Lace Read online

  Marie, in a white cotton nightdress with her hair twisted up in curl papers, was indeed astonished by Guy’s late call. She immediately asked him in and said she was prepared to sew, nonstop, all night until the replacement garments were finished.

  “Cross her off the list,” said Guy, scrambling into the Mercedes. “Now the cutter. I’ll ask him if he’s prepared to stay at the workshop tomorrow and work through the night.” Again, although it was now nearly midnight, Guy was invited in and the cutter immediately agreed to work throughout the following night.

  “Cross him off the list. Now let’s visit José.”

  A clearly terrified José poked her head around the gray front door of her second-floor apartment. Guy asked if he could enter, but with agitation she demurred. At this hour she was not dressed so it was impossible, her husband was sleeping and she didn’t want to disturb him, he had to get up early to be at the meat market by five in the morning. Guy said that he wanted her to try to remember whether any stranger had been in the workshop the previous week. José answered that the police had already asked her twice and she’d said that delivery boys and fabric salesmen were always in and out. Again Guy asked if he could come in, and again José refused, panic in her eyes. “Tomorrow morning at the workshop I’ll talk about anything you want but not now. It’s too late. Not now, Monsieur Guy. I dare not wake him.”

  Guy said good-night, clumped off loudly down the passage, then tiptoed back and put his ear to the door crack. He could faintly hear low, staccato voices arguing. Furious, Guy felt sure that his clothes were inside the apartment and felt like breaking the door down. Shaking with rage and impotence, he walked around the block to the waiting Mercedes and reported to Aunt Hortense.

  “What do you think, Maurice?” she asked.

  “It’s unlikely to be a buyer or a journalist or a supplier, Madame, it’s too great a risk for a mere eight million francs. It’s more likely to be someone with a low income—a delivery boy or a fabric salesman or one of the staff.”

  “A delivery boy or a fabric salesman would never have said ‘shears,’” Guy pointed out, “but workshop staff never say anything else.” He hesitated. “I once gave José a lift to the café Rubis. Her husband works in the meat market. If we are going to be negotiating in that café, he won’t look out of place, because I expect he’s always popping in and out, and even if somebody did notice him, I doubt they’d say anything to the flics; it’s a tough sort of place.”

  “But if the husband knows that you have taken José there he would be unlikely to use it.”

  “I only dropped her outside; maybe she didn’t mention it or maybe she’s forgotten it. She’s not a master brain, you know, and tonight she was terrified; she gabbled whatever came into her head first, she wouldn’t let me in and she lied to me. She said her husband was asleep, but I heard them talking two minutes later. Why should she lie?”

  “The fact that she lied, that she didn’t let Guy inside, and that she goes to the café Rubis, which is a meat-market café, and that her husband is a meat porter apply to José and nobody else,” said Judy. “Apart from that there is the odd coincidence that none of José’s work has been ruined. She knows my name, she knows that I’m a foreigner, she must know that Guy’s father is rich and she would certainly say ‘shears,’ not ‘scissors.’”

  “And what none of you saw except me,” added Guy, “was how terrified she was at the thought of letting me into her apartment tonight. She was gibbering with fright. I think she was terrified of me and even more terrified of her husband. But why should that be unless she’s guilty?”

  There was another thoughtful silence, then Aunt Hortense said, “If we broke into their apartment when they weren’t there, what would we have to lose if they were innocent? The police wouldn’t prosecute unless José pressed charges, and in such circumstances I’m sure she would prefer the cost of a new front door and a large cash bribe by way of recompense. What is your opinion, Maurice?”

  “I’m inclined to think she’s guilty, Madame. I suggest a surprise attack at José’s apartment, at the time of the arranged rendezvous to hand over the money. By ourselves, Madame. The police will not move fast enough.”

