The Dress Thief Read Online Free

alcohol and men could be written in the margins of a museumticket.
    Bonnet had wanted to visit them at the St-Sulpice flat, he confided, but Alix’s grandmother had forbidden it. ‘She thinks me an unsuitable acquaintance and she’s right.’ He’d gesturedto a crowd of men and women clustered around a piano where an African man was banging out jazz. ‘My tastes shock her, my friends would deafen her. Besides, I know too much. Your grandmother likes the pastto stay in the past, so, alas … it is perhaps hello and goodbye.’
    But Alix wanted the friendship, wanted more than one sip of this heady bohemian life. ‘I shan’t give you up now I’ve found you, M. Bonnet,’ she told him. They still met at least once a month. Mémé never suspected; Alix made sure of that.
    And the more Bonnet drank, the more he talked. Over a jug of Beaujolais, Alix learned theshocking fact that Alfred Lutzman had not died in his bed; he had been killed.
    ‘How? Who did it?’
    Bonnet had become uncharacteristically vague. An unprovoked attack, by thieves who broke into the house and were probably disturbed. ‘Best ask no more – your grandmother wouldn’t like it.’
    No indeed, especially as Mémé had always claimed that Alfred had died of a heart seizure, in his sleep. Sincethat day, Alix had tried to wring more from Bonnet, but it was hard to make him concentrate. His anecdotes spun off into surreal realms and changed with every retelling. He’d hop over the decades, throwing out names like exploding chestnuts. He could be bawdy too.
    ‘Remember fat Fiametta, the snake-dancer who comes in here with a big, covered basket? You know where she keeps her red-and-blackasp?’
    After a bottle or two, Bonnet would always try to borrow money from Alix. But she loved him all the same. He listened to her, really listened. He also agreed passionately with her that, had he lived, Alfred Lutzman would have been a leading artist of his generation. According to Bonnet, Lutzman had been the finest exponent of human flesh of the time. Of the paintings on Alix’s walls, onlyone had a human subject, a smiling girl whose black plaits were crowned with a coif of stiff, Alsatian lace. The picture was titled
Mathilda
and was the most precious of all to Alix.
    Knocking her out of her daydream, Mémé put a steaming bowl in front of Alix and pulled out a chair for herself. A ceiling light hung over the table, and in its glow Alix saw the traces of tears on her grandmother’scheeks. She almost put her spoon down, but stopped herself. With Mémé, you never cut straight to the most important question. She nodded at a nearby work-table strewn with gossamer silk and bobbins, and asked, ‘Is that the Maison Javier embroidery? They keep giving you new commissions. You must be exhausted.’
    ‘It’s hard work but I never knew any other kind. Finish your soup. Sit nearer the table – you want that skirt ruined? How is the bread? Stale, I should think.’
    ‘It’s fine if I dip it in. Shadow work, isn’t it, where you stitch on the reverse of the silk …’ Alix laid down her spoon. ‘Mémé?’ A tear was slipping from her grandmother’s eye. Mémé powdered her face each morning and evening, covering age spotsand blemishes, but the powder was smudged and the scar above her left eyebrowshowed white. ‘Were you so worried when I didn’t come home?’
    ‘I’ve been fretting all day.’
    ‘About me?’
    ‘I read in the paper how they treat Jews in Germany even worse now. I used to have cousins there. What will become of their families? And this civil war in Spain – how many must die before somebody puts an end to it? Then you didn’t come home, all evening you didn’t come home. Were you keptlate?’
    Alix was tempted to say, ‘Mlle Boussac asked me to teach a new girl the ropes,’ but she reminded herself she was twenty, too old for lies or prevarications. ‘I went to see Paul le Gal. I had a glass of wine on his boat and forgot the