“But they were saying at the Negresco that the police arrested you for his murder. They say you were out with him on his yacht and I know what that generally means.”

Really, I was quite amazed at how quickly gossip spreads among an expatriate community.

“The police have got it wrong, as usual,” Mummy said sharply. “Georgiana was invited for a sail on his yacht. She was not aware of your husband’s reputation, and she left when he began acting boorishly. That was the last time she saw him alive.”

Lady Groper’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. As you can imagine, I’m rather upset. However badly he behaved, he was my husband for over twenty years. I must have loved him once, I suppose. And I wouldn’t wish anybody to die like that, bleeding to death in his swimming pool.” She looked down at her gloved hands. “That pool was his pride and joy. Although a frightful extravagance, if you ask me. What irony that it should cause his death.”

“I rather think the blow to the head caused his death,” I said. “The pool was just a convenient place to dump the body in the hopes that it would look like an accident. Which of course it didn’t. You can’t hit the back of your head and then pitch forward into a pool.”

Again she looked at me with narrowed eyes, as if suspecting that I knew more than I was telling. I was glad that Claudette arrived just then with the cognac on a tray. Lady Groper accepted it and took a good swig.

“So you only heard the news this morning,” Mummy said. “It must have come as a tremendous shock to you.”

“Tremendous.” Lady Groper shuddered again. “I had been up to visit friends in the hills. I returned to the Negresco very late last night and saw the news when the boy brought in my morning paper. There it was, screaming from the headline: ‘English Lord Murdered.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Chanel said in her delightfully French-accented English, “why were you staying at a hotel when you own such a lovely villa nearby? Had you and your husband had a falling-out?”

Lady Groper flushed. “It’s really none of your business,” she said.

“Ah, but it is. My little friend Georgiana is accused of a murder she did not commit. So I must wonder . . .”

“How dare you!” Lady Groper put down the glass with a bang on the table. “Are you suggesting that I had anything to do with my husband’s murder?”

Chanel looked not in the least put out. She shrugged. “I am only curious why a wife chooses to sleep apart from her husband.”