The Dress Thief (40 page)

By the time she was parading a satin evening dress called L’Arabie, she was enjoying herself. Really, people were looking at the clothes, not at her. So long as she counted steps and didn’t bump any of the other girls, it was easy. She was striking her pose at the end of the catwalk when, above the whispering and rustling, came a strident voice …

‘I’ve had enough. Not one of the models you’ve shown today, M. Javier, is your own original work. I declare this collection is nothing more than a heist!’

A silence, then a single gasp left a hundred mouths. A rabid bustle as people tried to identify the speaker. Alix could see her from her vantage point, but the woman was unknown to her. Middle-aged, in a black hat and white cotton suit.

Mlle
Lilliane manifested onstage, those belligerent eyebrows promising violence.

The speaker faced the directrice calmly. ‘I am happy to repeat what I just said, if you wish me to.’ The accent was North American.

Alix sought out Una Kilpin, but Una was whispering to her neighbour. Then Javier was among them. In the mildest of tones he addressed the heckler. ‘Madame? You will perhaps oblige me by
explaining your words and, I trust, withdrawing them. I, Javier, have received many slights in my life, but the charge of plagiarism has never before been pointed at me.’

‘I’m sincerely sorry to be the first. I’m Gladys Fisk-Castelman and I’m a fashion journalist.’ The woman named a leading New York paper. ‘I saw this collection in New York on July 16
^th
, the day before I sailed.’

Alix and Una
made eye contact, reading each other’s disquiet.

‘Madame,’ Javier gave his infinitely respectful bow, ‘this work has been created in my ateliers and cannot also be in New York.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Mrs Fisk-Castelman, unabashed at being the sole focus of attention, squeezed along her row, issuing ‘pardon me’s’ and ‘mind your knees’ as she went. She stepped on to the platform inches from Alix. There she
unbuttoned her jacket, let it fall.

She wore a fitted blouse in camel-coloured silk, with mother-of-pearl buttons, a neat collar and a tie neck. It was, Alix conceded, twin to the one she herself had worn with ‘Lomond’.
Then again, the blouse was as simple as a blouse could be. Javier clearly thought the same.

‘I agree, Madame, your blouse could be the one I designed for my Scottish
tailleurs
. Or indeed, one I made for my spring collection in 1935. You might find similar blouses this season in three or four other houses. Sometimes a blouse is intended simply to lie quietly beneath a jacket.’

Someone in the audience began to clap. Someone else shouted, ‘Get on with the show. We don’t want to see an old prune undressing.’

Mrs Fisk-Castelman cricked her jaw. ‘I am sorry, ladies and
gentlemen, but I saw every item of this collection already, at a show put on by a friend of mine.’ Her finger sketched the outline of Alix’s dress in the air. ‘L’Arabie? Seen it. Tried it on. Go ask Yetta Flatmeyer, or better still, visit her boutique on East 49
^th
Street, which specialises in high-end ready-to-wear. I know which wholesaler she got that dress from and I know she paid a shave under
ninety dollars for it. You couldn’t get a candy wrapper between hers and the one this young lady is wearing.’

‘No. This is not possible.’ For the first time in Alix’s presence, Javier surrendered his famous composure. ‘It cannot be!’

‘How about an experiment, Monsieur? How about I draw you the climax of your show today? The big dress that’s going to knock the ball out of the park.’

Javier looked
like a man dragged across stones and left for
dead. Alix could have wept for him as he beckoned Mlle Lilliane. ‘Oblige this lady, if you please.’

With a dignity Alix couldn’t help but admire, Lilliane handed over her seating plan, complete with clipboard and pencil. Against a background of hostile whispers, Mrs Fisk-Castelman peeled off a page and began to sketch, Alix willing with every fibre
of her being for that pencil to break.

But, actually Alix was as mystified as everyone else by Mrs Fisk-Castelman’s claims, or nearly so. Javier had completed L’Arabie during the first weekend of July and Alix had drawn it for Mabel Godnosc around the seventh or eighth of the month. If the woman was sketching the show’s climax, a ball gown called Duquesa de la Noche, well, that hadn’t been finished
until 9
^th
July. She’d handed over the sketch of Duquesa the following week, on the 14
^th
,
quatorze juillet
, a date fixed in her mind as she’d pushed her way along the Champs-Elysées through swarms of holiday revellers. Given that even the
Normandie
, the fastest boat plying between France and the United States, spent five days on the Atlantic, Mrs Fisk-Castelman couldn’t have seen that dress in
New York on the sixteenth. Not unless Mabel Godnosc had made a pact with the Devil.

