“Actually it was through Syrie that the intelligence connection came about. One of her girlfriends was the mistress of a man in the secret service by the name of Major John Wallinger. It was Wallinger who offered Maugham a job and sent him to Switzerland, in nineteen fifteen. By nineteen sixteen, Maugham was an invaluable field agent working for Sir Mansfield Cumming, who was head of the foreign section of the British secret service and for whom Maugham was running a whole network of spies in southern Germany from the Hotel d’Angleterre in Geneva. Not everyone can do something like that. By nineteen seventeen, after the February Revolution in Russia, he was working out of the British embassy in Petrograd, where he met Alexander Kerensky several times. Kerensky was the leader of the Mensheviks. By now Maugham had several hundred secret agents under his sole control. He left Petrograd two days before the October Revolution, which brought the Bolsheviks to power and which ought to tell you something: that Maugham’s intelligence antennae were very good. Not everyone managed to get out safely. Since then it’s anyone’s guess how much work he’s done for the British, but there’s no doubt that being an internationally famous author is always good cover for a lot of spying. China, Central America, even the United States—Maugham has always maintained a strong connection with his old pals in the British secret service. In many ways he was the ideal agent: He’s an extraordinarily perceptive man, not to mention naturally secretive. He even wrote a novel about spying called Ashenden. I’ll lend it to you if you like.”

“Yes, I’d like to read that.”

She went to the shelves and quickly found me a copy.

Feeling the heat, I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of the door to one of the bathrooms. “I’m impressed,” I said. “At how much you know about him.”

“That’s my job. Tell me, these people from the Foreign Office. Did he say who they are?”

“He mentioned two names. Someone called Sir John Sinclair.”

“Never heard of him.”

“And a man named Blunt. Anthony Blunt.”

“Now, him I’ve heard of. He works for the Queen.”

“Yes, but which one? There are so many queens in this story. I get confused which one’s which.”