“Thank you, Millie,” called Gwen from inside. “Send her in, then close the door, please.”

Millie opened the door. Iris entered to see Gwen lying in melodramatic repose, the covers pulled up to her neck.

“Oh, my dear Miss Sparks,” she gasped. “So good of you to visit me in my distress.”

Iris waited until Millie had closed the door behind her, then grinned. “We’re safe,” she said.

Gwen immediately sat up, revealing her opera gloves.

“Hello, Gilda,” said Iris. “Are we putting the blame on Mame now?”

Gwen looked at her quizzically.

“Gilda?” repeated Iris.

“Sorry, not getting it,” said Gwen. “Who is Gilda?”

“The Rita Hayworth flicker? Where she does the glove-and-gown strip, only it’s just the one glove?”

“Oh,” said Gwen, getting out of bed and peeling off the gloves. “Let’s see. I spent the latter half of forty-four in the sanatorium where they wouldn’t let me watch the weekly films for fear they would upset me. Since then I’ve been living in this house doing my best to mother a small boy, which at times reaches a level of insanity greater than the one that had me institutionalised. Apart from cowboy movies and Make Mine Music, I haven’t seen anything. Certainly nothing with a striptease number.”

“What’s Make Mine Music?”

“Disney cartoons.”

“How was it?”

“Little Ronnie loved it. That’s all that mattered.”

“We should go out and see a movie. It would be nice to have a night out together that didn’t involve either murder or psychotherapy.”

“I’d like that very much.”

“So, explain the gloves.”

“I didn’t want to leave fingerprints on the letters, and I left my wrist gloves at the office.”

“How were the letters?”

“They paint a lurid picture of an affair between Alice and Andrea’s youngest brother, Christo, while they were in exile in Switzerland, complete with the implication that he fathered Prince Philip.”

“My, my. How lurid?”

“Downright explicit at times. Rather stimulating, if one goes for that sort of thing.”

“Yet you kept the gloves on.”

“I did, in case the forger left any prints.”

“Forger? They don’t match Alice’s handwriting from the earlier letters?”

“Oh, the handwriting looks to be the same to my untutored eye, but the content gave it away. In this one, in particular.” She held one up.

Iris plopped down on the bed next to her and read it. “Nope, not seeing it,” she said when she had finished.

“Then I am one up on you,” said Gwen. “It might be worthwhile getting an expert to look at them, in case my opinion isn’t enough to satisfy the authorities.”

“Which authorities?”

“Maybe the police, maybe whoever in your lot handles conspiracies,” said Gwen. “If these letters are being forged, then the forger, or his employers, are trying to set someone up.”

“Prince Philip, presumably.”

“I’m not so sure anymore. Someone went to a lot of trouble to fake these, and I don’t think they did it just to throw a scare into our young princess. Too many violent men are coming out of the woodwork for that. This smacks of being part of a larger plan. But you’ve already thought of that, haven’t you? Here’s what I’ve been thinking: what if Princess Elizabeth was never meant to be the intended recipient of the extortion request?”