The Dress Thief (24 page)

A waiter brought them champagne, slipping the bill into a leather folder at Kilpin’s elbow. ‘I suppose I’m paying for you pretty people tonight?’ Kilpin grunted.

‘Naturally,’
Una answered, ‘as you’re the only one here who owns a shipping line. Oh, listen, they’re playing “Autumn in
New York”.’ She extended a hand and Paul escorted her on to the dance floor, Alix following with her eyes. Una danced languidly, and Paul led her with his usual ease.

Gregory Kilpin bent towards Alix so his words reached her undiluted. ‘I know you’re something to do with this dress-exporting
business. Just don’t think you’re going to scramble all over her like ivy.’

Alix felt like saying,
It’s the other way round
, but Kilpin’s presence had a damping effect on her and she couldn’t bring herself to respond. Picking up her champagne, she let her focus melt. The band had upped their tempo to a faster swing, the horn section rising to play the eight-bar bridge. When they finished, they
sat down behind their inlaid mother-of-pearl music stands and the drummer took up the rhythm. A guitarist joined in, then the clarinettist rose to his feet, eyes closed for an improvisation. Frazer Hoskins and his Smooth Envoys sounded wonderful to Alix.

Looking about, she saw none of the dollar-a-dance girls Paul had feared. Nothing to suggest the Rose Noire was the haunt of anything but attractive,
sophisticated people. Did Solange Antonin’s boyfriend really own this place? People often made things up … they gilded themselves, like Gregory Kilpin and his brick.

Alix stroked the skirts of her dress. Her choice from Una’s wardrobe was another Lelong copy, this one a dark caramel. It left one shoulder bare, showing very little but revealing a great deal and she loved its feel. She could develop
a taste for silk jersey, and for Lanson champagne, she decided.

At a neighbouring table, six or more Javier mannequins sat with their escorts. One of them bent to pick up an evening bag and Alix saw Solange Antonin’s dark head resting on the shoulder of a man in a white tux. A moment later, they all stood up to dance. At the close of each season, most couture houses allowed their mannequins to
keep one of the dresses they’d modelled, and Javier was no exception. Alix knew she’d have taken the one Solange wore tonight, with its glove-tight bodice and skirt made of a thousand tags of black organza, each with a single sequin. She watched Solange glide on to the dance floor, her partner leading. They slid into a foxtrot and Alix’s throat tightened with envy.

Face it, she told herself,
this evening was a misery. All she could see was other people enjoying themselves. She glanced up to see a tall man coming down the stairs and her heart stuttered. Verrian? He’d got her letter! She half rose as he walked towards a cocktail bar lit with coloured bulbs … then realised he was somebody else.

A singer came to the microphone. ‘Can’t they find a white girl to sing?’ Kilpin muttered.

Lenice Leflore was Creole, her black hair in a chignon fixed with a lily. When she sang ‘These Foolish Things’ with a slight catch, Alix’s pain intensified. ‘I need fresh air,’ she gasped, getting up without any idea where she was going. To the ladies’ room if she could find it. Then a hand fell on her arm and curled
around her elbow. A teasing voice said, ‘Told you you’d end up the prettiest girl
in Paris. Let’s dance.’

*

She blinked at the white tuxedo, a dark-red rose in the buttonhole. At a pair of smiling lips and light eyes that contained no fear of rebuff.

‘I can’t dance with you. You’re Solange’s –’ she tripped on the word
lover
 – ‘friend.’

‘If you say so.’ His accent was difficult to place. A bit of Paris, a bit American. She looked around for Paul but saw Solange instead, the
girl’s fists bunched. This was serious. Solange might have a hatpin in her evening bag. ‘I don’t pinch other girls’ men,’ Alix said firmly.

‘You can’t refuse. Order of the club’s owner.’

She deliberately misunderstood him. ‘I don’t care what the owner says. I don’t like people telling me what to do.’

He put his hands on her arms, a prelude to pulling her into his. ‘I’m Serge Martel. I own the
Rose Noire. I did own it together with my father, but he passed away a few weeks ago.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s hard … have you still got a father?’

