The phone number Thieriot handed over turned out to belong to a baritone voice that, although perfectly polite, was also perfectly clear about his requirements. He might perhaps be the person they wanted, but before he agreed to say any more than that, he would need to call Thieriot to confirm that they were who they said they were, and that it was indeed Thieriot who had passed on his number. He would then call them back using the number Thieriot gave him, to check that it matched the one they were calling from. They should wait for that call.
Ten minutes later Rachel’s portable rang. The baritone voice was warmer now. He understood from Thieriot that Rachel and Magda wished to ask him some questions? He preferred not to speak on the phone. Would they please give him their full names and an e-mail address for one of them? He would send them further information later that evening.
At ten PM an e-mail arrived in Rachel’s inbox: 2 PM tomorrow, Apartment 4, 20 Rue des Vinaigriers.
The Rue des Vinaigriers was one of the long, thin lanes that branched off Paris’s broad boulevards. Narrow, flat-sided chutes crammed with tabacs, bars, churches, small supermarkets, parking garages, hairdressers, dentists, and all the other miscellany that make up communities, these streets are tiny neighborhoods spiking out from the public-faced boulevards. Unlike most of them, however, the Rue des Vinaigriers did not stop dead at its bottom end, but rather curved around sharply to the right. Just before this curve was an old social club, one of those ancient establishments where the elderly men of Paris gather to drink and remember together. Next to its burgundy façade, the curve of the street was backed by a wall with a shallow set of concrete steps inset. Once climbed, they opened on the left to a building shaped like a triangle with one of its points sheared off and replaced by flat windows and a glass door at the raised ground level. This geometric curiosity was the top six floors of the same building that housed the social club. Climbing the stairs was like a living magic trick, Rachel thought, one structure magically transformed into another just by turning a corner. As she and Magda waited for someone in apartment four to answer their buzz on the intercom, she stared over her shoulder at a mural of a young girl in cutoff overalls, her hair an afro of multicolored paint splats that seemed too heavy for her stem-like neck to support. The girl’s painted face was tired but accepting, a model of dutiful compliance.
The man who opened the door to the apartment was short and on the plump side, wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt that matched his beard. His feet were bare, his eyes were shrunken by the thick lenses of his glasses, and his hairline was not so much receding as simply giving up the fight. “Hippolyte Foucher,” he said. “Entrez, s’il vous plait.” As he stood back to let them pass, he added, “I apologize for all the mise en scène earlier, but fashion gossip is like espionage: secretive, cutthroat, and much less suave than it looks. It’s better to take precautions than to be unmasked.”
He ushered them into the séjour and gestured for them to sit down on a worn brown velvet sofa. “I know what you’re thinking: What is there to unmask? I don’t have the looks for fashion, and I don’t have the fashion sense for fashion.” He laughed lightly. “In fact, I don’t even have much interest in fashion. But five years ago my wife was diagnosed with cancer, and I needed to stay home to look after her. Our daughter was crazy about clothes, and when I started to make jokes about what I saw in her magazines, she told me I should do it online.” He widened his eyes behind his glasses, to show how mystifying this was to him. “At first it was just ‘Chanel’s jackets look like someone lost a fight with a bolt of bouclé,” or ‘Hedi Slimane is making suits for pipe cleaners’—that kind of thing. But people loved it. And they loved it even more when I started dropping in little speculations about the houses based on what I read. All of a sudden my traffic shot up, and places were begging to advertise on the site. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to monetize gossip.” He rolled his eyes, then slapped his hands on his thighs. “Un café?”
While he was in the kitchen, Rachel looked around. The séjour had the same air as its owner: a little shabby, vaguely messy, but clearly long inhabited by an interesting person.
Across from the sofa was a matching armchair, the lower half of its brown velvet legs showing that it had made the acquaintance of some sharp-clawed cat; the oriental rug on the floor was threadbare in places, and at some point someone had spilled something red on it near the left-hand corner. The bookshelves were jammed with volumes put in both vertically and horizontally. They had overflowed onto the coffee table, where Rachel could see that a pile of them were titles about the Hapsburg empire.
“What did you do before Quelles Nouvelles?”
“I was a professor of Spanish history.” Foucher put a tray filled with mugs and a sugar and creamer set on the table (Rachel moved the pile of books out of his way) and handed her a mug of tea. “It was surprisingly good preparation for the site. Being a historian is all about doing the research. If you do the research, you build a complete picture, and the more complete your picture, the more you can see where things fit and why they matter. Same with fashion, same with gossip.”
