In mid-Racinian recitative, Sylvie turned her attack from Rowland to Lindsay’s new, shiny Volkswagen. Swirling around with impressive speed, she raised her fist and brought it down hard on the hood. A dent appeared.

“Now, just wait a minute,” said Lindsay, advancing.

“Beech,” screamed Sylvie. “Inglish beech. You steal my man. I show you what I think of beeches. And their stupid cars.”

She kicked the Volkswagen’s bumper. Another dent appeared.

“What the hell? That’s it,” Lindsay said. She made a grab for Sylvie but missed as Sylvie was hoisted into the air.

“Out. Go away. Go home.” Rowland was shouting in a voice audible at least three blocks away. “Now. That’s it. It’s over.”

He had Sylvie in a firm grip several feet above the ground. Her legs kicked furiously. She was clawing and spitting like a tomcat. Even Lindsay was impressed, and Lindsay had a fierce temper of her own.

“I die.” Sylvie suddenly went limp. “I keel myself. I cut my neck. Right now.”

“No. You don’t,” said Rowland, frog-marching her along the sidewalk to her car. “You have remarkable powers of self-preservation, Sylvie.”

“I keel that beech, then, before I go.”

“That bitch is my wife, Sylvie,” Rowland said, depositing her next to her car somewhat violently. “We got married yesterday. It was a whirlwind romance. Now, go home.”

“Ta femme? Hypocrite! Menteur! C’est impossible!”

“Not impossible. Would you like to see the ring?”

He spoke with absolute green-eyed conviction. Sylvie gave an eldritch wail. She uttered a stream of French insults, slapped Rowland’s face extremely hard, leapt into her Mercedes, and screeched away.

Rowland turned to Lindsay, who was still standing, mouth agape, by her poor wounded car. Without speaking, his expression unreadable, he took her by the arm, led her up the steps, and opened his front door. He switched on the light. On the doormat inside, and trailing from the letterbox, was an assortment of women’s panties.

Lindsay bent and picked them up. There were black lace ones, pink lace ones, white lace ones. She looked at Rowland.

“Sylvie’s?” she asked.

“They’re her style,” Rowland replied. “Posting them through the letterbox is her style as well.”

“Bloody hell,” said Lindsay, and they both began to laugh.

They laughed all the way up the staircase, which was uncarpeted, and along a corridor, and into the first-floor reception room. Lindsay, who felt weak from laughing, sank down in the room’s only chair.

“Oh, my God,” she said at last. “She was extraordinary, Rowland.”

“Not extraordinary enough,” he replied.

“Does this kind of thing happen to you often?”

“Variations upon it, yes. Two or three times a year. God knows why.”

Lindsay did a rapid calculation: Max had said that none of the women lasted longer than three months. “Three months is the all-time record,” he’d said. “For most of them one month’s more the mark.”

Lindsay wondered whether Sylvie was a one-monther or a three-monther, then she checked herself. This was none of her business, after all.