At a quiet resort on the French Riviera, Anthony Tolworth, the cynical and suave social advisor to the exiled King of Althenia, has come ashore from the King’s yacht seeking entertainment and remuneration for the Royal household. However, his discovery of a corpse on the beach in front of the Casino upsets any plans for the evening.

The police are quick to suspect secretary Eve Raymond, as the dead man was her employer, gambler Leonardo Manetti, who’d been blackmailing her father. As Tollhurst is rather fond of Eve, he enlists the help of his headmistress aunt and two interfering and typical, small boys, to help him investigate the case. But the machinations of local politics – not to mention Althenian affairs – make the task almost impossible.