To my relief, my hotel room was no longer mine alone.

“Ah, Holmes, I was beginning to wonder if I’d need to come and bail you out, too. For assaulting an officer of the law, or at least offending him. You missed an interesting demonstration—and I saw Damian’s friend Picasso. I hadn’t realised that his wife was one of those who spend time on the Murphys’ beach. Have you had a good day?” I tried to remember what he had been setting off to do, then noticed the ash-tray near his chair. The number of stubs suggested hours of leisurely contemplation out of the window…but the vehemence with which the cigarettes had been smashed into it said something else entirely.

I looked at him, seeing the storm clouds on his brow, and tried for a light touch. “I take it you had another grim conversation with our friend the Inspector. Will we be turned back at the Monaco border, next time we try to get in?”

“Inspector Jourdain chose to bury his shame at being forbidden to do his job beneath a show of aggression.”

“Well, I don’t see any blood on your clothing, so the argument stopped short of an open brawl.”

“Merely a verbal one. Which ended with a threat of arrest.”

“I suppose that’s to be—”

“For both of us.”

“Me? Why, what have I done to offend the man?”

“Basil Zaharoff.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“Holmes, I—”

“Russell, what the blazes were you thinking? Basil Zaharoff? The man could swat you—”

This explained the ash-tray: not four hours of casual thought, but one hour of fury. “Holmes,” I began, but he was on his feet now, in full spate.

“—like an insect and have you wiped up without anyone seeing. If you imagine—”

“Holmes, it was—”

“—that I would have an easy time finding you, or even—”

“Holmes, I—”

“—Mycroft, with all the power at his call, could bring the man—”

“Holmes, for God’s sake! You think I don’t know the man is hugely dangerous? You think I expected him to be there? Give me some credit for intelligence, please.”

Say what you will about Sherlock Holmes: imperious, impatient, and patronising he could be, but when an accusation was put to him, he was also honest to his bones.

Sooner or later.

Right now, he was stung, and snatched up his tobacco to go stand at the window, back turned.

I took myself off to the bath, which also helped cool things.

Twenty minutes later, we met up and began anew.

He’d rung down for tea, which was a good sign. I walked to the tray, and poured. “What have you been doing, other than being both insulted and blamed for your wife’s actions by Inspector Jourdain?”

He accepted my change of topic. “I put my head into every tattoo parlour between here and the Italian border, and found no one who would admit to a customer resembling Niko Cassavetes.”

“Oh, Holmes—I’m so sorry! I just discovered this morning that it wasn’t a tattoo.” I explained how I’d seen Rafe Ainsley rub at his irritated arm, in precisely the same spot as the missing hair on Niko Cassavetes. “I should have remembered those gauntlets, Holmes, before sending you off on a wild-goose chase. Really sorry.”

“The time was not entirely wasted. It has given me considerable insight into the mores and manners of the contemporary female. Although, Russell, if you decide to have a tattoo engraved on your skin, I beg you to give your husband prior warning.”

“I promise. So, would you like me to tell you what actually happened between me and Zaharoff?”

“That would be an excellent idea.”

“Well, I did telephone to Mrs Hudson, but she said she’d be too busy to see me. I couldn’t see much reason to insist, so I told her I’d phone back.”

“She’s still with Mrs Langtry?”

“She was, although I’m not sure for how long. Then, as I was leaving the hotel room, the cleaner arrived, and I thought that perhaps local knowledge might include the whereabouts of Mr Zaharoff. I asked, and to my surprise she said that he used some rooms on the top floor of the Hermitage for meetings. I thought it might be helpful to know if the offices looked difficult to break into. I definitely was not expecting to find him there, since you said he has a house in Monaco, but the door was standing open and when I looked inside, expecting a cleaner or a secretary, it was him.”

I watched Holmes closely, seeing the effort it took to keep his wrath under control. “Why did you not immediately leave?”

“Wouldn’t that have appeared just a touch, I don’t know. Suspicious?”

“Perhaps. But less…suicidal than stepping inside the man’s rooms.”

“It took him two seconds to pull a gun on me. God knows how he’d have reacted if I’d turned and run. I know we’d like a sample bullet from his gun, but I didn’t care to have it fished out of my own flesh.”

