The Dress Thief (9 page)

‘Yes. He’s in
prison in Spain, where I’ve just come from. He’s in a desperate condition. My brother knows people in the British government who can pull strings. It’s a shot in the dark, and every hour counts.’

Alix thought quickly. ‘Give me a little time. I’ll do my best, but I’ll have to break the rules.’ She heard a whisper of relief.

He asked, ‘May I know your name?’

Her neighbour was listening avidly
so Alix replied, ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

‘Not allowed to fraternise? One last question: will you marry me?’

That giggle finally got out. ‘Perhaps. But this time you really will have to go to the back of the queue.’

*

Alix slipped the earpiece off and muttered to her neighbour, ‘I have to powder my nose.’

Ignoring her colleague’s protest that surely she could hold on to the end of the
shift, Alix ran along a corridor to a room where female operators sat at consoles either side of a gangway. Mlle Boussac was on duty in this section. She was at the end of an aisle, engrossed in some problem. Satisfied she’d chosen a good moment, Alix searched the rows for the destination sign ‘London’.

She selected a girl the same age as herself and placed a priority request card in front of
her. She’d filched it from Mlle Dujardin’s desk and filled it in herself. ‘It’s been authorised,’ she said, her stomach diving. She was risking her job for a stranger.

The girl looked unsure. ‘Hadn’t we better check?’

They looked to where Mlle Boussac was tapping the end of a connector cord. ‘She looks busy,’ Alix whispered.

At that moment, Mlle Boussac straightened up and looked straight at
Alix. Then another operator summoned her to where a rapidly flashing light indicated an electrical fault.

‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ Alix asked the girl, and tapped the card. ‘It’s fine. It’s from the ministry.’

‘Which ministry?’

‘
The
ministry. They always get priority.’

*

The following day, Monday, Alix was reported for breaking telephone company rules regarding the strict order of customers’
calls. The girl who sat beside her had seen her take the request card and told the supervisor.

Alix was docked a day’s pay and warned that no more infractions would be tolerated.

*

But the following day, Mémé called in at the exchange in great distress. Mlle Boussac sent a secretary to fetch Alix from the switchboard and to bring a glass of water.

Alix found her grandmother perched on a chair,
trembling so hard her water was in danger of spilling. Alix took the glass away from her. ‘Mémé, what is it?’

‘The Germans are trying to break into the flat.’

‘Germans, in St-Sulpice?’

‘All morning I’m hearing
tap, tap, tap
 –’ The rest was lost as Mémé flowed away in Yiddish. Alix caught one name –

‘Hitler was trying to break in at our door?’ She exchanged a glance with Mlle Boussac, who looked
as though she was sucking a bee.

‘Not the door, the roof! He’s lifting the slates to come in that way.’

‘Why would he?’ Alix asked. ‘How would he get up there in the first place?’

‘Perhaps he jumps from the building next door.’ Mémé rocked forward.

Alix thought,
Is it delusions?
A new fear struck her – her grandmother failing in her mind, needing constant attendance. Then a bird flew past
the office window and another possibility dawned. ‘Mémé, d’you think you could have been hearing pigeons? They’re nesting, fluttering about the chimney stacks. They woke me this morning.’

Mémé’s brows furrowed. ‘Pigeons? You are sure?’

‘Spring’s here and they’re pairing. Don’t they make a racket?’ As her grandmother nodded slowly, Alix burst out, ‘Oh, Mémé, you got upset over nothing, walked
all this way and you’ll have to go up those stairs again.’

‘I am all right. It’s my hands that hurt. I don’t walk on my hands.’

Mlle Boussac glanced at Danielle’s feet, her expression hardening. ‘Alix has a point, Madame, considering you sprained your ankle so recently. What will your doctor say when he hears you walked across Paris to come here?’

Mémé, oblivious to danger signals, inspected
her ankles carefully. ‘Have I sprained my ankle? I don’t think so. I’m stronger than I look.’

