Naughty In Nice Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Historical Note

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Rhys Bowen

  Royal Spyness Mysteries

  HER ROYAL SPYNESS

  A ROYAL PAIN

  ROYAL FLUSH

  ROYAL BLOOD

  NAUGHTY IN NICE

  Constable Evans Mysteries

  EVANS ABOVE

  EVAN HELP US

  EVANLY CHOIRS

  EVAN AND ELLE

  EVAN CAN WAIT

  EVANS TO BETSY

  EVAN ONLY KNOWS

  EVAN’S GATE

  EVAN BLESSED

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2011 by Janet Quin-Harkin.

  The Edgar® name is a registered service mark of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bowen, Rhys.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54381-8

  1. British—France—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Nice (France)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6052.O848N38 2011

  823’.914—dc22 2011010023

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to Marie O’Day,

  whom I have elevated to the ranks of royalty for this story.

  Chapter 1

  London

  January 15, 1933

  Weather forecast: showers turning to sleet later. Outlook:

  depressing.

  The Riviera had never looked more inviting. The sun sparkled on a sea of deepest blue. Elegant couples strolled beneath the palm trees on the Promenade des Anglais. The scent of mimosa blossoms hung in the air while a seagull soared lazily overhead. . . . I gave a contented sigh.

  “ ’Ere, watch it, love. You’re slopping soup all over.” The gruff voice brought me back to the present with a jerk. I wrenched my eyes away from the poster on the wall and down to the scene in front of me. A long, gray line of shabbily dressed men, muffled against the bitter cold, snaked across Victoria Station. They clutched mugs or bowls and stood patiently, eyes down or staring, as I had been, into a world that nobody else could see but them. I was currently helping out at the station soup kitchen. It was a bitter and bleak January day, and I felt as cold and miserable as those poor wretches who shuffled past me.

  “Oh, crikey. Sorry,” I muttered as I noticed the trail of soup splashed across the oilcloth table. “I wasn’t concentrating.”

  “It’s all right, love. It can’t be much fun doling out soup all day, not for a young lady like you.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” I said. “Help yourself to bread.”

  “Thank you kindly, miss.” The man gave me a half nod, half bow. “You’re a real toff, you are.”

  He was correct, of course. I am a real toff—Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, daughter of the second Duke of Glen Garry and Rannoch, thirty-fourth in line to the throne of England—and I was helping out at the soup kitchen for several reasons: The first reason, naturally, was that I couldn’t find a proper job. I had been educated to curtsy without falling over (most of the time), to know whether a bishop takes precedence over a duke (depends if it’s an archbishop or a royal duke) and which fork to eat oysters with (trick question: oysters are tipped from the shell straight into the mouth). I had never learned useful things like typing or bookkeeping or even cooking. Besides, the world was in the throes of a terrible depression and even people with strings of qualifications couldn’t find jobs.

  My second reason for working in the soup kitchen was that Her Majesty the Queen approved of voluntary service for the good of the community at this sad time. “It’s up to us to set an example, Georgiana,” she had said to me more than once. And I have to confess that maybe this particular volunteer job was attractive because a certain Mr. Darcy O’Mara had been known to help out here when he was in London. However, the most compelling reason for my selfless ladling of soup into tin mugs was that my sister-in-law, Fig, had taken up residence in our London house. Any excuse to escape from her was welcome.

  After a month of soup ladling, and scrubbing out vast vats of caked-on cabbage, it had begun to lose its appeal. Especially as Darcy had done another of his disappearing acts. I should explain that while Darcy could be described as my young man, he was not in any position to make me an offer, as his family was as penniless as ours. He lived by his wits, and, I suspected, on occasion he worked as some kind of spy for His Majesty’s government. He would never admit to this latter fact, however. If I had been a halfway decent temptress, like Mata Hari, I might have inveigled the truth out of him during a moment of passion. But I wasn’t, and we hadn’t, yet. It was a case of too much Fig and too little opportunity.

  My brother, Binky, the current duke, and his wife didn’t usually spend much time at our London house. Binky preferred country life on our estate in Scotland. But this winter an amazing thing had happene
d. Fig was about to produce a second little Rannoch. How Binky could have plucked up enough courage to have created a first child with Fig is still a matter of speculation. Why he did it a second time indicates insanity in the family.

