Give his mother AIDS. One more suggestion along those lines and he’d feel duty bound to report Roger to the dean. “Let’s think about that, all right? In the meantime, maybe you should write something more detailed about your brother. I found some of the pages about him to be the most interesting you’ve got so far. Just follow the little details of your relationship with him. That business about him falling out of the tree was genuinely touching.”

Desmond stood and ushered Roger out before he had a chance to tell him he didn’t have a brother at all. He shut the door behind him and packed up the last of the papers and lecture notes he was taking with him on his New York trip.

Discounting the last ten minutes, it had been an exceptionally good week. If he were prone to Jane Cody-style hyperbole, he’d call it a triumph. On Monday, Jane had told him about the near certainty of getting the money. “It was you,” she’d said as they were standing on the staircase at the Ritz. “Your whole concept of what the series should be was brilliant. But what really clinched it was that inspired business about Liza Minnelli.”

This wasn’t the first time she’d praised him for that particular lie; despite her compliments about his ideas for the series, it was this fabrication that seemed to please her most. And, curiously enough, it was that moment of ruthless prevarication that he kept replaying in his own mind. Not his clarification of Jane’s ideas, not his succinct analysis of Anderton’s life and talent. “I’ve been in touch with Liza Minnelli.” It was exhilarating to discover something new about himself, to find that he had a hidden talent for on-the-spot mendacity. It made him think he was more creative and spontaneous than he’d guessed.

On Tuesday, he’d started making phone calls to arrange interviews with some key figures in Pauline Anderton’s life. First there was an older couple in Waugborn, the Boston suburb where Anderton had spent her final days. This pair of garrulous boozers had been friends of Anderton’s sister and drinking buddies of Pauline’s right up to the end. They loved to tell amusing anecdotes about the fun they’d had with her, anecdotes that usually started with a fond “Remember the time we went to . . .” and ended with a drunken mishap and some variation on the comment, “Yeah, she almost died that night,” delivered as if it were the surprising and hilarious punch line to a joke. With careful editing, their stories could provide dramatic, colorful testimony to Anderton’s decline.