‘Mrs Wustrin is here to take notes toward an appraisal,’ Adletsky said.

He spoke with a trace of an accent, but his business English was very good.

‘If you feel you have to have your own appraiser,’ said Heisinger. He had led them to a room looking over the lake – hundreds of miles of water opening beyond the gray snow cloud. There was a round gaming table: Irish, eighteenth century – Amy had checked it out – green leather with a gilt border. This was one of the few genuinely good pieces. Heisinger had chosen for tactical reasons to work his way toward a closing in this room. The rest of the inventory – Amy had gone over it with her Merchandise Mart experts – amounted to very little.

‘My wife will join us by and by,’ said Bodo Heisinger. He chatted, filling up the time.

Old Adletsky listened unmoved. When Bodo announced that his wife was coming, it was the ladies who were interested – Amy most of all. Dame Siggy had already met the problematic Mrs Heisinger. Because she was problematic. More than that, Madge Heisinger was a notorious woman. Her husband had divorced her and then married her again. Jay Wustrin, when he represented Mrs Heisinger earlier, in an unrelated legal matter, had told Amy that she had made a real impression on him. He came home from the office smiling and said, describing or trying to describe her, ‘She makes no bones about it – she’s a real nihilist. She tells you so herself.’

Dame Siggy had told Amy that Mrs Heisinger wore Escada suits and Nina Ricci dresses. ‘She acts very provocative,’ the old woman added.

Well, if Mrs Heisinger was provocative, she would have provoked Jay. That would have suited him just fine. She might have had a smaller legal bill to pay than a less exciting client. (She wasn’t married to Bodo Heisinger then, and money might have been a consideration.) Jay’s clients often were problem women – nihilists, if you prefer, his favorite term. The excitement such women brought into his office meant much more to him than fees. If being sexual was like being drunk, Jay was something like a drunken driver.

Then I stopped being of any real interest to him, Amy was thinking, pulling the skirt of her blue knitted suit toward her knees. She had observed this early in the marriage. This morning Amy wore a good deal of makeup, especially around the eyes, where it was most needed. Her round face was calm, though her inner reckoning machines ran at high speed. Age sometimes brings slovenliness to women of a full build. But it was plain that she was still in control of her appearance; her traits and faculties were rounded up – they were on view in the corral. She was a beauty, her skin still smooth; she even breathed like a beauty.

If she had been my wife – not Mrs Jay Wustrin but Mrs Harry Trellman – her very body, in her early fifties, might have looked … no, would have been different. I could have offered her accommodations of a mental, imaginative sort.