  “Exactly my opinion. Oh, it’s like old times! I’ll drive the Mercedes as I used to. You and Guy can break in; you can hold off any attackers. Guy’s job will be to get a window open, then throw the clothes out to Judy. She will be waiting on the sidewalk ready to stuff the clothes into garbage sacks and throw them into the Mercedes. If there’s any trouble I’ll drive off with the clothes and leave you to sort yourselves out. Wear low-heeled shoes, Judy, in case you have to run.” She turned to Guy. “Maurice is very good at this sort of thing, but you must move fast. You’ll only have five minutes, that’s all you can count on. However, you’ll be amazed at what you can do in five minutes.”

  The next morning Judy and Guy went to the workshop as usual. While Guy played the part of a distraught designer, the staff started to work again. José—who really did look terrified—apologised to Guy for not letting him into her apartment the night before.

  “Forget it, I shouldn’t have come. I’d had a couple of drinks.”

  Guy went to his bank where he obtained a few small bank notes, which he added to an envelope already full of plain white paper.

  Back at the office, the sewing machines stopped whirring and everybody froze expectantly whenever the phone rang. The call came at midday, again for Judy.

  “Be in front of the Odeon Cinema on the Champs Elysees at five minutes past five o’clock this evening. Come alone or we won’t pick up. Face the photo stills display on the right-hand side of the cinema. Hold the money in a white letter-size envelope in your left hand down at your side. And do not move your head. The envelope will be taken from you. Don’t move for five minutes after that.”

  “How do we know we’ll get the clothes back?”

  “We have no use for the clothes. Once we have the money, we’ll send a message to tell you where we’ve stored the clothes.”

  This was reported back to Aunt Hortense. “Clever,” she said. “The film probably ends at five, so there will be a crowd pouring out around Judy and their pickup will be in it. Judy would hardly feel the snatch and she certainly wouldn’t be able to identify anyone. Of course, they have no intention of handing over the clothes; they’re incriminating evidence. I expect they plan to dump them in the Seine. We had better plan the surprise attack.”

  At a quarter to five that evening, Maurice parked the Mercedes two streets away from José’s apartment and changed places with Aunt Hortense, who wore a navy coat, navy beret and enormous sunglasses. She turned to Guy, whose face was chalk-white, and cheerfully said, “Justice depends on who is holding the scales. My dear, you have three things to remember. First, if you’re caught by the police, say nothing, not even your name, just ask for my lawyer. Second, do exactly as Maurice says—he is in charge. Unless Maurice gives you an order, just do your own job and get out after five minutes. Ignore any fighting. With luck you’ll hear me blow three blasts on my whistle when your time is up. And finally,” she added in a reasonable voice, “remember that you’re merely collecting your own property.” She put the car in gear with a crash as Maurice winced. “We hit them at ten to five when they’ll be most jumpy, when their thoughts will be at the Odeon.”

  Upon reaching José’s apartment building, Judy—also wearing sunglasses and a navy beret—jumped out of the car and stood on the pavement, a pile of garbage bags in her hands. Guy followed Maurice under the arch into the inner courtyard, up the stairs and along a dark, narrow corridor. Maurice looked around carefully, inspected the grubby, gray door, then put his ear to it. He felt the lock with the tips of his fingers and paused. He leaned casually against the wall opposite, lifted his left foot to the level of the lock, then gave it one vicious kick. The door flew open and Maurice charged in, flinging the door flat against the wall with his left arm, then throwing his back against it.

&nbs
p; The shutters were down and the apartment was muggy and silent except for the noise of traffic outside. There was very little furniture—a flowered sofa and two armchairs, a standard lamp with a fake parchment shade, a sideboard, a few pictures of agonised saints hanging from the wall.

  Maurice stuck his head out of the door and beckoned Guy in.

  “You take the left room and I’ll take the right.”

  The right door led to a small, bare kitchen and a lavatory. The left door led to a large room containing a double bed with a crucifix hung above it, a small wardrobe, an ornate bird’s-eye maple dressing table with triple mirror and another fake parchment lamp, this one with maroon fringe. Leading off the bedroom was another smaller room. In the dim, shuttered light, Guy could see that it contained another small wardrobe, a kitchen chair and a single bed—upon which was piled his entire collection of clothes.

