by Kate Parker
“Oh, that skirt is nice,” Leah said.
Esther mock whined, “Why do I feel like I’m pregnant at just the wrong time?”
“I’ll still have these drawings when you’re looking for something new for your wardrobe, and I’m sure Mimi Mareau will be happy to make something for you,” I assured her.
“But I’m going to miss out while you snoop around her salon,” Esther complained.
“Your father would rather you didn’t put yourself in harm’s way,” I said. “That’s why he hired me. And in the meantime, you need to talk to anyone you think is in a position to talk to an assassin.”
“That would be no one,” Leah said.
“How well do you know the people on the committee? You’ve only been married a year,” I said.
“They are the people I’ve seen the most of since I came to this country. They are all very English, and they are teaching me to be very English. None of them could possibly talk to an assassin. Or be a murderer,” Leah insisted.
Esther glanced at me, and I saw doubt in her eyes. I couldn’t hide my investigations for her father from Esther, of all people. And Esther couldn’t hide her doubts from me.
After Leah and I made plans to meet as soon as she could get an appointment, Esther and I shared a taxi into town. “While you and Leah will be looking at the latest fashions, I’m going to pay calls on the women of the committee. I’ll ask a lot of questions about families, which they’ll think is because of the baby, and maybe I’ll find the link to Elias or the Nazis.”
I didn’t know whether I should tell her or not, but I murmured, “You might listen for the name ‘Meirsohn,’ too.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“His real name was Josef Meirsohn.”
“Why did he change it?”
“He was using a nom de guerre. Maybe to hide his identity. Maybe to protect his family. I’m sorry, Esther, but it’s part of the mystery.”
Esther lowered her voice to a whisper. “There’s something else going on. Something bigger than one murder.”
“Right now I’m just trying to gather facts. When we know something, then it’ll be time to make connections.”
“You sound like a detective.” Esther sounded amazed, but she managed a smile as she spoke.
“I was hoping I sounded like a reporter.” I gave her an answering smile. I still wasn’t happy about reporting to General Alford. That felt too much like spying.
“Even if my father won’t let you tell me what’s going on now, I hope you will when it’s over. There’s a big difference between murderer and assassin.” Esther stared at me.
I couldn’t hold her gaze.
* * *
I wished life would return to its normal quiet weekday pattern, but that wouldn’t happen for a host of reasons. My mind was churning over what I’d learned from General Alford and what he hoped to learn from me. Reina was afraid of the person who killed Elias. Or Josef Meirsohn, as she had known him. In the center of it all stood Mimi’s salon.
And everyone was on pins and needles waiting to see what Hitler would do in Czechoslovakia.
On Thursday, Jane and I could barely find room to stand in the first-floor showroom during Mimi’s first London fashion parade. She had managed to make it uniquely British, with tweed suits alternating with French-inspired evening gowns.
The other two shows we’d covered that day had shown the same mixture of British tweed and pearls alongside French elegance and glamour. We snagged glasses of champagne of much better quality at Mimi’s than at the shows we’d been to before we reached hers. Everything, from the décor of the showroom to the imagination shown in the fashions, was just a bit more sophisticated, a tad more dazzling, than at the other two salons.
I wondered how the two shows covered by the other team from the Daily Premier would stack up.
I was surprised to discover one of the models in Mimi’s show was Lady Patricia. She had the looks and self-confidence to walk purposefully around the room for two turns while showing off different outfits, both times wearing Mimi-designed evening gowns. I couldn’t imagine why she’d do something so close to actual work.
As the show wound down and customers and reporters swarmed around Mimi, I slipped behind the silver metallic curtain in a search for Lady Patricia. I found her dressed in her own clothes watching the back staircase from one of the dressing cubicles.
Two people, a man and a woman, were on the staircase landing. The woman, a blonde, wore the deep rose duster of a Mareau salon employee, but I couldn’t quite see her face. The pair exchanged a few furtive words, and then hurried down the stairs while Lady Patricia walked toward me.
“You showed off Mimi’s designs very well,” I told her while trying to swing around her.
“Thank you.” She kept blocking my way.
“How did you get to model in her show?”
“I asked her. Daddy’s paying her enough for my trousseau. She could hardly refuse.” She smiled one of those girls’ school smug smiles I’d learned to hate years ago.
“Who was the man by the back stairs?” All I could tell from my vantage point was a very tall man had been talking to one of Mimi’s employees. From where he stood on the top step, I could clearly see only a dark wing-tip shoe and cuffed suit-trousers. The rest of him had been in shadow or hidden by the doorframe.
“What man?”
“I saw a man talking on the staircase. With Fleur.” That was a shot in the dark, but from what I could see of the woman, she had looked a bit like Fleur.
Lady Patricia glared at me. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“You were looking right at them.”
“Was I?” She stepped around me to pick up her jacket and bag from a cubicle and disappeared out into the showroom.
I glanced around. The models were dressing, paying me no attention. I bolted down the back staircase. Somewhere below me, I heard a door slam.
I was too late to catch the mystery man—not that I’d know what to ask if I did catch him. There was no reason to think Lady Patricia had anything to do with Elias’s murder. Except for her strange behavior and her father’s politics.
