Paris: The Novel

new room in there.”
    “Really?” Schmid cut in. “Will you tell me what? It would be interesting to see the work in preparation.”
    Again, the woman turned to the colonel.
    “You surely would not wish to ruin my surprise?”
    Colonel Walter stepped forward gallantly, and took Schmid’s arm.
    “My dear young man,” he said kindly, but with a trace of admonition, “one does not interrupt a great artist in the middle of their work.” He turned back to Madame Louise. “We shall look forward to seeing your next, astounding creation when it is ready.”
    So Schmid allowed himself to be conducted along the passage, and soon had other things to think about.
    And Louise wondered what on earth she was going to do with that room now.
    And, unaware of what had passed outside the door, little Laïla Jacob slept in Babylon that night.
    The following day, just after noon, Charlie de Cygne swept up to the guard post in his big car. The guards recognized him at once. Not many Frenchmen had such a car, or a pass to drive up and down from their family château, nor could they possibly get the fuel to put in the car to make the drive.
    But this aristocrat, whose family were such firm supporters of the regime, had all these things.
    As he pulled up, they noticed a small girl, swaddled in a blanket, huddled in the back of the car. She looked pale.
    “Our housekeeper’s granddaughter,” Charlie announced calmly, and waved a letter from a fashionable French doctor in front of them. “Taking her down to the country.”
    The young officer glanced at the letter, which Charlie had procured that morning.
    “No doubt the country air will do her good,” he remarked politely.
    Charlie looked him straight in the eye and made a face the little girl could not see.
    “We hope so,” he said quietly.
    The officer waved them through.

    It wasn’t long before the reports came to Charlie. The police had been looking for Laïla. Schmid and his men had taken all the work from Jacob’s gallery. The Jacob apartment had been let to someone else. Clearly they weren’t coming back.
    For a small payment to one of the guards, one of Charlie’s men was able to ascertain that the Jacob parents were being held at the big camp at Drancy. Since they were French, they hadn’t been shipped east yet, although trainloads of foreign Jews had already gone that way.
    Meanwhile, though Roland de Cygne was a little astonished to find a little Jewish girl living at the château, he and Marie kept up the story that she was a granddaughter of the old housekeeper in Paris, and no one was any the wiser. To be on the safe side, she was called Lucie. As for the little girl herself, she understood very well what she must do.
    “Have they killed my parents?” she asked Marie, who told her no, not yet.
    “Shall we pray for them each night, just you and I?” Marie asked her, and Laïla nodded.
    She read with her each day, and Roland would take her for walks and taught her to fish in the stream.
    She was an enchanting child: small, very pretty. If she was a little reserved and watchful at first, that was only to be expected, but it was clear that once she learned to trust the inhabitants of the château, she was full of life.
    Charlie found a little bicycle he’d had when he was her age, cleaned it up and asked if she knew how to ride it.
    “Oh yes,” she told him. “Mama and Papa liked to ride together on a Sunday afternoon, all the way to the Bois de Boulogne. I haven’t been there yet, but they taught me to ride in the park near where we lived.” And she had taken great pleasure in riding on the paths around the château.
    It had taken some time before Charlie had learned for certain, but as winter began, he confided to Marie that the Jacobs were no longer in the holding camp at Drancy. They’d been put on a train that would take them east, along with many others, including the brother of Léon Blum, the former prime minister. When did it happen and where were they sent? Marie had asked.
    “September. To Auschwitz.”
    The three de Cygnes had discussed for some time whether they should tell Laïla. In the end, no one wanted to.
    “Let’s wait and see what happens,” said Marie.

    The rescue of Laïla had one other, unforeseen effect. Charlie started worrying about his son.
    Right at the start, when he had first suggested to Louise that she might pass on information about her German customers, he had realized that there was a risk. Like many