Albertine Laseige

Albertine Laseige’s brief meeting with Paul Darac and Frankie Lejeune becomes a hinge in the investigation: when shown a photograph, she recognizes the name Olivie Djourescu and learns that the child survived. Her joy at the news also reveals that two children escaped, giving the detectives an unexpected lead while bringing long-buried family history into the present.

Identity and Introduction

At ninety, Albertine Laseige lives in her own apartment and insists on being treated as capable, not merely as an elderly person to be looked after. When Paul Darac and Frankie Lejeune arrive at 12:45 p.m., she opens the door only as far as its security chain allows. She studies their identity cards through the narrow opening before admitting them to the conversation, an alert, cautious first response that establishes both her age and her independence.

The formality of the visit does not make her deferential. After reading the cards, she addresses Darac by his full name and identifies his role with the Brigade Criminelle. When he offers to help in the kitchen, Albertine refuses: she may be ninety, she tells him, but she can provide refreshments in her own apartment. She then totters away to do so. The small exchange sets a clear boundary: physical age has not displaced her claim to authority in her own home.

The Photograph and a Recognition

During the detectives’ questioning, Albertine looks again at a photograph. She says the young man is not the person they are asking about and tentatively identifies the woman as Madame Delage, while qualifying that judgment with the limit of her knowledge. Her answer is careful rather than confident; she does not claim to recognize more than she can establish.

Darac then asks whether she would be surprised to hear that the person pictured had been known in infancy as Olivie Djourescu. The name changes the emotional temperature of the interview. Albertine’s skin turns pale, and she grips the arms of her chair, her hands closing like a bird’s feet around a perch. She repeats that it cannot be Olivie. The detectives’ inquiry has touched not just a face or an alias but a painful uncertainty about a child’s fate.

Frankie hurries to get water, but Albertine’s response soon shifts from disbelief toward hope. Told that Olivie was saved, she asks whether the child survived. She studies the image more closely and allows that it could be her, though she still stops short of certainty. The sequence preserves the distinction between recognition and proof: Albertine is overwhelmed by the possibility, but her emotional conviction does not become a categorical identification.

Family History and the New Lead

The prospect that Olivie survived brings Albertine joy. She blows her nose, then smiles more freely and wishes that Albert had been there to hear the news. In her view, both children got away; she calls it wonderful to learn this after all this time. She asks to keep the photograph, and Frankie gives permission.

That reaction immediately raises a question for the investigators. Frankie looks to Darac and asks about the reference to both children, and Darac asks Albertine what other child she means. The exchange makes her recollection a fresh investigative lead: the photograph may connect to one surviving child, but Albertine’s words indicate another escapee whose identity and fate must also be clarified. The supplied scene ends on that question, without yet resolving who the second child was.

Narrative Significance

Albertine’s importance rests on the contrast between the guarded opening and the emotional disclosure. The chain on the door and her inspection of the officers’ credentials establish a private, controlled space; inside it, a photograph and a name unlock a history she had not volunteered at first. Her insistence on independence is not contradicted by her later vulnerability: she manages the visit on her own terms, then responds openly when the possibility of Olivie’s survival becomes real to her.

The scene also turns a tentative identification into a larger revelation without presenting certainty where there is none. Albertine can only say the photograph could show Olivie, yet the news that the child was saved brings her visible relief and happiness. Her reference to two children expands the case beyond the detectives’ immediate question. In this brief encounter, a ninety-year-old witness becomes both the recipient of long-awaited news and the source of the next question the investigation must answer.