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hers.” Mavis said nothing. “Vangie and Napoleon. What an idea.” And just think of the casting possibilities — Hoffman, Pacino, Michael J. Fox … “What a child they’ll have.”
    “A girl,” she insisted. “It’s a girl.”
    “Perfect.”
    Mavis tapped the gleaming surface of the writing table impatiently with her fingernail. “I don’t know … ”
    “I do,” I said. “Trust me. I’m on your side.”
    She let out a short, humorless laugh. “That would be a first. It has been me against everyone else for as long as I can remember.”
    “No longer. You have me now.”
    She gave me her steely stare. I met it. Then she turned away and took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’ll be taking over the writing?”
    I nodded. “Just leave everything to me.
    “What shall I be doing in the meantime?”
    “Thinking about your own book. Let those ideas percolate. Let yourself go. We’ll go over what I’m doing chapter by chapter. I’ll be around if you need me.”
    Again with the stare, a bit more wide-eyed now. This was new for her — being bossed. She wasn’t sure how to respond. “Very well,” she finally declared airily. “I place myself in your hands.”
    “You won’t be sorry.”
    She gave me her frozen smile. “When you get to know me better, Hoagy, and you shall, you will learn something about me.”
    “And what’s that, Mavis?”
    “I am never sorry.”
    Frederick and Edward were waiting for us in the east-wing peacock parlor wearing matching gray flannel suits and apprehensive expressions. Frederick was chain-smoking. A man and woman I didn’t know were also in there. All four of them looked up at us when we came in. Mavis’s eyes went directly to the man’s and flickered a message his way. He then turned to the brothers and relayed it. They both exhaled with relief and came toward me with their hands out, beaming.
    “So nice to see you again, Hoagy,” exclaimed Frederick.
    “Glad everything seems to have worked out,” added Edward. “Thrilled. May I introduce you to Charlotte Neene, Mave’s treasured assistant?”
    Charlotte was a thin, anemic-looking little woman in her thirties, complexion sallow, short brown hair lank, dress drab. She wore no makeup or lipstick or jewelry. Her hand was bony and gelid. “Mr. Hoag,” she murmured, careful not to make eye contact.
    “Miss Neene,” I said. “Would that be your red LeMans out there in the courtyard?”
    “Why, yes,” she replied, chewing nervously on her lower lip. She had pointy, rather feral little teeth. Her lip was pulpy from being chewed on. “Why do you ask?”
    “I’ve been thinking of getting one. How does it handle?”
    “Okay, I suppose,” she replied vaguely.
    “Glad to hear it.”
    “And this fine gentleman,” interjected Frederick, with more than a hint of derision in his voice, “is Mave’s husband, Lord Lonsdale.”
    “ Richard Lonsdale, Hoagy,” Richard said heartily, after he’d shot Frederick a quick, dirty look. “Do ignore the title bit. Freddy’s just having you on. Welcome, and so forth. Damned decent of you to make it down.”
    Richard went at the ruddy English country-squire bit a little much for me, though I must admit it doesn’t take much to be too much for me. He had the clipped, regimental voice, the brush mustache, the robust vigor. He had the tweed Norfolk jacket, the leather-trimmed moleskin trousers, the wool shirt, the ascot. He didn’t completely pull off the ascot, but then no one has since Orson Welles died. His hair and mustache were salt-and-pepper. His shaggy brows were coal black and in constant motion. He had an involuntary blinking twitch that kept them squirming around on his forehead like two water bugs pinned to a mat. Evidently his drinking didn’t subdue it, and he did drink. The red-rimmed eyes and burst capillaries in his nose said so. He was a big-chested man, so big he looked as if he were holding his breath all the time. But he wasn’t tall. His