"Sorry 'bout that." Chris tucked the script underneath her arm. "Oh, Willie, have you seen that dress that I got for Rags last week? The blue cotton?"

    "Yes, I see it in her closet. This morning."

    "Where'd you put it?"

    "It is there."

    "You didn't maybe pick it up by mistake with the cleaning?"

    "It is there."

    "With the cleaning?"

    "In the closet."

    "No, it isn't. I looked."

    About to speak, Willie tightened her lips and scowled at the coffee. Karl, had walked in.

    "Good evening, madam." He went to the sink for a glass of water.

    "Did you set those traps?" asked Chris.

    "No rats."

    "Did you set them?"

    "I set them, of course; but the attic is clean."

    "Tell me, how was the movie, Karl?"

    "Exciting." His back, like his face, was a resolute blank.

    Chris started from the kitchen, humming a song made famous by the Beatles. But the she turned. Just one more shot!

    "Did you have any trouble getting the traps, Karl?"

    "No; no trouble."

    "At six in the morning?"

    "All-night market."

    Jesus!

Chris took a long and luxurious bath, and why she went to the closet in her bedroom for her robe, she discovered Regan's missing dress. It lay crumpled in a heap on the floor of the closet.

    Chris picked it up. What's it doing in here?

    The tags were still on it. For a moment, Clues thought back. Then remembered that the day that she'd purchased the dress, she had also bought two or three items for herself. Must've put 'em all together.

    Chris carried the dress into Regan's bedroom, put it on a hanger and slipped it on the rack. She glanced at Regan's wardrobe. Nice. Nice clothes. Yeah, Rags, look here, not there at the daddy who never writes.

    As she turned from the closet, she stubbed her toe against the base of a bureau. Oh, Jesus, that smarts! As she lifted her foot and massaged her toe, she noticed that the bureau was out of position by about three feet. No wonder I bumped it, Willie must have vacuumed.

    She went down to the study with the script from her agent.

    Unlike the massive double living room with its large bay windows and view, the study had a feeling of whispered density; of secrets between rich uncles. Raised brick fireplace; oak paneling; crisscrossed beams of a wood that implied it had once been a drawbridge. The room's few hints of a time that was present were the added bar, a few bright pillows, and a leopardskin rug that belonged to Chris and was spread on the pinewood floor by the fire where she now stretched out with her head and shoulders propped on the front of a downy sofa.

    She took another look at the letter from her agent. Faith, Hope and Charity: three distinct segments, each with a different cast and director. Hers would be Hope. She liked the idea. And she liked the title. Possibly dull, she thought; but refined. They'll probably change it to something like "Rock Around the Virtues."

    The doorbell chimed. Burke Dennings. A lonely man, he dropped by often. Chris smiled ruefully, shaking her head, as she heard him rasp an obscenity at Karl, whom he seemed to detest and continually baited.

    "Yes, hullo, where's a drink!" he demanded crossly, entering the room and moving to the bar with eyes averted, hands in the pockets of his wrinkled raincoat.

    He sat on a barstool. Irritable. Shifty-eyed. Vaguely disappointed.

    "On the prowl again?" Chris asked.

    "What the hell do you mean?" he sniffed.

    "You've got that funny look. " She had seen it before when they'd worked on a picture together in Lausanne. On their first night there, at a staid hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, Chris had difficulty sleeping. At 5 A. M., she flounced out of bed and decided to dress and go down to the lobby in search of either coffee or some company. Waiting far an elevator out in the hall, she glanced through a window and saw the director walking stiffly along the lakeside, hands deep in the pockets of his coat against the glacial winter cold. By the time she reached the lobby, he was entering the hotel. "Not a hooker in sight!" he snapped bitterly, passing her with eyes cast down; and then entered the elevator and went up to bed. When she'd laughingly mentioned the incident later, the director had, grown furious and accused her of promulgating "gross hallucinations" that people were "likely to believe just because you're a star!" He had also referred to her as "simply canting mad," but then pointed out soothingly, in an effort to assuage her feelings, that "perhaps" she had seen someone after all, and had simply mistaken him for Dennings. "After all," he'd pointed out at the time, "my great-great-grandmother happens to have been Swiss."

    Chris moved behind the bar now and reminded him of the incident.

    "Oh, now, don't be so silly!" snapped Dennings. "It so happens that I've spent the entire evening at a bloody tea, a faculty tea!"

    Chris leaned on the bar. "You were just at a tea?"

    "Oh, yes, go ahead; smirk!"

    "You got smashed at a tea," she said dryly, "with some Jesuits."

    "No, the Jesuits were sober."

    "They don't drink?"

    "Are you out of your cunting mind?'" he shouted. "They swilled! Never seen such capacities in all my life!"

    "Hey, come on, hold it down, Burke! Regan!"

    "Yes, Regan," Dennings whispered "Where the hell is my drink?"

    "Will you tell me what you were doing at a faculty tea?"

    "Bloody public relations; something you should be doing."

    Chris handed him a gin on the rocks.