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with which he denied it.
    “She’ll be in Europe,” he cried, as if the idea had just come to him. “Have you tried the Danieli, the Crillon? What about Molly Dorset or the Connaught?”
    When I explained that I had tried all these familiar ports of call, and others, Vickers gave a good impression of profound mystification.
    “Then I’m afraid I can’t help. You see, I haven’t set eyes on her, not for almost a year.” He paused, gave me an appraising look. “She’s been getting very strange, you know—almost reclusive. She doesn’t give parties anymore—hasn’t for ages. And if you invite her, well, you can never be sure she’ll turn up—”
    “Reclusive? Constance?”
    “Perhaps that’s the wrong word. Not reclusive exactly. But odd—definitely odd. Plotting something, I’d have said, the last time I met her. She had that rather gleeful, secretive look—you remember? I said to her, ‘Connie, I know that face. You’re up to something. You’re up to no good.’”
    “And what did she reply?”
    “She said I was wrong—for once. She laughed. Then she said she was taking a leaf from my book, embarking on her own retrospective. I didn’t believe her, of course. And I said so. I knew a man must be involved, and I asked her who it was. She didn’t tell me, naturally. She just sat there, smiling her Sphinx smile, while I played guessing games—”
    “No hints? That’s not like Constance.”
    “Not one. She said I’d find out in the end, and when I did, I’d be terribly surprised. That’s all.” Vickers hesitated. He looked at his watch. “Heavens! Is that the time? I’m afraid, in a minute, that I’ll have to rush—”
    “Conrad …”
    “Yes, dah-ling?”
    “Is Constance avoiding me? Is that it?”
    “ Avoiding you?” He gave me a look (an unconvincing look) of injured surprise. “Why should you say that? Obviously, you quarreled—well, we all know that. And I must say I did hear some rather titillating rumors: a certain man’s name bandied about—you know how it is….” He gave me an arch smile. “But Constance never discusses that. And she always speaks most warmly of you. She loved your recent work. That red drawing room you did for Molly Dorset—she adored that—”
    In his efforts to convince me, he had made a lapse. I saw the realization in his eyes at once.
    “The Dorsets’ drawing room? That’s odd. I finished that room four months ago. It was the last work I did before Steenie was ill. I thought you said you hadn’t seen Constance for almost a year?”
    Vickers clapped a hand to his brow; a stagy gesture.
    “Heavens, what a muddler I am! It can’t have been the Dorsets’ then. It must have been some other room. Age, you know, dah-ling. Advancing senility. I do it all the time now: muddle names, dates, places—it’s a positive scourge. Now, you mustn’t be cross, but I’m going to have to shoo you away. I’m due down in the Village in half an hour—just a gathering of old friends, but you know how the traffic will be. The whole city quite clogged up with the most dreadful people—tourists, you know, car salesmen from Detroit, housewives from Idaho, grabbing every available cab….”
    He was steering me, a firm grip above the elbow, in the direction of the hall. There, the Japanese houseboy hovered. “ Love you in that blue—too wonderful with the Titian hair,” he chirruped, and, since Vickers often used flattery to secure a quick escape, it was no surprise to find myself, a moment later, out on the sidewalk.
    I turned back, but Vickers, so famous for his charm in certain circles, had never been afraid to be rude.
    A white hand waved. The Japanese houseboy giggled. The aubergine door of the smart little town house shut in my face.
    I found that interesting: such a precipitate departure. I was then quite sure that Vickers, loyal to Constance if not to my uncle Steenie, had been lying.
    Before going to Conrad Vickers’s house, I had spent a