The Dress Thief (45 page)

At supper, Bonnet agreed wholeheartedly. ‘Stay away from
those police bastards. They’d make Danielle go over and over her attack until she was more confused
than she is now.’ He helped himself to seconds of meat. ‘Best thing you ever did, moving out of St-Sulpice. I meet Fernand Rey every now and again – the concierge’s son? He keeps a stall at Mouffetard market. He has ideas who the culprit might have been. He saw your friend de Charembourg at the flat that night.’

‘That’s not possible. The comte would have said something. I mean, surely he would?’

‘Maybe.’ Bonnet glanced at Mémé, who was eating the beef Alix had cut into small squares. ‘Perhaps he thought it indelicate to mention it. But this is more to the point. Do you remember the gypsies who lived in the courtyard?’

‘Course I do. You don’t suspect them?’

‘Fernand Rey does and, you know, it’s not so far-fetched. Not after what your grandmother said. The stink? Those gypsies make their
money catching rabbits in Bois de Boulogne. They sell the meat and cure the skins in urine. It’s why your courtyard reeked of it.’

Bonnet’s words were on Alix’s mind next day. Fernand Rey might be right; one of those gypsies might have broken into the flat and tried to silence Mémé when she discovered him. But it didn’t
feel
true. Alix had been wary of the refugees, but never afraid of them. On the other hand, she clearly recalled Fernand Rey coming into the flat with his
mother. He’d watched her rehang her grandfather’s pictures and Alix had felt he was pricing them up.

As she thought about Fernand Rey and his reasons for deflecting suspicion on to outsiders, she watched the fitter Marguerite and the première take a new client’s dimensions. They were making suggestions as to the style of suit that would best complement the lady’s neat figure, and as Alix liked
their ideas she said nothing. Gradually Fernand Rey became secondary to the business of waist darts, false pockets and a scoop neck.

Seeing Alix in the doorway, the client smiled and gave her name as Adèle Charboneau. ‘Mme Kilpin mentioned your name. We used to be neighbours on Avenue Foch. I’m hoping
you’ll make me a lovely cranberry-red suit. I know exactly what I want.’ She sketched a shape
with her hands. ‘With lace at the cuff and neck.’

As the conversation went on, Alix realised the new client was asking for a direct copy of a suit that Chanel had recently shown. She politely explained that Modes Lutzman did not produce copies. ‘We’ll be glad to show you our original designs.’

Abruptly the woman began to cry, explaining in broken sentences that her fiancé, who worked abroad
for the government, had sent her money to buy a Chanel to wear when she sailed out to join him. But – ‘I took my mother to Deauville for a holiday, spent it on her. She’s had so little happiness in her life … our last weeks together. Now I have to confess. My fiancé doesn’t like my mother. Oh, he’ll be so angry.’ Swimming eyes pleaded. ‘I was hoping you’d make a copy so he needn’t know.’ She gave
Alix a business card with an Avenue Foch address on it. ‘This isn’t my flat. I’m just a housekeeper. I couldn’t afford a real Chanel if I saved for ten years.’

Alix felt sorry for the woman but held her ground. ‘Would your fiancé know the difference if we made you a fabulous made-to-measure suit?’

‘Would you sew a Chanel label in it?’

‘Certainly not.’

Adèle Charboneau bit her lip, but when
Alix suggested that few men would know a Chanel suit if it came up and hugged them, she brightened. ‘You’re right. Make me one of yours.’

Alix thought no more about Mlle Charboneau that day or the next, which was a Sunday but definitely not a day of rest. Her autumn–winter show was now just four days away and her mind was buzzing like a hive. This season’s clothes had been built around herself
and four hired mannequins and were, dare she say it? … Breathtaking. Well, they took her breath.

