of France, she moved to the French Riviera and acquired a home in Nice, where she lived for the remainder of the war. Accusations of collaboration In 1949 fellow driver Louis Chiron accused her at a party in Monaco to celebrate the first postwar Monte Carlo Rally of "collaborating with the Nazis". However, her biographer Miranda Seymour is "circumspect on Nice's guilt", setting out various ways in which (hypothetically) she might have been considered to have collaborated, but noting that her enquiries at the Bundesarchiv in Berlin yielded no record of Nice having been a "Gestapo agent", as Chiron had appeared to claim. Despite the absence of definitive evidence, the accusation nevertheless left her "unemployable", being enough to deter sponsors and effectively ending her career. Final years and death One of the 20th century's most colourful women, who had competed with some success in more than 70 events at the higher echelons of automobile racing (including around 32 minor grands prix), spent her final years in a sordid rat-infested apartment in the back alleys of the city of Nice, living under a fictitious name to hide her shame. Neighbours recalled Nice "taking the milk out of the cats' saucers because she had nothing to eat or drink". Estranged from her family for years, she died penniless, friendless, and completely forgotten by the rich and glamorous crowd involved in Grand Prix motor racing. Her cremation was paid for by the Parisian charity organisation that had helped her, and the ashes were sent back to her sister in the village of Sainte-Mesme near her birthplace and where her parents were buried. She is not mentioned on the family's cemetery memorial. In 2008 a memorial plaque was erected on her previously unmarked grave by a foundation established in her name. References Further reading Emanuelle Dechelette, La femme la plus rapide du monde. Automobile historique. November/December 2001 - n° 51, pp. 52–56. Seymour, Miranda The Bugatti Queen: In Search of a French Racing Legend. (2004) Random House, New York; External links French female dancers French female models French racing drivers French female racing drivers Grand Prix drivers Bugatti people 1900 births 1984 deaths Sportspeople from Eure-et-Loir 20th-century French women