‘No. He died years and years ago.’

‘Then you know how it feels. Dancing helps,
hein
? Music washes away sadness. Not everyone understands.’ With each word, he drew her nearer to the floor where couples were dancing to ‘My Blue Heaven’. She could feel
Solange’s fury,
but Serge Martel had suddenly become more human. Maybe his eyes weren’t cold; maybe it was grief.

‘I don’t believe you own this place. You’re too young.’ He couldn’t be more than twenty-five.

‘Lying, am I?’ He dropped his arms and stalked away across the dance floor. Jumped onstage and tapped the bandleader’s shoulder. The man lowered his trumpet. A moment later the music slid
to a stop, leaving the singer holding an unaccompanied note.

Serge came back through the crowd like a breeze through corn. He took Alix into his arms and the bandleader counted, ‘One, two, three, four.’ The drummer gave the intro, the leader played a lick and ‘My Blue Heaven’ was on its way again.

‘I hate starting a dance halfway through. Relax, baby, you might as well stop fighting. In the
end, we’re going to be lovers.’

*

Verrian spotted Alix as he came down the stairs. When he saw blunt fingers stroking her spine, he understood how murders happen.

Lenice Leflore was scatting to ‘The Very Thought of You’.

Verrian went to the bar, attempting to park his darker feelings. He had a serious motive for being here, remember? He’d seen a picture of Alix’s grandfather, learned something of the man’s early life – and the abrupt manner of his end. If Alix didn’t know about that last bit, she needed
to. Taking a cigarette case from his pocket he pulled out a Navy Cut. Not that it was exactly small talk for the dance floor.

As the singer reached the tender climax of her song, the lights went off. Shock gave way to cheers as a single spotlight turned the stage into a shining lagoon. Verrian moved towards the centre of the floor, at last finding Alix by touch. He felt her recoil, ask ‘Who are
you?’

‘Verrian Haviland and I’m taking you out of here.’ He led her off the floor, using beads of light from the bar as his guide.

She resisted. ‘I have to stay.’

‘Why?’

‘My evening bag – my door key’s in it. I don’t want to lose another one.’

‘We’ll fetch your bag.’

‘No.’ The lights were flicking back on, one at a time. ‘I can’t just leave without a word.’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Something
hit him lightly on the shoulder and, for an instant, Verrian thought bats had been let loose in the club or the ceiling was coming down. Then he realised, rose petals. Red petals were falling on to the heads of those below. In the middle of the floor, the man in the white tuxedo who’d been dancing with Alix was making a slow scan of the tables.

They found Alix’s table, where Verrian scooped up
her bag and evening jacket, then guided her up the stairs, saying, ‘I’m taking you somewhere more authentic, assuming you like jazz.’ Out on the kerb, a taxi was pulling up and Verrian helped Alix into the back. Getting in beside her, he drew her against him and said to the driver, ‘Rue Pigalle, chez Bricktop, but take us the long way round.’

*

Her resistance held as the taxi crossed Place Pigalle,
passing the Moulin Rouge. It held as far as the junction with Rochechouart where she leaned into him with a sigh. Her hair smelled of lemon and almond and he felt a physical surprise at how fawnlike she was without the packaging of day clothes. It made him want to protect her eternally from bigots like his father, and
predators like the fair-haired man in the white tux. As they sped east down
Rochechouart, then south on to Boulevard Magenta, Verrian thought of hotel rooms and the span of a double bed, of silk sheets and time. He and Alix needed time. Her breath feathered his cheek.

‘I think we’ve made Serge Martel very angry,’

‘Do you care?’

She hesitated. ‘He knows where I work.’

‘If he bothers you, let me know. You’re not officially his girlfriend?’

‘Oh no. That’s Solange. She’s
a mannequin and very lovely, but I don’t think he cares much for her.’

‘I expect she has other ideas. She’ll slap his face for the way he acted tonight, call him a no-good lying cheat, and then they’ll spend all tomorrow in bed.’

