The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  He thrust his hand towards her and she assumed he wanted her out and, courteous to the last, was trying to shake her hand. But what he wanted was the newspaper. He took it to a waste-paper basket and dropped it in. There he stood while Alix struggled for something to say. When he returned to his desk, a sheen on his brow betrayed his emotion but everything else was under rigid control. ‘Thank you. Now, please return to the atelier.’

  ‘To the workroom?’ she gasped. ‘You’re sending me back there?’

  He nodded. ‘Last week you showed me how beautiful my gowns are when danced in candlelight. You breathed life into models from which all the vitality had been wrung. You and your charming friend danced a little magic.’

  ‘You’re angry?’

  ‘You held up to me a mirror. But it has just become clear to me that this mid-season line cannot go ahead.’

  ‘Not go ahead?’ She got messily to her feet, her chair landing upside down on the floor.

  ‘At this time of pain, of mourning, I cannot launch ball dresses. Not while Spain writhes and the free world looks the other way. It is all over.’

  *

  ‘Cancelled the whole mid-season collection? All those ball gowns? Just … cancelled?’

  Alix slumped in her chair. Una’s fury was making a bad headache into an unbearable one. She whispered, ‘He sent me back to the sewing bench.’

  ‘Javier did?’ Una snarled. ‘What’s got into the man? Nobody cancels a collection they’ve nearly completed unless they’re dead or certified insane.’

  ‘Mme Frankel is beyond words,’ Alix said, kneading her temples. ‘She thinks they’ll go bankrupt. Mid-season sales tide a business over to the summer. All the drawings I’ve done for you –’ she turned to Mabel Godnosc, who sat oozing shock, ‘you’d better burn them.’

  ‘Burn them?’ Una paused inches from Alix. ‘Chuck away money because your boss has mislaid his brain and you’ve mis-laid your nerve? We’re going to sell those damn dresses because we don’t get paid otherwise.’

  Mabel wailed, ‘I’ve got half the Seventh Avenue wholesalers ready to supply Javier modes by the third week of May. They serve some of the classiest shops on Fifth and Sixth Avenue. Press agents are writing articles for the fashion pages. Clients are telephoning orders without seeing a thread. Hundreds of garments, sold on spec.’

  ‘Then sail home and un-sell them,’ Alix groaned.

  ‘Sail? Shoot me from a cannon straight to Cape Cod, I’d be too late. Every sketch you’ve given me is either in production or waiting for the fabric to come off the looms.’

  ‘What?’ Suddenly afraid, Alix strode over to Mabel. A new scenario was presenting itself – that of Javier reading the New York fashion pages, seeing his clothes on sale even though they’d never been outside his own studio. ‘We agreed, nothing to be made until after the launch. You promised!’ She’d assumed Javier’s collection would seep into New York’s Fifth Avenue stores towards the end of May, along with the stolen designs of every other major Parisian couturier. ‘He’ll know there’s a thief … he’ll call the police.’

  ‘It’s called risk and reward, sweetie,’ Una said. ‘It’s why you’re being paid.’

  ‘I’m not being paid! And what danger is there for you?’ Alix grasped Una’s sleeve, ignoring the woman’s yelp of protest. ‘What’s going to happen to you if we’re found out? You’ll still have your apartment, your car, your chauffeur, your thousand dresses and your maid. You can be brave because you’ve nothing to lose.’

  Una wriggled free, furiously smoothing her sleeve.

  ‘You haven’t got manufacturers to sue you, like Mme Godnosc.’ Alix continued, ‘You don’t work all day for a pittance. You don’t have an arthritic grandmother sitting in a cold flat, or little sisters catching croup!’

  Una opened her mouth to reply, but Alix beat her to it. ‘You don’t have children, you don’t even have a cat. You’re a spoiled, greedy, stupid woman who steals the work of a genius because she failed in the same business. It’s not money for you, it’s …’ if there was a word that fitted Una Kilpin’s motives Alix couldn’t find it so she substituted, ‘prostitution.’

  ‘Prostitution?’

  ‘And it’s not my fault the Germans bombed Javier’s country!’

  Una attempted a scathing laugh, but something harsher came out. ‘I could say a few fine words to you on the subject of being a tease, Alix Gower, but I won’t. Just this: you are not alone in having dreams, nor wants and needs.’

