Clémence stepped back from the door as the others came rushing to her from the other side of the screen in response to her scream.
“What’s going on?” a burly security guard asked.
Clémence only pointed to the bloody body. He winced but tried not to react. With robotic professionalism, he spoke into his walkie-talkie, then took out his cell phone and made a call to the police.
Only a handful of the fashion set were able to peek into the room before the security guard closed it.
“Who was that in there?” asked another model, a blonde who looked barely sixteen years old.
“Please step back,” the first security officer repeated. “But do not leave the premises. I’m sure the police will have questions for all of you.”
Ignoring the questions people were throwing her, Clémence looked around for Marcus, who was walking toward her with a questioning expression, the journalists trailing behind him.
“What in the world is going on?” Marcus asked, his cat still in his arms.
Clémence pulled him aside. “Can you give us a moment?” she asked the reporters.
Reluctantly, they stepped away and began to talk to the models and crew members, who were all in jitters.
“Can you please not say anything in front of the press?” Clémence told Marcus.
“Sure,” Marcus said, “but you’re scaring me. What’s all the commotion?”
She closed her eyes, not sure how to break it to him. “Your assistant…”
“Natalie?”
“Not so loud.” Clémence shushed him, then she sighed. “Not that they’re not going to find out sooner or later anyway. Somebody stabbed her in the back. I’m so sorry.”
“Who? Who stabbed her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stabbed her with what?”
“With a knife. The thing is, it’s a knife that I’d brought before the show to cut the cake. We were going to surprise you with an opera cake from Damour. Natalie had the cake, and I suppose the knife was around too, but somebody took the knife and stabbed her.”
“Somebody literally stabbed her in the back.” Marcus blinked, looking numb. “It’s unbelievable.”
“It doesn’t look good.” Clémence bit her lip. “The inspector hates me. It’s a knife from Damour. Maybe it even has my DNA on it. I have to figure out who would do this before they try to pin it on me.”
“Of course you wouldn’t do this,” Marcus said. “You hardly knew her. And Natalie, well, she actually likes you, which is more than I can say about other people.”
“So she has plenty of enemies, huh?”
“Where do I begin? The thing is, Natalie can be nasty, but that’s precisely why she’s my assistant. She’s tough on people so I don’t have to be. I can be the nice guy, while she’s the bad guy.” He buried his face in his hands. “This is all my fault.”
“Marcus, no,” Clémence said. “Don’t think that way. Neither of us have anything to do with this. We need to pull ourselves together and get through this.”
He nodded. “The police are fools, but we can’t be stupid about this, either.”
“The thing is, I was the one who found her in that room. I need to figure out when was the last time she was seen alive.”
“With all the chaos backstage, sometimes I even forget my own name.”
“There are no cameras back here?”
“No. Not unless someone was filming with a camera phone. I don’t allow cameras backstage because I don’t want the models who might be half naked and getting undressed to be filmed.”
“When was the last time you saw Natalie?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Before the show started. She was helping me sort out the models.”
He suddenly cringed at the memory.
“What is it?” Clémence asked.
“I just remembered. I was getting stressed, and I lashed out at her because she got the lineup of the models wrong. I snapped and told her to go do something useful.”
“And she did?”
“I didn’t see her after that. If she was around, I didn’t pay attention. I’m usually so anxious before a show that work is all I focus on.”
“So she was killed anytime within a fifteen-minute window,” Clémence said. “The show lasted around ten minutes, and it took me around five minutes after the show ended to get back here. That’s just an estimate.”
“What could have possibly happened to prompt someone to kill her in that short amount of time?”
“It doesn’t sound like it was planned, since it was done with our knife,” Clémence said. “But I can’t be sure of that. I need to ask around.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw supermodel Gabrielle slip out. Clémence was sure she was heading out, because she had on her Burberry trench coat on and had her oversized Hermes purse in one hand.
“Wait, where is she going?” Clémence asked the makeup artist who had been helping her.
“She’s got another job lined up,” the makeup artist replied.
“But doesn’t she know what’s going on? Didn’t she hear that she’s supposed to stay until the police get here?”
“She knows.” She shrugged. “But she does have an appointment. The girl is always on time and professional. She’s not a top model for no reason. Shoots cost thousands of dollars a minute. You can’t expect her to stay behind when she doesn’t know anything.”
Clémence looked at the makeup artist. What she was saying made sense, in a way, but it was also ridiculous. Somebody had been murdered. Even if Gabrielle’s job had been for Chanel, a modelling job was not more important than a crime scene where she could’ve helped by cooperating.
She knew it would be useless to lecture the makeup artist, however. The best use of her time was to question her.
“What’s your name?” Clémence asked.
“Tata,” she replied.
