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You may imagine my surprise when the babushka, answering the sound of a gong, went into the small foyer at the main door and returned with Celeste Tangent in tow.

I expected from the lab assistant a start of surprise, a frown, a look of alarm, even. But after she had finished a loud and elaborate exchange of greetings with her host, she turned to me with an irresistible charm of smiles, voice, and gesture. “Norman, how delightful to see you again.”

“Miss Tangent,” I said, inclining my head, standing my ground.

She gave a quick, toothsome laugh. “ ‘Miss Tangent!’ Oh, I love it. So full of restraint. Not that this place is a stranger to restraints. And, Di, princess!” She turned to Diantha. “How are you? You’re so right about Norman. He is precious.” Then to me again, her hand sweeping the vast room, her silver bracelets jingling. “Isn’t this wild! Don’t you love its …”

“Extravagance,” I offered, finding my voice. I was, despite myself, under the woman’s spell.

“Yes. Yes.” She took off her long thick fur to reveal attire that, though quite casual, slowly mesmerized me. I mean the pre-faded expensive jeans over nylons and thick-heeled pumps, a low-cut black jersey that molded her breasts just so and displayed her gorgeous throat and neck. And then her lustrous blond hair piled wantonly on her head.

“You will stay for dinner?” Freddie Bain intoned.

“Of course. Norman needs a date.”

So I had a partner for dinner while not really wanting either. I should have made some good excuse for excusing myself. I could have pleaded guilt or insanity or grief or all three. I felt complicit in some tawdry enterprise, but nor could I withstand the fantasy to hand, so to speak. Because Miss Tangent had me quite bedazzled, sitting next to me on the sofa, her shapely limbs articulate as she shifted around. In what remained of my detective’s instincts, I understood then how she could have made slaves of Penrood and perhaps Ossmann. With my proclivity for self-delusion, I told myself I might be able to get her, in a weak moment, to tell me about what was happening in the Genetics Lab. But I can see, looking back, that all the weak moments were to be mine.

For the nonce, it was Mr. Bain who saved me from any overt foolishness. For reasons I cannot fathom, the man seemed determined to impress me. Glasses in hand, we began a tour of the art that hung both in the main room and along the balconied walls. Diantha kept glancing to me now, as though trying to divine whether I approved. I didn’t. To me the stuff — Dalíesque vistas foregrounded with muscle-bound blond men and great-breasted naked Valkyries with heroic buttocks doing violence to subhumanoid forms — appeared to be utter kitsch. Or kitsch so kitschy it achieved a kind of parodic authenticity. Art as a serious joke, so to speak. Not that Mr. Bain betrayed any self-amusement as he led us around.

“And what do you think, Norman?” Miss Tangent had hooked her arm in mine, had taken virtual possession, and now delighted in putting me on the spot.

Influenced by Dalí and perhaps by Wyeth, N.C., not Andrew, I responded, fending her off with a smattering of erudition.

The works on the third tier included a Werner Peiner landscape, an Ivo Saliger nude, and a large mural of muscular Aryans, men and women, at various kinds of outdoor work. “Looks like Communist art,” I said to Miss Tangent out of earshot of our host. “I suppose you could call it National Socialist Realism.” But my bon mot did not appear to register.

Instead, Miss Tangent unhooked her arm and took me by the hand. “You want to see my favorite room?” I didn’t have a chance to answer as she led me along the balcony to a door behind where the fireplace chimney joined the wall. It opened into a large bedroom with a row of pointed Gothic windows on either side. A rug comprising two polar bear pelts lay in front of a smaller fireplace while a bed capacious enough for giants to copulate on stood to one side under two angled gilt-framed mirrors.