The Designer(13)

Copper, who did not want to hear this, turned away. ‘You don’t know anything about him.’

‘Au contraire,’ the other woman replied, not without compassion. She patted Copper’s arm. ‘I do. They give a little pleasure and a lot of pain.’

‘Well, he’s my husband.’

‘That can be changed, chérie.’

Dior shortly reappeared wearing a felt hat and a stylish gabardine overcoat and carrying her much shabbier one. He helped her on with it. The singer stood outside her club, watching them walk down the street. ‘Come back tomorrow,’ she called after Copper.

The danger of air raids had not passed. None of the street lamps were lit. But the blackout was starting to be relaxed here and there. Curtains were being left open in the mansions, like gold sequins scattered on black velvet, and the boats that purred up and down the river carried sparks of red and green that were reflected in the water. There were couples everywhere, walking, laughing, kissing under cover of the darkness.

‘This is kind of you,’ Copper said to Dior.

‘Not at all. I like to walk. One wartime privation that it’s hard to mourn is the lack of gasoline. It has compelled us to rediscover our city on foot.’

‘At least the Germans are gone.’

‘The Germans are gone. But we’re still not ourselves. We have exchanged with you Americans, to your advantage. You have the mode, we have zazou.’

She’d heard him use the word before. ‘Zazou?’

He shrugged. ‘These hideous jazz women with square shoulders and heavy shoes, the hair piled up on the head like a haystack, the huge sunglasses and the crimson lipstick. It was a way of spitting in the Nazi’s faces. But it’s time to return to true elegance.’

‘And what defines true elegance?’ she asked wryly as they crossed the wide, empty, cobbled streets.

‘Dressing with care.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Far from it. But that is the essence.’

They reached the apartment on the rue de Rivoli. To Copper’s relief, the jeep was not parked outside. At least Amory hadn’t taken the woman to their bed.

As if following her train of thought, Dior asked, ‘How long have you been married?’

‘A year and a half. We’ve come a long way together.’

He nodded. ‘You deserve to be happy.’

‘It’s elusive, though, isn’t it?’ she replied.

‘Yes, it’s elusive.’

‘Thank you so much, Monsieur Christian. You’re most kind.’

‘Not at all. We will see each other in the atelier, I hope, tomorrow.’

He saw her to her door. She unlocked it, knowing she would burst into tears as soon as she was alone. Then she took a step back. A scene of horror greeted her in the hallway. George Fritchley-Bound was lying face down on the floor in a wide, dark pool of blood.

She rushed to his side and heaved him over to look into his face. He had been lying like that for so long that the blood had jellified on his face. His eyes were rolled back in his head. He was cold and dead.





Three

‘There are no external factors,’ the police captain said. He was flipping through the pathologist’s report. In wartime, autopsies were done almost immediately and took no more than a brutal half hour. ‘The cause of death was blood loss due to a ruptured stomach ulcer.’ He looked up at Copper and Amory, who were sitting on the other side of his desk. ‘The liver showed signs of advanced alcoholism.’

‘He was a heavy drinker,’ Amory said, shrugging.

‘The drinking caused the ulcer and the ulcer killed him. He emptied many a bottle and was himself, in the end, emptied.’ The captain tossed the report down. ‘We have no interest in the case. There will be no inquest. There is nothing further. You may collect your friend’s body.’

In the street outside the police station, Amory put his arm around Copper. ‘Are you okay?’

She pushed him away furiously. ‘Don’t you dare touch me.’

‘Take it easy.’

‘You left me to deal with that all on my own. How could you?’

‘Well, how was I to know the old bugger had died?’ he asked practically.

‘Of course you didn’t know. You were in that woman’s bed until dawn.’

‘As a matter of fact—’

‘Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?’ she demanded, shaky with exhaustion and rage. ‘Finding poor George dead on the floor. Dealing with the police. The blood.’ Copper covered her face. ‘Oh my God, the blood. It’s everywhere. It’s soaked into the floorboards.’

‘We’ll clear out of there today. We’ve got to leave Paris, anyway, and get as close to Dijon as we can. We may as well set off, now that the police are finished with us.’

She shuddered. ‘Thank God for Dior. If he hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done. He was wonderful. He got me over my hysterics, dealt with the police, was an absolute shining knight.’ She turned to Amory. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this, Amory.’

His calm was unshakeable. ‘Be reasonable. I went out for a breath of fresh air. You were gone when I got back to the club. I had no idea where you were.’