The journalist presented her sketch to Javier, who regarded it as if it were his death warrant. ‘This is the very dress, the climax to my show. How can this be?’

Alix couldn’t look any more. All she wanted was to pull Una
Kilpin off her chair and make her somehow explain how this horrible thing had happened.

*

For two days afterwards, Alix avoided the muttering huddles that filled every room and corridor of Maison Javier. So jumpy was she, Mme Frankel sent her once more down to the sanatorium. The nurse assumed she was coming down with summer flu and sent her home. Alix closed her shutters and lay in bed, very frightened.

Three days in to her supposed flu, Marcy called with a box of marzipan sweets
and the news that Javier had called in the police. As soon as she left, Alix finally got up, going to the Abbesses post office, where she called Una Kilpin’s residential number, trying repeatedly when she couldn’t connect. But either the telephone rang out or the maid fobbed her off, claiming ‘Madame’ was unwell.

At least Serge filled her nights. Champagne, music and his earthy preoccupation
with her body occupied her sleepless hours. He found it hilarious that, a few nights before, she’d unknowingly smoked a hashish joint at the jazz club they went to on Pigalle. ‘Mezz is a Saint,’ he crowed, referring to the club’s maitre d’. ‘He doesn’t like to see a lady looking sorrowful and will always provide the medicine.’ After that he’d made sure that the dealers who padded around the Rose Noire’s
tables kept her supplied. Alix stayed in a blessed half-haze for several days until she woke one afternoon fully dressed on Serge’s bed
with a pounding head, a fly buzzing in a fold of window net. Heading to the bathroom, she muttered, ‘Damn this. If I’m for prison, so is Una.’

An hour later she was on the Champs-Elysées, hammering at the street door of Maison Godnosc.

*

At a table strewn with
samples stood Mabel and Una. They looked to be in the silent stage of an argument which had hit the buffer. Mabel was holding a dress up to the light, pretending to examine it. It was one Alix had designed, kept on hand for customers Mabel didn’t trust. Even the dress looked forlorn. Green was difficult. Green so often wanted to be poison. No gin cocktails tonight, Alix noted, before accusing Una
of hiding from her.

‘No, I really was ill.’ She looked it. Mabel also looked positively gaunt. Even so, Alix launched an attack.

‘The stupidity of what you’ve done! Javier is talking to a police department that puts couture thieves in prison.’

Una nodded. ‘I took Gladys Fisk-Castelman to lunch, one ex-patriot to another, and she says autumn–winter Javiers are flooding New York and the great
man will sue if he’s got anything resembling balls.’ Those last words were aimed at Mabel, who buried her face in the green dress.

Alix snatched the garment away and threw it on to the table, yelling, ‘Again! You gave a collection to New York before it was presented in Paris.’

Mabel made a ‘whaddya expect?’ gesture. ‘I’m the middle woman. Can I go to a wholesaler like Samuels or Weinstock and
say, “Start manufacturing, but keep schtum until this date or that date”?’

‘We agreed we’d wait till mid-August. You only had to hold off a couple of weeks, so instead of one suspect – me – there’d be five hundred.’

‘They use us because we give them designs fresh out the egg. It’s our selling proposition. Our risk.’

‘Well, we’re dead.’ Alix swung round to include Una. ‘You’re nothing but a
pair of cardsharps.’ The advantage of keeping a lid on your anger was that, when you let it out, it had the power to turn pistons. ‘What’s more, I know you have somebody else working for you at Javier; you must do. You couldn’t have got my last sketches to New York in time to have them made up and beat Javier to his own show.’

Una denied it. ‘You’re our one true love, honour bright.’

That did
it, that little stab at humour. Alix picked up a chair, walked with it to the window. ‘I’m going to hurl this on to the Champs-Elysées. Then I’ll hurl out every fake dress, and scream until the police arrive. You have until the count of three to tell me the truth.’ She lined the chair up with the middle of the window.

‘OK, kiddo. Put down the weapon. Sit on it and I’ll tell you.’

So Alix sat
and Una folded her hands and Mabel clacked her bangles.

‘Belinograph,’ said Una.

‘Bell-what?’ Alix demanded.

‘Mr Kilpin’s latest toy. It’s a radio wire that transmits pictures. Instead of days at sea on a boat they whoosh across the Atlantic in minutes. It’s a miracle of technology.’