Magda settled back into the sofa with her coffee. “If you aren’t interested, why not wind up the site when your wife was healthy again? Or—I’m sorry—is your wife still—”
He waved a hand. “Completely recovered. And my daughter’s studying engineering at Université de Lorraine. But the answer to your first question is, having put in all the work to become an expert, I didn’t want to just give up. Especially given how much I make. And I must confess,” he said, smiling, “I enjoy the tone. It’s a good way to get out my frustrations and unkind thoughts.” He took a sip from his own mug. “But tell me why you’re here. All I know is that you are friends of Cyrille Thieriot, and there is some information I might be able to give you.”
“Well, yes and no.” On reflection, Rachel considered it unwise to lie to a gossip blogger. “Cyrille thinks we’re aspiring documentary makers working on a project about Roland Guipure.”
“And in fact you are …?” Foucher’s tone was mild.
Rachel smiled. “In fact, we are detectives, trying to solve Guipure’s murder, and we’re hoping you might be able to give us information on Keteb Lellouch, who just took his place.”
He looked at them for a long moment. “Are you working with the police?”
“No.” Rachel said.
He was silent for another long moment. “I don’t like the police,” he said at last. “I was a student at the Sorbonne in 1968 when they charged us with batons.” He put down his mug and braced his hands on his knees. “So. Bon. Keteb Lellouch. I’ll give you what I can.” He paused. “And I hope that if, at the end of your investigation, you have any interesting revelations to give, you will return the favor.”
They nodded in unison, two marionettes on a single string.
Foucher dipped his head to acknowledge the bargain, then drummed his fingers against his lips. “He started at Dior, if I’m not mistaken. Then moved on to AuSecours. Nothing notable at Dior, but of course that was when Galliano was there, so you didn’t really need any other gossip. Also, at that point he was nobody, really—he’d only graduated from the Institut Français the year before.” He drummed his lips again. “But at AuSecours there was something … It was a young label, and then the original CD left and a new one came in, and there was something there …” He rose. “Excusez-moi.”
For a few moments they heard doors opening and closing in the inner recesses of the apartment. Then he reappeared, clutching a stack of tomato-red plastic index card boxes. “My AuSecours tips.” Rachel and Magda’s faces must have revealed their confusion, because he elaborated. “When I decided to do gossip full time, I built contacts by waiting at the employee entrances of the big houses. I figured it’s the people you don’t notice who have most information. Seamstresses, flou girls, even cleaners—they are there, but in the background, so people forget about them when they speak. And they often aren’t paid well. Ideal informants. But from these beginnings a network grew, and eventually I had too much information to hold in my head. Et voilà—les cartes! And because each tip helps to build a history, I save the cards. Now, if you give me a moment …” He popped the top of one box and began flicking, his fingers almost a blur. “1998: a foolish vendeuse sent one client’s couture to another’s house. 2003: someone is stealing. He looked up and smiled. “Someone is always stealing. 2005: the CD is thinking of leaving. Yes, I think we’re close. Yes!” He pulled out a card and squinted at it. “Yes, here it is. In 2005, the founding creative director of AuSecours decided to retire, and the head pattern cutter—that was Lellouch—was considered his logical successor. But the outgoing CD decided not to appoint him because he was Moroccan. The CD was worried that the press would brand the house as ‘ethnic.’” He checked the card again. “They went with Antoine Delario instead. And folded five years later, by the way.”
Rachel suddenly remembered Cecile Phan’s stiff correction when she’d complimented her office decor as warm: “My aesthetic is exotic.” Now it made sense. If “ethnic” was going to be forced on you, it was easier to embrace it than to fight it—at least if you embraced it, you could label it “exotic” and gain some power by insisting on it.
She put her mug down and moved forward on the sofa. “So, let me see if I understand. In 2005, at the house he worked for before Sauveterre, Keteb Lellouch was on track for the top spot, but at the last minute they yanked the job away from him and gave it someone else?”
“Because they didn’t want the house to be seen as niche. Yes, that’s what happened.” Foucher cocked his head. “It sounds as if this helps you?”
“It certainly does.”
“And you, Madame,” Foucher said, looking at Magda, “you don’t look as pleased.”
“No, no, I am.” She smiled tightly. “It’s just that … well, I was wondering if there was more, about Sauveterre more generally?” She looked at Rachel. “We should know if there’s anything else there.” And back toward Foucher. “If that would be all right with you?”
