Score By Jilly CooperROMANCE

ANTHOLOGIES

Also by Jilly Cooper


Riders

Rivals

Polo

The Man Who Made Husbands

Jealous

Appassionata


Animals in War

Class

How to Survive Christmas
Hotfoot to Zabriskie Point (with

Patrick Lichfield)
Intelligent and Loyal
Jolly Marsupial
Jolly Super
Jolly Superlative
Jolly Super Too
Super Cooper
Super Jilly

Super Men and Super Women
The Common Years

Turn Right at the Spotted Dog
Work and Wedlock
Angels Rush In
Araminta's Wedding

Little Mabel


	Little Mabel's Great Escape
Little Mabel Saves the Day Little Mabel W'ms

Bella
Emily
Harriet
Imogen
Lisa & Co
Octavia
Prudence





The British in Love
Violets and Vinegar

FBANTAM PRESS

NEYORK
	°
	TORON'IX)

	SYDNEY




AUCKLAND





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Published 1999 by Bantam Press
a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd
Copyright (c)Jilly Cooper 1999

The right of Jilly Cooper to be identified
as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents
Act 1988.


A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0593 042263


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Typeset in 11/12pt New Baskerville by
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Printed in Great Britain by

Mackays of Chatham pie, Chatham, Kent.

To Ann Mills,
dearest of friends,
with love and gratitude.





Many men hated Roberto Rannaldini. Many women, after loving
him passionately, hated him even more. To be regarded at twenty
eight as the most exciting conductor since the war had necessitated
brutal trampling on the way up. But at least Rannaldini could
count on the unqualified love of his 	ten-year-old godson, Tristan
de Montiguy. To Tristan, the dashing maestro, with his suave,
catlike smile, his deep, caressing voice, and his recklessly fast cars,
was the most glamorous person in the world.

Most importantly Rannaldini had been a friend of Tristan's
mother, who had died when Tristan was a baby, and was the only
person prepared to satisfy the boy's craving for information about
her.

'She was so beautiful, so sweet, so proud of you, Tristan, and she
love you so much. Her death happen in moment of madness, when
she feel she cannot.cope, and was unworthy of your father.'

Tristan's father, Etienne de Montigny, was France's most illustrious
painter. He was revered for his portraits and landscapes
but most famous for his erotic paintings, many of which, Salome's
Ecstasy, The Rape of Lucrece and more recently David and Jonathan, hung in the great galleries of the world, elevating near
pornography to an art form.

Etienne, outwardly a laughing giant of a man, had spawned a
pack of children from three wives and numerous mistresses.
Twelve years ago, when he was sixty, he had met Rannaldini, newly
arrived in Paris to make his fortune as a conductor. The two had
struck up a rapport, and ltienne had taken the handsome, impossibly
precocious teenager under his wing. In return Rannaldini
had not only milked Etienne's contacts but also posed for him.





Part of the fun for collectors of what became known as ltienne's
'extremely blue period' was to identify Rannaldlni in the paintings
as everyone from Apollo to the head of John the Baptist.
Rannaldini had also provided beautiful young models to ddllate
the old goat's palate and palette.

The most beautiful had been Tristan's mother, the sixteen-year
old Delphine. Even tienne's staunchest supporters had been
horrified when he had made this exquisite child his fourth wife
and within a few weeks impregnated her.

Nemesis moved swifdy. A proud, delighted Itienne was busy
sketching his newborn baby, Tristan, when he heard that his fourth
and favourite son, Laurent, a young army officer, had been blown
up in Chad. Laurent had always been a rebel, and rumours
persisted that he had been taken out by his own side. Too crazed
with grief even to call for an inquiry, Etienne promptly lost interest
in baby Tristan, and hardly seemed to nodce when, a few days later,
Tristan's young mother committed suicide. She had been
suffering from post-natal depression. It was left to ltienne's sister,
Hortense, a rusty old batdeaxe, to organize Tristan's christening,
at which, as one of Delphine's last wishes, Rannaldini was a godfather.

l.tienne's indifference persisted. Tristan was the only one of his
children he pointedly ignored and never praised. The boy had
been brought up with the rest ofltienne's gilded pack in Paris or
at the chfiteau in the Tam, but he was always the wistful calf which
grazes away from the herd, longing for yet shying away from love.

Which was why his godfather was so important to Tristan and why
on that wintry November evening in 1977 he could hardly contain
his excitement as, in his first dark suit, his gold hair slicked down
with water, he peered out at the galloping black clouds and frenziedly
thrashing trees of the Bois de Boulogne for a first glimpse
of Rannaldini's Mercedes.

Although Rannaldini got a Machiavellian kick from sinKling out
Tristan for attention, knowing it irritated the hell out of Etienne,
he was genuinely attached to the boy. He had also been a
wonderful godfather: writing from all over the world, never forgetting
Christmas or a birthday, taking Tristan to concerts whenever
he swept through Paris. For his confirmation he had even given
him a Guarneri cello, valued at thousands, which Tristan had been
practising for days hoping Rannaldini might ask him to play.
Tristan had also painted him a watercolour - not too much like
Degas - of polo players in the Bois.

There was Rannaldini's Mercedes. Tristan hurded downstairs,
beating the housekeeper, slithering on a rose-patterned rug across

the floorboards, shyly shaking his godfather by the hand, before
submitting to a warm, scented embrace.
As usual, Rannaldini was in a hurry. As a tenth-birthday present,
he was taking Tristan to Verdi's greatest opera, Don Carlos. The cttrtain would rise in an hour so they were cutting it fine, but first
he wanted to hear Tristan play and whisked him into the library.

Here Rannaldini paused only to admire himself on the cover of Paris-Match, and clock any new artists on the dark red walls. Over
the centuries, the Montignys had increased their fortune buying
paintings ahead off.ashion. Rannaldini had considerably bolstered
his coffers by using Etienne's eye to build up his own collection.

Opening the piano score of Don Carlos, at the great cello solo at

the beginning of Act IV, he placed it on Tristan's music stand.
'Try this.'

Even though Tristan was sight-reading, he played with total
concentration and the sad sound blossomed as his long fingers
vibrated on the strings.

'Excellent,' cried Rannaldini in delight. 'You work very hard.
And this is excellent too,' he added, putting Tristan's watercolour
inside the piano score. 'I will hang it in my study. We must go.'


'I hope you will not be bored,' said Rannaldini, maneuvering the
Mercedes through the pre-theatre and dinner traffic at a speed
that astounded even the Parisians. 'It is long opera but very interesting.
I will briefly explain story.

'France and Snain are ending long, bloody war. To unite the two
countries, Elisabetta, the French king s beautiful daughter, is to
marry Carlos, the son of King Philip II of Spaan. Understand.

Tristan nodded. He loved the way Rannaldini never talked down


.: Young Carlos reach France in disguise, wanting to see if he has

lumbered with ugly cow, but when he see Princess Elisabetta
..out hundng in the woods,' Rannaldini gesticulated at the Bois de
'he find her utterly beautiful, with dark hair to her waist.
he reveal he is Carlos, her future husband, she fall in love

too. They will live 'appy ever after.'Jumping a red light, Rannaldini
a V-sign at an outraged crone in a Volvo.
'Then awful thing 'appen. Carlos's father, Philip II, decide he
Elisabetta for himself and marries her instead. This is very
because King already has beautiful girlfriend called Eboli.
'Poor Carlos, however, cannot stop loving Elisabetta even
she is now Queen of Spain, married to his father, and she
love him. But everywhere in Spanish court they are spied on.
I won't spoil the ending.'





They were approaching the opera house.

'Rannaldini, Rannaldini,' shouted admirers, surging forward.
A group protesting against nuclear tests was also lurking. One, a
handsome but ferocious blonde, banged on the Mercedes window,
which Rannaldini lowered a fraction.

'How would you like your testicles shrivelled by radiation?' she
yelled.

'Sounds interesting,' murmured Rannaldini, closing the window
as her furious face disappeared in a tidal wave of fans.


'I'm getting a bodyguard,' he complained, as a couple of doormen
finally dragged him and Tristan through the stage door.

Tristan was unfazed, particularly when Rannaldini, while
donning the splendour of white tie and tails, offered him a
birthday glass of Krug. All down the passage, singers could be
heard warming up.

A white gardenia in a glass box for Rannaldini to slot into his
buttonhole was delivered to the Maestro's dressing room. Most of
the flowers arriving were for Cecilia Rannaldini, his second wife,
who was singing Eboli, and who now could be heard screaming,
'When will people learn I only like red roses,' as she hurled everything
else on to the floor.

Chic and svelte for a diva, Cecilia had done much to advance
Rannaldini's career, not least by changing her famous name to his.
Having barged into the conductor's room and smothered Tristan
in kisses, she started rowing with Rannaldini in Italian.

Carlos was being sung by a plump, good-looking Italian, Franco
Palmieri. Rannaldini's latest discovery, an unknown South African
called Hermione, was making her d(but as Elisabetta.

The packed audience was too old to interest Tristan but, with
his chin resting on the front of the red velvet box, he gazed down
in wonder at the glittering instruments in the pit. Opposite him
were the cellos and behind them towered the double basses red
gold as beeches in autumn. But once the action started on stage,
and hunting horns heralded Hermione as Elisabetta riding in on
a real grey horse, Tristan hardly noticed the orchestra.
Hermione's thick brown hair did indeed curl to her waist and he
couldn't take his eyes off her cleavage, which seemed to part like
curtains whenever she hit a high note - and how gloriously she
sang!

Rannaldini's black hair was drenched with sweat, as his dark eyes
sent laser beams to singer or musician so they responded almost
without realizing it. Now he was smiling at Hermione, magicking
increasingly beautiful sounds with a twitch of his baton.

Cecilia Rannaldini had a pure, clean voice. But, not realizing
that shoudng and crying all night can harm the vocal cords, Tristan
thought she sounded very rough. She was, however, a great actress
and, as she glared at Hermione, put him in mind of the wicked
queen in Snow White. King Philip, on the other hand, was so stern
and cold with his son Carlos, he reminded Tristan of his own
father, ltienne.

Alone in the big box, he was also terrified by the Grand
Inquisitor, blind, hooded, bent over his sticks like a black widow
spider, and when the flames began to flicker round the poor
bare feet of the heretics, Tristan leapt to his own feet screaming,

'No, no they mustn't burn,' which was luckily drowned, by
' orchestra, church bells and chorus loudly praising God and the

Inquisition.

Every role in Don Carlos is demanding, but it was the young
Hermione who drew the most rapturous applause. Tristan clapped
his hands until they were as pink as the carnations that cascaded
down on her.

i
	After more champagne and hugging, as people poured backstage
to congratulate them, Rannaldini, Cecilia, Fat Franco, who'd

sung Carlos, and Hermione swept Tristan off to the Ritz, where he
:still couldn't speak for excitement. Everyone was sweet to him

because Rannaldini made sure they knew both of his birthday and

his famous father.

The management presented him with a frothy fruit cocktail
filled with coloured straws. Rannaldini, who never minded what
the boy ate, allowed him to have lobster Thermidor with sizzling
cheese topping, followed by blackcurrant sorbet.

Hermione, who'd changed into low-cut dark blue lace,

him with one of her pink carnations. Then a birthday
cake arrived with ten candles and he opened Rannaldini's

a red leatherbound copy of Schiller's play Don Carlos on
:which Verdi had based his opera, and a video camera. Tristan

couldn't stop Saying thank you.

... 'He already play cello very well,' boasted Rannaldini.

. 'Are you going to be a musician?' asked Hermione.

. 'No.' Tristan blushed and stroked the camera. 'I'm going to


He was too happy to absorb the tensions around him. Singers are
so fired up after a performance, they want sex instantly.
was clearly dented because Hermione made it
she was interested only in Rannaldini, which didn't improve
temper either. She and Franco muttered that Hermione
hung on to notes to make them run out of breath.





Nor would she have got such applause in the middle of Act V if
Rannaldini hadn't made an artificial pause. Fortunately Hermione
didn't understand Italian.

She was like one of his sister's old-fashioned dolls, Tristan
decided, who opened their big eyes and said, 'Mama,' although in
Hermione's case it seemed to be, The, me.'

'Was it really twenty call-backs?' she was now asking Rannaldini.
'Pinch me, so I know I'm awake.'

She screamed as Rannaldini pinched her hard enough to leave
white marks on her arm. Then he dropped his sleek dark head and
kissed them better. Cecilia stormed out, pretending that their daughter Natasha had flu.

'My wife is more neurotic than the horse in Act One,' grumbled
Rannaldini. 'You should be specially interested in Don Carlos,' he
added to Tristan, 'because one of your Montigny ancestors visited
Spanish court during Philip II's reign. And the Inquisition kill him,
thinking he is spy. I wish I had smart relations like that,' he went
on fretfully.

'I cannot imagine you not being smart, Signor Rannaldini,' said
a soft, dreamy voice, and they were engulfed in the sweetest scent,
as though a bank of violets had bloomed behind them.

It was the only time Tristan had ever seen his godfather blush.
Pausing at the table, in floating chiffon as violet as her eyes, a gently
mocking smile playing over her full pink lips, was the most
beautiful woman in France: Claudine Lauzerte, the actress wife of
the opposition Minister for Cultural Affairs.

'Madame Lauzerte!'

Jumping to his feet, Rannaldini kissed her hand. Then, clicking
his fingers at the wine waiter, he beseeched her to join them.

'I am leaving. I hear your Don Carlos is wonderful, with a sensational
new star.'

Bowing and scraping like a brothel-keeper at the arrival of a royal
stag party, Rannaldini introduced Hermione.

'And this is Franco Palmieri who play Carlos.'

Leaping up, Franco sent several glasses and a vase of flowers
flying.

Claudine Lauzerte had such impact that for the first five
minutes people talked gibberish in her presence, so she turned to
Tristan.

'This is my godson, Tristan de Montigny, ltienne's boy,'
explained Rannaldini proudly.

'Ah.' The violet eyes widened in amusement. 'Your father often
ask me to sit for him, but we are both always so busy.' She glanced at the video camera. 'You are obviously destined to become a

	director. With those looks, every leading lady will do exactly what
you tell her.'

Noting Tristan's pallor, his deep-set eyes mere hollows, she

chided Rannaldini. 'This poor child's exhausted! Take him home.'
'I will send you tickets,' Rannaldini called after her.

'I cannot believe I've met Claudine Lauzerte,' babbled
Hermione. 'She must have had several facelifts to look so lovely.'


On the drive home, having jettisoned a furious Franco, Rannaldini
pointed to a round white moon, retreating behind a lacing of dark
clouds.

'She is upstaged by your beauty,' he told Hermione.

From the back seat, Tristan noticed Hermione continually
holding her throat as ff it were some precious jewel. Tomorrow he
would take his new metal-detector, a present from Aunt Hortense,
into the Bois and find her- and perhaps Claudine Lauzerte as well
- a diamond ring.

Hermione was now complaining about lecherous conductors.
'I was doing Rinaldo last week and Sir Rodney Macintosh, who
must be over sixty, asked me to his room for a nightcap and greeted

me wearing nothing but a pair of socks.'

Rannaldini wasn't remotely shocked.

'Eefyou knee conductor in groin, he won't give you more work.

must invent fiance, preferably black belt atjudo.'

"
	Even such a fascinating subject couldn't stop Tristan dropping

he never knew if he'd dreamt it, or whether Rannaldini's
really had vanished into Hermione's dark lace dress, and a

breast emerged.

He did wake screa.m, ing, however, as Rannaldini pulled up

the house and Etienne, still in his painter's smock, loomed
and blacker than the Grand Inquisitor in the doorway.

his father cheered up when he saw Hermione, he curtly

to bed.

'And no ducking out of school tomorrow.'

'Good night, little one,' called Rannaldini, then, to irritate

'I'll be up in a few minutes.'

In fact it was an hour, and Tristan again woke screaming from

nightmare as another broad-shouldered black
loomed over him.

'It all 'appen four hundred years ago,' said Rannaldini as he

the boy in. 'You mustn't 'ave bad dreams.'

Looking round the bleak attic room, seeing the video camera,

copy of Schiller's Don Carlos and Hermione' s
in a tooth-mug on the bedside table, he picked up the



6
	7


silver frame, containing the only photograph of Tristan's mother, Delphine, in the house.

'So beautiful, a little like Madame Lauzerte, don't you think?'
'Will she sit for Papa?' asked Tristan hopefully.

'I doubt it. She is very pure lady - her nickname is Madame
Vierge.'

'Did they really burn people alive in those days?'

'They do today with electric chairs and bombs. That's how your
brother, Laurent, died,' said Rannaldini.

But the terror in Tristan's eyes was in case his father walked in
and heard the forbidden name. Such had been ltienne's heartbreak,
no allusion to Laurent was allowed in the house.

'Why didn't King Philip like Carlos?' Tristan asked wistfully.
'Fathers and sons.' Rannaldini brushed back the boy's hair.
hthp wasjealous, Carlos had whole life ahead of him - to pull the


'Can I work for you when I grow up?' murmured Tristan.

'One day we will make great film of Don Carlos together,'
promised Rannaldini.

8


Eighteen spectacularly successful years later, on a wet, windy, late
October morning, Sir Roberto Rannaldini gazed down on the
valley of Paradise, often described as the jewel of the Cotswolds.

Rannaldini owned many splendid houses, but the brooding,
secretive Paradise Abbey, which he had somewhat hubristically
renamed Valhalla after the home of the gods in Teutonic mythology,
was the one he loved most.

From his study on the first floor he could admire, albeit through
mist and rain, his tennis courts, swimming-pool, hangar for jet and
helicopter, ravishing gardens and racehorses, grazing in fields
sweeping down to his lake and the river Fleet, which ran along the
bottom of the valley.

To his left, coiled up like a sleeping snake, was the famous
Valhalla Maze. To the right, deep in the woods, lurked the watchtower,
where he edited, composed and seduced. Beyond,
disappearing into the mist, was the ravishing mill house, belonging to Hermione Harefield, his mistress for the last eighteen years.

But even as Rannaldini gloated over his valley, the dying fires of
autumn seemed to symbolize his own decline. For the first time ever, his massive royalty cheque was down. Last Sunday, when he
was conducting at the Appleton piano competition, his favoured
candidate and latest conquest, the ravishing Natalia Philipovna,
had been beaten into second place, despite intense lobbying, by
Rannaldini's detested stepson, Marcus Campbell-Black.

The same evening, Rannaldini learnt he had failed in his bid to
take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, who had accompanied
the finalists. As an ultimate humiliation at the party
afterwards, the first horn had hit Rannaldini across the room - his
fall had been broken only by the pudding trolley and the flaccid



9




cut,s of a grisly crone from the Arts Council, The newspapers had
had a field day. Rarmaldini shuddered.

Like Philip II of Spain, who had exhausted himself and his
nation's coffers trying to hold his Habsburg Empire together,
Rannaldini was also learning by bitter experience that his vast
kingdom could be maintained only by the crippling expense of
waging war on all fronts. He was currently engaged in law-suits
with orchestras, unions, sacked musicians, mistresses and ex
wives.

Nineteen months ago, merely to spite his great enemy, the very
rich and arrogant Rupert Campbell-Black, whom he believed had
orchestrated the break-up of his third marriage, Rannaldini had
made a catastrophic fourth marriage to Rupert's neurotic ex-wife,
Helen. In return for his habitual infidelity, Helen was now busy
squandering his millions and, because Rannaldini was only five
foot six, deliberately dwarfing him in public by wearing very high
heels.

Rannaldini was sad that his two eldest children from earlier
marriages, Wolfgang and Natasha, had left home after frightful
family rows. But, saddest of all, he knew his music was suffering.
Accusing Rannaldini of blandness in the Daily Telegraph last
Monday, Norman Lebrecht had suggested he stopped settling
scores and started studying them again. Rannaldini might
outwardly be the greatest conductor in the world, with orchestras
in New York, Berlin and Tokyo, but he was poor in spirit and
horribly alone.

Outside, rain swept across the woods like ghost armies marching
on Valhalla. Although his office was tropically warm and the
windows and doors were closed, an icy wind suddenly rustled all
the papers and the fire died in the grate with a hiss. On the
chimney-piece, agilt and ormolu clock of Apollo driving the horses
of the sun chimed twelve noon.

Valhalla was full of ghosts. They never frightened Rannaldini:
they were his accomplices in terrorizing the living. But, .hearing
an almost orgasmic groan, he looked up quickly at the Etienne
de Montigny oil to the right of the fireplace. Entitled Don Juan
in Transit, it portrayed the great lover, looking suspiciously
like Rannaldini, humping a lady of the manor but distracted
by the swelling bosom of her young maid hanging clothes outside
in the orchard. It was the attention to detail - the yellow stamens
of the apple blossom, each hair under the maid's armpit, the pale
green spring light - that made the painting so perfect.

Rannaldini smiled at his reflection in the big gilt mirror. His hair
might be pewter grey but his face was still as virile and handsome

a ton jumt ,. ,,. t- 	10


----;
	--:-t. t. 	,-oised to conduct

The first was a film of D0n Cargos, wm.tt ,,- ,,,.o v

and co-produce. The nightmare of cutting a three-and-a-half-hour

opera down to a manageable two hours for filming had not been

helped by Rannaldini insisting that an overture, an aria, and

linking passages to make the story more accessible, all composed

by himself, be included. The plot of Don Carlos had been gingered

up with several sex scenes and, to appeal to the pink pound,

Carlos's best friend, the gallant Marquis of Posa, would be

portrayed as a homosexual.

An all-star cast, who would have screaming hysterics when they

discovered any of their numbers had been cut, had been assem

,.i. for some time, because singers have to be booked several years

ead They included Hermi.one Harefi-.e,!d,,w-o at-Ocooud°sUhlde

	- " ," -" 	lav tlae ,,dunr lllSaOeut, ioi

need caretul ngnung to Vi .y
	... . 	t.:. 	more

" '

	la "n ton bands mtu

	than did Franco Palmen, who was p g

	had grown so fat he made Pavarotti look anorexic. However, it had

	been written into hs contract that he must lose seven stone before

	filming started next April.

	. In the past Rannaldini had often given juicier parts, in more ways

	than one, to his ex-wife Cecilia in lieu of alimony, but she and

	.Hermione would have murdered each other on location. As a

	result, the part of the seductive, scheming Princess Eboli had gone

	to a ravishing mezzo, Chloe Cafford. The search, though, was still

	on to find an unknown star to play the Marquis of Posa. Having, in

	his opinion, agreed to over-pay everyone else, Rannaldini was

	hunting for a bargain.

	Opera films were seldom big box office. Why, therefore, had

	these vastly high-earning singers committed themselves when they

	knew what purgatory it was to work with Rannaldini?

	The answer was Tristan de Montigny, who by driving.himself into

	the ground to win some recognition from his father, Etienne, was

	now one of the hottest directors in the world. With his ravishing

	English-speaking version of Manzoni's The Betrothed tipped to win

	several Oscars, he had spent the summer filming Balzac's The Lily

	in the Valley with Claudine Lauzerte. The word on the street was

	that, despite being over fifty, 'Madame Vierge' had never looked

	more beautiful or acted better.

		Success with actors of both sexes had been helped by Tristan's

	wonderfully romantic looks: the model whom Calvin Klein loved

	best. At six foot two, he was too thin, and his gold curls had dark

	ened to burnt umber, but the peat-brown, heavily shadowed eyes,

	the cheekbones higher than the Eiffel Tower, and the big mouth,



11




usually smiling but of incredible sadness in repose, made everyone
long to make him happy.

But itwas a mistake to be fooled by Tristan's gentleness: he could
be both manipulative and monomaniac in getting the film he
wanted.

He and Rannaldini were both so successful that they seldom
managed to meet except for an hour snatched at an airport or a
midnight dinner after a concert, but they had retained their affection
for one another and their dream of working together, which
at last was going to be realized.

But, sadly, too late to please ltienne. All the newspapers littering
Rannaldini's desk reported that France's greatest painter since
Picasso was dying but refusing to go to hospital. Rannaldini was
tempted to cancel tonight's Barbican concert and fly out to bid his
old friend farewell, but he'd get more coverage if he waited until
the funeral. He couldn't spare the time for both.

He felt a surge of hatred as he noticed an intensely glamorous
photograph in Le Monde of Rupert Campbell-Black embracing his
son Marcus before putting him on a plane to Moscow. If Rupert
was relinquishing one child, he might consider a reconciliation
with another, Marcus's younger sister, the ravishing nineteen-year
old Tabitha. Rupert loathed Rannaldini so much that he had
disinherited both Marcus and Tabitha for attending their mother's
wedding to Rannaldlni.

Tabitha, however, like Tristan, was one of the few people who
liked Rannaldini - not least because, when she became his stepdaughter,
he had given her a large allowance and bought her a
wonderful horse called The Engineer. But within a few weeks of
marrying Rannaldini, Helen had caught him leering through a
two-way mirror at Tabitha undressing, and packed her off to an
eventing yard in America. There Tabitha was winning competitions
and was already spoken of as an Olympic possible. She was
also making friends.

'I've been invited to fifteen Thanksgiving parties and I'm going
to all of them,' she had announced, in her last letter home.

On the other hand, she missed Rupert dreadfully. She had
always been his favourite child, the one who rode as fearlessly as
he did, and, like Rupert, she had hitherto dismissed her brother
Marcus as a wimp.

Knowing it would unhinge her, Rannaldini played his second
trump card, faxing out all the cuttings of Marcus being outed
before winning the Appleton piano competition and being
reunited with an overjoyed Rupert. Rupert had totally accepted
that Marcus was gay and in love with the great Russian dancer,

12


Nemerovsky. He had even flippantly told a group, of

re otters at Heathrow that he was looking forward to mee .ung

Nerovsky, and felt he was 'gaining a daughter rather than losing

	a $on.

	Silly, silly Rupert, thought Rannaldini, as he filled his jade pen

	with emerald-green ink to scribble a covering letter.

	Dearest Tabitha, I know you will want to share your mother's joy

	that your Mother is both a national hero and reconciled with your

father.'

	Miss Bussage, who

	Smirking, Rannaldini handed it to his new PA,

looked like being his third trump card. After only a month she had
transformed his life, keeping track of children, wives, finances and
his gruelling schedule. Nor did she have any compunction about
feeding pleading love notes, demands from charities and bad
reviews (after the author's name had been put on the hit list)
straight into the shredder.

Rannaldini dreamed of Miss Bussage giving him a bed review:

'You were very boring in the sack last night, Maestro, please do
better this evening.'

In her forties, Miss Bussage had the look of a well-regulated musk
ox, with small suspicious eyes and dark, heavy hair that flicked up,
sixties-style, like two horus. Her thick body was redeemed by a
splendid bosom and rather good legs. Like musk oxen, she was also able to survive the arcdc climate of Rannaldini's rages, and gave
off a strong, musky scent in the rutting season.

Friendly one day, downright rude the next, which Rannaldini,
used to sycophancy, thought wonderful, she had now picked up his
private telephone, which none of his other staff would touch at
pain of thumbscrew.

'Marcel Dupont for you.'

Dupont was ltienne de Mondguy's lawyer. He had grown rich
over the years but had had his work cut out, extricating the great

man from scrapes and marriages, and preserving his vast fdrtune.
'What news?' asked Rannaldini, seizing th.e receiver.

'The worst.' Dupont's voice trembled. 'Etienne died an hour

	ago.'

Glancing up as Apollo's clock struck one, Rannaldini crossed
himself. Death must have been at noon when the fire died in the
grate and Don Juan in ltienne's painting cried out in anguish. 'I
am so sorry,' Rannaldini's voice dropped an octave. 'I trust the end
was peaceful?'

'Did ltienne ever do anything peacefully?' asked Dupont. 'Like
Hercules, he battled to the end. He wanted to see another sunset.
I know how busy you are, Maestro, but...'



13




'I will certainly be at the funeral.'

Then Dupont confessed it had been tienne's dying wish that
Rannaldini should join Tristan's thre1	e older brothers carrying the
coffin.

'But surely Tristan...' began Rannaldini.

Dupont, sighed., 'Even in death. I can trust your discretion.'

Of course, lied Rannaldini.

French law insists that three-quarters of any estate is divided
.between the children of the blood, with whole shares going to legitimate
children and half shares to any born out of wedlock. Tristan,
therefore, would automatically inherit several million. But the law
also stipulates that the fourth quarter of a man's estate can be
divided as he chooses.

'ltienne itemized everything for children, mistresses, friends,
wives and servants,' said Dupont bleakly, 'but he left nothing
personal to Tristan, not even a pencil drawing or a paintbrush.
Why did he hate the poor boy so much?'

'Poor boy indeed.' Rannaldini was shocked. 'I will ring him.'
'Please do - he's devastated, and the end was very harrowing. I

:':i so. do,es't leak out. Anyway, while you're on,

, ruenne left you two of his greatest paintings, Abelard

and H('se and The Nymphomaniac. Both are on exhibition in New
York.'

Together they were worth several million. Not such a bad day,
after all, thought Rannaldini.

14


Having witnessed ltienne's extremely harrowing death, Tristan
had immediately fled back to his own fiat in La Rue de Varenne,
trying to blot out the horror and despair with work. He had been
on the brink of making the one film his father might have rated,
because it was with Rannaldini. Now it was too late.

Scrumpled-up paper lay all over the floor. His laptop was about
to be swept off the extreme left-hand corner of his desk by a hurtling lava of videos, scores, a red leatherbound copy of
Schiller's Don Carlos, books on sixteenth-century France and Spain,
sketches of scenes, Gauloise packets and half-drunk cups of black
coffee. Photographs of the Don Carlos cast were pinned .to a cork
board on the rust walls. Over the fireplace hung one of Etienne's
drawings of two girls embracing, which Tristan had bought out of
pride so that people wouldn't realize his father had never given
him anything.

He was toying with a chess set and the idea of portraying his cast,
Philip the king, Posa the knight, Carlos the poor doomed pawn, as
chess pieces, but he kept hearing the nurse's cosy, over-familiar
voice.

'Just going to put this nasty thing down your throat again,
Etienne,' as she hoovered up the fountains of blood bubbling up

from his father's damaged heart.

And Tristan had wanted to yell: 'For Christ's sake, call him
Monsieur de Montigny.'.

He also kept hearing Etienne muttering the words 'father' and
'grandfather', as he clutched Tristan's sleeve, and the roars of
resistance, followed by tears of abdication trickling down the
wrinkles.

At the end only the extremely short scarlet skirt worn by his



15




granddaughter Simone had rallied the old man. Tristan hadn't
been able to look at his aunt Hortense. It was as if a gargoyle had
started weeping. He prayed that Itienne hadn't seen the satis
faction on the faces of his three eldest sons that there was no hope
of recovery.

There was no way Tristan could concentrate on a chessboard.
Switching on the television, he felt outrage that, instead of leading
on Etienne's death, they were showing the young English winner
of the Appleton, Marcus Campbell-Black, arriving pale and fragile
as a wood anemone at Moscow airport, and being embraced in the
snow by a wolf-coated, wildly overexcited Nemerovsky, before
being swept away in a limo.

Rupert, Marcus's father, had then been interviewed, surrounded
by a lot of dogs outside his house in Gloucestershire.

'Campbell-Blacks don't come second,' he was saying jubilantly.
God, what a good-looking man, thought Tristan. If he had
Rupert, Marcus and Nemerovsky playing Philip, Carlos and Posa,
he'd break every box-office record.

He jumped as Handel's.death march from Saul boomed out and
the presenter switched to Etienne's death: France was in mourning
for her favourite son; great artist, b0n viveur, patron saint of vast
extended family.

'Montigny's compassion for life showed in all his paintings,' said
the reporter.

But not in his heart, thought Tristan bitterly, ltienne had never
been to one of his premieres, or glanced at a video, or congratulated
him on his Csar, France's equivalent of the Oscars.

'Of all ltienne de Montigny's sons,' went on the reporter, as they
showed some of ltienne's cleaner paintings followed by clips from The Betrothed, 'Tristan, his youngest son, has been the most
successful, following in his father's footsteps but painting instead
with light.'

That should piss offmy brothers, thought Tristan savagely, as he
turned off the television. Dupont had rung him earlier and, like a
starved dog grateful for even a piece of bacon rind, Tristan had
finally asked if Etienne had left him anything other than his due
share.

'Nothing, I'm afraid.' Then, after a long pause, 'Maybe it's a
back-handed compliment, because you've done so well.'

Dupont had meant it kindly. But Tristan had hung up, and for
the first time since ltienne had fallen ill, he broke down and wept.

Half an hour later, he splashed his face with cold water and
wondered what to do with the rest of his life. He was roused by the Sunday Times, commiserating with him, then more cautiously

16


probing a rumour that he was the only member of the family who
had been left nothing personal.

'Fuck off,' said Tristan hanging up.

Fortunately this pulled him together. The bastard, he thought.
All my life Papa noticed me less than the cobwebs festooning his
studio. Looking at his mother's photograph, he wished she were

alive, then jumped as the telephone rang.

'Papa?' he gasped, in desperate hope.

But it was Alexandre, his eldest brother, the judge.

'We're all worried you might be feeling out of it, Tristan. You're
so good at lighting and theatrical effects and knowing appropriate
poetry and music, we felt you should organize the funeral. We want
you to be involved.'

His brothers, reflected Tristan, chose to involve him when they
wanted their christenings and weddings videoed. He wished he
had the bottle to tell Alexandre to fuck off too.

Instead he said, 'I'll ring you in the morning.'

Without bothering to put on a jacket, he was out of his flat,
driving like a maniac to the Louvre to catch the last half-hour, so
that he could once more marvel over the Goyas, Velazquezes and
E1 Grecos. Every frame in his film would be more beautiful.

When he got home there was a message on the machine.
Rannaldini's voice was caressing, deep as the ocean, gentle, recognizable
anywhere.

'My poor boy, what a terrible day you must have had. I'm so sorry.
But here's something to cheer you up. Lord O'Hara from Venturer
Television rang, and he's happy to meet us in London the day after
tomorrow. I hope very much you can make it. And I think I have
found a Posa.'



17




Hollywood in the mid-nineties was governed by marketing men
who earned enough in a year to finance five medium-budget
films, who believed they knew exactly what they could sell and only
gave the green light to films tailor-made to these specifications. To
perform this function for Don Carlos and handle the money side,
Rannaldini had employed Sexton Kemp as his co-producer.

Sexton, who had started life selling sheepskin coats in Petticoat
Lane, was now a medallion man in his early forties with cropped
hair, red-rimmed tinted spectacles and a sardonic street-wise face.

Sexton's film company, Liberty Productions, so called because
he took such frightful liberties with original material, always had
several projects on the go. As he was driven in the back of a
magenta Roller to the meeting with Declan O'Hara, Sexton was
busily improving Flaubert.

Musically illiterate, he found the sanctity of opera plots incredibly
frustrating. Why couldn't the French Princess Elisabetta
become an American to appeal to the US market? At least he could
constantly play up the sex and violence in Don Car/o-.

'All that assassination and burning of 'eretics, and rumpy
pumpy, because we're using lots of the singing as voiceover, while
we film all the characters' fantasies about rogerin' each other.'

For a year now Sexton had worked indefatigably to raise the
necessary twenty million to make the film. He had also organized
distributors in twenty-five countries. 'Don Carlos is not exactly a
comedy,' he would tell potential backers, 'but very dramatical. And
wiv Rannaldini and Tristan de Montigny we can offer both gravitas
and a first-class seat on the gravy train.'

As a result Rannaldini's record company, American Bravo, and
French television had both come in as major players. Conversely

: I:



CBS had been unenthusiastic because Don Carlos is very anti
Catholic and they were nervous about alienating America's vast
Hispanic population. For the same reason, it had been a nightmare
wheedling money out of the French and Spanish governments.
Sexton had promised filming in the forest of Fontainebleau
to bring tourists to France and the restoration of numerous
crumbling historic buildings in Spain for use as locations. But each
time he neared a deal, the government would change and there
would be a new Minister of Culture to win over.

Even the last Spanish minister, a Sefiora Mendoza, who had a
black moustache, hadn't fazed Sexton.

'One bottle of bubbly and a tube of Immac and we was away.'
Unfortunately, shortly after this, Sefiora Mendoza had fallen from office and for Sexton, and was never off the telephone
angling for another seeing-to. Contrary to Sefiora Mendoza's
forward behaviour, there was also a real problem of filming nudes
and sex scenes in Catholic countries.

A substantial sum had been promised by a group of Saudi gunrunners,
who wanted to raise their profile by having their names
on the credits. (Unknown to the Saudis, Sexton was busy dealing
with the Iranians.)

His greatest coup, however, was to enlist the support of the
recently ennobled Declan O'Hara who was managing director of
Venturer Television and a complete Don Carlos freak. Unknown to
his tone-deaf partner and son-in-law, Rupert Campbell-Black,
Declan had pledged ten million towards the film's costs.

London had an untidy look on that chill mid-October morning.
Grey and brown plane leaves littered the pavements and clogged
the gutters. Brake-lights were reflected like flamingos' legs in the
wet road ahead as the traffic slowed in Park Lane.

Excited at the prospect of meeting a real lord, Sexton was
glad he, Tristan and Rannaldini were going to work out a plan of
action before Declan arrived. Rannaldini could rub people up the
wrong way.


Sitting in Rannaldini's exquisite flat overlooking Hyde Park,
Tristan felt warmth creep back into his veins. He had just lunched
on the fluffiest Parma ham omelette, sorrel salad, quince sorbet,
black grapes, gently dissolving Camembert, excellent claret and
very black coffee. It was the first food he had eaten in three days.
After the meeting, Rannaldini, Sexton and he were offto Prague to see the possible Posa: a Russian with lungs of steel called Mikhail
Pezcherov.

Tristan was already mad about Sexton, who was now hoovering




18
	19


up black grapes with a big hand, gut spilling over his waistband, his
face absolutely still, only his eyes swivelling in thought as he tried
to persuade Rannaldini of the benefits of accepting laundered
Russian money from the Iranians.

'Don't worry your pretty swollen head over that one, Ranners.
The Saudis need never know.'

In preparation for meeting Declan, Tristan had whiled away
last night's insomnia speed-reading Declan's massive biography
of Yeats, which ha.d just received ecstatic reviews. Declan had also
once interviewed Etienne on one of his vasdy watched, prestigious
programmes. The two had clashed. Declan had accused Tristan's
father of meretriciousness and pornography.

'That you're a genius makes the whole thing more reprehensible.'

ltienne
had stalked off the set. Tristan was ashamed how drawn
he was to people who had seen through his father.

As Sexton and Rannaldini were still arguing about money,
Tristan was glad there was so much to look at in Rannaldini's
sitting room. On the vermilion walls hung numerous portraits
of Rannaldini. On every surface were silver-framed photographs of
Rannaldini and the famous, dominated by one of him getting his
knighthood, and another of him smiling at a very blonde girl. What
a beauty. Tristan made a mental note to ask Rannaldini to introduce
him: what wonderful things the camera could do with her
face.

On a low table in the middle of the room beside a huge brass
bowl of dark crimson orchids lay the score of Don Carlos with cuts
and possible scenes pencilled in for discussion with Declan. As the
sun appeared, casting its mellow autumnal light on the park,
Tristan felt a surge of optimism.

'Oh, look, there's Rupert Campbell-Black in a morning suit,'
said Sexton, in excitement, 'I wonder where 'e's going.'

An outraged Rupert was in fact coming to Rannaldini's flat. As
a fellow director, having learnt about the ten million, he had spent
haft the night raging at Declan for such suicidal pledging of
Venturer's hard-earned cash. Rupert had never before questioned
one of Declan's artistic decisions, but as the last film he'd seen in
the cinema had been a remake of ThelncredibleJourney, where he'd
been outraged because the bull terrier had been changed to a
more politically correct breed, and the last opera an amateur
production of The Merry Widow, with Declan's wife poncing around
in the tide role, he couldn't see the point of Don Carlos at all.

'I mean the guy's in love with his stepmother,' Rupert, who had
loathed all his four stepmothers, had stormed at Declan.

Despite his indignation and the insensitivity that so often goes
with social fearlessness, Rupert noticed Tristan's black tie the
moment he entered the room and said how sorry he was about
ldenne's death.

'Bought a couple of oils of his twenty years ago. Bloody good
painter, and bloody well rocketed in value,' he added, even more
approvingly.

As Rupert was wearing a morning coat, Rannaldini smoothly
suggested a glass of champagne. Feeling he could use it, Rupert
was about to accept, then noticed the photograph of Tabitha on
the piano and curdy refused. The thought of Rannaldini having
access to her drove him to madness.

'Haven't you grown since I last saw you?' he drawled, then, tilting
his head sideways to glance at Rannaldini's lifts, 'Or maybe your
shoes have.'

Trouble ahead, thought Tristan, as Rannaldini's face contorted

ltienne had always painted in a north-facing studio, claiming
that the harsh light picked out every wrinkle and red vein, showing
the face as it was. Rupert must be forty-six or forty-seven but, as he
sat down on the window-seat looking north over the park, his
beauty made Tristan gasp. The sleek, thick gold hair, untouched
by grey and brushed back from the wide suntanned forehead,
emphasized the lovely shape of the head. The long, heavy-lidded,
rather hard lapis-lazuli blue eyes, the high cheekbones, the Greek
nose, the short upper lip pulling up the curling mouth, the smooth
olive complexion could all have belonged to a Latin or a statue,
the face was so still. Then Rupert caught a glimpse of a pordy
mongrel in a tartan coat, waddling along behind an old lady, which
reminded him of his wife's dog, Gertrude. His eyes softened and
his mouth lifted, and Tristan wondered how any woman ever
resisted him.

'Sorry Declan can't make it,' Rupert was now saying, in his light,
flat, clipped drawl. 'He forgot he was taking my children, his grandchildren,
to Toad of Toad Hall. He always swore he'd never accept
a peerage and now he has it's clearly unhinged him, particularly, if
he's intending to waste ten million on some crappy opera.

Rupert then proceeded to tear the project to shreds. The only
person he praised was Sexton for raising such an incredible
amount to subsidize such tosh. Rannaldini immediately rose to his
feet and opened the door.

'If you won't come in with us,' he said icily, 'we'd better look elsewhere.'
'We
can't, Ranners,' said Sexton aghast. 'It's goin' to be a mad



20
	21


scramble as it is. We gotta start filming by the end of March because
the first scenes take place in a forest wiv no leaves. It's goin' to be
grite,' he added to Rupert, his eyes shining brighter than his gold
necklace. 'Two mighty armies meeting on the skyline, and then the
'unt streaming down the 'ill.'

'Where's that being filmed?' asked Rupert.

'Fontainebleau,' said Tristan quickly. 'The French government
have put in a lot of money.'

As Venturer were putting in even more money, countered
Rupert, the film should be made on Venturer territory, namely in
his woods at Penscombe.

'Most beautiful beechwoods in the country,' he added,
haughtily.

'That is debatable,' snapped Rannaldini.

'Let's debate it, then,' snapped back Rupert. 'We can also get the
Cotchester Hunt for virtually peanuts, and hounds won't have to
go into quarantine. You'll never find decent hounds in France.'

Tristan had visions of drawing his sword for his country's canine
population.

The reason Rupert wanted his woods filmed was to categorize
them even more firmly as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
to scupper any evil plans to slap a motorway through his estate.

Rannaldini, who was determined the first act should be shot in his beechwoods at Valhalla, also to stop any motorway through his estate, said the French would never agree to it being filmed at
Penscombe.

'Anyway, your house at Penscombe was only built in the late
eighteenth century, too modern for Carlos,' Rannaldini added
dismissively, 'whereas Valhalla is medieval and steeped in religious
tradition.'

Seeing Rupert's eyes narrow, Sexton said hastily, 'We do need to
film in a monastery-type situation, Rupe.'

So Rupert switched to the fatuousness of the plot.

'I mean, the guy's in love with his stepmother.'

'Can't agree more, Rupe,' interrupted Sexton excitedly. 'I was
just saying to Ranners, why don't we make Elisabetta Carlos's real
muvver? Incest is really hot at the moment.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' said Rupert, who disliked his mother even
more than his stepmothers.

Tristan, who often fell asleep in meetings, was really enjoying this
one, and having great difficulty not laughing.

'The plot's far too complicated,' went on Rupert. 'Needs a
narrator to tell you what's going on. We'd better use Declan.'

Then, at least, Venturer's lawyers could claw back a massive fee

22


for Declan's services. Rannaldini, who intended to introduce the
opera himself for an even more massive fee, said this was totally
unacceptable, so Rupert attacked the cast.

'They're all geriatrics. How can that old bat Hermione
Harefield, who must be well into her forties, play a girl in her
teens?'

Then before Rannaldini could reach for his sword:

'Or Fat Franco, who's forty-six and at least forty-six stone, play a
twenty-year-old Infante? Don Kilos, that's a joke, and there aren't
many of those in the opera.'

'Fat Franco goes down very well wiv punters,' said Sexton,
reasonably. 'He's one of the biggest names of opera.'

'Biggest being the operative word. Here's the guy you want.'
Rupert chucked a photograph down on the table.

'Wow, who's he?' Tristan grabbed the photo in excitement.

'An Aussie called Baby Spinosissimo, not sure that's his real
name.'

'Speenoseeseemo,' said Rannaldini coldly. 'He's totally in

	"
	d'

	experience .

	'And breathtakingly good-looking,' said Rupert. 'Taken them by

	storm in Oz. Done well enough to buy himself several racehorses.'

	'And, eef he landed the part of Carlos, would no doubt be able

	to afford more horses for you to train,' said Rannaldini bitchily.

	'Leave the casting to us. You don't know what you're talking

	about.'

	'How about Elisabetta becoming an American?' suggested

	Sexton, who never gave up. 'They adore Dame Hermione in the

	US.'

	'Shows how stupid they are,' snarled Rupert. 'America was hardly

	built, like my house,' he glared at Rannaldini, 'in the middle of the

	sixteenth century, and Hermione would have even more difficulty

	in passing herself off as a Red Indian than as an eighteen-year-old

	virgin.'

	The meeting ended in uproar.

	'Who's getdng married?' asked Tristan.

	'Lovely girl- conductor actually- called Abigail Rosen, marrying

	a lucky sod called Viking O'Neill,' said Rupert, breaking off one of

	Rannaldini's crimson orchids and putting it in his buttonhole.

	'Rannaldini knows Viking,' he added nasdly. 'He's the horn

	player who hit him across a hotel dining room a few nights ago.

	Easy as a shot-putter - or shit-putter, in Rannaldini's case.'

	But the gods were on Rannaldini's side. As the front door

	banged behind Rupert, Helen Rannaldini rushed into the sitting

	room.



23




What a beautiful woman, thought Tristan, admiring the tragic,
ravaged face, as he leapt to his feet. But Helen was too distraught
to notice him.

'Oh, Rannaldini, Tabitha's on the phone. She's been fired! I
hoped I'd catch Rupert.'

'He's gone, let me talk to her.' Rannaldini whisked out of the
room. 'Perhaps you could organize some drinks, my dear.'

He was sweating with excitement as he picked up the telephone.
As he had predicted, his stepdaughter had flipped when his faxes
had arrived. Tab had always been Rupert's favourite child and
suddenly Marcus, her brother, had stolen his affection. She was
shocked rigid to discover Marcus was gay, and crazy with jealousy
that Rupert seemed to approve of MarcBs's new love.

'Daddy was always so foul about my boyfriends, and now he's
crawling all over some poofter. And there's even a photograph of
Marcus and Nemerovsky hugging on the front of the Washington
Post- yuk!'

Having read the faxes, Tabitha had ridden in a cross-country
competition, hurtling over the fences as though death were the
favourable alternative, before sliding off her horse, The Engineer,
fifty yards past the post. The course doctor had diagnosed her as
dead drunk.

Yesterday morning she had been suspended for nine months,
mostly because of her appalling language and lack of contrition.
Afterwards, she had gone out and got even drunker, she had only
just woken and screwed up courage to ring England. How fortunate
that Rupert and she had missed each other.

Rannaldini was smiling broadly. 'My naughty child! Come home
so I can spank your bottom,' he quivered in delighted expectation.
'You have been away far too long. I'll send the Gulf.'

'I'll make my own way. I want to travel with The Engineer. Could
you possibly lend me a couple of grand?'

24


Euphoric at the thought of Tabitha returning, Rannaldini swept
into the drawing room and promptly invited her mother to join
the trip to Prague. After all, Prague had been where he had first
bedded Helen on the stage of an opera-house where, earlier in
the evening, he had conducted Don Giovanni, and he didn't want
her to give him a lousy press as a husband if Tabitha was coming
home.

'I can't go,' wailed Helen. 'I've got to host a dinner for Save the
Children.'

'Bussage will cancel it, and tomorrow I will send Save the
Children a large enough donation to quell any disquiet,' said
Rannaldini expansively.

'I would love to go,' Helen told Tristan wistfully. 'Prague was the
place--'

'Where you and I spent our first wonderful romantic weekend,
exactly one year, eleven months and three days ago,' said
Rannaldini, kissing her.

'You remembered the exact date.' Helen's eyes filled with tears.

'Of course,' said Rannaldini smugly. It had not been difficult, it

had also been his forty-fourth birthday.
'But I haven't packed.'
Rannaldini looked at his watch.

'You have half an hour. Serena won't be here until five.'


Serena Westwood was a young, ambitious record producer, who
had just been poached by Rannaldini's record company, American
Bravo. Her first assignment was to produce the recording of Don
Carlos.

Helen nearly refused to go to Prague when she saw Serena, who



25





looked like a brunette Grace Kelly. Her heavy hair, drawn back into
a French pleat from a snow-white forehead, was shinier than her
patent leather ankle boots, and she was wearing nothing under
her austerely cut pinstripe suit.

Rannaldini had clearly been saving Serena's child as well as
sending a vast cheque to Save the Children because Serena immediately
kissed him, thanking him in a cool, clear voice for flying
up two of Helen's young maids, Betty and Sally, for the night to
look after her four-year-old daughter, Jessie.

'Bussage masterminded the whole thing,' said Rannaldini
smoothly, 'and it is good for Sally and Betty to have an outing.'

'Jessie fell so in love with them she hardly noticed me leaving,'
said Serena, turning to an outraged Helen. 'Oh, Lady Rannaldini,
I know it's a liberty hijacking your maids, but I've been stuck in
Rome with Dame Hermione and rushed home to find my nanny
had walked out, so Sir Roberto very kindly came to my aid. But it's
you I've got to thank.'

'We cannot cast Posa without Serena,' said Rannaldini. 'Now we
have time for a glass of champagne.'

'How was Hermione?' snapped Helen, who detested her
husband's mistress.

Serena waited until Rannaldini had left the room to get a bottle,
then said, 'Absolutely bloody. She's recording Arsena in Rome next
week so I spent all yesterday checking out hotels with her. They
were either too hot, too cold, too dark, too light, too big and not
cosy enough, too poky. I kept frantically apologizing to the hotel
managers - you know how sweet and obliging the Italians are. She
deserves a kick up the arsena.'

'She does,' agreed Helen ecstatically.

'I finally flipped and shouted at her,' confessed Serena. 'So, as a
peace offering, I sent her some ravishing lilies and the bitch rang
up shouting that they made her sneeze. "I want yellow rosebuds in
future, and I'll tell you exactly which florist to go to."'