‘I hope not. She has to take part in the collection at three o’clock.’

‘He’ll have forgotten it all by then anyway.’

Alix said nothing as the driver turned on to
Rue La Fayette, taking them through a series of lesser streets. As the taxi slowed, she said, ‘Do men forget humiliation so fast?’

The answer was no, so he tightened his arm around her. She was looking up at him, her eyes reflecting the carnal lights of Rue Pigalle. He was about to kiss her when the taxi drew up at an entrance door and the driver shouted, ‘Bricktop!’
In this club, a quintet played
hot gypsy jazz with a sweating intensity that made Frazer Hoskins’s band seem like a chamber orchestra. Verrian had to speak right into Alix’s ear. ‘Drink or dance?’

‘Dance.’

On the floor they were shoved up like sardines. Alix had never been in such a crowd but still felt that she and Verrian were alone in the world. For the first time, it was just the two of them. No dramas, no audience.

She looped her arms over his shoulders and he put his hands into the curve of her waist. When their lips touched it was with the same unforced ardour as when he’d kissed her in the downpour. She opened her lips and he responded, pulling her so hard against him she felt every sinew of his body. His cologne contained lemon and bergamot; she smelled it on the curve of his jaw, under the rim of his collar
as they stayed locked for ten, twenty heartbeats before pulling apart. They danced, one tune sliding into another. Then they kissed all the way through the Bricktop version of ‘My Blue Heaven’. Eventually Verrian said, ‘Would you like a drink now?’

‘No. Well, coffee, please.’

He’d purchased them a table and they eventually found it. They sat, hands locked, until the coffee came. They both drank
it one-handed, spare hands still linked.

‘Why were you dancing with that Martel earlier?’

‘He asked … Nobody else would dance with me.’

‘You were supposed to wait for me.’

‘You didn’t answer my letter.’

‘I only read it three hours ago. You should have faith, Alix.’

‘Why?’

He laughed and she felt his energy pass through her. She said, ‘On Boulevard St-Germain you ran after me to make sure
we didn’t part on bad terms, then nothing. No word.’

‘Not “nothing”. I went to do some research on German remilitarisation, and while I was there I thought of little else but you. I needed time away because I know I’m falling for you and you deserve somebody better.’

His intensity disturbed her. So did the fragments of pain in his eyes. ‘Somebody better?’ She tilted her head. ‘Yes, I probably
do.’

*

It was nearly three in the morning. They were waiting for a taxi and Verrian had given her his jacket to wear over her own insubstantial one. She leaned into his embrace, a tide of nightclubbers passing behind them. The whole night felt unreal. She yawned, almost dislocating her jaw. That felt real.

Verrian said softly, ‘I suppose I’m going to take you home.’

‘Yes.’ Was that the precise
moment she fell in love? She looked up at Verrian, but he’d spotted a black Peugeot taxi and was hailing it.

At her building, Verrian had the driver wait. He got out, holding
the door so Alix could slide across. ‘Give me your key.’ He unlocked the street door and followed her into the courtyard, waiting while she unlocked the door to the building. ‘I’ll see you up.’

‘We don’t have a lift.’

‘I like stairs in Paris. I dislike them in London, but they feel different here.’

‘You make no sense,’ she laughed.

Reaching the door of her flat, he told her he knew how she kept so slim. She gave him back his jacket and Verrian kissed her, not on the lips but in the centre of her forehead. Since they had to part here, there was no point in prolonging things. ‘Good night.’

Which of them weakened?
Somehow she was in his arms again and he heard himself saying, ‘I have to see you tomorrow. What time do you finish work?’

‘Seven, but then I have to go somewhere else.’ Earlier, Una had extracted a promise –
Musketeering begins tomorrow, no backing out now, Alix
.

‘Where?’

‘Nowhere important.’

‘Sweet Alix, tell a newspaperman to mind his own business, you might as well issue a downright invitation.
I’ll be waiting outside my office door at seven tomorrow evening. Walk past me if you choose.’