The Paris Seamstress

by Natasha Lester

  While Estella brushed her hair, Janie fished a copy of Women’s Wear Daily out of her handbag. “Did you see that?” she asked, pointing to a picture of a “kitchen dinner” dress, a Claire McCardell design complete with attached potholder.

  “I hope that’s supposed to be ironic,” Estella said grimly. “I see the point she’s making, that the dress can go from work to the kitchen and back out to the dinner table but couldn’t she have attached a…I don’t know…a…”

  “A box of rubbers?” Janie supplied.

  Estella doubled over laughing. “You’re terrible!” she said. “But yes, you get my point, although I was thinking of something more like a typewriter. All the women at the Barbizon are artists, musicians, actresses, secretaries. Not just the makers of dinner.”

  “A typewriter would be much less fun,” Janie grinned.

  They caught a cab to the 21 Club and Estella’s heart sank the minute her date, Eddie, said, “You sure are a looker.” He proceeded to regale her with a comprehensive rundown of baseball, which he said she’d need to get to know now that she wasn’t French anymore.

  “I’ll always be French,” Estella said stiffly. Even though she had no idea what being French meant anymore in a world where swastikas hung from every hotel, monument, and municipal building in Paris.

  Rather than think of France, she studied Nate, who seemed perfectly benign. He wasn’t as well off in the handsome department as she’d thought he’d be, but he clearly thought Janie was also a “looker.” He joined in the baseball talk with enthusiasm but had the manners to glance over at Janie occasionally to top up her wine, to ask her how her meal was—a meal that he’d ordered for her—and to ask her if she was cold, or if she wanted champagne instead, or to remark that he bet she’d never tasted lobsters so good before.

  No, Estella wanted to interject, our lives were so dull before you came along. We couldn’t order our own champagne or work out for ourselves if we were cold or make a decision about the lobster without first checking with you.

  But Janie didn’t seem to mind. She smiled and asked Nate to tell her more about the Yankees, whoever they were. Estella excused herself, knowing she was descending into grumpiness, hoping to recover her humor in the ladies’ room.

  Janie went with her. Once out of earshot, Estella said dryly, “I didn’t realize you were so interested in baseball.”

  “I couldn’t care less about it,” Janie said gaily as she reapplied her lipstick. “But men love it when you ask questions. It makes them feel important. Which makes them happy.”

  “Does he ever ask you anything in return?”

  “Why would he?” Janie shrugged. “I put on a dress, parade it around, take it off, put on another one.” She snapped her compact closed. “You could still make dresses when you’re forty. But my face is my fortune. Nobody will pay me for it when I’m forty.” Janie swept toward the door.

  Estella caught her arm before she left. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You should do whatever you have to do. But I might go back to Sam’s and do some work. I think that’s my fortune, not Eddie. Do you mind?”

  Janie hugged her. “Of course not. Besides, Eddie’s been ogling the legs of the lady at the table next to ours. He’s not the right man for you.”

  Estella laughed. “Thank you. My legs feel shunned but my ego is still intact. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Once back at Sam’s flat, she answered Sam’s question about her date by cutting herself some chocolate cake, rolling her eyes and saying, “If I never hear the word ‘baseball’ again, it’ll be too soon.”

  She changed out of her dress and into a pair of black rayon-crepe trousers that she’d made up in memory of the refugee women trudging across France. The matron at the Barbizon had censured Estella again when she’d seen her wearing them the week before.

  “Women do not wear slacks in the public areas of the Barbizon Hotel,” she’d said as she caught Estella crossing through the foyer.

  “Then I’d best get myself out onto the sidewalk,” Estella had replied, hurrying away with a grin. It had earned her a formal reprimand so she’d left the trousers at Sam’s knowing she couldn’t afford to lose her cheap accommodation.

  Now, she lapsed into quietness, getting up from the kitchen table every now and again to see how Sam had to alter the design slightly so that it could be cut in a more economical way, letting her pencil sketches come to life on the wooden mannequin they were using to trial the designs.

