There was no answer. Surely she couldn’t have gone out so early on a day like this. I stood there in the mews, the cold gnawing me, feeling indignant and uneasy at the same time. Belinda sometimes spent the night in a bed other than her own, that I knew. But we had talked about going shopping together only yesterday. All right, so Belinda was not the most considerate of people either. She definitely took care of her own needs first and if those needs included going off somewhere with a dashing man she met at Crockford’s, then it probably would slip her mind that she was supposed to be going shopping with her friend and a visiting princess.

I gave one last rap on the front door, then stomped off down the mews. Really, she could be most infuriating. Of course, we were only planning on a trip to Harrods and I didn’t really need her today, but all the same . . . As I walked away I couldn’t shake off the lurking feeling of uneasiness. Belinda lived the same kind of life as Bobo Carrington. She went to gambling clubs and was not too choosy about her bedmates. And Bobo Carrington was now dead.

Chapter 18

NOVEMBER 6

BOBO CARRINGTON’S FLAT

I was going to return to Kensington Palace when it struck me that I wasn’t too far from Bobo’s Mayfair flat. I was sure the police would have been through it, but I wanted to get a look for myself. You can learn a lot about a person from seeing the kind of place they live in. Even though I knew I would be putting myself through more torture if I saw Darcy’s dressing gown, or any other item I recognized as his, it had to be done. Until now all I knew about Bobo was what I had been told. She was a society beauty, she moved with the smart set, one of the bright young things. She had had an affair with Prince George, among others, and she had given birth to a child recently. Also she was a drug fiend. And apparently she had no family and no maid. But I knew nothing at all about what kind of person she was. Did she have many friends? How did she manage to live in Mayfair? And why did she have no maid? And the most important question of all—who had wanted her dead?

I turned onto Knightsbridge and made my way to Hyde Park Corner, then up Park Lane until I came to Mount Street. The world was eerily silent with the odd bus and taxi passing at a snail’s pace and almost nobody on the pavement. My own footsteps seemed to echo unnaturally loud and I found myself glancing over my shoulder, even though I knew I should have nothing to worry about.