The Dress Thief (6 page)

‘It came by hand, Monsieur.’ Jolyan Ferryman always addressed him as ‘Mon-sewer.’ The boy’s
French, though textbook correct, came with an excruciating English accent. To be in Ferryman’s presence was to wince more than was comfortable or dignified.

‘Just put it on my desk. Who’s it from?’

‘The personage declined to give his name and I felt it unseemly to ask. It was a working type of person.’

Jean-Yves got the subtext. His gentleman-secretary resented
performing tasks more fitted
to a footman. Tough. This household couldn’t run to footmen. In fact, if prices kept increasing, Jean-Yves doubted he would run even to a secretary much longer. Now, that would be a tricky conversation to have with his wife. When it came to their style of living, Rhona de Charembourg aspired to the grand ways of her English girlhood. Aisleby Park, with fifty indoor staff and an estate ten miles round,
was Rhona’s pattern of respectable living. Had she known she’d end up ruling a household of four domestics and a part-time gardener … undoubtedly she wouldn’t have married him.

Jean-Yves dismissed Ferryman and tore open the letter, extracting a sheet that reeked of cigarette smoke. Without doubt, a worker’s brand.

The click of the garden gate took him to the window in time to see his wife and
daughters leaving the house. Each woman wore a suit of fine Prince of Wales check. His two daughters each held a dog lead with a white Pomeranian on the end of it. Rhona, Christine and Ninette with Tosca and Figaro, taking the air on Boulevard Racan. A charming ritual that wouldn’t last much longer. Christine was marrying this June and the family circle would be cut by one.

Better read that letter.
DE CHAREMBOURG was written across the top. He absorbed what followed and the blood faltered in his veins.

He sat down. Forced himself to breath evenly. He’d suffered
chest trauma in the Great War and, though only fifty-six, he sometimes rasped like a spent hackney horse. He reread the letter in silence:

On 21
^st
December 1903, you slew Alfred Lutzman. Time to pay. There are witnesses living.
Meet my terms or I will tell your dirty secrets
.

I can hurt someone you love
.

His gaze flew towards the boulevard where his wife and daughters strolled. In what way, hurt? When his telephone rang, he snatched it up. ‘De Charembourg. Who is this?’

‘You got my note, M. le Comte? You understand my meaning?’ The voice was hoarse, the accent hard to place … something guttural mixed up in Parisian
argot.

Jean-Yves answered in his crispest Academy French – an instinctive defence. ‘Whoever you are, I imagine you are hoping for money. Prepare to be disappointed. Your accusations are as wild as they are offensive.’

A crackling pause. Then: ‘You lead an interesting life, Monsieur. So many friends. So many
lady
friends … Can your wife count them on her fingers? I’m sure she tries.’

‘How dare
you speak of my wife?’ How did this creature know anything of his life? Of his discreet liaisons? He was so careful.

The caller gave a thick laugh. ‘You are an appreciator of female beauty, and what is wrong with that? Women and girls,
ah … so tender and vulnerable, no? Is it not tragic when a young girl is hurt? You would not wish to cause the mutilation of a girl’s face?’

‘God, no. Of course
not. What—’

The voice became businesslike. ‘Five hundred thousand francs and nobody you love will know what a bastard you are – well, you
were
. I know what you did to Alfred Lutzman.’ The line went dead.

Jean-Yves discovered his shirt was soaked. At last, after so many years, the horror of that winter’s day in Kirchwiller had come back to haunt him. Five hundred thousand francs was equivalent
to a year’s untaxed income. How would he find such a sum?

In London he’d held a responsible position in the Banque d’Alsace, retiring with shares that bolstered his current, modest salary as a director of a textiles firm. Rhona had brought money to the marriage too, but what remained of that was invested for their daughters. And there was far less of it than she imagined. As Miss Aisleby, heiress
to her grandfather’s coal-mining fortune, she’d once been the richest girl in northern England. By the time she inherited, the Aisleby pits were exhausted and war had wiped out her invested fortune. Her grandfather’s debts and death duties took much of the rest. Jean-Yves often tried to explain that it was mismanagement and socialism that had swallowed her wealth, not theft, but Rhona still believed
her money existed somewhere. She certainly spent as if it did.

Bluntly, he wasn’t up to the luxury of a blackmailer.

He realised the telephone receiver was slick with sweat, and wiped it quickly. Who did that malevolent voice belong to? And how could a stranger ever know about events that took place in Alsace thirty-five years ago? It had all been hushed up.

