“You must be the only man in London,” she said, “who fills in the Times’s crossword in fountain pen. What happens if you make a mistake?”

“I don’t. Usually,” McGuire said, handing her a cup of coffee. “I’ve always found crosswords quite easy. Even the Times. It’s a quirk. A sort of knack.”

Lindsay gave him a sharp glance. His tone was modest enough. Two months before, when McGuire was first appointed, she might have been deceived by that tone: now she was not. Having given the impression that he was startlingly handsome, pleasant, and too good-natured to last long in this job, McGuire had started firing people. In between felling the dead wood, he had overruled Lindsay’s decisions twice in his first month. To do so once was forgivable. To do so twice was not. Lindsay had wasted no further time in arguments with McGuire, whom she realized she should have distrusted on sight. She went straight over his head, to the editor of the Correspondent, an old friend, Max Flanders.

In Max’s office, over a large whiskey at the end of the day, she had made a further discovery. McGuire, who had seemed so uninterested in power plays, had gotten there first.

“Look, Max,” she had said. “Who’s running the fashion department here? I thought it was me. It says it’s me on my contract. Now I discover it’s an Adonis with attitude. Do something, Max. I turn to you in desperation. Get this man off my back.”

“Strong words,” said Max, and lit a cigarette.

“Max, he knows nothing about fashion at all. Why in hell is he interfering? Since when did I have to answer to features? Is he empire-building, or what?”

“Certainly not. Rowland doesn’t operate that way. Though I have to admit, I sometimes think he’s being groomed for my job.”

Max, once a wild young man, and one whose ascent to editorial power had occurred at vertiginous speed, now cultivated a bland manner. He wore conservative three-piece suits, as befitted the editor of a powerful conservative newspaper. He had recently acquired spectacles Lindsay was certain he did not need. Max was thirty-six, masquerading as fifty-six, when on duty at least. He now suppressed a smile, adjusted the superfluous horn-rims, and gave Lindsay an owlish look.

“Max—am I getting through to you? This man pulled some Steve Markov pictures it took me three months to set up. This man didn’t like the model, didn’t like the pictures, didn’t like the clothes. The same man who did these things, Max, has never heard of Christian Lacroix. He admitted it, for God’s sake! I doubt he’s ever heard of Saint Laurent.”

“That’s what Rowland said? That he’d never heard of Lacroix?”

“He didn’t even blush.”

Max sighed. He lowered his eyes to his desk. “You don’t want to believe everything Rowland says, Lindsay. He likes teasing people. I expect he was sending you up.”

The remark did not improve Lindsay’s temper.

“He’s a clown,” she said. “A damned devious one too, I’m beginning to think.”