Girl in the Blue Coat(69)

Was I right all along, that day I told Ollie that it might not be Mirjam at the theater? Do I still have a chance to save the real girl?

Back in the office, Mina sits where I left her. She doesn’t ask me who was on the phone. She’s obviously beyond the point of expecting answers. The slide is still projected on the wall. Everything looks the same as it did five minutes ago. Nothing makes any sense. There are the soldiers. There are the frightened people. The brown coats. The lavender hats.

On my third pass, I see it. Something that all at once seems so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. “Something is off with this picture,” I whisper.

“What do you mean? The color might be off; the film was developed in a hurry.”

“Not that.” I move out of the way so Mina can see what I’m talking about. “Look at this closely. Really closely. Tell me if you notice anything about this girl’s face.”

Mina wrinkles her forehead. “I already told you; it’s blurry, and it’s hard to see her face. But I think she looks scared. As I would expect.”

“Not the expression. The direction.” I use the tip of my finger to draw explanatory lines in the air. “Here’s the soldier, to the left. Do you see? Giving instructions to the prisoners. And just in front of him is his partner.”

“And?”

“And every other person in the picture looks afraid of the soldiers. See the way this soldier is pointing? And how everyone else is looking in the direction he’s pointing? It looks like he’s telling everyone which way to go in the theater.”

Realization begins to dawn on Mina’s face. “What is Mirjam looking at?”

Mirjam’s face is pointed in another direction. She’s not paying attention to the soldiers at all. Whatever she’s looking at is far in the distance, out of the frame of the shot. It’s possible that it’s just a fluke, that she’d been looking at the soldiers, and a noise or a movement distracted her. That’s the most logical possibility and I know it. But I can’t get rid of another feeling.

Mirjam doppelg?nger, whoever you are. Is it possible that Nazis weren’t the only thing you were afraid of?





THIRTY-ONE




Mrs. Janssen doesn’t answer the door when I knock. I try again, as loud as I dare without drawing too much attention to myself. “Hello? Mrs. Janssen, it’s me, Hanneke,” I say softly.

“She went out,” a voice calls, a middle-aged woman standing on the stoop across the street. Mrs. Veenstra, the woman whose son was missing in the country on the day Mirjam disappeared. Or not-Mirjam.

“Mrs. Janssen never goes out on her own.”

“I know that, but she did, about ten minutes ago. I told her I could pick up anything she needed, but she said she needed to go herself.”

“Did she say where?”

“No, but she looked upset. I figured she’d had bad news about one of her sons. Do you want to wait in my house until she comes back?”

“I’ll just wait—” I’m about to say that I’ll just wait on her steps when I realize I never tried the doorknob. I surreptitiously twist it now, and the door pops open. Next door, Fritzi starts barking. “I’ll just wait inside. She’s expecting me anyway.”

Mrs. Veenstra looks uncertain. “I wanted to make sure I came today,” I babble pleasantly, trying to think of an excuse that will convince her I belong in this house. “You know, with Jan’s birthday. It’s probably why she’s so upset. I bet she’s at church.” I have no idea when Jan’s birthday is, but I doubt Mrs. Veenstra will remember any better than I do, and I hope she can’t sense how uncomfortable I am. A week ago, I was at this house, reminding myself how to behave on a social call. Now I’m reminding myself how to tell lies and excuses again. “Would you like me to pass on your thoughts as well?” I ask.

Finally she goes back into her own house, leaving me alone. Inside, Mrs. Janssen’s is quiet. A clock ticks. A half-drunk cup of ersatz tea sits on the kitchen table, next to a half-eaten slice of bread. Those are the only signs of human activity. I walk quickly through the rest of the house to be sure: the lonely bedrooms belonging to Mrs. Janssen’s sons; Mrs. Janssen’s own bedroom, smelling of rose perfume and something musty; Mr. Janssen’s home office, unused since his death. She’s nowhere.

My knee throbs. I still have Willem’s handkerchief tied around it, and drops of red have seeped through the white cotton. I rinse off the handkerchief in the kitchen sink and reapply it. I wonder if Mrs. Janssen has any aspirin powder and where she would keep it. Mama keeps ours in the pantry. The door to Mrs. Janssen’s is already ajar, and the secret latch is open, revealing the hiding place from behind the jars of pickles and radishes. Inside, the quilt on top of the opklapbed is wrinkled, with a faint depression in the middle. Mrs. Janssen must have come in here last night.

No amount of searching for aspirin powder or performing other menial tasks is going to be enough to distract me.

The timeline doesn’t reveal anything, no matter how many times I go over it. Four weeks ago, a girl appeared at the front door of this house, who may or may not have been Mirjam Roodveldt. One week ago, the same girl disappeared, and Mrs. Janssen hired me to find her. Two days ago, a girl was found in a raid and taken to the Hollandsche Schouwburg. I tried to help her escape. She was shot and killed. Was that girl the same one who knocked on Mrs. Janssen’s door? Or was it a different girl, one who had acquired Mirjam’s clothes and papers during the five days that Mirjam went missing?