He checked his watch. “I can only give you fifteen minutes. I have to pick up another party at the hotel and take them to the Bastille.”

She checked her phone. “Okay. No problem. I shouldn’t be that long. Just going to get my

. . . wrap.”

“Good luck,” he said, as she opened up the door and stepped outside.

The only problem was—just walking up the front pathway from the nearest drive to the individual guest entrance and through the arched doorway took a good five minutes. By the time she went through the massive double doors, she was already out of breath.

In the vestibule, she came to another set of doors. As she reached for one, it opened, and a man started waving her away, barking in clipped frantic French. He was wearing a suit and looking like he had done the same thing to countless other tourists over the course of the day.

“I’m sorry. I’m American. But I—”

“Okay, turn around. The Palace of Versailles is closed to visitors pending a police investigation. We will be open again soon. Thank you.” He did a circle with his pointed finger, motioning for her to about-face.

“Actually, I was here last night? I left something here—my wrap—and was wondering if you had a lost and found,” she said, clasping her hands together, ready to beg if necessary.

It wasn’t. He tapped an earpiece on his ear, listened for a moment, and then said, “Yes. We do. All right then. Right this way.”

He pushed open the door and let her go through the ticket check area, then began walking at a brisk pace toward one of the main hallways. As empty as it was, the foyer seemed even more vast and magnificent, but Diana didn’t have a chance to take it in since the man was walking so quickly, his dress loafers clicking on the marble floor. Again, she was nearly out of breath by the time he stopped at a door that said, pas d'admission sans affair. No admittance without business.

He pushed it open and said, “Monsieur Chevrolet? This woman was at the party last night and says she misplaced her wrap. She’d like to look through the lost and found.”

“By all means, send her in,” a voice inside said.

He pushed open the door for her and let her pass into a room far too big and ornate to be just any office. It was the size of a tennis court with at least twenty-foot ceilings and had massive floor-to-ceiling windows and loud flowered wallpaper. The crown molding on the walls was detailed and exquisite. The only thing that made it obvious that it was an office, in fact, was the ornate mahogany desk at one corner, dwarfed by the sheer size of the room. That itself was somewhat of an antique with detailed carving and gilded accents.

To complete the picture, the man behind the desk should’ve been dressed in a waistcoat, stockings, and a powdered wig but instead was rather anachronistically attired in a modern black suit. After Diana’s last trip to Versailles, his appearance there, signing whatever document in front of him with a ball-point pen, was slightly shocking and out of place.