Lausanne

“Are you sure this is quite safe?” Fiona said.

“Oh, yes,” Clarabelle Strappe assured her. After the initial confusion about uniforms had been resolved, she and the stern headmistress of St. Hilaria’s Finishing School For Respectable Young Ladies (18+) had rapidly become firm friends. “I overheard Charlotte whispering about it with her friends. Apparently this sort of thing is all the rage on the Continent.”

“But you’re quite sure nobody is going to come along?”

“Men are strictly prohibited from this whole stretch of beach,” Miss Strappe assured her. It was early in the morning. The warm sun shone down on the still surface of Lake Geneva, in the still waters of which a half-dozen or so young women splashed around. “Reserved for ladies only. Charlotte seemed very knowledgeable about the subject.”

“Um,” said Manon, the pert brunette fashion designer, who was one of the half-dozen or so young women. “Then what on Earth is that?”

A fisherman was tramping down the track that led through the small patch of forest which concealed the Plage des Nymphes from the prosperous Swiss town of Lausanne, where the Orient Express had stopped for the night. He was very obviously male. He glanced at the water, saw the women, did a double-take and grinned.

“That’s a man!” said Megan, the red-haired Scottish heiress, a blush springing to her freckled cheeks as she ducked down below the surface of the water. “What’s he doing here?”

“Perhaps we should call the police?” suggested Lakshmi, the maharani, who’d left her golden bangles and nose-ring behind in the train for the morning’s expedition.

“But they’re not allowed here!” said Dorothy, the all-American missionary, water flying from the end of her butter-golden braids as she turned in alarm. “They’re men!”

“¡Idioto! ¡Pervertido! ¡Bruto!” said Maria, the Spanish countess, dark eyes flashing, waves of dark hair cascading over her copper-coloured shoulders. “He has come to spy on us! I will run him through with my sword!”

“Bonjour,” said the fisherman, cheerfully, taking a seat on a rock and getting a packet of sandwiches, wrapped in waxed paper, out of his pocket. “Are you enjoying the water?”

“Go away,” snapped Fiona, blushing bright red as she took great care to ensure that no part of her was visible above the surface of Lake Geneva. The girls were swimming sans costumes, of course, having been reliably assured that the Plage des Nymphes was the best women-only inland nude beach on the Continent. “You’re not allowed to be here.”

“I have come here every morning for the last thirty years,” pointed out the fisherman, reasonably enough. “But never have I seen something like this. Antoine, Monty, take a look.”

Two more fishermen were emerging from the woods behind him. “C’est extraordinaire,” said the younger one, a handsome curly-haired lad in his early twenties. “Is this why they call it the Plage des Nymphes?”

“Non.”

“But I say,” said the older one, an Englishman in his early forties, who had the appearance of an ambassador of some kind. “Isn’t that a number of young ladies?”

“Oui.”

“How splendid. Hello, young ladies! Why don’t you have any clothes on?”

“I’m afraid a friend of ours has played a little practical joke on us,” said Fiona, having decided she was going to take charge of the situation, as the other girls cowered in the water. “We were told this was a nude beach.”

“It decidedly is not.”

“Yes, I’ve gathered that. Would you be so kind as to pass us our clothes?”

“Where are they?”

“Behind that rock.”

Monty glanced behind the rock, and said “Come and get them.” The other fishermen were sniggering.

“I don’t wish to.”

“Well, I’d gladly bring them to you, but it’s these old bones, you know.”

“Could Antoine bring them to me?”

“Pardonnez-moi?” said Antoine. “Je ne parle pas anglais.”

“Apporte-moi mes vêtements,” Manon said.

“Ich verstehe nicht.”

There was nothing more to be said. Fiona, stone-faced, emerged like Aphrodite from the water, hands clasped protectively over her bare breasts and sex as the men watched with polite expressions on their faces. She strode over to the stone, peeked behind it and said “Where are our clothes?”

“If I was your friend,” suggested the first fisherman, whose name was Louis, “I would have stolen them while you played in the water.”

“Yes, that does sound terribly amusing,” said Monty. “Did that to the Duchess of Sainsbury once at Balmoral.”

“And what precisely do you propose I do now?”

“Well, don’t do what the Duchess of Sainsbury did. Prince Albert never got over the shock.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be in the slightest bit inclined to assist us, seven helpless and innocent maidens in a predicament not of our own making, to lay our hands on suitably modest garments, thus sparing us from what I must protest is the entirely undeserved indignity from having to return to our lodging in a state of nature? It would be almost trivially easy for you to assist us in this manner.”

“Hm. No.”