It being well into the afternoon, Madame Crovetti gave us wine rather than coffee. After a brief hesitation, she brought over a bowl of almonds with an old silver nutcracker sticking out of the top, and we launched into an amiable if untidy conversation.

The reply to Holmes’ question was yes, she knew Niko Cassavetes. He’d been a friend of her son, and for nearly two years had been letting a room in the warehouse building at the end of her little terrace block. She was sad to hear of his death.

“What was he like?” I asked.

“Very beautiful.”

“I agree—but as a person?”

Her expression was fond and the phrase she used would, I thought, translate into “plausible rogue”—a likeable sort, but with some shady associates.

“So,” Holmes suggested, his attention, to all appearances, on the almond he’d placed between the nutcracker’s jaws, “you may not have been completely surprised at the manner of his death.”

“The manner? Yes—and yet not entirely, no. But the place? I knew Madame ’Udson was using him for a few tasks, but so do we all. Niko has been the odd-job man hereabouts, for some time.” Her phrase was homme à tout faire—but not, it transpired, for jobs related to leaking pipes or uneven doors. “I thought it would be to do with driving, or an introduction to some of his friends in the artistic community. But that she would have to do with guns.” Her distaste was strong, as it had not been at the idea of minor criminality. Interesting.

“How did Madame Hudson come to hire rooms from you?”

“Niko learned that an English lady was searching for a house, and gave her my telephone number. I was happy enough to have her. It is too quiet here, without neighbours.”

“But didn’t you say that Niko lived here, down at the end?”

“Yes, and my son as well. But Matteo is away, for a time, and Niko is—Niko was—a young man with a busy life, often keeping him away at night. It is a comfort to have another person nearby, in the evenings.”

I could well believe that: the nearest street-lamp was on the main road, and walking down the cul-de-sac in the dark would be eerie. “Madame, do you know where Madame Hudson was yesterday afternoon?”

“I would think she was where she goes every Friday afternoon.”

“Where is that?”

She primly shook her head. “I know only that on Fridays, she is generally away. I do not know what time she goes or returns—I am at the shop until last thing at night. Perhaps you should ask her?”

“Alas, we have not been able to reach the inspector in charge of her release.” A true statement, if meaningless.

“There is little more I can say. Other than the lady does have friends—friends from before she came here.”

We both looked up from our smashed almonds. Seeing our interest, Madame went coy.

“I should not speak. She is a private woman, I think.”

“She is also an old woman, locked in a cold cell. While the blood hardens on your floor-boards and the killer of Niko Cassavetes walks free.”

To do her credit, the third point seemed nearly of equal weight to the second. She pursed her lips and took a turn with the nutcracker, dropping a perfect almond into a bowl. “The dress she wore, when she came to my door late at night to telephone the police.”

“The red one?”

“I have not seen her in a red dress,” she said—hardly surprising, since I had invented the garment as a mere prompt. “It was her eau de Nil frock, with a spray of embroidered violettes along the neck. She bought it from me, and it is a favourite to her, for functions of the afternoon.”

“As opposed to evening cocktail parties or dinners?”

“Ladies’ gatherings,” she specified.

It was hard to picture Mrs Hudson in an afternoon salon, chatting about hair styles and Paris fashion and…whatever it was groups of women gossiped about.

“Were these perhaps English ladies?”

“How would I know?” she said tartly, handing the nutcracker over to Holmes. “A dame would not invite the likes of me to her home.”

Something about the way she said the word caught my ear. Did she simply mean a grand lady?

Holmes had heard it, too. “By ‘dame,’ you mean…?”

“A lady of the bath.”

She’d lost me. An attendant at the thermal baths was an unlikely hostess for a ladies’ salon. The phrase sounded like one of those chivalric positions handed down from Tudor days—though were there female members of the Order of the Bath? I opened my mouth to ask for clarification, only to be distracted by the expression on Holmes’ face.

“A lady of the bath? Good Lord.” He seemed to be having a brainstorm, or heart attack, his features contorted by a paroxysm of…humour?

“Madame,” he said, “is it possible that you know where this Lady makes her residence?”

“Somewhere above Sainte-Dévote.”

He dropped the silver nutcracker and reached across the table to take our hostess’s hand. “Madame, we must be gone, I hope to see you very soon, in the company of Madame Hudson herself.”

With that, he was out the door.

I grabbed Madame Crovetti’s hand for a hasty shake.

“And you, Madame,” she began. “If you require any clothing suitable to your visit in Monaco, you could do no better than my shop in town. Just up from the Casino, on the Boulevard du Nord.”

The last was called at my back as I scrambled to follow Holmes. He’d been forced to wait for a motor to go past, so I did not quite need to break into a run.

“Holmes, what on earth was that about? Who is—are you laughing?”

He was—or at least, brimming over with amusement and surprise, as if Madame C. had given him a taste of past joys. “Madame de la Bathe,” he said, as if repeating the punch-line of a joke.

“Yes, I heard what she said. Who is Mrs Bath?”

“Not Mrs: Lady. Lady de Bathe.”

“Very well, but—wait. Lady de Bathe? Wasn’t that…?”

He all but rubbed his hands with pleasure. “Yes. None other than the Jersey Lily herself: Lillie Langtry.”