He could think of only one person
who might tell him. He must break a taboo and ask her to meet him.

*

‘Paul, I’ll do it. I’ll steal Javier’s spring–summer collection so neither of us need worry about money ever again. I’ll slip into his show in disguise with a sketchbook up my skirt. Just don’t ever tell my grandmother.’

Having said her piece, Alix dug her fork into a mound of grated carrot doused in vinaigrette. She had radishes
on her plate too – and cold green beans, boiled egg, onion and slices of Toulouse sausage. This café on Butte de Montmartre specialised in the cheap and the vibrant. It was Friday lunchtime, 12
^th
March, and though the wind was still sharp, Place du Tertre was bright with sunshine, the trees squeezing into bud. Alix had just completed a night shift at the exchange and a further four hours to cover
for a sick colleague. She felt light-headed. ‘It’s mad, stealing a whole collection. And impossible but …’ She broke off.

Paul was making a dam of salt in a trickle of wine. When she asked, ‘Am I dining alone?’ he made a face and responded, ‘I’ve something to tell you.’

Oh, no. Surely his contact hadn’t approached somebody else
to steal the collection? Not after she’d spent sleepless nights
working out how to do it without actually breaking into Maison Javier in the night and carrying away the clothes. She watched Paul trying to spear a radish only for it to bounce off his plate and on to the cobbles. ‘If it’s bad news, give it.’

Paul grimaced. ‘I’m planning my words so you don’t bite my head off.’

‘I always bite your head off.’ A closer look revealed the blur of sleeplessness
in his eyes too. ‘Midnight oil?’

‘Nightmares. Every time I close my eyes, I see my mother’s corpse.’

‘Oh, don’t, Paul.’

‘And the police came to my boat.’

‘Police?’

‘Wanting to see my mooring permit.’

‘You
do
have a permit?’

He gave her a look that said,
What d’you think?
‘Alix, you always say you want to be a couturier and open your own fashion house? Well, my contact has arranged a job
interview for you.’

Her heart scudded to a halt. ‘What?’

‘At Maison Javier. Then you wouldn’t have to sneak into his shows; you’d be at the heart of his organisation.’

‘Oh.’ That was it then. The chance she’d dreamed of. Only …

‘Did I say something wrong?’

‘No. Well, a bit.’ Paul was enticing her to break her promise
to Mémé, but offering her the chance to betray herself too. It was so hard
to explain. She stared across the square, then waved her fork at an artist erecting his easel. ‘See him, with the little fat legs? Bonnet – my artist friend who lives here on the square? –’ she indicated a row of old houses behind her. ‘He says that man has spent twenty years sketching tourists, smoothing out their chins and the bumps on their noses. When he goes home, there’s a lake of charcoal
dust on the cobbles with his footprints in it, a memento of where he’s stood all day. For him, making a pretty picture and getting paid is what it’s about.’

Paul grunted. ‘From what you’ve told me about Bonnet’s empty food cupboards, he could do with selling a picture now and again, rather than criticising those who do.’

She leaped to Bonnet’s defence. ‘He’d rather starve than paint to order!
My grandfather felt the same. He believed that a finished picture had lost its soul.’

Paul tried to spear another radish. ‘How d’you know?’

‘Mémé says so. Grandpapa would paint the same scene over and over, trying for the perfect cast of light.’ Paul’s snort ignited her anger. ‘If you’d ever read Zola’s
l’
Œ
uvre
you’d understand. In the book, Claude Lantier struggles against an establishment
that only wants safe, traditional art. His whole life is dedicated to producing one great painting that fuses nature with authentic passion.’

‘Only he runs out of paint and dies?’

‘No, he hangs himself.’

‘Oh.’ Paul sent another radish careering into Alix’s lap. ‘Always a way out, isn’t there?’

Alix was bitterly sorry for her tactlessness, but she wanted Paul to understand why she was so torn.
She needed money, but the means being offered was dangerous and, more important, immoral. To her, couture was art. Copying a dress was like taking an apple from an orchard. Stealing a collection was like burning the orchard down. It was taking a man’s genius, his soul.

Paul said, ‘Do you want this interview or not? It seems a heaven-sent chance.’