Stepping out of the back stairs on the ground floor, I headed toward the front of the building, only to find Lady Patricia going out the front door.
I followed, worrying about what I’d say if I caught up with her. When I opened the door, I realized I didn’t have to worry. Lady Patricia was stepping into a smart two-seat tourer in red, the canvas top down, the automobile looking faster and sleeker than anything else on the road.
A man held the door for her. A very tall man who I saw wore the same color suit as the man I had seen on the staircase.
Then he walked around the auto to get into the driver’s seat, and I saw his face clearly. It was her father. The Duke of Marshburn, wearing wing-tip shoes and cuffed trousers. He must have come to congratulate Mimi on her show.
As they drove off, I jotted down the license plate number in my notebook. Just in case.
I walked back inside to a great deal of chatter from women talking above me in the showroom. Seeing my chance, I hurried down the basement stairs.
I had reached the bottom just as Fleur stepped in front of me, holding a large pair of scissors. “What are you doing down here?”
Blast. I came up with the first excuse I could think of. “There was a man on the staircase. I followed him down.”
“I don’t see him, do you?” she asked, staring at me.
“Did you see a man lingering around the stairs?”
“Not while I’ve been down here.” She held the scissors like a knife.
I wondered if it was Fleur or someone else in the fashion house I had seen talking to the tall man. “I guess he’s left already. Fleur, should I call you madame or mademoiselle?”
“Why?”
“Because in England it is more respectful to call you ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs.’ and your last name. What is your last name?”
“But I am French and ‘Fleur’ is just fine. Now I suggest you go upstairs where guests and reporters are supposed to be.” Fleur gestured with her scissors.
I nodded and ran up the stairs, glad I didn’t hear her footsteps behind me. I didn’t ask if she’d been the one I’d seen talking to the man in the stairwell. To the Duke of Marshburn. It was cowardice, but I didn’t care. Fleur looked like she knew how to handle a pair of scissors to do more than cut fabric.
From downstairs, I heard Fleur call up to me, “In English, it’s ‘Miss Bettenard.’”
* * *
I didn’t finish my article on the three fashion shows I’d seen until Friday morning, in plenty of time for the Saturday edition of the paper. It didn’t matter, since there was no room for our fashion news that day. Friday’s paper was full of Chamberlain’s trip to Germany to negotiate a settlement to the Sudetenland crisis. I read the stories and wondered, not for the first time, where Adam was.
We were very likely going to war, and he was a soldier. I was terrified for him.
That night, I received a call from Leah, saying she’d made an appointment for the following Monday at Mimi’s salon for a fitting. I told her I’d meet her outside the building for her two o’clock appointment.
On Saturday morning, I knew everyone would read about Hitler’s demand that the Sudetenland be handed over by the following Wednesday, September twenty-eighth, or he would take it by force. We were closer to war than we’d ever been, and I wondered if anything I learned at Mimi’s salon would make any difference.
I read the Daily Premier from cover to cover. The stories on the fashion shows had been cut to the minimum.
I spent the morning not knowing what to do with myself. My father was busy meeting the French government in London with our diplomats to work on a mutually agreeable response to Hitler’s demands. Adam had vanished into war preparations. I’d already cleaned the flat until it sparkled.
The weather was too nice to stay indoors. I called Reggie’s cousin Abby and invited myself to her Sussex home. She sounded thrilled to see me.
She met me at the train station, regaling me on the way to the manor house with stories of her husband, the war hero Sir John, pacing and fuming over “the government’s bloody weak-kneed bowing to that bloody little German.”
“Surely Sir John doesn’t want to see us go to war,” I said.
“He doesn’t. However, he doesn’t see how we’re going to avoid it now. Not without the king goose-stepping and shouting ‘Heil Hitler.’”
I nodded. “I can’t see King George doing that willingly. Sir John is right.” The enormity of it hit me. “Oh, dear.”
Abby gave a loud sigh.
By silent agreement, we didn’t use the “w” word for the rest of the day while we worked in her flower beds. We dressed for dinner, a glum affair with only the three of us.
Their two sons, Reggie’s godsons, had gone back to school that week. I missed their chatter and clatter around the house. I was sure the house echoed with emptiness for Abby.
“Nigel will be sixteen in November,” Abby said suddenly.
“Darling, don’t,” Sir John said.
I was about to say The war will be over before he’ll be conscription age, but then I realized I didn’t know. None of us did. And Abby didn’t need foolish sympathy.
Any more than I did for Adam Redmond’s fate.
CHAPTER TEN
“I don’t want this war,” Abby said, clutching her napkin in one fist.
“None of us do,” I told her.
“I wish Hitler had never been born.” She threw her napkin on the table, took a deep breath, and said, “Shall we have our coffee in the drawing room?”
From then until I left on Sunday afternoon, Abby didn’t display any more signs of nerves. We both acted as if things were normal and talked about her stunning chrysanthemums and her eccentric neighbors.
