Summary
Ann Annington—ink-stained oracle of the city’s literary pageant—receives an editorial gauntlet: pry open the hermetically sealed life of Harold Hargrave, novelist-as-recluse, a man who has turned every previous interviewer into a cautionary footnote. Rather than knock, she picks the lock of domesticity itself, sliding into his parquet-and-paper sanctuary under the starched alias of a housemaid. In starched apron and conspiratorial silence she rewrites his routines: silk stockings draped like question marks across the chaise, hairpins strewn like exclamation points between linen sheets—each filament of lace a signature of sabotage against the matrimonial blueprints drafted by Hargrave’s matriarch and the porcelain Evangeline. The fiancée’s nostrils flare at the olfactory evidence of trespass; maternal schemes curdle. Yet the jest boomerangs: Hargrave, peeling back the calico disguise, discovers not a spy but a mirror—an accomplice in restlessness. In the hush between the dismissed servant’s exit and the yawning newsroom deadline, attraction outruns subterfuge; confessions eclipse copy. The front page remains blank of scandal, the lovers’ future un-inked, the byline forever unwritten.
Synopsis
Ann Annington, book reviewer for a metropolitan newspaper, is assigned to interview author Harold Hargrave. Knowing that Hargrave has resisted previous attempts, Ann obtains a position in his apartment as a maid and resolves to break up his engagement to Evangeline, a girl chosen for him by his mother. She plants ladies' garments about his room and hairpins in the bed, and Evangeline is indignant. Discovering he has been tricked, Hargrave dismisses Ann. That evening they realize their mutual love, with the result that she does not report the details of his private life to the press.
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