I had succeeded in rendering Sherlock Holmes speechless. I grinned and dropped into a chair. “It was actually quite interesting, if you can keep yourself from exploding.”

He lowered himself onto the settee, not even reaching for the distraction of tobacco.

I told him about the munitions dealer, his quick transformations from threat to joviality, then the further change to what appeared to be actual humour.

“The man’s charm I should have expected—anyone who can manipulate the very highest rank of politicians and industrialists has to be able to use charm as a weapon. But I suspect that, given his reputation, it’s been a very long time since anyone dared to stand up and speak honestly to Basil Zaharoff. If I’d been a man, if I’d been older, or more beautiful—if I’d even been wearing something other than that ridiculous dress—he might have felt more threatened. But there I was, in flowers and spectacles, asking him first to give Mrs Hudson an alibi and then to tell me about his ties to Niko Cassavetes. I think he found it hard to take me seriously.”

He slowly shook his head. “Viyella as a means of disarmament. A weapon I can honestly say would not have occurred to me.”

I didn’t think the dress was made of Viyella. I also didn’t think this was the time for a detour into fabrics. Instead, I gave him a detailed report on everything Zaharoff had said, and moreover, how he’d said it.

At the end, Holmes reached out to move his cigarette case around on the table, but he did not pick it up. “You were playing a dangerous game, Russell. Zaharoff is out of your league—he may well be out of my league. I trust you do not intend to make further use of his capacity for amusement?”

“I might get one more chance at him, before he tires of me and has his bodyguard throw me out.” One could only hope not out of the window.

He bit back his immediate reaction, and took a moment to think. “I will admit, one chance is more than anyone else seems to have on offer. The Monaco police themselves are more concerned with protecting the man’s privacy than with asking him questions.”

“Is that how you heard that I’d been to see Zaharoff? Jourdain told you?”

“He did.” And without my prompting, he described his conversation with the Monaco detective, the man’s fury and threats, and beneath those, his air of frustration, even impotence, at the curtailment of his official powers in this, his native country.

“I’m sorry that’s how you had to learn of it, Holmes. Did he happen to mention how he knew, himself?”

“Interestingly enough, he did not.”

This time, we both sat and thought. Had Zaharoff sent a complaint up the Monaco chain of command? Did the police pay one of the hotel staff for information? Feodor the bodyguard?

“Is it possible,” I said slowly, “that the police are watching Zaharoff, but do not want it known?”

“The police—or Inspector Jourdain, on his own? It is possible.”

“Your speculation?”

“The Inspector’s exaggerated show of aggression at being kept under rein is suggestive. And if he is keeping up an unofficial, unsanctioned enquiry of his own, all the more reason to be upset when someone from outside threatens to walk through it with hob-nailed boots.”

“I was not walking through—”

“He could not have known of Zaharoff’s unaccountable fondness for young and impertinent questioners in flowered dresses.”

“Would you suggest that we consider Jourdain a potential ally? If, that is, we can find him sufficient cover to duck beneath?”

“Don’t think of him as a coward,” Holmes said sharply. “He loves his country, even if he does not love everything it does, or all it requires of him.”

“Fair enough. But can we trust him?”

“Only so far.”

Since we seemed to be past the flash-point of Basil Zaharoff and his possible, would-be protector in the Monaco police, I turned to my own day’s and night’s involvement with Rafe Ainsley, from fetching wine and glasses from Cannes, to packing up his plaster moulds in Antibes, then on to midnight conversations between him and the Russian Count. Eventually, I reached the morning’s demonstration in the foundry and my talk with Pablo Picasso.

“He says your son is well, by the way.”

He ignored that. “I should like to meet this Ainsley person.”

“As it happens, the Murphys are hosting a gathering tonight,” I said. “Though I can’t guarantee there won’t be someone who recognises you.”

“A collection of Americans, in the South of France? I can’t imagine we share much in the way of acquaintances.”

Four hours later, we walked into the garden of Villa America.

Thirty seconds after that, I paused to let my husband greet Sara and Gerald Murphy, and found him gone.