What a lovely young woman, thought Helen, putting her arm

round Serena's shoulders in an unheard-of gesture of intimacy.
'Come and meet our director, Tristan de Montigny.'

'He's next door phoning his auntie Hortense,' volunteered
Sexton.

Poor old Hortense was being extremely cantankerous and giving
Tristan a long-distance earful. For the first time in eighty-five years,
she was no longer Etienne's little sister. As head of the family, she
was feeling old, arthritic and frighteningly exposed. Tristan so
wished he could comfort her.

Oh, my goodness, thought Serena, as he wandered back into the
room. He was wearing a battered leather jacket, a buttoned-down
peacock blue shirt, and Levi's clinging to his lean hips. Serena
immediately wanted to bury her fingers in his shock of dark hair,
and run her tongue along his rubbery jut of lower lip before
burying her mouth in his. Instead, she smiled coolly, accepted a
glass of Dom Priguon, and said, 'Tell us about this Posa,
Rannaldini.'

'He's called Mikhail Pezcherov. Solti call me after hearing him
do the role in Russian. He's now singing Macbeth in some crappy
production and making ends meet belting out songs in a nightclub.'

'And which do we have to endure?'

'If we leave soon, we'll make the second act of Macbeth.'


Landing in Prague, they were driven over the cobbles of ill-lit back
streets to a crumbling opera-house. Rannaldini, well known to
scream at latecomers, had no compunction in sweeping his party
into their seats in the middle of the banquet scene. A rumble of
excitement went through the theatre and Lady Macbeth stopped
singing altogether to gaze at the great Maestro.

Another wild-goose chase, sighed Serena, who'd made sure she
was sitting next to Tristan. The sets and costumes might have come
from an amateur operatic society's production of Brigadoon. Neither conductor, soloists nor chorus could agree on tempi. Attempting to glide through a castle wall, Banquo's ghost sent it
flying.

But out of this shambles came a voice of such beauty, so deep,
rich, soft, yet intensely masculine, that Rannaldini's party turned to each other in rapture. Tristan was so excited he hardly felt
Serena's pinstdped leg rubbing against his.

Mikhail Pezcherov was also an excellent actor, with a
square, expressive face and strong features, enhanced by a black
moustache and beard, and a curly bull's poll tumbling over soulful
dark eyes. More important, if he were going to play the gallant
Marquis of Posa, he was of heroic stature, with long, strong legs
th would look marvellous in tights.

-terwards, he welcomed Rannaldini and his party backstage.
'My knees knock, my tongue thicken in mouth, I can only croak
hello, I am so excited,' he announced, thrusting mugs of very
rough red wine into their hands.

He wished he could afford something more expensive but all his
money was going home to support his darling wife, Lara, and his




26
	27



children. Showing the visitors their photographs, he wiped away
copious tears, but all would be worthwhile, if they could live
together one day in comfort.

'How did you meet your wife?' asked Helen.

'I was best man at wedding. Lara was bridesmaid. I sing "Nessun'
Donna" at reception. Zat was zat,' sighed Mikhail.

'Lady Rannaldini and I had our first romantic weekend in
Prague,' purred Rannaldini.

'Zat is good,' said Mikhail. 'I trust guys who love their wives.'
'I too.' Rannaldini caressed Helen's cheek.

Really, thought Helen, when he's as channing as this, I can
remember why I married him.


Back at Rannaldini's suite, Mikhail got stuck into a better class of
red, wolfed down his own incredibly tough steak, and polished off
everyone else's leftovers.

Rannaldini, who for once hadn't made a single bitchy remark,
produced the score of Don Carlos and thumped away on the piano.
When Mikhail came to the end of Posa's wonderfully beautiful
dying aria, it seemed impossible that only five listeners could have
made such a noise, cheering and shouting until people in the next
rooms banged on the thin walls.

'So thrilling to find him together.' A tearful Helen squeezed
Serena's hand.

'You're going to give the part exactly the right ker-pow quotient,
Mick,' Sexton told Mikhail. 'Tomorrow our people will call your
people.'

'You better call my vife, she handle money,' said Mikhail. 'If I
really have zee part?'

'You have it,' said Rannaldini, who had been particularly captivated
when Mikhail congratulated him on his piano-playing. Not
since Hermione had he discovered such a thrilling talent. Now,
where had he put his treasured jade fountain pen? In his excitement,
he must have handed it absent-mindedly to the waiter after
he'd signed for room service.

'May I call my Lara?' asked Mikhail, as his glass was refilled yet
again.

'Go into our bedroom,' said Rannaldini.

'Can I possibly borrow your mobile to check on Jessie?' Serena
asked Sexton. 'I've got a horrible feeling I've left mine in the taxi.'

Helen had buttonholed Tristan. When she'd first moved to
England from America, she told him, she had worked as an editor
in publishing, which had involved a lot of research. Perhaps she
could help out on Don Carlos.

listened politely. Close up, Helen's huge, staring eyes, ribby body, spindly legs and flesh worn down to her admittedly perfect bone structure, reminded him unnervingly of paintings of
chargers dying of starvation in the Crimean War.

Across the room, trying to make Tristan jealous, Serena was chatting
up Rannaldini, who was terribly sexy, but definitely not
husband potential.

'We rausthave dinner one evening,' he was murmuring. 'Bussage
can always find a window for special people. At least promise to sit
next to me at the Gramophone Awards on Tuesday.'

Helen's face had lit up while Tristan talked to her, but it went
dead as she noticed the wolfish expression on Rannaldini's.
Meticulous by nature, Helen became obsessive under stress. Now
she launched into a frenzy of tidying, lining up scores and magazines,
plumping cushions, whipping glasses from people still
drinking - anything to maintain her sense of controlling the
environment.

'Leave it. We are not at home,' exploded Rannaldini, and then,
remembering his role as cherishing husband, 'Go to bed, my
darling, you must be tired.'

Having told Mikhail he would fix him up with a shit-hot agent,
Shepherd Denston's, who would handle everything, and arrange
for him to have coaching in Prague to prepare him for rehearsals

starting in December, Rannaldini said he was off to bed.

'Helen and I have happy memories to relive.'

He found Helen faffing round in her nightie. She always laid out her clothes for the morrow, and she was certain she'd packed her
saxe-blue cashmere and the lapis-lazuli brooch that went so well
with it.

'You packed in a hurry,' soothed Rannaldini.

'I guess one of the maids has nicked it,' said Helen shrilly. 'I hate
Prague! The beds are so hard, the food's disgusting, you can't turn
down the heating so I'll have hot flushes all night, and finally
there's no bath plug.'

'I will plug your hole, my darling,' said Rannaldini softly.
'D'you remember last time we play game of naughty doctor, taking

liberties with young girl patient, and how excited you became?'
Helen gasped as he pushed her back on the bed.

'She has been very naughty.' Rannaldini locked the door. 'She
deserves good spanking for not eating enough.'

'The others'll hear us. You can't, Rannaldini!'

Parting Helen's legs, Rannaldini laid his tongue on her
clitoris. Not for nothing was he known as the James Galway of
Cunnilingus!




28
	29


Helen achieved orgasm, fantasizing about Tristan de Montigny.

Rannaldini pushed himself over the edge thinking about Tabitha.
'My darling child,' he murmured, as he came.
'Why can't our marriage always be like this?'
'From now on it will be,' promised Rannaldini.

Next door Tristan and Mikhail, who was drinking from the bottle , were dissecting the character of Posa.

'He changes in the opera.' Tristan lit another Gauloise. 'He
starts out an idealist, then realizes he's got to act politically to get
things done. He has to put on a different face to hide the brutal
facts.'

Like you'll have to, thought Sexton, with a sudden surge of pity,
if you're going to work with Rannaldini.

'Posa was like IRA freedom-fighter,' announced Mikhail.
Anxious to make a note about parallels with the IRA, who were
very hot in Hollywood at the moment, Sexton found his pocket
computer had suddenly disappeared. He was distracted by Serena,
who had unleashed her dark hair like a cavalry charge, and undone
two buttons of her pinstripe jacket.

'Can I have a word?' she murmured.

Wildly excited, Sexton padded after her into the second
bedroom.

'Is Tristan OK?' she whispered.

'No, shittin' himself about the funeral on Monday, poor little
sod.'

'It's going to be like a state funeral.'

'In-a-state more likely, wiv all his dad's ex-wives and mistresses
fighting to sit in the front row, and all the paparazzi hangin' abart.'

God, Serena was pretty. I'm going to score, thought Sexton
joyfully.

He was about to unfasten the last button of her jacket and push

the door behind them, when she hissed, 'Get rid of Mikhail.'
'W-w-what?'

'At once! Tristan wants to take me to bed.'

Sexton took it on the double chin.

'Don't hurt him,' he urged. 'He's on the blink.'


Mikhail was desperate to go on partying and Sexton had frightful
difficulty shepherding him into a taxi.

'Such a lovely straightforward guy,' said Tristan, as he and
Serena walked down the dimly lit landing.

Outside her room, she put a caressing hand on his chest.

'Sorry about your father,' she whispered, 'but a good fuck's truly
the quickest way to cure the pain.'

3O


Taking her key, dodging her puckered-up lips, Tristan dropped
a kiss on her cheek. Having unlocked her door for her, however,
he showed absolutely no desire to follow her inside. The trouble
with new men, thought Serena furiously, was that they were so
desperate not to harass women you never knew if they were gay or
not.



31




The Gramophone Awards took place five days later over a splendid
lunch at the Savoy. Record producers and agents in sharp suits
gossiped guardedly as they awaited their illustrious artists in the
foyer. Women press officers, their shiny highlighted hair and long
golden legs belying the severity of their neat black suits, hooked
musical big fish out from their pools of admirers and ferried them
like children to the right table. The progress was maddeningly slow
because it involved so much hugging and hailing on the way.

More hot and famous than anyone, but hidden behind dark
glasses, Tristan reached the table of Shepherd Denston, international
artists' agents, virtually unnoticed. He was delighted,
however, when his host, Howie Denston, a fawning little creep who
ran the London office, informed him that Liberty Productions'
cast for Don Carlos had cleaned up in the awards.

Alpheus P. Shaw, who was playing Philip II - Howie consulted
his pocket computer - was Artist of the Year. Glamorous Chloe
Cafford, the mezzo, who had posed naked on her winning record
sleeve, was the People's Favourite. Solo Vocal had gone to Rozzy
Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta's page, the Opera Award to
Hermione, while Early Opera had been awarded to Granville
Hastings, who'd been cast as the Grand Inquisitor. Fat Franco's
Italian Love Songs had been voted Best-selling Record. Most
prestigious of all, Rannaldini had won Record of the Year.

'Odd that you all know in advance,' said Tristan, accepting a
glass of Sancerre.

'Not at all.' Howie Denston lowered his voice. 'Singers have such
monstrous egos you'd never get them to an award ceremony unless
they knew they'd won.'

Nor was it a coincidence that all the cast of Don Carlos - except
Franco - were Shepherd Denston artists. This was because
had recently wangled himself the chairmanship of the
gency. He had therefore ensured that 20 per cent of the vast fees
earned by the singers in the film would go back into Shepherd
Denston's pockets.

Howie Denston, known as Mr Margarine because he spread his
oily charm so widely over his artists, had now abandoned Tristan
and bolted back to the foyer to await Hermione and his new
chairman, who were probably having a bonk upstairs and bound
to be late. Tristan didn't mind being left. He was always happy
watching people.

Also at the Shepherd Denston table, besides the award winners,
was the retiring chairman, who had an ulcer. Next to him sat
Serena Westwood, out of pinstripe into clinging scarlet, acting cool
towards Tristan, determined to show him what he had missed in
Prague.

Rannaldini, who'd done the seating plan, had also sat Serena
next to Giuseppe Cavalli, a hunky young bass, who'd be winning
awards in a year or two. Giuseppe had been cast as the ghost of the
Emperor, Charles V, who appears at the end of the opera and
draws his grandson, Carlos, into the safety of the tomb.

• No-one was likely to be safe with Giuseppe, who was an unghostly
thug with shoulder-length black curls. Given to check shirts tucked
into bulging jeans, he had a huge fan mail from women, but was
in fact the lover of Granville Hastings, known as 'Granny', who
could have uncheerfully murdered Rannaldini for continually
fixing Giuseppe up with rich single women. Lone parents were
even more predatory than loan sharks, reckoned Granny.

Elegant, tall, silver-haired, always exquisitely dressed, Granny
appeared a cosy old pussy-cat. Inwardly his heart was breaking. For
years he had sung Philip II, the finest bass role in the repertoire,
but now, at nearly sixty-four, he had been demoted to the just as
difficult but more pantomime villain role of the Grand Inquisitor.
As the bigger part, Philip also got the bigger pay cheque, and
keeping Giuseppe was very expensive.

Alpheus P. Shaw III, a very successful, self-regarding American
bass sitting at the head of the table, was pointedly ignoring Granny
because they had just sung Philip and the Inquisitor in the same
production in Paris. Granny, supposed to be blind in the part, had
totally upstaged Alpheus by bumping into furniture and at one
moment, when Alpheus was hitting a ravishing top note, putting
his finger into a candle flame and saying, 'Ouch.' Alpheus, who
had no sense of humour, had been outraged.

A magnificent-looking man, with red-gold hair brushed back



32
	33


from a noble forehead, Alpheus looked as though he'd been
carved out of Mount Rushmore. Married twenty years and the
father of three fine sons, he was also a stern upholder of family
values.

As he forked up a smoked-salmon parcel with his right hand,
however, Alpheus's left hand foraged between the plump, white
thighs of Chloe the mezzo. He and Chloe had fallen in love two
years ago when they both appeared in Aida. Engagements had
separated them, so they had accepted parts in Don Carlos to be
together in the long weeks of recording and filming. Alas,
Alpheus's wife, Cheryl, harboured suspicions, and was threatening
to join him on location.

The great din of chatter suddenly stopped as Rannaldini stalked
in with all the prowling chutzpah of a leopard who has no intention
of changing a single spot.

No star in decline wins Record of the Year.

'It's God,' murmured two record executives, as he swept past
them.

He was followed by Hermione Harefield, looking slightly
flushed. The lunchers giggled as they noticed the jacket of her
purple Chanel suit had been wrongly buttoned up.

'Gangway, gangway for Dame Hermione,' yelled Howie Denston
pummelling aside other late-comers and sycophants, as Hermione
glided across the room as stately as the QE2.

'I so wanted to creep in here anonymously,' she was saying
loudly.

Embracing Tristan, with whom she intended having an affaire on
location, kissing Sexton with whom she did not, Hermione totally
ignored that upstart Chloe the mezzo, whom she disliked
intensely, and Serena, whom she'd not forgiven for sending the
wrong flowers, and Granny, who had never treated her with due
reverence. Instead she turned to Alpheus, who was going to play
her husband.

'Your Majesty.' Hermione curtsied skittishly.

'Madama,' replied a bowingAlpheus, equally skittishly as he held
her chair for her.

Everyone was very sad Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta's
page, hadn't made the lunch. She was singing Octavian in
Budapest, but sent tons of love. Later, a delightedly squirming
Howie would accept the Solo Vocal Award on her behalf.

'Rozzy's so lovely,' sighed Chloe, as Alpheus removed his
burrowing hand to cut up his chicken Cenerentola. 'She's got no
ego problem, unlike some.' She glared at Hermione.

'I hope,' Hermione glared back, 'that Rozzy is not overstretching

34


: voice. I never do more than forty concerts a year.

g have you never done a Three Sopranos, Dame Hermione?'

the retiring chairman, with all the enthusiasm of one who
:knows he will never have to handle it.

'There is only one soprano,' said Alpheus.

Hermione bowed her head. 'Your Majesty is gracious.'

Conversation kept being interrupted by waiters grinding black
tmnoer and pouring wine and water.

,Still or fizzy, Dame Hermione.

Still, please.

'One would have known that you would choose only something

that ran deep like yourself,' observed Alpheus playfully.
'Great big plonker,' muttered Granny.
'Amen to that,' said Chloe.
Alpheus was hung like a donkey.

'Oh, look,' she nudged Tristan, 'here's your leading man.'
Causing howls of mirth by wearing a vast T-shirt saying, 'I've beaten anorexia', Franco Palmieri, who was playing Carlos, had
reached the Megagram table next door. Appropriating four buckling
chairs, he waved jauntily at Chloe then scowled at Alpheus,
whom he detested even more than Granny did.

'Fat Franco longs to be the Fourth Tenor,' Chloe whispered to
Tristan, 'but very sensibly the others won't let that conniving shit
near them. Don't worry,' she added, as she picked the fruit out of
her glazed apricot tart, 'hatred always produces incredible sexual
chemistry.'

'I prefer happy team,' protested Tristan.

'With Rannaldini as team leader?' asked Chloe incredulously.

'They say his dagger follows dose upon his smiles.'

'He is very great friend,' said Tristan coldly.

'Good, perhaps you'll have a benign influence on him.'
Tristan was heartbreaking, Chloe decided. Those bruised eyes
seemed to read her soul. 'I'm sorry about your father,' she added.
'The funeral must have been harrowing. Claudine Lauzerte

looked stunning.'

'She did.'

But even Claudine's divine presence had not distracted a
paparazzi frantic to find out, among other things, why Rannaldini
(in even more built-up shoes so as not to be dwarfed by Tristan's
three tall brothers) had carried the coffin.

Noticing Tristan's hands clamped to his thighs to stop them
shaking, Chloe said gently, 'When I got my first Amneris at the
ENO, I splurged on one of your father's drawings.'

'He would have loved painting you.' Tristan found he could say



35




wtu uo mun pare. ,nlOC comon-t nave oeen prettier, he
decided, very French, in fact. Her straw-coloured bob had a thick
fringe, which emphasized permanently smiling, slightly dissipated
eyes. Tristan had also noticed long slim legs and a black cashmere
bosom, arching like a purring furry cat inside her dove-grey suit.

Glancing up, her eyes widened and held his for longer than
necessary. She would be perfect to screw on location, he thought,
but since ltienne's death his libido seemed to have gone into
hibernation. He knew he had snubbed Serena the other night, and
would have to put in a lot of spadework if she wasn't going to act
up during the recording. Idly he noticed Chloe putting Sweetex
into Alpheus's cup of coffee, and wondered if they were having an affaire.

'Carlos loved his granddad, Charles V, like Prince Charles loves
the Queen Mum,' Sexton was telling an uncomprehending
Giuseppe, who had sunk nearly two bottles of red and was still
flirting with Serena in the hope of a fat record contract.

At last Rannaldini had reached the table. Wafting 'Maestro', his
famous scent, created specially for him by Givenchy, longing to
goad all the male members of his cast that in Mikhail Pezcherov he
had discovered the greatest bass baritone of the age, he immediately
insisted that everyone swap places.

'It is crazy,' grumbled Tristan, who was now next to Granny,
'Giuseppe, who is twenty-eight like me, is playing not only
Alpheus's father, but Fat Franco's grandfather, and he must be half
Franco's age.'

'That's opera for you,' said Granny, in ,his beautiful voice.
'Although no stretch of the imagination would go round Franco's
waist these days.'

'Have you met Rupert Campbell-Black?' asked Tristan.

'I would walk naked across the Arctic Circle for a touch of his
nether lip,' sighed Granny.

'He thinks Don Carlos can't work with Hermione and Franco.'

'Then you'd better stamp your pretty foot and replace them, my
dear.'

Hermione had finished her third helping of apricot tart when
everyone was asked to toast the Queen.

'Most people oughta be drinking to themselves,' muttered
Sexton. 'Never seen such a bunch of fairies.'

A roll of drams, and the awards started. Having accepted his gold
statuette of a harpist, Alpheus proceeded to thank everyone, from
the sound engineer to his wife Cheryl, his fine sons and Mr Bones,
his German shepherd, ending with Mozart who had, after all,
composed the music.

36


ver caring.'-Hermione clapped vigorously. 'I'm much
forward to working with Alpheus.'

She was irritated that it was too dark, except on the platform, for
everyone to see how lovely she was looking. Tristan de Montigny
was lovely-looking too, and even seemed to be getting on with that
acid-tongued Granny. As well as an affaire, Hermione was looking forward to having many in-depth conversations about herself with
Tristan.

Rannaldini was table-hopping again. Posing for the Daily Express with David Mellor, he smirkingly fingered the carpet bums on his
knees and elbows, acquired while seducing Serena Westwood in her new office last night. It had made him feel like a schoolboy.

'I'll have her but I'll not keep her long,' he murmured, blowing
Serena a kiss across the tables. Just long enough to control her
during the recording so that she used exactly the takes he wanted.

There was a great cheer as the newly married Viking O'Neill, golden boy and first horn of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra,
who had hit Rannaldini across the room after the Appleton piano
competition, sauntered up to collect his award for his recording of
the Strauss concertos.

'What a beauty,' murmured Granny, putting on his spectacles.

'If Polygram'll release him, I want him to play first horn in Don Carlos,' whispered Serena.

'Ladies and gentlemen.' A grinning Viking seized the microphone.
'Once upon a time, three dogs took part in an intelligence
test at Crufts. They had to arrange a pile of bones in the best shape.
The first dog who came in was an architect. He looked at the bones,
built a pretty little house and everyone clapped and clapped.

'The next dog was a town planner,' went on the Viking, in his
soft Irish accent, 'who scoffed at the dog architect's little house,
knocked it down, and rebuilt the bones as a beautiful town.
Everyone clapped even more. Finally, the third dog came in. He
was a tenor, and he ate all the bones, shagged the other two dogs
and asked for the afternoon off.'

Such screams of laughter greeted this joke that Viking could
hardly be heard thanking his record producer, the orchestra and
his divine new wife, the conductor Abigail Rosen, which brought
even more resounding cheers.

Returning to the Polygram table, Viking disappeared into the
vast congratulatory embrace of Fat Franco on his way back from a
grope or a toot or some other mischief. For a second, Franco
pretended to box Viking's ears for making snide jokes about
tenors, then the two men put their heads together until Franco
gave a bellow of laughter.



37





Seeing his chosen Don Carlos collapse on to his four gold chairs
again, scooping up petit fours as though they were Smarties,
Rannaldini shouted rudely: 'Unless you give up sweet things,
Franco, you'll never get into Charles V's tomb.'

'You no give them up,' shouted back Franco. 'Viking tell me how
you sail through air like dashing elderly gent on flying trapeze and
flatten sweet trolley and member of Arts Council.'

You wait, vowed Rannaldini, as the roars of laughter subsided.
I'll cook your goose before you've had time to stuffyour gross belly
with it.

At the announcement that Chloe had won the People's Award,
the entire room rose cheering to its feet, except Hermione.

'I am clapped so often that I am not used to clapping,' she told
Alpheus, as he returned, brandishing his award.

As Chloe, in her discreet dove-grey suit, reached the platform, a
huge blow-up of her naked on the sleeve of her prizewinning
record appeared, to even louder roars of applause, on the
monitor.

As Serena put her hand on Giuseppe's crotch, he fell into the
petit fours.

'Best place for him - young people need their sleep,' said
Granny, who was feeling much happier after a long chat with Tristan. The boy was too sweet for words and had wonderfully revolutionary
views on playing the Grand Inquisitor.

'Are you ready, Dame Hermione?' asked one of the Identikit
press officers, as vast illuminated olive-green letters announced the
Opera Award of the Year.

'This is the big one,' said Hermione, whipping out her powder
compact.

Meanwhile, losing no time for revenge - after all, Franco wasn't
a Shepherd Denston artist so they wouldn't lose 20 per cent of his
massive fee - Rannaldini was talking in an undertone to Howie
Denston. 'Do you know anything about a tenor called Baby
Spinosissimo?'

'Making waves in Australia, heartbreaking looks, I'll check out
his availability. And by the way,' Howie lowered his voice, 'we've
got to watch Alpheus. He tried to get Liberty Productions,
American Bravo andShepherd Denston each to pick up the tab...'

'You will ensure cash setdements for Dame Hermione,' interrupted
Rannaldini, as his mistress mounted the rostrum.

'Good people,' began Hermione, but alas, Rannaldini's mobile
had rung.

'Tabitha is home, Maestro,' said Clive, his leather-clad
henchman, silkily.

Rannaldini leapt to his feet. 'I 'ave to go,' he told the astounded
table.

'But what about your award?' cried an aghast Howie.

'You accept eet,' said Rannaldini blithely. 'A family problem
come up. I call you,' he shouted to Tristan.

'Most of all I would like to thank Maestro Rannaldini.' Hermione
wiped away a tear.

But she had lost her audience, as every eye followed Rannaldini
out of the room.




Rannaldini could hardly fly his helicopter home for excitement.
Would days of riding out in all weather have coarsened Tabitha's
amazing beauty? Would being fired so ignominiously have
tempered her extraordinary arrogance, her capacity for rage?

Evidently not. Rannaldini entered the west courtyard through
ancient gates, optimistically crowned with rusty iron letters spelling
the words omnia vincit amor. Sprinting up a mossy, paved path,
flanked by lavender bushes, and pushing open the heavy oak door
he found Helen spitting with fury. Tabitha was showing no contrition
at all. Halting her mother in mid-lecture, she had snapped
that she hadn't flown five thousand miles for an earful and sloped
off to the yard to settle The Engineer for the night.

'Now she's attacking the vodka,' spluttered Helen. 'We've clearly
got a lush on our hands- Rupert always drank too much. And after

over a year away she didn't even peck me on the cheek.'
'Where is she?' demanded Rannaldini.
'In the Blue Living Room.'

The Blue Living Room, an upstairs drawing room, which
everyone else at Valhalla still called the Red Morning Room, had
just been redecorated by Helen at vast expense in soft blues and
rusts to complement her own hazel-eyed, red-headed beauty. The
orange flames dancing merrily in the grate and the last tawny
leaves on the beech outside enhanced the effect. Rannaldini's
ltienne de Montignys and Russell Flints had been banished in
favour of an autumnal watermill by Samuel Palmer, and a
Canaletto of sea-blue Venice. An embracing Cupid and Psyche by
Canova provided the only erotic note.

Tabitha sat slumped in a carved brown chair, which was
Rannaldini's only contribution to the room, watching Wallace and

on television. She was wearing frayed jeans and a Stop
Farming T-shirt. A green toggle clung to her wrist like
mistletoe. She was very thin - probably from taking those mad
mood-inducing slimming pills to keep her weight down.

Her face was deathly pale, the long turquoise eyes bloodshot and
heavily shadowed, the long nose reddened, the mouth clamped
round clenched teeth in an attempt not to cry. White-blonde hair,
used to being washed every day, hung lank and greasy to her collarbone.
She was clutching a yellow Labrador puppy as though it were a hot-water bottle.

'where d'you get that animal?' asked Rannaldini sternly.
'Sharon? She was a stray, wandering round the docks.'

Rannaldini clicked his tongue. 'Have you alerted the quarantine
authorities?'

Tab's eyes darkened in terror.

'Please don't betray me. I couldn't leave her in Kentucky.'
Rannaldini, who was never too hot, put a log on the fire.
'How d'you fiddle it?'

'I came through France. There's a boat smuggling in thirty dogs
a day. The Engineer and I had to wait as it only sails when there's
no moon.'

'How long have you been travelling?'
'Four or five days.'
Rannaldini filled up her glass.

'Naughty little girl,' he said softly, taking Sharon and examining
her. 'Certainly she doesn't look rabid.'

He dropped the puppy gently on the floor.

'How can we punish you?' he purred.

'The American Horse Show Association's done that already, for
Christ's sake.'
'So they should have done. Risking the life of that beautiful
horse I gave you.'

'Engie's fine, I promise you.'

Tab's light, clipped drawl was so like her father's. Every time he
heard it, Rannaldini was excited by how much he could hurt
Rupert by Controlling and manipulating her. Moving round the
room, only pausing to run an admiring hand over Psyche's marble
bottom, he pressed a button on the back of Tab's chair. She gasped
then screamed, as its wings suddenly clamped round her waist,
trapping her.

'what the fuck- lemme go!' Fighting tears, she clawed fruitlessly
at the imprisoning wooden arms, until she nearly pulled the chair

over.

'It's a debtor's chair,' mocked Rannaldini, as he closed in on her.



4O


41




'Eighteenth century. Used to trap debtors like you. I've been
looking for one for ages. You owe me two grand for your journey
home, remember.'

'I'll pay you back.' Tabitha flinched away.

When she could retreat no further, she allowed his fingers
to caress her cheek for a second, then dropped her head like a
snowdrop.

'My father's such a bastard.'

Rannaldini shrugged.

'Maybe he's pleased Marcus is gay. Probably never wanted a son
competing with him.'

Having left pawmarks all over Helen's pale blue Regency sofa,
S.haron was now attacking a cushion Helen had embroidered of a
vargin and a unicorn. Neither Tab nor Rannaldini took any notice.

Rupert's remark about gaining a daughter when Marcus had
shacked up with Nemerovsky had been the one that had hurt her
most, confessed Tab.

'He's got a daughter, for Christ's sake.'

'And what a daughter,' said Rannaldini lovingly.

'I want to make him madder than he's ever been before.'

'Let's find something really to worry him.'


Rannaldini moved fast. With his Polaroid memory, he had not
forgotten four and a half years ago, his leading jockey, Isaac Lovell,
and Tabitha exchanging an impassioned eye-meet in the paddock
before the Rutminster Cup. Isaac had been riding Rannaldini's
vicious but generally victorious horse The Prince of Darkness,
who'd fallen at the last fence. Tabitha had been the groom looking
after Arthur, a big grey gelding, trained by her father, Rupert.

Tragically Arthur had died of a massive heart-attack, way ahead
of the field but just the wrong side of the winning-post. Slumped
sobbing over Arthur's body, Tabitha had been too distraught to
feel the hand of sympathy Isaac Lovell had dropped on her
shoulder as he led home the unhurt but shaken Prince of
Darkness.

The Campbell-Blacks and the Lovells had been feuding for
nearly forty years, since Rupert had bulliedJake at prep school for
being the cook's son and a gypsy with a wasted leg. GyppoJake and
Rupert had slogged it out on the international show-jumping
circuit throughout the seventies, with Jake finally getting his
revenge during the Los Angeles Olympics by running off with
Rupert's then wife Helen.

LaterJake had returned to his wife, Tory, Helen had eventually
married Rannaldini, Jake and Rupert had both switched to
4training, but their feud had not abated. One reason, apart from
loathing Rannaldini, why Rupert had disinherited Tabitha and
Marcus was because photographs had appeared of both of them
smiling at Jake Lovell, who as Rannaldini's trainer had been a
witness at his wedding to Helen.

If Helen and Jake had once fallen so passionately in love, reflected Rannaldini, might not history repeat itself?. By a delicious
coincidence, Isa Lovell was coming to lunch tomorrow, which
would give Tab a decent night's sleep.

Unhampered by scruples, Rannaldini didn't give a stuff that Isa
was already living just outside Melbourne with a tough little
tomboy called Marde. They had invested in a yard that had done
brilliandy its first season but which still needed capital. For this
reason, Isa had come home to make serious money in the
National Hunt season and also to help his father, Jake, now
increasingly debilitated by the polio he'd had as a child.
Rannaldini had several horses in training with Jake, and had
invited Isa over to try out two mares he had bought in France and
to plan for the future.

As usual Rannaldini had another motive. During the winter in
Melbourne, Isa had won three of Australia's biggest races,
including their Grand National, for Baby Spinosissimo, the young
tenor, whom Rupert had suggested should play Don Carlos. Isa
would know if Baby was sufficiently broke to accept the part for a
quarter of Fat Franco's fee.


There was nothing youthful about Isa Lovell. Money had always
been tight when he was a child: at six he was helping in the yard
and jumping at shows, at eight coping with very public trouble in
his parents' marriage, and his mother's attempted suicide. Despite
having been champion jockey three times, he was aware at twenty
six that he would soon have to support his parents, and was
therefore considering moving into training.

Isa had trendily tousled black hair, lowering black brows, and
slanting, suspicious dark eyes dominating a pale, expressionless
face. He looked like the second murderer in Macbeth and had a
Birmingham accent you could cut with a flick-knife. But at five foot
eight, he was tall for a jockey, with an undeniable brooding gypsy
glamour. Not above dirty tricks on the course, where he was nicknamed
the Black Cobra, he was as arrogant as Tabitha and, as
champion jockey, had had his pick of the girls.

After fourteen hours' sleep, a long, scented bath and a raid on
her mother's bedroom Tab, unaware Isa was coming to lunch,
wandered into the Blue Living Room. She reeked of Helen's



3





favourite scent, Jolie Madame. She was wearing Helen's new dark
green cashmere polo-neck, which turned her turquoise eyes
almost emerald. Her newly washed hair flopped arctic blonde over
her white forehead, as she sidled over to the drinks tray to get stuck
into the vodka.

'That is not a suitable breakfast and that's my roll-neck,' began
Helen furiously.

'Shut up,' murmured Rannaldini, but with such venom that any
further reproach froze on Helen's lips. 'We have a guest. Tabitha,
my dear, I don't think you've met Isaac Lovell.'

Tab halted, tossing her head so haughtily Isa could see up the
nostrils of her long Greek nose and the curling blonde underside
of her lashes. But as he breathed in her scent, he was so unaccountably
overwhelmed by foreboding that he found himself
trembling.

Tab in turn saw a young man as dark and narrow as the gallows,
and as still as the embracing Cupid and Psyche on the plinth beside
him. His eyes were filled with hostility and in his hand was a glass

of tomato juice as blood red as the feud between the two families.
'What the hell's he doing here?' she demanded in outrage.
'Discussing my horses,' said Rannaldini.

Everyone jumped as the door crashed open and a furiously
growling Sharon the Labrador backed into the room frantically
worrying a sheepskin slipper. Hanging on to the other end,
growling equally loudly but looking more sheepish than the
slipper because he knew the drawing rooms were out of bounds,
was Tabloid, Rannaldini's senior Rottweiler.

'Get them out of here,' screamed Helen, as a rose-garlanded
Chelsea bowl circa 1763 smashed into a hundred pieces. 'You know

those uncontrollable brutes aren't allowed in the house.'
'How did he get in, then?' spat Tab, scowling at Isa.
'Don't be so goddam rude,' shouted Helen.

Ignoring such brawling, Isa picked up Rannaldini's Times and turned to the racing pages.

Lunch was predictably unrelaxed. Isa, who had the conversational
skills of a Trappist monk, who had never visited Sydney
Opera House or seen the Nolans and the Boyds in any of the art
galleries, and who had never forgiven Helen for nearly destroying
his parents' marriage, turned his back on her and talked horses
with Rannaldini. Watching his weight, he drank only Perrier,
picked the bits of lobster out of the delectable mango and shellfish
salad and had no tartare sauce or vegetables with his Dover
sole. Tab just drank vodka and, horrified she was so violently
attracted to Isa, disagreed with everything he said. Rannaldini

them in delight, an evil smile flickering over his lips like
ake's tongue.


lunch Rannaldini, Isa and Tabitha rode the new French
horses and the dappled-grey Engineer round Paradise. Tab, who
had put on a blue baseball cap and an indigo bomber jacket, with
'Can't Catch Me' printed on the back, proceeded to show off,
executing dressage steps as gracefully as a ballerina, jumping huge fences and five-bar gates, beating Isa easily as they thundered down
the long ride past Rannaldini's cricket pitch.

Passing the gates leading to Hermione's beautiful mill, River
House, Tabitha noticed her fiendish son Little Cosmo Harefield
muting for a 'fiver for the guy', who looked surprisingly like
Rannaldini's fearsome PA, Miss Bussage.

'What's that obnoxious brat doing at home?' she asked, knowing
perfectly well that Little Cosmo was Rannaldini's son. 'I thought
he'd gone to prep school.'

'Cosmo has been suspended for bullying.'

Tab was shocked by the pride in Rannaldini's voice.
'Like son like father,' she said disapprovingly.
Rannaldini laughed.

On the village green, parents and children were happily building
a huge bonfire. As the horses clattered down Paradise High Street,
lights were coming on in the cottages. Seeing people companionably
having tea and watching television, Tab was overcome with
longing for Penscombe.

'what date is it?' she asked.

'October the thirtieth,' said Isa.
'It's Daddy's birthday tomorrow,' she said bleakly.

Mist was rising from the river as they turned right towards
Valhalla. The house itself was hidden by its great conspirator's
cloak of woods, but ahead in a dense copse known as Hangman's Wood, they caught a glimpse of Rannaldini's watchtower.

The roar of a tractor taking hay to Rannaldini's horses was
accompanied by deep complaining from the rooks. An early owl
hooted. In the dusk, Tab kept losing sight of Sharon the Labrador
as the dog plunged into a stream choked by leaves as yellow as
herself.

Entering Rannaldini's estate down a little-used back lane, The
Engineer stopped, and trembled violently, sweat blackening his
dappled coat, his big brave eyes rolling. Even when Isa and
Rannaldini rode on ahead, he refused to follow them between two
gnarled oaks into a tree tunnel in which blackthorn, hazel and
hawthorn intertwined overhead like a guard of honour.




44
	45



In sympathy with The Engineer, Sharon raised her hackles and
yapped, and when shouted at by Tab, rammed her tail between her
legs, and howled.

Even when Tab uncharacteristically laid into The Engineer with
her whip because she was so humiliated he was napping in front of
Isa, the horse wouldn't go forward. Finally he backed, terrified,
into a rusty barbed-wire fence, entangling his hind legs.

Only Isa's lightning reactions, leaping from his mare, chucking
his reins to Rannaldini, gently talking to The Engineer as he calmly
set him free, avoided a hideous accident.

'Could have severed a fetlock, you stupid bitch,' he swore at Tab
as he bound up the horse's leg with a red-spotted handkerchief.

Tab, who'd also jumped down, couldn't stop shaking and had to
lean against an equally shaking Engineer for support. After he'd
given her a leg back up, Isa handed her Sharon to hold.

'The little one's gone far enough. Better carry her home.'

'Let's go back through the main gates,' said Rannaldini,
swinging his horse round.

The setting sun had emerged from beneath a curtain of dark
grey cloud, firing the puddles, warming the swirling silver spectres
of old man's beard. As they swished home through the wet leaves,
Isa lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. Then, as Tab's hands were
full of reins and Sharon, he held it to her lips for a couple of puffs,
letting his fingers rest for a second against her cold face.

'Few horses like that lane,' observed Rannaldini idly. 'Sir Charles
Beddoes, a previous owner, got so bored with the local blacksmith
visiting his young wife Caroline, he rearranged the old man's beard
cables between the two oaks. Then he surprised the lovers in bed.
Escaping on his horse down the back lane, the blacksmith rode
straight into the cables and - snap - they broke his neck.

'Over the years many villagers have heard the clattering of his
horse's hoofs or seen him hanging above the road at twilight.'
Rannaldini's smile was satanic in the half light. 'Sometimes on
winter evenings at Valhalla you can hear poor Caroline sobbing for
her lost love, or see her wandering the passages in a bloodstained
grey dress.'

'A fashionable colour for ghosts,' said Isa sardonically, but he
crossed himself quickly and spat on the tarmac, as they turned into
the Paradise-Cheltenham road.

'Maybe,' said Rannaldini, 'but the trail of her little footprints
comes through locked doors leaving marks on the flagstones.'

'Why the hell did you take us that way, then?' yelled Tab. Then,
slipping all over the wet leaves, endangering both her horse's and
her puppy's lives, she galloped back to e stalles.

Once the vet had given The Engineer the OK, Tab retreated
along endlessly twisting dark passages to her bedroom, refusing
any supper, tempted to drown herself as she soaked in a hot bath,
sobbing helplessly like Caroline Beddoes as she waited in dread for
the sound of Isa's departing car.




Valhalla was full of priest-holes and secret passages, known only to
Rannaldini and Clive, his leather-clad bodyguard. Rooms on all
levels enabled people to peer out of the small mullioned windows
through the creepers into other people's bedrooms. Not trusting
Rannaldini, Tab drew her tattered crimson damask bedroom
curtains that covered the window overlooking the courtyard but
left open the others so that she could gaze south over the quiet
starlit valley.

Valhalla had been a royalist stronghold during the Civil War.
On one of the mullions was carved the head of a cavalier - probably
Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Running her fingers over his
long hair and proud, patrician face, Tabitha wished he'd gallop
down the centuries on his charger and whisk her away from all
this confusion.

From the Summer Drawing Room directly below her bedroom
she could hear the distant rumble of Rannaldini's voice, and
longed to gaze at Isa through a crack in the floorboards.


Used to owners banging on, Isa was only pretending to listen to
Rannaldini's post-mortem about why The Prince of Darkness had
only won by four lengths at Chepstow. To take his mind off
Tabitha, he was deliberately pondering on a small, lazy chestnut
two-year-old called Peppy Koala, which he'd seen last week in
Australia - or, rather, not seen because, frightened by a snake on
the gallops, the colt had flashed past him faster than light.

Peppy Koala's owner, a tycoon called Mr Brown, had no idea of
the colt's potential. Isa didn't ride horses for the flat, but he reckoned
he'd found a Guineas, possibly a Triple Crown winner. If
tipped off, Rannaldini would certainly pay for the colt, and its fare

48


to England, but would then want total glory and control. He was a
difficult, demanding owner.

Unfortunately Baby Spinosissimo, who let Isa do what he liked,
had run out of money. It couldn't be long before someone else
sussed the colt's potential. Rupert was also serenading Baby. The
racing world was a bloody jungle.

Isa was brought back to earth at the sound of Tabitha's name.
Rannaldini was saying idly that he was thinking of setding a very
large sum of money on her.

It wouldn't be worth it, Isa told himself. Too much blood had
flowed under the bridge and, being superstitious, he couldn't
defy that feeling of foreboding when Tabitha had entered the
room that morning.

As Rannaldini fetched the brandy decanter, Isa glanced at a
letter on a nearby desk:


Dear Dame Hermione

I am sorry to suspend your son, Cosmo, but we cannot allow
bullying, particularly of a much younger boy. Xavier Campbell
Black is only six and a half, a plucky little lad, who has settled in
as a day-boy extremely well. The fact that he is black makes the
whole business even more reprehensible. I hope ten days at home
will give Cosmo the chance to reflect upon his actions.


That was poetic justice, thought Isa sourly, Rupert's adopted son
getting a taste of his father's medicine.

'Tell me all about Baby Spinosissimo,' said Rannaldini, filling up
Isa's glass.

Later they went out on to the terrace to admire the winter stars,
which Isa knew well, as he had to rise most mornings several hours
before it was light. A small silver moon was sailing up from the east.
As Isa breathed in the smell of moulding leaves and woodsmoke,
Orion and his dog stars blazed down as beautiful, solitary and icily
imperious as Tabitha. And, like the little silver moon, how much
light she cast around her!


The chapel clock tolled midnight. Tab turned her sodden pillow.
Oh, why had she left the latest Dick Francis downstairs? The front
door banged. Isa was gone. She gave a wail of despair. But hearing
distant steps on the flagstones, she hastily turned off her light, in
case Rannaldini was on the prowl.

The footsteps, slow and deliberate, were coming up the stairs,
getting closer and closer. In a moment of panic she felt sure she
heard the door of the empty spare room next door stealthily



49





opening and closing. As the boards creaked outside her heart
stopped.

It must be Rannaldini. She wanted to scream, but who would hear,
with her mother locked in Mogadon-induced stupor at the other
end of the wing? Sharon, asleep on the bed, was no protection.

The floorboards creaked again, as if someone were deliberating.
Then there was a knock.

'Who is it?' gasped Tab.

Shutting the door behind him, Isa leant against it. In the moonlight
his eyes were a skull's black hollows. 'I've been brought up to
hate the name of Campbell-Black,' he said wearily, 'but I can't help
myself. You are the most desirable...'

But he didn't have time to finish. Tab had belted across the
room, tripping over a still unpacked suitcase into his arms.

'You're as verboten as a cream bun in a health farm,' she gabbled,
'but I can't help myself either.'

For a second, he put his hands round her white throat, so slender
that he could have snapped it in an instant, telling himself he could
still escape. But her breath, which came in little gasps, smelt so
sweet and her mouth, shyly testing his, was so beautifully soft, that
he found himself gently sliding his tongue between her perfect
white teeth.

But it was the last gentle thing he did. Sharon must have thought
one of the blacksmith's oaks had landed on her as they collapsed
onto the bed. Ripping off Tab's striped pyjamas, scattering the
buttons of his shirt, jamming the zip of his jeans, leaving on just his gypsy earrings to ward off evil, Isa appreciated her true beauty
only when he held her naked and quivering in his arms. Kissing,
often biting his way downwards, he found a little seahorse tattooed
just below her left breast.

'You're in for a bumpy ride, fellow,' he whispered mockingly, as
his exploring fingers crept between Tab's legs.

'Oh, bliss, you mustn't, oh, please go on,' gasped Tab, then,
worried that he might be bored by such a wonderful but extended
foreplay, 'Oh, please come inside me.'

As Isa brought her to extremes of pleasure with the same pelvic
thrusts that drove winners past the post, she knew exactly why he
had been nicknamed the Black Cobra. It was as though constant
lightning were being unleashed from his body, and she never
seemed to dry up, as if a Cotswold spring was constantly bubbling
between her legs. As their breathing grew quicker and the four
poster creaked like an old tree in a high wind, she thought she had
never known lovemaking like it.

Pm he watched them through the two-way mirror, which kept
misting up, Rannaldini realized he had never seen anything like it
either. Silvered by moonlight, they were so transported by their
passion, it was as though Canova's Cupid and Psyche had sprung
to white-hot life: constantly changing positions, they coupled with
snakelike frenzy.

Now Isa was kissing one of Tab's small, amazingly high breasts,
biting the nipple until she cried out. Now he was lying sideways his
dark head and stabbing tongue buried in her blonde pubic hair as
simultaneously her lips and tongue teased and caressed his cock,
which Rannaldini was furious to confess looked bigger than his
own. At least the little blighter couldn't hold. out much longer.

But, exulting in his control, Isa drew himself out as proudly as
Excalibur. Then swivelling round, he plunged inside her once
more, his pale murderer's face triumphant, his hips a juddering
blur. Only when Tab arched, went rigid then cried out, did he
finally let himself come, kissing in ecstasy her long white throat,
her damp forehead, her loving mouth, as for a fleeting moment
his defences were down.

Frantically wiping a peephole in the steamed-up mirror,
Rannaldini thought he would explode - and did. He must install
a video camera so he could gloat for hours over the playback.
Reluctantly he had to admit that Isa was as good at riding women
as he was horses.


'I love you,' mumbled Tabitha, when Isa finally removed his mouth
from hers.

...'Thank God you've washed off that bloody awful perfume.'

'It's Mummy's.Jolie Madame. She never wore anything else until
this summer when she switched to Organza so I thought I'd help
her use up the old stuff.'

In horror Isa realized he must have smelt the same scent on his
father, when Jake had come upstairs to tuck him in after stolen
meetings with Helen.

'Never wear it again,' he snapped, and rolled off her on to his
hack.

'Buy me something else, then. God, you're a revelation,
I've always,been soixante-nervous before, but with you it was un
Ielievable.

;;|a couldn't believe it had happened. How could he have

parents like that?

better go,' he said.

Hearing the rusty creak of drawbridges being pulled up, fighting

Tab scooped a drowsy Sharon into the warm place left




by his body. Then she caught sight of the bedside clock. 'It's
October the thirty-first now,' she said insolently. 'Happy birthday,
Daddy. Sleeping with the enemy is the worst present I could give
him.'

Isa glowered down at her, his arms trapping her like the debtor's
chair. 'Is that why you went to bed with me?' he hissed.

'Not entirely,' said Tab.


For the next week, they devoured each other, making love in the
hayloft, on the wet autumn leaves, knowing they were playing with
fire but unable to stop themselves. Aware of the difference in their
backgrounds and temperaments, Isa was the more detached of the
two. But within three weeks Tab was pregnant.

Isa, who had a strong sense of dynasty and a smouldering eye for
the main chance, hoped that Rannaldini would settle money on
her as hinted, and insisted they got married. There was no way a
possible Lovell heir was going to be terminated. Anyway he
couldn't get enough of Tab.

But he was worried sick about Martie, his Australian girlfriend,
to whom, in explanation of his absence, he had considerably
exaggeratedJake's illness. In junking her and consorting with the
devil-led Campbell-Blacks, had he lost all his principles?

Terrified of trapping him, Tab would willingly have had an
abortion.

'I've never looked after a man,' she gibbered. 'I'll probably give
you hay for dinner.' But she loved him so passionately, she was only
too happy to get married.

Events were much bowled along by Rannaldini, who not only
agreed to pay for the wedding, which - because of his overflowing
diary - could take place only on a late afternoon in the middle of
December, but also offered them his latest purchase, Magpie
Cottage, just across the valley, rent-free.

Helen had mixed feelings. Tab could have done infinitely better
and it would mean the press raking up her affairewith Isa's father,
Jake, but she'd enjoy showing everyone at the wedding how much
better she looked than Tory, the wife Jake had gone back to. She
must book in for a few days at Champney's.

Finally there was undeniable pleasure in how much the whole
thing would enrage Rupert, and at least it meant that Tab, who had
draped a banana skin on Psyche's head only that morning, would
move out. And Rannaldini wouldn't run after her any more if she
married Isa, who looked capable of knifing any competition - or
so Helen thought.

52



Meanwhile, rehearsals for Don Carloswere supposed to have started
in a defunct WI hall in North London. Tristan, however, grew
increasingly frustrated when all his stars, headed by Fat Franco who
was singing Otello at La Scala, failed to turn up.

This meant that poor Mikhail, whose hotel bill was being picked
up by Liberty Productions, had no-one to rehearse with except his
voice coach, who found it a great strain having to squawk
Hermione's and Chloe's parts, let alone growling like an old bear
pretending to be Alpheus. The reason for this mass absenteeism
was that top singers hate rehearsing because they don't get paid
for it. 'Why should we roll up because Mikhail Pezcherov hasn't
sung the part in English before?' they chorused. 'We're only
going to be reading our parts at the recording anyway, and could
be whizzing round the world avoiding tax and making fortunes
elsewhere.'

'Franco and I never met when we did Tristan and Isolde,' protested Hermione, on a very crackly call from a Florida beach.
'I just put on cans and recorded the entire opera from the
orchestral track.'

'That's why it was so lifeless and boring,' yelled a furious Tristan,
but Hermione had hung up.
Tristan also spent a lot of time on the telephone shouting at


-How the fuck can I direct individual rehearsals when there
aren't any individuals to direct?'

I am shocked at them all,' lied Rannaldini, and to placate
"lritan, he invited him down to Valhalla the following Saturday.

we iron out every problem. I also invite that Australian
temor, Baby Spinosissimo,' Rannaldini added airily. 'He's coming




down to see his jockey, Isa Lovell, who by an extraordinary coincidence
happens to be my jockey. Why don't you drive down
together?'

Rannaldini rubbed his hands in glee. What frisson it would add
if Tristan, and particularly Baby, were present at the wedding!
Thank goodness, Clive, his bodyguard, had discovered that on the
big day Rupert would be out of the country with his son Xavier.