Mlle Boussac did not challenge Alix immediately. But after Mémé left, Alix was summoned before the head of department. While he looked on in stern silence, Mlle Boussac asked Alix if she had lied. ‘On 4
^th
March you claimed your grandmother needed to visit the doctor and requested time off.’

Alix admitted
it.

‘You wanted to see a young man, I suppose.’ Anger flooded Mlle Boussac’s cheeks.

Alix agreed. A young man, yes. It was simpler.

‘It seems, Alix Gower, I have been mistaken in my estimation of your character. The company may tolerate one misstep but not two.’

The head of department was inclined to agree. Alix was invited to collect her coat and leave the premises.

On Rue du Louvre she
stared around, her hand over her mouth. The air was thick with exhaust fumes. Outlines of buildings melted under her shocked gaze. She’d been sacked. What was she feeling … relief?

Maison Javier
.

Out of one job, she had no choice but to take another. As she crossed the street, she wondered whether her English caller had reached his brother and saved his Spanish friend.

He often came to this church to hear its organ and view its famous Delacroix murals. ‘Jacob Wrestling with the Angel’ was his favourite. But today he couldn’t face Jacob, a man abandoned to a combat he could not win. So he found a seat, bent his head and prayed she’d come. He wasn’t sure she’d got his letter inviting her to meet him inside the
church of St-Sulpice. He’d left the note with a concierge, who’d promised to ‘find someone to take it upstairs’ before pushing it into her grimy apron.

He wished someone was playing the organ today. Bach ideally, something complex and ear-filling. In its midweek silence, this monumental interior made him feel judged. And alone – though on the other side of the aisle a handful of women moved their
lips in prayer.

She wouldn’t come. He should never have suggested a church for a meeting. But he’d wanted somewhere they could speak in whispers without attracting notice.

‘Whenever I’m here I marvel at the money you Catholics
spend providing a home for God. It says much for your confidence in his presence.’

He whipped round to see Danielle Lutzman settling behind him. His immediate thought
was,
She’s aged so much since she came to see me
. Was it a year ago that she’d called at Boulevard Racan to ask his help to get her granddaughter into some employment? That once-handsome face was now a wizened apple, dwarfed by a sombrous hat.

‘I come sometimes to hear the organ,’ she said, misreading his shock. ‘A Jewess may hear a little Bach or Handel without taking anything that is not rightfully
hers. It is the nearest I come to God, and my father would have shaken me, my husband too. Bolshevists to the bone. The only music my father liked was the clatter of falling monarchies.’

‘What would he have made of this place?’

She stared upward. ‘He’d have wanted it made into a grain store.’ Fastening spectacles on her nose, she said, ‘I received your note but I’ve been unwell. A little mad,
I think. Would you believe, I thought a pigeon on my roof was that liver-worm Hitler coming for me? I read in the newspaper about his Gestapo police and cannot stop thinking of the day I was taken by the police from my home in Kirchwiller. I am so scared in Paris. I did not think I would be.’

‘What made you leave London? You had a home and a life there.’

She shrugged. ‘The eternal search for
safety … for
atonement.’ A nervous smile distorted her lips. ‘Here, at least if the police come to fetch me I can call on you or on my friend Bonnet. Both of you helped me before, did you not?’ She waited for his wordless acknowledgement before asking, ‘What do you want of me?’

Her confession of fear had pushed him off track, and when he spoke he forgot to be cautious. ‘I have become a victim
of blackmail over your husband’s death.’ He saw her touch the scar at her temple. ‘Yes, that day has finally returned. Madame, you swore to tell no living soul.’

‘Yes, I swore it.’

‘Somebody knows. Somebody telephoned me at home, minutes after I received this.’ He passed her the grubby letter that had been delivered to his home on the twelfth. ‘Tell me if you know the writing.’

She handed it
back after a moment and her body was trembling. ‘I don’t recognise the hand. He threatens to expose the truth of Alfred’s death. It is blackmail, Monsieur, but the writer is not sure of his ground.’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘He threatens to hurt someone you love if you do not pay. Which shows that exposing the facts of poor Alfred’s murder is not enough … because nobody cares any more.’ She murmured
in Yiddish. ‘People thought
I
had killed my husband.’