  Anyway, she was beginning to swell up like a ripe watermelon and felt in need of more pampering than could be achieved in the vast, cavernous halls of Castle Rannoch, where the wind howled down the chimneys. And so they had chosen to spend the winter at Rannoch House, our London home, where I had been camping out alone, more or less successfully, for the last year. I’m an easygoing sort of person, but it would take a saint to spend more than three days with Fig.

  I sighed and ladled another spoonful into a waiting mug. Every day while I manned my post, my fingers numb with cold, that poster of the Riviera looked down from the station wall, as if mocking my currently hopeless position. And the situation was made worse because every morning travelers passed us on their way to the boat train and the Continent. Each time I looked up, porters with great mounds of luggage preceded fur-clad ladies and well-dressed men. Amazingly some people still seemed to have money in this depression.

  “So you’re off to the Riviera, then?” A man’s voice floated across to me through the smoke from the steam engines. “You lucky chap. It’s all right for some. I have to show up at the office every day, come rain or shine, you know. Nose to the grindstone and all that. The pater demands it.”

  “Well, if you will have a father who owns a private bank, what can you expect?” replied the second voice with a similar Old Etonian accent. And two young men came into view, one of them wearing a bowler hat and carrying a brolly, the other accompanied by a porter and the requisite mountain of luggage. They were a little older than I; in fact, I thought I recognized one of them as a one-time dance partner at a hunt ball. For a second we almost made eye contact, but then his gaze moved on without a flicker of recognition, as if he couldn’t possibly know someone wearing a cabbage-stained apron and doling out soup.

  “Not all of us are going to inherit a title and an estate, old chap,” the first man said.

  “We might still have the title and the estate but we’re stony broke like everyone else these days,” the other replied. “Can’t even afford to stay at the Negresco this year. If I didn’t have an aunt with a villa, I don’t know what I’d do. Still, a couple of visits to the casinos should make up for the meager allowance the old man gives me. With a little bit of luck, what?” And he laughed, an exaggerated haw, haw, haw sound.

  They moved away, their voices lost in the puffing of a steam engine and the shouts of porters. As I watched them go, another voice rose clearly over the station hubbub. “Do watch out with my luggage, porter, or the whole lot will come crashing down.”

  I turned to see a veritable Matterhorn of trunks, valises and hatboxes heading my way on a trolley, pushed by a red-faced and struggling porter, while behind it, carrying a small crocodile train case in one hand, a cigarette holder in the other, came my dearest friend, Belinda Warburton-Stoke.

  “Belinda!” I called, dropping the ladle and wiping my hands on my apron as I ran toward her.

  She looked up, confused for a moment; then a big smile spread across her face as she recognized me. “Georgie! Good God. What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Obviously not on my way to the Continent like you, you lucky old thing,” I said. “I would hug you, but I’m rather carrot encrusted at the moment.”

  “Er—yes, I can see.” She took a step backward, moving her gorgeous fox fur coat out of danger. “So you’re still doing your Girl Guide good deeds at the soup kitchen. Positively destined for sainthood, darling.”

  I grimaced. “Anything’s better than spending all day at Rannoch House, with Fig telling me what a burden I am to them and how sad it is that I’m not married yet.” I studied her, wrapped in her long fox fur, with her neat little pillbox hat perched jauntily to one side. She was the height of glamour, while I was conscious of my soup-stained apron and windblown hair. “I had no idea you were home or I would have come to visit you to cheer myself up.”

  “I haven’t been in London at all, darling,” Belinda said. She turned to the porter, who was hovering impatiently. “Take my luggage to my compartment. I’ll be along in a minute,” she commanded.

  “As you say, miss,” he grunted and pushed the trolley into motion again. The mountain of luggage teetered dangerously as he picked up speed.

  “He’ll probably tip the lot onto the rails,” Belinda commented. “I always seem to get the one clueless porter. You’d think with all this unemployment that those who got jobs would be top-notch, wouldn’t you?”

  “So where have you been?” I asked. “Why haven’t I seen anything of you?”

  She gave a resigned shrug. “Home in the bosom of my family, darling. I came home for Christmas, because family togetherness is expected of one, isn’t it, and because Father usually gives me a generous check in my Christmas stocking, but now I’m rushing back to the Riviera as fast as my legs can carry me. Too bleak and dreary in London and nobody fun is still here. Between you and me, I’m positively sex starved. I haven’t had a good roll in the hay in weeks.”