Poor Xav had not only had to endure Cosmo's horrible bullying.
Rupert had also found his little son sobbing his heart out because
he'd been scrubbing his face for hours trying to get it as white as
Rupert's. Rupert had struggled not to weep too. Instead he
decided to give Xavier some sense of identity by taking him back
to Colombia. Here, Xav could meet the nuns in the Bogotfi
convent in which he'd spent his first two years, and see something
of the ravishing surrounding countryside. Taggie, Rupert's wife,
and Bianca, Xav's younger sister, would have gone as well if Bianca
hadn't caught measles.

At midnight on the eve of the wedding, therefore, an unsuspecting
Taggie was at Penscombe, filling up the deep freeze for
Christmas. Bianca, whose temperature was down, was fast asleep
upstairs. The six dogs, except for Gertrude the mongrel who always
kept an eye open for scraps, slept in their baskets. Two huge mous
sakas for the staff party were complete, except for the cheese
topping which was bubbling on the Aga.

Having laid the big scrubbed table for the grooms' and jockeys'
breakfast tomorrow, Taggie had left space at the end to wrestle
with her Christmas cards. Very dyslexic, she found proper names
a nightmare. She was dickering over whether to send a card to
Rupert's ex-wife, Helen, to heal the breach, and make it easier
for Rupert to see Tabitha again, but she wasn't sure how to
spell 'Rannaldini'. Hearing the strange strangulated croak of a
fox's bark she glanced out of the window. A car was lighdng up the
trees as it sped along the opposite side of Rupert's valley when
the telephone rang.

Oh, bliss, it must be Rupert. He hated her working late. She must
remember to sound sleepy.

'Is that Taggie?' asked a slurred voice, so like Rupert's. 'Look,
I'm getting married to Isa Lovell at five o'clock tomorrow - no,
today. Will you come? I'd like some family there, apart from
Mummy.'

'Oh, no, Tab, you can't.' Taggie collapsed in horror on the
window-seat.

Tab burst into tears. It was several moments before Taggie could
elicit the fact that her stepdaughter was having Isa's baby and

54


being angelic, had masterminded the wedding and
it hat Tab was madly in love with Isa.

'But he's so busy race-riding five days a week and helping Jake'
at the dreaded name, Taggie jumped as though she'd been

stung - 'with his yard that I don't see much of him. He doesn't
need me as much as I need him.'

As Tabitha was obviously getdng cold feet, Taggie beseeched her
to postpone the wedding.

'You don't have to marry him, darling. Have the baby here. We'll
all help you look after it.'

'Daddy wouldn't allow that,' sobbed Tab.

'Of course he would. It'll kill him, Tab. Anyone else but Isa! You
know how he feels about the Lovells - and not having the wedding
at Penscombe will break his heart. He was just about to ring you
and make it up.'

'Put him on, then,' demanded Tab.

'He's in Bogot with Xav.'

Immediately, Taggie knew she'd said the wrong thing, as Tab,
who was as jealous of Xavier and Bianca as she was of Marcus,
slammed down the telephone.

A disgusting smell of burnt cheese sauce brought Taggie back to
earth, as Gertrude the mongrel wandered over stiffly and laid her
head on her mistress's knee. 'Oh, Gertrude, what am I going to
do?' sobbed Taggie.


'Is your name really Spinosissimo?' asked Tristan, as he edged his
navy blue Aston on to the M4.

'Course not,' said Baby. 'I got it out of a rose catalogue. My real
name's Brian Smith. But you can't have Smith alongside the
Pavarottis and Domingos on a record sleeve.'

Outrageous, incredibly glamorous, Baby Spinosissimo had
burnt-sienna curls, thickly lashed debauched grey eyes, a beaky
little nose and a pouting, but wickedly determined, mouth. Slightly
plump already, he finished awhole box of Quality Street on the way
down, chucking his sweet papers out of the window. He also spent
a lot of time on Tristan's telephone talking to his bookmaker.

Responding to Tristan's ability to listen, Baby was soon telling
him about his sex life. Women ran after him in droves, but the only
person he was remotely interested in was his trainer and jockey Isa
Lovell.

'He's got such a capacity for menace. I can't sleep at night for
imagining him gripping me as he grips those horses.'

Baby also confessed that buying horses for Isa to train had
screwed him up with the taxman.



55





'Jan one, and the debtor's prison looms.'

In return Tristan told Baby about his problems with Don Carlos. 'Fat Franco won't rehearse.'

'He's got half Colombia up his nose, for a start,' said Baby dismissively.
'And he hates the part of Carlos. Thinks it's very difficult
and not important or sympathetic enough. Domingo feels the

same. He dismisses Carlos as a wimp with one solo.'

'What d'you think?' asked Tristan.

'If the part was decently acted by someone hugely attractive...'
Baby smoothed his curls. 'What else are you up to?'

The Lily in the Valley was nearing its final cut, said Tristan.
Tomorrow he was nipping over to Paris to re-do some dialogue
with Claudine Lauzerte.

'Are you pleased with it?'

'Yes,' admitted Tristan, 'but one has no idea what will happen
when it faces an audience.'

'Claudine Lauzerte,' Baby rolled his eyes, 'is a terrific gay icon
in Oz.'

They were in deep country now. The sun hadn't appeared for
days, probably singing Otello in Milan. But despite bare trees and
lowering skies, the winter wheat spilling like a jade sea over the rich
red ploughed fields gave a feeling of spring.

Driving through the russet cathedral town of Rutminster
approaching some traffic lights, they drew level with a black
Mercedes driven by a young girl. She was wearing a Stop Puppy
Farming T-shirt but her pale blonde hair was fantastically
garlanded with pink and white flowers like a Botticelli angel. A
Labrador puppy as yellow as her hair lay across her thighs. Her seat
belt was undone and she was unashamedly taking slugs out of a
vodka bottle. Tristan, who knew he'd seen her before, nearly ran
into the car in front.

'Ke-rist on a Harley-Davidson!' gasped Baby.

'Oh, Don Fatale,' muttered Tristan, because the girl had one of
those unique faces that makes everyone else's look commonplace.

'Where are you going to, Mademoiselle?' shouted Baby,
lowering his window.

'It'll be Madame in an hour or two,' shouted back Tabitha, lifting
the vodka bottle to her lips and driving on.

At the edge of town, she gave them the slip.
'That's one for the divorce courts,' said Baby. Then, to Tristan's
surprise, he admitted he had been married briefly when he was
twenty-one. 'My brother had such a beaut stag party I wanted one
too. So I had to get spliced. My stag party was so great, I only just
made the wedding, passed out as soon as I got to the reception and
didn't wake up till next day. My mother-in-law never forgave me,
and nor did my wife. It only lasted a few weeks.'

Baby told the story so wickedly that Tristan couldn't help
laughing, but neither could he stop thinking about the girl at the
traffic lights. Then he remembered. He'd seen her in a silver frame
on Rannaldini's piano.


Across the world in Bogotfi, Rupert had returned from a marvellous
day out. Xavier had totally captivated the nuns, who had not
seen him since Rupert and Taggie had adopted him four and a haft
years ago. He was so tall, straight-backed and confident now, and
proudly showed them photographs of Taggie, Bianca - who'd
come from the same convent- Bogotfi his black Labrador, Gringo
his pony, already covered in rosettes, and finally of his big brother,
Marcus, winning the Appleton.

'We read about Marcus in the papers,' said Mother Immaculata.

'You must be so proud - and what about your sister Tabitha?'
'We don't see her any more, thank God,' said Xav flatly.

'She's in America, eventing,' explained Rupert hastily, vowing to
telephone her the moment he got back to England.

Returning to the Hilton, he found a message to ring Taggie

urgently. When he heard the news he went berserk.
'what time is it in England?'
'About three thirty.'

'We've got to stop it. Rannaldini's set the whole thing up in
revenge for Marcus winning the Appleton and the rows over Don
Carlos. Gimme his number.' Then, for once forgetting his wife's
reading problems, 'For Christ's sake, move it.'

As Tabitha breezed in from the hairdresser, a purring
Rannaldini told her that her father was on the line. For a second
her face lit up. Then, picking up the telephone, she was scalded - even thousands of miles away - by the lava of Rupert's rage. If
she rea//y went ahead and married Isa, he would never speak to
her again, never allow her back to Penscombe, never give her a
penny.

'So what else is new?' screamed Tabitha. 'You said exactly the
same thing when Mummy married Rannaldini. I love Isa. It's not
just because I'm having your grandchild.'

'Won't be any bloody grandchild of mine! It's spawn of the
devil!'

': "Bollocks[ You're the devil. I know what you got up to - terror

at school, and Tory when she was a deb, makingJake's
a misery on the show-jumping circuit, pinching Revenge from

I'd no idea that Revenge started off as Jake's horse, or the




reason Macaulay wouldn'tgo for you in the World Championship
was because you'd beaten him to a pulp in the past, just as you beat up Mum.'

'I bloody fucking didn't!'

'Yes, you did! You're the biggest bastard that ever walked.'

'You ain't seen nothing yet!' howled Rupert. 'I'll destroy your
marriage and bring down Rannaldini and the entire Lovell family.'

'Oh, go screw yoursehq.' A shattered Tab slammed down the
receiver.

Rupert was straight on to Taggie. 'I can't get back in time to stop
the marriage but I'll get it annulled tomorrow, and I'll strangle you
if you go to the wedding.'

The moment Rupert hung up, Tabitha called Taggie and
begged her to go.


'Christ! Look at Hammerklavier House of Horror,' shivered Baby
as, after extended drinks at the Pearly Gates, he and Tristan drove
towards Valhalla. Rooks rose out of a shroud of mist, thickened by
bonfires of wet leaves. Sinister, conspiratorial as its owner, the great
grey house lurked behind its mighty army of trees. Its tiny deep-set
windows, thought Tristan, were like the eyes of medieval scholars
grown small from poring over learned texts lit only by a flickering
candle.

As Rannaldini had wanted maximum publicity without alerdng
Rupert, he had waited until midday to invite the leading gossip
columnists, who had dropped everything to be there. The rest of
the paparazzi, in black leather jackets and dark glasses, tried to
storm the electrc gates, as they opened to admit Baby and Tristan.
Remembering Etienne's funeral, Tristan ducked in horror. Baby,
on the other hand, waved happily.

At the end of a long drive through dark woods and deer
haunted parkland, Tristan and Baby were directed through the omnia vincit amor gates. Rannaldini's all-devouring smile
welcomed them at the front door. Inside they found Tabitha.
Except for the puppy-farming T-shirt and the flowers in her hair,
she was unrecognizable, her swollen eyes redder than carbuncles,
her face grey, except where it was covered in blotches. Despite
having thrown up after her terrible row with Rupert, she was still
attacking the vodka.

Delighted by the turn of events, Rannaldini was about to introduce
her, when Tab gave a cry of relief, and shoving Baby and
Tristan aside ran towards a dark girl, who had followed them into
the house. 'Oh, Lucy, thank God you've come!'

58


.
	One glance at Tab's blubbered woebegone little face told it all.
'Has your dad been horrible to you again?'

,Horrible, horrible,' sobbed Tab, as she led Lucy upstairs.
Lucy Ladmer was Tabitha's greatest friend. They had met when
they became involved in animal rights. A vegetarian and a makeup
artist, Lucy was very careful not to use cosmetics that had been
tested on animals. Extremely successful because she combined a
painter's eye with a sympathetic, soothing nature, she fortunately
had a spare day between filming to make up Tab and provide
moral support.

'Come on, Latimer.' Tab gazed at the wreckage in her bedroom
mirror. 'This is the greatest challenge you'll ever face.'

'Don't you worry.' Lucy unpacked a roll of brushes, sponges and
assorted bottles. 'I'll have you stunning as ever in a trice.'

'And talking of stunning, did you see that man in the hall?'

'Couldn't miss him, really,' sighed Lucy, 'but you'll have to put
all that behind you now.'


Only a streak of saffron on the horizon gave a clue the sun was
setting, but apple logs burned merrily in the Summer Drawing Room.

Rannaldini, looking very good in a morning coat, because the
grey waistcoat matched his pewter hair, handed Tristan and Baby
glasses of champagne, and apologized that they had run into a
wedding.

'Who's getting married?' asked Baby.

'My stepdaughter, Tabitha.'

'She doesn't seem very keen on the idea,' said Tristan, wincing
at his father's painting over the piano, of a leering man undressing
a very young girl.

'Just last-minute nerves.' Rannaldini seemed to be killing himself
over some private joke.

'Who's the lucky guy?' asked Baby.

'My dear boy, I thought you'd have known. It's your jockey, Isa
Lovell.'

The colour drained from Baby's suntanned face. He seemed to
shrink, like a larky March hare suddenly looking down a gun
barrel.

'Christ, he can't be,' he stammered. 'What about Marde? He was
talking of marrying her after Crimbo.'

Rannaldini always got a charge out of inflicting pain.

'He'll be in in a minute to tell you himself. He was irritated not
to be riding at Cheltenham today.'



59




Tristan felt desperately sorry for Baby and put a hand on his rigid
shoulders.

'This happen very quick. You told me she only came home the
day of the Gramophone Awards.'

'Ah,' sighed Rannaldini. 'When one is young, love work like
lightning. Like Carlos and Elisabetta.'

'Carlos and Elisabetta happen so quick because they were giddy
with relief an arranged marriage had turned out so well,' protested
Tristan.

'I believe in arranged marriages,' said Rannaldini warmly. After
all, he had arranged this one.

'I hope you'll stay for the wedding,' he begged. 'You might even
sing something during the signing of the register.' He smiled at
Baby who, having drained his glass of champagne, had got a
grip on himself. 'Dame Hermione is singing "Panis Angelicus",'
went on Rannaldini. 'Ah, here comes the bridegroom.'

And in strolled Isa, still in old cords and a tweed jacket.

'Hi.' He smiled almost mockingly at Baby, who found it impossible
to act normally as he blushed and couldn't speak. Isa always
had this effect on him.

'Hadn't you better get changed?' snapped Tristan.

'Plenty of time,' said Isa coolly. 'I thought Baby might like to see
round your yard, Rannaldini.'


It wasn't long before Baby found his tongue again.

'Why the hell didn't you marry Tabitha's brother Marcus?' he

hissed. 'At least he's the right sex. I suppose you knocked her up.'
'This is a very nice mare.' Isa opened a haft-door.

'She'll lose it if she goes on hitting the vodka. I suppose it's also
for the money.'

'Rupert won't give her a penny,' sighed Isa. 'And Rannaldini will
only help out if it suits him.'

'Well, you're not getting another cent out of me.'

In the safety of the loose-box, Isa ran a finger down Baby's gritted
jaw. 'It doesn't change anything,' he said softly. 'If you're a good
boy, I'll tell you more about this amazing horse I've found. Did you
know,' he added idly, 'gypsies consider it unlucky if a marriage
takes place after sunset?'


Meanwhile Tristan was exploring Valhalla. Grey and spooky in the
December twilight, it would be the perfect setting for Don Carlos. He could imagine the hunt streaming down those rides, or Eboli
chasing Carlos through the maze. There were dungeons for Posa's
death, and a splendid mausoleum for Charles V's tomb. Even the

6O


dafe, in which the heretics were burnt, could be staged in the
I outside the chapel.

As he wandered through rooms formed by yew hedges, statues
of naked nymphs lurked in every corner. Tristan wished he could
offer them all his jacket. To his right, the wood kept readjusting
the mist like a shawl around its shoulders and, as he reached the big lawn, to the north four vast Lawson cypresses reared up, like monks in black habits with their pointed hoods over their faces.
Gazing up from beneath them, Tristan suddenly felt the terror of
the sixteenth-century man-in-the-street, overwhelmed by the dark,
towering forces of the Inquisition.

Quickening his step as night fell, he nearly ran into a pack of
paparazzi. As they levelled their long lenses like a firing squad at a new arrival, he decided they were part of some present-day auto da
fe, destroying reputations for public delectation.

In a blinding flash, he realized that Don Carlos must be made in
modern dress. The present English Royal Family were so similar to Verdi's French and Spanish royalty. Elisabetta was so like both
the sad Princess Diana and the wistful Queen Elizabeth, married to the short-fused, roving-eyed Prince Philip, who was not unlike
Phifip II of Spain. And they, too, had a son called Charles, who


was romantic, idealistic, longed for a proper job, had a lo{ring
nature and was terrified of his stern, critical father, as Carlos had
been. Whilst in Eboli, the feisty mistress in love with Carlos, could
be seen an echo of Camilla Parker Bowles, and in the noble
Marquis of Posa a touch of Andrew, her diplomatic soldier
husband. They could start the film with these characters in the
royal box, then cut to the two armies on the skyline.

But who was the modern equivalent of the Grand Inquisitor?
wondered Tristan, as he retraced his steps to the omnia vincit amor gates. Who terrorized people to madness? Why not Gordon Dillon,
the ruthless editor of the Scorpion, who would shop his own children
to boost circulation and who went around in tinted glasses
and soft-soled shoes, scaring his staff as shitless as the public? The
Inquisition bully-boys, who cast such terrifying shadows over Don
Carlos, could be represented as lurking paparazzi or as the chin
less, ruthless courtiers who spent their time spying and
manipulating at Buckingham Palace.

Tristan couldn't wait to tell Rannaldini.

'Monsieur de Montigny.' A soft lisping voice made him jump out
of his skin.

In his path lurked what appeared to be yet another leatherclad
member of the paparazzi, with hair as pale as his bloodless
face and the leer of a chemist when asked for something



61

	g


embarrassing. Before Tristan could tell him to piss off, the sinister
creature introduced himself as Clive, Rannaldini's henchman.

'Sir Roberto was worried you were outside without an overcoat.
He thought you might like a cup of tea, or something stronger,
before the service starts in half an hour.'


Fifty miles away at Penscombe, Taggie Campbell-Black was still
tearing out her dark hair. Rupert's reprobate old father, Eddie,
had invited himself for the weekend. Having ensconced him
happily in the study with a bottle of Bell's and racing on television,
Taggie took the opportunity, as she hastily made up her face for
Tab's wedding in the kitchen mirror, to discuss the crisis with
Rupert's assistant, Lysander Hawkley. Lysander, who was married
to Rannaldini's young third wife, Kitty, and who had also ridden
his horse Arthur in the Rutminster Cup the same year Isa had
ridden Rannaldini's delinquent Prince of Darkness, was absolutely
horrified.

'Tab can't marry Isa, Taggie, he's an evil bugger. He spat at me
before the race and made some seriously insulting remarks about
Arthur - who, being a horse, couldn't answer back - and he gets
up to wicked tricks on the course. Nearly rode me into the rails and
called me "Campbell-Black's bumboy",' Lysander flushed. 'Bloody
insult. Not that,' he added quickly, 'if I was that way inclined, I
couldn't think of anyone nicer than Rupert.'

'You probably could in his present mood,' sighed Taggie, as she
fluffed blusher on her blanched cheeks. 'Oh, Lysander, what am I
going to do? Tab couldn't have done a worse thing.'

'Poor darling,' said Lysander, who, having been worshipped
unconditionally by Tab for four years, had a rosier view of her than
most people. 'She's so impulsive.'

'She'll be so isolated in that camp,' said Taggie. 'Jake and Tory
won't like it any more than Rupert, who'll kill me when he
discovers I've gone to the wedding. But I can't not - Tab sounded
so pitiful.'

'I'd come with you,' said Lysander, 'but I'd murder Rannaldini.
Take Eddie - he'd liven up any party.'


Rannaldini's woods soared up like black cliffs. Trees, sheathed in
ivy, danced like witches at some wild Sabbath.

'What a creepy house,' shuddered Taggie, as Rupert's helicopter
landed, and she helped her father-in-law climb out.

'Why's the fella flying both the German and Italian flags?'
snorted Eddie, glaring up at the roof.

'He's half German, half Italian.'

62


"Strordinary to be on both losing sides in the last war.'

As they hurried towards the omnia vincit amor gates, a lot of

people were getting out of a minibus.

'Must be the tenants,' said Eddie.

'No, I think they're Isa's relations,' said Taggie.



63




It was nearly six o'clock. The little chapel at Valhalla, attached to
the north wing, was packed to overflowing. Having drifted in to a
rumble of approval twenty minutes ago, Helen, on her own in the
left-hand front pew, grew increasingly furious. In order to upstage
Tory Lovell and Hermione, she had spent a fortune at Lindka
Cierach's on a ravishing smoky-blue suit, nipped in to show off her
tiny waist. She had spent almost more on a fox-fur hat, about which
Tab had been vilely rude. One should not call one's mother 'no
better than a bloody murderer' on one's wedding day. And
because Tabitha had never written thank-you letters or looked up
Helen's family when she was in America, none of them had
bothered to fly over for the wedding, claiming it was too near to
Christmas. Even Marcus had deserted her because Nemerovsky
had a first night in St Petersburg.

As a horrible result, Rannaldini had spitefully filled the relation
less row behind her with Valhalla staff: Sally and Betty, the pretty
maids, who'd gone to London to look after Serena Westwood's
Jessie, Mr Brimscombe, the gardener, who was hopping mad
because Helen had stripped his conservatories of flowers, Mrs
Brimscombe, the housekeeper, who'd been allowed out of the
kitchens for half an hour, and to top it the fearful Bussage in a
trilby and a severe grey dress. No doubt they'd be joined soon by
Clive and Tabloid the Rottweiler.

Having ignored Helen, the bridegroom across the aisle was
reading the Racing Post and murmuring to Baby, whom he'd
somehow seconded into being his best man.

As there was a limited time one could admire the white fountains
of jasmine and freesias and the Murillo Madonna, which
Rannaldini had insisted on hanging on the wall to the right of the

64


Helen walked down the aisle to disabuse Lady Chisledon, a
worthy, of any idea that Bussage might be a relation.
Bloody hell! Helen prided herself on not swearing, even in
private, but Taggie Campbell-Black had just tiptoed in looking
.wildly embarrassed but undeniably gorgeous in a crimson suit with
a black velvet collar and a little crimson pillbox on her dark cloudy
hair. Rannaldini, who was hovering in the doorway, was all over, or
under her, because Taggie was so tall, like a bull terrier courting a
wolflaound.

Even worse, Taggie had brought Helen's dreadful ex-father-in
law, Eddie Campbell-Black, who was getting drunker by the minute
with the aid of a hip flask and wearing Rupert's far too large
morning coat, with a badge pinned to the lapel, saying, 'Old men
make better lover.'

'Ouch!' squawked Helen, as Eddie pinched her bottom.

The Lovells looked as though they'd come to a funeral, the men
in dark suits, the women with too much hair sticking out under the
front of their hats, except for Tory, who looked, maddeningly,
much prettier in a royal blue suit than Helen remembered, and
who never let go of Jake's hand.

And now, late as ever, Hermione swept in, having abandoned
her usual Chanel suits in favour of a white angel's midi-dress and
a gold halo hat. Psyching herself into the saintly role of Elisabetta,
thought Tristan sourly. It would hold more credence if she made
the odd rehearsal.

In one hand, Hermione was clutching the music of 'Panis
Angelicus', in the other, her fiendish son, Little Cosmo, who
proceeded to kick the pews, crunch crisps and stick out a green
tongue at the rest of the congregation.

'That's Rannaidini's illegit,' whispered Meredith Whalen, who'd
taken one overexcited look at Tristan and swept him and Lucy
Latimer into a back pew.'Can't you tell from the nasty rolling black
eyes? And he's twice as evil as Rannaldini.'

Meredith, who was known as the Ideal Homo because he was so
much in demand as a spare man at Paradise dinner parties, was a
hugely successful interior designer, whom Rannaldini had booked
to do the sets for Don Carlos. Meredith looked so innocent and
sweet all his gay friends wanted to put him in short pants and smack
him.

'And did you ever see anyone so tense asJake and Tory Lovell?'
he was now whispering to Tristan. 'Like blasted oaks. I suppose it's
sad when one's little acorn goes astray. And look at Bussage! She's
a worse control freak than Rannaldini and she's wearing her
control frock. We could film Philip's coronation in here, you know.



65





Don't you just love that Murillo? Must be worth five million. That's
why Rannaldini spends so much time in chapel gloating over it.'

Eddie Campbell-Black, who'd been ogling Lady Chisledon,

suddenly spied Hermione, one of his former amours.

'Hello, Henrietta,' he bellowed.

Tabitha, who was even drunker than Eddie, swayed on

Rannaldini's arm in the chapel doorway.

'You look sensational,' he murmured.

She was wearing two triangles of white silk, high at the neck and
falling nine inches above her knees. She held a small bunchof
freesias, to match the flowers in her hair.

'My dress is new, my knickers are borrowed from Mummy,' she
informed Rannaldini. 'My toenails are painted blue, and you're
the something old.' For a second she frowned at him. 'I ought to
be at Penscombe, with Daddy giving me away.'

'The last thing I'm ever going to do is give you away,' purred
Rannaldini, his fight knuckles gently kneading her left breast.

Then he winced at the first strains of 'Here Comes the Bride'.
'Who chose this junk?'

'I did,' said Tab, then, glancing round the chapel she gave a sob.
'Oh, thank God, Taggie and Granddaddy are here.'

Striding up the aisle like a young Amazon, she paused to squeeze
her stepmother's hand.

'What a vulgar dress,' said Hermione, in a very audible whisper.
'When's her baby due?' asked Little Cosmo loudly.

Lucy, who'd hardly had a second to change into a dark brown
suit and black bowler, or to apply any of her make-up skills on
herself, prayed that Tabitha wouldn't be sick.

'That's Percy the Parson,' hissed Meredith, as a red-faced cleric
with straggly grey hair moved forward to welcome the bride. 'He's

got such a plain wife, they're known as One Man and His Dog.'
Lucy fought the giggles.

'And the bridegroom is to die for,' sighed Meredith, as Isa
moved beside Tabitha. 'Such a moody, vindictive little shit, pure
Heathcliff, in fact, but bags I be Catherine Earnshaw.'

'Should have had a haircut. Fellow's hair's longer than
Tabitha's,' said Eddie loudly.

There was an awkward moment when Percy the Parson asked if
anyone knew of any impediment or just cause why the couple
shouldn't be joined in matrimony and Little Cosmo called out, 'I

do,' with a maniacal cackle and had his ears boxed by his mother.
'To have and to hold from this day forward,' intoned Isa.

'Chap sounds like something out of Brook.side," muttered a disapproving
Eddie, taking a swig from his hip flask.

'I, Tabitha Maud Lavinia, take thee, Isaac Jake,' said Tab in the
flat, clipped drawl that reminded almost everyone present of
Rupert

'Love, cherish and obey,' she went on, looking mockingly at Isa
from under her mascaraed lashes.

'Oh dear.' Taggie blew her nose on a piece of Too paper. She


	't

	certmnly hadn obeyed Rupert today

	'With my body I thee worship...' As she lurched over to kiss Isa

	on the jawbone, Tab nearly fell over 'And with all my rather

	depleted worldly goods, I thee endow, although I am going to keep

	The Engineer,'-she added, as an afterthought.

	'Tabitha.e hissed an appalled Helen. What would the Lovells

	think?

	Fortunately everyone was distracted by the ringing of Little

	Cosmo's mobile. Tab got the giggles.

	: Even more fortunately, Percy dispensed with a sermon. He'd

	kept waiting quite long enough, and when he'd asked

	i:.Helen and Rannaldini for touching memories of the bride, Helen

	think of any and Rannaldini's had been quite un


knelt to pray it could be seen that the bridegroom
sapphire cufflinks as big and blue as his wife's eyes.
by a smirking Rannaldini, a tight-lipped Helen, an
and Tory, Tab and Isa went off to sign the register.

'Tristan turned to Lucy. 'That is best make-up repair job I ever
know she'd shedded a tear.' No Frenchwoman
that black bowler, decided Tristan, but Lucy
a nice face, not pretty, but kind and generous. With her dark
earls, freckles, bright eyes and athletic body, she reminded him of
in one of those Mallory Towers books his girl cousins
devouring in the holidays.

who'd spent her life studying faces, thought Tristan's was
llous.. She longed to paint out the dark shadows, bring
the.deep-set eyes and add a bit of tawny blusher to the
cheeks. There was also deceptive strength in the jaw. And
he had wonderful even white teeth.

as Meredith, who was now standing on the pew to
, whispered that the Lovells looked as though they
a death warrant. 'Probably will be if Rupert rolls up.'
'Who's that beautiful woman in the crimson suit?' asked Tristan.
'Taggie CampbelbBlack.' Lucy was appalled to feel a stab of
jealousy.

Married to that white-hot fury, thought Tristan in dismay. He hoped Rupert didn't beat her up.





Hermione had now mounted the pulpit, her gold halo hat
glinting in the candlelight, and opened her music and her big
brown eyes.

'Panis Angelicus' rang out on the arctic air.

Tristan gave a shudder of pleasure.

'Could you make her look eighteen?' he muttered to Lucy.
'She doesn't look much older, she's so lovely.'

'A maestro a day helps you work, rest and play,' giggled
Meredith.

Hermione would have eked out 'Panis Angelicus' for ever, if a
mobile hadn't rung again.

'Hi, Joel. Who won the four thirty at Doncaster?' demanded
Little Cosmo, and Hermione had to scuttle down from the pulpit
to cuff him again.

Hermione was followed by Baby, who strolled up to the chancel
steps, turned, with his hands in his pockets, and looked straight at
Isa and Tabitha, who were waiting to return for the blessing.

'Where'er you walk,' sang Baby, and the chapel went still because
he had one of those extraordinary voices whose music goes straight
to the listener's heart, and, as he sang, his face lost all its mockery
and decadence, leaving only sweetness and beauty. Isa Lovell's face
was totally expressionless, but his eyes were as dark as an open
grave at midnight.

God in heaven, thought Tristan, he's got to play Carlos. Glancing
round he found Rannaldini smiling straight across at him, making
a thumbs-up sign, as the congregation launched into 'Jerusalem'.

Isa, his saturnine face lit up, a cigarette concealed in his left

hand, was whispering to Tabitha as they came down the aisle.
Oh, please let it be OK, prayed Lucy.

Helen followed, in great embarrassment, on Jake Lovell's arm.

His limp was so bad that their progress was painfully slow.
Eddie tugged Taggie's sleeve.

'Wasn't that the fellow Helen ran off with at the Los Angeles
Olympics?' he demanded loudly. 'D'yer mean to say the bounder's
done it again?'

After that the Marx Brothers seemed to take over. The guests were
firmly shepherded upstairs for champagne cocktails in Helen's
Blue Living Room, and the bride and groom disappeared for their
first legal bonk.

Seem Lucy gazing in wonder at a Sickert of a pretty dan.cer,
Tristan joined her and in no time had learned she was twenty-eght,
' , ,,rt=,d li, him on a number of big films and owned a

		lurcher called James.

			'Nice scent,' he said, scooping up several asparagus rolls.

	;' 'It's called Bluebell. It reminds me

				of

					home.'

'Where's that?'
'The Lake District.'
'Ought to be called Daffodils, then. "I wandered lonely as a
cloud. How did you meet Tabitha?'

::'At a Compassion in World Farming rally. We were trying to stop
a lorry taking baby.calves abroad. When the driver and his mate

of their lorry because we were blocking the road, Tabitha
.jumped in, backed up the lo ,try and drove it away. They arrested
just before the motoraay. ,

" :'What was she going to do with them? Tristan noticed Lucy
refusing chicken volau-vents.

.CLet them loose in her father's fields. We both spent the night
gaol. It sort of bonds you. We've been friends ever since. She's

'no side,' she added humbly. 'And she's so beautiful.
up so many faces but hers is easily the best.'

i'You do excellent job today. Look, Lucy.'

spoke her name in that husky Grrard Depardieu voice, r was lost.

start filming Don Carlos next April for three month, maybe




68
	69


more,' he went on. 'I would like to offer you the make-up job.
Would you be free?'

'Yes, please,' gasped Lucy. She'd have cancelled anything.
'Singers are very highly strung,' sighed Tristan. 'They can't pack
their voices away in a case like other musicians. But if you can calm
Tabitha you would have no problem, I think.'


Having discovered they both shared a pathological loathing of
ramblers and deliberately neglected their woods in the hope a
rotten tree might fall on one, Eddie had taken an unaccountable
shine to Rannaldini.

'How far d'you go?' he said, peering out of the window.

'The whole hog every time,' giggled Meredith. 'Oh, do look at
the bride.'

Helen had removed her fox-fur hat because it flattened her hair
but, to her horror, Tabitha had just returned in jeans and a navy
blue polo-neck, which had pulled most of the freesias out of her
hair. 'I was cold, Mummy,' she protested, feeding vol-an-vents to

Sharon the Labrador, who had a pink bow round her neck.
'Champagne, Mrs Lovell?' said a lisping, mocking voice.

As Tory Lovell swung round, her sudden desolation that
Rannaldini's evil henchman, Clive, was addressing her new
daughter-in-law rather than herself was almost palpable.


'The make-up artist is most important person on the set,' Tristan
was now telling Lucy, as they admired an olive-green wood by
J. S. Cotman. 'She is first person an actor see in the morning. If she
say, "I haven't been paid for weeks, the director's a bastard," it
poison atmosphere.'

'You couldn't be a bastard,' blurted out Lucy, then went scarlet
as he glanced at her bare wedding-ring finger. 'It's hard to be in a
long-term relationship if you're a make-up artist. On location, you
tend to slip into affaires. I had a boyfriend at home, but we've just
broken up,' she confessed, in her soft Cumbrian accent. 'He was
fed up with me being always away. Said he wanted Marks and
Spencer's dinners and someone who listened in the evenings.
Weddings always make you feel a bit bleak.' She must be drunk
already. She could tell this man anything, and he hadn't volunteered
a word about himself.

'Are you married?' she asked.

Tristan shook his head.

'Perhaps that's why I too make films - you become 13art of big
family and kid yourself you're not alone.'

TO

gave you those gorgeous cufflinks?' Meredith admired Isa's
apphires. 'Are they a present from the bride?'

'No, the best man,' said Isa.

'And let the best man win,' murmured Baby.

Tab, who had been lighting a cigarette, looked round sharply, but as she opened her mouth to retort, Helen tapped her on the
shoulder.

'Can you please rescue poor Tristan? He's been stuck for ages
with your friend Lucy.'

'No-one gets stuck with Lucy,' snapped Tab. 'You chuck him a
life-belt if you're worried.'

'Dinner is served,' announced the fearsome Bussage.


Waiters holding candles guided the guests past tapestries and suits
of armour down dark, wandering passages to the Great Hall, which
looked stupendous. A string quartet was playing in the minstrels'
gallery. The red and gold mural of trumpeters, harpists and
- fiddlers gleamed in the flickering light of hundreds of candles.

A bottle-green cloth stretched the length of the huge table. Mrs
Brimscombe and the maids had risen at dawn to search the woods
and intersperse the gold plate and the glittering armada of cut
glass with beautiful red and gold fungi and the last coloured leaves of autumn.

In front of a huge organ rising to the ceiling, a side table groaned
with silver dishes of oysters, giant prawns, vermilion lobster, slices of sole in cream sauce and stuffed sea bass. Carrying on the main
table's colour scheme were great bowls of tomato mayonnaise, mute verte and gleaming gold Hollandaise. And this was only the
first course.

At dinner Lucy lost Tristan. She was stuck between a dull Lovell
cousin and Little Cosmo, who she felt sure was about to slice a red
spotted toadstool into her food. Tristan was next to Helen, who
bombarded him with questions about Don Carlos, then interrupted
with her own views, 'I mean, the poor old Grand Inquisitor was
visually challenged,' when Tristan tried to answer them.

She was far more tense than she had been in Prague, her hazel
eyes constantly policing the room for women who might be getting off with Rannaldini, particularly the adorable Taggie, whom
Rannaldini, in a fit of mega-malice, had seated between himself
andJake Lovell.

Taggie didn't know which man unnerved her more. Rannaldini
was being unbelievably charming. Knowing what a great cook she was, he found her the tenderest piece from the saddle of lamb,
then sought her opinion on the russet apples glazed with



71




Cumberland sauce. Would Bramleys have added more piquancy?

Taggie mumbled truthfully that it was all delicious, but she
couldn't forget the hideous way Rannaldini had treated her friend
Kitty, while she was married to him. Jake, on the other hand, was
like a small thundercloud.

'I'm desperately sorry about this,' stammered Taggie.

'No more sorry than we are,' saidJake bleakly.

Down the table, the bride sat between Baby and Isa, a cigarette
in one hand, a fork in the other, her eyes crossing, hardly taking in
the horse talk that flowed across her.

Poor red-eyed Tory Lovell tried to hide her despair. She andJake
had managed to patch up their marriage miraculously but now
she'd have to see Helen, with whomJake had once been so hopelessly
in love, at the baby's christening and at birthday parties for
years to come. She wished she liked Tab more. She shouldn't be
smoking and drinking like that, it was so bad for the baby. Tory
had so longed for her first grandchild.


When Tab cut her cake, she most audibly wished for an Olympic
gold for The Engineer. People were beginning to table-hop. Jake

joined Isa and Baby, ignoring Tab, who got to her feet.

'Musht go to the loo.'

'Aren't you going to throw us your bouquet,' called Meredith,
'so we can see who's going to get hitched next?'

Instead Tab threw her flowers high into the rafters, but as the
single women and Meredith surged forward, she reached out and
caught them herself.

'I'm the one who's going to need it,' she said, glancing enigmatically
at Isa.

With distress, Tristan noticed the delight on Rannaldini's face
then turned and caught the satisfaction on Baby's. Rannaldini was
clearly as crazy about poor little Tab as Baby was about the cool,
sinister Isa.

A family drama in a princely house, he thought wryly, which was
how Verdi had described Don Carlos.

Eddie Campbell-Black was nose to nose with Lady Chisledon.

'I do wish they did soap operas about people of our class,' she
was saying.


Lucy had never met anyone quite like Little Cosmo. 'What are you
going to do for a living?' she asked.

'I'm going to lead paedophiles on and then blackmail them,'
said Little Cosmo, who was lighting a joint.

His mother, who wished to speak to her director, plonked herself

72


Tristan and Helen. 'Tory Lovell is such a charmeri' she


Helen flounced off.

:Everyone was wandering back to their seats for the speeches. Not
.anting to be landed with Hermione, Tristan introduced her to

'No, we haven't met,' said Baby, 'but we share the same colourist
in Mount Street.'

Hermione, who'd always sworn her rich brown hair was natural,
ras absolutely furious. Making a hasty getaway, Tristan sidled up
to Taggie. God, she was adorable.

'I hear you adopt children from Colombia,' he said. 'I once
recce'd a film there. The people are ravishing.'

Taggie melted instantly and was soon telling him about Bianca's
adventures in the nativity play.

'I love acting, Mummy," she said yesterday, "but I hate being
watched." I'm not boring you?' she asked anxiously.

'Never, never,' murmured Tristan. 'My singers, alas, love being
watched but hate acting.'

Taggie was shyly producing photos of Xav and Bianca when she
felt a laser of jealousy from Tab and hurriedly shoved them away.

'Stop doing a number on Isa's divine stepmother-in-law, Tristan,
Iwant to make a speech,' shouted Baby, who had clearly recovered
his high spirits.

:'In a minute, like Leporello,' he bashed the table with a spoon,
.Tin going to list all the men, women and kangaroos Isa's been to

bed with but first I want to read out the telegrams. Here's an excel

one for Tabitha: "Are you sure you're doing the right thing,
darling? love, Granny."'

:
	After a long pause, this was greeted by screams of laughter.
Wonderful woman,' said Eddie, who was trying to light a Gristik.

'Propose to her every Christmas, know we'll end up together.'

'Sit down and shut up, Baby,' called out Rannaldini, with a big

pussy-cat smile. 'I'm the one who's making the speech.'
'Helen's not with us,' called out Lady Chisledon.

Next moment, the mother of the bride came rushing in.

'I cannot believe it. Someone has set fire to my fur hat. Tabitha!' she rounded furiously on her daughter.

'Must have been Lucy,' said Tab, collapsing on to her husband's

knee. 'She's so and people wearing fur.'

'I never!' stammered Lucy.

'Sort it out later,' said Rannaldini. 'Sit down,' he added
gly.

Helen sat, red blotches of rage staining her neck.



73





'Brilliant cake, Mrs Brimscombe,' shouted Tab, taking a bite of
Baby's untouched piece.

BothJake and Tory had looked at her in horror.

'Spit it out,' Tory wanted to shout, but it was too late.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' began Rannaldini silkily, 'it is with great
pleasure...'

But for once he was talking to air as Rupert stalked in. He was
wearing a crumpled lightweight suit and must have hitched a lift
from Bogot on someone else's jet.

'Enter the Pin-up from Penscombe,' whispered Meredith in
ecstasy.

Aware that Rupert was the father of Xavier, whom he had bullied

so dreadfully, Little Cosmo slid under the table.

'Hello, Daddy,' called out Tabitha.

For a second Rupert looked round, taking in first the bride, his
daughter, on Isa's knee, then his father, with his hand down Lady
Chisledon's shirt, and finally the bride's stepmother, who was also
his wife, cringing betweenJake Lovell and a smirking Rannaldini.
His scowl of fury was as blasting as nerve gas.

Only Hermione was unaffected. 'Rupert Campbell-Black! Just in
time for the dancing!' she cried, charging him like an excited
buffalo.

Stepping out of her way, Rupert chucked an envelope on the
dark green tablecloth. Clive, who shadowed Rannaldini's every
move, was moving in from the right.

'Venturer are pulling out of Don Carlos,' said Rupert softly. 'You
can fucking well survive on your own.'

'But you're the chief backer,' hissed Rannaldini, 'and the
contracts---'

'Have not been signed,' interrupted Rupert. 'You should stop
your Rottweiler lawyers being so greedy. And that's only the
opening shot, you poisoned dwarf.'

Then, totally ignoring a frantically mouthing Taggie, Rupert
turned on his heel and stalked out.

'Rupert Campbell-Black gets away with beingrude because he's
very posh,' announced the muffled voice of Little Cosmo.

'Penis angelicus,' sang Tabitha, and slid under the table to join
him.

The following day Rannaldini, Tristan and Sexton, who'd been
heartbroken not to be asked to the wedding, held an emergency
meeting. Without Venturer's millions the film was seriously in partly . They couldn't postpone because it was written into
K!pheus's contract that they would finish at the latest by the end
0f,June. Sexton was particularly gutted: he had not only regarded
Rupert as a terrific gent, who was shit-hot with money, but also as
¢,omfortingly much of a musical Philistine as he was himself.
.Rannaldini was just sighing that he would love to help out
,financially but what with the wedding and tax bills looming...

Tristan took a deep breath - after all he had no dependants

said as soon as the French lawyers stopped wrangling,

could have the bulk of the money Etienne

.left him. Then he suggested they economize by

g in modern dress, drawing parallels between the Spanish
i and the English royal families.

!-.,'Grite, grite!' cried Sexton in excitement. 'Princess Di as

- the Americans will go apeshit! And we can change
,harles V's ghost into the Queen Muwer.' ,.,DOn t be fatuous, Sexton, snapped Rannaldini.

To Rannaldini's delight, however, Tristan then proposed they
at Valhalla, which would be much cheaper. 'You have

.mausoleum, dungeons, cloisters, and huge.state rooms.'

:.,,'And we can save on location fees, travel expenses and hotels by

the cast up at Valhalla,' said Rannaldini gleefully, envis
unlimited extensions and redecorating on the budget.

's over, we'll recce Buckingham Palace to get the

authentic.'

leaves are back on the trees by the time we start shooting,'




74
	75


added Tristan, 'we can always send a second unit to film the
opening scenes in Romania where it'll still be winter.'

'Sounds expensive,' said Rannaldini, not altogether playfully.
'We'll build in serious penalties if you don't finish the movie on
dme.'


Meanwhile the cast were still not turning up at rehearsals but each
night Tristan and Serena Westwood spent hours on the floor of
Tristan's flat, shuffling papers trying to schedule the recording. It
was like wrestling with some massive seadng plan, fitting in with

singers' availability and keeping the difficult ones apart.

'Tricky when they're all difficult,' sighed Serena.

'I suppose Rannaldini will have to turn up for the recording,'
said Tristan wearily.

Serena smirked because the Maestro was still finding time to take
her to bed. But, to her irritation and despite heavy hints, Tristan
still hadn't made a move on her.


The recording itself was held in a huge assembly room attached
to Wallsend Town Hall in north-east London. As the orchestra
straggled in on the first day, in early January, the temperature
plummeted below zero. Snow lay thickly over the regimented beds
of wallflowers and pansies. Lengthening icicles glittered from the
gutters in the morning sun. Inside the hall it was even colder:
the central heating had been switched off in case gurgles and clicks
were picked up on the tape.

'It's going to be breathe-in time for everyone,' said a fat female
member of the chorus, looking round the tiny gallery with disapproval.
Down below technicians were trying to find room for all the
orchestral chairs and music stands, and putting green bottles of
water by every singer's microphone.

The off-stage band had ill-advisedly been sent to play in the bar
where an impromptu rehearsal for soloists, who had deigned to
turn up, was also under way. Hearing screeching, Sexton, who was
heroically trying to get into the jargon, remarked that Dame
Hermione was 'in fine voice'.

'Chance would be a fine thing! That's the chorus master,' said
Serena sourly.

'Do you have a pass, sir?' asked a man on the door, as Rannaldini
stalked in, chocolate brown from skiing.

'It's Maestro Rannaldini!' hissed the other doorman. 'Where
have you been? Outer space?'

Within seconds, Rannaldini was rowing with both Serena and
Tristan, and changing everything. Half an hour later, Hermione

76


in and started yelling that her dressing room was too small
too far from the stage, and she had nowhere to warm up.
- 'How dare you send me yellow roses that are fully out when you know I only like buds?' she then shouted at Christy Foxe, Serena's
PA, a little scrubbed-faced school-leaver, who had just staggered in
with Hermione's four suitcases. 'And don't forget I always have a glass of chilled champagne at eleven.'

'No need to fucking chill it in this hall,' muttered Christy, making
his escape.

Rannaldini was now altering the schedule. No matter that the chorus, who had been booked for the day at vast expense, would
be cooling their heels, he wished to kick off the recording with


	Hermione's last duet with Franco. When Fat Franco didn't show
up, Rannaldini dragged him out of another recording studio in Rome and sacked him.

'Tha{'s a million saved for a start,' he told Tristan gleefully, as he
put down the telephone.

..When Franco's agent came on the line in apoplexy, Rannaldini
:ountered suavely that the final contract had not been signed,
i again due to lawyers wrangling; and, if it had, Franco was in default

for not having attended a single rehearsal or having lost a kilo of
weight. 'He hasn't got a fat leg to stand on.'

.
	'How can you fire the finest tenor in the world?'

'Pour encourager les autres.'

.As shock-horror at the sacking ricocheted round the world,
Liberty Productions called a press conference to announce their
new leading man: 'The dazzling, drop-dead gorgeous, honey
toned Australian tenor Baby Spinosissimo. The most exciting thing to come out of Oz since Joan Sutherland.'

'And the same sex,' muttered the Daily Mail, scribbling furiously.
Aware that he was getdng Liberty Productions out of a hole, Baby
had played terribly hard to get. When Howie Denston, now his
agent, had rung to offer him the job, he had said he'd think about
it. He then went screaming ecstatically round the house, before
calling Isa Lovell. He was going to earn more money in a few
months than in his entire life, so he could now pay his tax bill and
buy that horse, Peppy something, Isa kept banging on about.

Baby roiled up at the subsequent press conference on the arm of a ravishing pony-tailed youth in a pinstripe suit. Gwynneth, the
flabby crone from the Arts Council on whom Rannaldini had
landed when Viking hit him across the room, was covering the event for the Sentinel. Wildly excited, she whisked the pinstriped
youth from group to group, introducing him reverendy as 'Mr
Spinosissimo's partner'.



77





'How long have you and Baby been together?' asked the Telegraph.

'Oh, he picked me up in the car park half an hour ago,' grinned
the youth.

'D'you prefer guys to women, Baby?' asked the Mirror.

'I prefer sheep,' said Baby. 'If sheep could cook, I'd marry one.'

Over the roars oflanghter, a blonde from the Scorpion called out,
'Who's this guy Schiller who's done the tie-in?'

'Shriller, if it's Dame Hermione,' drawled Baby.

The only obstacles ahead seemed to be that Baby must lose a
stone before filming, if he were to look suitably lovelorn, and that the Don Carlos press officer, Bruce Cassidy, predictably nicknamed
'Hype-along', would have to try to hide the fact that Baby swung
every which way including koala bears.

In another corner of the room, as the loudspeakers played Posa
and Carlos's Friendship Duet, Rannaldini and Tristan told a
battery of cameras and tape-machines how delighted they were
Baby was taking over and how equally excited they were about their
new Russian discovery Mikhail Pezcherov. Rannaldini did most of
the talking, as Tristan lit one Gauloise from another and looked
languidly beautiful.

'Bankable and bonkable,' wrote the Mail.

'You've been called the Italian stallion and the Kraut lout, Sir
Roberto,' piped up the Scorpion, 'how come the Frog Prince is
making a film with you?'

'Rannaldini,' said Tristan, in that husky, smoky accent with a
slight break in it that sent shivers down every woman's spine, 'as
my godfather and friend, has inspired and encouraged me. It has
been my lifelong ambition to work together on Don Carlos. I have
every confidence in our collaboration.'

Alas, the recording was continually embatded. For a start,

Rannaldini was only interested in the music sounding as he
wanted. He would scrap even Hermione's most glorious take if he
didn't like the intonation of the clarinets. Nor would he adjust his
to suit a singer, and had no intention of adjusting it for
for whom the timing of every bar was crucial.

i,...Normally in films, music is added later to enhance the action,
:lint.in filming an opera, the action has to fit already recorded
Thus, Tristan kept having to halt Rannaldini if he played
:ething too fast or too slowly because when it came to filming
't have the right amount of time to run
the centre of the maze or indulge in a passionate clinch.

i Rannaldini detested this. He had arranged for a camera to be on
constantly while he was conducting, so that the video could be

iown on a huge monitor to guide the singers on location. Such
his monstrous vanity that he required endless lighting
ihearsals, and would hold up a hundred musicians, not to
singers, chorus and technicians, all on overtime, for
minutes while his hair was brushed and the shine taken off
nose. Once started, though, he was reluctant to be halted
at his own whim.

¢:!or were his singers behaving any better. Hermione was staying
tithe Lanesborough, Chloe at the Capital. The hotels were only a
throw apart, but both divas insisted on travelling in
limos. When she discovered that Chloe's dressing room
than hers, Hermione was enraged and duly took her
the next day.

are reputed to sing less well when they have their




periods. Their vocal cords thicken and the diaphragm supporting
the voice becomes sore and easily tired.

Next day Chloe recorded her great aria, 'O Don Fatale', and
denounced her 'fatal gift of beauty' so gloriously, but with such
controlled venom, it was impossible not to think it was part of her
character. As she came to the end, however, and before the strings
could tap their bows on the backs of their chairs in congratulation,
Hermione had produced a Tampax from her bag, and thrusting it

towards her, asked solicitously, 'Are you needing this, dear?'
Chloe was outraged.

'I can't believe you're still young enough to use those things,'
she snarled back, and retaliated later in the day by dropping her
handbag in the middle of an exquisite take of Hermione's aria in
Act II. This triggered a five-minute screaming match, with Hermione
threatening to walk out. Only Tristan managed to calm her.

