Deadly Fashion

by Kate Parker

  Leah’s whole body shuddered before she continued. “He had our wedding certificate. He said that meant I had to go back to Germany with him. I was his wife.” She looked at David. “But I am your wife now. You are my only husband. I will not go back.”

  “Why did you have a length of pipe with you?”

  “I carry one in my purse all the time. I never know when I might get cornered by SS troopers. I won’t let them take me. Not again. Never again.”

  “There are no SS in London,” David said in a soft tone.

  “They are everywhere,” Leah said in a monotone.

  “But a length of pipe? Leah, where did you find it?” David asked.

  “There are plenty in the basement, left over from a repair, I suppose.” She shrugged.

  “What did you do with the marriage certificate?” I asked.

  “I tore it up and threw everything from his pockets in a dust bin down the road.” Her voice was growing calmer. Less hysterical. But she sounded as if she were answering by rote.

  I still didn’t know the answer to the question I most wanted to learn. “Where did you meet Reina? Why did she have to die?”

  “I met her at the synagogue. She recognized me and said we needed to talk. She still loved Josef. She took me back to that basement, to show me where he died and to tell me she never received whatever he wanted her to keep safe. I think she would have realized what I’d done, so I had to kill her too. I can’t go back to Germany. To prison. Don’t you see? I can’t go back there.” Her monotone broke on the last words.

  She began to sob then, a piteous sound that wracked her body as it escaped. She swayed as she sobbed, her eyes closed and her mouth open.

  Mr. Nauheim rose and walked toward the hall.

  “Father? Where are you going?” David asked.

  “I’m calling our solicitor. I want him here when the police arrive.”

  “No!” David shouted, an echo of his father just a short time earlier.

  I put out a hand to him. “The only way you can get help for Leah is to be completely honest with your solicitor and the police. I think after what she’s been through she’ll go to a mental institution rather than hang.”

  I turned to Leah. “You’ll be safe there. And there you’ll have hope for a future. Away from danger. Away from the Nazis.”

  Sir Henry and I sat in the Nauheims’ small parlor with our teacups as we waited until the solicitor came and took Leah and David into another room. Then he returned and held a hasty meeting with the elder Mr. Nauheim.

  When he heard my part in her confession, the solicitor told me to stay. Daniel Nauheim and Sir Henry locked gazes before Sir Henry said, “I’ll stay too. I’m as responsible as anyone for Livvy hunting for the killer.”

  Luckily, I’d had a decent amount of sleep on the ferry from Denmark, or I would have fallen asleep in my comfortable chair. Sir Henry and Daniel passed each other as they paced the room on ancient, thin rugs with faded patterns. Their constant movement began to give me a headache.

  A phone rang in the hall and Daniel Nauheim went to answer it. He kept his voice low. When he returned, he told me Mr. and Mrs. Mandel had arrived at the bank in the City of London where the goods I had transferred were now stored in the vault.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, but it didn’t seem important. Not when I could hear Leah sobbing and moaning in another room.

  Shortly afterward, the tall, dry-looking solicitor came out and conferred again with Mr. Nauheim before walking out to the phone in the hall. I heard him ask for a doctor. I suspected a psychoanalyst.

  Then he called the police, requesting a specific Scotland Yard detective. I wished it were possible for Adam to arrive with whomever was sent from the Yard.

  No such luck. And just seeing the constables in uniform sent Leah into hysterics. Fortunately, the doctor showed up and gave her a shot that not only calmed her down but put her to sleep.

  The room fell silent as David scooped up his wife in his arms and carried her up to their room.

  The detective, a chief inspector that the solicitor knew, made Daniel promise to bring Leah to Scotland Yard the next morning for a formal interview. The doctor insisted on attending as well.

  Then the detective sat across from me and had me tell him the whole story. Sir Henry and I received some skeptical looks when I told him about some of my actions. He didn’t appear to be the type who would miss things, so I told him everything he could possibly want to know. Sir Henry verified some of the more outrageous events.

