I sat. “She can’t overhear us, can she?” I muttered. “This is strictly for your ears only.”

“The kitchen’s at the back. So go on. Spill the beans.”

“I’m in awful trouble, Belinda,” I blurted out.

Her perfectly plucked eyebrows shot up in surprise. “It was only just over a week ago that you expressed interest in losing your virginity. You can’t possibly be pregnant already!”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” I said. “There is a body in my bathtub.”

“A dead body, you mean?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Belinda was now wide awake. She perched on the edge of the sofa, and leaned in closer. “My dear, how absolutely fascinating. Anyone you know?”

“Actually, yes. He was an awful Frenchman called de Mauxville, who was trying to claim ownership of Castle Rannoch.”

“A long-lost relative, then?”

“Good Lord, no. Nothing to do with us. He won the house from Father in a card game, or so he was trying to claim.”

“And now he’s lying dead in your bath. Have you called the police yet?”

“No, I didn’t want to do that until I could find Binky and now he’s vanished, so I don’t know if he had anything to do with it or not.”

“It won’t look good—you both have an awfully good motive for killing him, after all.”

“I know that.”

“So what are you planning to do—dispose of the body somehow? Does Rannoch House have a back garden? Flower beds?”

“Belinda! I couldn’t bury him in the back garden—it simply isn’t done.”

“It would be the simplest solution, Georgie.”

“No, it wouldn’t. For one thing he’s rather large and I don’t think even two of us could drag him out to the garden successfully. For another, someone is bound to be looking out of a window and see us, and then I’d be in worse trouble than I am now. At least at this moment I can face the police with true innocence. And don’t forget that the Rannoch family motto is Death Before Dishonor.”

“I bet you’d have done it if he’d been a small man and you’d had a wilderness behind the house,” Belinda said, grinning.

I had to smile too. “Maybe I would.”

“Who else would know that this de Mauxville had come to claim Castle Rannoch?”

“Our solicitors, unfortunately. Apart from them, I couldn’t say.”

She sat frowning for a moment. Then she said, “I think your best approach is to play your trump card.”

“Trump card?”

“Your royal connection, my dear. You summon the police, acting with righteous indignation. You have just found a body in your bathtub. You have no idea who he is or how he got there. Kindly have it removed instantly. Think of your great-grandmother. The lower classes are always in awe of anything royal.”

“And if they ask me if I know him? I can’t tell a lie.”

“Be suitably vague. You think he came to the house once to see your brother. Of course you were never personally introduced to him, so officially you don’t know him.”