  ‘Hush, ladies,’ Mabel pleaded, ‘or you’ll bring them up from downstairs.’

  Una replied icily, ‘Let’s decide – at a modest volume – how we pull something out of the wreckage Alix has sprung on us.’

  ‘We call it off,’ Alix said. ‘Everything copied from Javier, everything in production in New York, must be destroyed.’ She spoke with all the calm authority she could muster. ‘Javier has already written to the press, announcing the cancellation. If we go ahead with a copied collection – well, we might as well print “Wanted” posters with our faces on them and stick them up all over Paris.’

  ‘Cut and run?’ Una had regained the better part of her composure, though crossed arms diminished the full effect. ‘Impossible. What about medicines for your poor grandmother? What about Paul, sinking deeper by the day? You should instead be asking what will get the ladies of New York queuing ten blocks for our Javier copies.’

  ‘How about, “Because nobody else will get them now”?’ Mabel suggested. ‘Exclusivity.’

  Alix stamped her foot. It was that or scream. ‘The game’s up! If I get found out, I’ll be sacked at the very least. For you, Mabel, it’ll be worse. The police will come.’ Alix was desperate to finish this and get away, see if Verrian was waiting or if her impulsive words about sitting naked for Bonnet had killed his interest. But she couldn’t go until she’d got these women to understand the danger they were all in.

  Una had been tossing a pencil in the air and it dropped with a clatter. ‘Alix, take us through your meeting with Javier again. He may just be having a creative tantrum and tomorrow the collection will be on again.’

  Alix closed her eyes. ‘He’s isn’t having a tantrum; he’s grieving. He asked me to read him an article from The Times.’ She related the details of the bombing of Guernica and Mabel Godnosc said, ‘Dear God,’ and even Una looked at the ground. ‘His homeland is dying and he feels he should be fighting, not making clothes.’ She described how, the previous week, she’d sought to dispel his growing depression. ‘I made him see his dresses move with dance and music.’

  Una’s head lifted. ‘You danced for him?’

  ‘I had the mannequins brought up and they all danced, one by one, with Paul—’

  ‘You danced with Paul? My Paul?’

  ‘The tango.’ Alix met the tempest in Una’s eyes and thought, You think you own everyone. Well, you don’t. Paul will never look into your eyes the way he looked into mine. ‘We danced to “Mi Buenos Aires Querido”, our bodies fused in candlelight.’

  ‘Spare me the gush.’

  ‘How did Javier react?’ Mabel Godnosc sat forward.

  ‘He told me I had revealed to him the allure of his clothes as nobody else had ever done before.’

  ‘And was so impressed,’ Una came back, ‘he smacked you on the tush and sent you back to buttonhole duties. Honey, you served up your sex appeal to the wrong guy.’

  Mrs Godnosc let out a banshee shriek. ‘That’s it! Oh, shut up,’ she snapped as Alix began a riposte. ‘That’s the angle; that’s what will sell Javier. It’s delicious. It’s, pardon me, orgasmic. I need to ring my press agent.’

  ‘What? No!’ Alix shrilled. ‘I told you, that collection mustn’t get into the shops. If you want to stay out of jail, it mustn’t get into the shops.’

  ‘Sure, sure, whatever you say.’ Mrs Godnosc scuttled to the door. ‘Go home, both of you. I’ve had enough.’

  *

  Verrian waved from his regular table at the c
afé, white shirt-sleeves glowing orange in the sodium light. ‘You’re dragging a leg, Alix. Long day?’

  She hid her joy at seeing him, offering him a reserved smile instead.

  ‘You look worn out. Shall I take you home?’ he asked. Some kind of klaxon battle was going on behind him at the junction with Place de la Concorde. ‘If I ruled Paris, I’d make car horns illegal.’

  ‘Then how would pedestrians know they were about to be hit?’ she replied, sitting down beside him.

  ‘Good point.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shall we go somewhere less exposed?’

  ‘Please. I don’t have to be home early because it’s Mémé’s cards night. She takes a cake to a café across the road and all the old ladies play till eleven or so.’

  ‘I’ll take you to dinner. And you look fine,’ noticing her quick downward glance.

