This was a lie, of course. Benedict Wilfred Thorpe hadn’t sent any regards at all to Alfred de Marigny or Nancy de Marigny; had not sent a single word, in fact, to his own wife, or to anybody—at least so far as I’d heard—since disappearing on the morning of Harry Oakes’s murder. Of course, a lot of people disappeared around that time, and nobody showed the slightest curiosity about that singularity. Everybody just carried on, and since the fact of our marriage was indisputable—why, the Windsors themselves confirmed the story, terribly romantic, and what cachet to have been married by the governor himself, everybody was so envious—the fiction of Thorpe’s urgent, unfortunate business elsewhere stood pretty firm, thank you. There was a war on, after all. Everybody understood that.

And so I walked up the path to my bungalow alone that night, the fourteenth of November. I unlocked the door and went into my empty house and checked the rug, the hall table, as I always did.

I found no note, no letter, no message of any kind. But a fellow stood in my living room, a blond giant of a man, wearing a creased suit and a sober, anxious expression.

“Who the devil are you?” I cried, hand on heart.

He opened his mouth and spoke in impeccable English, though a pronounced German accent. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Thorpe. Your housekeeper was kind enough to admit me. My name is Johann. Johann von Kleist.”

“Johann?” I whispered.

“I’m afraid I have taken the trouble to come to you with some grave news.”

I covered my mouth with my hand.

“It’s to do you with your husband,” he said. “My brother. Benedict Thorpe.”

Eleven days later, on the twenty-sixth of November, I followed Marshall into the drawing room of Government House, where the Duchess of Windsor was supervising the erection of a tall blue spruce in full needle. The air smelled deeply of pine. For a moment, I stared at the back of her head, her trim waist in its blue jacket, belted in yellow, and I couldn’t quite comprehend what was going on. Then I remembered. Christmas.

“Madam,” said Marshall, “Mrs. Thorpe is here.”

The duchess made no sign of having heard him, except that she raised one finger in the air. “A little to the left,” she said, and the footman moved the spruce to the left.

“Will there be coffee, madam? Tea?”

“No, thank you. That will be all, Marshall.”

Marshall bowed and turned. I believe, in passing, he offered me a look of sympathy. But I might have been mistaken. When it came to poker faces, Marshall could have cleared the card table in Amarillo, Texas.