  He gave a cry of triumph and wrestled open the shutters as Maurice dashed into the room.

  Guy could see Judy two floors below and about fifteen feet away, anxiously looking up. He screamed at her. She heard immediately and dashed toward Guy’s window. Aunt Hortense started up the motor and the Mercedes slowly followed Judy, then waited with the engine running.

  Both men started hurling the clothes out of the window so they landed far too fast for Judy to stuff them into the bags. She wrenched open the near side door of the Mercedes and threw suits, dresses, hats and shoes into it as fast as she could pick them off the pavement. The few astonished passersby watched motionless until Aunt Hortense gave three sharp whistle blasts. Judy jumped into the back of the car, throwing herself on top of the clothes, the two men ran out of the doorway and squeezed into the front seat of the Mercedes. Aunt Hortense stepped on the gas and took the first corner on two wheels, leaving a pink satin shoe and a green scarf fluttering on the pavement behind.

  “Steady, Madame, steady!” Maurice said. “We don’t want a speeding ticket at this point.” But Aunt Hortense was enjoying herself. She drove at top speed to Guy’s dry cleaner, where they left Judy with the clothes. Judy felt exultant as she never had before—she now knew the exhilaration of action. She had expected to be frightened but instead she had positively enjoyed it. And they had won.

  “Nothing seems to be missing,” reported Guy, as Aunt Hortense drove to the workshop. “Only the hat brims are wrecked.”

  Aunt Hortense braked, then reluctantly yielded the wheel to Maurice. “No need to mention anything to the police,” she said carelessly. “They don’t like breaking and entering. And they might want to keep the clothes as evidence. So why not let this remain yet another of their unsolved mysteries?”

  Guy nodded, then raced upstairs, two at a time, hoping to catch José before she left for the night. The other two employees had already left and José was belting her beige raincoat. One look at Guy’s face told her that she had been found out. Roughly he leaped across the room, caught hold of her wrist and dragged her to the telephone. “If you don’t want me to call the police, you’d better tell me why you did it and who helped you,” he said, tight-mouthed with fury.

  “Let me go! You must be mad, Monsieur Guy, let me go. I’ll scream.”

  “Scream away—and someone will call the police.” She tried to free her wrist, tried to kick Guy, then jerked her head in despair toward the window as she and Guy fought. He panted, “I’m not going to let you throw yourself out of the window, José, what good would that do? I don’t want to hurt you, I only want to know what happened. I know it wasn’t your idea. I know you didn’t want to do it. We’ve got the clothes back. They were on the bed in the little bedroom in your apartment.”

  Astonished, she stopped struggling and looked at him, frightened but wary. “What good will it do me if you go to jail, José? I’ve got the clothes back. But I want to know what happened. If you tell me all I want to know, I might not tell the police. But if you don’t come clean I’ll call the flics straightaway, and that’ll mean prison. So tell me the truth, José. It was your husband’s idea, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” There was a pause.

  “We found the clothes in your apartment.”

  José burst out, “It wasn’t my man.” She paused again and Guy jerked her toward the telephone. “No! It was his pal André—he’s a pickpocket. I’ve never liked him. My man would never have tried this by himself. Oh, Mother of God, what’s going to happen to us now?”

  “And who else helped you?”

  “No one else! No! Put the phone down, Monsieur Guy! I’ll tell you! There was no one else.”

  “Was it this André who telephoned?”

  “Yes, yes, it was André who phoned.”

  “Liar!” He yanked at her wrist until she started to whimper again, but she still looked surly and wouldn’t speak. “André would not have said ‘shears.’ One more lie and I call the flics”

  She burst into tears again. Guy shook her shoulders but she only howled louder. However, when he picked up the telephone she stopped in midshriek and told him the rest of the story. It was very simple.

  At five o’clock that afternoon, her husband had been waiting fifty yards from the cinema in the Champs Elysees because he hadn’t trusted his pickpocket friend. Their plan was that after snatching the money both of them should dive into the metro, catch a train at random, get out and find a park. They would wait until dark, when there would be few people around, and then divide the money. José’s husband then planned to post his share of the money addressed to himself, poste restante, at his local post office. When he felt safe, he would collect the money.

