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not tell Natalia. Being a lady, she might be nervous at the idea of ghosts. If only Egbert Rose were in Cannes they might investigate together. That would be most pleasant. For ghost-hunting would have nothing to do with murder.

Chapter Two
    The Villa Russe perched in all its white gleaming glory on the chemin de Montrouge on the hill of La Californie to the east of Cannes. It overlooked the Mediterranean, below its gardens, with a view over the whole bay of Cannes from the promontory of the Croisette, with Ile Ste Marguerite beyond it, to the Esterel in the west. Below, over the roofs of comparatively less ostentatious villas, lay the Croisette and the Gardens of the Hesperides, where 10,000 orange trees had been planted over forty years ago for the delight of any
hiverneur
who cared to pay fifty centimes.
    During the dangerously hot summers, La Californie was almost deserted, but this was the height of the social season. During the bleak months of November to January Mentone pleased most, but for February, March and this year April there was no place other than Cannes. Although the English had encroached from their enclave to the east of Cannes on to the higher reaches of La Californie (indeed a prince of the royal blood had died at the Villa Nevada) and were making a determined onslaught on the eastern slopes of the hillside, Russian nobility remained firmly entrenched in the centre and south. Here during the season those unfortunate – or fortunate – enough to have incurred Imperial displeasure by marrying morganatically or not at all, advanced from England, Paris and Vienna to spend the winter season, often joined for holidays by those still basking in Imperial favour but seeking brief respite from the intrigues of the Russian court, by travelling in grand style on theSt Petersburg-Vienna-Nice-Cannes Express. A hundred yards away from the Villa Russe, the Grand Duke Michael and his morganatic wife the Countess Torby lived magnificently in the Villa Kasbeck (in the winter of course) and two hundred yards or so to the east, his sister the Grand Duchess Anastasia. In a few weeks the Russian church would celebrate the marriage of her daughter to Prince Christian of Denmark, thus inconsiderately extending the season unfashionably far into April.
    The Villa Russe was built in the 1860s, when La Californie was still largely a barren hillside, by the enterprising gardener who had turned estate agent, and was now British vice-consul: John Taylor. Under the patronage of Sir Thomas Woolfield, he had created the gardens of Cannes, full of flowers, palms and eucalyptus trees, for which the town was now famed. The arrival of an earlier Romanov had been followed by the addition of some Russian statuary on the roof and porticos to remind him of the Winter Palace. Its present name had also followed, it being thought that the Villa Palmerston was no tactful appellation for a Romanov. The Grand Duke had also added a spectacular belvedere in the gardens overlooking the Bay of Cannes. Determined to go one better, and to rival that of the Grand Duke Michael at the Villa Kasbeck, he had rendered the ironwork golden, where it gleamed over the hillside as if in tribute to the old Russian sun-god Yarilo.
    The villa still stood in splendid isolation, but its walls grew higher as the surrounding land sprouted more villas, churches and doctors. Admittedly there were now five British doctors in Cannes to the Russian one, and several English to the sole Russian church, but the lifestyle of the flamboyant Russians evened up the score.
    ‘Cricket, cricket,’ shouted the Grand Duke Igor jovially at the French local police inspector summoned to the Villa Russe at the un-French hour of 7 a.m. The Romanovs were brought up in Spartan fashion.
    ‘But, Your Imperial Highness, who would possibly wish to kill you?’ Inspector Fouchard asked rhetorically. He knew the answer.
    The Grand Duke looked quickly round the room as though the samovars might hide an