The Room on Rue Amélie(34)
He walked up the flight of stairs and turned to his left. Might as well begin at the beginning. There was a door there marked 1B, and before he could second-guess himself, he took a deep breath, raised his hand, and knocked.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
October 1941
Monsieur Benoit had been dead for two months now, and Charlotte knew there was more to the story than anyone was telling her. It was impossible for her to believe the official explanation: that he had gone out one day and gotten caught up in a police action that had nothing to do with him. She knew about the secret closet in the hall and the Allied pilots, and she felt certain that his death had been linked to them. Already, the French police, accompanied by two German officers who looked like attack dogs, had come to Ruby’s door three times. Charlotte had tried her best to hear what they were asking Ruby, but she could only catch snippets here and there. It seemed that the men knew of Marcel’s involvement in the escape line, but that they ultimately believed Ruby when she said she’d had no idea what her husband was up to. “He treated me like I didn’t have the brains to understand anything,” Charlotte had heard Ruby say on their last visit.
“Well, you are merely a woman,” a deep French voice had replied.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Ruby had responded, and Charlotte had felt a surge of pride that her neighbor was getting the last laugh.
Finally, the police and the Nazis stopped coming. “She clearly doesn’t know anything,” one of the French policemen had said on their way out of the building at the end of the last visit.
“Clearly,” one of the German officers had replied with a snort. “But what a piece of ass, yes?”
His words had been followed by a nauseating stream of sexual comments, each of the men sniggering about what they’d do to Ruby if they had a chance to get her alone. And while Charlotte longed to come to Ruby’s defense, she knew that in the end, what the men had said was better than their realizing that Ruby had played a role—albeit a small one—in the escape line too.
Charlotte suspected that her neighbor felt more alone than ever now; after all, she really had no one to turn to. Ruby rarely went out anymore, except to pick up her rations, and Charlotte had never seen her have a visitor.
Charlotte was still seeing Ruby once a week for English lessons—her parents were very firm on that—and while she tried to ask how Ruby was doing, most of their conversations were only about schoolwork and mundane details of daily life. Charlotte had tried to raise the subject of the British pilot more than once, for she wondered and worried about what had happened to him, but Ruby always cut her off. “You never know who’s listening,” she would whisper. “We mustn’t speak of these things aloud, Charlotte.”
But Charlotte was tired of avoiding what was obviously the defining moment of their friendship, and so on one early autumn night, she made a decision after dinner. She would go and let Ruby know that she could be trusted and that she wasn’t scared of the Nazis.
She had her hand on the door to her apartment, ready to step out into the hall, when she heard a noise that startled her. She peered through the peephole just in time to see a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man lurching toward Ruby’s door. He knocked loudly, and Charlotte, suddenly paralyzed by doubt, held her breath. Was he another Nazi? Was he there to hurt Ruby? But as he knocked again, harder this time, Charlotte realized he was dressed in ill-fitting clothes caked with dirt and grime. Certainly no German soldier would wander around Paris looking like that. But he wasn’t wearing a pilot’s uniform either. So who was he?
Ruby’s door finally opened a crack.
“Excuse me,” the man said in French with an accent that sounded familiar. Where had Charlotte heard it before? “I’m just coming from the north. My wife has died, and I’m looking for her cousin. I’m sorry, but I don’t know his name. I only know that he lives in this building and walks with a limp.”
Ruby regarded him in silence, and in that sliver of quiet, a realization hit Charlotte: His accent was the same as that of the pilot she and Ruby had hidden in August. She was almost certain of it. But why was he telling such a ridiculous story? She peered back out the peephole just in time to see Ruby’s expression. She looked confused, but not scared.
“A man with a limp, you say?” Ruby asked carefully, and the man nodded, although he was already backing away.
“Perhaps I have the wrong apartment. I’m very sorry,” he was saying, but there was something about his voice that sounded strange now. His words were melting together, and he sounded suddenly weak. He seemed to rock back and forth on his feet, and then he fell to his knees with a great crash and appeared to waver there for a moment. “Very sorry,” he said, but this time, his words were in English, and then he toppled forward, passing out cold in Ruby’s doorway.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
October 1941
Three facts were immediately clear to Ruby. First, the man before her was British. Second, he had come in search of Marcel, which probably meant he was a pilot in need of help. Third, she needed to get him out of the hall immediately, before the concierge or someone else saw him. As if to underscore her thoughts, the door to the Dachers’ apartment cracked open, and Charlotte peeked out.
“Ruby?” she whispered.