In Atlas Obscura’s Q&A series She Was There, we talk to female scholars who are writing long-forgotten women back into history. It was April 1943 and a man was staring at her. British secret agent Odette Sansom (codename: LISE) noticed him immediately, with his “puffy red face” and thinning black hair. The stranger followed her into Hôtel de la Poste, a stucco-and-wood lodge that was her home in the quaint French alpine town of Annecy. Inside, another agent introduced the man as Colonel Henri and produced a letter. Henri was…