  “If we cut this on the bias,” he said of one, “then it can be slipped over the head and you can save money and time on fastenings.” Or, “If you alter the line of this skirt slightly, I can cut it a little off-bias and it will hang evenly but keep its fullness and you’ll save on pattern pieces.” And so the night wore on until Sam yawned so much that she told him to get some sleep.

  “Stay as long as you like,” he mumbled as he collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep in an instant.

  She’d finish one last dress, she decided, then she’d take the train back to the Barbizon, go in the service entrance to avoid being caught breaking curfew, and sleep for a few hours herself. She turned the wireless on low, in time to catch Charles de Gaulle speaking from England, urging the French people to fight, to do whatever they could to resist the Germans, to never, ever give in.

  As she listened, she felt so strongly the distance she’d put between herself and her mother, herself and her homeland, only able to sit here and hope and wish and pray, unable to do anything besides make dresses. What was her mother doing right now? Was she listening to de Gaulle too, in secret on a wireless hidden somewhere in the apartment? Was she thinking about Estella? Was she, did she ever, think about Lena? Did she even know about Lena? She must, surely.

  Then she heard a light tap on the door. She looked across at Sam, but he hadn’t stirred. It had to be Janie. Something must have gone wrong on her date if she’d come back here.

  Estella tiptoed over to the door and opened it with her finger on her lips to warn Janie that Sam was sleeping. Except it wasn’t Janie. It was Alex.

  Chapter Twelve

  God she was beautiful. Alex kept the thought strictly locked away, far behind his eyes, as he watched her finger drop from her lips. Her face, so easy to read, moved through shock, annoyance, and anger, and he read her move to close the door just in time, stopping it with his shoulder and stepping into the apartment.

  He took in the bed, shoved over to one side, the man sleeping in it, face turned away from the door. Alex couldn’t stop the movement of one eyebrow upward; he hadn’t realized she had a lover. But why shouldn’t she? Everyone else did. A sewing machine, fabric sprawled immodestly across a kitchen table, a rack on which hung two dresses. The lack of her in the room besides those things. She either didn’t stay here often or the man in the bed preferred she keep her belongings elsewhere. He was just glad he’d been able to find her here, rather than at the Barbizon, which would have challenged even his abilities to get inside secure buildings.

  The wireless crackled and de Gaulle’s voice concluded its speech. Good. She listened. She hadn’t put France out of sight and out of mind. Because France needed everyone to care if the British were ever going to defeat Germany at a game the Allies were scrambling to play.

  “I suppose I needn’t ask how you found me?” she said in a chilly voice, the distance of a hundred miles between them. “I imagine it’s the first thing they teach you at spy school; to hunt down unwilling parties to interrogate.”

  “I didn’t come to interrogate you.”

  “How did you meet Lena?” she asked abruptly.

  How to answer that question without adding a million more miles to the distance that already separated them? “I met Lena six months ago. Here in Manhattan. Not long after I met you.”

  “What are the chances,” she mused, “of you meeting both of us in different countries within a few weeks?”

  Alex couldn’t help it. He gave a small laugh.

  The tinie
st hint of a smile touched the corners of Estella’s mouth, making her, if possible, even more beautiful. Even that minute suggestion of amusement added stars to her silvery-gray eyes. But a movement from the man in the bed removed her smile before it became indelible.

  “How hard does he hit?” Alex asked about the man he assumed was her lover.

  “I can wake him up and find out if you like,” Estella said.

  Alex gave another muffled laugh. “Perhaps if we talk over there,” he indicated the table, “then I won’t need to.”

  “Cake?” Estella asked, holding up a plate of the most deliciously fudgy-looking chocolate cake Alex had ever seen.

  He nodded and she cut two slices and poured two glasses of whiskey, mixing her own into a sidecar. He chose the cake over the drink, taking an enormous bite. It took him a moment before he could speak. “That is possibly the best food I’ve ever had after midnight.”

