The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  ‘You can’t refuse. Order of the club’s owner.’

  She deliberately misunderstood him. ‘I don’t care what the owner says. I don’t like people telling me what to do.’

  He put his hands on her arms, a prelude to pulling her into his. ‘I’m Serge Martel. I own the Rose Noire. I did own it together with my father, but he passed away a few weeks ago.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s hard … have you still got a father?’

  ‘No. He died years and years ago.’

  ‘Then you know how it feels. Dancing helps, hein? Music washes away sadness. Not everyone understands.’ With each word, he drew her nearer to the floor where couples were dancing to ‘My Blue Heaven’. She could feel Solange’s fury, but Serge Martel had suddenly become more human. Maybe his eyes weren’t cold; maybe it was grief.

  ‘I don’t believe you own this place. You’re too young.’ He couldn’t be more than twenty-five.

  ‘Lying, am I?’ He dropped his arms and stalked away across the dance floor. Jumped onstage and tapped the bandleader’s shoulder. The man lowered his trumpet. A moment later the music slid to a stop, leaving the singer holding an unaccompanied note.

  Serge came back through the crowd like a breeze through corn. He took Alix into his arms and the bandleader counted, ‘One, two, three, four.’ The drummer gave the intro, the leader played a lick and ‘My Blue Heaven’ was on its way again.

  ‘I hate starting a dance halfway through. Relax, baby, you might as well stop fighting. In the end, we’re going to be lovers.’

  *

  Verrian spotted Alix as he came down the stairs. When he saw blunt fingers stroking her spine, he understood how murders happen.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lenice Leflore was scatting to ‘The Very Thought of You’.

  Verrian went to the bar, attempting to park his darker feelings. He had a serious motive for being here, remember? He’d seen a picture of Alix’s grandfather, learned something of the man’s early life – and the abrupt manner of his end. If Alix didn’t know about that last bit, she needed to. Taking a cigarette case from his pocket he pulled out a Navy Cut. Not that it was exactly small talk for the dance floor.

  As the singer reached the tender climax of her song, the lights went off. Shock gave way to cheers as a single spotlight turned the stage into a shining lagoon. Verrian moved towards the centre of the floor, at last finding Alix by touch. He felt her recoil, ask ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Verrian Haviland and I’m taking you out of here.’ He led her off the floor, using beads of light from the bar as his guide.

  She resisted. ‘I have to stay.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My evening bag – my door key’s in it. I don’t want to lose another one.’

  ‘We’ll fetch your bag.’

  ‘No.’ The lights were flicking back on, one at a time. ‘I can’t just leave without a word.’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ Something hit him lightly on the shoulder and, for an instant, Verrian thought bats had been let loose in the club or the ceiling was coming down. Then he realised, rose petals. Red petals were falling on to the heads of those below. In the middle of the floor, the man in the white tuxedo who’d been dancing with Alix was making a slow scan of the tables.

  They found Alix’s table, where Verrian scooped up her bag and evening jacket, then guided her up the stairs, saying, ‘I’m taking you somewhere more authentic, assuming you like jazz.’ Out on the kerb, a taxi was pulling up and Verrian helped Alix into the back. Getting in beside her, he drew her against him and said to the driver, ‘Rue Pigalle, chez Bricktop, but take us the long way round.’

  *

  Her resistance held as the taxi crossed Place Pigalle, passing the Moulin Rouge. It held as far as the junction with Rochechouart where she leaned into him with a sigh. Her hair smelled of lemon and almond and he felt a physical surprise at how fawnlike she was without the packaging of day clothes. It made him want to protect her eternally from bigots like his father, and predators like the fair-haired man in the white tux. As they sped east down Rochechouart, then south on to Boulevard Magenta, Verrian thought of hotel rooms and the span of a double bed, of silk sheets and time. He and Alix needed time. Her breath feathered his cheek.

  ‘I think we’ve made Serge Martel very angry,’

  ‘Do you care?’

  She hesitated. ‘He knows where I work.’

  ‘If he bothers you, let me know. You’re not officially his girlfriend?’

  ‘Oh no. That’s Solange. She’s a mannequin and very lovely, but I don’t think he cares much for her.’