'There are women, Hermione,' deliberately he made his voice
even huskier, 'who Verdi claimed are "born for others, who are
quite unaware of their own egos, and who rise above the petty
squabbles of lesser mortals.'

Hermione was so moved she behaved herself for the rest of the
afternoon.

On the other hand, she was not the only member of the cast to
be worried that Fat Franco had been ousted by an unknown
Australian. At least Franco would have ensured that Don Carlos was
a commercial success. Confidence was restored, however, the
moment Baby opened his mouth. The entire orchestra turned
round to gawp, and at the end of his first duet with Chloe, Mikhail
put down the score he was studying, ran across the hall and flung
his arms round Baby. 'You have most beautiful voice I ever hear. It
will be privilege to york with you.'

Mikhail's own voice was just as impressive: Posa's death scene
had everyone in tears. Mikhail, however, was easily demoralized,
particularly by Alpheus who, in the great duet between Philip II
and Posa, kept sighing and wearily holding the bridge of his nose
between finger and thumb, as Mikhail, with his poor command of
English, fluffed line after line.

Baby and Mikhail on the other hand took to each other instantly,
almost as an extension of their comradely role in the opera. In the
evening they went on pub crawls, rehearsing their songs for the
next day to the noisy delight of the punters. They tried to take
Tristan with them but, to their disappointment, he insisted on
returning alone to a friend's flat he had borrowed overlooking
Regent's Park. After all the rows and hysterics, he nee, ded peace to
study the next day's score.

Mysteriously with Mikhail's arrival things started to disappear.
Serena mislaid some pearl earrings, Alpheus some gold cufflinks.
Chloe had quite fancied Mikhail until a large topaz ring, the only
decent present Alpheus had ever given her, went missing. The
cutlery in the canteen had to be replaced twice in a week. Only
Baby, Mikhail's buddy, remained unfleeced, which convinced
Hermione, who'd made an unbelievable fuss about a missing
umbrella, that he must be the thief.

'All Australians are descended from convicts.'

'I have never stolen anything in my life except thunder,' snapped
Baby.

- Poor little Christy Foxe, the PA, had the thankless task of getting
the cast to the right mikes on time. A singer meant to sound far
away has to stand back from the mike, but if, in the middle of a
number, he has a love scene with another singer, he has to rush to
the mike next to them.

::- In the ensemble numbers, therefore, it was like Waterloo in the
rush-hour, with little Christy shunting Dame Hermione, like a
cattle truck, in one direction, and the chorus master propelling
.:ipheus, like the Intercity Express, in the other. Collisions,
screaming-matches, kicks on the shin and slapped faces were


There were more rows in the control room, which was where
::.singers flocked after a stint of recording to listen to the playback

.try to persuade Serena and Sylvestre, Tristan's handsome

French sound engineer, to use the take in which they had

best.

who knew he sounded best in everything, got so bored

to his own voice, not even handsome Sylvestre
uld distract him, so he frequently started dancing round the

much to Alpheus's disapproval.

already disapproved of Granny's hunky boyfriend,
because if Giuseppe's consumption of red wine didn't
the beauty of his voice he might one day topple Alpheus in

bass roles, as Alpheus had toppled Granny. Alpheus also

of Granny, who sat calmly knitting colourful squares
patchwork quilt for his and Giuseppe's bed, shaking with

at his own even more colourful asides. He hardly
to put down his needles when he sang, but chilled the

time he opened his mouth to deliver the words of the
Inquisitor.

disapproved most of all of the orchestra.

think the brass section have been drinking,' he complained,

an evening session.



80
	81



'I should be extremely surprised if they hadn't,' said the
orchestra manager calmly.

In turn, the orchestra, who worked flat out at every session,
thoroughly disapproved of the singers, regarding them as lazy,
stupid, hypochondriacal, hysterical and grossly overpaid. They did,
however, forgive Baby, because he made them laugh and was
monumentally generous. Whenever hampers or crates of wine
rolled in from his increasing army of fans, they were handed over
to the orchestra. Alpheus, who begrudged giving away anything,
was horrified. No wonder Baby had difficulty with tax bills.

Meanwhile, Chloe and Alpheus had worked out their schedule
so that whenever neither of them was singing they could slope off
to bed.

The ladies of the chorus also thought Alpheus was yummy, and
whiled away long, cold hours gazing at him. Predominantly
middle-aged, given to baggy jerseys and straining leggings, they
were of little interest to Alpheus. One member of the chorus,
however, Gloria Prescott, rose like Venus from the permanent
waves and was nicknamed 'Pushy Galore' because she always
pushed her way to the front, nodding, gesticulating, shaking
her blonde ringleted head and overacting to catch the director's

or conductor's eye. She also sucked up to Dame Hermione.

'Ay am such a fan.'

So Hermione befriended Pushy to infuriate Chloe. Alpheus,
Rannaldini, Sexton, Sylvestre and Mikhail had all clocked Pushy.
In return, Pushy whispered constantly in all their ears, including
Tristan's, that her greatest role at music college had been
Elisabetta and wouldn't she be younger and prettier in the role
than Dame Hermione? One morning she was practising one of
Hermione's arias, and hitting all the high notes perfectly, when
Rannaldini's vulpine smile came round the door.

'Would you like me to accompany you, my child?' Then, as he
was tinkling away, 'You see, I am not such an ogre. When I say
thees or that ees bad, it is because I have ears to 'ear the wrong
things.'

The chorus were not booked for the following day, but
Rannaldini confided to Pushy that he would specially like to send
a limo for her tomorrow afternoon so she could hear the orchestra
recording the overture that he himself had composed, and then
perhaps they could have tea at the Ritz. Pushy was in heaven.

But if Rannaldini was histrionic when he conducted Verdi he was
ten times more difficult when it came to his own music. Having
reduced the orchestra to nervous wrecks in the rehearsal beforehand
he started rowing with an increasingly demented Tristan.

'If you take it that fast,' yelled Tristan, 'the hunt will never have
time to stream down the valley.'

'Then they must stream queeker.'

'Then you will lose magical flowing effect.'

'I must be faithful to my music.'

'First dine bastard's been faithful to anything,' muttered Viking
O'Neill, the first horn.

'I must be faithful to story,' shouted Tristan.

'OK, we rehearse two ways: queek then flowing.'

Rannaldini proceeded to take his overture at a breakneck speed,
his stick a blur, and then at such a funereal pace that the strings
ran out of bow, the woodwind and the brass out of puff, and all got
screamed at again.

Tristan nearly killed Rannaldini. So did Serena, when she saw

the ringleted, beribboned Pushy Galore at the back of the hall.
'Rannaldini said no outsiders,' she stormed.

'Sir Roberto kaindly sent a limo for me,' simpered Pushy.

i Tristan sat shaking in the control room, his head in his hands.


i'Quiet, please, we now record,' said Rannaldini imperiously, filling
: the musicians with such terror they could hardly pick up their
.... instruments. 'Remember, gentlemen, this is for ever.'

He then took his overture at a totally different, lilting, cantering

to which the orchestra had a mad struggle to readjust.
end there was utter silence. Gazing at their shoes, waiting

inevitable explosion, his musicians didn't see the tears in

eyes.

'Thank you, gentlemen, that was absolutely beautiful,' he said

'You can have the rest of the afternoon off.'

he can take me to tea at the Ritz, thought Pushy joyfully.

ignoring Pushy, abandoning the gaping orchestra,

the control room where, for once,

had lost her cool.

cannot waste an entire session,' she yelled, as she met him

'What about the introductions to the other acts?'
But her tirade faltered, as Rannaldini's hand crept inside her


'We shall go 'ome to your flat.'

'But Jessie is there with Nanny Bratislava.'

'Tell little Jessie she must learn to call me Uncle Roberto.'




82
	85



The next drama to rock the recording was when Rozzy Pringle
finally turned up to sing Tebaldo, Elisabetta's page. A seventies
beauty, the doe-eyed, long-legged Rozzy was so like Celia Johnson
that everyone had wanted.to have unbrief encounters with her. She
was much too old for the part, but at least she'd make Hermione
look young, and she had a host of fans.

Granny and Rannaldini, who'd often worked with her, admired
her inordinately. Serena and Alpheus had long collected her
records. On the other hand, Hermione disliked all other sopranos
on principle, and Mikhail, Baby and Chloe, being from a younger
generation, scoffed that Rozzy was past it.

Tristan was livid with them. Enchanted at the prospect of
working with one of his heroines, he filled Rozzy's dressing room
with spring flowers.

But when Rozzy finally came through the door, on a dank, grey,
viciously cold morning, he was appalled. She looked old enough
to be Hermione's grandmother, and was purple with cold to match
the darned violet blazer she was wearing over her long, flowered
dress. To combat the ageing hippie look, she had curled up her
hair but it had dropped in the fog, and fell in lank straight tresses
over her jutting collarbones. Everyone greeted her effusively to
conceal their shock.

'Hi, Rozzy, I'm such a fan,' said Chloe, clanking cheeks. Then,
ten seconds later to Baby, 'She must have lied about her age in
Who's Who. She'll never see fifty again.'

Having thrust a beautifully wrapped present into Tristan's hand,
'a little something because you're so kind to book me', Rozzy fled
to the loo.

having Rozzy Pringle here, stinking out the lav gain,'
Hermione, half an hour later, as little Christy Foxe
her towards the microphone.

t have to move to mike four, next to Baby, in bar forty-five,
Hermione,' he reminded her for the tenth time. Then,
his score, he said, smiling at Rozzy as she crept grey and
out of her dressing room, 'You start off standing twelve
feet from mike two, then move up close to mike three, Mrs


worry,' said Tristan, putting his bomber jacket round
Rozzy's trembling shoulders. 'Tebaldo'sjust as petrified as you in
,scene. Just make sure those opening "Hey theres" really ring out. '

Rozzy, Baby and Hermione were all in place, their breath rising
white plumes as Rannaldini swept in.
' "Morning, Rozzy, lovely to have you with us. Shall we catch up
i a spot of lunch? he called out, ehcmng scowls from Serena,
:'i:::.hy and Hermione.

It was tOO early for the offstage band to have got drunk in the
i" " Seeing Ran'naldini raise h-is stick on the nonitor, Viking
O'Neill came in with the mournful, fading sob of the deparlang


	"All is silent, night approaches, and the first star glitters on the

	horizon, sang Baby, who worked the mke like a rock star.

	Now they'll eat their bitchy words, thought Tristan, as

		lini smiled at Rozzy, but despite her anguished face and

		[ mouthings, no 'Hey theres' came out.

	Rannaldini halted the orchestra.

	Rozzy?'

	'Sorry, Maestro.'

	'From the top.' He raised his baton.

	Viking's horn, then Baby, both hauntingly exquisite, were

followed by silence, and a dreadful, strangulated croak.

'Relax, Rozzy, one, two, three,' called Rannaldini.

Rozzy's heart was crashing, the blood pumping through her
veins, but her throat was drier than the desert. Even after ten
minutes of struggling, all she could produce were scraping gasps.
Tristan, in the control room, felt as if he was watching a dog, whose
vzal cords had been cut in the vivisection clinic, trying to cry out
as the surgeon's knife went in. By the time he had run down into

Rannaldini had lost his temper.

'How dare you call yourself a professional singer?' he was
:reaming.

'You've let us all down,' reproached Hermione, as Rozzy fled to




84
	85



her dressing room, her body racked as much with coughing as with
sobs.

Rannaldini picked up the telephone to the control room.
'Who booked her, for Christ's sake?'

'You and Tristan did,' snapped Serena. 'We're going to have to
reschedule.'

'Tebaldo was my favourite part at college,' piped up Pushy.


Rozzy's present to Tristan was a cushion, green velvet on one side,
the other exquisitely embroidered with the words, 'The Lily in the
Valley'.

Tristan couldn't bear unhappiness. Leaving everyone fighting,
and Baby and Hermione to finish their duet, he drove Rozzy to
Harley Street with his car heater turned up.

She had had a terrible Christmas, she revealed, between sobs,
yelling at insolent stepchildren, placating Glyn, her idle husband,
coping with his frightful mother, who kept commiserating with
him for being neglected by a wife who was always selfishly pursuing
a career. Matters had not been helped when Rozzy had nipped off
on 28 December to sing Mimi in a cheap Hungarian production
to pay a tax bill, before singing Brfinnhilde, with laryngitis, in
Athens three days later. Brfinnhilde's immolation scene had done
for her.

Why the fuck did you risk it?Tristan wanted to shout.

The throat specialist said Rozzy had thoroughly overstrained her
voice. He couldn't promise that it would come back and she
certainly couldn't sing in the recording.

Seated in Tristan's car once more, Rozzy cried so hard that
passers-by - swept down Harley Street by the north wind - gazed
in horror.

'People will think I am woman-beater,' grumbled Tristan, and
drove her to his flat overlooking Regent's Park, which glittered
with hoar frost in the midday sun. All round the walls of the sitting
room were propped photographs of the cast.

'I like to live with my characters,' explained Tristan.

'Past and present,' said Rozzy, picking up a large photograph of
Claudine Lauzerte in its own silver frame. 'I wish I looked as good
as that now.' Wincing, as she glanced in the mirror she wiped
mascara from under her eyes. 'People used to say Claudine and I
were a little alike.'

'A little.' Tristan smiled as he handed her a vast Bloody Mary.

She looked half starved. He couldn't have her blubbing all over
a restaurant. He'd been too uptight himself to eat the Chinese
r he'd brought home last night. Perhaps he could heat it
for Rozzy.

'I'm sorry to be such a drip,' she said, following him into the
kitchen. 'Yesterday I discovered Glyn had appropriated thirty thousand
pounds I'd saved for my tax bill to subsidize some dodgy
property deal.

'He's also employed an incredibly pretty temporary housekeeper
called Sylvia at vast expense for the few days I was going to
be away recording Carlos. This morning I took my mother-in-law
Go-Cat in her breakfast bowl instead of muesli...' Rozzy started
to cry again.


'You're just overtired,' said Tristan, putting an arm round her
shoulders. 'I found my washi,ng in the dishwasher this morning,
and my car keys in the fridge.

He let her run on as he got out the takeaway. The waxy topping
Of orange fat looked disgusting.

'I canV't go !,ome tonight,' Rozzy was whispering to herself.
.yGlyn'll think I m spying on him and Sylvia. Oh, Tristan, what are
we going to live on if I can't sing any more?'
ii' For once when his mobile rang Tristan was relieved.

.. Baby was in ecstasy, and having a large vodka and tonic, because

Christy Foxe, who'd been such a trooper, had finally walked out.

'He was fed up shunting Hermione around,' explained Baby,
'Rannaldini being so vile to Rozzy was the final straw. The brave
little lad got up and sang 'q'he Prisoners' Chorus" from Fidelio. After he'd gone, he sent Rannaldini a message on his bleeper,

aying, "Stuff job up your ass, rude letter to follow."

Tristan started to laugh.

'After Christy walked out,' went on Baby gleefully, 'Alpheus,
too vain to put on his glasses and too busy ogling Pushy Galore,
failed to read Christy's last pencil note on the score saying,
"Please move back, Herd of Elephant coming through", so Dame
Hermione ran slap into him. Hermione is now suing for a broken toe, Alpheus for a broken rib. I think you'd better find another
PA, Tristan.'

Grinning and shaking his head, Tristan switched off his mobile.
'We're in luck. You can stay on at the Capital, and take over
Christy's job. You know Don Carlos backwards. And because you're
wonderful at sewing - that is most beautiful cushion I ever 'ave when
we go on location, you can stop Griselda, the wardrobe

mistress, 'having nervous breakdown. And to keep you on the cast
list,' Tristan chucked the takeaway cartons in the bin, 'you can have
i file non-singing role of the Countess of Aremberg. All you'll have




86
	87


to do is cry when the King sacks you, and you're very good at that.
Come on, I'll buy you lunch.'

Rozzy got to her feet unsteadily. As he caught her before she fell,
Tristan felt her desperate boniness.

'You are the kindest person I've ever met,' she said, in a choked
voice.


Sexton and Serena, however, shook their heads at such unilateral
brokering of a deal, and Rannaldini went ballistic at such prodigality:
a singer's salary for a neurotic geriatric PA.


That night, in revenge for Alpheus ogling Pushy, Chloe invited
Sylvestre, Tristan's handsome blond sound engineer, back to the
Capital and discovered he was as good at twiddling knobs in bed
as out. Afterwards, as they shared a bottle of Dora P6rignon on
Liberty Productions, Sylvestre sighed that Tristan was too kind for
his own good.

'We had location manager on Lily in the Valley so useless he
couldn't find his own cock. Tristan called him into his caravan to
sack him, but he spent so much time listing his good points so as
not to demoralize him that the guy came out three hours later
convinced he'd been promoted.'


More seriously, they were now without a page who, in Tristan's new
present-day version, had become a bodyguard. Tebaldo is not a
huge part, but a vital one, a larky little fellow, usually played by a
charming gamin.

Pushy Galore came forward immediately, ringlets and ribbons
flying. She knew the part, could she audition? Rannaldini, Sexton,
and Alpheus were all keen.

'Give the young woman a chance,' urged Hermione, because she
knew it would irritate Chloe, who longed secretly to be admired
and promoted by Hermione.

Serena, however, wanted to kick in Pushy's buck teeth, because
she was always making eyes at Rannaldini, and Tristan thought her
ghasdy and far too refined to play a bodyguard.

The argument was at full throttle in the control room
when Viking wandered in. Despite their earlier differences, he had
played like an angel throughout the sessions, and he and
Rannaldini had achieved a grudging, if transient, respect.

'Here's one soprano who isn't working at the moment.' He
chucked a photograph on the table.
The girl wore an ivory silk shift. She had a shiny dark red bob,

88


gold skin sprinkled with freckles like a tiger lily, and cool,

green eyes.

put a tape in the machine. Her voice was of such piercing,

sweetness that Tristan had to hear only a few bars.
Viking, who is she?'

'Flora Seymour- she's Georgie Maguire's daughter, so it's in the
genes. She played the viola in my old orchestra, but trained as a

as well. She's got the most angelic voice in the world.'

. 'Give me her telephone number,' said Tristan.

He met a lot of opposition. Serena, Hermione and Chloe all
thought Flora was a tramp, probably because she'd had affaireswith both Rannaldini and Viking, and because they'd all three had
designs in the past on the filthy rich, if slightly shady, George
Htmgerford, with whom Flora was now living.

Rannaldini didn't want any advice from Viking and he'd fallen out badly with Flora. But he doted on her voice, which had never
:leen properly exploited. He was enough of a mischief-maker as
Well to see the potential for avenging himself on nora's lover,
George Hungerford, who as managing director of the Rutminster
S-ympaony (rchestra had foiled Rannaldini's takeover bid and
who, as a developer, was also threatening to slap a bypass through
Valhalla.

Sexton, who was watching the mounting costs in horror, was in
favour because Flora sounded ceap.

'How d'you know her so well? asked Tristan.

.
	'I was on'ce hopelessly in love with her,' said Viking.
Answering his mobile, he wandered out of earshot to speak to

hls' new wife." - 'Abby darling.. I love you too. I've. also been match-.
making,' he lowered his voice. 'I've posted Trastan de Montagny
down to Rutminster Hall to see Flora.'



89




Flora sat naked on the white shagpile drying her hair. In the long
gilt bedroom mirror she could see three moles on her inside thigh
and soft red pubic hair, still damp from the bath. Her small
freckled breast rose every time she lifted her ann, but her two spare
tyres didn't shift.

Schiller's Don Carlos was now open between legs grown far too
chunky to play a page-boy poncing about in white tights. She
mustn't get too engrossed in the story, or she'd forget her hair and
the sleek bob would shoot upwards like an explosion in a mattress
factory.

'A hundred eyes are hired,' she read.

Surrounded by George's guards, who watched her every move,
Flora identified with Carlos. Then she looked up at George's
photograph on her dressing-table: cropped-haired, square-jawed,
dark brown turned-down eyes, mouth set like a steel trap in the
Harvey Smith/John Prescott rough, tough North Country mould
- himself against the world. Only Flora knew how sensitive and
kind George was behind the faqade, but he was terribly possessive.

Having screwed up his first marriage because he was a workaholic,
George had taken the autumn offto cement his relationship
with Flora, but had returned to work because mega property
companies and orchestras don't run themselves. Most of his time
was spent in Germany. Flora wanted to travel with him, but she
couldn't bear to be parted from Trevor, her little black and tan
terrier, who was now asleep with a red ball in his mouth on the vast
oval bed, whose headboard hummed with every dial. When she was
away Trevor wouldn't eat, and neither he nor she would survive
quarantine, so she stayed behind and missed George dreadfully.

Flora was also lonely because her great friend Marcus Campbell

90


won the Appleton, was now blissful in Moscow with
Nemerovsky, and her other friend, Abigail Rosen, was

baby and blissfully happy married to Viking.

a maternity dress hiding a non-existent bulge, had recently

down for the day and chided Flora for putting on weight.

'You've never been an achiever, Flora. You never really concen

on your singing career, and you've never stuck to a diet.'


,: 'Too right,' Flora agreed g, loomily. 'I'm the one who should be
aring the maternity dress.

ii i I Ge6rge is an incredibly attractive man,' went on Abby. 'If you're
going to keep him you mustn't let yourself go.'

!/ " Flora's hair was dry now. Thick as the shagpile inside, snow was
growing on the window-ledge. Tomorrow she and Trevor would
.build a snow-dog. As she reached for her glass of champagne,
Trevor flew off the bed, rushing downstairs in a frenzy of excited
barking. Outside, Flora could see the lights of Rannaldini's helicopter
bringing Tristan from London. Trevor had mistaken it for
rge's.

.. The heat of the hair-dryer had removed any need for blusher.
.iging her eyes with brown liner, Flora wriggled into a pair of
black jeans, covered the flesh that spilled over the waistband with one of George's evening shirts, squirted on Coco Chanel and

downstairs. The Frenchman who came through the front
door with snowflakes in his hair was so handsome and so near Flora
in age that she promptly had another glass of champagne on an
empty stomach out of shyness.

!Tristan, however, noticed a Schubert quintet, in which he had
often played the cello part, on the music stand in the drawing room
and theywere off, chattering dix-neufto the dozen. Tristan was only
too happy to tell Flora all about Tab's wedding because it gave him
an excuse to talk about Tab.

'She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw,' confessed Flora, 'but
crazy like a fox, and so volatile. It must be like being married to
Mount Vesuvius. I gather Rupert pulled out of Don Carlos as a result.'

Tab's wedding took them down one bottle, then they moved on
to the recording. As Flora's parents lived in Paradise Valley next to
Rannaldini and Hermione, and she knew Chloe, Serena and
Meredith too, the gossip on that took them most of the way down
another. Tristan, who'd noticed all the burglar alarms and the
grilles on the windows, thought Rutminster Hall was ghastly, but
".unproved by George's Rottweilers stretched out in front of the fire.
By the time they'd finished the second bottle, he'd ceased to worry
about all the guards.



91




'Where are you filming?' she asked, as they tottered in to dinner.
'Valhalla.'

'Then I can't do it. George would never allow it,' squeaked Flora
in horror, then shut up because two of George's guards were
serving steak and kidney pie and pouring a matchless Margaux.

After they'd shut the door, Flora told Tristan how strapped
George was for cash.

'He owes the Germans about forty million in bridging loans. If
it were me I'd never sleep again. If I'd taken the part I could have
helped out with a few bills, but truly I'm too fat. I've got a treble
chin, although most trebles don't have chins like mine.'

Tristan laughed. He thought Flora utterly ravishing and said
there would be masses of time for her to lose any weight before

filming started at the end of March.

'But I haven't got page's legs.'

'As it's in modern dress, Tebaldo's become one of those handsome
detectives Princess Diana and Princess Anne seemed to get
so close to. So your perfectly OK legs will be hidden by trousers.'

'But the main drawback,' went on Flora, 'God, I hope this room
isn't bugged, is working with Rannaldini. George is insanely
jealous and has never forgiven Rannaldini for beating me up and
trying to rape me last August. I promise you it's true,' she added,
seeing Tristan's look of horror. 'Rannaldini wanted me to stay the
night with him after singing in The Creation but I bolted back to
George.'

Then, after a large glass of Armagnac, she said, 'I'll do it, if
George says it's OK and if I can bring Trevor. Perhaps he could
wear lifts and audition for one of Philip II's wolfhounds.'

Trevor wagged his stumpy tail approvingly.


As soon as Tristan left, Flora rang Germany. George was dreadfully
torn. He felt sick at the thought of Flora working with Rannaldini
again and neither did he want her anywhere near that impossibly
glamorous Tristan de Montigny, exuding cross-Channel
pheromones. But he couldn't stand in her way.

'You'd never forgive me or yourself if you turned down the break
of a lifetime.'

'You're the break of my lifetime,' sobbed Flora, who haffwanted
George to forbid her. 'Nothing will ever be as wonderful as falling
in love with you.'

The moment she rang off George regretted it. Flora would have
other chances and he didn't trust Rannaldini. But when he rang
back the number was engaged, even though it was two o'clock in
the morning. She was obviously speaking to Tristan, accepting the

part. George only just stopped himself ringing all the other
numbers in the house.

Three hours later, Flora was slumped at the kitchen table,
finishing Don Carlos and a large tub of banana and yoghurt ice
cream, when she saw more fireflies dancing in the window.

Having made a detour to the other side of Rutminster to drop
some Roman coins into the excavations of a rival, to prevent him
getting planning permission from English Heritage, George had
landed his helicopter outside the kitchen.

AS Flora, followed by a sleepy Trevor, ran across the snowy lawn
into his arms, George said, 'I've got a meeting at nine in
Dfisseldorf, I can only stay an hour.'

'Let's spend every second of it in bed,' said Flora, dragging him
upstairs.

In fact, George was angelic. A fine bass himself, he returned the

following evening to help her learn the part.

Flora also received a call from Sexton.

We're writing into your contract a clause to say you mustn't fall
pregnant before the end of filming. Can't 'ave a private dick in the
dub.'




Before her first recording Flora spent the night with Abby and
Viking, who had practically to drug and drag her screaming into
his car to get her to Wallsend Town Hall, which had grown even
colder, the icicles outside even longer. The red-nosed chorus, in
their overcoats, looked like carol singers.

Flora was supposed to take over where Rozzy had not started: in
the Forest of Fontainebleau with Hermione and Baby, but as a
dreadful anticlimax, Hermione had just rung in for the second day
running saying that the broken toe she'd sustained in her collision
with Alpheus was much worse.

Tristan was so angry for Flora that he drove much too fast over
icy roads back into London to the Lanesborough. Thundering on
the door of Hermione's suite he was admitted by her excited PA.
Hearing shrieks of agony, he thought he had misjudged his
leading lady, but barging into her bedroom, found her having her
legs waxed. To Hermione's fury, he immediately insisted she and
one hairy leg return with him to Wallsend.

Flora, meanwhile, had been immensely comforted to find a
good-luck card in her dressing room from Serena's new PA, Rozzy
Pringle. She was attempting to get her trembling lips round a few
arpeggios, when Rozzy herself rushed in with a mug of hot
Ribena.

'Hello, my poor lamb, you mustn't be frightened. You've got
such a lovely voice. I've studied the role so if you need any help...
I have to confess,' Rozzy went on, as she hung Flora's blue scarf on
a hanger, 'I was prepared to hate you because my husband, Glyn,
is so in love with your mother, he's got all her records.'

'I'll get him an advance copy of her next album,' promised Flora.
'We're all huge fans of yours.'

,Come and meet Granville Hastings,' said Rozzy. 'He's such a


: 'Why are there so many people here?' muttered an aghast Flora.
. , 'You've turned up on the worst possible day,' whispered back
Rozzy inclignanfly. 'By constantly ignoring poor Tristan's schedule and pulling out people to sing as and when he felt like it,
Rarmaldini's created the most appalling backlog. All the rest of the

cast are here in case they have to do retakes. Poor Tristan!'
They found Granny regaling an audience with chitchat.

'My dear child, welcome.' He put down his knitting to give Flora
a kiss.

.... 'Where the hell's Rannaldini?' Even the normally ebullient Baby was uptight Over all the hanging around.

. 'Having a poke, I expect,' sighed Granny. 'He always poked the
prettiest chorus girls at the Garden, bending them over the red
¢elvet balcony of the royal box between rehearsals. If anyone came
, he used to pretend he was showing them round the opera


Granny rose, still knitting, and went into a sequence of languid
,.pelvic thrusts. 'Down there ees the peer, where my orchestra play

thrust], and zat is rostrum where I perform miracle [thrust], and

is proscenium arch [ thrust].'

:'When you 'ave feenish, Granville,' said a chilling voice.

e laughter died. Granny dropped several stitches.

:i -.'Dame 'Ermione soldier in. At least 'ave the courtesy not to keep
.' Rannaldini glared round.
got a Fisherman's Friend?' came Hermione's pathedc


ostentatiously, she joined Baby and Flora on the


like the Teddy Bears' Picnic,' hissed Flora, glaring at

.'s full-length mink.

'I assure you, this will be no picnic,' hissed back Baby.

just had to stand there. His cruel, cold, pale,

face was enough to give a performance its special

He raised his stick. Viking's dying horn call floated out of
bar.

Flora was so terrified she began loud and sharp. It didn't take

long to put the boot in. After the fifth take, when she'd
the notes right, he said, 'That was better, Flora, but you

act.'

1. 'But I thoughtm'

said Rannaldini crushingly. 'You do not have the neces
equipment,' he added bitchily. 'To be a singer you have to




94
	95


have a voice. To be a musician you have to have a brain. Don't
confuse the two.'

There is a limited number of times you can ask a singer to repeat
herself and get the words, notes and acting right. Rannaldini
exceeded it. Flora was also slimming, and the rare perfect take was
invariably wrecked by her rumbling tummy.

'This is hopeless,' yelled Rannaldini, calling a lunch break. 'We
will finish scene tomorrow.'


The last day was even more tempestuous, not improved by
George Hungerford rolling up with Trevor, Flora's terrier, and
sitting at the back of the hall scowling at Rannaldini. Flora got
even more flustered, particularly when Trevor started howling at
Hermione's rather dubious top notes, which reduced both
chorus and cast to fits of laughter, so master and dog were
banished from the hall.

'That nasty little dog is, alas, a critic,' said Serena, as she picked
up the telephone in the control room to ring Rannaldini on the
rostrum. 'Dame Hermione has lost her top.'

'Where? Where?' said Sexton, looking round the control room
in excitement.

'Her top notes, you bloody idiot.' Serena slammed down the
receiver.

Rannaldini decided to take a break and listen to the playback.
Tristan bore George offfor 'a cup of tea and a piece of shortbread
for Trevor'.

Smarmy frog even knows the name of my dog, thought George
ungratefully.

'And then you can sit in the control room,' added Tristan.
'No, he can't,' snapped Serena, who'd nipped down to the
canteen to grab a cup of tea, and who hadn't forgiven George for
choosing to live with Flora rather than her. 'Our singers' weaknesses
and how we conceal them are entirely our secret.'

'Weaknesses?' squawked Hermione, who, having clocked
Rannaldini's preference for Serena, had been spoiling for a fight.
'What weaknesses? How dare you, you patronizing hussy?'
Grabbing cups and saucers, she started smashing them on the
floor.

'Pull yourself together, Hermione,' said Serena bossily. 'My little
Jessie wouldn't behave like that.'

Appearing in the doorway, Rannaldini ducked to avoid a milk
jug and frogrnarched a screaming Hermione off to her dressing
room. Three minutes later, he came out zipping up his flies.

'She'll be OK now.'

96



going to have to drop in someone else's top notes,'
Serena.

Tristan decided to placate George with a large whisky instead

bore him off to find one.

i 'Flora is wonderful,' he said enthusiastically. 'She is determined

to betray her panic to Elisabetta, but listen to the tension in iher voice.'

": ..,She's not having to act,' snarled George, 'and who's that damn
ight too good-looking boy playing Carlos?'

Baby Spinosissimo. He's sublime, but extremely gay.'


The ladies of the chorus, who were not needed in the finale, were

drifting away. Pushy's hard little heart was breaking as she knocked
on Rannaldini's door.

'Ay've just come to say goodbay, Maystro.'

'My dear, can you keep a secret on pain of death?'

Of course,' lied Pushy, wriggling inside.

' !'How would you like to sing Dame Hermione's top notes?'


At last the recording was over. Tristan heaved a sigh of relief that
. Rannaldini would now whizz off round the world out of their hair,
allowing himself, Serena and Sylvestre to get on with the editing.
to his horror, Rannaldini went nowhere, hogging the edit
putting his stamp on everything, causing endless rows over
which take was used, twiddling knobs so some singers sounded less
d and others better than they had at the recording. Granny,
i iitting to the end of his career, needed careful editing. Hermione,
as Rannaldini's mistress and more importantly because of
their mutual record sales, couldn't sound less than perfect.
Sylvestre dropped in Pushy's top notes so no-one could detect the
join.

Still disappointed that Tristan hadn't made a move, Serena put
it down to the fact that she had supported Rannaldini on cvcr
artistic decision. She had also, reluctantly, become we smitten
:with her Italian stallion. It was so sweet of Rannaldini on the last
day of editing, because her involvement in the film was ended, to
invite her, Sylvestre and Tristan back to his flat overlooking Hyde
Park for a farewell dinner.

As Serena was leaving to relieve the babysitter, because it was
Brauslava s night off, she handed Rannaldini a picture her
/ daugfiterJessie had painted specially for her 'Uncle Roberto'.

, 'How charming of Jessie,' Rannaldini wiped away a tear, and as
he ushered Serena into her minicab, promised he would call her


97




Bounding back into the house, noww .........

picture, plunged it into the drawing-room fire and lit hs cigar
with it.

'What are you doing?' demanded Tristan in horror.

'Now the recording is sewn up,' Rannaldini inhaled happily, 'I
have no more need to ingratiate myself with little Jessie's mother.'


There were more fireworks in March when members of the cast
were issued with cassettes of themselves singing so they could learn
the words to which they had to mime on location and time their
movements to them. Then they discovered how much Rannaldini
had doctored the recording. Chloe was incensed by the cuts in the
'Veil Song' and in 'Don Fatale'.

Rannaldini blithely blamed Serena.

'Anyway, those numbers don't add much to the plot, my darling.'
Baby was outraged he'd been so often drowned by Hermione.
Alpheus felt Rannaldini had consistently favoured the orchestra
and every other singer. It was sacrilege to cut his great solo in Act IV
and his character didn't 'garner sufficient sympathy'.

Mikhail was so cross, he rang up Rannaldini in the middle of the
night. 'Why did you not use my third and best take in death of
Posa?'

'Because it was too slow,' said Rannaldini coolly. 'Serena wanted
to get Acts Four and Five on to one CD for when the record comes
OUt. '

'At this rate my billing will be so small and low down, only snails
and mice will be able to read it,' sighed Granny, who'd also been
savagely cut.

'Think of poor Verdi,' snarled Rannaldini. 'He had to drop the
entire first act of Don Carlos, because the Parisians couldn't get
their last trains home.'

'And directors have been putting it back ever since,' said Granny
drily.

Sylvestre, the handsome French sound engineer, felt Hermione's
performance had been so enhanced by subtle additions
that he sent her her cassette with utter confidence. In a frenzy
Hermione returned the tape by taxi, shrieking down the telephone
and threatening legal action. 'You have rejected every single take
I wanted and my top notes sound terrible.'

Sylvestre waited four days, wrote to Hermione saying he'd
laboured all round the clock on a new tape, and sent her back the
old one. By return of post, he received from Hermione a letter,
which he framed, saying, 'You have worked miracles.' Also

great consternation when a hatchet job, on the lorror
with Rannaldini, appeared in the Sunday Times,
by little Christy Foxe. As Christy subsequently turned out
Rupert Campbell-Black's godson, and the son of Janey
a very dangerous columnist, Rannaldini and Tristan
uneasily if this were the first round in Rupert's war of



98
	99



One of the secrets of Rannaldini's success was that he knew when
he had pushed those he needed too far. Immediately the editing
was finished he suggested he, Tristan and Meredith, the set
designer, should recce the state rooms at Buckingham Palace.

Rannaldini and Meredith went back a long way. They had done
up numerous houses together without falling out. Aware that
Meredith had been the lover of Hermione's charming husband,
Bob Harefield, for fifteen years, Rannaldini had never outed them
because he was fond of Meredith, and Bob, as orchestral manager
of Rannaldini's old orchestra, the London Met, had made life
incredibly easy for him.

Neither Rannaldini nor Hermione, on the other hand, had
made life easy for Bob, who'd pretended he was far too stretched
in Australia setting up a new opera company, to come home and
organize Don Carlos for them.

Meredith, a hugely successful interior designer, had turned
down a mass of work to create the sets for Don Carlos, but he
intended to screw a vast fee out of Liberty Productions, and
although missing Bob a great deal, he was very excited about
working with such an enchanting Frenchman.


On the day of the proposed trip to the Palace, so many builders'
lorries and cars belonging to outraged planning officers were
already whizzing in and out of Valhalla that the Fancy Fish frozen
foods van slipped through the gates unnoticed. Famed for his
cheeky, cheery manner, which could sell shellfish la King to a
barmitzvah party, Terry, the Fancy Fish rep, had long had designs
on Valhalla, particularly now rumours were spreading of a film
crew rolling up at the end of March.

Bussage, Rannaldini's PA, had tipped Terry off that Sir
s in rare residence. On his way to make his pitch Terry
to pop into Bussage's cottage, which nesded in a copse
up Valhalla's drive, to deliver a cardboard box of sole
. as a thank-you present. Loading up other boxes, in case
was tempted to place an order (Terry never missed a sales
opportunity), he was just admiring the snowdrops and aconites
in her little garden when he heard a male voice, sepulchral and


'How dare you spell Spinosissimo wrong!' followed by a great
thwack and a shriek.

,I'm sorry, Maestro.' It was a woman's voice now, quavering,

'Please don't hurt me.'

'How dare you put a comma in that letter to Lord Cowrie, when
|.dictated a semi-colon,' intoned the man's voice.

More thwacks were followed by even more piercing shrieks:

me, Maestro, I'm so sorry.'

to the rescue through the back door, Terry froze
th shock. A naked Miss Bussage was spreadeagled face down

the kitchen table, with wrists and ankles strapped to each

leg.

her, an equally naked Rannaldini, with an erection
the tower of Pisa, was laying into her reddening but

trim bottom with a hunting whip. Watching them with

was a large fluffy white cat.

moment sole Vronique, garlic king prawns, not to

,jumbo crispy cod fingers, destined for Little Cosmo, went
all over the kitchen and Terry had fled.

the bleedin' excitement on their faces fixed me,' he told
that evening.


later, Meredith and Tristan, having enjoyed a merry

at the Heavenly Host, bounced into Bussage's

to find Rannaldini, immaculate in a pinstripe suit and
pink tie, autographing a pile of photographs.

said you were here,' giggled Meredith. 'The helicopter's
What the hell did you do to that sweet Fancy Fish man?

the side off Tristan's flash car.'


in for a two-hour trip round the state rooms, which was all
time Rannaldini could spare, they lunched beforehand at
in Bury Street. Over oysters, lobster and Sancerre, they
they needed ideas for the Great Hall, which was going to
turned into Philip II's bedroom. They also required a set,




100
	:.
	101



probably the Summer Drawing Room, into which Philip
summoned Carlos from the polo field for a pep talk. This was a
duet composed by Rannaldini, so he didn't want a too-spectacular
d6cor to distract people from his music. But they could go to town
on the state room in which Philip had his great political debate
with Posa, which had only been written by Verdi. For this
Rannaldini had evil designs on Helen's Blue Living Room.

Arriving at the Palace, Meredith commandeered the red guidebook.
'That's the arch through which diplomats and heads of state
enter,' he announced, as they peered down into the pink-gravelled
quadrangle.

'Her Majesty lives on the opposite side,' said Rannaldini,
pointing to a dark blue door.

'Why don't you give her a bell?' suggested Meredith. 'Ask if we
can pop in for a brandy. You must have met her when she gave you
your K.'

'And on many other occasions,' said Rannaldini icily. 'Anyway,'
he added, looking up at the empty flagpole, 'she is not in residence.'

'"In 1826 George IV chose John Nash to design a new palace,"'
read out Meredith, '"but he was hampered by a chronic lack of
funds." Nash et moi. I expect he gnashed his teeth.' Rather like a
child swinging between two parents, Meredith linked arms with
Tristan and Rannaldini. 'You will give me a decent budget, won't
you, boys? We can't stint on royalty. Oh, look, they've got Sky
Television. Lovely to think of that butch Prince Andrew watching
all that golf.'

Tristan was gazing up at the lion-coloured columns of the ambassadors'
entrance.

'The English stole the idea for that double portico from the
Louvre,' he grumbled. 'They steal all our decent ideas.'

'Well, we won both of those,' Meredith waved the guidebook at
two panels celebrating the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo, 'so
boo sucks.'

'Weeth a little help from the Germans,' said Rannaldini
crushingly. 'Now concentrate. Not now,' he snarled, as a group
of middle-aged tourists tiptoed up reverently in the hope of an
autograph.

Meredith was disappointed the tour didn't include the ballroom.
'You're only admitted,' announced Rannaldini pompously,
'if you're getting a decoration.'

'Get you,' said Meredith, who was now busily sketching a grand
staircase, which unfurled like the frill round a golden wedding
cake.

lost in thought, was admiring a lovely marble ofa lurcher

a thorn removed from its paw by Diana the huntress. He
a postcard to send to Lucy Latimer. Thank God he'd
her to do the make-up and to calm Hermione and Chloe
filming started. There were dogs in every painting too, which
itneant he'd have to include lots in the film. Dogs, he reflected
earily, were almost more of a nuisance than children.

'This is the Green Room,' Rannaldini paused on the threshold,
ere one mingles before proceeding to the Throne Room to ttieet one's hosts.'

'How lucky we are to have you to initiate us,' said Meredith

gravely.

-i, 'Stop taking the pees, you little popinjay,' said Rannaldini. 'How
this dcor for one of the drawing rooms?'

good for your colouring,' said Meredith firmly. 'Green's
with grey hair and a sallow complexion. Someone would

you with a cocktail stick. Although we could drag the
colour to cast a sickly glow on poor, doomed Posa.'
' Tristan kept having to hide his laughter by examining paintings.
'This is how I want room where Posa defies Philip,' said
as he hustled them into the Throne Room, which was
length of a cricket pitch. The crimson silk walls were lined with
sofas. Huge cut-glass chandeliers glittered from the ceiling
. fleet of Jack Frost's air balloons.

The ceilings at Valhalla are too low for chandeliers,' protested

Meredith.

i 'Then raise them,' said Rannaldini imperiously.

:
	Through an arch flanked by white-winged genii holding gold

chains, burgundy red steps led up to two crimson thrones,

the initials EIIR and P.

'We must reproduce those for Elisabetta and Philip II,' said
Fristan in excitement.

'And keep them permanendy at Valhalla after filming's over,'

Meredith, 'we can unpick the E and P and change it to R
for Rannaldini and H for Hermione, or Helen or Harriet Bussage,'
he added slyly, 'depending on who's in favour.'

Rannaldini allowed himself a chill smile, but he could only
think of a throne initialled T, with naked Tabitha sprawled on its
faded damask, waiting for him to mount the burgundy red steps

her.

i In every room there were beautiful clocks depicting heroic

How slowly the minutes must have ticked by for the young
\Princess Diana, thought Tristan, and for Carlos and Elisabetta.
How d'you cure a broken heart in a gilded cage, particularly




102
	103


when every ravishing piece of S6vres showed idyllic scenes of young
shepherds and shepherdesses in love?

'I want a scrolled codpiece for Chrislanas,' said Meredith,
bringing everyone back to earth.

'Her Majesty enters the Throne Room through that emergency
exit,' murmured an official, who'd recognized Rannaldini, 'so she
doesn't have to walk through a lot of rooms.'

'That's nice,' piped up Meredith, 'so she can always retreat down
the backstairs for a squirt of Diorissimo.'

'Half the big-looking glasses,' confided the official, 'despite
being covered with gilt patterns of leaves and flowers, are actually
hidden secret doors.'

Rannaldini's eyes gleamed. How perfect for the to-ing and
fro-ing of lovers and Inquisition spies, often the same thing in
Don Carlos, and for himself, who liked to vanish like the Cheshire
Cat.

They had reached the great spine of the state rooms- the Picture
Gallery - mostly Dutch and Flemish masters. Tristan was enraptured
and went into a flurry of oh-mon-dieus, particularly over
Rembrandt's O/d Ship-builder and His Wife, whose faces were
luminous with affection and inner light. If only Lucy could make
the faces of his cast glow like that.

Too much enthusiasm for anything other than himself unnerved
Rannaldini, who whisked them past each masterpiece, only
pausing to admire Guido's terrifying painting of Cleopatra being
bitten by the asp. ltienne had been the same, thought Tristan, with
a pang. As a child he had never been given time to linger over a
painting.

' Christ Healing the Paralytic.' Consulting the guidebook, Meredith

paused before a large oil. 'He ought to have a go at Tabitha Lovell.'
'Is she still drinking?' Tristan tried not to sound interested.

'Buckets,' sighed Meredith. 'She'll give birth to a little pickled
walnut at this rate.'

'This is the best picture in the room.' A good-looking official
drew their attention to Charles I astride a fine grey horse. 'His eyes
really follow one round the room.'

'So would mine given the chance,' said Meredith admiringly.


'This is the Blue Room,' purred Rannaldini, 'where one gathers
for drinks before grand diplomatic occasions.'

'This is it, glorious,' squeaked Meredith, whipping out his notebook
and scribbling frantically. 'Corinthian pillars the colour of
Harrogate toffee, sea-blue flocked wallpaper, masses of gold
framing the mirrors and ceiling, pale turquoise sofas, perfect for

Drawing Room and Philip's pep talk to Carlos.'

the gilded splendour, through floor-length windows
:lawns could be seen sweeping down to a lake surrounded by

'I'm going to scrap my fences and flower-beds and sweep
to my lake,' Rannaldini was thinking aloud.

a lot of mowing,' chided Meredith. 'Teddy Brimscombe

: notice and no-one else would put up with you. I like this

he mused, as they moved into the Music Room, 'like a
. sunset and incredibly flattering to your colouring.'

.... Rannaldini smoothed his hair complacently, but the smile was

offhis face when Tristan was suddenly mobbed by a party of

tourists, demanding his autograph, taking pictures and
after Claudine Lauzerte.

to lose the limelight for a second, Rannaldini dived
• the red rope and played 'God Save the Queen' on the Music

piano. Guides blanched, security men with walkie-talkies

the French tourists, melting away from Tristan, cheered

they recognized Rannaldini.

't reseest it.'

Sir Roberto.'

last port of call was the White Drawing Room, which took
:their breath away.

is answer for the Great Hall,' exclaimed. Rannaldini. 'Then

,'s debate with Posa we can restore our Blue Living Room

glory with reds and crimsons.'

a't that the room Helen just redecorated?' said an aghast


poor darling,' agreed Meredith. 'We tried a hundred coats
we got the right blue. But this gilt and white is to die for.
there's darling Queen Alexandra over the chimneypiece. She
as good about fat Edward's philandering as Helen is about
yours, Rannaldini, so we might placate her with a new portrait over
the fireplace.'

Meredith does get away with murder, thought Tristan, as they
trooped down the staircase.

Out in the sunshine, Rannaldini stalked off to the Palace shop.
'We must take Sexton a present,' said Tristan, as he and
Meredith panted after him. 'He was so heartbroken he wasn't
allowed to join us.'

'He'd have wanted chandeliers in the larder,' said Meredith
sensibly.

'Get him a box of royal fudge,' mocked Rannaldini, who had
bought a mug for Tabitha and crested tea-bags for Helen and
Bussage.



104
	105



I'll get him postcards of all the interiors so he can pretend he's
been,' said Meredith.

Out in the street Rannaldini announced he must leave them.
'It is Isa's birthday, I got tickets for Riverdance. Sadly, Isa cry off.'
Rannaldini looked delighted. 'I hope Tabitha won't be too bored
with just her old stepfather.

'Dear boy.' He turned to Tristan who, for one miraculous
moment, thought Rannaldini was going to ask him to take Isa's
place. But with an evil smile, as if he could read Tristan's mind,
Rannaldini merely thanked him for sparing the time.

'My God,' giggled Meredith, as Clive glided up in the most flamboyant
orange sports car.

'A Lamborghini Diablo,' boasted Rannaldini. 'A beautififl girl
deserce evening out in a beautiful new car.'

As Clive slid across into the passenger seat, Rannaldini took the
wheel and roared off towards Hyde Park Corner.

'Silly old ponce,' went on Meredith. 'Talk about mutton dressed
as Lamborghini.' Then, seeing the desolation on Tristan's face,
'Don't tangle with that nest of vipers, baby boy.'

had tried so hard to make her marriage work, giving
and fags for the sake of the baby, keeping tidy the
cottage Rannaldini had lent her, cooking - admittedly
disgusting - meals. But Isa was used to a clockwork mother
clockwork mistress, Martie in Australia, who'd both provided
admiration, clean shirts, tea on the table, and an impec
service.

also as driven as Tristan, and didn't want to be distracted
tantrums or grumbles about burst pipes. He was away
race-riding or atJake's yard, where it was made quite
didn't want Tab anywhere near his horses.

' she drifted into drinking. One Sunday, when Isa had
over to seeJake, she had downed halfa bottle of vodka before
:on the ironing. Trying to watch Champions on television at
time, she singed the colours of a very important owner.
curse in Romany for over five minutes and proceeded to


home, he'd stopped at the garage to buy Christmas
all his owners.

send those,' said Tab, in horror. 'They're all spangly
horrendously haft to say "Season's Greetings".'

be fucking stupid,' snapped Isa, and handed her a fiver.
the stamp money. Make sure you post them tomorrow.


.
	11, I forgot. I 11 ring for a pizza, or we could go to the Heavenly


can't afford it.'

escalated. The following night Isa arrived home late




to find Tab had gone out clubbing in Rutminster, and things went
from bad to worse.

Isa was so cool, silent and withdrawn, Tab so up-front and tempestuous,
she felt like a tidal wave hurling itself against the sea wall.
Physical passion had drawn them together, but the doctor had
insisted on no intercourse for the first three months.

'It's all right,' bleated Tab, who was terrified Isa might find a
replacement from all those groupies mobbing him on the racecourse,
'I'll go down on you.'

But when she tried, she retched all over him and the bedclothes.
She was suffering from morning, noon and night sickness. Her
hormones were all to pieces and she was paranoid about everything,
snapping Isa's head off one moment, in floods of tears the next.

Isa was sympathetic until he saw the overflowing ashtrays and
plummeting vodka bottles.

'Hasn't the doctor told you to give up?'

'He said cut down because it would cause me and Baby Rupert

too much stress if I stopped completely.'

'Don't call it fucking Rupert.'

Tidy by nature, Isawas driven crackers by Tab pinching his jerseys,
socks, razors, and CK One, his precious aftershave. As she drank
more, she forgot more: to put out milk bottles and dustbins - but,
worse still, for a jockey's wife, she forgot telephone messages. Isa
started putting all calls through his mobile and his bleeper, which
made Tab even more paranoid about other women.

