Culpepper cut me off. “The trouble for her was with the folks at Immigration. They’ve gotten wise to foreigners who fall in love at first sight. The way the law works now, an immigrant has to prove that their marriage to an American is the real thing. Apparently, Marie had found several likely prospects, met with the authorities to see if they’d grant her citizenship if the marriage took place, and flunked three times. The only thing that puzzles me is why she started up again today, knowing that Immigration was on to her. Shows she was cracking up.”

Oh good, I thought, a federal board of review for the credibility of amour, as if love were a thing that made sense. When I’d married my lovely ex-wife, who didn’t bob her hair or sport bee-stung lips, my male friends had thought her drab by flapper standards—until they themselves got hitched and discovered that they’d married a makeup kit. My wife had been beautiful enough to model in glamour shows with Sally Rand when she was seventeen and knew more about makeup than Clara Bow had forgotten, but she’d given that up for motherhood. I told my cronies that with my Nancy, I’d been greeted each morning by the same wonderful face to which I’d said good night.

Culpepper stood. “I’m going to ask you to make a formal statement, Mr. Sherwood, and I’d appreciate it if you’d emphasize how distraught and desperate Miss Prasquier was, telling you she felt like killing herself, that sort of thing.”

I said, “Maybe it would be easier for you if I just put my signature at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper, and you can type what you want above it.” He looked a bit startled. He hadn’t been a bad guy, and I immediately felt as if I was being needlessly peevish.

Culpepper asked a woman outside the door to join us, then turned back to me. “All right, just go ahead and say what you think is the truth, in your own words. I was pushing you too hard to get what I wanted.” He shook his head. “This fair, Treasure Island, it’s a beautiful world but it hasn’t been an instant success, though we haven’t lost our shirts like those know-it-alls in New York.” I noted him referring to the Exposition as we. The cop on the corner smitten with his neighborhood. “That’s why any backspin you can put on Miss Prasquier’s emotional state would help the fair an awful lot. We don’t want the general public thinking people get killed here.”