Black Cat Weekly #93

Chapter 8-1

byCharles Deschamps, the Paris couturier, was going to bring down necklines in his next collection and I knew about it six months ahead of time.

Foreknowledge of a fact like that is all a good consultant needs to make him dream dreams and see visions: dreams of idleness and sybaritic luxury, and visions tinted uniformly green, like the folding money which alone can make such dreams come true.

For Charles Deschamps was unique in the fashion world, the unquestioned leader of the style parade. He was the Paris dress designer whose designs other designers copied, the ultimate arbiter of the world’s fashions, and if he was going to bring necklines down in his next collection, you could bet your bottom dollar that within a very short time thereafter, necklines all over the world would inevitably follow suit. That’s why the news that Deschamps intended to return to plunging necklines woke such a fever in my usually phlegmatic blood.

This was not only a piece of news that could be turned to good account by a clever man who appreciated the possibilities; it was also a piece of news that came into my possession months before the rest of the world even suspected what Charles Deschamps was going to do next. So it was exclusive news, you might say; a scoop.

Why? Because Deschamps wrought his wonders of creation (or destruction) in utter secrecy each year, following in this respect the couturier tradition. No one, outside of his own four walls and his sworn-to-secrecy staff, ever had an inkling of what his new decrees in women’s fashion were to be until, each fall, he generously permitted them to burst upon a dazzled world at a Paris showing of his latest “collection.”

How then, you may well ask, did I contrive to hear of the prospective tumble in Deschamps’ necklines before that public showing?

It is no great mystery, actually. I have what many would call an industrial spy in the Charles Deschamps organization, a very attractive industrial spy named Michelle. She works as a cutter and part-time mannequin in the famous designer’s salon and happens to like me. We met quite by chance. She thinks American men are glamorous and that I am the most glamorous of the lot, being without visible means of support yet usually in funds when I visit Paris, and thus able to entertain her in the most chic and expensive places. If she occasionally breaks her vow of secrecy to the House of Deschamps, it is innocently—under the influence of my seemingly aimless questioning and a glass too much of the sparkling burgundy she loves.

Thus, on a night in June, Michelle and I were dining at the Tour d’Or, a fashionable aerie in a glass-walled penthouse high above the Seine. As we ate, we could look across the river and see the towers of Notre Dame soaring upward in the moonlight. Michelle was chattering charmingly away, her tongue somewhat loosened by three glasses of wine. It was shop talk, mostly, about her colleagues at the salon, about Monsieur Charles, her employer, about the comparative merits of cutting cowl collars on the bias, about anything, in short, which came into her pretty little head. I listened, as usual, with more attention than she realized, masking my interest behind an air of casual indifference, almost boredom. I was, in fact, beginning to be bored in earnest when she brought out the tidbit about Charles Deschamps bringing down his necklines.

I almost missed it, torn as I was between the beauties of Notre Dame across the river and Michelle across the table. Yet the odd computer I have in my brain which manages, I don’t know how, to sort out automatically the few tiny kernels of potentially useful information from the large cornfield of a woman’s gossip, flashed me a signal at the word “necklines.”

“What was that, darling?” I asked negligently. “I’m afraid I missed your last remark. The moonlight is so enchanting…”

Michelle dimpled. “You were enchanted by that blonde across the restaurant, admit it.”

“Not true. I have barely noticed her. You mentioned necklines?”

She nodded, taking another sip of wine. “At the salon, yes. Monsieur Charles is bringing down necklines next season.”

“A cataclysmic event,” I offered, “that will no doubt shake the world of high fashion to its foundations.” I did not yet understand how such a simple style change could have significance for me, yet I never ignore my mental computer. I kept the subject alive, hoping for enlightenment.

“Pas de blague,” said Michelle, “and I for one shall be very glad to see it happen. A woman’s neck is one of her loveliest features, don’t you think so?” She put up a hand to her own, covered almost entirely by a high-necked gown of Thai silk, and smiled at me.

Pas de blagueI instantly agreed, with the more fervor since I was quite intimately acquainted with Michelle’s neck. I said, somewhat cautiously, “it is rather early for Charles Deschamps to announce, is it not? With his showing still six months away?”

“Oh, he didn’t announce it, silly. He never does, not even to us girls, until he can’t put it off a minute longer, if he is to get his new designs made up in time for his showing.”

“Ah, then, it is merely a rumor, I suppose.”

“No, it will happen. I have seen some of Monsieur Charles’ own sketches for his next collection. They all show lower necklines.”

“You are teasing,” I rallied her. “You saw his sketches? One does not see the master’s sketches, does one? Such top secret documents?”