At Christmas everyone made an effort. As their daughter, Darklis,
was in South Africa, Tory persuaded Jake to let her invite Isa and
Tab to stay.

The Old Mill, which Tory had been given by her rich grandmother,
was big, rambling and totally horse-orientated. The only
paintings on the walls were of Jake or Isa's horses, or of their various
sporting achievements. There were scant carpets on the wooden
floors, all the sofas and armchairs needed upholstering. Nor were
the Lovells into central heating.

Outside were days of extraordinary beauty and bitter cold. The
chill factor, because of the east wind from Siberia, was minus 16 and
produced wonderful sunsets and sunrises, rose pink on the horizon
above snowy fields.

Traditionally in racing yards, the grooms have Christmas Day off.
Itwas a matter of pride forJake to do the horses with Isa, just to show
everyone that polio hadn't got the better of him. Outside he noticed
the wind had scattered ivy-mantled branches all over the fields,
clearing out the dead wood. Like me, he thought, with a shiver.

The only way he could relieve his pain-racked leg and back was to

108


in a booing bath, but he returned home to find Tab had used
-the hot water. He found her in the kitchen, hugging the Aga,
!:dean, pale hair flopping over her ashen face, her long turquoise
angry and bloodshot. Exactly like her father, thought Jake
and as capable of causing havoc.

;:.Poor Tory, attempting to cook Christmas dinner for the family and the grooms, was also trying to get to know her daughter-in-law.
'I have no idea how to change a nappy,' Tab was saying disdain

'They use Velcro now. It's as easy as putting a bandage on a horse,'
aid Tory encouragingly.

Picking.upJake's hatred, Tab escaped to pack her presents, stopping
on the way upstair,s to pinch Tory's sellotape and a pile of
newspapers because she d forgotten to buy wrapping paper. The whole thing took ages because she kept stopping to read. There was

a huge piece, in the Telegraph colour mug, about eventing stars
destined for the next Olympics. Tab was not even menUoned, which

made her feel more of a failure than ever.

"Turning to the Sunday Times she found a lovely picture of Rupert
i and a piece saying how well he was doing. Tearing it out, she fough, t

.
	k the tears. The .b, lue sky outside reminded her not of Mary s
robes, but of Rupert s eyes. The bells pealed far more sweetly at


Remembering the mountains of presents, the banks of holly, the
hmte fires, Taggie's goose, her parsnip pure, and the brandy round
ite"Christmas-udding, which flamed longer than the Great Fire of
London, Tab forgot the earth-shattering rows with which 'she and
Rulaert had disrupted the endre household. The last one had been
because Rupert had only bought her a Golf GTi convertible for
Christmas, instead of paying forty thousand for The Engineer, for hich Rannaldini had forked out later in the year when he'd
married her mother. God, she had taken her wonderful family for
granted.

'Can't you ever forget about being a bloody Campbell-Black?'
Isa had walked in and caught sight of the piece in her hand. Sharon, stretched out on the bed, scattered receipts as she waved her tail.

'Have you been ransacking my mother's tights drawer?'

'Hardly be tight on me,' snapped Tab. She'd got so thin she could
jump through the hoop of the sellotape hanging from the bedside
table.

'I was looking for a thick jersey,' she went on, 'which one certainly
needs in this house. The only thing I could find was Pond's
Vanishing Cream. Your mother could start by using it on her hips.'



109





She thought Isa was going to hit her.

'You been drinking?'

'Of course not. I promised.'

Isa wasn't sure. Like most drinkers, Tab went through three
stages: clinging and filled with anxiety when she woke up, incredibly
cheery after the first few slugs, then punchy and belligerent
when she was coming down. It looked as though she'd reached the
third stage. But he didn't want to upset his mother, so he asked if
Tab would come downstairs to open the presents.

'The gritters are out,' he added, gazing at the lights flashing
along the horizon. 'We're in for a hard night.'

'People use them on their teeth round here.'


The Lovells were frugal, short of money and had allotted one
present to each person. Tory had gone to a lot of trouble to track
down an early history of eventing in a second-hand-book shop for
Tab. Isa had rather pointedly given Tab some scent called Quercus,
so she wouldn't nick his CK One any more, and a rather ugly gold
locket.

'I'm going to put your picture in one side,' said Tab, hugging
him, 'and Sharon and The Engineer in the other.'

Used to Penscombe prodigality, where everyone received
presents from every dog, horse and human, and in anticipation of
a fat Christmas cheque from Rannaldini, Tab had rolled up with a
crate of champagne and a side of smoked salmon for the Lovells.
Her individual presents were less successful and all wrongly
labelled. Tory opened a red fishnet stocking of dog treats, destined
for Sharon, then some boxer shorts.

'Sorry, they're meant for Isa, although I suppose Sharon could
wear them if she was a boxer not a Labrador.'

Isa, thinking of their bank account, grew increasingly tightlipped
as he opened a silver-topped whip, two beautiful dark blue
cashmere jerseys, because I m always mckingyours, and a camera,
when he'd already got four.

Tab herself was desperately disappointed to have nothing from
Rupert and, even more worryingly, no fat cheque from Rannaldini.
Instead, he and Helen had given her a royal blue vase edged with

gold and decorated with a pastoral scene.

'Very pretty,' said Tory.

'Except Bussage picked it up at a car old-boot sale,' said Tab furiously.

She was most excited about the present she'd got forJake and
Tory. She had taken a photograph of their ancient lurcher, Beetle,
from Isa's photograph album, and commissioned Daisy France

	a friend of Rupert's, to paint from it an exquisite miniature.

	her horror, Jake merely grunted and put it face down on the

	'mble.

	i. 'Why are your parents so ungrateful?' sobbed Tab as she watched

	changing for dinner, thinking how ravishingly a dark suit

	became his wild black hair and pale gypsy face.

	'Why d'you do things without asking me?' hissed Isa. 'Beetle was

	the puppy my father bought for my mother, as a peace-offering

	because he loathed living with your mother, and he wanted to

	come back to Mum and he'd heard her dog had been run over. He

	found Mum in hospital, dying of a massive overdose because she

: 	couldn't live without him either. They believe Beetle was the

	talisman that saved Mum and their marriage, and you have to go

	and give them a flaming painting of her.'

. 'I didn't know, I never thought,' sobbed Tab.

You never do,' snarled Isa, reaching for his aftershave.

She must have been drinking to have wrongly wrapped up all

those presents. Then he twigged, as he realized he was slapping not

CK One on his face but neat vodka.

ner was bearable because there was plenty of wine, Tory had
cooked a delicious turkey, and as Isa and Tab were sitting at

opposite ends of the table divided by the grooms no-one realized
they were not speaking to one another.

The telephone had rung constantly: owners, jockeys, friends, Tory's sister Fenella from America, Darklis from South Africa, all
ed to wish the Lovells happy Christmas. No-one rang Tab.

: Tory found the silver bachelor's button in her Christmas
pudding, which caused lots of laughter. From silver charms in puddings,
the conversation moved on to superstitions.

'One mustn't get married after sunset,' said a pretty redhead,
making eyes at Isa.

'And never eat your own wedding cake,' said her plump friend.
'Why not?' asked Tab quickly.

'Anyone want any more Christmas pudding?' cried Tory desperately.
'Jake, do shove round the white.'

'Why not?' insisted Tab.

Even more of a chill than there was already fell over the room.
'A marriage is supposed to be doomed if you marry after sunset,'
said the pretty redhead with a shrug, 'and the gypsies say if you taste
your own wedding cake your child will die.'

'But I did both those things,' Tab clutched her tummy in horror.

'It's only a silly old gypsy's tale,' said Tory, in distress. 'Think of
the times you see a single magpie and nothing awful happens.'




1
10
	111


A ringing telephone made everyone jump.

'It's your father, Tabitha,' said the head lad.

Tab streaked out of the room. 'Daddy, oh, Daddy!'

'My darling leetle girl,' said Rannaldini, 'your mother sends love.
I just wanted to know how you are getting on.'

As Tab returned to the dining room, hollowwith desolation,Jake
was making some dismissive crack about Penscombe Pride not
winning the George VI tomorrow.

'My father's a far better horseman than either you or Isa ever
were,' screamed Tab, and fled upstairs where, mistakingJake and
Tory's room for the 1oo, she regurgitated turkey and vodka all over
their bed and passed out.


The next day, Isa andJake went off to Kempton, and Tab, who had
no intention of getting to know her mother-in-law better, made the
excuse that she couldn't leave The Engineer any longer and drove
back to Paradise.

It was lovely to come home to such a pretty place. Magpie
Cottage, which was faded russet, rather than black and white, lay
just across the valley from Rannaldini's watch-tower, with a beech
copse behind and a stream running down one side. On the lawns,
back and front, it was hard to tell where snow ended and snowdrops
began.

Tab loved Magpie Cottage but she grew nervous on her own;
Sharon picked up the vibes and kept barking at the wind or
imagined bangs, which made Tab more scared than ever. Taking
a slug from the bottle of vodka she'd bought in a pub on the way
home she started brooding on the superstitions they'd discussed
last night and then about one magpie for sorrow.

Finding a paintbrush and some black paint in a kitchen
cupboard, she went out into the fading afternoon. The sky was a
pale, silvery grey, dotted with darker grey clouds and patches of
gold on the horizon. The snow was too powdery to make snowballs,
but had drifted beautifully, sharp as a shark's fin against the garden
wall. Sharon charged round the lawn raising spray like a skier, as
Tab added an S to the board outside. Now it was Magpies Cottage
- two for joy.

'I'm going to make my marriage work,' she told Sharon, 'and you
can show everyone how good Labradors are with babies.'

The cold spell continued. There was no racing, which made Isa

.
	very twitchy and cross because neither he nor Jake were making
any money. The horses grew bored and restless. Pipes froze, so

Tab, who'd forgotten to stop the milk, bathed in it instead.

i Rupert beat the chill factor by taking Taggie, Xav and

skiing. Tab ground her teeth over their photographs in
paper.

Fighting hangovers, and sickness, she still staggered up to do

every morning because she couldn't bear him to get
to one of Rannaldini's grooms than herself. Then she

to the vodka, which she found increasingly difficult to
because she had no money. Several of her Christmas cheques

before she discovered Rannaldini had stopped her


isa doled her out pocket money for housekeeping, but grndgbe
much more sensible, he said, for her to wheedle
serious dosh out of Rannaldini, which was why she had
the invitation to Riverdance on Isa's birthday in January.
At the last moment, Isa had cried off in a rage. Tab had a
habit of always borrowing his jackets. Grabbing his
the back of the bedroom door, he had found all the
cards to his owners unstamped and unposted in the


was why Tab had a lone evening with an amused but

Rannaldini.

is a successful jockey. You have a charming, free cottage, and
bothered to check, you ungrateful child, you'd discover the

vase I gave you for Christmas was worth a few bob. Young

should make their own way.'



112
	113



He wouldn't even lend her a grand or two to appease Isa and the
bank manager.

The coupling of an alcoholic and a workaholic is not a happy
one. As Isa worked endlessly to keep the show on the road and
compensate for lack of support from Tab, he had less and less dme
to spend with her, which lowered her confidence and made her
drink more out of loneliness.

Isa was so cool he fell asleep in the middle of a row, and she could
never tell, behind that expressionless face, what he was thinking.
In fact, throughout that long, hard, cruel winter, Peppy Koala, the
chestnut colt, so charming, so idle, so uncompetitive, had never
been far from his thoughts.

He was just making plans in late February to fly out to Australia
when Mr Brown, Peppy Koala's owner, suddenly called him. He
was in England, taking over some Bristol electronics firm. Was Isa
free tomorrow evening?

Mr Brown also wanted to seeJake's yard, and having read about
Isa's wedding in Hello.t, said he'd sure like to shake hands with the
new Mrs Lovell, who looked a beaut, so perhaps they could have
dinner at Isa's place.

Switching off his mobile, Isa looked round at Magpie Cottage.
God, it was a dp! The ravishing little chest of drawers Taggie had
given them for a wedding present was already covered in drink
rings, like a pond in a rainstorm.

Knowing there was no way he could bring Mr Brown back here
in its present state, Isa swallowed his pride and a large whisky and
rang Helen. Could he borrow Mrs Brimscombe, Betty and Sally
tomorrow morning to blitz the place? Then all Tab had to do was
collect some precooked food from Waitrose and make herself
look beautiful.

As luck would have it, in lieu of payment, one of Isa's owners had
given him a brand-new Jaguar XK8, which was being delivered to
the cottage that afternoon. If money ran out he could flog it.
For the meantime it would impress Mr Brown.

The three-month ban on sex was now up, but the cold war
seemed to have set in too hard for Isa to placate Tab by making a
move on her that night. Tab had stopped being sick, but instead
when she opened her mouth a stream of resentment came out.

On the morning of Mr Brown's visit, however, she was full of
good intentions: no booze, and wifely behaviour. By midday a tightlipped
Mrs Brimscombe and a giggling Betty and Sally had made
the cottage look wonderful and set the table.

'Why don't you buy some daffies for that lovely blue vase?'
suggested Betty.

Tab had been just off to Waitrose when she went to Isa's chest of
drawers to borrow a pair of socks. Rooting round under the lining
paper she found a lovely laughing picture of Martie, his Australian
girlfriend. He's still in love with her, she thought in terror, he's
going to leave me.


When the telephone woke her, it was dark. Isa wanted to know if
everything was on course. Mr Brown had been impressed with

Jake's yard. They'd be back around six thirty.
'What have you bought for supper?'
'It's a surprise,' bleated Tab.
'Shall I get red or white?'

'Both, I should think. See you later.'

., Whimpering with panic, Tab looked around her. How could she
have made such a mess? An empty vodka bottle and fragments of the royal blue and gold vase Rannaldini had given her for
Christmas littered the floor. She'd better go and buy the food
for dinner; then she could tidy the place and herself while it was
heating up.

Her car was out of petrol, so she borrowed Isa's new Jaguar. God,
itwas bliss to drive. In no time she had reached Waitrose, and
loaded up with a smoked-salmon mousse, three packets of
Coronation Chicken, new potatoes, ready-made dressing and a
pretty red and green bag of salad. Adding banana and yoghurt ice

a brown loaf and runny Brie, she was off to the checkout
:ounter, piling on Pedigree Chum and Whiskas on the way.
Catering was so easy if you knew how. She even ignored a great
glacier of vodka bottles. Hurrah for Tabitha the coper.
iHer undoing was a white tablecloth covered in glasses, and a

salesman with a special offer of Chilean Chardonnay.
'Might as well have a slurp,' muttered Tab, as her trolley
developed a mind of its own and veered boozewards.

in a flat cap and a green Husky had had the same idea,

soon swilling away, waggling his nose back and forth in the
like a windscreen wiper.

Remarkably good,' he said to Tab.

'It is,' she agreed, smiling back at the salesman, 'and a terrific

Could I have another glass just to make sure?'


a lovely little hidey-hole,' said Mr Brown, as Isa drew up

'Look at those primroses. I'm dying for a


thought was that his Jaguar had been stolen, the second




115

114



that his mobile was ringing. Ignoring it, he ran into the house.
Chaos met his eyes. Charging into the downstairs 1oo, he found no
bog paper and no towel Fuck Tab!

The best he could do was a box of tissues from the kitchen, which
was also a tip, with no sign of dinner and no flowers. A fire was laid
in the grate but unlit. Littering the floor were fragments of the
Svres vase and Martie's torn-up photograph. He had better
answer his mobile.

'Are you the owner of car P704 HHA?'
Isa had to think twice.
'Yes. It's been stolen?'

'We're not sure, sir. It's been abandoned across the gangway in
Waitrose's car park, obstructing the flow of traffic, and the alarm
is causing a disturbance. No-one can get inside the vehicle.'

Coming out of the lavatory, flapping his hands, Mr Brown was
rather amused by the news.

'My spouse is always locking herself out of her car, and my
teenage daughters never lift a finger in the house.'

He was very happy to give Isa a lift to Waitrose. He'd seen
photographs of Tab in OK magazine on the flight over and was
looking forward to meeting her even more.

They found Tab and the man in the flat cap sitdng in a little cafe
half-way down a second bottle of Chilean Chardonnay. Not having
driven Isa's car before, she had no idea that it was his number being paged with increasing urgency.

'This is Hugh Murray-Scott,' she announced happily. 'He's a
friend of Daddy's.'

'Where are my car keys?' snarled Isa.

'Car keys?' As Tab rooded through the pockets of her jeans, Mr
Brown and Mr Murray-Scott admired her slender hips. 'Here they
are. Now, where did I put my trolley?'

The final straw was when Isa found his lovely new Jaguar had
been rammed by another car with a furious owner.

'It's only metal,' said Mr Brown soothingly. 'Don't blame the little lady.'

He thought Tabitha was wildly exciting.

'I'm sorry you won't be able to enjoy any home cooking,'
mumbled Tab. 'I'm not only offmy trolley, I seem to have lost it as
well.'

She ended up trying to write a cheque for the Chardonnay with
her toothbrush, and Mr Brown swept them all off to the Old Bell
for dinner. Despite Isa hissing at Tab to keep her fucking trap shut,
she and Mr Brown got on famously. She was soon telling him about
her Olympic hopes for The Engineer, and he was telling her all

, Koala. 'Prettiest Itttle norse you evt:r tw

Paradise, he and The Engineer could
' said Tab, whose eyes were sparkling at the sight of the bottle
'Mot arriving in an ice bucket.

'Aren't you rather isolated in that little cottage?' asked Mr Brown.

'I'm Isa-lated,' giggled Tab, 'because my husband is always late


Mr Brown thought it a very funny joke.

Isa wanted to throtde his wife, but if he could stop her doing
anything frightful, Mr Brown's obvious infatuation might just work to his advantage. By the time they had all ordered lobster with
mottles marini6re to start with, Mr Brown was talking about when
la broughtPeppy Koala to England rather than if

'//you run him in the Derby this year,' Isa was saying, 'he'll get a ven-pound allowance because, as a southern hemisphere
horse, he'll be so much younger than the others.'

' Tab sloped off to the ladies. On the way, wondering whether to

in a quick vodka at the bar, she caught sight of a tank of

She hadn't realized they weren't born red. Black, already
mourning, they waited helplessly, their claws ded together with
tic bands to stop them killing each other so that they could be
ed alive and intact.

distraught, she up-ended a nearby ice bucket on the

scooped up as many lobsters as it would hold and fled into
the street. Outside, in her thin jersey and jeans, the cold hit her

left hook. If she could reach the sea she could set them free.
Isa and Mr Brown caught up with her on Rutminster bridge
g hysterically, trying to hitch a lift. When Isa tried to snatch
lmck the bucket, she emptied the lobsters into the river.

Although the young lady was a handful, Mr Brown admired her
spirit and was horrified by the way Isa tore into her.

'Don't you understand, you stupid bitch? They can't survive in
fresh water.'

'Like me,' sobbed Tab. 'I can't survive in the wrong marriage any more.'


After a week of cold war, Isa flew to Australia on the pretext of
wi.n. di.ng up the yard he had started with Martie. As March came in,
days of torrential rain and flooding, Tab died of every
of jealousy. Looking out lisdessly one morning she noticed
the sun had broken through. The stream that flowed past the
cottage had also broken away from its course into lots of smaller
treams, glittering like a crystal lustre as they danced down the




116
	117


valley to join the river Fleet. We're free to make our own way in the
sunshine, they seemed to sing to Tab.

'Your future godmother, Lucy, won't like it, Little Rupert,' Tab
told the baby inside her, 'but you and I are going hunting.'

Tab had always hunted, until Lucy had persuaded her it was
cruel. But so many foxes escaped, and a ropy old pack like the
Rutminster Ramblers never caught anything anyway, and the poor
Engineer was so bored of dressage it would pep him up to have a
day out.


Gold catkins lit up the valley like Tiffany lamps. As The Engineer
floated over the fences, Tab had never been more conscious of
owning an Olympic horse. She was so enjoying herself she didn't
notice a strand of wire. Next moment The Engineer turned over
on top of her.

It didn't hurt at first. She was conscious only of her white
breeches turning red with blood, and screaming, 'The baby! Please
save the baby!' before she passed out.

By the time Isa had flown home at vast expense, mother and
horse were doing well, but little Rupert had died.

Tab was utterly devastated, sobbing and sinking into despair. Isa,
who loved children, was determined not to show he was equally
devastated. He never reproached Tab, because he knew in his
heart that it had been his fault. He had longed to take her in his
arms, but such was his loathing of the Campbell-Blacks, he
couldn't convince himself he hadn't unleashed some gypsy curse.
Instead he had gone to Cheltenham, won a big race on a horse of
Baby's and not come home that night.

Rannaldini, delighted at the turn of events, had been playing
Iago. Clive, who had let himself into Magpie Cottage with
Rannaldini's master key, had been responsible for putting Martie's
photo in Isa's sock drawer. He also tipped offRannaldini when Isa
was away, enabling him to ring Tab and drip poison into her ear.

'Isa is finding it so difficult to break with Martie. She was so
capable, and they were together seven years and he is seven years
older than you.' Which was vilely hypocritical of Rannaldini, who
was intending to move in, despite being nearly thirty years older
than Tab himself.

He would play the same game with Isa, telling him how wild Tab
was, how young and unstable, how late coming home, how not
always alone, how fond of the bottle. Subtly, slowly, treacherously,
the same shoulder Rannaldini was providing for them both to cry
on was the wedge he was driving between them. He encouraged
Tab to use his indoor school and have a cross-country course built

the estate. Her suspension would be up in August in time for

But he still hadn't given her any allowance. Let her beg

it.

The National Hunt season was nearly over. Isa's winnings were
horing upJake's yard so money would grow even tighter. Playing
his usual cool waiting game, Isa had not pestered Mr Brown about
Peppy Koala.

Finally, Mr Brown rang him. 'I'm dead choked your little Tabitha

lost the baby. How is she?'

'Pretty depressed.'

'Not surprising, the way you treat her. If you can't be nice to a
pretty lady like that, how can I trust you with my little horsy?'

'That'scrazy,' said Isa sharply. 'No-one fusses over horses like my
father. Where were you thinking of sending him?'

'Well, Sir Roberto Rannaldini's offered me so much dosh I
nearly sold to him, but in case Peppy's that good I'm giving him to
your other father-in-law, Rupert Campbell-Black.'

If Isa couldn't blame Tab for losing the baby, he could, and
certainly did, for the loss of Peppy Koala.


The following day Rannaldini and a suicidal Tab rode round
Paradise. A big red sun was disappearing into the mist like the
brake light of Apollo's chariot, putting a pink rinse on the bare
trees and a rose flush along the horizon. Conscious that they were
about to be invaded by far more famous singers, robins and blackbirds
were carolling their heads off.

'I've had some lovely letters about the baby,' muttered Tab,
'from Lucy in Belgium, Meredith, Mr Brown, and even from that
glamorous French director you invited to our wedding. He sent me
a lovely poem about Little Rupert really existing and being a plant
of light.' For a second, her stony little face softened.

That one would have to be knocked on the head very quickly,
thought Rannaldini.

'Mrs Brimscombe told Isa how sorry she was about the baby,' he
said idly. 'Isa said, "At least it's given Tab something new to
grumble about."'

'The bastard,' gasped Tab.

'I suggested you get a part-time job.'

'And what did Isa say?'

As the sun sank, all the birds that had been singing so madly
went silent. As the glow in the west became an orange fire,
Rannaldini noticed a little adolescent moon turning her slim back
on such ostentation. She reminded him of Tabitha.

'He said you were unemployable.'



118
	119



'God, he's a shit. You wait till the bloody ban's lifted -we'll show
him.'

'That's how I wanted you to react,' said Rannaldini silkily.

As he moved his horse close to The Engineer, his hypnotic black
eyes were level with Tab's. Perhaps he had such an impact on
women, she thought, because he was small enough to dazzle them,
like a low-angled winter, sun.

'Filming starts the week after next,' he announced. 'I'd like to
offer you a job on Don Carlos. As mistress of the horse,' he added
sententiously.

'Sounds perverse?'

'As well as hunting, war scenes and polo during the overture,
horses will be needed for Philip's coronation, and Tristan might
want to film Carlos and Posa galloping across country. We need
someone to organize it. We'll pay you a very good fee.'

'Won't people think it a bit odd you hiring a totally inexperienced
member of your wife's family?'

'Not in the least. Tristan has already signed up his delectable

niece, Simone, to handle continuity.'
'Can The Engineer have a part?'
'A starring role.'
'Then I'll do it.'

She was flaming well going to show Isa and Rupert that she could
do her bit for the marriage.

What Rannaldini did not tell Tab was that also joining the crew, as
second assistant director, and as hellbent on proving himself,
was his eldest son, Wolfgang. This had come about because
Rannaldini, wildly jealous of Rupert's rapprochement with Marcus
and closeness to Xavier, wanted his son back, and had ordered
Sexton to employ him.

The twenty-four-year-old Wolfgang, who had just gained an
excellent law degree in Germany, had agreed to work on Don Carlos as a filler before taking up a plum job in Berlin. He had not been
back to Valhalla for six years, ever since Rannaldini had pinched
from him his beloved Flora Seymour, who was then a sixteen-year
old schoolgirl.

Highly, if somewhat rigidly, intelligent, Wolfgang had read

in the original, and parallels between the cold, tyrannical
Philip stealing Elisabetta from his son Carlos were not lost on him.
::. Now a jackbooting Eurocrat with a slimline briefcase and
laarrowed eyes, Wolfgang was determined not to let Rannaldini
bally him. His job would be to run errands, keep the chorus in
order and yank singers out of their dressing rooms, which in turn
would give plenty of opportunity for bullying.

I am completely over Flora, Woffgang told himself firmly and
repeatedly, as he hurtled down the M4.

only car that overtook him was a red Ferrari. Glancing right
shot past, Wolfie nearly rammed the car in front, for in the

seat, yacking her head off to a beautiful boy instantly

as the tenor playing Carlos, was Flora in person.

had to pull into service station to recover.
not her he told




120
	121



Unaware of the havoc she had just caused, Flora was much too busy
worrying about tomorrow's filming.

'You just have to hit the mark and mime to your own voice,' said
Baby soothingly. 'It'll be a doddle, I promise you.'

'Hey doddle doddle, I'm sure it's going to be more difficult than
any of us think.'

'There's bound to be a voice coach around to bring us in. God,

I could murder a burger. Let's stop at that Little Chef.'

'You mustn't. You look fantastic. Adonis Carlos.'

After a week at Champney's, Baby had lost his double chin and
his gut.

'I can wear all my jackets as wraparounds like the Queen
Mother,' he crowed. 'And I adored being whipped by all that
seaweed.'

Flora gazed gloomily at the yellowing verges. It hadn't rained for
weeks. The motorway was littered with furry corpses desperate to
reach the river. Crows hung overhead like vultures.

'George and I were so miserable at the prospect of being separated.'
She sighed. 'We had a stupid row last night and slept back
to back loathing each other. We were just making up when Trevor
barked hysterically at some non-existent burglar. By the time I'd
defied George and let Trey out and in, the mood was broken. And
Trey doesn't give a stuff,' she added, as the little dog raced back
and forth along the top of the back seat, yapping furiously at dogs
in other cars.

'And that's the precious life blood of a master spirit you've just
devoured,' she said reproachfully, as she retrieved a chewed-up
copy of Captain Corelli's Mandolin from the back seat.

'That's a nice ring,' said Baby, admiring the row of coloured
stones on her left hand.

'It's called a regard ring. Victorian men gave it to their sweethearts
if they were separated as a token of their regard. George
gave it to me before we started rowing last night,' she added dolefully.



'You are entering the misnamed Valley of Paradise,' she intoned
half an hour later.

From the south side, they realized the immensity of the operation.
Opposite lay the great abbey of Valhalla, as grey and brooding
as the clouds hanging over it. Around it, all over Rannaldini's parkland,
like a huge circus, sprawled lorries, caravans, tents, a mobile
canteen, Portaloos and vast generators.

'God, it's a creepy place.' Flora shivered. 'Rannaldini is
rumoured to have a torture chamber under the house. It's safer to

: round Brixton after dark. My parents live there,' she pointed

a large Georgian house on the right of Valhalla, 'and that's
!Dame Hermione's shack further down the valley. Golly, the river's

that little lane to the left is Magpie Cottage, where Isa
and Tab clearly aren't going to fifteen rounds.'

Spotlt brat, said Baby dismissively.

	,Takes one to know one,' chided Flora. 'D'you fancy Tristan?'
'I certainly do. Don't you?'

'One can't not. He's so Holy Grailish, and separate. And so sad
behind all that charm. D'you think he's gay?'

.: 'Hope so, but at least we've got three months to find out. Shall
:,e have a quickie in the Pearly Gates?'

'No,' said Flora firmly. 'We've got to behave.'


.¢¥alhalla swarmed with technicians, everyone obsessed with his own
agenda. Meredith, determined to produce the most memorable

whisked about trailing comely chippies, who could transform
a dog kennel into Aladdin's cave in twenty-four hours. Not only
::trad they ripped apart the Great Hall and the two drawing rooms,

:also the dining room, the entrance hall and Rannaldini's study
and bedroom too.

!.!ii,,Tristan was outraged, and having a shouting match with

as Baby and Flora arrived.
other rooms were not on the budget!'
might just get into shot,' said Meredith blithely.

want to risk it. I love it when you act masterful.'
!:!Tristan stormed off, as Meredith turned to Baby and Flora.

i. 'My dears, it's all too exciting, and wait till you see Tristan's boys.

so glamorous, he must be gay.'

: Ttastan s boys - the crew, mostly French - were, indeed, a

bunch. They all seemed to have skiing tans and lean
: ,:rapidly being hidden by beard so they wouldn't have to shave
, i when they dragged themselves out of bed at the crack of dawn.

professional, they had already checked and tested their
equipment for the first shoot day, making sure that lights and
d gear were in working order and camera and lenses properly


to grumble at everything anglais and to blow Gauloise
in the face of any singer who played up, they were also
bolshie because most of them hadn't been invited to
s smart dinner party that evening.

who had included the wonderfully languid director of
known as Oscar because he'd won so many Oscars
with his floating scarves, dark hair flopping from a





middle parting, and endlessly assessing heavy-lidded eyes, he was
a dead ringer for Oscar Wilde. Oscar seldom went near a camera.
He appeared to sleep most of the day, but was paid five thousand
pounds a week to make sure that the sets and the singers were
beautifully lit. Despite his effete appearance, he was a doting family
man, who spent his time on location - when he wasn't asleep talking
to Valentin, his handsome son-in-law, the camera operator,
who earned two thousand a week. They had arrived with several
crates of claret, and intended to escape home to Paris on every
possible occasion.

Sylvestre, Tristan's sound recordist, who'd already sampled the Don Carlos wares during the recording, said little because he was
always so busy listening. Sylvestre's aim on location was to pull the
delectable Simone de Mondgny, who was in charge of continuity.
Much of Simone's energy would go into proving she had not been
booked to work on Don Carlos because she was Tristan's niece. The
daughter of Tristan's eldest brother, Alexandre the judge, she was
in fact just two years younger than Tristan. Having caught a
glimpse of Wolfgang Rannaldini she knew exactly who she wanted
to pull on location.

And then there was Lucy Latimer, who'd been working in
Brussels on Villette, which had overrun by several days so she had
had a mad scramble to get to Valhalla on time. She was cheered
that Sexton had provided her with a beautiful caravan in which to
work. She had already unpacked her make-up brushes and
sponges for the first day's filming. Her main problem would be in
persuading the cast that the camera, four feet away, saw different
things from an audience up in the gods.

In the fridge were three bottles of white, plenty ofveggie snacks,
and a garlic-flavoured cooked chicken, for her russet shaggy
coated lurcher, James, who ate much more expensively than she
did and now, in a smart new green leather collar, lay replete and
snoring on one of the bench seats. Above him in the window, Lucy
had already put stickers saying: 'Lurchers Do it Languidly', 'A Dog
is for Life not just for Christmas', and 'Passports for Pets'.

Round the big mirror, semi-circled with lightbulbs, beside snapshots
of her little nieces, Lucy had stuck photographs of the cast
and the members of the Royal Family, or Gordon Dillon, the editor
of the Scorpion, they were supposed to represent.

Over the door was pinned her prize possession, nicked from the
BBC, which said: 'Please ensure that all spirits are returned to the
spirit tank in this room.'

It was creepily appropriate in Valhalla, where every shadow
appeared inhabited, and the dark cliff of wood behind the row of
known rather grandiosely as 'the facilities unit',
determined to obscure the stars. Who knew what ghosts
out of the cloisters or, on this bitterly cold night, the
identifies of the mufflered and overcoated figures scuttling by.

Also on Lucy's walls were thank-you cards from the cast she'd just
looking after. As usual there had been tears and promises to
in touch. But for once she wasn't mourning the end of yet
another location affaire. Her thoughts had been too full of Tristan.
: She had been overjoyed to find a big bunch of bluebells in her
caravan, but slightly deflated that every woman in the cast and crew
had also received flowers. But at least he'd remembered she liked
bluebells, and she kept his good-luck card, which she would
certainly need. Tomorrow she had to make up Baby and Flora, who
would each require at least an hour and a half, and if things moved
swiftly, she might even have to do the ancient tenor playing the
Spanish ambassador. Thank God Dame Hermione had insisted on
her own make-up artist at vast extra expense.


Fifty yards from Make Up, Hermione's squawks could be heard
issuing from the dairy, which had been turned over to Wardrobe.
Lady Griselda, the wardrobe mistress, big, deep-voiced, kind,
vulnerable and a bit dippy, looked like Julius Caesar in drag, and
i. .had a small mouth like the slit in the charity tins she so often
gled on street corners.

As a deb Griselda had played the double bass in a pop group
called the Alice Band, and had briefly been in waiting to a lesser
member of the Royal Family. She now lived with a lot of cats in a
thatched cottage in North Dorset, where she knew 'absolutely
everybody'. The cottage was called Wobbly Bottom. Griselda
tended to send herself up, before anyone else could, by dressing
outlandishly. Today she was wearing a floor-length red
embroidered tunic and a purple turban.

She was also having a nervous breakdown, because Rannaldini
(who'd employed her because he felt she'd know how the upper
dasses dressed) was being absolutely beastly.

Riding coats and breeches littered a large sea-blue damask sofa,
which had recently and peremptorily been ejected from Helen's
Blue Living Room, as Flora, Baby and Hermione tried on their
clothes for tomorrow's shoot.

Tristan was pacing about. There were a million technical
demands on him, a potentially disruptive crew, production
pressures, worry that the cast would gel even less in a strange
environment.

Rannaldini's beautifully manicured fingers were drumming on




124
	125


the table. Sexton was massaging his big face with his hand, always
a sign that all was not well.

Hermione, in white breeches, black boots and a waisted red coat
with black velvet facings, cut long to hide her large bottom, was
preening in the mirror.

'You look lovely, Hermsie,' boomed Griselda, whose social and
sartorial instincts were rapidly being sabotaged by her thumping
great crush on Hermione.

'Women don't hunt in red coats in England,' snapped Tristan.
'It looks vulgar. Please try the dark blue one again, Hermione.'

'The dark blue won't show up against the trees,' argued
Rannaldini.

'I want to add a cheery note to the winter gloom,' pouted
Hermione.

Baby, who was supposed to have hurtled across country to join
the hunt incognito, was wearing a brown herringbone tweed jacket
and, having lost so much weight at Champney's, was marvelling at
himself in buff stretch breeches. As Elisabetta's bodyguard, Flora
was wearing a less fitted brown riding coat to accommodate the
bulge of her gun.

'All of them are same colour as countryside.' Rannaldini's voice
was rising. 'They'll get lost.'

Meredith, oblivious of the storm breaking over his airborne
curls, was trying on the diamond tiara Hermione was supposed to
wear for Philip II's coronation.

'Put on your hats for the total look,' urged Griselda.

The row escalated because neither Hermione nor Baby was
prepared to wear hard hats with black chin straps to resemble
Camilla Parker Bowles and Prince Charles.

'How could anyone fall in love wit6 anyone at first sight wearing
that?' protested Baby. 'D'you want Hermione to smoke a fag as
well?'

'Those hats are authentic,' protested Griselda, getting up with a
rattle of Valium to tap Hermione's brim further down over her

eyes. 'We must set a good example to the Pony Club.'

'Fuck the Pony Club,' snapped Baby.

'Rannaldini would quite like to,' murmured Meredith.

'You can take offyour hats the moment you dismount,' pleaded
Griselda. 'And Hermione's blonde wig will then tumble beautifully
down her back.'

'My hair won't tumble anywhere,' snarled Baby. He loathed his
Prince Charles wig, complete with incipient bald patch, even more
than his hat.

Meredith, who was now trying on a flower-trimmed straw bonnet,

that Baby's and Hermione's hard hats might look better
. were dressed up with long earrings.

r if I can wear my scarlet coat,' said Hermione mulishly.

women don't wear--' began Tristan.

.'But I'm not English,' said Hermione, with a peal of merry
as though she'd made a frightfully good joke. 'I'm South

' ifricalL '

'Reimpose sanctions,' muttered Baby.


like many ancient ecclesiastical buildings, was H-shaped
with the north and south wings forming the verticals of the H.
Rannaldini and his family lived in the south wing overlooking the

Meanwhile, in the north wing, other members of the cast and
the upper echelons of the crew were bagging their bedrooms,
,tlaich in contrast to the lavishness of the south wing, consisted
rather creepily of ex-monks' cells reached by badly lit uncarpeted
:staircases and long, narrow corridors.

'Bit scary,' quavered Lucy, pushing a reluctant James into a
: :darkly panelled rabbit warren, almost entirely occupied by a big
.mahogany double bed.

'I don't mind sharing,' said Ogborne, Tristan's cocky and
Cockney chief grip, who had a shaved head, an earring, and looked
a self-confident pig. Employed to hump equipment around
shove heavy cameras along tracks, Ogborne had had no diffiin
carrying all of Lucy's cases upstairs.

'Plenty of room for you, me and Fido in here,' he said, patting
:.the bed.

'I talk dreadfully in my sleep, and James snores,' said Lucy
:hastily.


Down the corridor, Alpheus Shaw, psyching himself into the part
of Philip II, was getting more regal by the second, referring to
himself as 'one', and striding around with his hands behind his
back. He had also demanded the biggest bedroom, which had the
biggest four-poster and small leaded windows looking north into
the woods and east up the valley.

However, he was deeply displeased that, unlike Tristan, he had
not been put in the lush south wing, which he had admired loudly
on a previous visit.

• Only half the principals were in situ: neither Mikhail, Granny, his
wayward boyfriend Giuseppe, Alpheus nor Chloe would be needed

. for a couple of weeks. Alpheus had come down ostensibly to show
solidarity and to inspire the cast. After all, he was the principal

:



126
	127


male singer now Fat Franco had been fired. In reality he wanted
to screw Chloe without having to fork out for a hotel - particularly
as his wife Cheryl always went through the cheque stubs.

Looking down, he could see Tristan and Rannaldini walking
towards the house, their arms waving as they yelled at one another,
their shadows long and black behind them.

Inside the dairy, Meredith, like a small child comforting his

mother, was patting the vast shoulders of a sobbing Lady Griselda.
'It's just first-night nerves, don't take it personally.'
Griselda gave a sniff.

'Try not to get lippy on that hunting tie, Hermsie,' she called
out, 'and I'd be grateful if you'd all put your clothes back on the
hangers.'

'What time's dinner?' asked Baby.

'Seven thirty for eight,' said Flora, as she wriggled back into her
old grey jersey and scruffy black jeans. 'I can't be bothered to go
home and tart up.'

	128


Dinner began scratchily. Helen, a lousy hostess at the best of times

	because she never refilled glasses or introduced anyone, was

	.clearly livid at being invaded by so much mess and so many

	strangers. As a final insult, drinks were being served in the old red

	morning room, which she had spent two years of her excruciat

	unhappy marriage transforming into an exquisite symphony

	of faded blues and rests. Almost overnight, it had been reduced to

	riot of cherry-red walls, gilded ceilings, floor-length

	: ors framed with gold leaf, and two crimson thrones initialled

	E: and PII at the end of the room. Worst of all, three huge

	chandeliers, hovering overhead like Spielberg space

	.fliips, highlighted every bag and wrinkle - an unkind contrast to

	ludicrously flattering painting of herself over the fireplace in

	she was portrayed as Athene, goddess of wisdom, with an

	owl perched on her head.

	Having flown in from a wildly successful Mahler's Resurrection in

	Berlin, to ensure Valhalla's cuisine exceeded anything French,

	Rannaldini had unearthed the Krug and was welcoming guests, and

	accepting compliments on the room. 'It ees, of course, based on

	Throne Room at Buckingham Palace,' he told anyone who would

	listen.

	As the crew gathered in one corner puffing Gauloise smoke, and

	the cast retreated to another trying not to breathe it in, gossip

	whizzed back and forth in all languages. Everyone was also assessing

	talent.

	'How can I tell Tristan's boys apart when they've all got beards?'

	said Baby fretfully.

	'Jesus m,ust have had the same trouble with his disciples,' said

	Meredith, except this lot have got gorgeous names like best-boy



129




because she wanted him to light her beautifully, and because she liked the piratical good looks of his son-in-law. 'ltienne de
Montigny was always begging me to sit for him.'

Tristan had had enough and belted off to the more reassuring
comfort of Lucy, who had been deserted by Tabitha in need of
more vodka, and who went scarlet when Tristan kissed her on both
her already flushed cheeks. Oh, why had she worn a red wool
twinset to stand by a blazing fire?

'Thank you ever so much for the bluebells,' she stammered.

'I know you love them, and I remember very good poem about
Lucy.


'A violet by a mossy stone,

Half hidden from the eye.

Fair as a star, when only one,

'Is shining in the s.'


Tristan reeled off the verse in triumph.

But no-one looks at her when all the other stars come out,

thought Lucy. She'd never found the poem very flattering.
There was a pause.

'And this must be James.' Tristan put out a hand to stroke Lucy's
lurcher, who was now curled up on the crimson throne initialled E
for Excellent.

'You remembered,' said Lucy rapturously.
'Of course. He is beautiful. How old is he?'
'About twelve, the vet says.'
'Where did you get him?'

'I was on a shoot in the East End. He was running round the
streets, terrified, with his lead flapping, so I coaxed him into my
caravan with a bit of quiche. He was starving.'

The words were tumbling out of Lucy's big, trembling mouth.
'Then he leapt on to a chair, as if he wanted me to make him up,
so I took off his lead to make him feel at home and put it on the
table. Would you believe it? The next moment, he'd leapt down,
snatched back his lead, put it on his chair, jumped back and sat on
it.' As Lucy caressedJames's brown velvet ears, her voice broke. 'He
was desperate not to lose the only possession he had in the world.
I had to keep him after that. I'm sorry,' Lucy wiped her eyes,
smearing her mascara, 'I'm boring you.'

'I would run around East End with lead trailing,' said Tristan
gently, 'if it found me an owner like you.'

Squawking, like a pheasant disturbed in a wood, was coming from
the other end of the room. Oscar, not recognizing Hermione, had

132


girl who was going to play Eliaabetta, ano louoay ....

: would have no problem lighting her at all.

was hopping.

i Lucy's blushing cheek with one finger, Tristan shot off
. calm Hermione, which also gave him a chance to say hello to Tab.
]ut Tab had grabbed a bottle and, saying quite untruthfully that Lucy's glass was empty as an excuse to fill her own, shot past him

the other way.

's that man who looks as though a marmalade cat's died on
his head?' she hissed.

'That's Colin Milton,' grinned Lucy, lowering her voice. 'Poor old boy's been in the wilderness for years. Kept forgetting his lines
md then had a nervous breakdown. He's playing the Spanish
ambassador. He's really sweet.'

	Meanwhile, anxious to make Alpheus jealous, Chloe was chatting
Wolfgang and, to prove she was not just a pretty face, discussing


:. In the play,' she said, 'Philip offers his mistress, Eboli, in

to a disgusting old courtier.'

'He also offers Carlos up to the Inquisition,' said Wolfgang

'because both his mistress and his wife are in love with

Philip a marvellous excuse to murder a son

hated.'

thought Chloe, you're a chilly boy, ruthless as your dad.
The combination of blond, chiselled, Luftwaffe-pilot looks with
:Rannaldini's night-dark eyes was very disturbing.

gooded' Hermione clapped her hands. 'Here's Alpheus.'

who had deliberately arrived late to make an entrance,
splendid, deeply tanned, wearing a frilly cream shirt tucked

..t trousers to show offhis T-bone figure. Helen's
s widened with excitement as he kissed her hand.

. ,i 'Here comes the Lothario from Long Island,' said Baby sourly.

is handsome,' reproached Flora.

a lobster,' snapped Baby. 'Tasty body, but a head full of shit.'
'Dinner is sevced,' grumbled Mr Brimscombe, the gardener, who

violently opposed to Rannaldini's plan to obliterate his flower

a great Buckingham Palace sweep of lawn down to the lake,
and who had only agreed to butle because so much crumpet was on



133




As the Great Hall was being transformed by Meredith's myrmidons
into Philip II's bedroom, they dined in the old Prussian blue
dining room, which now had walls the tawny red of beef consommd,
and a gold ceiling to match all the gold plate and the frames of the
portraits on the walls. A brass trough filled with white daffodils
stretched down the middle of the table.

'"And then my 'eart with pleasure fills an' dances with the
daffodils,"' said Tristan, who had been summoned to sit on
Helen's right, but hoped Lucy and therefore Tab might come and
sit on his other side. But, tossing her ringlets, Pushy Galore nipped
in and stole the seat.

'How the hell did she get in here?' Chloe hissed to Flora.
'Sexton brought her. In that dress, she looks as though he
ordered her from the Past Times Christmas catalogue. The last shall
be first - she'll probably end up marrying Tristan.'

'Having cased the joint, she'll more likely become the next Lady
Rannaldini. As Helen clearly hasn't thought we were worth a
seating plan, shall we sit together?'

Flora nodded, clutching a furiously growling Trevor to stop him
attacking James. She was actually in a state of shock. She'd had no
idea her old flame Wolfie was working on the film or that he'd
grown so devastatingly attractive. If only she'd bothered to wash
her hair and change.


In honour of the stag hunt with which Don Carlos opens, they dined
on the darkest, meltingly tender venison steeped in a rich red wine
sauce.

'The secret of venison is that it should be well hung,' announced
Hermione of delicious celeriac
'Like blokes,' agreed Baby.

'Sublime, Rannaldini,' announced Alpheus, determined to raise
the tone. 'How d'you make it so goddam tender?'

'I eenjeck the marinade into the tissue with a hypodermic
syringe,' purred Rannaldini.

'How gross,' snapped Tabitha, and fed her venison to Sharon
under the table.

Colin Milton wasn't eating his venison either. '"Great Henry, the
glorious King of France,"' he muttered to himself, "rishes to
bestow the hand of his daughter..." Oh, hell, what came next?

His hand was shaking so dreadfully that when he tried to raise
his glass of Chtteau Mouton Rothschild 1949 to his lips, he spilt it.

'Don't waste that stuff, Colin,' shouted Rannaldini, down the
table. 'Eet cost a fortune.'

Bastard, thought Lucy, who was already embarrassed because
she had refused the venison.

Sitting beside her, Wolfie noticed her empty plate.

'I don't eat meat,' she stammered. 'I'll be fine with vegetables.'

Wolfie stood up. 'I'll have a word with . . .' he glanced up the
table at Helen '... er, Mrs Rannaldini.'

'Lady Rannaldini,' howled Rannaldini. 'Have you lost your
manners, Wolfgang?'

.... An ugly flush spread over Wolfie's face and his white-knuckled
hands clenched the table. Lucy felt terrible, particularly when Mrs
Brimscombe hobbled in, apologizing, with the most delectable
vegetable lasagne.

'I make it specially for you, Lucy,' called Rannaldini, determined
to ingratiate himself with Tabitha's friend.

You're still a bastard, thought Lucy, delighted that Wolfie was
now defiantly emptying tomato ketchup over his venison.

When everyone was eating the lightest primrose yellow syllabub
th bitter chocolate sauce, Tristan stood up. Having thanked
Rannaldini and Helen for allowing their house to be invaded, he
went on to talk about Don Carlos, repeating Verdi's description of:

'"A family drama in a princely house", which must have been very
like Valhalla. It is also a story about sexual jealousy and loneliness
.in high places.

'Both Schiller and Verdi were obsessed with oppression,' Tristan
continued, 'the tyranny of Philip II over his family and his subjects,

tyranny of the Church over everything. Today, the Church has

its stranglehold, instead we - and particularly the Royal

t and the government - are controlled by the media. That is
we have set our Don Carlos in modem dress, with a corrupt

the Grand



134
	135


As part of her job Lucy never stopped watching faces. Seeing the
rapt attention of Flora, Chloe, Pushy, Hermione, Helen and even
Tab, her heart sank. How stupid to think she had a hope against
such dazzling competition. Lost as a star, when all the rest are
shining in the sky, she thought sadly. As if to comfort her, James
laid his long nose on her knee. At least she hadn't had to go abroad
this time and leave him behind.

In the flickering candlelight, Tristan's face had lost its hollows
and yellow-greyish pallor. His eyes glowed with conviction.

'None of us is going to get him into bed,' murmured Meredith
to Baby. 'Like Spielberg, he only fucks the movie.'

'In real life Don Carlos was horrible person,' Tristan was now
telling his audience. 'He roast animals alive, he gallop his horse to
death, he assault and flog palace maids, he even bit the head off a
pet lizard and ate it.'

'Ooh,' squealed Pushy.

'I could have murdered a whole lizard at Champney's last week,'
called out Baby.

'You are very beautiful now, so it pay off,' laughed Tristan, then
serious again. 'Tomorrow we begin filming the first act, which is
perhaps the most tragic. Dusk is falling on a great forest. The
huntsmen are riding home. Elisabetta and Carlos experience /e coup de foudre, first love striking like lightning. They have few
moments of ecstasy, thinking they will live happy for ever. Then it
is over.'
Noticing the desolation on Tabitha's face, he was ashamed to
feel a flicker of satisfaction her marriage might not be working out.
He had been haunted by dreams of her lean, jeaned body and
garlanded head ever since the wedding.

After he'd wished everyone good luck for the morning, there was applause, coffee and liqueurs.

Down the table Hermione was telling Alpheus that Rannaldini
often lent her his Gulf IV for overseas engagements. Why shouldn't
the Maestro do the same for his principal bass?

Misinterpreting the excitement on her lover's face, Chloe tried
once more to galvanize Wolfie. 'Do you like opera?' she asked.

'I liked you in Nalmcco,' admitted Wolfie, 'when the ENO
brought it to Munich.'

'It's pronounced Na-book-o,' snarled an eavesdropping Ran
naldini.

