This hotel room was beginning to feel confining. She made some time pass, first by telephoning home and speaking to Tom, and then by sending a second fax to her contact at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, who had not yet replied to her query of the previous day. Then, having hesitated some time, and finally having decided to risk it, she called Rowland’s room, since it was now nine in the morning and need not, therefore, be too embarrassing if it was Gini who picked up the phone.

She let the number ring, but there was no answer. Then, still feeling on edge, she went down to the room the Correspondent was using as their headquarters. Pixie, dressed in a garment that appeared to be made of knitted string, was already there. Lindsay picked up her pass for the Cazarès press conference that morning, checked on a few other details, was about to leave, then paused.

“You made sure there were passes for Rowland and Gini?”

Pixie gave a small smile.

“Oh, sure. I had them sent up to their room last night.” Then, after a delicate pause: “Clever of McGuire to get that room. I wept, pleaded, offered to sell the management my body—and I had no luck at all.”

“So? Rowland has more heft than you do,” Lindsay said.

Pixie’s smile broadened. Lindsay knew what that smile meant: it meant gossip, speculation, the spirals of office intrigue.

“Well,” Pixie said, “he’s that kind of man. Not easy to refuse.”

“What’s that supposed to imply?”

“—Though I thought it was pretty odd. Him sharing that room with her. I mean, he’d fired her only a few hours before.”

“What? Rowland fired Gini?” Lindsay shook her head. “No, Pixie. I saw them both last night. You’re wrong.”

“Oh, everyone saw them last night,” Pixie said in a negligent tone. “After all, this place is stuffed to the gills with reporters, what can you expect? They were seen going out late last night. They were seen when they returned. One look at her face, apparently—there was what you might call ribaldry in the bar.”

“What absolute rubbish,” Lindsay said sharply. “I was with them both later. They were working, that’s all.”

“They were? For how long?”

“Look, Pixie, I was up in the room with them a good two hours, maybe more. We were all three of us working. And you might think about doing some work right now.”

She moved to the door, hoping this lie would quell the gossip, then hesitated. “What made you think Rowland fired Gini?”

“I don’t think. I know. Tony called me from London late last night. McGuire was on the telephone, in his office, with the door closed, but Tony overheard. He said you couldn’t help overhearing, McGuire was so mad, you could have heard him in Piccadilly Circus.”

Lindsay sighed: Tony was Pixie’s latest boyfriend, and devoted. He worked in a very junior capacity in the features department, in an office across the corridor from Rowland McGuire’s.