The Dress Thief

by Natalie Meg Evans

  The fitter, Marguerite, came running in and they all stared at each other.

  ‘Right,’ Alix said. ‘No point waiting for them to find me.’ She went downstairs, Rosa and Marguerite behind her. From the ground-floor office came a drizzling sound – M. Hubert asleep in his chair, toupée awry, head pressed against the bell.

  They joked about it in the end, but Alix was still jittery at the close of the day. With a new collection almost complete, she felt vulnerable. There were people in the jealous world of couture who wanted to see her fail. She knew for a fact that Simon Norbert and Mlle Lilliane had played a part in blackening her name. Marcy Stein, whom she’d met one day buying buttons in Rue St-Denis, had told her so.

  *

  As Alix was slicing bread in her flat that evening, Hubert knocked, contrition on his face and his arms full of roses. ‘These came as I was locking up.’

  Sighing, Alix took them and put them in the sink. Twenty-four stems, boudoir red. Tomorrow she’d distribute them among her sewing girls. Bonnet, who ate with Alix and Mémé several times a week, put one to his nose and said, ‘He obviously wants you back, for all he was furious when you left.’

  ‘How do you know Serge was furious?’

  ‘Because I still visit my old Montmartre haunts, and the saga of Serge Martel’s feral rage was the talk of the cafés. Everyone wanted to know my opinion because they know I’m your special friend.’ Snapping the head off a rose and tucking it into a ragged button hole of his overalls, he described how Serge had hurled a shoe at the mirror where Alix had written her lipstick ‘goodbye’. The glass had shattered and Serge had cut himself badly. The cleaning woman who’d witnessed the outburst had been sacked on the spot. ‘And later he flung a bottle of wine at a waiter who didn’t fetch him a glass quickly enough, though I’m told he often does that. A few days on –’ Bonnet shrugged – ‘the storm had passed. Things end and he knows it.’

  It was Dulcie L’Amour who now sat at the special table, sipping Lanson champagne and eating oysters arranged in a heart shape – when she wasn’t on stage wiggling and cooing.

  Serge had cared enough about her to hurt himself and lash out, Alix told herself. But then he’d replaced her so quickly. So then why the roses? His way of telling her she could have him back, if she wanted?

  *

  A thunderstorm that night gave little respite. The next morning Alix went up to her atelier and found her girls stripped down to their petticoats. Una had told her once that American department stores had a thing called ‘air conditioning’ that sucked out heat and moisture, leaving the atmosphere pleasantly cool even in the grip of summer. One day, she promised herself. One day.

  ‘Mlle Gower?’ Marguerite poked her head into the atelier. ‘A visitor. I’ve put her in the salon.’

  Alix said she’d be right down. She turned to her première, who was holding out a muslin toile. Inspecting it, Alix nodded. ‘Very well, Mme LeVert, cut the fabric. We’ve fitted this toile a thousand times and we can’t waste the time we have left.’ Always frightening, the moment the scissors bit into costly cloth. She always put it off far too long, but then, so had Javier.

  Alix went down to meet her guest, feeling guilty relief. You could sense the temperature decreasing with every step. The salon’s walls were painted ice grey. Unable to afford carpet, she’d painted the floorboards white. She’d had the eighteenth-century mouldings and ceiling roses lime-washed and the effect was ghostly, like Javier’s salon through the voile drapes. Her only extravagances had been table lamps and elegant sofas. Her clients might come upstairs wondering what sort of backstreet oddity they’d stumbled into, but the moment they sat down, they were at home.

  A leggy girl got up as Alix came in. Alix immediately knew her to be a mannequin, from the way she moved. It took her a moment to recognise Javier’s Nelly under a pale straw hat. Last time she’d seen her had been at Javier’s ruined show last July. She stiffened, but Nelly embraced her and, with a gesture for the salon, said, ‘Room to swing a cat?’

  Alix fixed them iced lemon water and sat back to learn why Nelly had called. It took a while because Nelly wanted to tell about her engagement to a theatrical entrepreneur and her September wedding, for which Javier was making her a gown. But eventually she pouted and said, ‘I’ve been meaning to call for some days. I saw Serge Martel a little while ago in a club. He came over and mentioned you.’

  ‘We aren’t together now,’ Alix said quickly.

  ‘Hmm. That’s not quite what he said. He thinks you’ll go back when you’ve had your sulk out.’

  So Bonnet was wrong. Serge hadn’t accepted the end of the affair. ‘A long sulk, Nelly.’

  ‘I’m glad. You ought to know what happened to Solange. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.’ Nelly’s face lost its humour. ‘That time Solange was so impossible? Kept storming out? Only a couple of us knew … she was pregnant.’

  Alix whispered, ‘I had no idea. Was it … ?

  ‘Serge’s. Solange thought he was going to marry her. He said he would, then –’ Nelly wrinkled her nose – ‘he met you.’

  ‘He left her for me?’

  ‘Worse than that. He got some tablets.’ Nelly glanced around, though nobody could have entered the salon without them seeing. ‘They brought on a miscarriage. It went wrong and she nearly died. She had to go to her parents’.’