  The detective instructed the sergeant taking notes to get in contact with Adam, who had been attached to Scotland Yard’s investigation into these murders. I hoped that meant he’d have to come back to London immediately.

  I didn’t tell him about the hunt for the French assassin or my role in it. I didn’t think General Alford would like it if I brought his name into this.

  I was told not to leave town and to make myself available for further questioning. That was fine with me. I’d done enough traveling for the present.

  Sir Henry had the Nauheim staff call us a taxi and we rode back in the dark. “I hope you’ll be at work tomorrow,” Sir Henry said while we waited for a traffic light.

  “I hope so, too,” I answered, looking at the familiar London traffic and buildings and relieved to finally return home. “Are you going to tell Esther who the murderer is, or shall I?”

  “I will,” he grumbled. “She’s going to be angry.”

  “At me,” I added.

  “At you,” he agreed. “But this was a very successful investigation. We should be able to sell some papers while we build up sympathy for Leah. It might even make getting refugees admitted to England easier.”

  “Unless people will be afraid they’ll be murdered by the refugees,” I said.

  “No. Not when we finish writing up this story.”

  He sounded certain. I felt sick. Leah wouldn’t want to be at the center of a controversy, read about over London’s morning coffee.

  Sir Henry dropped me off at my building. I rode up to my flat, lugging my suitcase that seemed to get heavier with every step.

  Whether Leah hanged or whether she ended up in an asylum, she’d never forgive me. Her husband and father-in-law would never forgive me. Esther would probably kill me herself for trespassing on our friendship.

  Why did I persist in searching for the killer? It didn’t bring anyone back to life. It might bring the planet back into balance, but it certainly didn’t make me more popular.

  As I dropped my suitcase inside the door of my flat and picked up the mail off the hall rug, a little voice inside me said, “Because murder is wrong, catching killers is the right thing to do, and you do it very well. Even your father admits you’re good at uncovering secrets.”

  Even if it hurt sometimes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I rose early the next morning, looked at the dreary sky leaking on everything in London, and put on a somber dress. The last thing I wanted to do was walk from the Underground to Mimi’s salon, getting splashed by passing buses and tangled with other people’s umbrellas.

  There was no reason for it. Mimi probably wouldn’t speak to me. She might not care who killed Reina or know where Fleur had gone. She would probably blame everything on me.

  And in a way, it was my fault. I wanted to do a story on someone I idolized as a fashion genius. I saw a chance the day I met Mimi at Lady Patricia’s fitting in the Duke of Marshburn’s drawing room, and I seized the opportunity with both hands. I didn’t realize until too late that I might not like the person who carried that genius inside her.

  I walked up the opposite side of Old Burlington Street and gazed up at the building that held the Maison Mareau. There was a removals van parked outside the door and in front of the van was a familiar, fast-looking red two-seat tourer with the canvas top up against the weather. I couldn’t make out the features of the man sitting in the driver’s seat of the smart car.

  Pulling out
my notebook, I flipped open to the page where I’d jotted down the license plate number of the Duke of Marshburn’s car. I glanced up. That was the auto.

  At that moment, a flash caught my eye. A woman in wide, low heels raced out, water splashing up at every step, and jumped into the passenger seat of the high-powered auto. She was perfectly dressed, a big hat covering her hair, without a thread out of place as she dashed. I was surprised Mimi was wearing sensible footwear for the weather.

  As soon as the woman was seated and the door shut, the car roared to life and raced down the street with a mixture of speed and authority.

  The perfect image of the Duke of Marshburn and Mimi Mareau as they dashed off to Scotland or the Riviera or the wilds of Africa. There was a time when I would have been envious, but that was a time before I’d met them.

  I walked up to the open front door and stepped inside to get out of the way of two men carrying a modernistic black bench that had been in the showroom.

  “Taking it back to France?” I asked Brigette as she walked up behind me.

  “All the furnishings are being moved to a warehouse owned by the duke. He’s renting the building to a firm of solicitors.”

