Timothy X. Farrell suddenly visualized the opening shot to the film that he had planned to make of Daphne Du Maurier's lush novel Rebecca. He had just pulled into the driveway to Laurel House, set high above the slow-churning Potomac River, and there before him in the icy silver moonlight was the start of his movie had David O. Selznick not outbid him for the movie rights and then hired Alfred Hitchcock, of all people, to direct.

Plainly, a true disaster was now in the making.

Attendants parked cars in front and to the side of the mock-Georgian facade of the house of what would have been his brother-in-law, Blaise Delacroix Sanford, had Timothy and Blaise's half sister, Caroline Sanford, ever had time to get married in those busy years when, together, they had created a film studio that, for a time, nearly changed movie history until . . . What was the name, he wondered, of Olivia De Havilland's sister? The one who was now the lead in Rebecca.

Timothy parked at the front door. He could almost hear what's-her-name's voice over the screen: 'Last night I dreamed I had gone back to Manderley'--or whatever the line was. Purest junk, of course. Timothy preferred his own 'true to life' Hometown series of movies, but the public was supposed to be more at home with beautiful houses and beautiful people and a dark mystery at the heart of it all, not to mention a great fire that reveals a terrible secret. Even so, he had wanted desperately to direct Rebecca: something un-Farrellesque in every way.

The butler was since his time. 'Sir?'

Timothy gave his name. Then: 'Is my film crew here?'

The butler was now all attention. 'Oh, yes, Mr. Farrell! This is an honor, sir. To meet you. Your camera people are setting up in the library.' The drawing room was full of Washington grandees, some elected, some born in place, like Alice Roosevelt Longworth, wearing for once the wrong blue, some newly arrived from abroad now that England and France were at war with Germany. Nevertheless, for an average American like the butler, the defining, the immortalizing presence of The Movies took precedence over everything else. 'Shall I show you into the library, sir?'

'No, not yet. I must say hello. . . .'

Timothy had forgotten the rapid lizardlike Washington gaze when someone new enters an important drawing room. Conversations never drop a beat and all attention remains fixed on one's group and yet the newcomer is quickly registered and placed and then set to one side, until needed. The Hollywood stare was far more honest, more like that of the doe frozen in a predator's sight line. Fortunately, Timothy's face was not absolutely familiar to anyone except Frederika Sanford, Blaise's wife, who now moved swiftly through her room filled with guests, many in military uniform, some drably American, some exotically foreign, like the embassy attaches. War or peace? That was the only subject in this famous 'city of conversation,' or the new phrase that Frederika used when she embraced the brother-in-law that never was: 'The whispering gallery has been roaring with the news that you were coming here to make a film.'

Frederika was now a somewhat faded version of her original bright blond self. Timothy recalled how Caroline had always preferred her sister-in-law to her half brother Blaise. But then Frederika was a born peacemaker while Blaise liked to wage war, preferably on every front. At the far end of the room he was regrouping his forces beneath a Sargent portrait of his father. Blaise was now stout, mottled of face--had he taken to drink? He looked like one of Timothy's Boston Irish uncles. To the troops attending him, Blaise was laying down the law...