April Vogt, Sotheby's continental furniture specialist, is speechless when a Paris apartment shuttered for seventy years is discovered in the ninth arrondissement. Beneath the cobwebs and stale perfumed air is a goldmine, and not because of the actual gold (or painted ostrich eggs or mounted rhinoceros horns or bronze bathtub). First, there's a portrait by one of the masters of the Belle Époque, Giovanni Bodine. And then there are letters and journals written by the very woman in the painting, Martha de Florian. These documents reveal that she was more than a renowned courtesan with enviable social status. In fact, she was a spy for the French government. It becomes clear that Martha's apartment may have been a safe house for French resistance fighters during World War II. If that's the case, there could be more hidden in the walls.
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