And she did have the temperament, I decided. She was emotional, jealous, high-strung. And she adored Marina. Now I’d have to find a way into tricking her to reveal a morsel of the truth. As I came back to apartment 1 I let myself in through the front door. No servant appeared and I was able to cross the full length of the foyer unseen. So it might have been possible that Bobo let herself in, or was admitted by the countess. But if she had been killed here, someone would have had to drag or carry her out to the archway beneath the clock tower. That would take strength, and such an undertaking would have had to leave a trace. I remembered Bobo’s sparkly gown, the beads around her neck. Wouldn’t sequins have come off, beads have snapped if she had been dragged along the cobbles?

I went back outside and retraced my steps along the side of the building and around to the archway. I didn’t notice a single bead or sequin lying along the path. There was another difficulty with my theory: Bobo’s white dress would have been covered in mud. And it wasn’t. Which brought up another problem—what happened to her overcoat? It had been a beastly night earlier on. She wouldn’t have walked across the park to Kensington Palace with no coat on. So where was it? Hanging in someone’s wardrobe at the palace right now? Or in the boot of somebody’s car, or already dumped into the Thames? I went back inside. I could hear Irmtraut and the princess still conversing in the sitting room.

Without hesitating I tiptoed up the stairs. Irmtraut’s room was on the same floor as mine, but overlooking the front door, where our car had picked us up last night. Outside her door I hesitated. I didn’t know whether she had brought a maid with her from whatever country she lived in. I hadn’t seen one, but good servants are trained to be invisible, as I had told Queenie. And I suspected Irmtraut would insist on well-trained servants. I gave a tentative knock. No answer. I glanced down the hallway, then turned the handle. The room was unoccupied and I breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.