Chapter 2
Two
Isabelle took a refreshing swallow of cool water. ‘Thank you,’ she said, putting the glass down. ‘I needed that after hurrying from the station, not wanting to get caught in the rain.’
Romy nodded. ‘The sky does look menacing,’ she agreed.
Her hands were steady on the folder in her lap, her light brown gaze clear and calm.
With her very dark brown—almost black—hair gathered in two thick shoulder-length plaits that brushed the top of her ochre-coloured T-shirt, she had the serene, unworldly look of a Renaissance Madonna.
But Isabelle had the feeling that this young woman’s stillness was not a pointer to a calm inner nature.
There was something in her eyes that warned you not to make easy assumptions.
Romy handed her the folder. ‘When I first saw the name “Houssaye” scrawled on the catalogue, I looked it up,’ she said, ‘but all Google came up with was the name of a street just off the Champs-élysées—Rue Arsène-Houssaye. I presumed then that it had just been someone jotting down the name of the street for reference, or something like that.’
‘Yes.’ Isabelle spoke absently, hardly listening to Romy’s explanation, her heart fluttering as she studied the front cover of the slim catalogue that lay in the folder.
‘Belle Jardinière, 2 Rue du Pont Neuf’ was emblazoned across the top, and at the bottom were the words, ‘Nos Nouvelles Collections Pour La Belle Saison’.
The department store La Belle Jardinière had been founded in 1824, well before the better-known Printemps, Galeries Lafayette, La Samaritaine, and Le Bon Marché.
Unlike those four, however, it didn’t exist anymore.
It had had a very specific mission: concentrating on the creation and sale of its own designed collections of fashionable ready-to-wear but made-to-measure clothing and accessories for women, men and children, at accessible fixed prices.
And every season it released catalogues like this one, from which you could order directly.
Dated late March 1930, it was an attractive, fragile remnant of a vanished fashion era, the one Isabelle loved above all: the late 1920s and early 1930s.
But it wasn’t the undoubted appeal of the catalogue itself that drew her attention.
It was the word scrawled in ink on the margin: ‘Houssaye’ it read—the same surname as the person to whom the letter had been addressed.
It wasn’t a common surname and it couldn’t be a coincidence, either.
Mademoiselle Houssaye, whoever she was, had to have been living here, at this address, at about the same time as the letter had been written.
When Isabelle had turned up at the apartment building and had the good fortune of being let in by a man who was going out, she hadn’t really thought past the point of showing the envelope to whoever lived in that flat and asking the question.
In truth, she had thought the likelihood was that she would hit a dead end.
The letter was very old and the chances of anyone knowing anything about the person who’d once lived there were equally remote. But now …
‘I’m in brocante, specialising in clothes, accessories and jewellery from the 1920s and ’30s,’ she said, looking up at Romy, her eyes shining. ‘I’ve seen quite a few of these in my line of work. Mademoiselle Houssaye must have been a customer.’
‘That’s possible,’ Romy agreed. ‘Or perhaps she worked there, on their design team. May I?’ She reached across for the catalogue and flicked through to the page she wanted, then handed it back to Isabelle.
The illustration was of a willowy woman in a pale blue summer dress, with white piping on the sleeves and collar, and a skirt that was straight till it reached the knees, where it ended in two flounces that reached mid-calf and were imprinted with white polka dots.
‘See the pencil circle on that page?’ Romy asked.
‘I’d say that Mademoiselle Houssaye must have had an interest in the dress, either as a customer or for some other reason—she might have designed it.
’ She paused. ‘I can’t be absolutely sure, of course, but it looks like it might have been inspired by a Fontaine design. ’
Isabelle’s scalp was prickling as she gazed at the illustration, knowing at once that the young woman was right.
In the legendary Elisabeth Fontaine’s first—and unfortunately only—collection, there had been a number of striking summer dresses similar to this one.
This one wasn’t an original—you could tell that immediately.
It was pretty, yes, but missing that touch of genius.
The summery lightness, the colours; they’d recreated those quite well.
But the dress was too fussy, it mixed a bit too much—piping and polka dots and flounces—and didn’t have the beautiful simplicity of a Fontaine.
And that clinched it. Putting the catalogue down, Isabelle extracted the envelope from its protective wallet, put on the thin white gloves she always carried, and drew out the letter.
‘It was never delivered,’ she explained.
‘I found it, unopened in its envelope, in a box of old postcards that also contained three other pieces of unopened mail from around the same time period. The man who sold the box to me said that it was possible the unopened mail had been lost in transit or that whoever was supposed to deliver them just didn’t bother.
The other bits of mail weren’t particularly interesting, but this one …
well, you’ll see.’ She unfolded the letter, feeling the same tingle of disbelieving excitement as when she’d first seen the fine pale green paper stamped at the top with Elisabeth Fontaine’s trademark, a curlicued EF within a silhouetted white flower, and the few hurried yet confident lines of black ink.
My dear friend, I write in haste before we leave for Nice to tell you that the evening sketches are almost ready, but I have taken them with me to finish—you never know, I might even get a moment to do that!
Just in case, this time I’ve left the copies in the orphan box where no one ever looks.
I know you will keep them safe till we return, and that you won’t tell anyone, because you know what the press is like if they hear even a whisper!
With all my gratitude and affection,
Elisabeth