It was an impossible choice. She’d have to give
in her notice at the telephone exchange and withstand Mémé’s distress. And what if she got taken on at Maison Javier only to discover she’d been mistaken about her talent? You could carry dreams around with you for years, like a cluster of balloons, only to discover they were all empty air. Gesturing towards the radishes, she told Paul, ‘Use your fingers. Who’s watching? I think, after all, I won’t
become a couturier. Bonnet asked me to pose for a painting. I’m off for a sitting after lunch.’ She’d run into the artist at a second-hand clothes stall in Rue des Rosiers. She’d been selling a tweed skirt she no longer wanted.

He’d chuckled when she told him her rent was going up. ‘That’s fate telling you it’s time to pose for me,
michou
. I can’t pay much, but it’ll give you something to throw
at your bastard landlord.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Our secret.’

Paul poured wine for them both, the cheap kind that left a
red stain in the glass, and said gravely, ‘Being an artist’s model is fine when you’re young, Alix, but do you want to live to see your wrinkles on a gallery wall? This interview is for the bottom rung at Javier, but it’s a start in a career where women climb to the top.’

Her own argument, lobbed back at her. ‘You only want me to do it so I can steal.’

‘I want you to have your dreams too. But steal, yes, once. Just once. Alix, I’m desperate for money! I didn’t tell you the end of my nightmare: my mother’s corpse reaches up and grabs Lala and Suzy off me, down into the water. I can hear them screaming my name as they go.’

She drank her wine, feeling it rough on
her tongue. ‘This interview … when is it?’

Paul caught her hand. ‘Tomorrow.’

So soon?

‘I can tell my contact you’ll go? Take the job, pirate the collection? I’ll write down the details.’

She shushed him. In his excitement he’d forgotten to whisper. Slowly she responded, ‘If I do, I’ll never pretend stealing is right. You understand?’ He was reaching for a pencil, so she said again, ‘I’ll never
pretend it’s right.’

‘I’m not your judge.’ Paul began writing on the back of a discarded bill. He formed his letters as circles, adding sticks top or bottom as appropriate, and marched his words to the edge of the page. Knowing he hated being watched, Alix turned
away, following a troop of schoolgirls with her eyes. Pallid, uncooked girls – she must have looked like that once. An old man laid
his beret on the cobbles and began to play a bourrée on elbow pipes.

Paul handed her a note which read, ‘Javier, Rue de la Trémoille. Say Mme Shone sent you, ask for première Mme Frankel. 11.03.’

‘Do you mean eleven thirty?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Change it.’

‘Mme Shone … she’s your contact?’

‘Sort of. Tomorrow, remember. Alix? You won’t be late?’

*

After they’d paid for their lunch and she’d
kissed Paul on each cheek, she crossed to Bonnet’s house. He rented two second-floor rooms overlooking the square. She searched in vain for a light switch inside the front door and eventually shouted up to him. No reply, so she climbed the creaking stairs and knocked at a door she was just able to make out in the gloom. At the invitation ‘Come in unless you’re the taxman!’ she pushed.

Bonnet
was in the middle of the room, brushing glue size on to a canvas. Assuming she was late, she apologised, but he said imperturbably, ‘I thought I’d get on with a different job. Wish I hadn’t. Go get yourself ready.’

As she undressed behind a screen, Alix became increasingly aware of a foul smell. She emerged wrapped in a robe, sniffing. Linseed, turpentine, spirits for cleaning and some for drinking
 … the
usual smells of an artist’s garret, but also something more. ‘Bonnet, is there a dead rat under the floor?’

Bonnet brandished his sticky paintbrush at her. He was no taller than Alix and his full beard gave the impression he had no neck. He wore serge overalls, and a collarless shirt covered by a moth-eaten sweater, and – with his face lined through years spent painting in the hills of
Alsace and in the blistering fields of Provence – he looked the consummate peasant-turned-artist. On Montmartre his appearance gave him status; anywhere else he’d be moved on. ‘It’s dead rabbit,’ he said morosely, ‘I paid for best-quality rabbit size and it shouldn’t smell, not if it’s made properly. People tell me all the time my work stinks –’ he shook his head at the glistening canvas – ‘now it
will forever. So. Nice long lunch with your boyfriend,
michou
?’ His grin sent wrinkles speeding out of his beard.

‘Paul’s not my boyfriend. I’m sure I told you.’ But she was smiling. Bonnet was balm to tumbled spirits. He brewed wonderful coffee, and when it got really cold he’d add a drop of Kirsch, the cherry liqueur of Alsace. ‘You should take that size back, demand compensation, say it gave
your model a fainting fit.’