Her evening dresses had overskirts of embroidered net and chiffon. Her suits, by contrast, were plain to the point of military, and her day dresses were ultra-simple, plain silk. She
knew
people would come to this collection, from curiosity if nothing else. She’d hired a publicity agent renowned for
her ‘little black book’ full of names of ladies who spent heavily on couture clothes. The agent had sent invitations to the cream of them, and also to department-store buyers, boutique owners and fashion journalists. Alix had booked a stylist to decorate the salon, and yesterday she’d taken delivery of two hundred programmes which read ‘
18
^th
August 1938, Modes Lutzman presents …
’

She and the
mannequins would show the clothes. The star dress, which Alix would wear herself, was of gold silk velvet with a satin waistband; lustrous, supple fabrics costly enough for a queen. Its skirt, as big as anything Javier had produced last summer, was decorated with flying birds. A quick glance suggested they were woven into the cloth, but a closer one proved that the velvet’s pile had been shaved away.
Alix had chalked round stencils, razoring away the pile inside the lines
to reveal the lighter base. Only she knew how many evenings she’d worked through, sneezing as silk fibres flew up her nose. She’d given this one dress a name: Ma Fuite. ‘My escape.’

Not every idea had succeeded. There was the doomed No. 10 for instance. Alix had bought a roll of coffee-coloured rayon, a modern fabric ideal
for draped dresses, and conceived a clinging evening gown with a V-neck back. Bands of silk fringe were to spiral down its length, moving with the body, calling attention to the figure beneath. Alix had experimented, weighting the fringe at the rear of the dress with glass beads to accentuate the low back. The back looked gorgeous, but the front was all bunched up. A technical step too far? Javier
would have made up a dozen toiles and trialled the dress in rayon until he had perfection. Alix didn’t have the time or the staff for that. Nor did she have Mme Frankel’s skills to hand. How she missed that calm voice taking control of a fractious studio:
‘It will work, so long as we do it like this –’
Her own Mme LeVert saw more problems than solutions, and in the end No. 10 had been wrapped
up and put into storage, in pieces. When her collection was over and her nerves relaxed, Alix would have another go.

It was as she took a last, sad look at No. 10 on the Monday morning that she saw a cranberry-red jacket and skirt being passed to a seamstress for finishing. If that was Adèle Charboneau’s suit, the lady ought to be impressed at the speed with which her order had been fulfilled.
A closer look suggested the suit was dangerously close to Chanel’s original, and a look at
the lining showed a ‘Chanel, Paris’ label. ‘Lock this away in a cupboard!’ Alix barked at the workroom supervisor. ‘On no account is it to be delivered. Who authorised that label?’

‘Mme LeVert,’ the supervisor told her. ‘The customer gave it to her, asking for it to be sewn in. I was surprised, I admit.’

Alix went off in search of her première, but Mme LeVert had gone home with a sore throat. It wasn’t long before the demands of staging her collection took over and Alix forgot about Adèle Charboneau and the fake Chanel.

*

On the morning of 18
^th
August, Alix awoke feeling dizzy with nerves. In the salon, she counted the rows of chairs twelve times but the result always came out different. Then
she passed between them, straightening them, though they were straight already.

She sat down, feeling pure terror at what would take place in just a few hours. Fourteen models would whizz past like an express train and people would say they’d been sold short. If they came at all. But afterwards they would be served Alsace wine and canapés. Those who wished could mingle and see the girls walking
about in the clothes. She, Alix, would be available to discuss her models woman to woman. It was more of an afternoon party than a collection, in the end. Violette, Alix’s upstairs receptionist, and Rosa would take orders – if anybody liked her designs enough to order them.

By midday the air was so humid the windows beaded. Thank
heavens there was none of the frantic bustle that had characterised
Javier’s shows. Everything was ironed, hung, brushed, ready. The four mannequins sat in their robes, waiting for the signal to dress. Paying the florist gave Alix a brief diversion, and then it was back to that minute-before-the-curtain panic, in which it freshly dawned on her that she’d done everything wrong. Her clothes were a disaster and she was a failure. Rosa, catching her mood, said, ‘I’d
forgotten how bloody awful stage fright is. Hour from now, you’ll be laughing.’

They heard three long rings of the doorbell and stared at each other. Hubert’s ‘police raid’ warning signal. Rosa muttered, ‘You’d think he’d get it right today, silly sod.’