* * *
Monday morning, I got right to work on society page announcements and kept it up through my lunch hour. Then I told Miss Westcott that I had a meeting to cover and met Leah down the street from the couture house. We went inside together, where we were escorted upstairs by a young woman with a French accent who I hadn’t met in my earlier visits. She wore the ubiquitous Mareau salon deep rose smock over her clothes.
We were seated in the showroom and Leah was asked about what type of outfit she was looking for. As she set down her bag, it landed with a thud. The young assistant and I looked at her handbag at the sound, a noise I remembered from the committee meeting. She had to be stronger than her frail appearance led me to believe.
Leah ignored this as she said she wanted a tweed suit and then had me show my drawing of Lady Patricia’s tweed skirt.
The young woman, whose name turned out to be Veronique, was surprised at the drawing. “You draw very well, madame, but I’m not sure it can be translated into woolen fabric.”
“Lady Patricia, the Duke of Marshburn’s daughter, had a tweed suit made for her trousseau that I drew this from,” I told her. “Mrs. Nauheim wants a suit cut like Lady Patricia’s, but in a different tweed, and she wants some other changes. Obviously, she doesn’t want a copy of Lady Patricia’s suit.”
“Obviously,” Veronique said, her eyes widening more. “I’ll get Madame Mimi, shall I?”
We both nodded.
Mimi arrived a few minutes later. “You’ve been giving away my new designs,” she said to me accusingly.
“There was no way I wouldn’t tell my good friend about your marvelous tweed suit, since she’s been looking for one.”
She considered that for an instant before a smile crossed her face. “I’m glad you find it marvelous. There will have to be stylistic changes.”
“Of course,” Leah said. She looked pleased to be getting an original, or the closest thing to it, from Mimi Mareau. “I’d like a tweed in a light shade. And the fur collar in a light shade, as well.”
“Very good. And I’ll make some changes to the pockets and buttons,” Mimi said.
Since I hadn’t drawn the pockets and buttons, Leah was content with that.
Mimi led us to a dressing room in the back as she asked Leah to disrobe down to her slip and called Veronique back to take measurements. I noticed two of the other dressing rooms were occupied, but their inhabitants were too busy to pay any attention to us.
The cubbyhole where Mimi deposited us was near the back stairs. I kept an eye on the stairs and a minute later I was rewarded with a view of Reina going down them. I could hear Mimi’s voice somewhere, but she was out of sight, no doubt working with another client.
I whispered, “I have to question that woman,” and gave a small wave to Leah. She looked puzzled but nodded slightly before I slipped down the back stairs. Peeping in, I didn’t see Reina in the ground-floor workroom where two seamstresses were busy at their machines. I took a chance and went down to the basement.
There were more trunks against the back wall now than when I was down here before. Reina was reaching into one of the old trunks I hadn’t looked in when she must have heard my footsteps. She turned toward me, a guilty look on her face.
I hurried over to her. “What’s wrong, Reina?”
“You shouldn’t be down here.”
“You want to know who killed Josef,” I said, using the man’s real name.
She nodded, tears springing to her eyes. “He was my friend when we were children.”
“Tell me about him.”
“He was a year or two older than me, perhaps thirty-two now, and the smartest boy in our village school. He was daring, stubborn,” she said with a smile, “and handsome. His family was among the wealthiest in the village and he had relatives in Berlin, so they sent him there for schooling. Later they said he was going to university there, then law school. That was a few years after the war.”
“What is your family name, Reina?”
“Blumfeld. Mimi tells everyone it’s Belleau.”
So Mimi had t
o know Reina was Jewish.
“Did Josef come here to meet you the day he died?”
“He asked if there was a safe place to meet. He said he was in danger and wanted to give me something. To keep it safe for him. He said it was important. I told him about the basement and the door kept on the latch for the workmen.”
“How did he know you were in London? Both of you had just arrived here.” It proved to be an unlucky meeting for Josef.
“I went to Oxford Street to look in the shops at the fashions. To see what was au courant here.” She looked defensive as she added, “Mimi thinks we can work all the time, but it is not my fame, my money. It is hers. I have no wish to work that hard for someone else. Let her work that hard if she wants.”
Reina shook her head. “I saw Josef coming out of a hotel entrance and we ran into each other on the pavement. We only spoke long enough to arrange the meeting here.”
She lifted a bolt of light green silk from the trunk. “Now you need to go back upstairs. I have to take this up…” Her voice trailed away as a length of pipe fell from the center of the bolt and fell to the floor with a clank.
One end showed traces of blood and hair stuck to it.
“Do you know how this ended up in your fabric?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide.
“Don’t touch it. I’ll call the police.” And then Mimi would know I was in her basement again asking questions. I didn’t want her to be aware of my interest in this murder. I had come here because I was thrilled with her glamour and her style. Her vision for women’s clothes.
But we found a body, and everything changed.
“Thank you for…” Reina shuddered and dashed up the stairs, clutching the fabric to her chest.
I went up to the front entrance and used their phone to call the police with my finding. When I hung up, the girl at the desk demanded, “What are you doing?”
“The murder weapon was discovered downstairs. The police have to retrieve it.”
“Madame won’t like it.”
“Why didn’t they find it the first time?” I asked the girl at the desk as if this were her fault.
