Angelina wasn’t joking. That morning, she wouldn’t come into my Green Oak mansion.“Stop me here,” she said to my chauffeur a stone’s throw from the gates, and he stepped on the brake. Then she turned to me. “I’ll see you later,” she mumbled and climbed down from the car.

I should be worried about her, but when I stepped into my mansion and headed for the stairs, my thoughts were of the server girl—Mabel Parker, as she’d introduced. Images of her crying, her quiet sobs as ...