The Blackbirder by Dorothy B. Hughes

they did it. False accusations, false information.” Her voice beat against the gray mask Jacques had laid across his face. “I can't leave him there to suffer. I don't care how decently he's treated, it's indecent to be locked up. Like an animal. Caged. Helpless. I know.” Her voice whispered the horror. “I was locked up once in Paris.”
    She steeled the words. “Did you know that? I was locked up. Paul did it. So I couldn't get away.” She wasn't looking at him, not speaking to him now. “I was always afraid of Paul. I didn't know it but I was. There was something cruel in him, the way a beast would be cruel, not for any reason, just because he is. He came to my room in the night. It was the night of Monday, June tenth. Do you remember that night, Jacques? The night Italy marched. Where were you? Somewhere on the front fighting. No, not fighting. The generals wouldn't let you fight, would they? They made you lay down your weapons. The Maginot Line had been broken. We knew it was the end. I told them at dinner, Uncle Paul and Aunt Lily, that I was going to leave Paris before it was too late. I wasn't going to stay to be bestialized by the Nazis. If Paul and Lily wouldn't go with me, I'd leave alone.”
    After trying to erase it for three years, the memory was still brutally livid. “Paul came to me in the night. I didn't know what he was going to do. I was afraid to go with him. But if I hadn't he would have laid hands on me. I was more afraid of his hands. I went— up— up— he was behind me on the stairs. I don't know where Aunt Lily was. I don't know if she knew.” She pushed the damp hair away from her forehead. “In the very top attic there was a slant room with a tiny dormer window. I'd never been in it. You could just see the Boulevard far below. He told me the Nazis would march there on Thursday afternoon.” Her eyes closed. “He knew the day. The very hour.”
    Jacques's face was empty.
    “He locked me in there.” She pressed back the nausea. “He came at night and brought food. Once I tried to break past him. He struck me.” She let out her breath slowly. “The third day— I heard the planes first, then the machines, and then— the feet of marching men, thousands of them, little gray things far below— like ants.” She steadied her voice. “I thought Paul had left me there. For the ants.”
    She had to touch the bedstead now, to know the reality of solid form. She had to wait before she could continue.
    “That night Tanya came for me. The house was full of Nazi officers. They were having a Victory dinner.” Her voice was dust. “Paul and Aunt Lily were with them, drinking toasts, laughing. I saw them. Tanya got me out of that house, through the streets, into an underground. She started me on my way to freedom. She wouldn't come with me. She said her work was there.”
    He spoke now. His voice was empty. “Tanya is dead.”
    It was a moment before the import of it smote her. “Dead?”
    He said it again. “She is dead.”
    “They killed her.” She spoke with tight throat. “Didn't they? They killed her because of me. That was it, Jacques?”
    “She helped many.”
    “It was because of me. Wasn't it?” Her voice sharpened to pierce through his lethargy. "Wasn't it?"
    He saw her again. His eyes turned on her. “Yes. The Duc was angry. Because you escaped. Because you took the money, and the necklace, the de Guille diamonds.”
    “She— ” She couldn't speak Tanya's name, not without her voice trembling. “She took the money for me. Paul was wise. He had filled his house with francs while the banks were operating. We didn't take much. It was all mine.”
    Her voice rose. “My money supported all the Guilles for years, since I was a child. That's why Paul had himself declared my legal guardian, so he could have my income without report, for his own purposes.”
    Even the diamonds were hers. She had bought them over and again. They hadn't been out of pawn for fifty years before