Vibeke Thorsager

Vibeke Thorsager is 40 and presents herself as Anjali, a dancer of steps she insists were inherited from a distant temple. Born in Aarhus, Denmark, the daughter of a fur merchant, she left home at 18 with a passing violinist. Theatrical and seductive, she lies with a smile and changes the subject by talking about her art. The stage has forgotten her now, and she lives on admirers and debts.

She usually dines in a velvet-lined private booth at an elegant restaurant near the avenue, where the maître d' already knows she orders the same champagne, always arrives late and leaves before the bill. On the booth's walls, gilt-framed mirrors, a silver candelabra and a curtain that closes with a pull of the cord. She says life is a stage, and a good stage needs an audience and a discreet exit.

She is tall and majestic in bearing, with dyed black hair in a low bun held by a pearl comb, dark eyes lined with kohl and dark red lipstick. She wears an emerald-green silk robe embroidered with peacocks over a black dress, a long amber bead necklace and long white gloves. She speaks slowly, in an accent that changes with her listener, and touches her own neck at every question, like someone checking a necklace.

About her work with the captain, her account is that of a patriotic artist: she volunteered in December, because an artist enters drawing rooms where no soldier can. The captain promised her much and paid her in compliments. About the envelope of names, she says she read it once, memorized it the way she memorizes choreography and burned it in the ashtray, because paper in a hotel room is danger. 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.

Vibeke knows a foreign, solitary artist is the kind of woman a city at war thinks of before the truth. When the detective accuses her, the smile stays intact, but her sentences get shorter, and she asks to be spoken to as one speaks to a lady. It could be the wounded pride of a citizen of a neutral country. It could be someone who rehearses indignation the way she rehearses a step. The detective will have to decide which.