  ‘I expect she has other ideas. She’ll slap his face for the way he acted tonight, call him a no-good lying cheat, and then they’ll spend all tomorrow in bed.’

  ‘I hope not. She has to take part in the collection at three o’clock.’

  ‘He’ll have forgotten it all by then anyway.’

  Alix said nothing as the driver turned on to Rue La Fayette, taking them through a series of lesser streets. As the taxi slowed, she said, ‘Do men forget humiliation so fast?’

  The answer was no, so he tightened his arm around her. She was looking up at him, her eyes reflecting the carnal lights of Rue Pigalle. He was about to kiss her when the taxi drew up at an entrance door and the driver shouted, ‘Bricktop!’ In this club, a quintet played hot gypsy jazz with a sweating intensity that made Frazer Hoskins’s band seem like a chamber orchestra. Verrian had to speak right into Alix’s ear. ‘Drink or dance?’

  ‘Dance.’

  On the floor they were shoved up like sardines. Alix had never been in such a crowd but still felt that she and Verrian were alone in the world. For the first time, it was just the two of them. No dramas, no audience.

  She looped her arms over his shoulders and he put his hands into the curve of her waist. When their lips touched it was with the same unforced ardour as when he’d kissed her in the downpour. She opened her lips and he responded, pulling her so hard against him she felt every sinew of his body. His cologne contained lemon and bergamot; she smelled it on the curve of his jaw, under the rim of his collar as they stayed locked for ten, twenty heartbeats before pulling apart. They danced, one tune sliding into another. Then they kissed all the way through the Bricktop version of ‘My Blue Heaven’. Eventually Verrian said, ‘Would you like a drink now?’

  ‘No. Well, coffee, please.’

  He’d purchased them a table and they eventually found it. They sat, hands locked, until the coffee came. They both drank it one-handed, spare hands still linked.

  ‘Why were you dancing with that Martel earlier?’

  ‘He asked … Nobody else would dance with me.’

  ‘You were supposed to wait for me.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my letter.’

  ‘I only read it three hours ago. You should have faith, Alix.’

  ‘Why?’

  He laughed and she felt his energy pass through her. She said, ‘On Boulevard St-Germain you ran after me to make sure we didn’t part on bad terms, then nothing. No word.’

  ‘Not “nothing”. I went to do some research on German remilitarisation, and while I was there I thought of little else but you. I needed time away because I know I’m falling for you and you deserve somebody better.’

  His intensity disturbed her. So did the fragments of pain in his eyes. ‘Somebody better?’ She tilted her head. ‘Yes, I probably do.’

  *

  It was nearly three in the morning. They were waiting for a taxi and Verrian had given her his jacket to wear over her own insubstantial one. She leaned into his embrace, a tide of nightclubbers passing behind them. The whole night felt unreal. She yawned, almost dislocating her jaw. That felt real.

  Verrian said softly, ‘I suppose I’m going to take you home.’

  ‘Yes.’ Was that the precise moment she fell in love? She looked up at Verrian, but he’d spotted a black Peugeot taxi and was hailing it.


  At her building, Verrian had the driver wait. He got out, holding the door so Alix could slide across. ‘Give me your key.’ He unlocked the street door and followed her into the courtyard, waiting while she unlocked the door to the building. ‘I’ll see you up.’

  ‘We don’t have a lift.’

  ‘I like stairs in Paris. I dislike them in London, but they feel different here.’

  ‘You make no sense,’ she laughed.

  Reaching the door of her flat, he told her he knew how she kept so slim. She gave him back his jacket and Verrian kissed her, not on the lips but in the centre of her forehead. Since they had to part here, there was no point in prolonging things. ‘Good night.’

  Which of them weakened? Somehow she was in his arms again and he heard himself saying, ‘I have to see you tomorrow. What time do you finish work?’

  ‘Seven, but then I have to go somewhere else.’ Earlier, Una had extracted a promise – Musketeering begins tomorrow, no backing out now, Alix.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Nowhere important.’

