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?
Does any of this even matter anyway? There’s a girl who is dead.
“Hello?” Through several walls, I hear the front door creak open and someone call out. “Hello, Mrs. Janssen?”
I rush out of the pantry, hurling the door closed behind me. A young blond woman I’ve never seen before stands in the parlor, dressed in the clothes of a shopgirl or store clerk.
“Can I help you?”
“Oh!” She theatrically puts her hand to her chest. “Where’s Mrs. Janssen?”
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” I say, deciding the best way to avoid answering her question is to ask a ruder one of my own.
“I’m Tessa Koster. I work—I worked—for Mr. Janssen in the furniture shop. The door was ajar. Are you… Mrs. Janssen’s companion?” she guesses.
“Yes. Mrs. Janssen’s not here. Can I help you with something?”
“Oh, no. I came by to drop some things off for Mrs. Janssen, but I’ll come back later when she’s home.”
Tessa Koster smiles, flustered, and as she heads for the door again, I piece it together. The furniture shop employee. The one who was leaving on her honeymoon the day after the raid. “Photographs,” I say. “You brought photographs for Mrs. Janssen, from Mr. Janssen’s back room.”
She looks unnerved that I know this; for all she knows, I’m a spy sent to trap her. “Is Mrs. Janssen coming back soon? I really should talk to her.”
But I’m already shaking my head, looking as sympathetic as I can, because I want her to leave those photographs with me. “I don’t know when she’ll be back. I suppose you could come back tomorrow? You’re brave, walking around with those photographs, though. It sounded like they were sort of”—I bring my voice down to a whisper and continue—“illicit.”
“I’ll—I’ll be fine.”
“Did you ever meet the family who was in hiding?” I ask, letting her see I know more than she guessed I did. “The daughter? Mirjam.”
“No, I didn’t. You knew about that?” She looks back toward the door.
“Are you sure you never saw them? They were there for several months. You must have suspected something.” Mrs. Koster averts her eyes, staring down at the new wedding band on her finger, and I have a new, ugly suspicion.
“Mrs. Koster. Were you the one who told the police that Mr. Janssen was hiding people in his back room? Did you report him to the Nazis?”
“Listen.” Her eyes dart to the side. “I don’t approve of what Mr. Janssen was doing, but I didn’t tell on him. I didn’t even know about it. I came into work, and the raid had already happened. These were in the back room; they had blood on them, so I took them home to clean them up, and then Mrs. Janssen wrote me a letter saying she wanted them. That’s really all the involvement I want to have. Can I leave them with you? And then I don’t have to come back again.”
She digs in her handbag, blond curls falling in her face, and eventually produces a paper envelope. “Here. Take them.”
I pretend to consider it. “Are you sure? You’re not going to wait?”
She thrusts the paper in my hand. “Take them.”
Once I see her out the door, I take the packet of photographs back into the kitchen. I’m not rushing this time. I’m infinitely precise. I’m infinitely patient as I sit down at the table, lay the envelope squarely in front of me, moving with an emotion it takes me a while to identify. Dread.