The Dress Thief (29 page)

Thank God, he’d managed to convince Ninette it was a prank. The pig, his blackmailer,
wanted the money by the end of the week.

Pay a blackmailer, keep a blackmailer
. How, though? He was cleaned out and couldn’t sell the rest of his bank shares without alerting the financial community to his cash problems. One had to be so careful of one’s credit. He’d have to sell something physical. His car, the Panhard? But by the end of the week?

Hélène came into the bedroom bathed in a miasma
of Chanel No. 5. ‘Are you awake, Jeannot?’ she whispered.

He pretended to be asleep.

‘Alix, Monsieur wants you in his studio, at once.’

Alix took the lift and, when she emerged, found herself following the aroma of coffee. It was early Monday morning and she’d left home without breakfast, eager not to repeat last week’s crime of being late. The weekend had dragged because Verrian had been too busy to meet her. Or had he been
holding himself aloof? She stopped a few feet from Javier’s studio door, biting her lip. Why did Javier want her? Could she have been tailed to Godnosc’s? Had someone seen her taking fabric samples? Or looked inside her shoe … Now she was being ridiculous. She knocked at the door.

Javier wasn’t alone. His elderly Spanish maid was pouring coffee so strong it overpowered the house perfume, Ersa,
which was sprayed in the room every morning. The maid indicated to Javier that his cup was full.

‘
Si, si
,’ he replied, not looking at it. Dozens of sample books were spread across his desk. Filled with sketches, fabric and embroidery samples, they were the working drawings of a
professional lifetime. Javier’s archive. ‘Sit down,’ he told Alix. ‘Coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’ Alix sat, ramrod straight.

‘Ana-Sofia –’ Javier made a request in bullet-fast Spanish and the maid fetched another cup and a jug from which she poured hot frothy milk followed by coffee black as engine oil.

‘When I was a boy,’ Javier picked up his cup, ‘my mother ran our island’s laundry and my father made his living driving a cart down to the port. He would meet the boats, and bring the passengers up. A taxi service before
there were motorcars. In the mornings, everybody was rushing and my elder sister, Abigaíl, would make coffee you could cut with a knife. It would be left on the side, but the milk was always boiling hot. I cannot change my habit, though the French shudder at it. Habit is the last to die.’

He slid a brown-paper parcel towards Alix. ‘Open it.’

She used her scissors to cut the string. Paper fell
open to reveal a tight coil of blond horsehair lace. ‘Goodness, there must be ten miles of it.’

Javier smiled. ‘I tried your lace on Oro – you will allow me to pay your grandmother for the sample – and you have solved the problem. Alix, I salute your instincts.’

‘I suppose this was expensive?’

‘Beyond expensive, but that hardly matters – there is something very particular I want you to do for
me.’ Javier opened a drawer and brought out a newspaper. ‘My sisters Abigaíl and
Carmen are the only family I have now and they will not leave our island though I tried to bring them away. Nobody knows what will be the fate of Spanish Jews if the Fascists win this war, but my sisters will not come to France.’ He put a cube of sugar into his coffee, gently so it wouldn’t splash the precious books
beside him. ‘What would you say to them, Alix, if they were your sisters?’

‘Um …’ She’d known about the civil war in Spain, even before meeting Verrian, but had assumed the politics were too complex to attempt to understand. ‘Do … um, do Spanish Jews have reason to be fearful?’

Javier blinked and she amended, ‘I mean, are they in the same position as German Jews? My grandmother reads about their
plight in
l’Humanité
and it upsets her.’ She hoped Javier would extricate her, but he seemed content to wait while she unravelled her logic. ‘Grandmother is terrified of Nazis … they’re the German National Socialists—’

‘I do know that, Alix.’

‘Yes, sorry. She’s afraid she’ll wake up one day and find them in France. I don’t like to think about it. You’ll think me very stupid, but I always supposed
politics stopped at a country’s border, like language or signposts. It was that way in England.’

Javier nodded, growing serious. ‘
Petite
, you were seen wearing a very beautiful Lelong dress a few nights back. Is it one you bought yourself?’

A blush scorched her cheeks. She stammered that she’d
borrowed it from Mme Kilpin. No point in lying. Una Kilpin’s presence at the Rose Noire gala opening
would have been as obvious as their dresses. ‘She invited me to call and opened her wardrobes for me.’

‘How marvellous. Did you see many fake couture gowns among her hoard?’

‘I – I don’t know. But her boudoir has white carpet, thick as bearskin, and walls polished to such a sheen you can almost see your reflection in them. Her wardrobe doors are mirrors too. When she opened them …’ Alix was
sure Javier had used the word ‘fake’ to shock her. The last thing she wanted was to seem familiar with piracy – or, worse, end up confessing her involvement. ‘I’ve never seen so much pale gold and biscuit in my life. You know, she buys clothes in other colours too, but never wears them?’

‘Extraordinary. Who understands the very wealthy? The truth—’ The maid returned with fresh coffee and Javier
snapped at her to leave.

Alix eyed him in dismay. She’d never known him to be rude before. This was it. He was going to confront her about her stealing. She steadied herself, praying she’d come through it with dignity. ‘The truth, Monsieur?’

‘… is,’ he continued, ‘they’re afraid of leaving their cats and the grave of our parents.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Abigaíl and Carmen. They said they would
come with me,
packed their trunks, gave away their food stores. The cart came, we loaded it, but at the last, they would not climb on board. I helped them put everything back inside and I left. I came home and drew sketches of dresses. My shows must go on, no?’

Alix nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘You spent your childhood in England, I believe?’

‘I was born and went to school there.’

‘Your father was
English?’

‘A Londoner, a railway engineer.’

‘Ah,’ Javier wagged a finger. ‘You have inherited his wisdom. You can judge the load-bearing capacity of lace.’

As she laughed in relief, Javier pushed his newspaper towards her.
The Times
, dated 28
^th
April, the one Verrian had been reading. ‘Please, read me the column that describes a town destroyed by an air attack, I have not had the courage to
read it yet myself. Say it quietly – I do not want Ana-Sofia to hear.’

As Alix read the eyewitness account of the destruction of a Basque town, she was conscious of breaking terrible news. Javier must have heard about the attacks but not the detail. ‘…
at 4.30 p.m. the church bell rang … and the population sought refuge in cellars … Five minutes later, a single German bomber circled over the
town at low altitude, then dropped six heavy bombs … thenceforward the bombing grew in intensity, ceasing only with the approach of dusk
.’ She glanced up. Javier was looking fixedly at a spot behind her head. ‘
The whole town … slowly and systematically pounded to pieces …
I’m sorry, Monsieur. So sorry.’

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.