  I turned to look at her. “So Mimi hasn’t written off having a London salon in the future?”

  “She’s lost her lead seamstress and her lead cutter. It will take a long time to rebuild the business. We’ve sent the seamstresses back to Paris to complete the last few orders from our London couture house.” Brigette stood with her arms crossed, glaring at the front door.

  “At least she has you. Everyone else can be replaced.”

  “Until next fall. Then I’m going to university.”

  “In France?”

  “Of course.”

  “What are you doing here?” Mimi’s shrill voice cut my back to ribbons. “Writing a piece on the end of the French invasion into British fashion?”

  My heart skipped and thudded when I realized that hadn’t been Mimi in her lover’s car. Was the duke driving? “I came to say I’m sorry about how things ended. And to tell you Reina’s killer confessed.”

  When she didn’t immediately respond, I swung around to look her in the face. Her expression changed from sad to hard and bitter. “Who was it?” she finally asked.

  “The wife of the man who was killed in your basement. Reina had known the man when they were children, and the wife considered Reina a threat to her secret.”

  Mimi frowned. “We both know Reina couldn’t have seen the man killed. She was away from here shopping.”

  “The woman’s secret was she was also married to a British man, making her a bigamist. Her British marriage was invalid. She didn’t want to be sent back to Germany any more than Reina did.”

  “She was Jewish.” Mimi nodded and watched more furniture go out through the door. “They complain about Hitler, and then they kill each other. Fools.”

  She didn’t look at me and so missed the glare I gave her. “Who was the woman riding off with the Duke of Marshburn?”

  “Oh. Was he here?” Her tone rang with false innocence.

  “Yes. Who was she?” And then it hit me. “Fleur. No wonder they couldn’t find her in France.”

  “They won’t find her here either.” Mimi sounded smug.

  “Do you like your chief cutter riding around town with your lover in his fast motorcar? They’re both likely to end up in jail.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. He is a duke, and I’ve been told that means something in this country.”

  It meant a great deal. It would make the Duke of Marshburn, and Fleur, practically unstoppable. She would be free to try to attack Churchill again, or the cabinet, or the king. The whole business made me sick.

  I wanted to punish Mimi for not being who I wanted her to be. I blurted out, “Reina’s killer had the same last name as Brigette’s father. She could be Brigette’s half-sister.”

  All the color drained out of Mimi’s face.

  I walked out into the cool October drizzle. I was angry at not being able to definitely identify Fleur. I was angry at Mimi for protecting a Nazi assassin in her fashion house. I was angry at a British duke helping a Nazi agent.

  And I was angry at myself for the cruel taunt I had thrown at Mimi.

  My feet were soaked by the time I reached the Daily Premier building, but my anger had kept me warm. I left my coat, hat, and umbrella in the cloakroom and hurried into our office. Fortunately, I was only a few minutes late and Miss Westcott, after all my recent disappearances, didn’t seem to notice.

  I called Sir Henry’s office and was put directly through. “I just saw a woman I think was Fleur leaving Mimi’s salon in the Duke of Marshburn’s auto. And Mimi didn’t deny it.”

  “Are you certain it was her?”

  “No. She was wearing a big hat. I couldn’t see her face.”

  “The army is awash with sightings of Fleur. I don’t think they’d appreciate another one.” At my huff of aggravation, Sir Henry said, “They’ll catch her. And it’s time for you to get back to doing your normal job.”

  I did. About eleven o’clock, Miss Westcott called me to her desk as she held the telephone receiver out to one side. “Sir Henry’s office,” she said.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Mrs. Denis? Mrs. Olivia Denis?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Yes.”

  He identified himself as a Scotland Yard detective. “We want to speak to you in Sir Henry Benton’s office as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll be right up.”

  I hurried upstairs where Sir Henry’s secretary pointed me toward the conference room. I walked in to find two detectives in limp three-piece suits and two constables in pristine uniforms facing Sir Henry. Two men in army uniforms stood nearby.

