“I say, that’s damned bad luck. It’s no joke being broke, is it? Especially when the old man is rolling in dough.” He sighed. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t very well play tonight. Not with my father mooching around the place. I’ll have to lie low until things calm down and Mama goes home in a huff. I expect someone will offer me a sofa to sleep on.” He gave a cheerful smile. “Well, toodle pip. Good to meet you. Georgiana, isn’t it?”

“Most people call me Georgie,” I said.

“Splendid. So if I manage to soften up the old man and he says all is forgiven and invites me to stay at the villa, then maybe you and I can go out for a night on the town, and I’ll teach you to play roulette with his money.”

“We’ll see,” I said, half laughing. There was something rather appealing about him. We moved out of the alcove. Bobby glanced around him before walking purposefully to the door. I watched him go, not quite sure about him. He seemed a typical likeable young Englishman, but the ease with which he had left that salon undetected indicated that he had done that sort of thing before. And also the forged check. . . . Then I realized that he had never tried to say that he didn’t steal the necklace. Somebody took it, and he was the only one who successfully left the room before he could be searched.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Still at the casino

I wondered if I could ask my mother to have her chauffeur take me home. I started to move back into the crush around the bar, looking for her, or Coco and Vera.

“I say, it’s you. Are you all right?” Another young man stepped out to block my path. He looked familiar somehow and I realized I had seen him at Victoria Station when I was serving soup. “You took a nasty tumble back there,” he said. “No bones broken?”

“Only my pride,” I said. “I felt like a complete fool.”

“Damned Frenchies,” he said. “What’s the betting there was a nail or something sticking out of that stage thing that made you trip. Can’t build anything properly to save their lives, these foreigners. You should see the botched job they did on our villa roof. Least little wind and tiles rain down like confetti. Give me good old English workmanship any day.”

“And yet you come here for the winter,” I pointed out.

“Ah, well. They do know how to cook divinely,” he said. “And the wines . . . and the weather is decidedly better. I’m Neville, by the way.”

“Georgiana.”

We shook hands. I decided how pleasant it was not to have to go through the formalities of home. In England we would have had to wait to be introduced properly by a third party. Here we could be on a first-name basis.