  ‘Sweet Alix, tell a newspaperman to mind his own business, you might as well issue a downright invitation. I’ll be waiting outside my office door at seven tomorrow evening. Walk past me if you choose.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning, Alix flew down the stairs, the Lelong dress, in its cover, over her arm. A handbag stuffed with the day’s necessities bumped the wall as she jumped the last four steps. She’d overslept.

  ‘Late night?’ Mme Rey dragged her mop bucket into Alix’s path, using the mop as the steering mechanism. ‘Heard you come in well after witching hour.’

  Alix kept her eye on the exit. ‘Sorry if I woke you.’

  ‘No. I don’t sleep well, always half awake. New man with you, was it?’

  Alix gave a clenched smile. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bit older than you I’d say, from the sound of his voice. Nice voice though.’

  ‘He has a very nice voice. Sorry, I have to—’

  ‘Took you right upstairs, did he? That’s the sign of a gentleman. My mother used to tell me, if a man doesn’t see you to your door, forget him.’

  ‘Very wise, Madame. I really have to—’

  ‘Hang on, dear, I’ve got newspapers for your grandmother. I’ll just fetch them.’

  Alix bent forward. Her period was due to start in a day or two and it felt as if somebody were twisting her innards on a stick. When Mme Rey eventually returned with copies of Le Petit Parisien, Alix said, ‘I’ll leave them on the bottom step and take them up when I come home.’

  ‘That won’t do, dear. Those oiks across the way will have them. I caught a couple of the little toerags in here yesterday, though they scooted fast enough when they saw me. Anyhow, I’m sure Mme Lutzman would like to read them with her breakfast, but I can’t manage all those stairs more than once in a day.’

  Cursing roundly, though still under her breath, Alix hurtled upstairs. He’s got a nice voice … How close had that grimy old ear been to the door last night?

  Reliving the feel of Verrian’s arms around her made her stomach flip. So much to dream over when she wasn’t in a hurry.

  *

  ‘Alix, are you feverish again?’

  ‘No, Mme Frankel.’

  ‘Only you were late, and now you keep staring the way Javier does when he’s getting one of his migraines.’

  Alix reassured the première, who replied, ‘Good, because it’s every hand to the pump and I still don’t know how we’re going to get the mid-season ball gowns finished for showing in two weeks’ time. We’ve just thrown away yesterday’s work on Oro too. I wish I could start this year again.’

  ‘She says that every time,’ Alix’s companion Marcy whispered later. They’d been sent down to help one of the assistant designers, a solid young man called Simon Norbert who had spent twenty minutes ignoring them. They could hear him in his office, voice rising as he complained to some caller – ‘Only eight of the fourteen complete, the mid-season show fixed for 12th May. And all Monsieur does is lament in Spanish. As for that bitch Oro, I said from the start that underpinning was never going to work. There’s only so much you can ask of a length of tulle. Wire! I said it would have to be wire, though I warned Monsieur, “It’ll look like a lampshade, you’ll never get it to float like feathers.”’

  Alix, in love with Oro even in its unfinished state, had complete faith in Javier and Mme Frankel. She was shocked by this show of disloyalty. Without thinking, she shouted, ‘Just because you’re a dumpling does not make Oro one. She will float!’

  Marcy shushed her. Simon Norbert stood in the doorway of his office. ‘Dirty little cockroach,’ he yelled. ‘When I want you, I’ll send for you.’

  ‘Norbert has a point, you know,’ Marcy said as they crept away. ‘M. Javier conceives a look and asks Mme Frankel to devise the technique. Norbert’s people get caught in the middle and Javier can be hard on them if they don’t interpret him perfectly. We’d better go back to Mme Frankel.’

  Alix and Marcy were working together in a capacity that had no name. If they were called anything, Alix reflected, it would be ‘donkeys’. They fetched fabrics from storerooms and liaised with the workrooms, withstanding the howls of harried supervisors who couldn’t see how shaving another hair’s breadth off a seam could improve anything. They also handed offcuts to the matchers, which gave Alix the chance to trim off slivers of cloth. She had a treasury of samples, along with five detailed drawings from the mid-season line which tonight she’d hand over to Una Kilpin and the New York businesswoman who was Una’s associate. Those two would turn stolen sketches into real-life copies.