  “When you get done with this lot,” Sir Henry said, “come to my office.”

  “Yes, sir. Esther?” I added.

  “Furious.”

  I was afraid of that. She was fond of Leah.

  Sir Henry left and I was invited to sit. As soon as I did, one of the army officers said, “You are not to divulge any information you learned at Mimi Mareau’s salon or in Kent.”

  “Understood.”

  The detective said, “What is this?”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “Everything you want to know has nothing to do with the matter they are protecting. Ask your questions.”

  They did, mostly about my conversations with Leah, Mrs. Grenbaum in Prague, and Reina. The army men looked relieved when the Scotland Yard men finished with me.

  “Is Captain Redmond currently in London?” I asked.

  The army men looked as if they’d like to fidget. “Not yet,” one of them told me.

  I felt the first flash of hope. “Then he’ll be here soon?”

  “He’s been recalled.”

  I almost asked from where before I stopped myself. That was the kind of question they couldn’t answer.

  As soon as the Scotland Yard men were out of the room, I told the army men, “I believe I saw Fleur here in London in the Duke of Marshburn’s car.”

  “Were you close enough to see her face?”

  “No. She was wearing a big hat. But Mimi Mareau didn’t deny it when I asked her.”

  “Thank you for telling us,” one of the officers said. It was obvious from his tone that my information would go no further.

  The rest of the day dragged without any word from Adam. As soon as I could, I went straight home and waited for the phone to ring.

  About seven, the phone finally rang and I raced to pick up the receiver. “Livvy,” Esther’s voice came through the line to me, “they’ve decided Leah isn’t fit to stand trial. She’s going to a sanitarium where they’re going to try to help her. David is standing by her, and Mr. Nauheim has arranged for them to be married again by a rabbi. A very simple ceremony, but one that will be legal.”

  “I’m glad for them, but I’m sorry I didn’t realize how ill she was before Reina was ki
lled,” I told her.

  “None of us did. We all failed her,” Esther said. I was relieved she had calmed down.

  “Do you forgive me for telling Mr. Nauheim and your father what I learned in Prague?”

  “Of course. You had to uncover all the nasty secrets surrounding the murders, and you had to tell the truth.”

  “Thank goodness. I don’t think I could stand it if you never spoke to me again,” I admitted.

  “After we sent you there, and after what you did for the Jews in Prague? Livvy, we owe you. I owe you.”

  I was about to ask exactly what I had done besides being a goods transporter when I heard a knock on my door. “Esther, I’ve got to run. Someone’s at my door.”

  “Adam?”

  “I hope so.” I hung up before she had a chance to reply.

  When I threw open the door, Adam was standing there with his teasing grin and his gorgeous hazel eyes and his wide shoulders. I leaped into his arms. Between kisses, I said, “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  “I’m glad you’re back from Prague. I was worried about you.”

  Without letting go of each other, we managed to get inside my flat and shut the door. When we came up for air, I asked, “What happened in France?”

  “Fleur escaped into Germany. Fleur isn’t her real name, but we don’t know what it is. We have her photograph at every border crossing, thanks to you.”

  “I think I saw her in front of Mimi’s salon in the Duke of Marshburn’s auto. And before you ask, she was wearing a big hat.”

  “And you didn’t see her face. We get a lot of those. Livvy, it could have been anybody. We suspect some of these sightings are arranged to throw us off the trail. We’re pretty sure she’s in Germany now.” He gave me another kiss. “And I heard you caught Elias’s killer.”

  “It was his wife.”

  “Really?” He chuckled. “Maybe I should forget this getting married idea.”

  “She was a bigamist, married to an Englishman the second time. She’d thought he died in prison, and she didn’t want anyone to force her to go back to Germany. I’m not married, and I’m not German. So you should be safe.”

  “In that case…” Adam reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled something out. When he held it out to me, I saw it was a little box, already opened. And inside was a delicate gold band with a small shining diamond.