He was not even listening. He rose and removed his overcoat, which he tossed down on the floor. As he rose, Lindsay saw women’s heads turn. She glanced up: Rowland’s dark, untamable hair fell across his forehead; the black suit, the white shirt, emphasized his height and his looks. Just along the row from her she heard a sharp American whisper: Darling, who’s that perfectly divine man? Rowland had evidently sensed none of this. “Damn,” he said, sitting down again as a group of somber-suited, impeccable Cazarès executives came onto the dais in front of them. “Damn. It’s too late now. And I need to talk to her…”

“You have a lead?” Lindsay said in a noncommittal tone: it might be a lead, she supposed, but that was not the first thing that sprang to mind.

“What? Yes. I do. And it’ll have to wait now.”

He turned back to look at the dais. Lindsay tensed. Jean Lazare had just entered, and as he did so, walking at a quick pace to the lectern, silence fell in the room.

The tribute he gave was brief, and he made it four times: first in French, then in English, then in Spanish, and finally in German. While he spoke the room was hushed, the only sound the soft whirr of cameras. When he ended, and only when he ended, came the flashing of scores of camera bulbs.

Lindsay could follow some but not all of the French; Rowland’s comprehension, she thought, was better than her own. He listened with total concentration; once or twice he frowned. As Lazare switched to English, he appeared to continue to listen, but Lindsay was unsure if he actually did so. She was straining hard to catch every phrase, so her attention was diverted, but she could sense that although Rowland kept his eyes on Lazare, he scarcely saw him. His true attention seemed elsewhere, perhaps back in the French version of Lazare’s statement.

“Yesterday afternoon,” Lazare began, “as you will know, Maria Cazarès suffered a heart attack. She was at the home of her former maid, to whom she was devoted. I take comfort from the fact that when this happened, so suddenly, she was not alone, but with a friend. I should like to take this opportunity now to thank the doctors of the St. Étienne hospital, who made every effort to revive her, and who gave her every possible care. Unfortunately, their efforts were not successful. Mademoiselle Cazarès died a short while after she arrived there. I was by her side.”

He paused. “I wish to announce that as would have been the wish of Maria Cazarès herself, her couture collection will be shown tomorrow, exactly as planned. It will include three designs, her last designs, drawn by her the day before she died. Maria Cazarès was born an artist, and was an artist to the end.

“Tomorrow morning, at Cazarès, there will be a spirit of joy, not sadness.” He paused again, on a note that was one of command. “We will be celebrating one of the most extraordinary women of our time, and certainly the most extraordinary, gifted, and visionary woman I have ever known. She was a couturière of wit, of originality, of passion. She was a woman who, as she once said, understood both the art and the science of clothes…”