Godelieve Vanhaecke

Godelieve Vanhaecke is 46 and has been Vibeke's maid and dresser since she fled Belgium with a bundle and a missalmissal A Catholic prayer book containing the texts for the Mass.. Born near Bruges, the daughter of a shrimp fisherman and a lacemaker, she worked from girlhood in the houses of people who never learned her name. Quiet and devout, she speaks little and with a Flemish accent, and has the habit of listening to what is said without raising her eyes.

She sleeps in a small maid's room under the hotel roof, on the top floor, with a narrow iron bed, a porcelain basin and pitcher, a wooden crucifix on the wall and a little window onto the chimneys. In a biscuit tin she keeps photographs of a house that no longer exists and a letter from her sister, which she rereads on Sundays. She wakes at five, prays in a low voice, and says whoever works with her hands has no time to be suspicious.

She is short and sturdy, with a round, ruddy face lined with fatigue and graying blond hair tucked under a starched white cap. She wears a black maid's dress with a white apron, a worn-covered missalmissal A Catholic prayer book containing the texts for the Mass. in the apron pocket and red hands from washing and ironing. She walks with short, quick steps, speaks looking at her own hands and always answers in small sentences, like someone pulling a thread without wanting to unravel the cloth.

About her service, her account is that of a faithful maid: she has been with madame since 1915, irons, sews and keeps quiet, and her mistress gives her a bed and work. About the night of the dinner, she says what she saw in few words and prefers not to repeat what she heard. When asked about the names from Brussels, she answers that she would rather die than give the Germans anyone's name. With the city blacked out and the hotel full of people coming and going, nobody can say for certain where each person was at each hour.

Godelieve knows a Belgian refugee, the maid of a foreigner, is the kind of person the police trust little and ask much. When the detective claims she sent the names, her voice rises just once, to remind him that the Germans burned her street. It could be the genuine pain of an exile. It could be someone who prays in a low voice so the question ends before it reaches something else. The detective will have to decide which.