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Page 38.
 The land line rang as Hannah was getting ready for work the next day. She sat down, with one nylon stocking on and the other one as far up as her right ankle. “Hello?”
“Mademoiselle Wilson?”
“Oui?”
“AmélieTournesol at the Louvre. Hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”
“Just getting ready for work. How are you?”
“Fine. I have one more little piece of news.”
“Oh wow. Anything would help.”
The distant voice said: “I don’t know how much this would help, but my researcher has found out that even though we can’t locate any papers of Mademoiselle Vervain, we did find a record in a file belonging to the late Professeur Brouillard. It seems he made a note in his day book in 1981 that he was working with Miss Vervain on her dissertation, advising her. He had recommended that she unearth the notes of a Professeur Benjamin Wandrous dating fifty years earlier, in the 1930s. Professeur Wandrous was a scholar who happened to be Jewish. He had grown up in Berlin with Walter Benjamin, the famous author of Les Passages, which are about those early glassed-over streets or passages (galeries) of Paris, but really a history of the century before everything went up in smoke in the 20th Century. Walter Benjamin died trying to escape the Nazis, while Benjamin Wandrous was sent off to Drancy and then Auschwitz where he died as well. Dr. Wandrous’ entire family were deported, and his notes and books were brought into one of the museum collections and then forgotten. Brouillard was the son of one of Dr. Wandrous’ students, who was a professor of History at the Sorbonne. So what I can tell you is that if you wish, you can stop by the university library at the Pantheon, and I will send instructions for them to give you access to the files. I assume you read French?”
“Not very well, but I’ll bring my boyfriend Yves.”
“Oh yes, the tall, handsome Parisian. I’m jealous.”
“I am flattered, Madame. Thank you so much.”
She laughed warmly. “My pleasure, sweetheart. Take care, and call me if I can help you again.”
Wow.
After ringing off, Hannah sat with her loose nylon in both fists as if she were about to strangle herself.
Ha! Another break, maybe. Or not. But it would be worth pursuing.
? ? ?
She called Yves, who agreed to meet her at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University I (among a dozen campuses around greater Paris) in the Latin Quarter, that afternoon. She left work early and took the Métro from the skyscrapers of La Défense to the more stately Sixth Arrondissement with its many historic features like the Pantheon, the Luxembourg Gardens, and the sprawling campus. She walked the last few blocks to the decorative campus of History and Humanities in the rue Saint-Jacques. Yves was waiting for her on the sidewalk, and they linked arms and strode inside.
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