  “I used to make it at least once a week. It was my regular snack after I arrived home from a night out in Montmartre.”

  “You made it?”

  “I can do other things besides look the same as the women you sleep with.”

  Alex’s laugh was a gasp. “I take it back. You’re more than prickly. France would have had more luck if they’d used you on the Maginot Line for their defenses.”

  It was the smallest of sounds but it was definitely a laugh and it had definitely come from Estella. “Point made,” she said and this time she tossed him a real smile and he caught his breath. She was stunning. Completely, utterly bewitching and he needed to get his head back in order—and definitely not drink the whiskey—if this was going to end up anywhere other than him kissing her.

  “I’m not kissing you again, by the way,” she said.

  For the first time in a very long time he felt himself blushing. Did she read minds too? “Glad we’ve established that, and the fact you can smile if you want to.”

  “What about we make a deal? I’ll stop being prickly if you stop flirting.”

  “I’m not flirting.”

  “You can’t help yourself. You don’t even know you’re doing it.” Her smile vanished.

  Shame. He knew what it was the instant it seized his gut with its unfamiliar fist. He was behaving appallingly and he had to stop. He swallowed the whiskey, despite his vow not to, and put on the impassive face of the man who’d faced much more difficult and dangerous situations than Estella, the man so used to not being who he really was that he could no longer be Alex Montrose no matter how hard he tried to find a way back to him.

  She noticed the shift in his demeanor. “That’s better,” she said quietly.

  “And you’re making a lot of assumptions about Lena and me.”

  “A man doesn’t kiss a woman the way you kissed me unless he’s sleeping with her.”

  “No.” He paused. Unless he has slept with her. Once. Past tense, not present. “I thought you might want to read this,” he said, passing her a newspaper article, and helping himself to more of the cake. “I know Lena didn’t explain a lot the other night. It’s…hard for her to talk about Harry. But this might tell you who he is.”

  He watched her eyes skim over the words Lena had shown him months before.

  June 26, 1906

  Harry Thaw Kills Stanford White in Jealous Rage Over Actress Wife

  Harry Thaw’s trial for murder has the plot of a dime-store novel. More sensational revelations were made in court today, leaving even the hardiest reporters gasping, ensuring this trial will remain fixed in the nation’s headlines for weeks to come.

  Below that piece of breathless reporting were photographs of three people: Thaw himself, or, as the newspaper called him, the “millionaire slayer”; the murder victim, an architect by the name of Stanford White; and Thaw’s wife, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, an actress whose marriage to Harry the previous year had, according to the newspaper, caused its own sensation. Estella rolled her eyes and Alex knew she was wondering what any of those people had to do with her. But she read on anyway.

  Harry Kendall Thaw, millionaire assassin of Stanford White, the world renowned architect, told his own story of the killing in court today. Jealousy, hate, and revenge were his motives. According to Thaw, White ruined his wife, Evelyn Nesbit, prior to their marriage by luring her into a secret loft adorned with a red velvet swing, and a bed where he drugged her and stole her maidenhood from her.

  At a subsequent meeting with White at a Manhattan party, Thaw said that Nesbit, “my poor delicate wife, shivered and shook when confronted with the sight of the scoundrel White. Now, he won’t be able to ruin any more homes. White deserved all he got.”

  What White got from Thaw was a public execution; Thaw strolled up to White during a performance at the rooftop theater at Madison Square Garden—a Stanford White project no less—and shot him in the head while the performers on the stage sang “I Could Love a Million Girls.”

  But was Harry Thaw as guilty of violence toward Nesbit as Stanford White? Another witness, a friend of Nesbit’s, in the most shocking testimony, claimed that she tried to rescue Nesbit from Thaw’s clutches in Paris two years earlier. Thaw had, she said, beaten Nesbit repeatedly until her skin was blue and then locked her in a room while he went out to solicit women. Nesbit was kept a virtual prisoner by Thaw in Paris and she believed that Thaw would eventually kill her. His actions were those of a brute and a madman, the witness stated.