  ‘You like busy?’ Mme Albert asked when Alix was sent to the thread room to pick up a box of white bobbins.

  She did like busy. She was learning a trade she loved. And in Marcy Stein, a gentle girl from the suburb of Batignolles, she’d found her first friend at Javier. But tonight, when all she wanted was to meet Verrian and hold hands over a table, she had to take one step deeper into a world she already regretted entering.

  ‘Alix? You’ve been ten minutes fetching those. I said I needed them at once.’ Anger showed for the first time in Pauline Fran-kel’s face. ‘If you don’t want this chance, go back to your sewing bench.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Madame. It’s –’ she looked around to check that none of the male staff were near – ‘my time of the month. I feel dreadful.’

  Pauline Frankel’s features evened out. ‘Ah. I understand that well enough. If you want to lie down –’

  ‘I’d rather work, take my mind off things.’

  ‘Very well. Go and see if Javier needs you, but, please, no tragic faces. All that tulle you sewed under Oro’s skirt? He’s had someone unpick the lot and I only just stopped him from throwing the dress out the window. We cannot afford theatricals. We need finished clothes. We need cash and custom.’

  *

  In the top-floor studio, Solange Antonin held a pose in a gown destined to be No. 14 of the mid-season collection. ‘Lune de Minuit’ – Midnight Moon. It had a body of black velvet with alternate flounces of ivory and black lace. During his trip to Spain, Javier had watched Flamenco dancers and this mid-season collection reflected it. Arms and shoulders were bare. Bodices were boned like basques, skirts flared in fishtails. It was, thought Alix, enchanting. But … again, as with Oro, something about this dress felt not quite right.

  Poor rejected Oro looked like a burst balloon with her underpinning removed. And Simon Norbert had a point, Alix mused, wire would be wrong. What it needed was something strong as wire yet light as silk. Something with movement. Something alive … She stared until the dress melted into flame and cried, ‘I know!’

  An assistant shushed her, nodding towards Javier, who stood cupping his chin. Simon Norbert mirrored his pose, his pot belly pushing in and out as he strove to contain his anxiety. Up on the pedestal, Solange bore the signs of a late night. Noticing Alix, she jerked as if an electric curr
ent had hit her.

  ‘Keep still,’ Javier snapped. ‘How can I judge a dress if you squirm?’

  Solange flung a look of hatred at Alix, and Javier said wearily, ‘I can see you too, petite. What do you want?’

  ‘Mme Frankel sent me to see if I could be of any use.’

  Simon Norbert sniffed. ‘Hardly likely.’

  Javier opened his arms. ‘Wave the magician’s staff, make me love my collection.’ His hands danced. ‘I who could once make a poem out of a bundle of sheeting have lost my gift. We might as well shut down. I am a spent force.’

  ‘Monsieur, I’ve an idea about Oro, how to make it float.’

  Simon Norbert snorted.

  ‘That mule of a dress.’ Javier shuddered. ‘She has defeated me. I have given up. Now I am instead in anguish over Minuit. It is the couturier’s fate, Alix, to be speared through the heart by those you love.’

  Alix could see that beneath the melodrama lurked desperation. She walked towards Solange, then took five steps back, narrowing her gaze. Any other day she’d have kept her mouth shut, but this was not any day. Last night in the Rose Noire, Serge Martel had told her ‘We’re going to be lovers.’ Minutes later, another man had snatched her away. A man whose touch made her feel dizzy and abandoned.

  She said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with any of your gowns. Your collection is a triumph of grace.’

  ‘Shame yours is the least important opinion in the building,’ Norbert muttered.

  ‘Dummies, M. Javier.’ Alix pointed at the wooden mannequins that kept silent witness against a far wall. ‘You’re seeing your clothes on dummies. It’s all wrong.’

  Norbert blustered, ‘You’ve no right to a point of view.’

  ‘You are saying …’ Javier engaged her in visual combat, ‘my designs are for wooden dolls, not women?’

  Like a roulette player hurling everything on black seventeen Alix dared to continue. ‘Have you a gramophone?’

  Javier blinked. ‘I have.’