  *

  As Alix got up from her café chair on the Champs-Elysées, Jean-Yves sat down in the apartment in St-Sulpice. Danielle had answered his knock, inviting him into the living room, but he’d indicated a chair by a hall table. His heart objected to six flights and he needed to get his breath back. Anyway, it was clear that Danielle was about to go out. She was wearing short boots and a black hat like a cottage loaf trimmed with netting. There was a basket by the door with a cake tin and spectacle case. ‘I won’t keep you,’ he began.

  ‘Only going over the street. How can I help?’

  He took a steadying breath. ‘On Friday, one of my daughters took a telephone call from my blackmailer demanding more money. Yes, yes, I know what you told me. I should have listened to your advice. But …’ a deep breath, ‘he knows for certain what happened in Kirchwiller. He knows details that only you and I should know. He had my daughter write down names including that of my mother and her old housekeeper, Célie Haupmann. Madame, who but you or I could know such intimate facts about your husband’s death?’

  She leaned against the wall, not answering.

  He waited, thinking silence might jog her memory, occupying himself by picking up a framed photograph from the table. A wedding picture, which he could date precisely. John and Mathilda, married 18th December 1915. The groom’s hair was cropped and he wore khaki uniform. The bride wore a dress narrow to the ankle, showing a glimpse of white stocking and T-bar shoes. Her toes must have been icy because there was snow on the ground. Snow on the chapel roof behind them. The bride’s condition would explain the large spray of artificial flowers held over her stomach. And perhaps the groom’s tense smile.

  ‘They married before John sailed for France,’ Danielle said, looking over his shoulder to see what held his attention. ‘I was furious, my daughter in the family way, her nursing career cut short. My shame spoiled their day. He did his best, John Gower. Did the right thing. If I had known my poor girl would be dead so soon …’

  A smaller picture had been knocked on to its face. Jean-Yves picked it up and emotion rammed him – Mathilda in the uniform of a VAD, Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. Her face under her white cap was solemn, but nothing could dim that roguish twinkle in her eye. Her starched pinafore bore a cross and it took him back to his own weeks in a casualty clearing station in France. 1915, summer. He’d been stunned by shell-fire, lungs punctured, and had no idea how long he’d lain on the ground, or how much time he’d spent in the field hospital. But he remembered the nurses. ‘We loved those girls,’ he said. ‘You’d lie in bed, waiting for one to walk past. If she stopped and brought you water or puffed up your pillow, you felt the luckiest man alive. A strange place for love to blossom.’ He tried to put the small photograph back, but his fingers were shaking.

  Danielle said, ‘The little thing at the back … what’s it called? Hinge. It’s broken.’ She took the picture from him. ‘I think now I must go.’

  ‘I spoke to Alix at Maison Javier the other day.’

  ‘I begged her not to work there.’

  ‘She asked questions about her father, her mother, how well I knew them. Other times she’s wanted to know all about her grandfather. She’s a grown woman, Madame, and it’s time to tell her the truth.’

  ‘Never!’ Danielle rasped. ‘Her mother died, but he –’ she pointed at John Gower in his uniform – ‘lived long enough to fill her head with fantasies. He would tell her she was his princess. Princess, indeed! I would tell him, it’s no kindness spinning dreams to a girl born in the gutter.’

  Jean-Yves flared at the oblique accusation. ‘Why should Alix have been born in the gutter? Damn you, Danielle Lutzman, I followed you to London to take care of you. You could have had anything you wanted, including a decent home and an obstetrician for your daughter. Mathilda didn’t have to die in childbirth.’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘I sent you cheques which you ripped up.’

  ‘I had no bank account.’

  ‘Bone-headed false pride. You let your loved ones die rather than take help from me.’

  Her furious gaze expanded behind her demi-veil. ‘I did what you asked. Told lies to the police in Kirchwiller, left my home for a strange country, a new language. I lost my only child. You blame me? You, who took everything I loved from me? You think I will come to you for money? Only when I have no choice, and then with disgust at myself.’

  She hobbled to the door, forgetting her basket. He picked it up and followed her, pulling the door behind him. Though fury hung in the air between them, he took her arm. Plunge down these stairs and she’d break every bone. They descended in rhythm, as bound together now as ever. On the ground floor, a savoury smell met them.

