“What can I tell you? We turned out to have the more powerful victim card, and we were damned if we weren’t going to play it. But don’t forget it was Julia who created it in the first place.”

“Yes. And her so-called friend who put it in your hands.”

“The reader? Ex-friend I should have said. One of many ex-friends, it would appear. She seems to have a gift for alienating people, poor Julia.”

Yes, poor Julia, I thought. Nothing seemed to work out for her. I felt sorry for her in spite of everything. Her voice on Marco’s answering machine echoed in my ears, distress and rage blended in it indistinguishably: I want you to know you haven’t succeeded in silencing me . . . It seemed to me that whatever force was impelling her forward in this course of action, whether it was a real thirst for justice, or a deluded sense of injury, or just the pure malice and greed Marco believed it to be, she was clearly powerless in its grip, and clearly suffering.

“How did she react?”

“Julia? No idea. Not my concern. My position at this point is Julia Gault can rot in hell.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s finally over,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. We’ll celebrate again when you’re back.”

I got off the phone, confused and dissatisfied, and thoroughly perplexed by my own lurching sympathies.

5

5

THAT WAS where things had stood when I met Renata at my mother’s funeral a week later.

Needless to say, she hadn’t been remotely “grateful” at having her author’s misstep of twenty years back brought to her attention (or, more accurately, shoved in her face). I suspected she’d have pressed ahead with the book if it hadn’t been for the thought of her dear departed Otto turning in his grave. I don’t think she was afraid of public opinion, but she’d been devoted to her husband; they’d built the Whitethorne Press together, and it was surely the case that he wouldn’t have wanted her mixed up with an admirer of some member of Hitler’s inner circle. I pictured her in that little office I’d visited in my twenties, sighing heavily amid the stacks of manuscripts as she weighed her options and made her reluctant decision to ditch Julia’s ill-fated memoir. Well, Sir Alec Rosedale had judged his opponent nicely. But he was known for that, of course.

I saw him at the funeral and again, later, at the reception we gave at my mother’s house. He and Gabriella were standing at the back of the drawing room by the old Dutch spinet my father had rescued from a burning building during the war, talking with a group of other elderly people.