I glanced across at her. I had heard that she was an ambitious and ruthless woman. Was it possible that she arranged for my accident? Or at least that she took me as a model because there was a good chance I would fail and thus give her publicity?

“But what about the queen’s choker?” I asked. “I feel terrible about it.”

Coco shrugged. “What can we do? It is now in the hands of the police, although judging from that sad little man, I do not have much hope. So we have no choice but to forget about it for the present and go to the casino.”

I winced. I felt I should be doing something personally to recover the necklace, but I had no idea what that might be. Then I decided that most of the guests from this event would be at the party at the casino and it would be a good opportunity to observe them and thus rule out those who could not be suspects.

“I’ll go and change,” I said.

Coco put her hand on my arm to stop me. “But no. Continue to wear the ensemble, I beg you—you will cause heads to turn at the casino and everyone will know you as chic.”

I wasn’t so sure that a man’s tweed jacket and lace blouse really made me look elegant, but I supposed that anything Coco did would be counted as chic. “I must take these shoes off, though,” I said. “They are hurting me. I think Vera bought them one size too small.”

“If you must, you must.” Coco shrugged.

We went through to the changing room. For some reason I found it hard to walk and almost stumbled again. When I took off my shoes, I noticed something. One of the soles looked as if it had a darker patch on it—as if I had stepped in something. I touched it dubiously. The outer layer was smooth but there were places where that outer layer had worn away, exposing an inner layer of substance that was tacky. Incredibly tacky. I had been set up to stumble and trip. And cleverly too. Someone had painted a substance on the sole of my shoe—some kind of glue, and maybe a varnish over it. The first few steps would have been fine but as the outer hard layer was breached, then the tacky substance would have rooted me to the floor. It seemed more and more likely that someone knew I’d be wearing the queen’s necklace tonight and had planned a very clever robbery.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Still January 25 and still at the casino
Wishing I could be somewhere else.