“I read that in your horoscope, too.”

“No, really. I am sorry but I haven’t been honest at all.”

I felt the sincerity of what she had said, but it made me uneasy all the same, as if she’d played me like a hand of cards. Not that it mattered, particularly. I always liked my women a bit slippery. And it wasn’t as if she’d used me to get close to Somerset Maugham. When first she’d approached me I hadn’t even known the old man. All she’d wanted was some lousy bridge lessons. Besides, she didn’t know my real name, so I was hardly in a position to feel aggrieved at her lack of honesty.

“That’s not exactly an exclusive club, Anne. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“When I told you I had an offer of fifty thousand dollars from Victor Weybright to write Maugham’s biography, I didn’t mention that I’d already signed the contract.”

“Congratulations.”

“The fact is, I’ve been working on the old man’s biography for several months. I’m sorry, Walter, but I probably know more about Somerset Maugham than you do. Than you’ll ever know.”

While she spoke Anne pulled out one of the drawers in the cabinet, removed one of the red envelope files, and handed it to me. There was a printed title in the corner that read “MAUGHAM, SYRIE née Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo.”

“These are my research files. For example. This is all about his wife, Syrie.”

“I thought he was— I mean, I didn’t even know he’d been married.”

“When they met, she was Mrs. Wellcome, the wife of a wealthy American pharmaceutical manufacturer. They married in 1914. It was probably Syrie that put him off women for life. They divorced in nineteen twenty-eight. But she never married again so he was obliged by the terms of his settlement to support her financially. She died last year. And not a moment too soon as far as Maugham was concerned. By all accounts he hated her. I think he felt she’d trapped him into marriage. That she’d used him as a way of getting rid of Henry Wellcome.”

Anne showed me another file. It was titled HAXTON, GERALD FREDERICK.

“This name I recognize,” I said. “He was friend and companion number one, I think. Another homosexual Englishman. It’s something to do with the weather they have in England, I expect. They can hide a lot in that fog. Anyway, he sounds like a piece of work.”

“He was. Only he wasn’t English, he was American. From San Francisco. Maugham met him during the first war when Gerald was with the American Red Cross. He visited England only once, for less than a week, in February nineteen nineteen. He went to London, hoping to see Maugham, but was picked up and deported. Never went back.”