  ‘Hare in red wine,’ he said.

  ‘The concierge is having dinner with her son. She’ll have used our coal to cook it.’

  Jean-Yves took the olive branch. They could not risk parting as enemies. ‘You’ll keep your door locked, Madame?’

  ‘Always. Will you pay that scum who threatens you?’

  ‘I have to. I can’t risk –’ he nearly said, Alix being hurt again, remembering at the last moment that Danielle knew nothing of the indignity her granddaughter had suffered in Montmartre.

  ‘I love her, Madame. I’ve only ever wanted her to be happy.’

  ‘Then don’t speak of her grandfather’s death, or your wartime romance with my daughter. Why make Alix witness to shameful events that will fade?’

  ‘Fade?’ he sighed. ‘When you and I die – is that what you mean?’

  ‘And when old Célie Haupmann goes too. Isn’t she even older than I am? She must be one of the last witnesses of that time. After all, she was your mother’s go-between, taking messages between your castle and me in the prison.’ Danielle laughed without humour. ‘How she resented being put to work to help one such as me. She made sure everyone knew she was only doing it to oblige her mistress in an act of charity.’

  ‘We’ll all go in the end, and our sorry sins will go with us.’

  Danielle made a ‘tsk’ sound. ‘Life is never so tidy. But let us stay quiet so Alix can live her life free of our mistakes.’

  *

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much. Arantxa is a wonderful cook.’ Good food and Verrian’s company had charmed away Alix’s headache.

  ‘It’s her husband in the kitchen.’

  ‘Lucky woman.’

  They were drinking coffee, between them a plate of irresistible oreillettes, vanilla fritters sprinkled with sugar. They were seated in a corner niche of L’Arancia, their seclusion lit only by a red candle that was sinking into waxy tendrils. Verrian reached across and stole a fresh one from the table next to them, lighting it in the stammering flame. ‘Alix, I’m not sure there’s a good time to say this, but I have to tell you what I know about your grandfather –’

  ‘You’re going to tell me he was murdered.’ She took an oreillette and bit off the lobe.

  He made a noise in his throat. ‘Any reason you didn’t mention that before?’

  ‘Would you shout about it?’ She sent an enquiring look at him through the candlelight, not
wanting to be accused again of game playing. ‘Bonnet told me that grandpapa was hit over the head, in his studio.’

  ‘Bonnet knew who did it?’

  ‘They were never caught.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Pedlars, vagabonds, whatever you call them. They would work in twos, a boy and a woman. The woman would have strings of kitchenware around her neck to give her an excuse to knock on doors. While she showed her wares to the mistress of the house, the boy would slip upstairs to steal valuables. Afterwards they’d melt into the forest. Kirchwiller’s forest is crossed by paths only hunters and tinkers know about.’

  Verrian frowned. ‘That’s what the authorities thought? Passing thieves?’

  ‘It’s what Bonnet says. He was there.’ Verrian’s gaze jumped to hers. ‘Nearby,’ she amended, ‘in his lodgings. Mémé ran to fetch him after she found grandfather’s body. Bonnet was with her when she was taken away by the police.’ Seeing Verrian’s eyes widen, she added hastily, ‘It was a dreadful mix-up, some slow-witted policeman got suspicious because Mémé had blood on her.’

  ‘Your grandfather’s blood?’

  ‘She’d tried to revive him and staunch the wound. When my grandmother’s hysterical, she doesn’t make much sense and she was led away. The authorities wouldn’t let Bonnet see her, so he went to the comte for help. Mme de Charembourg, the comte’s mother, came to the jail in her furs and demanded to see the chief inspector. Back then, local aristocrats had power.’

  ‘She sounds like a good woman.’

  ‘She saw a miscarriage of justice. She made sure Mémé had food and warm clothes and had her freed after a few days. Nobody ever really thought she was guilty. Except her. Sometimes I hear her murmuring that it was her fault.’

  ‘And the vagabonds … you said, “Never caught.”’

  ‘No.’ Stories about her life always fizzled out, Alix reflected.

  ‘So a boy killed your grandfather. One hard-bitten lad.’ Verrian took her hands and lifted them into the candle’s aura. She gasped as something caught her eye, driving thoughts of murder and vagabonds from her mind.