“During the course of your winter in Rome, you began a relationship with a Russian émigré and fashion designer by the name of Valeri Valierovich Orlovsky. The affair broke off around the third week of March, just before your sister’s accident brought you both into contact with Mr. Digby.”

“If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Fox. I don’t know where the hell you’ve been getting your facts, but I don’t see that my private life is any of your business—”

He shakes his head. “I’m not interested in prurient details, and I don’t care how you conduct your personal affairs. We are all different. We are all locked in struggle with our own demons. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t make some effort to understand the psychology of everyone connected to this case, Miss Macallister. You asked me how I knew I could trust you, and I’m telling you.”

“Jesus Christ.”

He sends me a hard look. I presume that whatever tolerance he extends to my sexual history, he doesn’t enjoy hearing the name of his Lord taken in vain. “At the beginning of May, you made plans to leave Rome. You booked a second-class cabin in the steamship Antigone for you and Mrs. Digby—then, of course, still Miss Macallister—but at the last minute, she elected to stay in Rome with Mr. Digby. You traveled home to New York, sharing your cabin with a Mrs. Slocombe, who recalled that you were subdued and—I quote her—under the weight of some great sorrow.”

“That’s only because Mrs. Slocombe wouldn’t stop talking.”

“Two years after your return, you found a job as Mr. Hudson’s secretary, taking over more of his duties following his stroke in the summer of 1944. The agency enjoyed great success under your administration. During the war, you organized your more celebrated clients to sell government bonds, and for propaganda efforts under the direction of the War Department. Just about everyone who’s worked with you—clients, government officials, advertising executives, magazine editors, even business rivals—describes you as fiercely intelligent, honorable, tough but fair, and not above using your personal charisma to achieve advantage on behalf of the models you represent.”

Sometime during the course of this disquisition, I find a seat on the wide, deep couch. I cross my legs and light a cigarette from my pocketbook, and my God, I have never needed one more badly.