I felt I had scored a small point as I made my exit, but I was only halfway to the lift when the enormity of the truth hit me. Belinda had said that someone else had been at Crockford’s with Bobo and she had left with him. She had been going to tell me and then rapidly changed the subject. She had been going to say that she had seen Darcy leaving Crockford’s with Bobo that night.

His dressing gown was hanging behind her bedroom door. It was almost a physical pain to think the words. What more proof did I want? I knew that Darcy had been no saint when I met him. I knew that young men of my social class were often wildly promiscuous, but he had said that he loved me. He wanted to marry me. My hand went to the silver Devonshire pixie I wore around my neck. Darcy had given it to me last Christmas, when he had proposed to me. Was I stupidly naïve to think that he’d be living a chaste life now? Men were different, weren’t they? They had needs, apparently. But Bobo Carrington? The girl with the silver syringe? And not just a one-night stand either, but leaving his dressing gown behind her bedroom door.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut so that tears would not come.

As the car drove me back to the palace I tried to push Darcy from my mind and focus instead on who might have killed Bobo Carrington. This was not easy as I knew nothing of her friends or her wicked lifestyle. It did occur to me that going to Gussie Gormsley’s party tomorrow night might be a worthwhile thing to do as he did move among the bright young things. I’d seen people snorting cocaine at one of his parties, and Noel Coward had been there, and . . . Oh. I paused, reconsidering. And Prince George also. So maybe it was a dangerous place to take Princess Marina. But if George himself showed up, he’d have to behave with his future wife there, and someone in that set might well have been friendly with Bobo Carrington.

I toyed with Prince George as a suspect. He had always come across as an easygoing sort of chap. Everyone liked him. He had an infectious smile. But if his former mistress had come to him right before the wedding and told him she would go to the newspapers and tell them about their affair and the baby, might he have been driven to silence her at all costs? That was clearly what Sir Jeremy and Major Beauchamp-Chough were fearing. But Prince George had a perfect alibi. He had been at dinner with his family last night. He had still been there when Marina and I left to go back to Kensington. In fact he had offered to drive us until we told him we had a car waiting.