Alix said, ‘If he’s gone to sleep on that damn chair …’ But then she heard footsteps down below, a door clunked and her heart did a cartwheel.
People were arriving for her show. There were always those who’d come early to get a front-row seat.

Rosa called, ‘Violette, stand by for action.’ She poked Alix. ‘You’d better get out of sight.’

Alix slipped into the office that had been turned into a
cabine
. Every spare mirror and table had been brought in and lamps glowed, making the clothes shimmer in unexpected colours. Alix fanned herself
and checked the window was open. It was.

The mannequins, professional young women who had brought their own underpinnings and makeup, stared at her expectantly. ‘Do I hear an audience?’ one of them asked.

‘Might as well get into our first clothes,’ Alix answered,
nodding at Marguerite who was acting as
chef de cabine
. Alix wished she could conjure up Mme Markova, though, mind you, Madame was
too rotund for such a tiny space. She slipped off her robe and reached for a tailor-made of russet wool. ‘Oh, why do winter collections have to be in July and August?’

Which was when she heard, ‘Now just one moment, hold your horses!’ and realised Rosa was speaking English and sounding rattled.

Before Alix could react, three men were at the
cabine
door. The mannequins in their undergarments
screamed. Alix pulled the russet skirt against herself. ‘What is this? Who are you?’

‘Mlle Lutzman?’

‘I’m Gower, Alix Gower.’

‘Is there a Mlle Lutzman?’ The speaker was a middle-aged man, smartly dressed. He had the decency to stare at the ceiling as he demanded to see the proprietress.

‘That’s me. I own Modes Lutzman.’

He looked at her and they recognised each other at the same moment. A
year ago this man had finished the Paris career of Mabel Godnosc. For a hideous moment, Alix thought her bowels were going to give way and she pulled every muscle tight.

‘Mademoiselle, we have a warrant to search these premises as we believe counterfeit items are produced here for sale.’

‘That’s rubbish. You can’t search!’ Two other men were eyeing the room eagerly and Alix heard her five-year-old
self
make a bid for clemency. ‘Please – I’m showing a collection in just a few minutes. People are coming. Don’t do this.’

But they were already doing it. The girls scrambled into their robes as men began emptying the rails of Alix’s precious collection.

The men in suits were the advance party. There were others behind, wearing bland laboratory coats that gave them the air of museum curators.
Alix watched her collection being fed into wooden crates on wheels. Her collection, her future … She was in such shock she hardly heard when Rosa hissed in her ear, ‘I’m going to drop the keys to your own wardrobe into the lavatory cistern. If those buggers want to see your private stuff, they’ll have to get their arms wet.’

Alix made no reply because a man was pulling Ma Fuite off its hanger.
She pleaded, ‘It’s velvet, you’ll crush it.’

A policeman asked her to stand aside. When she heard cupboards being opened elsewhere in the building, she knew they were raiding their way up to the ateliers. They’d find couture items, all her own legitimate property. No copies except … oh, God. They’d find the black Chanel evening gown she’d bought off Mabel Godnosc, and the caramel-coloured Lucien
Lelong she’d borrowed from Una all those months ago, which Una had given her before going to England. And the almost-Schiaparelli coat with its embroidered collar. Would those three items constitute piracy? She was persuading herself not when she remembered the cranberry-red suit. A suit with a Chanel label sewn inside.

She tried to sit down, missed the chair. One of the girls ran to help her
and put a robe around her. She saw their shock, their pity. Nice girls, but this humiliation would garnish every tea plate in Paris. They wouldn’t be able to stop themselves.
‘You’ll never guess …’

It got worse. At 1 p.m. she heard the raiding party retreating down the stairs, colliding with the fashion
cognoscenti
coming up. A seasoned torturer couldn’t have designed it better. Who had she to
thank for this? Whoever it was, many in the fashion world would agree that Alix Gower was reaping her just reward.

A pair of arms. She needed a pair of arms around her. The flesh-and-blood reality was Rosa, who let her cry on her bosom, then set her aside so she could announce, in her poshest voice, the regrettable cancellation of today’s show.