“It’s not a problem at all.” Then he gave a little frown. “But I don’t remember that I have very much on Sauveterre. They’re a tight house. Their employees are notoriously loyal.”
Rachel remembered that Cecile Phan had said something similar. Still, you never knew …” We’d be very grateful if you could look,” she said.
Once he was out of the room, she turned to Magda. “Lellouch has experience. He has experience being passed over for the top job! Can you imagine how angry he must have been when it happened again? Talk about long-simmering motives! Especially if Guipure was already borrowing from his designs!”
But Magda shifted uneasily on the sofa. “I don’t know.” She held up a delaying hand. “I don’t mean ‘no.’ I just mean … I don’t know. I meant what I just said. I agree that Lellouch had motive. And now that we know about his previous experience at AuSecours, I agree that his motive plus that previous experience might have made him angry enough to kill Guipure. But we don’t really know anything about anyone else at Sauveterre. And I don’t care what picture Thieriot painted of their final encounter, he’s still the only one we know for certain was alone with Guipure before he died. So it’s not so simple.”
Foucher reappeared. This time he held three index card boxes, all dark green. He looked chagrined. “I did say there wasn’t much.”
He sat down and popped the top of the first box, flipping through the cards. “No, this is all Guipure’s addiction.” He put it to one side and opened the second. “No, this is all family history. You know the father was a stable hand?” They shook their heads. “Oh yes, that’s why the family money was put in trust. Maximilien Sauveterre made so much after the war—he sold the Jewish paintings for the same price he bought them for, appropriate given the circumstances, but of course word of what he’d done in the war brought him more than enough business to make up for that. And then, after he died, the gallery and building went for a nice amount. But the family lawyers didn’t want Pierre Guipure to be able to get his hands on it, so they lodged it in that trust.” Foucher pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. “Not that he ever wanted any of it, from what I’ve read. He adored Geneviève Sauveterre.”
He closed the second box, put it on the table, and popped the top of the third. “Ah, d’accord, now here we are. In 2008, they are buying their grandpère’s building. 2012, Antoinette Guipure is dating the head of Banque de Paris—that didn’t last long. In 2014, the CFO’s assistant hates the CD’s new boyfriend. In 2015, the new collection will be inspired by drag.” He glanced up. “Those mirrored dresses were terrible. So kitsch.” He looked back down at the card. “Ah, that bit of news came from … our mutual friend.”
“Oh yes, Cyrille.” Magda moved forward on the sofa. “What do you think of him?”
Foucher rolled his eyes. “He’s a type.” The he shook his head. “Of course, I shouldn’t be so unkind—that type is my bread and butter. But”—he shook his head—“there was always so much drama with him! He would telephone me with these little commérages and act as if they were great scoops. And always he complained about the money.” He drew back slightly, looking at Magda, the corners of his lips twitching. “Or did you mean, what do I think of him as a suspect?”
Magda nodded, and Foucher shook his head. “Cyrille Thieriot wouldn’t kill Roland Guipure.” He rolled his eyes. “First of all, he’s too lazy to kill anyone. But even if he could rouse himself to it, he wouldn’t have killed him when they were involved because it would have ended the lifestyle Guipure was supplying. And he wouldn’t have done it after they broke up because he would’ve been focusing his energies on finding a new meal ticket. He’d have been much more likely to want to win Guipure back, for the same reason—it’s money he’s interested in, not revenge for a love spurned.”
Nice phrase, Rachel thought. Not that it was much help to them.
Magda said something similar once they were out on the street. They had left Foucher’s company with as many cheek kisses as they had entered Thieriot’s the previous day. He had tried to press on them some of the various pieces of clothing and accessories that had been sent to him by designers hoping for a favorable mention, but each woman had declined—Rachel dimly felt there might be an investigator’s code of ethics, so she turned reluctantly away from a Sur Le Banc military-cut wool coat that she was certain would transform her into the person she’d always wanted to be. Now, as they strode empty-handed back up the Rue des Vinaigriers, Magda said grimly, “Mediouri better hurry up and call. Without him we’re going nowhere.”
Then, two days later, Mediouri did call. In the end, though, the conversation Rachel had waited for in agony took all of fifteen seconds.
“Madame, your dry cleaning is ready,” Mediouri said. “Tomorrow is our late closing day, so you can come collect what you need at eight PM.” Then he broke the connection.
Rachel stared at her phone’s dark screen. “Sick!” she muttered.