I hate my father, thought Wolfie, I should never have come back.
I hate Helen. She had always been a pain in the arse when her son
Marcus and Wolfie had been at school together. And now she had
put him back in his old room, which she'd obviously been using as

136



/a spare room, then. ex.pected him to rave over tl,e chintz curtain.s
and the flower pmnttngs on the pretence she d redecorated

	eapecially for him.
	,

I loathe Tabitha, he thought. She s a spoilt brat, worse than Little
Gosmo, more arrogant than her fatherland n, ow possesslon.,Oef
the nicest cottage on the estate. And tnere, laugmng across m
table with Chloe, was Flora, his old love, bloody gold-digger,
covered in his father's fingerprints, now shacked up with a guy as

probably richer than his father. He had forgiven neither
nor Rannaldini, and Flora, seeing the antagonism batding with
the longing in Wolfie's eyes, found it very disturbing. As solid as
Tebaldo's gun, she fingered the mobile in her jeans pocket, willing
George to ring.

Rannaldini was now talking about Valhalla.

'Part of the house is twelve century. It has been owned since the
beginmng by aristocrats or m,onks.'

'Certainly by neither today, said Tabitna sourly, as sne reacnect

	through the w,hite daffodils for the Kumm,el.
	.

	:)- 'Sometimes, Rannaldini ignored her, on summer mgnts we

			the most beautiful plainsong from the chapel, but no-one is

		there. A sad, weeping lady in grey, Caroline Beddoes, is often seen

		gazing out of a blocked-up window on the north side. She has

		blood on her dress and a little dog in her arms. Sometime she glide

		through doors which exeest no longer. You can hear the hiss of

		her silk skirts on the flagstones.

		'And, of course, as in many great houses, there is a legend that

		when the lake dries up the head of the family will die.'

		'It looked promisingly low on the way down,' murmured Baby.

		Everyone laughed nervously, glancing furtively into the shadowy

		corners - except Alpheus.

		'Did you really manage to negotiate a cash setdement?' he was

		asking Hermione.

		'Do you believe in ghosts, Sir Roberto?' quavered Pushy.

		The lights seemed to dim.

		'I believe, my dear,' the excited throb in Rannaldini's voice was

		growing more insistent, 'in a great departure lounge crowded with

		spirits desperate to get to the next world or to return to this one,

		to avenge themselves or to clear their name or find a lost love.'

		'Attractive, isn't he?' whispered Chloe.

		'Satanically,' shivered Flora.

		'Been to bed with him?'


'So have I. Brilliant, wasn't it?'

'Yes.'


137





'We also have the legend of the Paradise Lad, a beautiful novice,'
Rannaldini's eyes gleamed, 'flogged to death by the monks for
falling in love with a village girl. Sometime we hear him sobbing.
Listen.' As Rannaldini held up a white hand, a moan came from
the chimney and everyone jumped in terror. 'But it is probably
only the wind.'

The port and brandy were orbiting like formula-one cars.
Suddenly the door creaked slowly open. People screamed and
clutched each other, as no-one entered. Then Rannaldini's white
cat, Sarastro, padded in.

'It's the night shift come to sit on Colin's head,' whispered
Tabitha.

Next moment even she had jumped out of her skin, as Sarastro
arched his back and hissed, his tail thick as a snow-covered
Christmas tree. But he had only seen James, who would have given
chase, if Lucy hadn't grabbed his new green collar.


Helen was not happy. Tristan was perfectly charming but she
wished he didn't always want his crew to enjoy the same privileges
as himself, when it meant her having on her left Ogborne, the pig
like chief grip whose shaved head was gleaming in the candlelight

and who had just poured himself a third glass of port.

'Got everything you need?' she asked acidly.

'Well, Cindy Crawford would be nice,' said Ogborne, adding
kindly, 'but it's been a great meal.'

'Where does the name Valhalla come from?' asked Pushy.

Helen opened her mouth. At last a chance to show off, but she
was pre-empted by Ogborne.

'Wagner,' he told Pushy. 'Valhalla was the palace built for the
gods by the giants Fasolt and Fafner. You must remember that
wonderful moment at the end of Rhinegold, when the gods pass
over the rainbow bridge and enter the castle at sunset.'

The entire table fell silent, gazing at him in amazement.

'And who's that very handsome gentleman over the fireplace?'
simpered Pushy Galore.

'She's so far up Rannaldini,' hissed Chloe, 'one can't see her
toenails any more.'

'That is my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side,' said
Rannaldini, smiling warmly at Pushy. 'A tremendous rake. That
portrait has been known to wink at very pretty girls.'

'Bollocks,' hiccuped Meredith. 'You bought Great-greatgrandpop
and all your other ancestors in the King's Road in the
late eighties.'

Tristan tried not to laugh, and because Rannaldini had thrown

Meredith such a filthy look and he didn't want his enttre a,, ,.cast
quitting Valhalla in terror, he got up to go.

'Bedtime, everyone. Thank you, Rannaldini and Helen, for a
wonderful evening. It has put us in great mood for tomorrow.'

Not a//ofus, thought Flora sadly, then squeaked in ecstasy as her
mobile rang.

I'm in a seven-foot by seven-foot four-poster in Doosledorf,' said
a broad Yorkshire accent, 'and I need soomeone to fill it.'

'Oh, George,' sighed Flora, 'I love you so much and thank you

for my lovely regard ring.'

Wolfie flinched.

'OKfor some,' said Tab bitterly, then, pleadingly to Lucy, 'Come
back to the cottage for a quick one.'

'Can I come too?' asked Ogborne, picking up the bottle of
Kummel.

'No, you can't,' said Tab rudely.

Lucy sighed inwardly. 'It'd better be quick - I've got to be up at


made a few telephone calls, Rannaldini locked his study

pressed a button and the bookshelf slid back to reveal a wall
', of monitors.

'Two-way mirror on the wall,' murmured Rannaldini, 'who is the
' fairest of them all?'
i/. Sadly, Tab had gone home. He must get Clive to install that
i video-camera in Magpie Cottage. Flora had pushed off to her

Hermione to River House. But there was poor bald
without his toupee, pacing his little cell, and Tristan had
asleep on his chessboard, clutching his mobile. Oscar was
asleep, Valentin calling his new wife.

Ah, that was more interesting. Pushy Galore going down on
8ylvestre, and Ogborne snorting with delight over a porn mag.
Wolfie lay on his back, smoking. Rannaldini had so often seen the
mane bruised furious reproach in Wolfie's mother's eyes. Of all of
wives, she had been the first and the worst treated. She had
young. He must win Wolfie over. In the next cell, Baby was
gazing at a photograph of someone suspiciously like Isa Lovell.

Pouring himself a brandy, Rannaldini sat back to watch Chloe
:and Alpheus but, despite Chloe's ravishing body and flickering
expertise, it was so mainline, he soon nodded off.


she had tumbled into bed, long after midnight, Lucy
icouldn't sleep. The house, like an ancient arthritic, kept shifting
its position, creaking and groaning to get comfortable. The wind




howled, the central heating gurgled,James was restless, and in the
next room Colin Milton was so nervous they might get to the
Spanish ambassador tomorrow, he spent all night practising his
lines.

Lucy tried not to think about Tristan. For once she was glad
when her alarm clock went off at five thirty.


From six o'clock onwards a mighty army of lorries, caravans, a
canteen, generators, double-decker dining-buses and a Portaloo
euphemistically nicknamed the honeywagon rumbled eastwards
into Rannaldini's woods. Their destination was a beechwood
known as Cathedral Copse, because its silver trunks soared to the
sky like the pillars of a huge nave.

Itwas a bitterly cold day. In a clearing Oscar, the director of
purple scarf and dark hair flapping, was eating a
sandwich, glancing from shivering stand-ins to light meters,
i i and briefing the gaffer, the chief electrician, who in turn told his
the sparks, where to put the lights. Except in the place
the singers were going to act, the carpet of faded beech
i leaves was crisscrossed with camera tracks and cables and teeming
focus-pullers measuring distances, boom operators, and
trying to look useful.

in Make Up, Lucy had grabbed a cup of coffee and a hot
i for James before starting on the long haul of making up Baby,

who needed Alka-Seltzer, lots of blue eye-drops, concealer for his
dark shadows and blusher for his blanched cheeks.

,: .! !You've got such a beautiful face,' chided Lucy. 'You should cut
'," :oUt the booze and get a few early nights.'


	'Carlos is supposed to look pale and wan.'

/'Not in this scene. That comes after his dad's nicked his girl


'How's Mrs Lovell's marriage?'

Lucy drew a white line inside Baby's lower lashes to
the redness.

; 'Yeah yeah, Rannaldini's won a peace prize. Is Isa catting



'You should know. You're his friend.'

'He's not the greatest communicator, except with horses.'

'Aren't you nervous?' asked Lucy, who was accustomed to
calming terrified actors, particularly on the first day.

'Not in the least. Don't change the subject. You went back to
Magpie Cottage - she must have said something. She was certainly
on the pull last night, flashing her sea-horse tattoo.'

'She dressed up because she thought Isa was coming with her. I
don't want to discuss it. Now, what are we going to do about your
green tongue? Here's a pink cough pastille, if you can keep it down.'

Next she had to cope with a sobbing Flora, clutching a furiously
yapping Trevor with one hand and tugging her red hair down over
her ears with the other.

Whereas make-up artists usually adjust to their subject's wishes,
film hairdressers tend to impose their views on others. Flora had
got stuck into the tattered remains of Captain Corelli's Mandolin only to discover she'd been given a short back and sides.

'George will sling me out. Oh, for God's sake, stop it, Trevor!'
Flora's voice rose to a scream as the little terrier lunged at a
surprised James.

'You can get away with it, you've got such a lovely face.' Lucy tied
a powder-blue overall round Flora's neck. 'And it'll soon grow.'

'Not for three months, it won't,' mocked Baby. 'That gauleiter
Simone from Continuity won't allow it, and Lucy said I've got a
beautiful face too. She says it to all the girls.'

'Oh, go away and annoy Wardrobe,' said Lucy, throwing a
sponge at him.

'I shall go and inhabit my caravan. Look, it's on the call sheet "Mr
Spinosissimo's caravan". It's,. eight inches longer than
Hermione's, I measured it- so yah, boo!'

Lucy then had to turn a quaking Flora into Hermione's private
detective, thickening her eyebrows, giving her sideboards and a
small moustache, and creating brown stubble with a dry sponge.


'I'm bored in my caravan. It's lonely being a mega-star,' said Baby,
half an hour later. He was so turned on by Flora's new butch look,
he couldn't stop pinching her bottom.

'You're wanted in Wardrobe, Mr Spinosissimo.' Standing in the
doorway, his shoulders broadened by a lumber jacket, was a stony
faced Wolfie. 'Get yotr ass into gear, the director's waiting.'

'Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen. Heil Hider.' Baby goose
stepped after Woffgang. 'Christ, it's cold. If March is meant to go
out like a lamb, this one's New Zealand and deep-frozen.'

Over at Wardrobe, Tristan and Lady Griselda, in a floor-length fur
lined red coat and a fake-fur hat like a tsar, had decided that as
Carlos had just flown into France incognito, it would be more
appropriate for him to lurk at the meet in a covert coat.

'Wouldn't a flasher's mac be more suitable?' said Baby.

He was still violently opposed to his Prince Charles wig and
enraged Tristan by asking the grinning crew whether he looked a
let or not. When they voted by a show of hands that he did, he

it off and threw it into a bramble bush.

Tristan only gave in because he and Rannaldini, who'd just
rolled up in his huge wolf coat, had been sucked into an-even worse
screaming match with Meredith, who didn't appear quite so young and boyish out of doors. The point of contention was a hunting
lodge, which looked as though it had been exclusively decorated

Colefax & Fowler.

'.!
	: 'We are not making fourth-rate production of Hansd and Gretel,' snarled Rannaldini, whose idea it had actually been because he

' wanted a free summerhouse, but who hadn't forgiven Meredith for
last night's bought ancestors.

. 'Carlos and Lizzie have a love tryst in it,' Meredith stamped his
little snow boot, 'so it must look nice.'

'We should have seen a model first,' said Tristan reasonably.

i; i . :'It look like cuckoo clock,' hissed Rannaldini.

, Meredith flounced off, muttering that his artistic input had been

,compromised. The cuckoo clock was banished and stood sulking
car park for the rest of the shoot.


Because Hermione was still squawking in Make Up it was decided
to relight and shoot the first four lines of Baby's aria, when
rapture after catching his first glimpse of Elisabetta.
,:. -There was already a crimson blur of new bud on the beeches.
leaves and green flames of wild garlic were pushing
the leaf mould. But such signs of spring were speedily
out by the snow machine scattering white foam everywhere,
even between the cracks in the dry ground.

:',:",'Remember not to bang your chest. It sound like Beeg Ben,'
as he miked up Baby.
moment, everyone jumped out of their skins, as music
: lured out of speakers hidden behind two venerable


t't it sound gorgeous?' cried Flora, rushing out of Make
p, her eyes filled with tears. 'Rannaldini's overture is simply
.nsational. You'd never know it wasn't Verdi.'

"You always admired him,' said Wolfie coldly.



Flora flushed. Next moment she had tripped over a sign
concealed by the snow saying 'Beware of Snakes'.

'Oh, God,' she wailed. 'Trevor and I are going to invest in some
thigh boots before summer.'


Meanwhile, Hype-along Cassidy, the harassed press officer,
who was expecting a reporter and photographer from the Independent,
was sidling from one bewildered member of the French
crew to another, imploring them to charge forward and ask for
Dame Hermione's autograph when she deigned eventually to
come out of her caravan.

'Bruce Willis's press officer does the same thing,' he lied.
Tristan was taking Baby through a quick rehearsal. Valentin,
Oscar's handsome son-in-law, perched on a little chair behind the
camera, was following them, as Ogborne, a red knitted flower-pot
covering his shaved head, pushed the camera along the silver rail
tracks.

As the head of Props pressed a button, and the smoke-machine
enveloped Baby in swirling grey mist, Lucy shot forward with her
brushes to take the shine offhis nose, and a hairdresser rearranged
his curls.

'More smoke,' shouted Tristan.

'That brown velvet collar needs straightening,' yelled Griselda.

'Quiet, please, we're going for a take,' brayed Bernard, the first
assistant director.

An incredible tension gripped everyone - even the birds were
silent, the breeze still.

'Sound rolling,' said Sylvestre.

'Camera rolling,' called Valendn.

'Mark it,' said Tristan, and the clapper-loader jumped in front
of the camera, saying, 'Slate one, take one,' and snapped his
clapper.

'Action,' shouted Tristan.

Out strolled Baby into the sunlight.

ontmnet)leau. Immense and solitary forest",' he sang exactly
in time to his own exquisite voice. "¢ghat rose-filled gardens, what
Eden of loveliness could equal in Carlos's eyes this wood through
which his smiling Elisabetta passed?"'

'And cut!' shouted Tristan. 'That was great.' Then, loping over
to Baby, 'Could you make it a little more ecstatic? You are
expecting hideous future wife and suddenly you discover you are
to marry most stunning girl in world - you could even clutch yourself
with joy.'

'Anything's better than clutching Dame Hermione.'

144



'Tais-toi!You're miked up! OK, we go again.'

The mournful clarinet began once more, the smoke-machine
fired another swirl of mist. As Tristan called, 'Action,' glamorous

Valentin, riding his camera like a jockey, reminded Baby of Isa.
'Fontainebleau,' he sang rapturously.
After three takes, each more miraculous than the one before,
Tristan said, 'Fantastic! Check the gate.'

Once the clapper-loader had shone his torch into the camera to
check there were no hairs or dust to ruin the picture, Tristan
shouted: 'Cut and print.' Everyone cheered, because the first shot
was in the can.

The rest of the aria was going to be used as voiceover as Baby
smuggled himself into France and the Spanish ambassador's
entourage. Itwas now time for Hermione. Having borrowed a tape
measure from Griselda and discovered Baby had the longer
caravan, she was now screeching at Bernard Gu6rin, the first assistant
director. 'I answer only to Tristan de Montigny or Sir Roberto,
and no-one, absolutely no-one, orders me to hurry up. And in
future ensure that my caravan is not parked next to the honey


Bernard, who'd been unable to make last night's party, acted as
:Tristan" 's sergeant major. His job was to see everything ran
on the floor. Any hold-up cost thousands.

: Bernard also did the bellowing and bossing around, which
to drift about, inspiring, charming, manipulating,
and still appearing as Mr Nice Guy, even when he pushed people

:: to the limit. Bernard, who'd been in the army with Tristan's
brother Laurent and held him dying in his arms in Africa, hero

!:worshipped the Montigny family. He also got wildly jealous and
ked if anyone got too close to Tristan.
Sadly, one of the reasons Hermione was being so gratuitously
to him was because he had a brick-red face, the rolling eyes
big teeth of a rocking-horse, an ebony moustache covering a
upper lip and the bray of a choleric donkey.

-'When Frogs are ugly, there's no competition,' whispered Baby,
: a Bernard emerged from Hermione's mauling, his red face darkened
to maroon and enlivened by a delta of purple veins on his


With a sigh, Rannaldini vanished into Hermione's caravan and
:came down the steps a minute or so later, ostentatiously tucking
his trousers. 'Dame Hermione is now on her way,' he
' .called out smugly, so the crew could hear. 'You must learn tact,


:Nemesis, however, was hovering: almost on cue, Hermione's





young, hopelessly harassed but adorably pretty make-up artist
wandered down the steps of the honeywagon next door. In her
clinging orange cardigan above knitted red and white trousers,
she looked every inch a star. To the rapture of the Independent photographer, she was then stampeded by crew members, crying
"Ermione, 'Ermione!' and begging for her autograph.

Hype-along Cassidy, the Press Officer, whose brown velvet hat
was knocked off in the rush, only just managed to beat them off as
Hermione herself emerged in the red riding coat Tristan had
vetoed last night.

Whatever happened to Rannaldini's dominance ending at the
recording? thought Flora in alarm.

Hermione was further outraged when Tristan cautiously
suggested her make-up was too heavy for outdoors.

'Which, roughly translated, means it makes the old bat look a
hundred,' whispered Baby to the crew, who he'd got totally on his
side.

Hermione's quailing make-up artist was then ordered by Tristan
to take her make-up down, which meant another hour's delay.
Later, Bernard stole offto have a pee behind a holly tree, and only
just missed Hermione frantically applying eyeliner.

'Her next CD will be called "Hermione goes to Hollybush'.'
Baby's joke was soon whizzing round the set.

Baby proved a complete natural, who only had to glance at his
lines in Make Up before going from nothing to regulo ten in thirty
seconds. Hermione, on the other hand, was used to having a raised
eyebrow seen in the gods, and was defeated by the stillness, subtlety
and control of cinema acting. She was soon driving everyone
crackers insisting, 'But I always enter right for this aria,' and
because she, like everyone else, had a monstrous crush on Tristan,
wanting to know her motivation for every syllable.

Tristan's niece, Simone, in charge of continuity, was dny and
elfin with a glossy dark brown urchin cut and mournful Montigny
eyes. Her fragility, however, belied a forceful personality. As most
of the film was shot out of order, Simone's main task, apart from
timing takes, was to insist that each scene blended into earlier and
later ones.

'Your cigarette was only a quarter smoked last time, Baby,' she
was now shouting, 'and we agreed you should carry a whip, Dame
Hermione.'

'Oh, sugar, I left it at home.'

'Wolfgang can go and get it,' said Rannaldini. 'That's what he's
here for.'

Having played in the first tugger team of an English public

school, Wolfie was used to being yelled at under pressure. But with
Bernard shouting instructions into his earpiece all morning, it was
as though the Battle of the Somme had broken out. Now
Rannaldini was pitching in.

'And you can pick up another thermal vest from the Mill while
you're there, Wolfgang,' Hermione called after him. 'I cannot
afford to catch cold,' she added, as Tristan's eyes rose to heaven at
the thought of more delay.

By the time they broke for lunch, only Baby's four lines had been
filmed, and everyone had such cold noses they looked like an
advertisement for Comic Relief.

Aware she had a French crew, Maria the caterer, a pretty, pregnant
Italian, was on her mettle and had produced baked red
snapper with aromatic Chinese sauce, steak and kidney pie,
sauteed garlic potatoes, a vegetable stir-fry for Lucy, followed by
rhubarb crumble or treacle pudding.

Everyone piled up their plates and charged the dining bus,
where Tristan, because of the cold and it being the first day, had
ordered bottles of wine for every table.

'How the hell are you going to put up with Hermione?' asked
Oscar, as he tied his napkin round his neck to protect his purple


'Divas are not fully balanced human beings,' said Tristan dropping
three Disprins into a glass of Perrier. 'If they were they
wouldn't be great.'

After lunch the rows escalated.

'What is my motivation for this scene?' Hermione asked Tristan
for the thousandth time.

'You are cold, exhausted and lost in a huge forest,' said Tristan,
through gritted teeth. 'Suddenly Carlos steps out from behind that ree and offers you his protection.'

'If I've just come off a plane, surely I'd offer her a slug of duty
free,' said Baby helpfully.

'Will you stop taking the pees?' Tristan's voice rose. 'As I was
saying, Hermione, you're lost in a wood.'

.'"Just a little lamb who's lost in a wood,"' sang Hermione, fortis- s/m0, then went into peals of laughter as everyone jumped out of
their skins.

'Don't you wish that pistol was loaded?' murmured Baby to
Flora.

'I feel like Agent Scully. At least we've got the same-coloured
htir,' whispered back Flora, who was very excited by her gun, which
a Heckler-Koch 'toy', as used by the SAS.

She was feeling spooked, however, because Rannaldini had




nastily insisted she take off not just her regard ring but also her
sapphire engagement ring.

'It ees almost beeger than the evening star, and much too camp
for a detective,' he sneered. 'Why not lend it to Baby?'

'Look mean, Flora, c/dr/e,' shouted Tristan, 'and when you see

Carlos, shield Hermione and point your gun straight into camera.'
'Stand by to shoot, please,' bellowed Bernard.
Everyone moved out of shot.
'Here we go, let's turn over.'

And poor Flora was into a rat race. If she sang loud enough to
have the right facial movements, the sound was too loud for her
to hear the playback and she got out of synch. Alas, the promised
voice coach had been sacked even before he'd started. Instead, to
help her sing in dine, and come in at the right moment, the video
of Rannaldini conducting the score was now being relayed on a
huge monitor behind the crew. This made her even more
nervous.

She kept fluffing her lines, let alone remembering to look mean
and shoot into the camera. Nor was she helped by planes going
over, Griselda charging up to smooth her riding coat over the
bulge of her gun, Lucy racing in to tone down her red nose with
green face powder, Simone telling her to do up her top button, or
Rannaldini continually shouting.

'I don't like hecklers, even if they do have cocks,' she muttered
dolefully. Then, just as she got things right, her mobile rang.

'Oh, George,' Flora burst into tears, 'I'm a lousy actress, but I
can't talk now. I'll ring you back. I'm sorry, everyone.'

Rannaldini went berserk. 'Are you going to take this thing seriously?'
he yelled, grabbing her mobile. 'Because eef not Gloria
knows Tebaldo's words and is only too 'appy to take over.'

'Leave her alone,' shouted Baby, who'd been crunching clove
after clove of garlic in anticipation of his clinch with Dame
Hermione.

There was a red glow on the horizon. The third lot of snow
needed topping up, the day was running away. Blown like a dry leaf
by everyone's arguments, Flora leant against a tree, got lichen on
her breeches and bollocked by Griselda.

'Everyone hates me,' she muttered miserably.

'I don't,' said Sylvestre, who could hear her through the mike.
'I don't,' said Rozzy Pringle, the former singer of Flora's part,
whose voice had broken down in the recording, who'djust arrived
to help in Wardrobe. Putting a little stone hot-water bottle into one
of Flora's blue frozen hands and a mug of hot Ribena into the

148


er;
		whispered, 'You look chilled to tile marrow, poor utu

	she

		,



	'- 'Oh, Rozzy, how. lovely to see you.
	,

	'-And you. Don t cry, da, ling, your make-up ,wi!l run.

'-oh, that looks nice, called Hermione. ,I d like some hot
Ri-.b-na too. Go and fetch me some, Wolfgang.

--\-,Which made Wolfie hate Flora more than ever, particularly when he met Helen punting up the hill going the other way.

'George Hungerford'sjust called the house. He can't get through.
Can you tell Flora to switch on her mobile? He says it's urgent.'

'I'm not having any of those thoogs bullying you,' were George's
first words, as Flora rang him on Bernard's mobile.

	'Flora,' snarled Wolfie, 'are you going to hold us up all night?'

He wants to kill me, thought Flora. Even with a hundred people
milling around, he terrified her.


The next day went much better. In the afternoon, they even filmed
Carlos and Elisabetta's first kiss. Baby's attempts only to kiss
Hermione between her jutting lower lip and her chin came to
nothing: she sucked in his tongue like a Hoover.

'Cut,' shouted Tristan then took her aside. 'As this is the first kiss
of an innocent young virgin, che, I thinkit should be more tenth


'That woman could suck Tasmania back to the mainland,' Baby
regaled an hysterical crew. 'God knows how Rock Hudson did it
for years.'

'It's called a Fontaineblow-job,' giggled Flora, who'd regained
her high spirits. 'When the weather improves you've got to bonk her.'

'That'll be a piece of piss,' drawled Baby. 'When I was a little kid
in Oz my parents were always sending me up chimneys.
Hermione's fanny holds no fears for me.'



149




The first weeks of filming were very traumatic for Tristan, and his
good nature, particularly when large crowds, horses and hounds
were introduced, was severely tested.

Extras, as Sexton was fond of saying, are more expensive than
lawyers. Tristan planned to use much of the chorus's already
recorded singing as voiceover, and when he employed actual
crowds, to keep down the budget by packing as many of their
scenes as possible into the same day.

One of his problems was that Sexton had advertised for extras in
the Rutrainster Echo, and the same lot rolled up for every crowd
scene, whether as poverty-stricken woodmen and their wives or
glamorous French courtiers and ladies-in-waiting or suave darkeyed
diplomats from the Spanish delegation.

This was particularly apparent because Pushy Galore, one of the
few trained singers used as an extra, pushed her way to the front
in every crowd scene.

If any of the extras managed to have a word with Tristan, they
could claim they had 'taken direction' and charge for extra pay. If
they were filmed beside any of the stars, this could be categorized
as a 'cameo appearance' and they received double pay.

One of Wolfie's most important jobs, therefore, was to keep the
extras away from the cast, which was particularly difficult the day
Hype-along invited down a reporter from The Times and was
bunging anyone he could see to ask for Dame Hermione's
autograph.

This was after a most unfortunate piece had appeared in the
Independent headlined 'Dame Qui?' saying none of the French crew
had a clue who Hermione was. Poor Hype-along had had to rise at

dawn and buy up every Independent on sale at the Paradise village
shop before Hermione could send out for one.

It was even harder to keep the extras away from Tristan, who
was so polite, whose head was so much in the clouds, and who was
so horrified by the way Rannaldini was shattering everyone's confidence
that he'd speak to all and sundry just to reassure them they
were doing brilliantly.

As well as bellowing through his loud-hailer to the extras to keep
back, Wolfie had to tell them what expression - sad, shocked,
deprived, happy - to use. Uninstructed extras always look like the
village idiot.. Every week, Sexton came down with money in a
Gladstone bag, new readies for the extras, used readies for Hermione.
Wolfie had to distribute these.

The extras made their first appearance at a stag hunt through
snowy beechwoods. A very metdesome stag had been hired, and
Baby and Flora made jokes about fast bucks, particularly when the
stag took off into the forest scattering rustics and was last seen
chasing ghasdy Percy the Parson, who'd got a thumping crush on
Baby after hearing him sing at Tabitha's wedding.

i Griselda, the wardrobe mistress, massive in a mauve boiler-suit,
was having even more of a nervous breakdown than usual. She had
spent days amassing clothes for woodmen and foot-followers that
were suitably bucolic. Rozzy Pringle, her new PA, had spent hours
labelling them with each extra's name and hanging them on
rails.

Alas, all the extras had lied about their neck size and ended up
wearing collars so tight their eyes popped out, like an old
Pekineses' reunion.

",Then Rannaldini started screaming that nobody looked dirty
enough.

	i *Thees ees not catwalk at Aquascutum fashion show.'

: i 'You OK'd those clothes yesterday,' said Griselda, bursdng into
lL'ar. 'I hate extras,' she sobbed. 'Only ten per cent of the men
Wear underpants, and only five per cent of the women.'

'Can you tell me which five, when you've got a second?' asked
Ogborne, his shaven head hidden in a blue wool flower-pot today,
m ;he laid the tracks for the dolly on which the camera travelled
a different ride.

had loads more people to make up. The courtiers and


		•
		were fairly straightforward, but she had great difficulty

				:horus of poverty-stricken woodland folk, because none

				t remotely undernourished.

			had even more of a problem keeping a straight face when



Colin Milton, instead of removing his marmalade toupee to play the balding Spanish ambassador, insisted on hiding it under a bald
skull-cap.


Flora - who as Hermione's detective was meant to shadow her
during the hunt - found singing while controlling a horse
extremely difficult. Tab had grudgingly lent her The Engineer
because she wanted her little grey horse to appear in the film.
Unfortunately every time Wolfie, who was cantering around like a
polo umpire, bellowed through his loud-hailer, The Engineer
bolted. Yelling that she couldn't afford to lose an Olympic horse,
Tab finally insisted Flora switch to Wolfie's old pony, Audrey. This
triggered off a further screaming match with Simone, because it
screwed up continuity, and with Wohqe, who didn't want poor
Audrey between Flora's thighs.

Tab didn't care. As mistress of the horse, her word was law. She
had already tranked the delinquent Prince of Darkness, because

Rannaldini wanted Hermione to ride him in the film.

'Rather like a selling plate,' grumbled Baby.

The Prince of Darkness was fine when he was galloping across
country, but he lashed out at crowds, particularly at Pushy Galore,
who had shoved her way to the front of the foot-followers. Pushy
was livid and promptly reported the Prince and Tab to the union.
This may have been due to jealousy.

Every time Tab appeared on the set, all one could see was technicians
tripping over cables and camera tracks and cannoning into
each other as they cricked their necks for a third and fourth glance.
Even Oscar, the director of photography, woke up.

'Talk about the return of Hale-Bopp,' he sighed, as Tab and The
Engineer flew past, blonde hair, grey mane and tail flying.

After Tab, the most eye-catching sight on the set was Hype-along
Cassidy, the Press Officer, who had ginger sideboards and, even in
winter, whisked about in flowered kipper ties and flared pastel
suits. 'Seventies is my trademark,' he was always saying. 'If you're
different you're remembered.'

Hype-along knew more people than Griselda, but in twenty-five
highly successful years he had never met a bunch whose vanity and
caprice exceeded the cast of Don Carlos. Not only did they want
coverage in the posh papers, but also double-page spreads in the
tabloids praising their ardstry but not mentioning their sex lives.

On the extras' second day, Hype-along wheeled in the Sunday
Express, whose photographer was having an adventurous time
leaping out of the way of The Prince of Darkness and snapping the
hunt as they streamed down a woodland ride.

152


!l pleasant to have a break in Paradise,' announced Hermione, g down to bow to the Express photographer as she and Colin

Ill, ton c, antered decorously past. 'It's so peaceful here.'

Colin s chesmut mare had furry legs like a feminist. It was lucky

he was hanging on to her mane for grim death for next moment

they were overtaken by a yelling peril.

'Move it, you fuckers!' shouted Tabitha. 'You're hunting, not
pulling a coffin, and for God's sake sit, up, Grandma,' she added
to Hermione, 'and shorten your reins.

Hermione turned puce. 'To think I sang at her wedding for
nothing! I'm not surprised Isaac's fed up with her already. I also
think she's been at the hip flask.'

Wolfie thought the same thing, and finding a half-empty bottle of
vodka in the hollow of a large oak tree, empded it on to the grass.

Tristan, meanwhile, knew exactly what space he wanted between
horses and, in the politest possible way, made Hermione, Flora,
Colin and the hunt return to their starring-point at the top of the
ride again and again.

They were at last achieving a perfect take, galloping out of
the wood with the sun shining and ivy glittering like chain-mail on the trees, when Tab came scorching across their bows,
screaming, 'Cut, cut, cut.'


	Horses and riders slithered to a halt.

But before,Tab could weigh into them in front of a flabbergasted
crew, an outraged Tristan and an apoplectic Bernard, Wolfie had
hurtled up, caught The Engineer's reins and yanked him to a halt.


	'What the hell are you playing at?'

With his furious, flushed face, his gleaming blond hair, and his
plunging horse, he looked just like St George. But his indigo eyes
blazed like Rannaldini's.

'Hermione's toes were pointing down like Darcey Bussell,' yelled
' back Tab, 'and Spanish ambassadors don t cling on to their horses

manes. And who let Hermione carry a hunting whip without a lash?
It's so haft. And if she wants to wear a red coat, why doesn't she get
a job at Buflin's?'

'You've just wrecked a perfectly good take!'

'My reputation is at stake,' countered Tab, who was getdng
thoroughly above herself. 'If this goes on, I'll have to take my name
off the credits.'

'After all your forty-eight-hour experience,' said a scornful
Wolfie, thinking how pale and unhealthy she looked in the spring

sunshine. Then, seeing the first assistant director puffing up the
hill, he added, 'And you'll bloody well apologize to Bernard.'

'I will not, you bloody Alfred Hitler.'



153




'Alfred?' Wolfie raised an incredulous blond eyebrow.
Realizing she'd goofed, Tab had to recover herself. 'Adolf's
much more evil elder brother,' she said haughtily. 'And don't you
dare take the piss out of me.'

'Can we get on?' said a chilling voice, which promptly sent the
sun in.

It was Rannaldini.

'You're out of order, Wolfgang. Tabitha was quite right to halt
the film. That whip,' he added bitchily, 'is wrong. Hermione had
a lash yesterday and The Prince of Darkness should be wearing my
saddlecloth. Very black mark, Simone.'

'Not if he's being ridden by a French princess,' said Wolfie deft
antly. 'Your saddlecloth incorporates the colours of the German
and Italian flags,' and swinging his horse round, he cantered off to
tell the hunt to go back up the hill again.

How truly kind of Wolfie to defy his terrifying father for my sake,
thought tiny Simone tearfully.

To avoid more chaos, Tristan filmed the hounds on a separate
day. The Cotchester Hunt, pulled out by Rupert, had been
replaced by a splendidly sixteenth-century assortment of wolfhounds,
greyhounds, salukis and lurchers. But being gaze hounds,
who chased what they saw rather than what they smelled, they
ignored the extra, drenched in aniseed, who'd replaced the stag,
and tore instead after the camera moving on its dolly. Soon
Ogborne, clutching his flower-pot hat, Valentin, in his new English
brogues, and Oscar, who'd nodded off against a copper beech,
could be seen belting off into the wood in terror.

James the lurcher, who'd been signed up as a hound, immediately
rushed back to Lucy, where the other Valhalla dogs, Sharon,
Trevor and Tabloid, Rannaldini's Rottweiler, who'd all ploughed
the audition, proceeded to rubbish him out of jealousy.

'Cut down the tallest puppy,' said Flora, who was in such
hysterics, she fell offAudrey.


Despite the traumas, wonderful work was being done. Hermione's
long, one-noted 'Yes', when she agreed to marry Philip rather than
Carlos, had everyone in tears. And at the end of two and a half
weeks, the first, and probably most taxing, act was in the can, the
buds could feel free to burst open in Cathedral Close, and the wild
flowers to throw off their blanket of artificial snow.

Action would now move inside to the dungeons and to Alpheus's
bedroom scene. Alpheus, Granny, Chloe, Hermione, Mikhail and
Baby would be needed, but no horses or Flora, so she and Tabitha
could have a break.

154


But there was no respite for Lucy. Her make-up had been
inspired, except when Tristan popped into her caravan and her
hands started shaking. When he watched the rushes, he realized
even more what a treasure he had found. Flora with her short
back and sides looked disturbingly androgynous. With miraculous
shading, Baby had lost all his puppy fat - he was also
acting everyone off the screen, you couldn't take your eyes
off him.

The only person not ravished by the rushes was Hermione. She
was in the habit of pestering her agent, Howie Denston, twenty
times a day, even ordering him to ring up and tell her chauffeur
to turn down the car radio when she was being driven the half-mile
from River House to Valhalla.

Now she told Howie to tell Tristan she could only film in the
afternoons, when her big brown eyes were fully open. She also
sacked her make-up artist and insisted on having Lucy.

Lucy was then summoned to Hermione's caravan for a glass of
very cheap South African sherry as the great diva lay stretched out
on a bed, a pad steeped in witch-hazel over her eyes.

'As I'm playing a beautiful young princess in this film,'
announced Hermione, 'I thought it fitting at first to employ a
beautiful young make-up artist, who would be au fait with the latest trends. While you're here, Lucy dear, could you peel those
grapes, and pop them into my mouth? Now I realize I was wrong.'
Hermione sounded as though she was going over to Rome. 'Far
' better to go for a mature, older woman, like yourself, who knows
the ropes. You mustn't be fazed, Lucy. I have every faith in you.'

'I wanted to ram her bloody grapes down her throat,' Lucy told
Tristan afterwards.

Although he was cross, Tristan was ecstatic Lucy could now feed
all his ideas into Hermione's thick skull. But realizing Lucy never
finished clearing up and doing her paperwork much before
eleven, he promised her more assistance - perhaps Rozzy Pringle.
'And you need more light in here.'

Lucy was so touched he'd noticed she'd have made up the entire
crew. Griselda, however, was livid. Rozzywas the best assistant she'd
eer had: she was determined to hang on to her.


also proving a great asset, checking Oscar's cigars were
and that Tristan didn't lose his camera script. And if he found
ugly and uncharming, he didn't mob him up like the

Having been brought up with artists, Wolfie was quite used
to them losing their head and their nerve several times a day, and
managed to get everyone - except Hermione - out of



155




their dressing rooms on time. Outwardly, however, he appeared
terribly arrogant.

The crew, resenting this, pinned a notice saying 'Stalag Studios'
on Wolfie's door and whistled 'The Dambusters' every time he
walked past. Ogborne and three of the sparks had too much to
drink one lunchtime and proceeded to circle the production
office, where Wolfie was wrestling with the next day's call sheet.
Sticking their arms out, they pretended to be Lancasters and
lobbed Scotch eggs through the window.

Wolfie ignored them, but later that evening Tristan found him
gazing miserably into space. He knew Wolfie's arrogance was a
defence mechanism, and that beneath his reserve he was warmhearted
and thoughtful. It had been Wolfie who had told Tristan
Lucy needed more light.

Tristan had also noticed the anguish Wolfie couldn't hide when
an ecstatic Flora, baseball cap tugged over her short back and sides,
had flown off to join George that morning.

Tristan was a workaholic but, for once, he abandoned his story
boards and bore Wolfie offto dinner at the Old Bell in Rutminster.
Wolfie had always been jealous of Tristan because Rannaldini
had such a high regard for him but now, over several bottles,
they discussed Schiller, horrendously competitive fathers and,
inevitably, the cast.

As they walked back unsteadily from the Valhalla car park, across
the valley, a light like a low bright star was shining in Magpie
Cottage.

'You could loosen up with Tabitha,' said Tristan idly.

'She's appalling,' said Wolfie bleakly. 'The most awful human
being I've ever met.'

'The wicked stepsister.' Tristan smiled in the darkness. 'And you
could stop bitching up Flora.'

'I made love to Flora in every inch of this park,' said Wolfie. His
face was in shadow, but his voice was raw with pain. 'The night I
took her to the school dance, my father landed his helicopter on
the cricket pitch, and Flora disappeared into it like Close Encounters. I left home the next morning or I'd have murdered him. And how
can she live with that thug George Hungerford? He's knocked
down more buildings in Dresden than Winston Churchill.'

As they wandered past the north wing Tristan noticed, with a
sinking heart, the curtains moving in Bernard's still-lit window. If
Bernard felt he was being usurped as Tristan's confidant he would
give Wolfie a hard time.

	156


Next day Rannaldini pushed off to New York for a week and,

	heaving a sigh of relief, Tristan decided to kick off indoor filming

	with Posa's moving death scene in the dungeons. This was scup


	pered by Mikhail missing the plane from Moscow. So Tristan

	ritched to a later scene, in which Carlos and Philip are joined by

	Ebli and the Grand Inquisitor, with the Spanish rabble outside

	the dungeons all clamouring for Carlos to be set free. This meant


an awful lot of people for Lucy to make up.

Her biggest challenge was to turn the silver-haired, noble
browed, patrician Granville Hastings into Gordon Dillon, the
Neanderthal thug who edited the Scorpion and whose hairline rested on his straight-across brows. Lucy was terrified of letting
Tristan down, but Granny promptly cheered her up by bitching
about Hermione. 'My dear, the only reason Madam is so addicted
to playing the pink oboe is that she's read that seminal fluid rejuvenates
the vocal cords.'

Lucy giggled, then added charitably that it seemed to work.
'She showed me the marvellous reviews she had for Rinaldo.' 'Her mother must have written them,' said Granny waspishly.

'Oh, you do cheer me up.' Lucy was sticking on a long line of
beetling black eyebrow.

'Don't take any truck from her, Lucy Lockett,' said Granny, 'or
from Alpheus, who's such a wooden actor he makes that table look
like Anthony Hopkins, and you're going to have dreadful trouble
with his hooter.' Granny smirked admiringly at his own beautifully
aquiline nose. 'Alpheus has a bigger conk than Rudolph the
Reindeer.'

Lucy had just grabbed a pair of scissors to trim the ends of
Granny's brows when Meredith bustled in in great excitement.



157





a dungeon wall, one of the set-builders has unearthed a skeleton
with a rosary round its neck.'

'Oh, my God.' Lucy nearly dropped her scissors.

'Anyone we know?' asked Granny, retrieving a dropped stitch.

'Probably the planning officer,' said Meredith gleefully. 'He's
been so dire.'


The dungeons at Valhalla had always been damp and chill. Now
none of the crew would go in there, even after Percy the Parson
was summoned and sprinkled holy water from a Smirnoff bottle.

Ever conscious of a spiralling budget, Tristan gritted his teeth.
He'd have to reschedule. Mikhail had now rung in from Moscow
claiming to be laid low with bronchitis, so Baby could shove offfor
a few days and stop making a nuisance of himself and they could
switch to the Great Hall, which had been transformed by Meredith,
with the help of a massive white and gold silk four-poster, into King
Philip's bedroom.

Meredith's minions were already busy dusting the arctic white
marble chimneypiece, and touching up gilt cherubs, who were
getting up to no good in the frieze running round the white walls.
The prop table groaned with priceless ornaments, which
Rannaldini intended to keep after filming and which Meredith
kept rearranging, driving dny Simone crackers.

Griselda had agonized long and loudly over what a king should
wear in bed and settled for a magnificent Turnbull & Asset
dressing-gown in pink and purple stripes, which Alpheus was
equally determined to hang on to after filming. Having spent a
duty fortnight in the Caribbean with Cheryl, he was also frantic to
screw Chloe.


Filming began with the insomniac Philip's great soliloquy. Even
though he had played the part twenty times, Alpheus was avid to
know his motivation.

'The candles are guttering,' said Tristan. 'It is the heure de loup just before dawn, when man's resistance is at its lowest. You feel old
and threatened because your ravishing young wife and your sexy,
demanding mistress are both madly in love with your son. You are
also deeply hurt and raging with jealousy.'

'Too fight,' agreed Sylvestre, dropping a cold microphone down
Alpheus's hairy chest, which had just been greyed up by Lucy. 'I
would be peesed offwith scenario like that.'

'No-one asked your opinion,' snapped Bernard. 'All fight.
Quiet, please, we're going for a take.'

him a seven,figure tax Dill,

thundered Bernard.

the heartbreakingly beautiful cello solo, which sets the mood

aria, Alpheus wandered dazedly round the room, then plunElisabetta's
desk, which was rumoured once to have
belonged to Louis XIV. As he riffled through her diary, scrutinized
her itemized telephone and Amex bills, and finally rooted under
the mattress of the big double bed for love letters, Rozzy Pringle

a groan. How often had she done that at home, praying she

:stumble on more evidence of her feckless husband Glyn's
infidelities?

Alpheus then sang the first part of the aria so beautifully, and
with such an air of nobility and resignation, that the crew gave him
a rare round of applause.

Alpheus can act and his nose looks fine. Naughty Granny,

Lucy indignantly.

If only it were me singing that aria, thought Granny.


Tristan was going to use the rest of the aria as voiceover when he
filmed Philip forcing himself on a young, unresponsive bride.

: Suddenly at the prospect of watching Alpheus and Hermione in
the sack, the number of people on the set seemed to have quadru
Mr Bfimscombe, Rannaldini's gardener, who was always
into the female extras' changing room, was pretending to
i im back the famous Paradise Pearl wisteria so that he could peer
in through a high stained-glass window depicting St Cecilia at her
organ.

The weather was still bitterly cold and the cost of heating the hall
ialone was putting Liberty Productions over budget. There was no
way, however, that Hermione was going to risk turning blue in a
shove-and-grunt scene.

Howie Denston hadn't quite screwed up enough courage to tell
Sexton and Tristan that she wouldn't be filming in the mornings
any more, but she made him ring in now to say that she had a cold.
Everyone was less than amused when she promptly whizzed off to
sing in an arena concert in New York, except Rannaldini who was
already there and was taking a fat percentage of her hundred
thousand-pound fee. Far from chiding her, he sent the Gulf to
collect her.


demented Tristan was forced once more to reschedule. Granny,
who'd been planning to go to Sense and Sensibility with Chloe, was




158
	159


livid to be dragged into filming the blind Inquisitor's great
dialogue with Philip and insisted on upstaging Alpheus by feeding
Bonios to his guide dog, who was being played quite excellently by
Sharon the Labrador.

Granny's make-up, beetle-browed above black glasses, made him
look so menacingly like Gordon Dillon that, after crossing themselves,
the crew also gave Lucy a round of applause. Sexton, who'd
rushed down from London to have a butcher's at a naked
Hermione, felt Granny's makeover was so realistic that they'd
better watch out for an injunction from the Scorpion.


The power struggle between Granny and Alpheus was so crucial to
the plot that it took four days to film, by which time Sharon, egged
on by Granny, had chewed up both of Alpheus's blue velvet crested
slippers.

Alpheus had not endeared himself to the crew. Regally bidding
them all to drinks in the Pearly Gates, leading the stampede, he
would grind to a halt just outside the pub to admire the mullioned
windows and the variegated skyline of turrets.

'You Brits are so lucky, your history is so old.'

By which dme the first round would have been bought, and
Alpheus, who had read somewhere that the Royal Family never
carry money, would get away with not buying a drink all evening.

'The least often heard words in the English language,' grumbled
Ogborne, 'are "Thank you, Alpheus."'

'The next least heard words are Alpheus aying, "It's my round,"'
said Sylvestre.


Next day, Dame Hermione flew back from New York, but wanting
to rest, and refusing to film in the morning, she made Howie ring
in to say her throat was still playing up. Rather than waste a tropically
heated hall, Tristan therefore shot a little shove-and-grunt
scene between Alpheus and Chloe, which, having had plenty of
practice, they did quite beautifully.

Once again in seconds, as Oscar ordered his team to rearrange
their lights to cast a more diffused, romantic glow, the Great Hall
was absolutely packed out. Sexton materialized from nowhere.
Meredith was whisking around rearranging pieces of Svres on a
table beside the bed on which Chloe was now lying on her back,
the picture of abandonment. The fact that she had to wear an eyepatch
to play the traditionally one-eyed Princess Eboli, somehow
made her look even more sexy.

'Don't feedie with those ornaments, please, Meredith,' begged
Simone, consulting her Polaroids. 'There were only two vases last
trouble with such a hot room was flat nipples. Lucy had to

forward with ice-cubes.

Blu-tack,' she told Chloe.

- "Do you think my penis is too large?' asked Alpheus seriously.
:i 'Not when Howie's taken off his twenty per cent,' replied


Woffie got the giggles.

'Chloe's chewed off all her lippy,' bellowed an excited Griselda.

'No-one's going to nodce that either,' said Oscar, who for once

had stayed awake. 'God, look at the light on those pubes.'
'She's like a little Bonnard,' sighed Simone.

'I've certainly got a Bonnard-on,' confessed Sexton, whose redrimmed
spectacles had quite steamed up.

'Hush, or I'll put ice down your trousers,' chided a returning
.Lucy.

,My mum wouldn't let me do nudes,' pouted Pushy Galore, who
dying to take her clothes off.

'Quiet, please, everyone,' brayed Bernard, whose face had gone
even darker shade of magenta.

i'God, this is sensational, Oscar. Dramatize the neck un peu,
dr/e,' murmured Tristan, as Philip's aria poured out of the
speakers.

As
	Chloe raised her head, thrusting out her breasts so that the
caught her rouged, now upright nipples, an approaching

whipped off his pink and purple dressing-gown.

" 'Action,' shouted Tristan.



160
	161



Claiming that his bronchitis had turned into pneumonia, Mikhail
finally arrived and was overwhelmed by the beauty of Valhalla. A
touch of rain had sent the green flames of the wild garlic sweeping
over the woodland floor like a forest fire. Even Rannaldini's
lowering maze of dark yew had a blond rinse of lemon-yellow
flowers.

'You pay me for vorking in such vonderful place?' Mikhail asked
in amazement.

No-one, however, could quite work out whether he really had
been ill or just moonlighting. He had turned up wearing a black
Pavarotti smock, with large pockets for amassing loot. Maria, in the
canteen, soon found her cutlery disappearing.

Then Mikhail started complaining that he missed Baby. Alpheus
was no fun and far too expensive to drink with, and he missed his
wife, Lara, even more, and kept hinting that Liberty Productions
might pay for a plane ticket so she, too, could admire the 'vonders'
of Valhalla. From New York, Rannaldini put his foot down. There
was no way he was having Lara and Mikhail stripping Valhalla of
his lovely new pickings.

Less welcome an arrival was Granny's hunky black-haired
boyfriend, Giuseppe, who wasn't needed to play the ghost of
Charles V for several weeks but who'd rocked up to ogle Tristan's
boys and enjoy free booze on the budget.

'His mausoleum's going to smell worse than the Pearly Gates,'
grumbled Ogborne.

Meanwhile, the digging up of the skeletons seemed to have
disrupted the household ghosts. The night after Mikhail and
Giuseppe arrived, the occupants of the north wing were woken by

bloodcurdling shrieks. When a terrified Lucy, a for once quite
pale-in-the-face Bernard and an unfazed Ogborne, who was eating
a banana, emerged from their cell-like rooms, they found hunky
Giuseppe in hysterics. Having slipped Granny a Mogadon, he was
just returning from an unspecified location, when he'd seen his
own part, the ghost of Charles V, stealing out of a bedroom and
creeping away down the corridor.

'He was all in white, weeth a hood over 'ees face,' gibbered
Giuseppe.

As Giuseppe's breath rivalled Bacchus's after an all-night bash,
everyone assumed he was plastered. Having calmed him down,
Lucy tucked him up in bed beside a snoring Granny.

But the following night, as she was wearily drawing her curtains,
the windows suddenly rattled, the wind shrieked in the chimney
and a ghostly hooded white figure came flitting along the parapets.
She had never known such fear - not even a strangled croak would
come out of her throat. James the lurcher was no help at all, and
. only growled if you tried to shove him off the bed.