“I’m Clémence.”
“I know who you are. I guess you don’t know who I am.”
Clémence was confused. Was she supposed to? Maybe Tata had done her makeup in the past and she had forgotten.
Suddenly it came to her when she saw the makeup scattered on the table.
“I’m sorry,” Clémence realized. “It just dawned on me who you are. That’s funny, because I just started using your concealer on my friend Sophie’s recommendation.”
“Sophie Seydoux? I’ve worked with her. Don’t worry about it. How many makeup artists can you count on one hand? Most people wouldn’t know what Francois Nars, for example, even looks like.”
Tata must’ve been in her late thirties or early forties. She dressed well, in a trendy and sophisticated black silk button-down shirt printed with flamingos. She wore tiny earrings shaped like pineapples. Clémence supposed she was drawn to kitsch. She had dark features set on a olive face and small brown eyes that mascara and eyeliner couldn’t enlarge. Her most interesting feature was her strong nose. Her cheeks were severe. Tata was no model, but her face had harsh angles that would’ve made interesting shadows in photographs.
“Did you know Natalie Albert at all?” Clémence asked.
“What do you mean ‘know’?” Tata asked in her brisk way. “We know each other professionally. We don’t tell each other our deepest, darkest secrets. This is maybe the second time we’ve met. As far as I know, she hasn’t been working for Marcus for long.”
Clémence had also met Natalie recently. She hadn’t known Marcus that long either, only a few months, which was as long as Clémence knew Natalie as well.
“What did you think of her?” Clémence asked.
Tata shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve met worse.”
“Any idea why anyone would kill her?”
“Kill? I don’t know. It’s a petty business. I’ve been working in this industry for almost twenty years. The backstabbing I’ve seen has been brutal. Things could get heated.”
“But a literal backstabbing?” Clémence asked. “Don’t tell me that’s commonplace in the fashion industry.”
“No, but I’ve seen a photographer almost strangle a client to death once.” Tata looked around. “When are the police getting here? I really want to go have a cigarette. Ever since they banned smoking inside, it’s been hell to live.”
“You need a smoke?” a model piped up. “I’ve got an e-cigarette.”
“Oh, thanks,” Tata muttered, taking the slim device from the girl’s hand. “I should really buy one, although I prefer the real thing. I love the sensation of burning my insides.”
Clémence bit her tongue and tried not to make any remarks. Her biggest pet peeve in the world was smoking, yet she was living in Paris, where everyone smoked. She observed the room. Everyone was talking intensely among themselves. Half of the models were sucking on e-cigarettes, too.
Tata seemed to be the only person who seemed utterly calm about the whole thing. It was as if she was used to crime scenes and hearing about people getting stabbed.
“None of this seems to faze you,” Clémence observed. “You seem to be handling this a lot better than the others.”
“Nobody here really cares about the death of an assistant,” Tata said curtly. “They just like to savor the drama of being on a crime scene. Frankly, I’m beyond that. Other people’s misfortunes bore me rather than excite me.”
“You’re not even curious who would do such a thing?”
“It wouldn’t be surprising if any of the people here committed the crime. Like I said, this industry is full of terrible people.”
Tata was saying it within earshot of the models, including the one who had lent her the e-cigarette. Clémence didn’t know whether to find the makeup artist intriguing or frightening. Was she just a jaded member of a cruel business? Tata seemed to detest the very people she worked with. Clémence didn’t doubt there was truth to what she said about them. There were cutthroat people in every industry, but there was an elevated shallowness and egoism that pervaded the entertainment industry, where everyone was clamoring for fame and status.
Tata had a piece of that pie, yet she didn’t seem to appreciate it. In fact, it didn’t seem like she had any feelings at all except for apathy. Clémence couldn’t understand how she could be so desensitized to something like murder. Even though Clémence had seen more dead bodies than she could count on one hand in the past year, she would never get used to them. The fact that someone was murdered, however little she knew about them, would never cease to disturb her.
If she didn’t know any better, she would think Tata was behaving like a psychopath. Did Clémence know any better?
But then again, psychopaths would know better than to express their true feelings openly, wouldn’t they? They would be clever enough to disguise their disgust with humanity rather than let on about their disdain.
There were some people who were simply selfish. Perhaps Tata was right. Fashion was full of selfish people, Tata included.
The fact that somebody had been stabbed barely made a dent on someone like Tata’s day. Even though Clémence couldn’t understand that line of thinking, she didn’t want to jump to conclusions to think that Tata had something to do with it.
But the fact still stood that Tata didn’t care for people, and she didn’t bat an eyelash at a murder scene. That made Clémence suspicious.
Before she could continue with her line of questioning, the person Clémence dreaded seeing came into the room.