  ‘To Corsica?’

  ‘Corsica? No. Her family live in Le Havre. Anyway, when I saw her she looked awful. She was wearing a hat, the sort little schoolchildren wear. She said she was staying away, getting over what happened, only … Alix, in the end she showed me. She’s … disfigured.’

  Alix frowned. ‘From having a miscarriage?’

  ‘No. Because of Serge. Solange’s parents were threatening to go to the police about the pills. Serge agreed to pay compensation to Solange, only they had an argument and he bit her.’

  ‘Bit? How?’

  ‘Sank his teeth into the side of her face and tore her ear.’ Nelly gathered up her things. ‘Look, I have to rush. I’m meeting my fiancé at the Crillon. Alix, you had to know.’

  ‘Wait. Serge isn’t violent, not to women.’ Alix followed Nelly to the door. ‘He’s selfish, but he never hurt me.’

  ‘Don’t give him the chance. Don’t end up like Solange.’

  Alix couldn’t let her go without asking after Javier. Nelly was quiet for a moment. ‘You obviously don’t hear much these days. He’s closed his doors. After last summer’s fiasco he tried to keep going. He brought out a fabulous collection in February.’

  ‘I know. I saw pictures—’

  Nelly gave her such a look she fell silent. ‘Then all the fabric companies demanded payment at once. There’s a foreign businessman called Maurice Ralsberg who has bought out all the smaller companies. He foreclosed. Javier tried to get financiers to help, but the debts were too big. One afternoon when he and Mme Frankel were sitting down to discuss ideas for July, he threw down his pen and said it was over. Go down Rue de la Trémoille, you’ll see boarding on the windows.’

  *

  After Nelly left, Alix sat, numb, until Rosa came to find her.

  ‘Look at you. Hubert hasn’t been ringing his bells again?’

  ‘Oh, Rosa, I’ve just heard the two most dreadful things.’

  ‘Two, eh? Means number three’s on its way. May we shut? Everyone’s wilting and it’s gone seven.’

  Number three came an hour later.

  *

  Alix always took a couple of hours off for dinner. Mémé no longer cooked. Her injury had affected her balance, and though she was lucid some of the time, the powders she took to ease a persistent headache inhibited her memory and concentration. Much of her life in London and Paris before the attack was a blur, yet she still recalled her youth with absolute clarity.

  Putting together a potato salad with cold salt beef, Alix laid the table and filled water jugs. It was this time of night she got the champagne twitch, a gnawing need to s
ee the bubbles rise, the bloom appear on the glass. Drinking water helped, so did keeping busy. Going down the steps to Bonnet’s studio, she smelled the inevitable strong coffee and something else. That putrid tang that announced her friend was priming a canvas.

  ‘Rabbit size,’ she said. ‘You’re still buying the cheap stuff.’

  ‘No,’ Bonnet said without breaking stroke. ‘I buy expensive stuff and the bastard who makes it swaps it for the cheap stuff.’

  ‘Take it back.’

  ‘The factory’s out in La Villette, too far. Your grandmother’s in the garden. Pick your way around the clutter.’

  Mémé came in before Alix reached the door. Taking her granddaughter’s arm and leaning against her, she watched Bonnet’s paintbrush moving up and down, apparently fascinated.

  ‘Horrible smell, Raphael Bonnet, and I smelled it before. I smelled it when I was bashed on the head.’

  Bonnet stopped. Turned slowly.

  Mémé went on, ‘I had no idea until now why my head hurt and why I had to leave my flat in St-Sulpice. Now I remember.’

  ‘Grandmère, are you telling us you know who hit you?’

  ‘The man who smells like Bonnet’s paintbrush.’

  Alix stared at Bonnet, who made a flummoxed face back.

  ‘I got home from playing cards. It was dark. The front door was open and I thought you were home. I called “Aliki?” No answer, so I supposed you were in bed. I went to the kitchen to make my hot milk. I heard a door open and I shouted, “You call this a time to come home?” I turned, but instead of you, there he was.’

  ‘Who, Mémé?’

  ‘The man who smelled like Bonnet’s paintbrush,’ Danielle Lutzman repeated with great patience. ‘I couldn’t see his face. When he said, “You’re back too early,” I picked up the iron skillet but I couldn’t hold its weight.’ Mémé held up her hands, displaying frail wrists. ‘He took it and hit me very hard.’ She patted the place. ‘I fell and I remember his stink as he knelt beside me.’

  Alix remembered being sent flying in the dark. She remembered a foul rag in her mouth, a man’s face covered by a mesh of oily wool. She picked up Bonnet’s tin of rabbit size and sniffed. ‘It’s the same odour, you’re right.’

  Her grandmother gazed back at her with childlike eyes. ‘Shall we tell the police that I remember how the bad man stank?’

  Alix thought – a smell as evidence? They’d be laughed out of the police station. Besides, she didn’t want to go anywhere near the police.

  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.’

  Chapter Thirty

  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 ‘18th 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 18th 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.