold. She heard footsteps in the stairwell.

She shoved the photograph back into the compartment, replaced the board, and stood, trembling. The footsteps grew louder—two sets, a heavy tread and a lighter one. She heard a German voice, low and commanding, followed by Antoine’s smooth answer.

She had seconds. She crossed the room, stepped onto the balcony, and pulled the door shut behind her. The railing was cold against her wet palms. She looked down—the drop to her own balcony was manageable. She swung her leg over the edge, caught the iron trellis of the building’s vine, and climbed down hand over hand until her feet hit the wood of her own balcony. She ducked inside just as the door to Antoine’s apartment opened above.

From inside her bookshop, she could hear voices above, muffled through the ceiling. Antoine’s voice. The German’s voice. Something that might have been laughter.

Élise pressed her back against the wall and slid down to the floor, her hands shaking.

*M. Lenoir.* The name she’d seen on Marcel’s list. The name Father Marchand had told her belonged to a spy already embedded in the resistance, a man who knew their routes and their people.

And now she had seen that same name written on the back of a photograph, hidden beneath the floorboards of her collaborator neighbor—who kept false papers in two names, who owned a German uniform, who had just come home in the company of an officer.

Her stomach turned.

She looked down at her hands and realized she was still clutching something. The key to Antoine’s apartment. She had forgotten to put it back.

She closed her fist around it.

Above her, the footsteps moved across the ceiling. Then stopped.

A shadow fell past the window. Antoine, on his balcony, looking down.

Their eyes met through the glass.

He smiled.