More sightings followed. Everyone grew increasingly terrified except
Alpheus, who pooh-poohed any suggestion of spooks.
'I'm sure these apparitions would disappear if you guys went to
d sober for a change,' he added pompously.

The weather, although nearly May, was still freezing. After
the following night Alpheus, mindful of colds, locked his
his curtains against draughts. He had just mounted his exercise bike, with the Don Carlos score on a
nearby music stand so he could study tomorrow's scene, when
achill breeze ruffled the pages. Spinning round Alpheus found
windows still firmly locked.

Suddenly the room felt clammily damp and cold as if he were in
.n underground cave. Next moment a window behind him had
blown open and the heavy dark green velvet curtains were
tfillowing into the room. Outside Alpheus could see the cliff of
wood disintegrating, thrashing and writhing as if caught up in the
frenzy of a mighty gale. But jumping off his bike and rushing to
the other window, he found the moonlit valley all stillness and

.:
	erenity. The wispy white clouds were only crawling past the
ing stars. Not a silver leaf was moving. Far below, the lake lay
t-11 as the blacked-out window of a limousine.

I White and trembling, Alpheus rushed out into the corridor,
along endless dark passages until he reached
i's study. Rannaldini, just back from New York, was all





'But, my dear Alpheus, these things happen. Poor monk was
rumoured to have hanged himself from the beam een your room.
But, then, legend weaves on legend like Mees Havisham's cobwebs
in these great houses. I never tell you because you insist on biggest
bedroom.'

Rannaldini gave Alpheus a brandy but, despite heavy hints, did
not invite him to move into the south wing.

'But my wife, Cheryl, flies in tomorrow. She has a heart murmur.
I cannot subject her to this.'

'Why don't you rent Jasmine Cottage?' suggested Rannaldini.
'Just beyond Paradise village, on the opposite side of the valley.
Hermione recently 'ave it redecorated. I'm sure she would be
'appy to 'ave you there.'

If Liberty Productions picked up the tab, Alpheus felt he could
go with this. A pretty cottage would be a more discreet venue to
entice young women, and le had clocked the fact that Tabitha
Lovell lived just up the road.

After bidding him goodnight, however, Rannaldini added silkily,
'Eef you must creep down my corridors every night to pleasure
Chloe, Alpheus, don't wear that white hooded dressing-gown you
stole from the Hilton, Milan. How can my crew and cast get their
beauty sleep eef they theenk you are ghost of Charles V?' and
grinning evilly, he slammed the door in Alpheus's frantically
mouthing face.


In the morning, as he was leaving Valhalla to inspect Jasmine
Cottage, Alpheus was somewhat spooked to meet Percy the Parson
coming the other way with his Smirnoffbottle of holy water to exorcize
a ghost - who was, in fact, himself.

'I wish he'd exorcize Cheryl,' grumbled Chloe, who was getting
less and less discreet about her affaire with Alpheus.

'What's Cheryl like?' asked Lucy, as she painted a dark brown
semi-circle in Chloe's eye socket.

'Short-legged, noisy and goes for the jugular, like a tweed Jack
Russell,' said Chloe sourly. 'She's the personification of the word
feisty.'

'I hope you two don't come to feistycuffs,' giggled Lucy.


Cheryl, when she arrived, was enchanted by Jasmine Cottage,
which had a modern kitchen, a power shower, a charming garden
with a waterfall and a swing hanging from an ancient apple tree.
On her first evening, a mischief-making Rannaldini invited her to
supper and to see the rushes, which, of course, included Chloe and
Alpheus's spectacular naked bonk. This put Cheryl into orbit.

Hermione, incensed that Chloe looked so good, vowed to steal
Alpheus from her.


Later Alpheus, turned on by the rushes and feeling it might be
expedient to pleasure his wife on her first night- after all, she had
intimate knowledge of all his tax fiddles and could turn nasty suggested
they christen the big brass bed at Jasmine Cottage.

It was not a success.

Stoking away, Alpheus's notion of himself as the great lover was shattered by Cheryl yapping shrilly, 'You don't need to go on all
night, Alpheus. I'm not Chloe, you know.'


Nor were tempers improved by the driest spring on record.
Rannaldini's streams were all disappearing. Blossom whipped off
by the bitter east wind fell down the ever-widening cracks in the
paths. On the parched sunny slopes, saplings shrivelled and died
in their cardboard tower blocks and poor bluebells faded and
curled over without ever reaching their sapphire splendour. There
was less and less grass. Lucy watched the lambs skipping after
Rannaldini's groom, Janice, as she brought them hay each
morning.


Tristan was anxious to dismantle the set in the Great Hall and move
outside, but he still hadn't shot Hermione's nude scene with

Alpheus. On the morning it was scheduled, Hermione rang
Tristan herself because Howie was in Tunisia.

'I can't hear you, Hermione.'

,'the voice,"' whispered Hermione sententiously, 'she hasn't woken yet. My body tells me I haven't had enough sleep. I'll do my
love scene tomorrow afternoon.'

Spitting, Tristan ordered Wolfie to ring up Alpheus and get him
in. to do a couple of cover shots. But when Wolfie called Jasmine
Gottage, an irate Cheryl told him that Alpheus had left for the set two hours ago.. As a result, Cheryl was soon yapping up
Rannaldini's drive, and seeing Chloe coming out of the omnia
vinritamorgates on her way to the post office, blacked her eye with her new crocodile handbag.

This caused huge consternation. Chloe had a starring role in the

scene the day after tomorrow. The chorus, Flora and
who'd nipped off to Prague for the weekend, were all due

rabitha had already booked some polo ponies.

'You could change Chloe's eyepatch to the uwer eye,' suggested


cried Simone in outrage.




164
	165



'Could you hide it with make-up, Lucy?' asked Tristan.

'Not for a few days. The eye's much too bloodshot.'

Only when Tristan suggested she come out later for a consoling
dinner did Chloe stop sobbing into his shoulder, and rush off to
Make Up beseeching poor Lucy to streak her hair for this exciting
date.

Cheryl, meanwhile, was roaring round Valhalla in search of
Alpheus. She was soon joined by forty members of Dame
Hermione's fan club who'd won a Daily Express competition,
entitling them to a day on the set of Don Carlos, and who'd just
arrived by bus. Because Hype-along, the press officer, was frog
marching Baby through a series of interviews in London, Wolfie
was deputed to show them round.

As they passed the mobile canteen, wafting forth an enticing
smell of boeufProvenfal, one of the fans asked about the dear little
house next door.

'It was a hunting lodge for Act One, but in the end we never used
it,' explained Wolfie.

Throwing open the door, he thought for a moment two of his
father's prize pigs had pushed their way inside. Then, to his horror,
he realized he had caught Alpheus and Hermione irflagrante.

Cheryl was about to black Hermione's eye with her crocodile
handbag, when Hermione rose to her feet, wrapping a white Hilton
dressing-gown round her goddess-like form, crying, 'Cheryl, my
dear, calm down! Alpheus and I were only rehearsing for tomorrow
afternoon. No-one should act a scene without rehearsing.'

Such was the steamrolling force of Hermione's personality, they
were all silenced. The fans went off murmuring reverently that
Dame Hermione was such a professional, particularly when she
ordered 'bubbly' on the budget for them all at lunch.


Everyone except Chloe and Cheryl was in stitches over the whole
affair. The crew wanted to know if Alpheus had a crown on his
cock. What, however, a blushing Wolfie reported back to Tristan
and Sexton was that Hermione had pubes bigger than Brahms's
beard.

'I think she ought to trim it before she does a nde scene. Papa
could have told her,' Wolfie blushed even deeper, 'but he's away.'

'How about Mr Brimscombe?' grinned Sexton. 'He'd love to do
it wiv a Strimmer.'

'Alpheus can tell her,' said Tristan. 'I'm busy. You brief him,
Sexton.'

Sexton, however, pussyfooted so much around the subject that Alpheus went the whole hog and Hermione rolled up on the set
the following afternoon with a totally shaved bush. This caused
more rage and hysterics.

'Perhaps itwas fashionable in the sixteenth century,' said Sexton
hopefully.

'We're filming in modern times,' snapped Tristan. 'Get her
ome false pubes,' he ordered Lucy.

'It's called a merkin,' volunteered Granny.

	'Hardly a word that occurs in crosswords,' giggled Meredith.


	'During the film of Carmen,' said Griselda eagerly, 'when Lilian
Watson shaved her armpits by mistake, Make Up had to hold up
hoodng for two hours while they stuck on individual hairs.'

'Oh, I couldn't,' said Lucy aghast. 'I've just spent even longer
coveting Dame Hermione with body makeup.'

.'Rather like varnishing the whale at the Natural History
Museum,' said Meredith sympathetically.

. 'We'll just have to shoot her from the back,' said Tristan, who
was torn between tears of despair and helpless laughter, pardcu

when Hermione summoned him and Wolfie to her caravan
ask if they thought her breasts were too large.

i.: You could always get some smaller ones from Props,' said Wolfie

and both men had to flee clutching their sides.

set was absolutely crowded out. Mr Brimscombe, binoculars
from his scrawny neck, was selling dckets at the door. Ross
who'd been smuggled in by a returned Hype-along to do

fell off a rafter, fortunately landing on the great

As he was very handsome, Dame Hermione looked
r excited. Tristan, however, flipped.

!i *Clear the set! Clear the fucking set!'

don't bother,' said Hermione graciously.

. am I going to hide my microphone?' grumbled Sylvestre,

had to drop it down Hermione's cleavage.

her ass,' volunteered Ogborne.
please!' roared Bernard.
howled Tristan, then lowering his voice. 'Can you do
about the blue veins on her boobs?'

darted forward with concealer, murmuring, 'Don't you get
about taking your clothes off in front of all these people?'
i?Itldeed not.' Hermione looked amazed. 'A woman should be

body.' Then, in indignation, 'Why is that man reading News? Very discourteous of him. Oh, it's you, Meredith. I

ally count.'

grabbed Tristan's camera script to conceal a huge


turning over,' he said hoarsely.




'Action,' shouted Tristan.

'Christ, Alpheus isn't having to act in this scene at all,' hissed
Sylvestre to Wolfie, a few moments later. 'He's bigger than a
fucking Thermos.'

'Hermione ees supposed to be gritting her teeth, Uncle
Treestan,' whispered Simone, 'but she look as though she enjoy
every minute.'

'Cut,' said Tristan, then to Hermione, 'Your husband is virtually
raping you in this scene, ch/r/e. Could you possibly act a bit more
upset?'

'There are beings, Tristan' - roguishly, Hermione quoted him
back at himself- 'who are born for others, who are quite unaware
of their own egos. Elisabetta had far too perfect manners to upset

her elderly partner by showing him she wasn't having a good time.'
Tristan was defeated.
'Okkay, okkay.' He sighed.

They'd just have to film her even more from behind.
'I'd take a wide shot on this one,' he told Valentin.
'One could hardly do anything else.'

Oscar, slumped over the camera ostensibly checking the lights
through his eye-piece, was actually asleep.

'Talk dirty to me, Alpheus,' murmured Hermione, who was used
to being turned on by Rannaldini's crooning obscenities.

'Unless Sexton pays me cash like you,' murmuredback Alpheus,
'I may have difficulty meeting next year's tax bill.'


Chloe was utterly mortified. Alpheus had been pompous and self
regarding.

'But I thought he loved me and would shelter me through life
like a great tree,' she told Tristan, as she toyed with her scallops
Mornay in the Heavenly Host that evening.

'Plants growing in shade miss out on sun and rain,' said Tristan.
Chloe's breasts leaping out of that crimson dress had the same
springy texture as the scallops, he decided.

'You and Baby are stealing the show,' he went on, filling up her
glass. 'You'll get your revenge on Hermione when the reviews
come out. You're so beautiful, Chloe.'

Chloe glanced complacently at her reflection in a nearby mirror.
Lucy's streaking was so subtle. The dark glasses over her blackened
eye showed off the tilt of her nose and the luscious curves of her
smiling crimson mouth. She must buy Lucy a box of chocolates tomorrow.

168


powder Alpheus's coc. -i..

thin so she'd had to extend the natural line along the

with a lipbrush and fill in quite a large gap. But the-end
had been heavenly, particularly in that incredibly skimpy

Tristan had reeked of Eau Sauvage and even put on a suit.
Outin the park, as the orange glow of sunset died away, the occasional
bleat of a lamb and the deep-throated reassuring rumble of
its mother reminded her of Cumbria and made her long for
tjmbling grey streams, geometric walls and mountains rising out of the mist. Why did one feel most homesick when one was miserable?


A Tristan walked Chloe back to the north wing, she cursed herself
for wasting so much of dinner bitching and talking about herself.
he wasn't used to dining with a good listener. The lamp over the
doorway shining through the clematis cast a leaf pattern on
Tristan's face. From the sides of his nose past his beautiful big
mouth, two lines dug trenches that had not been there in January. Don Carlos was taking its toll.

I 	,¥our suite or mine?' she whispered.
There was a long pause. An owl hooted.
",Darling Chloe.'

:
	Are you gay?'

i The leaf pattern quivered as he shook his head.

.: Is ther' e someone else?'

'Something else. Rannaldini's back tomorrow. I have two, three
hours' work to do.' Then, when Chloe looked sullen, 'My father
die last year. Your scene with Alpheus was so like his paintings. Give
me time, Chloe.' He kissed her cheek.

As he wandered off into the garden, rain dripped through the

like some Chinese water torture. The constellation of the
was chasing Leo the Lion across the sky. When push came
to shove and grunt, he didn't want to sleep with Chloe, who, as she
undressed, felt it would have been quite easy to get over Alpheus
if Tristan had made a pass at her.



169




Away from home for so long, people started to lose their moorings,
groups formed and re-formed, cabals sprang up, feuds and
jealousies flourished, as husbands, lovers, children were - sometimes
gladly - forgotten. Poor Rozzy Pringle, working flat out in
both Wardrobe and Make Up and sending most of her wages
home, couldn't forget Glyn, her horrible husband, however,
because he was always ringing up to bombard her with complaints
and demands.

'When he's ratty,' sighed Rozzy, 'I can never tell if he's been
dumped by one of his girlfriends or his business is in trouble
again.'

'No work and all play makes Glyn a kept boy,' observed Meredith
disapprovingly.

Everyone loved Rozzy, who seemed to love everyone, even the
lascivious Mr Brimscombe, who spent hours discussing plants with
her and even gave her access to his tool-shed. Lucy had filled a
window-box outside her caravan with love-in-a-mist. Rozzy remembered
to water it, and took James for walks when Lucy was too busy.

Rozzy loved everyone, but most of all she adored Tristan for his
kindness when her voice gave out. She was always shoving buttered
croissants and big cups of card au lair into his hands. Lucy had to
curb tinges of irritation - after all, Rozzy fussed over her too.
Wardrobe had its own Bendix to wash costumes. Rozzy put in
Lucy's clothes and occasionally dragged Tristan's favourite
peacock-blue shirt offhim when he became too obsessed with work
to change it. As Cheryl had become extremely bolshie, Alpheus
crinkled his eyes in the hope of getting his washing done too, but
drew a blank.

170


i up Bernard was a favourite location pastime, but Rozzy
for him too. Bernard had insisted on his own little office,

between Wardrobe and the smoke-filled ant hill of the
office. Here, he could work out tomorrow's movement

and complete the Figaro crossword, which was faxed
him every morning. On the door was a notice saying: 'First

Director. Please Knock.'

So Baby knocked when he went past.

YGome in. What can I do for you?' asked Bernard.

'Nothing at all. It says, "Please Knock", so I did.'

Bernard was apoplectic, particularly when Baby did it each time

went past, and the habit caught on with everyone else.

, They were all giggling about it in the canteen one lunchtime
when Rozzy lost her temper.

.::'Bernard's a darling,' she shouted at them. 'You only dislike him
Icause he's good at shutting up chatterboxes.' She glared at Baby
d Granny. 'And he refuses to reschedule because someone,' she

z across at Chloe, 'wants to buzz off and sing

Paris.'

;:!iWho wrecked their voice in January singing all over Europe?'

Chloe. 'I suppose you and Bernard have the screaming
hotsfor Tristan de Montigny in common.'

Parlez pour votre self,' drawled Baby.

Then Chloe went as crimson as her lipstick because Bernard was I - ttanding in the doorway. The dreadful silence was only interrupted

' the clatter and chatter of the canteen staff washing up. But
rnard was oblivious of Chloe. Crossing the room, he kissed

Rozzy, s hand.

, 'Thank you, Madame Pringle. May I buy you a drink?'


With fractionally warmer weather filming moved outside to
Rannaldini's garden, which had reached a pitch of late spring
perfection. Tristan decided to kick off with a returning Mikhail
singing a beautiful aria to Hermione. Alas, Mikhail's English had
been so incomprehensible, the taxi driver picking him up at
Heathrow took him to Rugby rather than Rutminster. Mikhail
rang in in tears, saying he couldn't reach Valhalla before early
evening.

Reluctant to waste Hermione, who'd already spent three hours
in Make Up bullying Lucy, Tristan decided to shoot a later scene in
which Philip finds Elisabetta unattended, and sacks her favourite
l,.dy-in-waidng, the Countess of Aremburg. This was the non
part in which he had cast Rozzy, which would at least get
name on the credits. Rozzy was only required to burst into



171





tears, but she was dreadfully nervous even of this piece of mime,
particularly as Rannaldini had just returned from Tokyo and was
scowling from a new chair with 'Executive Producer' printed on the back.

Being called at such short notice, Rozzy had had no time to
wash her hair - which Lucy was able to hide under a very pretty,
short, curly wig - or to remove a few hairs from her chin and
upper lip.

'Some Immac will take them offin a trice,' said Lucy soothingly.
'We haven't got time,' quavered Rozzy.
'Course we have.'

'Lucy,' screamed Hermione.

'Don't leave your old bags unattended,' quipped Meredith, as
Lucy belted off to Hermione's caravan.

'I've nicked a toenail,' moaned Hermione, 'and it's sdcking into
my big toe. Have you got a plaster?'

'Only to put over your mouth,' muttered Lucy.

'Are you nearly ready, Luce?' Wolfie appeared at the door. 'My
father's about to boil over.'

As a result Lucy only had time to put a bit of slap on Rozzy and
pray that the dark base would hide any hairs, before Sylvestre
arrived to mike her up.

Alas, poor Rozzy, struck down by nerves, fled to the honeywagon,
from which, because naughty Sylvestre had not switched off the
mike, the whole crew could hear the sound of Mount Etna
erupting.

'Mrs Pringle's got the runs,' giggled Pushy Galore.

'Pity she's not playing for England,' sighed Ogborne. 'They're
fifty-two for four.'

Even Bernard was smiling. Everyone, however, managed to
compose their faces as Rozzy arrived on the set, except Hermione
who, with merry laughter, proceeded to explain the joke.

'That's enough, Hermione,' snapped Bernard, seeing Rozzy
going crimson. 'Rozzy looks beautiful, and the hair is very nice.'

'That style makes you look years younger,' conceded Hermione,

'but you're a little too red in the face.'
'Probably a hot flush,' sighed Rozzy.
'Oh, no, dear, you're well past that.'

'Let's go for a quick rehearsal.' Tristan came off his mobile to
Aunt Hortense. 'Rozzy, you look wonderful.'

'He could make a warthog feel like Helen of Troy,' grumbled
Pushy.

I'm Elisabetta's lady-in-waiting, I ought to be playing the
Countess, she thought furiously as, with the rest of the ladies of the

, she bobbed around in front of a hedge of white roses trying to get into shot.

'"Countess," sang Alpheus sternly,' "at daybreak you will return to France." '

'Burst into tears, Rozzy,' shouted Tristan.

Rozzy's only problem would have been holding them back any
longer. Particularly when Hermione repeatedly stroked her face. as
she mimed her consoling aria and, between takes, loudly advised

Rozzy to invest in some decent electrolysis.

'It's well worth it a.t your age.'

Tears of such humiliation had gushed out of Rozzy's eyes that
Tristan was genuinely able to congratulate her on a wonderfully
convincing performance, which didn't cheer Rozzy up one bit.


Happily, Hermione's comeuppance was in train. Oscar, who was

:the most famous director of photography in the world for

had decided to avenge both Chloe and Rozzy.

evening, as everyone poured into the viewing room to
the rushes, all that could be heard was Hermione's agitated

Having lit her from beneath in her nude scene with
Oscar had made her bottom look enormous.

.: !.e great globe itself,' said Granny, in a sepulchral whisper.
..:,You should have reduced it with a darker base, Lucy,' giggled


moment, David Attenborough will pop up and lecture us
the mating habits of the hippopotamus,' cried Baby,


Shouts of 'My bottom is not that big, my bottom is not that big,'
drowned by cheers, particularly from Chloe, who gave Oscar
kiss.
. iWhat are you doing after this?' she murmured. 'I owe you.'

;.,. . Tristan laughed, but was cross with Oscar because they ought to
raithoot. He was overruled by Sexton and Rannaldini, who both
'd big bums and small budgets.

0 " " " " '

y u know the meaning of the word calhpygean . asked

xton cosily, as he tried to bear Hermione away for a consoling


Hermione shrugged him off. She wasn't going to let such a
¢mnmon little man take advantage.

had laughed as heartily as anyone over Dame
humiliation, until Rannaldini sidled up to him.

¢I be honest, Alpheus? You look in great shape in those nude

preened. 'But in future I think you should leave off
nose. It looks a leede grotesque.'




172


Later, on the terrace, oblivious of an exquisite coral sunset,
Hermione and Alpheus could be seen berating a sleeping Tristan.


Sexton was not cast down by Hermione's rejection. He had just
come back from Cannes where, showing a ten-minute trailer of
Chloe and Alpheus in the sack in order to sell more distribution
rights, he'd had to massage even bigger egos than theirs. Now he
retreated to the production office and continued four different
deals on four different mobiles. 'I may look calm,' he was fond of
telling people, 'but I'm not.'

Poor Hype-along Cassidy was not feeling calm either. Controlling
the publicity was a nightmare. Hermione, incensed that
nothing about herself had appeared recently, was unaware that her
sacked make-up girl had just dumped in News of the World: 'How I
Concealed Dame Hermione's Turkey Neck, and How She Ate
Technicians for Breakfast.'

Hype-along's rise at dawn on Sunday mornings to empty the
village shop of papers was becoming a common occurrence. He'd
also had terrible trouble with Baby, who, when he'd taken him up
for interviews in London, had fallen asleep over drinks with the Guardian, and on the way to lunch with Lynn Barber had jumped
taxi to buy clothes in Jermyn Street and not been traced till the
following day.

Saddest of all, Tristan, the person to whom everyone wanted to
speak, was so violently anti-press he wouldn't give interviews at all.
Hype-along, however, was working towards a quiet lunch at the Old
Bell with Valerie Grove of The Times.


'I think Oscar and Chloe are an item,' Griselda told everyone, as
Chloe looked more and more magical in the rushes and Oscar
slept even more during the day.

But Chloe was not out of the woods. Baby was watching porn on
the Internet one afternoon when up popped a teenage Chloe,
cavorting with a black girl and a goat.

'Goodness,' gasped Lucy, when Baby rushed in to tell her. 'Was
the goat female?'

'I saw its udder shudder. In mitigation, it did appear to be having
a good dme.'

'I do hope Rannaldini doesn't know about it,' shivered Lucy.
'I'm sure he'd use it against her.'


Someone was pinching clothes from Wardrobe, especially ties.
Griselda and Simone, whose continuitywas being screwed up, went
out to the Heavenly Host to drown their sorrows and asked Lucy

174


which at least gave Lucy a chance to quiz Simone

Tristan.

I 'What's his aunde Hortense like?'

.. :'Abatdeaxe, who demand the whole time,' sighed Simone. 'And

. at all motherly to Uncle Tristan. When she drop him as a baby
drawing room, she ring for maid to pick him up.'

Then Simone added slyly: 'Valentin, Sylvestre and Ogborne
ranted to crash dinner tonight, Lucy. They all fancy you, but they

'ave eyes for Uncle Tristan.'

'That's ridiculous,' spluttered Lucy, sending her glass of red

'Of course I don't.' Then, as she frantically mopped up with
:her pink scarf, 'I wouldn't dream--'

, 'Dream is perhaps the only thing you should do,' said Simone
-gently. 'I love my uncle Tristan but he is very damaged.'


the ghostly sightings inside Valhalla, Lucy had taken
sleeping outside in her make-up caravan, which seemed less
claustrophobic than those little cells and long, dark, spooky corri

dors. But returning from the Heavenly Host, as she scuttled past
;silent generators and empty dark-windowed Hair and Wardrobe

she wasn't sure. It would be so easy for a ghost to leap

out from behind an empty lorry. Even the moon and the stars had
rted her.

As she approached her caravan, still upset by what Simone had
xid about Tristan, she. froze at the sound of pitiful, anguished
obbing. Oh, God, was it the ghost of Caroline Beddoes, mourning her lost love, the blacksmith?

'You might at least try and look fierce,' she hissed at James,
who'd stopped in his tracks with his head on one side.

The sobbing grew more pitiful. Lucy's Dutch courage evaporated.

'Who's there?' she quavered, as she unlocked the caravan door,
screaming as a grey shadowy figure loomed over her.

Then, as she fumbled for the light switch, she heardJames's bony
tail whacking against the open door and Rozzy's choked voice
saying, 'Don't turn it on, I look so terrible, and I don't want any of
the others to know.'

'Whatever's the matter? Let me get you a drink.'

' 'I don't want one.'

Lucy did. As she fumbled her wayto the fridge, Rozzy was racked
by a fit of coughing. Then it all came tumbling out. She'd been to
the doctor that evening to hear the result of some tests, and been
told she'd got throat cancer.

'Oh, Rozzy.' Lucy collapsed on the bench seat opposite.



175




'There are lots of things one can do,' wept Rozzy. 'Voice boxes,
treatment, operations and things, but my career's finished. I'll
never sing again. Even worse, we're so broke, Lucy, and I'm all
we've got to live on. I feel the prison doors clanging shut on a
solvent future.'

Lucy was devastated.

'You'll be able to earn money as a PA. Everyone thinks you're
brilliant. You must get a second opinion. The Campbell-Blacks and

Rannaldini have a brilliant private doctor, James Benson.'

'I couldn't possibly afford him.'

'I can,' said Lucy stoutly, as she took a bottle out of the fridge.
'You've been so good to me.'

As soon as she'd poured Rozzy a drink, Lucy wrote her out a
cheque for six hundred pounds. After all, she got paid at the end
of the month.

Later refusing all Lucy's entreaties to sleep in the caravan, Rozzy

insisted on dragging herself back to the cells.
'I don't want people suspecting anything.'
'You must tell Glyn.'

'I can't.' Rozzy started to cry again. 'He'll be so cross with me.
Thank you, Lucy, for being such a friend.'

Lucy didn't sleep all night, thinking of a ravishing voice that
would sing no more, like a nightingale being strangled. She had
been sworn to secrecy, but Tristan, seeing her red eyes next
morning, wheedled the truth out of her and was equally horrified.
Pretending he'd no idea that Rozzy was ill, he casually asked her

out to dinner. Inevitably Rozzy asked Lucy to do her make-up.
'I can't let Tristan dine with an awful old hag.'

At the Old Bell, away from gossips, Tristan told Rozzy he'd been
asked to direct Der Rosenkavalier at Glyndebourne. 'Eef your voice
is rested enough, I would like you to sing the Marschallin. It won't
be for two years.'

It was lucky they were sitdng in a dark alcove so no-one could see
Rozzy weeping again. Tristan knew she would never be able to take
up the offer: she might be dead in two years, if, as Lucy suspected,
she had secondaries elsewhere, but at least it would give her hope.


Next day Rozzy was beside herself. 'I never dreamed Tristan
thought that much of me,' she kept saying to Lucy, who was bitterly
ashamed to find herself feeling irritated.

176


At the end of May, the weather finally gave way to heatwave. Rozzy
"oughed more in the dry, dusty heat and grew thinner, her adoring

eyes
	bigger in her shrunken face as she gazed at Tristan.

	gazed longingly at Rozzy, but even on the hottest day he

ouldn't take off his shirt in case it dented his authority. He
encouraged Wolfie to do the same.

For the first year ever, Rannaldini didn't sprinkle his lawns, so

would look more parched and Spanish. He allowed Mr

to water only selected plants: the rest could die of
thus realizing his plan of a Buckingham Palace sweep down to the lake, which was getting perilously low.

i Again, despite delays, rows and nightmarish rescheduling,
beautiful scenes were being shot, particularly of the great duet in

which gallant Posa defies Philip II on the subject of religious persecution.
Here, he so captivates the King, he is nicknamed 'the

's
	Favourite' by the entire court. It became a running gag on
that anyone singled out by Tristan became 'lefav0ri du roi'.

Playing Posa movingly, however, was not enough to Mikhail, who
was getting bored. Paradise was a lovely little village but he wished
there were more of it. He was also frightfully jealous that Baby was
about to have a shove-and-grunt scene with Chloe.

, The occasion, shot in the cow-parsley in the shade of a huge lime to blot out the burning sun, was not without incident. They were
just about to turn over, when Lucy hissed, 'Cover up, Chloe, nous
avons company.'

It was Percy the Parson, pretending to be bird-watching.
'Obviously looking for great tits,' said Ogborne as, with gi-eat
presence of mind, Wolfie whipped off his dark blue polo shirt and
pulled it over Chloe's head.



177




The beauty of his young, broad-shouldered body was lost on no

one. Simone immediately took a Polaroid.

'Oh, hunky, hunky dory,' sighed Baby.

'I've never been topless before,' joked Wolfie, to hide his embarrassment.

'It's Baby the vicar's mad about,' hissed Chloe, as Percy raised
his binoculars to peer through an elder bush. 'Better slip a dunce's
hat over his cock.'

'My cock is not a dunce.'

'May I have this dunce?' asked Meredith, who shouldn't have
been there either, as there were no sets to dress, and everyone
collapsed with laughter.

Precious shadows drained away until at last Percy moved on.
'Get Wolfie's shirt off, Chloe,' yelled Tristan. 'Christ, I feel like
Icarus about to melt,' he added, taking offhis director's cap to mop
his brow with his arm.

'At least you don't have to sustain a hard-on,' grumbled Baby.
'Dong Carlos,' said Chloe.

They had all corpsed once more when Tabitha thundered round
the corner on The Engineer, who shied violently and nearly
unseated her. The additional sight of Tristan, a haft-naked Wolfie
and all the crew leering joyfully at a naked Chloe and Baby, put her
into orbit.

'You disgusting perve,' she screamed at Tristan, 'turning yourselves
on making revolting pore movies.'

Swinging The Engineer round, she galloped off in a cloud of
dust.

'Pissed as usual,' drawled Baby. 'I dropped off a cheque for her
husband last night. Even Sharon was drunk.'

'Don't be a bitch, Baby,' said Lucy furiously.

'Shut up, all of you,' shouted Bernard, seeing how upset Tristan

Was.

But the fun had gone out of the day.


As Chloe walked into the canteen Wolfie handed her a big glass of
iced lime juice.

'Oh, you angel,' said Chloe, taking a great gulp. 'Will you marry
me when you grow up?'

'I'm afraid there's rather a long queue,' piped up Meredith. 'I'd
like a very small prawn salad, Maria darling.'

Maria, the cook, loved watching the French crew. She loved the
sensual way they tore apart their bread, and undressed their
prawns with beautifully manicured fingers, knotting their napkins
round their necks to protect their perfectly ironed shirts, propping

178



	knives and forks up on their plates, savouring what they were

drinking each glass of wine slowly and reflectively, chattering
all the time.

Tristan, although he often forgot to eat, would make love in the

leisurely fashion, imagined Maria. Happily married, with a

on the way, she could still allow herself to daydream. She had i been to the hospital for a scan the day before and proudly

a photograph of the baby.

'Oh, how lovely!' cried Lucy ecstatically. 'Look at its nose, and head and little legs.'

'Rather like E.T.' Meredith took the photograph gingerly as if it were a newborn baby.

'What a little angel,' said Oscar, who was the proud father of five.

'Hello, Tab,' shouted Griselda, as Tabitha haft sheepishly, half
defiantly, sidled into the canteen and dropped her bag on an

: table. 'Come and look at this sweet little babba.'

'Oh, no,' Lucy muttered. But it was too late.

Tab gazed at the photograph, tears trickled down her cheeks.
.'It's adorable,' she whispered. Next moment she had fled.
'What/s the matter with that girl today?' grumbled Ogbome.

"
	'Someone's left a bag,' said Simone, who noticed everything.
Inside were only a tattered Dick Francis, a bottle of Evian, a

Coutts Switch card and photos of Isa, Sharon and The Engineer.
'It's Tab's,' said Wolfie.

'Not the sort to bother with a compact, lipstick or even a comb,'
mid Chloe dismissively.

'She doesn't need to,' Wolfie was amazed to hear himself saying.
Behind his smooth, broad, fast-browning back, Meredith and
Baby exchanged glances.

: 'Do you think he and Tab are going to be the next item?'
6riselda whispered excitedly to Simone, who was suddenly looking
very sad.

Tab refused to answer her telephone but, seeing her dirty green
Golf outside Magpie Cottage, Wolfie decided to return her bag in the tea-break. Through the car windows, he breathed in great wafts
of wild garlic pestled by rain and the soapy smell of the hawthorns.
In the lane up to Magpie Cottage, light brown puddles reflected hedgerows and overhanging trees like an album of sepia
photographs.

Tab's lawn was blue with speedwell. A few white irises were
fighting a losing battle with the nettles round the egg-yolk-yellow

	front door The reek of more wild
	from the woods behind

	didn't
	dustbins. No

d the bell let h



179





Tabitha, cuddling Sharon on the sofa, was wearing a pale green
vest, a bikini bottom, dirty gym shoes and was watching racing on
television with the sound turned down. Her face was deathly
white, except for her reddened eyes, but nothing could take away
the beauty of her long pale legs.

'What are you doing here?' she asked.

Sharon, who had better manners, jumped down and brought
Wolfie a small rug, revealing a pile of dust. Wolfie handed Tab her
bag.

'I brought this back.'

'Thanks.' Staggering to her feet, kicking an empty half-bottle of
vodka under the sofa, antagonism fighting with loneliness in her
eyes, Tab asked him if he'd like a cup of tea.

Wolfie followed her into the kitchen and nearly fainted.

'I'm sorry.' Tab smashed a cup, as she tried to get the kettle
under the tap in a hopelessly overcrowded sink. 'I only tidy up
before Isa comes back.'

She had cut herself on the cup. Tugging off a piece of kitchen
roll, Wolfie wrapped it round her finger, then started to load the
contents of the sink, mostly glasses, into the dishwasher, which was

empty except for a shoal of silver on the bottom.
'How's your marriage?' he asked.
'A bed of roses.'

Wolfie looked sceptical.

'With the thorns sticking upwards,' said Tab.

'You could stop drinking.'

'I don't drink at all, I've given up.'

'What's this, then?' Wolfie produced the Evian bottle out of
her bag.

Tab brightened. 'I'd forgotten that. I think we're out of tea
bags.' Fretfully she opened a cupboard and a lot of pasta packets
descended on her head. 'Oh, Christ, we'd better have a slug of that
instead.'

But before she could grab the Evian bottle, Wolfie had emptied
it into the sink.

'Whydya want to waste perfectly good alcohol?' screamed Tab.

'Now what am I going to do?'

'Go to AA.'

'One is supposed to meet rather nice men there. I might find a
new husband.'

'I'll take you along. There must be a Rutminster branch. I'll
check out the time of the next meeting.'

'Just stop it,' Tab flared up again.

on the trees outside Wolfie across the

valley at tassels of rain hanging from the clouds. They wouldn't be
shooting for a bit.

Why had she been so upset at lunchtime? he asked, knowing the
answer, but feeling she needed to talk.

'It reminded me of my own baby,' muttered Tab. 'Isa won't
discuss it - won't really discuss anything. Then I got a letter from
Mummy this morning, raving about my brother Marcus's recital in
Moscow. And how charming Alexei, Marcus's lover, was being. I
bet she drives him crackers, and the mean old cow's locked her
bedroom-door so I can't help myself to her stuff.'

Wolfie laughed but, noticing Tab shivering, unearthed a bottle
of orange squash, poured an inch into a mug and switched on the
kettle as she talked.

'Even if everyone else thought I was a nightmare,' Tab was
saying, 'I was always convinced I could whisde Daddy back.
Marrying Isa was the easiest way to hurt him. Christ, I need a
drink.'

Wolfie poured the boiling water on to the orange squash.
'Have this instead.'

'And another thing,' Tab was pacing round the kitchen,

cooing over the photograph of that baby reminded me.

and awful I was when my stepsister Perdita arrived, and
even worse when Daddy and Taggie adopted Xav and Bianca. I
tried to be good, but I wasn't.'

:As she hung her blonde head, she reminded Wolfie of the
¢owsfips fading in the valley.

'So did I,' he said roughly. 'I was Papa's first child, and now I

seven stepbrothers and -sisters, not to mention Little Cosmo,

and I wanted to kill each one when it arrived.

thinking, When will Papa ever have the tiniest bit of
or time left for me?'

do make me feel better,' sighed Tab. 'If Mummy suddenly

can drown our sorrows.'

: As she took a sip of orange squash listlessly, Wolfie noticed how
her arms were. 'When did you last eat?'
. 'Dlmno.'

telephone rang.

'You answer it.' Tab led him back into the sitting room.

were Isa, it might make him sit up, but it was Bernard

fire.

said Wolfie, putting down the receiver, then blushing.
like to have dinner tonight?'

l't ask me out.'

Wolfie thought Tab was going to




180
	'
	181


'You're like a very rare and beautiful orchid,' he stainmered.
'People feel they ought not to pick you.'

'That's nice.' For a second Tab examined Wolfie's dark blue
eyes, matching his polo shirt, his square-jawed, slightly old
fashioned Action Man features, his reddish complexion turning

brown. He would make a good, dependable friend.
'I'd like to,' she said.
'I'll take you to Shako's.'
'We'd never get in.'

'Wanna bet? There are advantages in having a famous surname.

We can take your dustbins to the tip on the way.'

'Oh look! There's Daddy.'

Tab lurched towards the television, turning up the sound and
fingering her father's face. Wolfie and he were both tall and blond
but it was like comparing a cob with a thoroughbred.

Rupert had just paid seventy-five thousand to make a late entry
in the Derby.

'That's a lot of money,' John Oaksey was saying. 'You must be

sure Peppy Koala'll do well.'

'Very,' said Rupert.

'Oh, my God.' Tabitha had turned as pale green as her vest. 'If
Peppy Koala wins, Isa will murder me.'


She rang at nine o'clock just as Wolfie was leaving Valhalla, her
voice slurred.

'I'm sorry, I can't make it.'

'Course you can, I've already left.'


The heatwave chugged on. Between filming, people played
croquet and tennis, swam in Rannaldini's beautiful pool, got lost
in the maze and helped Granny knit squares of his patchwork quilt.
The hawk-eyed Simone went round routing out sunbathers
because a tan screwed up continuity. Rozzy watered dying plants,
sewed thousands of seed pearls on an ivory satin dress for
Hermione to wear at Philip II's coronation and kept wonderfully
cheerful.

Dr James Benson had been so kind to her, she told Lucy with
passionate gratitude. He was such an attractive, sympathetic man.
Whenever Rozzy had to disappear for treatment, Lucy covered up
for her, explaining she'd had to rush home to deal with some
domestic problems. Lucy spent much of her spare time surreptitiously
making Rozzy a wig.

As befitting an international maestro, Rannaldinijetted in and
out criticizing everything and everyone, slowing down filming,

182


it was alreaay

spiralling. Rumours of the runaway budget were sweeping

and Hollywood. Tristan had already ploughed in five

and seen it vanish, mostly in Meredith's decorating costs.
t was as though Rannaldini had thrown petrol over the notes and

fire to them. But Tristan couldn't stop to worryabout money:
finishing the film was all that mattered.

Alpheus, too, was making no attempt to keep down the budget.
Having finally screwed a Jaguar out of Sexton, he now wanted a
runaround for Cheryl.

'He's already giving her the runaround,' observed Baby, as every
day, wearing face masks, Alpheus and Pushy jogged bouncily off
into the yellowing park.

Poor Cheryl spent a lot of time spying up trees and was mistaken

a member of the press by Mr Brimscombe, who removed her
ladder to much squawking.

.Hermione insisted on her limo to and from River House being

on permanent standby. She also demanded unlimited champagne,
and fresh flowers each day, both in her caravan and on her sunhat.
She still thought Sexton was a nasty, common little man for
eurbing her expenses - everyone knew caviare, like seminal fluid,
good for the vocal cords.

'Nor was Sexton setting a very good example. His worries about
the budget had not deterred him from employing a ravishing new
production secretary calledJessica, on the flimsy grounds that her
telephone manner kept the backers sweet. Clearly she had not
been hired for her typing. Copies of her first memo from Sexton
'Please will all the cast assemble for a publicity shit in the Great
Hall at twelve moon' - were already circulating the unit.



183





After a nice break with George, Flora was back to accompany Chloe
in the Veil Song. For this Tristan had introduced a chorus of
ladies-in-waiting, picked from the prettiest extras who would be
seen poring over Tatler, and playing bridge and tennis. Eboli or,
rather, Chloe - would dazzle in tennis whites. Flora, as the
Queen's detective, would flirt and strum Chloe's racquet like a
mandolin.

Flora, terrified of acting, was further demoralized to discover
her old enemy Serena Westwood, the record producer, had
rolled up to see how filming was going. Even with temperatures
in the nineties Serena, in an apple-green suit, looked as though
she'd just come out of the fridge. She had also brought four
year-old Jessie, who Little Cosmo promptly pushed into the lily
pond. 'Uncle Roberto' had regrettably displayed a similar lack of
chivalry towards Jessie's mother: he had dropped her after the
recording and refused to answer any of her telephone calls.

Lunching in the canteen, Serena and Helen, who had no idea
that Serena had had an affaire with Rannaldini, which she was
frantic to re-ignite, were joined by Hermione in her big straw hat
decorated with yellow roses. The three women were all old flames
of Flora's George and, not realizing Flora had wandered in, were
loudly agreeing how attractively macho George was, and how
anyone so rich and powerful could free himself in five minutes to
marry Flora, if he really wanted to.

'How old is George?' mused Serena.

'About a year younger than me,' said Helen. 'We used to laugh
about his being my toy-boy.'

Hermione, as Rannaldini's long-term mistress, detested any

that Helen be to

'When were you fifty, dear?' she enquired beadily. 'Was it in '94
or '95?'

Helen choked on her spinach and bacon salad. 'I am not forty
four yet, Hermione,' she said furiously.

, 'Aren't you, dear?' said Hermione blithely, then peering into
Helen's face. 'Those chandeliers Meredith installed are quite
lovely but not very flattering if you're heavily lined. After the
movie, I'd encourage Rannaldini to return to more subdued

lighting.'

A hush had fallen on the canteen. Glancing round, Serena saw
Chloe killing herself and Flora looking extremely unhappy, and
hastily asked after George.

'He's working in Germany,' mumbled Flora.

	Serena raised eyebrows plucked thin as the new moon.

.
	'Is that wise?'

'My Bobby's in Australia,' chipped in Hermione, 'but we have a
relationship of trust.'

Grabbing a Mars bar and a packet of crisps for Trevor, Flora
retreated, chuntering, to Make Up to find Lucy also going spare.

"
	On the premise that she adored children, little Jessie had been
,dumped on her to stop her prattling during takes. Jessie, having
up-ended Lucy's make-up box, was now trying to rouse James from
his siesta by tickling his long nose with a powder brush.

'He's going to take her hand off in a minute.'

),"Let Trevor do the honours,' said Flora sourly. 'He loathes chil
then. Oh, hell, Rannaldini'sjust rolled up in that flash orange car.
He'll be wearing white polo-necks soon and combing his hair in
!itlle tendrils over his forehead.'

, Sleek, suntanned, satanic, Rannaldini had decided the Veil Song
tmeded gingering up with a spot of sapphic necking between Flora
and one of the ladies-in-waiting.

: o shall we choose?' murmured Rannaldini. 'Chloe, perhaps?
Although maybe even randy little Tebaldo wouldn't risk jumping
tm the King's mistress.'

Running his eye lasciviously over the chorus, he noticed Pushy
Iaing around in rose-red gingham, like an apple under a water

and beckoned her over.

tven Lucy couldn't calm an hysterical Flora as she applied
dt'igner stubble to her ashen cheeks. Flora took Foxie, her puppet
fox and adored mascot, everywhere with her. But this time, she
ed, Foxie must stay in the caravan with James and Trevor, in

he became corrupted.

'loxie's face must be turned to the wall.'




184 18fi



The light was ravishing. A rare downpour had brightened the late
spring greenery. Unearthly white lilacs wafted forth heavenly
scent. A froth of cow-parsley merged into the rose-ripped barley.

Then, as Chloe and Flora sang about the randy King trying to
seduce the veiled beauty, Flora had to act out the scene with Pushy.

'Just a queek snog.' Tristan patted her padded grey linen
shoulder.

I cannot go on, thought Flora after they had notched up twenty
nightmarish takes, because she was groping Pushy with all the
enthusiasm of one de-fleaing a rabid dog. Even the cuckoo mocked
her from a nearby ash grove.

'"Ah, weave your veils, fair maidens,"' sang the chorus, as they
swayed about desperate to get into shot.

Taking a sadistic pleasure in how much this must be hurting
Serena, Helen and Hermione, Rannaldini kept strolling over to
show Flora exactly how the pass should be made, which Pushy
clearly adored, judging from the way she giggled and wriggled
beneath his wandering hands. He would then seize Flora's hands
and slap them like a weatherman's suns on various embarrassing
parts of Pushy's anatomy.

'Maestro Rannaldini gives off enough electricityto make the
generators superfluous,' said a disapproving voice. 'More cheerfully,
Australia are two hundred and fifty for no wicket.'

It was Baby eating a large strawberry ice.

'Remember the times I've had to snog Dame Hermione,' he
whispered to Flora. 'Just shut your eyes and think of income.'

Then, when she didn't laugh, he grabbed Foxie from Lucy's
caravan, and clasping his furry puppet paws together, kept raising
them above his head like a cheerleader.

'It's no good crying,' hissed Rannaldini, as a tear trickled down
Flora's cheek.

The reek of decaying wild garlic, indistinguishable from the
breath and armpits of the crew, was making her feel sick. How dare
those three witches, Serena, Helen and Hermione, sit there

despising her? How dare Wolfie fill in his lottery tickets?

Oh, darling George, prayed Flora, come to my rescue.

And suddenly Flora's prayer was answered as George, unable to
resist checking how shooting was going, ruined the first perfect

take by noisily landing his helicopter in the next field.

'We'll go again,' shouted Tristan.

Storming through the buttercups, terrible as an army with
banners, George saw that devil incarnate Rannaldini and that
smooth bastard Montigny, his peacock-blue shirt flapping against
his lean, taut, dark gold body, and Wolfgang, blond as a Nordic

	and Baby, a laughing Cupid, and hundreds of smarmy Frogs

over his darling Flora as she groped some ringleted tart. But he misread the excitement on their faces as desire, when

was, in fact, delighted anticipation that someone might at last

going to take out Rannaldini. Either way George flipped.
Bellowing at Tristan, sending cameras and crew flying, ordering Flora off the set, George grabbed Rannaldini by his white shark
fldn lapels, threatening to bury him, until Clive and his pack of heavies dragged him off.

Analysing it afterwards, Flora wondered guiltily if it had been
because George was looking so uncharacteristically brick red and
sweaty, and because his wool suit - it had been cold in Dfisseldorf
first thing - suddenly looked too tight for him, but irrationally she
also flipped.

'I can't walk off in the middle of a take, it's totally unprofessional,'
she screamed. 'It's only a grope, you bloody Victorian
prude.'

"Pack your stooff, we're going,' yelled back George.

, 'We are not.'

. Flanked by bodyguards, Rannaldini went on the offensive.

, 'Didn't you 'ear the lady?'

As George swung around the hatred so distorted his face that Flora thought he was going to kill Rannaldini.

I'll get you, you wop bastard!' he bellowed. Then, without a
kward glance, he stumbled off in the direction of his heli¢opter.
'And you're not having custody of Trevor,' Flora screamed after


.. 'Why don't you go into the diplomatic service, Rannaldini?'

sighed Baby.

'Who do I have to sleep with to get off this movie?' said a shaking
Flora.

Tristan laughed and said how sorry he was.

'I'm going to London tonight, I'll take you somewhere fantastic
tomorrow evening.'

After that Flora completed the scene in one take.

Baby, not unpleased by the turn of events, also comforted Flora.
He would buy her dinner and then, if she still needed to drown her sorrows, they would go on to Ogborne's birthday party.




186
	187



Rolling up at Magpie Cottage to take Tabitha to Ogborne's party,
Wolfie was horrified to go slap into Isa, unexpectedly returned
from Australia. The odds on Peppy Koala for the Derby had been
shortening alarmingly. Rannaldini was furious at losing the colt
and, not wanting to lose him as an owner or Tab as a wife, in no
particular order, Isa had decided to stay awake and attend the party
to protect his property.

He had missed Tab's birthday at the beginning of June, but had
brought her back more Quercus, the sweet, lemony scent he loved.
It smelled wonderful on her just bathed body, but it didn't match
up to Wolfie's present: a short, sleeveless, pale blue suede dress
from Hermes, held up on one slender shoulder by a silver chain.
It was also a reward: Tab hadn't had a drink for three weeks.

She looked so beautiful, Wolfie could hardly breathe, particularly
when she flung her scented arms round his neck, whispering
it was the loveliest dress she'd ever had. Isa was looking extremely
wintry.

Over at Ogborne's party, which was taking place around
Rannaldini's swimming-pool, a relay race, crew against cast, was in
deafening progress. The crew was tipped to win, because
Rannaldini, a powerful swimmer who wanted to show off his
rippling muscles and flashy crawl, had graciously joined their side.

'Bernard looks more like a walrus than ever,' Chloe whispered
to Simone, as the crew were held back by the first assistant
director's ponderous breaststroke.

Lucy, due to take over from Bernard, quivered on the edge of
the pool, dying to hide her white body under the water. Having
spent so much time on location in hot countries, however, she
swam very well. Spurred on by the sight of Rannaldini, the crew's
last swimmer, poised to plunge into ferocious action, she streaked
up the pool to roars of applause.

'Bravo, Lucy.' As she lurched forward to touch the brass rail,
Rannaldini's mahogany body flew over her head. Alas, Alpheus,
the cast's last swimmer, had had an Olympic trial and emerged like
an otter at the other end pipping an enraged Rannaldini to the
post. Vowing to take both Pushy and Cheryl off Alpheus,
Rannaldini stormed off to change.

There was a chorus of wolf whistles as Lucy climbed panting out of the pool. 'Pity you're always hiding that gorgeous body under a
shirt and jeans, Miss Latimer,' yelled Ogborne, who was now
wearing Hermione's rose-trimmed sunhat on his shaved head.
Already drunk, he was doing very well for presents.

Tab gave him a purple and white striped shirt from Harvie &
Hudson, confessing that in her drinking days she had bought it four sizes too big for Isa.