  Guy could only whisper, he was so furious, so weak with rage. “Get out,” he croaked, “and never, never, never come around here again or I’ll call the police immediately.”

  José burst into fresh tears and fled.

  Within twenty-four hours, the story of Guy’s kidnapped and returned collection was known to the entire fashion trade of Paris, and although he denied the story to reporters, the intriguing tale drew many more journalists to his collection than might otherwise have seen it.

  That collection established Guy as a serious designer to be watched, not just a rich brat dabbling in fashion. Judy suddenly found that dealing with the press was almost a full-time job.

  The only person to publicise an accurate story of the theft was Empress Miller, who was so charming, so disarming, so unobtrusively efficient that she always found out the truth—which was why Judy was a little afraid of her.

  12

  THE NEXT TWO years were breathlessly busy but packed with excitement. Success invariably involved money problems until Guy obtained support from an unexpected source—his bank manager. Having studied Guy’s financial history and the profit and loss projections, his bank manager—unprompted—telephoned Guy’s father and said that it seemed a pity to turn his back on a potential money-making business simply because it had been started by his own son. The result was that the bank agreed to back Guy, and his father—quite glad to be able to drop his dogmatic stance—guaranteed the loan. Nevertheless, Guy was still determined not to expand simply because he had enough orders to do so.

  “I’m not interested in short-term turnover but in long-term stability,” he explained to Empress Miller, who was wedged into a creaking conical cane chair perched on three thin black metal legs. Their new, modern office not only had an elevator and a tiny reception area, it also had a picture-window view of the gray rooftops and chimney pots of Paris—now covered with January snow—and a louvred cupboard, inside which was fitted a compact little kitchen. Judy hovered with the coffee pot as Guy answered Empress Miller’s questions. “What I eventually want is to establish a small, good-quality ready-to-wear collection. There’s no RTW fashion in Europe, as there is in the States, only cheap, manufactured garments. But on the other hand, in the States there are no name designers—which is why your manufacturers buy their designs from Paris. I want to combine the two operations.”

  “Yes, that’s
quite a good idea, Guy.” Empress always praised with caution, although she did not hesitate to criticise in a manner that ranged from mildly ironic to downright acid. But she was always fair, and when she didn’t like something, she explained exactly why.

  Her neat blond head bent over her notebook. “How does it feel to be so successful when you’re so young? To have come so far in only a couple of years?”

  Guy wriggled on his purple canvas womb chair, suspended on a thin, black metal butterfly frame. “That’s the question that everybody asks me, but you might as well ask me what it’s like to be a dog or a university student or a post office messenger. I am who I am, and there’s no getting away from it, and I don’t know what it’s like to be different. I’m a fashion designer, just the way someone else is an accountant. I started young because it worked out that way and because I wasn’t interested in anything else.” He looked reflectively at the orange ceiling. “If you’re going to do something really well, I suspect that it has to be to the exclusion of everything else. And I haven’t been an overnight success. I’m twenty-six and I’ve been working hard in fashion for ten years. It’s simply that people suddenly realised it overnight. I suspect that most overnight successes are the same.”

  “Nevertheless, Wool International went out on a limb for you with your last collection.”

  “And so did I for them. My entire collection was made from wool and nothing else.”

  Not without some of the noisiest rows I have ever participated in, thought Judy, who had insisted on this publicity-attracting theme.

  Empress raised her eyebrows in polite query and Guy explained. “Wool jersey drapes well and is flattering to the figure—synthetic fabrics tend to be either too stiff or too limp.” He heaved himself out of the purple canvas sling, pulled a bolt of dark green wool from the rack, then deftly draped and pinned the fabric around Judy, an old favourite trick to demonstrate his point. “See what I mean? And look at the colour—it glows, it has depth, because a natural fiber absorbs colour better than a synthetic.”