Alix narrowed her eyes. Was Una gulling her? ‘If there was a wire over the sea, ships would get caught in it.’

‘Bless you, it goes by cable laid on the seabed. Just like a telegraph message, only this time it’s your drawings reduced to a series of beeps … never mind, take it from me: nobody has to send pictures by boat so long as they have a Mr Kilpin. He bought the machine for sending weather charts and marine maps around the world. I use it some evenings; his secretary turns a blind eye.’

‘You sent
my sketches on this Bell-thing? Mme Godnosc, you knew?’

Mabel made a grinching face. ‘If technology’s there, you use it. We don’t wear twigs or cook dinner in a pit any more. That’s progress.’

Alix swung back to Una. ‘All for one and one for all?’

Una twitched. ‘I told Mabel to wait, but controlling Big Apple entrepreneurs, that’s hard.’ She reached out and patted Alix’s cheek. ‘Chin up, kiddo,
we’ll pull through.’

Alix yelled, ‘You can be calm because nothing will happen to you.’

‘Oh? When my husband finds out we wired from his office, he may divorce me. And did you get paid? Well, did you?’

‘A lick and a promise and it all went to my grandmother’s clinic.’

‘I’m sorry for your trouble, but like Mabel said—’ Una stopped. They heard men’s voices, a protest from the receptionist. After
that, footsteps coming closer.

Three men entered dressed in smart civilian suits. The eldest said courteously, ‘Mme Godnosc?’

‘No.’ Una gestured faintly to Mabel, who cleared her throat and bleated, ‘Oh, God.’

‘Madame, we are following up evidence presented by the couturier Javier to the effect that you are involved in the illegal copying and transmitting of fashion designs. He has proof that
designs were stolen from his premises and sent abroad for copying. We are also investigating his claim that you pirate the work of other leading couturiers. We intend to conduct a search of this office and confiscate any items that implicate you.’ He spoke French, of course, and when Mabel returned mute incomprehension, he turned to Una. ‘We are also looking for a Mme Kilpin in connection with
the offence.’

‘Look no further, honey.’ Una attempted an invincible smile. ‘Mademoiselle?’ One of the other men looked at Alix, who stared back, mouth opening and closing without sound.

‘Her?’ Una snatched a sheet of brown pattern paper from the table. She created a travesty of a parcel around the green
dress and flung it at Alix, who caught it. ‘English, not a word of French, but the poor idiot
strives to be chic so we do our best with what she’s got.’ She hustled Alix to the door. ‘
Au revoir
, Mademoiselle… er … Garland.’ Shoving Alix into the corridor, she hissed, ‘Bring me grapes in jail.’

*

Entering Maison Javier next morning, Alix knew by the texture of the air that something had changed. She’d just put down the valise-style bag that contained her mannequin’s accessories and make-up
when Mme Markova came to her and said, ‘Monsieur wishes to see you in his studio.’

Simon Norbert and Mlle Lilliane stood either side of Javier. Like a bodyguard, blank-faced. In a further office, telephones were ringing. Somebody was answering them, but clearly could not cope. Javier invited Alix to sit. His sketchbooks were piled at either elbow, walling him in. One was open, a paperweight keeping
the page.

For some time he said nothing, so that when he did speak her overstrained pulse leaped. ‘I believe this is the blackest time of my life, Alix. The damage done to my reputation …’ He shook his head. ‘A second collection ruined. Journalists’ sneers proved right. Twenty years’ work thrown in my face. You know Mme Kilpin has been arrested for pirating?’

Alix cleared her throat. ‘I – er
 – heard.’

‘Whether they will charge her …’ He shrugged. ‘Her husband is so rich and influential. I mention this because she is in
a way your patroness. You are here because of her recommendation.’

Hope surged. Maybe Una’s quick thinking had saved her. Alix knew she didn’t deserve to get off, but keeping Javier’s affection suddenly felt all-consuming. That, and keeping her job. She knew precisely
on which day this month the money to pay Mémé’s bills would run out.

‘Tell me your opinion of this.’ Javier turned a sketchbook towards her, removing the paperweight. It was a sketch of a woman in medieval dress and Alix recognised its inspiration. One of the ‘Lady with the Unicorn’ tapestries which hung in the Cluny museum. Its sleeves were similar to those of Christine de Charembourg’s wedding
dress. The neckline too, the one originally designed to show off the family pearls. Why was Javier showing her this?