The Chink in the Armour

Sylvia Bailey, a beautiful young widow, and her friend Anna visit a fortune teller in Paris and receive ominous warnings: for Anna, that she’ll have an incredible streak of fortune at gambling but shortly lose her life, and for Sylvia that she’ll meet a great lover but somehow be strangled by her beloved pearl necklace, a piece of exceedingly great value purchased against her lawyer’s advice with much of the wealth her late husband bequeathed her. The fortune teller implores them not to leave Paris soon, and certainly not together, but, ignoring the advice, they make their way to the picturesque town of Lacville. There, they set about playing baccarat and making friends with the local characters—until a mysterious disappearance raises uneasy questions.

This hair-raising mystery is the first of Marie Belloc Lowndes’s novels to have been adapted to the screen, and it showcases her understanding of the inner life of women, the mindset of the gambler, and the discomforting experience of a silent haunting.

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