Escape From Paris by Carolyn G. Hart

hung open and empty. The Durands, mother and son, had the second-floor back apartment. The smell of cooking cabbage flooded down the stairwell.
    Eleanor hesitated. It was so dark and dirty. But if anyone would help her, it would be the Durands. She started up the steps, smiling. Paul was one of her husband’s best friends, a fortyish sardonic professor of languages. His mother, Leone, cooked incessantly, talked without pause, welcomed his friends, bemoaned the lack of a daughter-in-law, and continued hopefully to match-make, undismayed by Paul’s wry disinterest. Her round, plump face always smiling, tendrils of curls escaping from her bun, her good humor and kindness attracted students of all sorts. Once Paul had put his foot down firmly, “Mother, I know you have a soft heart. I appreciate it, I value it. But, nonetheless, I am not willing to share the front hall closet with that bedraggled girl from Tours. Send her home to her loving family. I wish once again to hang my overcoat in the front closet, place my boots in the corner, tuck my umbrella to one side.”
    Leone had opened her huge blue eyes wide, tilted her head, and said slowly, “Oh Paul, I’m sorry about the closet. I would clear it out for you if I could. But Paul, Annemarie doesn’t have a loving family.”
    That had been that. Annemarie had lived with them for two years, then married a prim young pharmacist and moved two blocks away to a tiny room in a boardinghouse attic, but she still spent most of her day at the Durands. As Eleanor hurried up the stairs, she was listening. She was almost to the second floor when her steps slowed and she began to frown.
    It was quiet. Too quiet.
    It was never quiet at the Durands. Young voices, usually raised in excited loud discussion, reverberated until the early morning hours, Leone offering steaming mugs of hot chocolate or glasses of red wine. She knew each student by name, knew his hopes (“Michael, have you been accepted at the Institute, my dear, how wonderful! Dominique, you think twice my dear, don’t be hasty. If it is really love, there is no hurry. Tell me your name again? Ralph? How do you say it? Ralph. And you’ve come all the way from Mexico? No? Oh, New Mexico. Where is New Mexico, Ralph?”) Cigarette smoke and the tart smell of wine, the warmth of people, laughter and movement, Paul smiling satirically but always gently.
    Silence.
    Eleanor almost turned away without knocking. Obviously, no one was home. Of course, the fall term hadn’t begun. Perhaps Paul and his mother had left Paris in June, before the Germans came, and hadn’t returned. If they had left soon enough, before the German onslaught swept past Paris and turned back the refugees, they might have reached friends in the South and be there now.
    Everything had happened suddenly after the Germans stormed into Holland. Andre had only a week’s notice when his unit was called up. He had tried frantically to arrange his affairs. That last morning, cramming an extra set of boots into his luggage, he had told Eleanor, “If you need help, real help, go to Paul Durand.”
    Eleanor stared at the closed door to the Durand apartment. Usually the door had been ajar when they came in the evening, voices and music drifting down the hall. How dreadful that she had not even checked on Paul and his mother since Andre left.
    But it hadn’t seemed a time for visiting friends, not with half the shops in Paris boarded up and the hated green of the Germans everywhere you walked. It was better to stay home, shades drawn, shutting out all the hurtful sights.
    She knocked almost perfunctorily. Once, twice. She turned away. She was midway down the hall when she heard someone coming briskly up the steps. They met at the top of the stairs.
    â€œAnnemarie? Yes, it is, isn’t it?”
    The thin young girl paused, nodded. “You are. . .”
    â€œMme. Masson. Eleanor Masson. My husband Andre and