‘You were arrested on suspicion only, and released almost immediately.’

‘Thanks to you. But to rescue me, you brought others into our secret. Perhaps one of those ‘others’ has crawled out from under a stone to threaten you.’

He agreed, adding, ‘But who?’

‘There was Kern.’

‘The police inspector whom my mother bribed? He died a decade ago
and had no reason to talk. After all, we made him rich. There is Célie Haupmann, of course, my mother’s housekeeper … but she’s frail now and her loyalty to my mother was always beyond question.’

‘To your mother, but not to you. Was Haupmann the one who brought warm clothes to me in prison?’ Danielle stroked her sleeves as he confirmed it. ‘She did not like me. I don’t think she liked you either.
You say she is frail?’

‘She is dying. I don’t suspect her.’

‘She has dependents though? A son or daughter who pokes her for money, who might benefit from a little windfall?’

‘Haupmann has no children. She was always utterly dependent on my family and will be loyal to her last breath. Could
you
have revealed the facts of your husband’s death accidentally? Perhaps to Raphael Bonnet?’

‘We agreed
on a story that would save us both, and I told nobody, not even my child! As for that –’ she pointed at the letter – ‘
that
was written by a lout who smokes dung. My old friend Bonnet is a man of proven loyalty. Whatever he has learned of
my
failings –
mein gott
, I have many – he would not
exploit them for money.’ She clasped her hands, closing the subject. ‘How much does your liver-worm blackmailer
want?’

He found a smile. ‘Rather a lot, and I’m struggling to raise it. According to his admirably detailed instructions, I’m to leave it behind a tobacco kiosk near Notre-Dame-d’Auteuil on Good Friday. That’s the day after tomorrow—’ He broke off as a woman walked by. She was slim, dark-eyed, and his thoughts jumped to Alix. ‘How is our Aliki? I’d like to see her.’

Danielle scraped her chair
as she rose. ‘I must go.’

Jean-Yves followed her out of the church, catching her arm as she stumbled in the afternoon dazzle. ‘At your request I haven’t contacted Alix, but I hate pretending that I don’t know she’s in the same city. If she needs a friend here, money to study with, a letter of recommendation, anything, you will ask?

Danielle swatted the offer away. ‘You helped her to a position
at the telephone exchange and that’s enough. Save your wealth for your daughters. A wedding to pay for, no? Now you look as if I have said something vulgar. I read about it in the newspaper.’

He sighed. He had not wanted a public announcement, considering such fanfare to be indelicate. But Rhona had insisted.

Danielle unwittingly echoed Rhona’s very argument. ‘Why should you hide your great
triumph from the world?’ She reeled off, ‘“Marie Louise Alphonsine Rhona Christine, eldest daughter of the Comte de Charembourg, to marry Guy Philippe Antoine, Duc de Brioude, on 15
^th
June at the family estate in
Kirchwiller.” It’s a stupendous match and I can understand this is a bad moment to have to pay a blackmailer. So, don’t pay him. Tell him to piss in his own teeth.’ When he hesitated,
she raised a finger. ‘Pay a blackmailer, keep a blackmailer.’

‘You read those threats, but you didn’t hear him, Madame. You didn’t hear him gloating at the prospect of ruining …’ he paused because he felt sick, ‘ruining a sweet face. I don’t know by what means. Burning, sulphur-acid, a knife … All I know is, I must pay.’

‘Does the farmer’s wife milk her cow only once?’

He had no answer to that
and they made their goodbyes. He watched Danielle Lutzman hobble across the square having declined his offer to escort her home on the grounds that they shouldn’t be seen together. ‘People gossip, and it will upset that lady your wife.’

She was wise and he was a fool. But he was also a father, a proud and loving father. He was a husband, a guardian and – perhaps belatedly – a man of honour. So
he must find the money. He had no choice.