  But Thaw explained away his behavior as a simple attempt to extract the truth from Nesbit about what Stanford White had done to her.

  What sort of woman could prompt such jealousy-fueled acts of rage? Evelyn Nesbit is an infamous beauty, a Gibson Girl, an artist’s model, a performer. She has attracted the attention of many a New York gentleman from the time she was only fourteen, including that of John Barrymore, Stanford White, and Harry Thaw. During Barrymore’s courtship, which ended in a proposal that she turned down due to the actor’s lack of funds and White’s interference, Nesbit underwent at least two emergency appendectomies, which were rumored to have been a cover for other operations meant to save her from disgrace, and had to take at least one trip to Paris to recover.

  Today’s claims of Thaw’s predilection for violence are not the first to have been made. Earlier in the week, a Manhattan brothel madam said Thaw took pleasure in beating her girls with a jeweled silver-capped whip…

  Estella put the newspaper down. “I need a drink.” She finished her sidecar. “What happened to him in the end? I’m not sure I can read any more.”

  “To Thaw?”

  She nodded.

  He produced another article with more garish headlines by way of explanation. “He had a history of drug-taking and erratic behavior which meant that he was able to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. But he only served a few years before another team of lawyers proved he was no longer insane and arranged his release—don’t forget he had a lot of money. Evelyn filed for divorce then.”

  “If what the paper says is true about what he did to her in Paris, why did she ever marry him in the first place?”

  Alex shrugged. “I guess she was young. Young people do foolish things.” Which skated dangerously close to the truth of his own past so he pointed at the article to bring the conversation back to Harry Thaw, and thus to Lena. “Before the Thaws took in Lena, Harry whipped and abused a boy almost into unconsciousness in late 1916. He was found insane and locked up again. But it only took him seven years to prove his sanity this time and to be released. At which time he took on the care of Lena from his mother.”

  “He doesn’t sound like much of a father figure,” Estella said with a frown.

  “He wasn’t,” Alex replied shortly, wishing to God that Lena would just tell Estella what Harry had done to her, certain it would arouse her sympathy. But Lena had expressly forbidden it. So he was doing what he could, without betraying Lena’s confidence, to make Estella understand at least part of it. Because, like everyone else, he had no real idea of what any of
this meant, of how it might connect Lena and Estella.

  She stood up suddenly, surprising him. He’d relaxed too much with the whiskey and the goddamn cake. He sat up straighter, waiting.

  She leaned her back against the wall and studied him in return. “Tell me about you.”

  He reached over and switched off the lamp. “It’s bright in here for two in the morning. And no, I’m not turning off the light in an attempt to seduce you.” It was better without the lights. More places to hide. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “Where are you from? How did you become a spy? And who are you spying for now?”

  “Is that all?” he replied, pretending to joke but she didn’t respond. He supposed he owed her some information. He folded his arms across his chest, making sure to keep his face blank. “I’m from everywhere and nowhere,” he said lightly. “Born in London, son of a diplomat. I’ve lived in France, London, Shanghai, Florence, and even Hong Kong. I went to university here in New York, which gives me cover of being American; if I was in France as an Englishman I’d be interned. Whereas America is still neutral. I chose my job because I can speak more languages than most, because whispered conversations and politics are in my blood, and because it pays me a lot of money. And that’s about all I can say. Now, what about you?”

  Estella turned to the window and stood with her back to him, looking out on the real witching hour of New York, the slice of time between true night and morning. When she spoke, her voice was expressionless and he listened hard for a change in inflection that would point him to the truth that would naturally lie somewhere between what she would say and what he heard.

  “Apparently my father is American. I have American papers. My mother was abandoned as a baby and raised by nuns in a convent; they taught her to sew. She had me when she was only fifteen, told me that my father was a French soldier in the Great War, that he married her one day, and died the next. But if I have American papers, then none of what she told me is true.”