  “Belinda!” I exclaimed. After having known her all this time she still managed to shock me.

  She looked surprised. “One does so enjoy it.”

  I tried to imagine if it was as good as she claimed. Darcy’s kisses had certainly been blissful, but I couldn’t quite believe that the next part could be as great as Belinda claimed. Obviously my mother thought so. She had done it with a great many men on every continent except Antarctica.

  “I don’t think I could live without sex,” Belinda added. “I could never be a nun.”

  I laughed. “They’d never have you!”

  “Which is more than any man of my acquaintance could say.” She gave a wicked smile, then the smile faded. “Crockford’s was like a morgue when I popped in for a quick flutter last night. Only a few dreary businessmen. Not a wealthy playboy in sight.”

  “Did you win anything?”

  Belinda made a face. “I didn’t stay long. I try not to play with my own money, you know, and I couldn’t find anyone sympathique enough to fund me. The casino at Monte Carlo will be friendlier.”

  “So you’re going to Monte, are you?” I tried to hide my look of envy.

  Belinda hesitated. “Ah. That part’s not quite settled yet. I don’t exactly have a firm invitation from anyone.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I was planning to camp out at the Negresco in Nice and do a little scouting around, but frankly Father’s check is less generous this year. I blame it on the wicked stepmother. Like your sister-in-law, she objects to family money being spent on the unmarried daughter. So I’ve got about enough cash to get me there, and then, who knows? I may have to have my car conveniently break down outside someone’s villa, like I did in Romania.”

  “Belinda. You’re terrible.”

  “It worked perfectly at the royal castle there, didn’t it?” Belinda gave me her cat-with-the-cream smile. Suddenly she grabbed my arm. “I’ve got a brilliant idea. Come with me, Georgie. We’ll stage that convenient breakdown together. It would be such a lark, wouldn’t it? And someone would be more likely to take us into their bosom if you were with me. Royalty does carry clout, and I gather your cousin the Prince of Wales is wintering on the Med at the moment, so you’d have a perfect excuse to be visiting him.”

  “I can’t,” I said, while my less sensible half whispered that it would indeed be a tremendous lark. “Apart from the fact that I’m hardly dressed for the boat train, it’s a small matter of not being able to afford the ticket for the journey. And certainly not the Negresco until we secure our invitation.”

  “I’d volunteer to share a room with you,” Belinda said, “but it might rather cramp my style.” She leaned closer to me. “Actually, I have a particular chap in mind.”

  “Another one?”

  “Of c
ourse.”

  “So who is this new beau? Why haven’t I heard about him?”

  “Not my beau yet; in fact, we only exchanged a few words and some very smoldering looks. He sat next to me at the roulette wheel at the casino before Christmas and when I was about to bet he put his hand over mine and said, ‘Allow me,’ and put a stake on for me. And it won too. He’s absolutely dreamy. What’s more, he’s a French aristocrat of incredibly long pedigree, I gather, and frightfully rich. But we never had a chance to get to know one another properly. He regretted that he had to leave for Paris the next morning, but hoped we’d meet again in more agreeable circumstances. So I’m planning to pick up where we left off.”

  “Good luck,” I said. “Now, if you marry him, you’ll have to behave yourself. The French expect their wives to be terribly chaste and demure.”

  “Not their mistresses, however,” Belinda said, smiling wickedly.

  “Belinda. I worry that you’ll end up like my mother,” I said.

  “I don’t think your mother has had a bad life at all,” Belinda said thoughtfully, staring out across the smoky bleakness of the station. “Rather fun, actually.”

  “But what about when she gets old and loses her beauty and sex appeal?”

  “She can make a fortune writing her memoirs. ‘My life—from actress to duchess to bolter.’ They will make Lady Chatterley look like a Girl’s Own comic.”

  “It wouldn’t be the kind of life I’d want,” I said.

  “Of course not. You’ve too much of Queen Victoria in you. You want the family seat with an adoring husband and a pack of children around you. We’ll just have to find you another Prince Albert.”

  “I met enough of those at the wedding in Romania,” I said. “They were terribly stodgy and boring.”