I really didn’t want to go to the casino. Frankly I wanted to go home and straight to bed. I never wanted to face any of these people again. But Coco was insistent. “You think this is a big thing, but I say it is a trifle. If this is the worst thing that happens to you in your life, then you are lucky. I had to suffer the death of the man I loved. That was so painful that anything else since means nothing.”

Of course my thoughts went instantly to that image of Darcy on the beach holding hands with a child and smiling down at the woman with long dark hair. Chanel was right. Nothing could be as painful as that. I put on more comfortable shoes, wrapping the high-heeled wedges with the tacky sole carefully in the suitcase I had brought with me. Then I toned down my stage makeup and we joined Vera, who was waiting for us at the doorway.

“Your mother went on ahead,” she said. “She said she’d open the champagne.”

“I really don’t see how we can drink champagne when we have lost the queen’s necklace,” I said. “She will be furious. You know how she prizes her possessions.”

Vera nodded. “I know. I feel rotten, knowing I’ve let her down when I promised her so faithfully that I’d take care of her jewels. I still don’t see how anyone can have taken the damned thing. It must have been someone supernatural who vanished into thin air.”

“Or a very clever professional thief,” Coco said.

“I feel I should be doing something, but I have no idea what,” Vera said. “I have no confidence in that inspector. The man appears to be a bumbling fool. Do you not know anyone in the Sûreté in Paris, Coco? Someone we could ask to come down and take over this delicate matter with as little scandal as possible?”

Coco shrugged. “Yes, I have friends at the Sûreté, but they can’t just come and take over,” she said. “It is like your Scotland Yard. They have to be invited by the local police and I do not think this little man would welcome outside interference, do you?”

“Then we must try to recover the necklace ourselves,” Vera said. “Keep your eyes and ears open, Georgiana. Someone must have seen something pertinent when you fell.”

“I’m afraid they were looking more at the spectacle of me sprawled over the poor Russian princess and then the Prince of Wales helping me to my feet. But I will keep my ears open for the young man who disappeared. I know what he sounded like even though I only have the vaguest impression of what he looked like.”