She laughed. “I was surprised. I went into his studio to ask a question about accessories for a pants suit he wants me to model, and he was not there. The sketches, however, were on his drawing board, ready to be put into his safe. I just glanced through them quickly, you understand, before I really knew what they were. The safe door was standing open, you see.”

was“Odd,” I said, refusing to waste time on her non-sequitur. “Where was Monsieur Charles?”

“He had gone to the W.C., I think.” The corners of her mouth turned up. “He came back in a moment, while I was still in his studio, and put the sketches in the safe while he answered my question about accessories—all except the one I found in the wastebasket.”

I gave her a severe look. “What did you say, my dear?”

WhatShe giggled. “One of his sketches, crumpled up and discarded in his wastebasket. Because he didn’t like the design when he got it finished, I suppose.” She said without guilt, “I stole it,” then added at my reproving look, “it was signed, you sec.”

“Oh?”

Her dimples appeared and she took another sip of burgundy. “Even a discarded sketch by the great Deschamps is a collector’s item. Especially if it’s signed. You know that, darling.”

You“May I see it?”

She unlatched the handbag in her lap and brought out a folded piece of artist’s drawing tissue and opened it out. Then she thrust it across the table to me with a pretty air of triumph. “You see? The signature is only a little smeared. Because it’s in pencil.”

I was more interested in the sketch than in the unmistakable, boldly slanted signature “Deschamps” that appears on the label of every Deschamps creation. The sketch showed a three-piece costume, for afternoon wear, Michelle explained, but so ungraceful of line and so absurdly unfeminine that it might have been produced deliberately to uglify any woman who wore it, as perhaps it was.

Michelle once told me that all the great male fashion designers, including Charles Deschamps, really hated women in their hearts and designed clothes that would make them appear ridiculous. Nevertheless, the neckline of the dress in the sketch was deeply cut—a scoop affair that dipped far enough to permit a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage.

wasI said to Michelle, “May I keep this for a few days?”

“Keep it? Whatever for?”

“It may be worth some real money…a Deschamps sketch with an authentic signature.”

“But it is a keepsake!” Michelle protested.

“So is money,” I said, and Michelle, being French, could not deny it.

Our waiter came and poured more burgundy into her glass. Refolding the sketch, I slipped it into my pocket. As soon as it was out of sight, Michelle forgot it.

Why did I borrow the sketch? I acted by instinct alone. And why did I feel that Charles Deschamps’ neckline apostasy had significance for me? Instinct again. I can only say that somewhere in the situation lurked a fine opportunity, I was sure, to acquire a substantial consultant’s fee from someone—if I could only determine from whom, for what and why.

Hours later, in my hotel bed (I stay at the Meurice when I can afford it) I pondered the problem further, waiting for the penny to drop and the conundrum to be elucidated, but my mental computer, usually so reliable, proved stubbornness itself that night. It was only when I went over Michelle’s chatter at the Tour d’Or word by word that I gained a tiny foothold on the edge of an idea. Recalling one word of hers produced the miracle. The word was “accessories”.

Accessories… Somewhere at the back of my mind there seemed to exist a fragile connection between that word and plunging necklines. It was elusive, but I worked at it until at length a vague possibility of profit appeared. This vague possibility I duly fed into my mental computer for elaboration, and the print-out that resulted was eminently satisfactory. I am by nature a modest man, yet I admit thinking as I fell asleep that night that perhaps I was touched, however lightly, by genius. In any event, I slept the sleep that night of I the able consultant who is about to make what we used to call a bundle by rendering valuable service to a rich client.

I did not see Michelle next day. Instead, I visited several high-class shops; I dawdled in a book store, leafing through scientific treatises;

I obtained a first-class ticket on an evening jet for New York; and just after the dinner hour, I saw the lights delineating the French coast appear and then fade away below me.

New York did not detain me long. I visited more shops; I consulted more books, this time at the public library. I even, to my own surprise, for I detest active physical work, spent three days in the suburbs, going from door to door of numerous prosperous homes, conducting, so help me, a survey of sorts. These preliminaries out of the way, I took a jet on Saturday to Tokyo.

Inside a large Tokyo hotel, one docs not know one is in Japan, but on Tuesday morning, when I left the hotel for Ashimoko’s famous shop on the Ginza, Japan was all around me. The sights, smells, noises and people of the largest city in the world are like no others anywhere.

I decided to walk to my destination since Japanese taximen do not speak English. Never; at least, I never met one who could or would. Recollections of my former visits to the city, fortified by a good street map, should lead me to where I wanted to go. Strolling vigorously along past the site of Frank Lloyd Wright’s beautiful old Imperial Hotel (now, alas, replaced by a glassy modern horror)