'Thank you,' said Ogborne, kissing her. 'Pity you're off the
booze. I was hoping to get a job carrying you home after parties.'
Tab giggled. All the men had gasped when she'd rolled up in
suede dress, then sighed in disappointment to see a
lowering Isa in her wake. Chloe, however, spotting fresh talent,
idled up to Isa.


the hero of the evening after his winning swim, was
a wonderful time. Pushy, who he'd pleasured earlier in the

was looking very lovely and so was Serena. But no-one

He was just edging towards her when he choked
vol-au-vent. His wife, Cheryl, had swept in, a vision in
lace, showing even more boob than Pushy.
never told me you were coming,' he hissed.
never asked,' hissed back Cheryl.

.' eesus naw, you 'ave never look more enticing.' Rannaldini,

radiant in pale beige linen, clicked his fingers for Clive to
Cheryl a glass of Krug. 'Let me show you my garden.' Then,

Serena moving in on him, desperate for a showdown, he

swaying hunk with fretted black Charles II hair. 'Serena,

you must remember Granny's partner, Giuseppe,' and
them together he whisked Cheryl into the shrubbery.


s Tristan?' asked Tab, who wanted him to see her in her

French dress.

to London,' said Simone. 'In a way it's easier when my

here - the women don't compete for him, the men




188
	189


Tab didn't think so at all and was very disappointed. 'That
Giuseppe,' she stormed, turning to Wolfie with all the disapproval
of the reformed drinker, 'has just thrown up in Rannaldini's
delphinium bed and blamed Maria's paella.'


The party roared on. Ogborne, Sylvestre and even newly married
Valentin were trying to get offwithJessica, Sexton's ravishing new
production secretary. Chloe was finding Isa desperately heavy
going.

'Why are you known as the Black Cobra?' she asked.

'Because I'm lethal.' Isa yawned and looked at his watch: he still
hadn't made his number with Rannaldini.

Neither had Serena. Desperate to win back Rannaldini, she
flirted more and more outrageously with Giuseppe, until Granny,
knitting quietly away under a walnut tree, wanted to plunge his
needles into Rannaldini's heart for setting the whole thing up.

The evening's main topic of conversation, however, was George
Hungerford's flying visit, and whether Flora should have entered
into the spirit of her part. Most of the crew said they would have
been only too happy to grope Pushy. Soon Hermione was loudly
putting her oar in.

'I cannot understand why Flora Seymour made such a fuss. I have
often made love to young women on stage.'

'Can you get me some comps in the front row next time you're
at it?' called out an excited Sexton, to guffaws all round.

Hermione flounced off. Trust such a common little man to lower
the tone.

Emerging stars reflected milkily in the silken green water. The
party was growing more raucous. Those with good bodies had
started skinny-dipping.

'Those roses need watering,' said Valentin, emptying a bottle of

red over Hermione's sunhat, which was still on Ogborne's head.
'Where's Flora?' asked Simone.

'Having dinner with Baby at the Pearly Gates,' said Lucy.

'No, she isn't, they've just arrived,' crowed Griselda, as, followed
by Trevor the terrier, Flora and Baby drifted hand in hand through

the buttercups. 'I always said those two were an item.'

'Oh, Grizel, when will you learn?' sighed Meredith.

Ogborne, dripping red wine, and more delighted to have a stale
Pearly Gates Scotch egg from Trevor than a magnum of Mott from

Baby and Flora, patted the bemused little dog over and over again.
'It's the fort wot counts, Trevor, my lad.'

A snake in the water caused shrieks of horror, particularly when

190


,fished it out by its tail, killed it with one crack on the side of

It turned out to be an adder.

eat snake in Australia,' he informed his admiring audi
'It tastes just like fanny.'
'How would you know?' asked Ogborne pointedly.
My brother told me,' said Baby, to howls of mirth.
'Baby is so attractive,' sighed Simone.


ii.: Ca-ashing around, like a fretful moth, searching for Rannaldini,

ltermione perked up when the singing started and she won first

in the not-so-friendly fight to hog the microphone.

to Watch Over Me' was soon blasting squirrels and
Out of the trees within a half-mile radius.
after several snorts of cocaine, was in a wicked mood, his
eyes glittering, his bronze curls tangled round his handsome face.
lda was thumping him on the back for being exactly the right

weight at the moment, when Hermione charged up to them.
'Please protect me from that common little man.'
'Which one?' Griselda stared around.

,-.....:'Sexton,' hissed Hermione.

'Oh, right,' said Baby thoughtfully. 'Not many people know

went to Eton.'

'Eton,' said Hermione incredulously. 'Eton?'

.'Certainly did. Sexton thought he'd get on better in the film
business if he acquired an East End accent, so he took elocution
lemons.'

:: "He's so modest, he doesn't like to talk about his very grand
ily,' murmured Griselda.

.Five minutes later, she and Baby were crying with laughter as

they watched Sexton, looking as delightedly bewildered by
Hermione's unexpected attentions as Trevor had over Ogborne's
otch egg.

'You're not to tease,' Hermione was telling him roguishly. 'One
can always tell an Etonian from his air of quiet authority. I expect
you played cricket against my very good friend Rupert Campbell
Black, who must have been at Harrow at around the same time.'

Baby was so entranced he could hardly be dragged away to sing
'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square' with Granny and Mikhail.
'Oh, I love this tune,' sighed Flora.

She was just wondering where George was when Baby sang, 'And
when you stopped and smiled at me,' and, looking straight across
at her, jolted her with a lightning bolt of desire.

The moment the song was over, Baby launched into 'Waltzing
Matilda' and, watched in amazement by the entire party, seized



191




Flora's hand and danced her off into the park, round and round
under the stars through the foam of cow-parsley.

They were both so drunk they nearly fell over one of the set
designer's pots of paint near the cloisters. Seizing his brushes, they
were busy writing 'Death to Rannaldini', with cackles of laughter,
on the chapel walls when they saw evil, leather-clad Clive gliding
up on the right and hasdly changed it to 'Death to Racism' before
running away.

'"Gee, it's great, after staying up late, walking my Baby back
home,"' Flora's piercingly sweet voice echoed round the valley, as
she bore Baby up the valley to her parents' house, Angels' Reach,
because she'd promised to feed Charity the cat.

'What was Rannaldini like in bed?' asked Baby.

'A genius. Mesmerizing, imaginative, with immense concentration,
but utterly depraved. He'd have taken me down to hell.'

To their tight was a long lake, even shorter of water than
Rannaldini's. White daisies spilt over a low stone wall, lilies poured

forth scent out of a tangle of weeds.

'What was his watch-tower like?'

'The top floor's all bed with a mural of wildly applauding crowds
in evening dress.'

'We'll have applauding clouds,' murmured Baby, idly stroking
the nape of Flora's long neck beneath her short back and sides.

Oh, help, thought Flora, I want to sleep with Baby so badly but
it's a cul-de-fucking-no-sack.

Ahead, stone angels stretched up from each corner of the roof,
plucking star daisies out of a grey suede sky. In protest against their
being so late, Chatity the cat had left a small disc of sick on the hall
floorboards. Baby most resourcefully scraped it up with his platinum
Amex card.

'Seriously good pictures,' he said, drifting from one big under
furnished room to another, as Flora opened a tin for Charity and
a bottle of Mot.

'My father owns a gallery.'

'Where is he?'

'In London and up to no good, probably. He's very attractive.'
'Like his daughter,' said Baby. He led her out into the garden,
waltzed her round and round until the stars joined in the
dance, and they collapsed on the dewy grass, their hearts
hammeting.

For a second, Baby laughed down at her, his bland, brown, uno
repentant face irresistibly young and beautiful, caught in the lights
from the house. Then he kissed her.

Rigid with shock, Flora clamped her mouth shut, but such was

the darting insistence of his tongue that her lips soon opened, and
she was kissing him back with ecstatic enthusiasm.

'I thought you only fancied men,' she gasped, when she finally
drew breath.

'No more Mr Nice Gay,' crowed Baby. 'I take the best of both
sexes, and you are definitely the best. I fancy you absolutely squint
eyed.'

'You're drunk.' Flora made a last attempt to keep control, but as
he rolled her towards him to unzip her dress, the warmth of his
body melted her resistance.

'I love George,' she mumbled, into his smooth, scented
shoulder.

'George has gone offlike a prawn in the sun. Deserves all he gets.
Oh, you little beaut.'
Baby was a master of the tease. Running his fingers round the
of one nipple until every nerve of her breast was crying out,
ttroking her belly over and over again, letting his hand creep up
iher inner thighs, just stopping short of her clitoris, until she was
.creaming to have his cock inside her, and even then he was totally


. ,When Charity came



out, mewing in outrage that plastered
humans had mistaken Pedigree Chum for Go-Cat, Baby just
Imaghed and said, 'Cattus interruptus.'

relaxed.

and little shimmering moths all over the lawn
all over the sky. Gradually they seemed to merge.

q'm having such a heavenly time,' mumbled Flora, 'but I'm far

to come.'

'Wanna bet.' Sliding out of her, turning her over, Baby kissed

of her backbone, slowly, slowly progressing downwards.
6:''Oh, my God! Oh, my God!'

:. +O(es, I thought you'd enjoy that.'

%:..'Do I taste of snake?' mumbled Flora.

only of Paradise.'


so much about women?' asked Flora, as they lay
stupefied with pleasure, on the grass.

to be married.'

Flora sat bolt uptight.

a singer.'

did it break up?'

a slug of Mofit. 'She asked me what I thought of her
Requiem. I was foolish enough to tell her. She never

gain.'



193



'Did you mind?'

'Nope.'

'Isn't it rather immoral, pretending you're gay when you're not?'

'Certainly not. However would I get rid of all those ugly cows if
they suspected I was heterosexual?'

'You are seriously degenerate,' said Flora, as they fell asleep in
each other's arms.


194


cold, stiff and horribly hung over in the morning, Flora
Was demented. How could she have done this to George? He'd

never forgive her if he found out. Rannaldini had spies everywhere

lwas bound to tell him. 'I'm being punished for shortchanging

cat,' she moaned, as she crunched around on the Go-Cat the
f,arious Charity had up-ended all over the kitchen floor.
" 'I will take care of you,' said a totally unfazed Baby.

when Flora returned, crawling with embarrassment, to her

room at Valhalla, she found her puppet fox had been cut

to tiny pieces. Flora went berserk. She had had Foxie since she was
He had always brought her luck. Without his protection,

would never come back. And who could have cut him up?
Rannaldini, Helen, Hermione and Serena all hated her, so did

and probably Pushy, Bernard and Sexton, after yesterday's

Or perhaps some admirer of Baby's, horrified she'd got
him last night. It was all dreadfully frightening.
Everyone was very sympathetic, particularly Rozzy, who gathered

fragments of orange fur and said she'd soon sew Foxie together


'Rozzy's so lovely,' a tearful Flora told Baby. 'If only she could

get rid of that horrible husband and find some heavenly lover.'
'Hard to kiss a woman whose mouth's always full of pins.'

Flora was far too miserable to have dinner with Tristan that
night.


Tab, too, was absolutely miserable. Isa was back in Australia so
Wolfie came and watched the Derby with her at Magpie Cottage.
Then she had the exquisite but agonizing pleasure of seeing
Rupert and his entourage in their grey top hats streaming, solemn

195




as warlords, into the paddock to watch Peppy Koala saddling up.

'Look, there's Lysander, and Declan, Daddy's partner,' she told
Wolfie, 'and Billy Lloyd-Foxe, who was his great show-jumping
mate, and Ricky France-Lynch and Has Baddingham, his old polo
friends.'

'Who's that blonde?' asked Wolfie, thinking she was beautiful.
'My half-sister, Perdita, uptight bitch. That's her husband, Luke
Alderton, he's a saint. Heavens! Marcus has flown back from
Moscow. That must be Nemerovsky, his boyfriend. Look at the
stupid poof showing off,' Tab added furiously, as a smiling
Nemerovsky waved his top hat to acknowledge the cheers of the
crowd. Wolfie, who'd been at boarding school with Marcus,
thought how happy he looked.

'Here comes Taggie,' hissed Tabitha, as her stepmother,
ravishing in a fuchsia-pink silk suit and a big violet hat, was towed
into the paddock by a thoroughly overexcited Xav and Bianca.

'Bloody hell.' Tab took a long slug of Perrier, splashing her
face. 'Children shouldn't be allowed in the paddock, particularly
loose,' she added angrily, as Xav and Bianca rushed forward to
hug Peppy Koala. 'And that geek with his hat on the back of his
head is Peppy's owner, Mr Brown.'

Mr Brown apart, thought Wolfie wistfully, they were the most
glamorous, self-assured bunch: Tab's world. How presumptuous to
hope he could ever be part of it.

'God, what a beautiful horse.' Another slug of Perrier spilt over
Tab's face, as Rupert's jockey, wearing Mr Brown's colours, bright
blue dotted with white stars like the Australian flag, mounted a
dancing Peppy.

The little colt gave all his supporters a heart attack by dawdling
at the back until the last furlong then, putting on a staggering
burst of speed, he bounded past the toiling field to win by three
lengths.

Having screamed her head offwith excitement, Tab proceeded
to sob so wildly Wolfie couldn't help her.

'I miss them all so much. Mr Brown refused to give Peppy to Isa
because he thought Isa was cruel to me. That's what Isa will never
forgive.'


Neither did the Derby result please Rannaldini. How could Isa
have let Peppy Koala slip through his fingers?

To goad Tab, Rannaldini summoned her to his study a week later
to watch a big Australian race on cable. Isa was riding a dark brown
mare, who won as effortlessly as Peppy Koala. As usual, he was
mobbed by groupies. Tab, on the other hand, was more upset to
face break into a smile as Martie, his allegedly
scruffier and shinier than any of the grooms,
to hug him after the race.

, well ridden,' said Rannaldini softly, 'but he could spend a
; more time in England training my horses.' Then, seeing Tab her lower lip, 'And I don't think he is paying you quite
attention, my angel, to justify a free rent in that lovely


him in the debtor's chair. Where is it by the way?'

'Somewhere much more exciting. Remind me to show you some
time.'

:Tab had fled sobbing from the room.



	meanwhile, was spending more and more evenings in

	He was obviously not sleeping and everyone was

	him with their insecurities and petty rivalries, as he

	battled to keep within budget and Rannaldini at bay.

	trying to smoke less, which made him very uptight and,

	yielding to Hype-along's pleas, he had finally agreed

	, Valerie Grove of The Times, in the hope that some good

	might calm the backers.

	the past he had stuck up for Rannaldini, but as Lucy cut his

	for the interview he repeatedly returned to the attack.

	He's like evil octopus with tentacles everywhere.'

	how thickly and beautifully Tristan's hair curled into

	Lucy struggled against the temptation to stroke it. Then

	' lost an ear as he switched to the subject of Tabitha.

	: 'Rannaldini is so crazy about her, he inveigle her into marrying

that absolute shit, Isa Lovell. Now he plays games with her like Iago.

came out of his study crying this afternoon.'

fought despair. Thank God Rozzy had rolled up with a
bottle to cheer Tristan up. Rozzy was relieved that she only had a
htmdred or so more seed pearls to sew on Hermione's coronation
dress.


Next morning Lucy was terrified to discover slug pellets inJames's
water bowl. Perhaps someone had just missed the window-box or
rhaps, she thought wryly, people were jealous because Tristan
spent so much time in Make Up - but it was only because he was
desperate to talk about Tab.

She had further evidence that afternoon, when Hermione, who she was making up for her great renunciation scene with Carlos,
announced she'd heard a horrid rumour that Tristan was queer.

'Of course he's not,' exploded Lucy.




196
	197


'Well, that's what they're implying. Silly, really,' Hermione gave
her horrible little laugh, 'that with so many pretty women to
choose from, Tristan's spending his evenings with.., and also that
make-up girls usually stick to their own kind and drink with the
sparks and the chippies.'

Then, seeing Lucy's face, she added, 'But I stuck up for you,
Lucy. I said you had quite a warm personality and, anyway, beauty
is in the eye of the beholder. Oh, Belgian chocolates!'

Lucy was about to snap that they were a thank-you present from
Tristan for cutting his hair when Hermione opened the box and
found one white truffle left.

'My favourite,' she cried. 'Although I've already got a handsome
hubby, and a thousand a year wouldn't go far these days.'

She was just about to eat it, when Lucy snatched away the box.
'James loves white truffles,' she insisted, and opening the amazed

dog's jaws, shoved it into his mouth.

Hermione was furious.

'When you think of Flora and that wretched terrier, and Tab
drooling over that Labrador,' she said beadily, 'it is extraordinary how women who cannot get it together with a man become dependent
on a companion animal.'

James spat out the white truffle.

'Bloody chippies,' exploded Lucy.

Meredith's carpenters, building a cathedral for the auto da fe and banging away all morning, had given her a blinding headache.

She was so cross she gave Hermione a parsnip yellow complexion,
ageing grey shading, hideous violet eye shadow and a
wonky lip-line. Hermione was so busy reading about her health in the Daily Mail that she didn't notice.

Tristan did, however, and remonstrated sharply with Lucy.

'Well, if she was about to give Carlos the push and she loved him
to bits, she would look grotty,' shouted back Lucy.

"Ma petite.' Tristan looked at her in amazement. 'Thees is first

time I see you angry. You are so sweet,' and he ruffled her hair.
'Patronizing bastard,' muttered Lucy.

She was so fed up that she knocked back nearly a bottle of white
at lunchtime, and stuck Colin Milton's bald wig on back to front.
Colin was so taken by the sight of himself with a youthful fringe of
grey curls nestling on his eyebrows that he would happily have let
it stay. Tristan, however, went ballistic again, and yelled at Lucy to
stop taking the piss.

198


auto dafe, which means Act of Faith, is one of the most terrifying scenes in all opera. Heretics in dunces' caps are paraded
through the streets by their executioners and followed by sinister
monks who, with the courtiers and ladies-in-waiting,
their seats round the funeral pyre.

crowned Philip comes out of the cathedral and repeats
coronation oath to defend the faith. The scene ends with his
words, 'And now on with the festivities!' The masses are
not by fireworks but by the heretics being burnt
stake.

twenty minutes in the opera, even Tristan's pared-down
took eight gruelling days to shoot. The harrowing nature
of the subject exacerbated Rannaldini's sadism. Meredith and his
only just completed their ravishing cathedral fafade,
on to the east courtyard, when Rannaldini swept in on the
dy of shooting and pronounced it utterly suburban: 'Just like
a Weybridge hacienda. Are we going to have chiming doorbells,
celebrating the burning of the heretics?'

i Meredith promptly burst into tears. It took all Tristan's tact to
StOlZ him resigning. Lucy had visions of being asked to streak

s hair for yet another dinner at the Heavenly Host.
Fortunately Sexton rocked up and told Meredith he thought the
cathedral was just beautiful.

' 'And he ought to know,' whispered Hermione reverently.
'8exton did go to Eton.'

Hermione was also delighted that, after weeks of work, Griselda
and Rozzy had finally sewn the last seed pearl on her ivory satin dress. Her first appearance wearing it that afternoon caused gasps
of wonder and genuine applause from the crew.



199




A second later Rannaldini had erupted on to the set, and
everyone glanced at the sky in excitement. Then, to their horror,
they realized that what they had imagined as the patter of rain was
the scattering of thousands of pearls, as Rannaldini ripped off the
dress, and stamped it into the dust with his suede boots. Hermione,
in her petticoat, screamed and screamed. Oscar crossed himself.
Itwas like seeing aVelazquez slashed in the Prado. Tristan grabbed
Rannaldini in white-hot fury.

'What the fuck are you doing? That was the most beautiful dress
I ever see.'

'Elisabetta must wear scarlet,' yelled back Rannaldini.

'At her husband's coronation?'

'To symbolize in Philip's crazy mind she has been unfaithful.'

'All those pearls, all those pearls,' whispered Rozzy, who'd done
nearly all the work.

A devastated, hysterically sobbing Griselda had to be carried off
the set by a buckling Lucy and Simone. Everyone was outraged.
They loved Griselda: indefatigable, gossipy old trout. They knew
she was good. The crew would have walked out if Rannaldini
hadn't built massive penalty clauses into all their contracts.
Instead they went slow, with Oscar waking up to relight every ten
minutes.

All the crew were putting in impossibly long hours, but no-one
more so than Wolfie. Once again, his greatest headache was stopping
Pushy Galore appearing in everything. Having waved a flag as
a member of the hoi-polloi and simpered as a lady-in-waiting, Pushy
was determined to star as a heretic, and was utterly incensed when
Tristan chucked her out.

'You wait till Ay tell Sir Roberto.'

Fortunately Rannaldini had flown off to Vienna and was not
expected back until the evening. Pushy was even crosser when
Tristan chose Tab instead. She would look so touching, a dunce's
cap on her blonde head, her deadpan face smudged. Tab was
terribly excited. Wolfie less so. Supervising the filling of petrol cans
with water, he couldn't bear the thought of her beautiful body
being torched.

The drought was so terrible, it was as if Meredith had carpeted
the surrounding fields brown. Wild flowers that had survived were
a quarter of their usual height. Wolfie disappeared in a cloud of
dust as he drove his Land Rover round the park. All the cast
complained non-stop about not being able to breathe. Wolfie
could have burnt the lot of them on the bonfire.

It was the last set-up before lunch as, surrounded by leather-clad
paparazzi, with Tristan's four black cypresses in the background
overseeing things, Granny as Gordon Dillon took up his position
on the battlements of the cathedral. While the heretics were tied
to the stakes below, shredded piles of the Sco','pion were thrown
under their bare feet.

'As people in the sixteenth century flocked to see heretics burn,
today we devour the papers and gloat over reputations being
destroyed,' explained Tristan. 'Think of the poor Duchess of
York.'

'Think of Chloe in a week or two,' murmured Flora to Baby.
Out in the park, through the heat haze, they could see Chloe,
ravishing in palest pink, having her photograph taken for the
Smrp/on. Hotfoot from a very promising Samson and Delilah audition,
she had returned to Valhalla for an in-depth interview with
Ik:attie Johnson, the Scorpion's most dreaded columnist. Beattie
had written to Chloe direct, claiming she was a long-term fan of
Chloe and the opera. ,

• 'I can handle the press, Chloe had told Hype-along haughtily
when he expressed ho, rror at the planned interview.

ii' iIaving read Chloe s cuttings and a page-long synopsis of Don
• C, ar/os in the limo driving down, Beattie Johnson was highly

to see the identical twin of her notorious boss, Gordon
on the battlements and was now shredding reputations, 'off

of course', with Chloe.

who'd already had to make up Chloe as well as the cast,

' from hell. The gruesome concept of an auto dafe
her dreadfully. Her passport had gone missing and she'd
two hours looking for it. Her back, from so much bending,

her. She'd have gone straight to James Benson, if she
given more money to Rozzy who'd been in tears all

This was because, after a weekend at home, Rozzy

done a U-turn
, to find her horrible husband Glyn and his glamorous house
Sylvia,
opening a bottle to celebrate her departure.

ca. 't go on shoring everyone up, thought Lucy in despair.

not had any breakfast, she was feeling faint and decided
a salad from the canteen, where she found Chloe and

two glamorous blondes, sharing a bottle of


the first assistant, has a thumping great crush on Rozzy
Chloe was whispering.


Beattie,' giggled Chloe, 'you must have heard of Rozzy.

she pees eau-de-Cologne.'

,'s blood started to boil.



'Here comes Tristan,' hissed Beattie. 'You must introduce me.'

She's got the hard, set little face of a terrorist waiting to lob a
bomb into all our lives, thought Lucy.

'I've seen allyour films,' Beattie was now telling Tristan.

Lucy was on her way out when she heard Tristan, who'd taken
an empty seat at the table, explaining the auto dale to Beattie. 'The
Spaniards are experts at ritualistic torture,' he was saying. 'Look at
the ballet of killing the bull. In the same way, auto dafe sets fire to
humans in dunces' caps to humiliate and express power of
Church.'

'I love Spanish men,' said Chloe, who hadn't been listening. The too,' sighed Beattie.

'Well, you're both stupid bitches,' said a furious voice.
Looking round, everyone was amazed to see a trembling, redfaced
Lucy holding a tray, off which a glass of orange juice and a
salad were sliding.

'I hate Spaniards. Hate, hate, hate them,' she went on hysterically.
'When greyhounds are past their sell-by date in England,

they're sold to Spain where they're raced into the ground.'

'Oh, put-lease.' Chloe raised her eyes to heaven.

'But the fucking Spaniards are too stingy to shoot them or put
them down so they string them up in the woods with their toesjust
touching the ground and have bets on which is going to die first.
It takes hours. The poor dogs scream in agony like the heretics.
And you like fucking Spaniards?'

The appalled silence was broken by Lucy's salad crashing to the
ground, and orange juice spilling all over Chloe's new pink dress.
Flora, Baby and Granny leapt to their feet, but Tristan reached
Lucy first.

'It's all right, sweet'eart, of course it's terrible, whether it's greyhounds
or heretics.'

But Lucy had wriggled out of his arms and, shouting, 'Why don't
you have a word with King Carlos? I bet he shot partridge with your
father,' she fled, sobbing, back to her caravan.

'Dear, dear,' drawled Chloe. 'When make-up artists start having
tantrums, the rot has set in.'

'Oh, shut up,' yelled Flora.

Tristan was about to go after Lucy when Bernard seized his arm
and dragged him off to an urgent meeting in Sexton's office.
This Tristan did not enjoy. The budget, Sexton told him bleakly,
had hit twenty-two million and was still climbing: Tristan must
hurry up the crew. After a snide piece in the Stage, picked up by
the nationals, the backers were getting antsy. Rannaldini must be

202


to release more money when he returned tonight.
won't unless we allow him to do his sodding introductions.'

unwrapped another piece of chewing-gum. God, he
a cigarette.

was just saying he couldn't pay this week's wages when
into the room. 'What's that bitch doing here?'
bellowed Bernard.

was Daddy's mistress between marriages,' stormed Tab.

ruined him. She stopped him and Taggie adopting
in England, she got Abby Rosen sacked, and she outed my

Marcus She's the most evil woman in the world.'

Who are you talking about?'

Johnson, who's interviewing Chloe,' said Tab. 'In that
:black bag are a hammer and nails to crucify her victims.'

,' exploded Bernard.

'But a shrewd assessment,, agreed Sexton. 'If Beattie stitches us

backers really will pull out.'

/Tristan wrinkled his brow. 'I think she's a friend of Rannaldini.

i better throw her out before he gets back.'

found Beattie buttering up Pushy.

qfyou weren't so lovely, people would take you more seriously


	r'

la stage .

Roberto's always sayin' that.'

says you stand out from all the other extras.'

. an extra, Ay'm a featured extra,' said Pushy haughtily.
the record, how well do you know Alpheus Shaw? What a


Tristan had heard enough. Beattie was incandescent with rage

he told her that a car, with her suitcases all packed in the
was waiting to take her back to London.
/.'Do not say Liberty Productions do not evict with style,' he

.added, as he opened the door for her.

Chloe was also insane with anger.

'We hadn't even begun the interview yet. Everything was off the
record.'

'Every inch of that evil frame is taped,' said Tristan.

Spurred on by his meeting with Sexton, he returned to the set
determined to dispatch the last gruesome seconds of the auto dafe in one stint. It was even hotter. Hermione was flushing up in her
new red dress from Versace. Flora and Granny sweltered in their
dark suits, but not nearly so much as Alpheus in his gold regalia,
or Baby, Mikhail and the courtiers in their ermine-trimmed peers'
robes.



203




As Lucy, tearstained after her outburst at lunchtime, rushed
round trying to cool people down with a chamois leather soaked
in cologne, Baby could be heard grumbling that he'd be barbied
without going near any stake.

'If you confessed at the last moment, you could be strangled
before you were burnt to death,' volunteered a listless Flora, who
hadn't heard from George since her night with Baby.

To capture the intense drama, Tristan was using a crane to film
from above, with Valentin and his camera on a tiny platform
hanging twenty feet above the funeral pyre. It would be a wonderful
shot, tracking over the excited crowd, the bigwigs of church and
state in their gilded regalia and the poor, doomed victims. The
head of Props waited with his finger on the button of the smoke
machine. The flames would be added later by special effects.

'Take that "I survived Don Carlos" badge off at once, Baby,'
ordered Bernard. 'Quiet, please, everyone.'

'OK, let's go for a quick rehearsal,' shouted Tristan, from a first
floor window.

'Shit,' muttered Valentin, who from his platform could see an
orange Lamborghini Diablo sneaking up the drive. 'Rannaldini's
back.'

'Ignore him,' snapped Tristan.

In moved the paparazzi like a firing squad, their long lenses
trained on the heretics. Swiftly the executioners chucked petrol
cans of water on the shredded Scorpions, then flicking on their
lighters pretended to set fire to the damp newsprint.

'Cue for smoke,' yelled Tristan, and a white cloud engulfed the'
heretics. 'Excellent, let it clear,' he shouted, 'and we'll go for a
take.'

Adjusting his director's cap to a more military angle, Tristan
felt a surge of power as he looked down at the huge crowd. He was a general commanding a mighty army. The landscape shimmered
with heat-haze, a hot breeze ruffled the red-tipped barley
into flickering flames. He was just shuddering at the thought of
Tab's body being burnt to death when he was roused by a
dreadful screaming. And fantasy became reality as the shredded
newspaper beneath her stake burst into flames, and flared up
around her. For a moment, everyone was motionless with horror.
Then, as the screaming grew more terrified, Tristan leapt straight
down into the smoke, miraculously landing safely on the stony
courtyard.

'It's all right, ctdvie.'

Diving for the rope tying her to the stake, aware of flame
caressing his chest, his long fingers somehow managed to untie the

204


without fumbling. A moment later he had dragged Tab to


out the flames snaking up her yellow heretic's dress,
no pain except that of frantic worry, he dragged the peer's

off a horrified extra and rolled Tab in them. It was over in
, seconds.

Next moment, Wolfie, who'd been watching from a second-floor

hurtled into the courtyard, yelling, 'Is she OK? Get the

for Christ s sake.

The front of Tab's hair, her long blonde eyelashes and her
were singed, there was a terrible stench of burning, but
didn't appear hurt, only dazed and terrified as she collapsed
i wildly into Tristan's arms. As Tristan clutched her to his I sweatMrenched shirt, examining her face for burns, kissing her
crooning in rapid French that she mustn't be fright

ened, the extras, thinking it was part of the plot, led a round of

. As he ran into the courtyard, and sized up the situation,

face was shrivelled into a mask of evil.

'Who left petrol in that can?' he screamed. 'Someone has tried
murder my daughter.'

'They were all filled with water,' stammered an aghast Wolfie, 'I

:d them.'

'Well, heads will roll.' Everyone retreated as Rannaldini glared


Tristan promptly called a wrap for the day. 'I'm taking Tabitha


:'You can't,' muttered an appalled Bernard. 'All these extras, a

cast, we've got hours of light left.'

'I don't geeve a fuck. Oscar can take over.'

'Tabitha will stay at Valhalla. Her mother will look after her,'

Rannaldini, 'and you can carry on.'

'No!' Tab was hysterical. 'I want to go home with Tristan.'
Even Griselda was roused from her despondency over
Hermione's wrecked dress. 'I always said those two would end up
together,' she hissed to a boot-faced Alpheus. 'At least they're the
same class. Here you are, darling.' She slipped Tab's short red shift
over her head, sliding it down her body as she removed the
heretic's robe. 'Go home and have a heavenly tryst with triste Tristan, and boo sucks to sodding Rannaldn.

'That little madam gets everyone nice,' said Baby sulkily.

A stricken Lucy fled to her caravan. A stunned Wolfie kept
repeating that there had been no petrol in the cans. Rozzy had
mindlessly collapsed nto Rannaldm s execuUve producer s chair,
tears streaking down her face.



205




'Tristan could have been killed.'

'You're so wet, my dear Rozzy,' sneered Rannaldini, 'you could
have put the fire out yourself. Clive?' He clicked his fingers for his
shadow, then dropping his voice: 'Follow the two of them, see what
they get up to.'


Magpie Cottage, Sharon the Labrador, singing in delight,
welcomed Tristan by bringing him a pair of Tab's knickers.

;:
	'You sing better than Hermione.' Tristan stooped to pat her.
Tab laughed, then gave a sob and fled upstairs to examine her

naked lashless face in the bathroom mirror. Five minutes later

found her shaking uncontrollably, rubbing toothpaste into
iher blanched cheeks. He was amazed, then touched when she

a glass of brandy. 'I promised God I wouldn't and He admittedly
helped by you - has just saved my life.'

the bed, Snoopy gazed up from one of her pillowcases,

osaurs from the other. Tristan had just persuaded her to lie
down on the Peter Rabbit duvet when the doorbell rang.

'Tell it to go away,' pleaded Tab. 'Don't bang your head on the

going down.'


It was James Benson, the smooth family doctor who had been
summoned to so many Campbell-Black and Rannaldini crises in
.the past. Agreeing with the paramedics that Tab was unhurt but
deeply shocked, he gave her a shot.

'You'll be fine, sweetie. You're a lucky girl. It would have been a
tragedy if that lovely face had been spoilt. Where's your husband?'
'In Australia. Tristan saved my life. Will you see he's OK?'

Downstairs James Benson produced some very strong
painkillers. 'You've come off worse than she has,' he said, as he
accepted a large brandy. 'Thank God she's off the booze, but she's
not in good shape. She was clinically depressed after she lost the
baby in March, and she burst into tears when I said I'd seen Rupert
last week. I'd give the old bastard a ring - I'm convinced he's
missing her as much as she's missing him.'


206
	..
	207



'It's all Helen's fault,' exploded Tristan. 'Bloody woman doesn't
give a stuff about Tab.'

'That's not fair,' said James Benson sharply. 'I first treated Helen
when she wasn't much older than Tab. She was the loveliest thing
I ever saw, and sweet too. If she hadn't been a patient, I'd have
made a serious play. Rupert was away when she nearly died having
Marcus, he was even more humiliatingly unfaithful to her than
Rannaldini, if that's possible. Between them, they've done for her.'

Tristan was amazed by the venom in James's voice, but Tabitha
was his only interest. 'What about Isa?'

'Cold fish, corroded with moral outrage against the Campbell
Blacks. He'll never forgive Tab. Sooner she's out of this marriage
the better.'

Tristan was pacing the room, clearly desperate to be left alone
with Tab. Leggy and effortlessly elegant, despite his dusty
espadrilles and dirty frayed white shorts, he reminded James of a
heart-throb admired by his own generation: Grard Philippe.

'I know it's none of my business,' he drained his brandy, 'but
she's very vulnerable.'

Having let the doctor out, Tristan noticed a framed photograph
on the desk of Isa smugly riding in the winner of last year's Gold
Cup. Parking his green chewing-gum on his rival's face, he belted
back upstairs.

Tm going to make you a cup of tea.'

'Hot sweet tea!' mocked Tab. Td rather have hot sweet

Montigny. Please don't leave me.'

'I won't.'

He was touched to see Schiller's Don Carlos beside Dick Francis
on the bedside table.

'I'm trying to educate myself,' she muttered.

'Are you sure you're not hungry?'

Tab shook her head. 'Sharon probably is.'

'I feed her. I give her sheep chops I find in ffidge.'

Tab giggled. 'Flora and Baby call Griselda: Lady Caroline Sheep.
I'm sorry I'm holding up your film, but it was so cool you telling
Bernard and Rannaldini to fuck off, and leaving three hundred
and fifty extras and Dim Hermione all cooling their heels because
of me.'

Tristan lay on the bed beside her.

'Am I squashing you?'

'Not enough,' mumbled Tab.

Tristan could feel the faint down of her leg against his. He
thought she'd fallen asleep, then her hand crept into his.

'Are your poor burnt hands agony?'

'Not when you hold them.'

The smell of wild mint and meadowsweet was drifting in through
the window. Outside, wild roses cascaded over dark green trees like
a William Morris wallpaper. As Tristan lay up on his side he
thought he had been caught up in some time warp. Without her
lashes and eyebrows and with her extreme pallor and her hairline
temporarily singed back an inch, Tab had become a sixteenth
centtLry beauty, Elisabetta, or even Eboli. Her forehead was as
white as the moon, her lashless lids like magnolia petals.

James Benson's painkillers had begun to kick in. Bending back
his hand as though he were drying his nails, because his palm was
still very sore, Tristan ran the inside of his wrist up the red chiffon
dress, feeling the concave belly, the soft swell of breast, only to be
halted by a rock-hard nipple.

As he bent over and kissed her, Tab gave a gasp and kissed him
back in ecstasy, breathing in a faint tang of Eau Sauvage, and the

burying her fingers in his thick silky hair,
his big bumpy head, so different from Isa's, which was as


narrow as a weasel's.

'I have longed for you,' murmured Tristan, laying his cheek

st hers, 'ever since I saw you at the traffic-lights in Rutminster

vodka, Sharon across your thighs instead of a safety-belt.

I want to be safety-belt that protect you,' he smiled
at the malevolent little eyes and great gnashing teeth on the

beside her, 'even from dinosaurs.'

time I saw you I thought, Jesus! Although it was prob"Jeshush"
because I was so pissed. I asked Lucy as she made

seen that fantastically gorgeous man downstairs and
laughed and said yes, but I'd have to give all that up now I was

married.'

you marry Isa because you were pregnant?'

confessed Tab, gently pulling fragments of singed hair
from his chest. 'I never do anything because I ought to, so I put

on hold until I galloped round the corner and saw you all

that naked bitch Chloe. God, I was cross, but ever since then
looked forward more and more to seeing you on the set. It's

you've got a halo. You're the only person I notice.'
about Wolfie?'

but too straight and he doesn't have a halo.'

though Tristan's hand was stroking its way very slowly down I body, setting her completely adrift, she had to know.

on the unit spends their time speculating about your

she said falteringly. 'A celibate Frenchman is a contra
in terms. There must be someone.'




Outside a blackbird was singing, a dog barked in the valley.
Sharon barked back.

'Not any more,' said Tristan, as his hand now crept up slender
thighs, honed by years in the saddle.

'Please wait!' begged Tab. 'There isn't someone like Isa's girlfriend
in Australia, waiting to rear her hideous head in a month or
two? I couldn't handle it.'

'Hush.' As he shut her mouth with his, Tristan's fingers edged

under her knicker elastic into the tightest, stickiest hollow. 'Oh,
ma petite.'

Wriggling out of his arms, Tab leapt out of bed. Like a poppy
shedding petals, her red dress slithered to the floor.

Tristan had lost enough weight for her to tug off his shorts

without unzipping them. Next moment she was on top of him.

' Vencz inside moi, route sweet.'

Tristan did just that. As he thrust up inside her, he was briefly
conscious of a delicious slipperiness, of muscles closing round him
like a fist, and Tab moving, fluid as a dancer. Then he trembled
violently, cried out and came.

'Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, I'm so sorry.' He buried his face in her
shoulder. 'I should 'ave 'old out. I am weemp, but you are so lovely,
I was lost, I am so sorry.'

'Don't be.' Tab kissed him over and over, her tears soaking his
shoulder. 'It's so gorgeous to be wanted so much. Isa times it like
a race. Conserve the energy, push through the gap.'

'I love you totally,' said Tristan, as he slowly returned to earth.
Assuming sex was over for the day, Sharon galumphed into the
bedroom, landing between the lovers, and was disappointed to be
firmly told by Tristan that it had only just started.

Hazily watching his dark head between her legs, as his long lazily
lapping tongue drove her through repeated hoops of ecstasy, Tab
was inclined to agree with him. And those lovely endearments he
kept murmuring in French. It's like Sharon being talked to by me,
she thought. She doesn't understand what I'm saying, but she
knows, by the tone of my voice, it's adoring.


'That was the best sex ever,' she said, flopping back on to the
pillow. Then, terrified it might only be a one-afternoon stand, she
glanced sideways, trying to memorize his face for ever, noting the
dark brown curls, straighter since the moisture had dried out of
the earth, the big, slightly twisted mouth, the sallow complexion,
now burnt dark gold like wheat, the long slightly snub nose, thick
curly eyelashes that would never need mascara, black rings
beneath the hollow eyes.

you 'ave finish staring,' said Tristan acidly, 'I have first
ihairs at twenty-eight. It is abomination.'

.'ve been working too hard.'

I worry you will never love me. Oh, my angel, what a lovely
:'!1 have together.'

froze. 'D'you mean that?'

Tristan took her hand, tempted to slide off her
ring. 'James Benson wanted me to call your father.'
Fuck, he'd ruin everything!

;:*Don't interfere.' Tab hissed. 'It's nothing to do with James!

is everyonem?'

tt everyone, hush.' Gradually, he calmed her.

'I can't Cope if Daddy hangs up on me. I don't want to lose face.'

No-one would want to lose one as beautiful as yours.' Tristan ran
r down her cheek.
I really beautiful?'

r darling, you are also genius,' he added lovingly. 'I never
more better organized on a shoot.'
tell Isa?' Tab sat up in excitement. 'He thinks I'm a total


Ia'8 over.'

I go on about him,' confessed Tab, 'but he's tougher to
than the booze. I don't love him but him having this other

hurt almost more than losing the baby.'

poor darling.' Tristan kissed her forehead, then her Greek

and then her luscious, loving mouth. 'We will have lots of kids.
:I will always adore you the most.'

i 'Kissing his fingers, tasting traces of herself, Tab examined his

On it was engraved a snake coiled round a column.
can't read the motto.'
i Basically it say, "Don't disturb the Montigny snake, or he'll come
and get you." He can see off a Black Cobra any day.'


taken Sharon for a run, Tristan left Tab, when she was
nearly falling asleep. He had missed a half-day's filming, and had
several hours' work to do.

'Come back later,' begged Tab.

'If you promise not to wake up.'

Suddenly thunder rumbled round the valley like a roused guard
dog.

'Poor James, he'll be terrified,' said Tab.

'Poor Lucy.' Tristan thought of her anguished, disintegrating
face in the canteen.

Outside the front door, white rose petals snowed down on them.



210
	211


As he kissed her goodbye he felt his soul, like those of the heretics,
being drawn up to heaven.

Bats flitted across a rising-yellow moon, as he floated back to
Valhalla trying to keep the silly grin off his face. Overhead, proud
and defiant, strode the constellation of Hercules. As Tabitha loved
him, he could dispatch thirteen hundred labours. Suddenly he was
singing, 'I am Carlos, and I love you, yes, I love you,' at the top of
his voice. He was so happy he walked straight under a ladder.

On his bed lay a fax of his interview with The Times. He had been
very taken by and had got mildly tight over lunch with Valerie
Grove, who'd written it. She had described him as the complete
Prince Charmant, with naturally aristocratic good manners and a

haircut that could only have come from Paris.

Tristan smiled. He must show Lucy that bit.

The piece mentioned his 'close friendship' with Claudine
Lauzerte, and said that the word on the street about The Lily in the
Valley was that it would be both smash hit and ardstic triumph.

'Is This the Greatest Montigny of Them All?' said the headline.
Below was a big picture of himself. Flanking it were smaller pictures
of Etienne, and Tristan's older brothers, including an incredibly
rare snapshot of Laurent, who had looked so like Che Guevara.

'One reason I make Don Carlos,' Tristan was quoted as saying,
'was my brother Laurent die twenty-eight years ago, blown up in
Chad fighting injustice, like Posa. His death broke my father's
heart. I wanted to give him my own memorial.'

ltienne would have gone ballistic at the mention of Laurent.
Tristan hoped the crescendoing of thunder wasn't his father
smashing furniture in heaven.

But it seemed a lovely piece. Perhaps he was being too harsh on
the press in Don Carlos. They weren't all bad apples like Beattie
Johnson. But his head was too full of Tabitha.

He wished his mother, who had been only two years younger
than Tab when she died, was alive to celebrate with him. Idly he
switched on his machine.

'Dearest boy.' It was Rannaldlni at his most silken. 'However late
you get in, pop down to my watch-tower. We must talk.'

Bloody hell, thought Tristan, as he pulled on a pair of jeans. He
hoped Rannaldini wasn't going to be insanely jealous.

212


e moon, pale and sinister as Rannaldini, kept vanishing behind

, sable cloud. A witch's trail soared straight through Hercules.
¢11 breeze ruffled the leaves as Tristan walked through

The stench of decaying wild garlic was stronger

!m ever.

Rannaldini, waiting in the watch-tower doorway, was wearing a

that gave him a vaguely ecclesiastical air.
'How's Tab?' he asked, as he led the way to the glowing red

room on the first floor.

r shaken.'

collapsed on a pale-grey sofa, his tummy rumbled.
:last thing he'd eaten had been one of Rozzy's croissants at

and he didn't remember finishing it. The vast Armagnac
ialdini handed him would go straight to his head. 'She's OK,'

'but we must tell the police. It can't have been an acci

dent, and about Flora's fox being cut up. Tab was so brave,' then,
mble to help himself, 'and so adorable.'

Rannaldlni had gone very quiet, frowning as he paced up and

trampling on the red roses that patterned the faded


'I have been sad recently that you and I have so often come to

he said gently, 'but we only fight because we so passionately

" rant Carlos to work.'

'Of course.'

'But I never stop loving you, Tristan. You are still my little
godson.'

Rannaldini's voice was so hypnotic. Perhaps he should do those
introductions after all, thought Tristan.

'And I love you,' he stammered. He felt very happy that



213




everything was falling so wonderfully into place. But Rannaldini
went on pacing.

'There is...' he began. 'No, I cannot.'

'Go on,' urged Tristan.

'There is secret I prayed I would never have to tell you, but as

very close friend of your father...' He paused.

Tristan went cold.

'Have you never wondered why ltienne neglected you and never
loved you?'

Tristan winced.

'All the time,' he said wearily. 'Laurent died, I suppose. I lived.
Laurent was my father's favourite son, then Maman committed
suicide. Maybe it deranged him. On his deathbed, he was rambling
on that my father was my grandfather. I didn't know what he was
talking about.' He shuddered, remembering ltienne in the huge
bed, with the determinedly cheerful nurse siphoning off the fountains
of blood.

The moon, like a Beardsley rakehell, was leering in through a
high window covered in a black lacing of clematis, whose quivering
shadows in turn cast an illusion of mobility on Rannaldini's cold,
impassive face.

'Your mother was most stunning woman I ever meet. Turn
round. I don't think you ever see painting your father did.'

Tristan leapt to his feet. Behind him on the scarlet wall was a
small oil of a young girl, her naked body as white as Tab's but far
more softly curved and passive. She leant against a dark green sofa.
The young Rannaldini, black-haired, black eyes glittering with lust
and power, was stripped to the waist in tight breeches and boots.
He had a hunting whip in his hand, and had coiled the long lash
round the girl's neck. There was an expression of terror and wild
excitement on her face.

'Maman,' stammered Tristan, finding himself blushing in
horror and sick, shaming excitement at what was clearly one of his
father's masterpieces.

'It is called The Snake Charmer," purred Rannaldini. 'The texture

of her body is quite extraordinary. I shall miss her dreadfully.'
'What d'you mean?'

'The Tate and the Louvre are planning a huge Montigny retrospective.
Your beautiful mother will tour the world and take her
place in the pantheon of women who inspired great artists.'

'Non.t' cried Tristan, in outrage. 'For God's sake, Rannaldini.'
He wanted to throw his shirt round Delphine's naked body.
Dragging his eyes away, he collapsed, trembling, on the sofa,
fumbling for a cigarette.

	214


inspired your father,' began Rannaldini softly.

	laenne did not know was that her father, Maxim, your

	was a thug, brutish, utterly unstable, his sole passion

	He was obsessed with her. Delphine only went out

	idly, Rannaldini flicked a speck of dust from a bronze of

	'to escape him. For the same reason, she marry your

	Maxim, her father, was so crazed with jealousy he wait till

	ltienne return from honeymoon - which had not been a

	the marriage hardly consummated, ltienne fly to

	i for two months to fulfil commission.'

	.aidini paused, his face full of compassion.

	torture me. Should I tell you this?'

	for fuck's sake.'

		later, Maxim roll up at empty house and rape her.'

i'eBreath swamped Tristan chest, his heart had no room to beat.
r horrible luck, she became pregnant.' Rannaldini admired
expression of genuine concern in a big gilt mirror. "But
too terrified to tell ltienne so she passed the baby off


[don't believe you,' croaked Tristan, his legs shaking with a
life of their own. 'Why didn't she have an abortion?'
was so young, a strict Catholic, and terrified of it coming
t her father was clinically insane., that people might commit

she was insane too, that Etienne might kick her out,
Maxim."

could have helped her,' spat Tristan.

	boy, I was in Berlin. I knew nothing. After you were

Delphine sink into depression and reject you. Your father
too devastated by Laurent's death to give her any support.
en he do sums. You are large, healthy boy, not premature. He
furiously cross-question your mother. She collapse from guilt and
weakness and tell him everythin.,g, then take her own life. That was
the dreadful irony.' Rannaldini s eyes were velvety dark as pansies
with sympathy. 'That Laurent, the flower of the Montignys, was dead.., and you...'

'A little incestuously conceived bastard,' said Tristan, with a dry
laugh horribly reminiscent of Etaenne s death rattle, 'was alive.'

'I am so very sorry,' murmured Rannaldini. 'ltienne was never
able to speak of Laurent again.'

'What happened to my...' Tristan couldn't say father '... to
Maxim?'

'He go off his head with grief when Delphine die. He was
committed and die shortly of 'eartbreak in the asylum.'

'It's not possible.' Tristan winced as he put his head in his sore



215





hands, but it was nothing to the pain in his heart. 'My grandfather
was my father. Oh, Christ.'

Rannaldini put a caressing hand on the boy's rigid, shuddering
shoulders. 'My poor child. Knowing all this, I deliberately take
interest in you, hoping to give you back some of the love that
deserted you.'

The wind had risen, frenziedly shaking the trees. Rose stems
scraped at the windows, lacerating each other with their thorns.
Rannaldini was trampling over the Aubusson roses again.

'But, when cheeps are down, Tabitha is my daughter.' He
sighed. 'I see the longing in your eyes, but she is better offmarried
to Isa, even if he is Rupert's deadly enemy. She needs babies.
Marcus is homosexual. There is little likelihood of you fathering
healthy kids. You are three-quarters Maxim, remember.'
Rannaldini watched the boy shove his fists in his ears, trying to
shut out the horrors. 'One day, Tabitha will be reunited with
Rupert. He would not be 'appy with some unstable, misshapen
offspring.'

'Like the vrai Carlos,' whispered Tristan bitterly.

Picasso's one-eyed girl over the fireplace had the same Greek
nose as Tab.

'Tonight I find her.' Tristan's voice broke. 'I love her,
Rannaldini.'

'There is only a couple of weeks left of filming. Everyone fall in
love on location. Chloe and Oscar, Alpheus and Chloe, Baby and
Flora, Sexton,' Rannaldini gave a wry shrug, 'and 'Ermione,
Sylvestre et tout le monde. 'Ave you also not notice the way your niece
Simone gaze at my Wolfgang?'

Tristan was too shocked to take in any of these pearls, gleaned

from Rannaldini's monitors.

'You will soon forget her.'

'Never.' Tristan's mind was reeling.

Not only was he not a Montigny, but his identification with Don
Carlos, because the Inquisition had murdered his Montigny
ancestor, was a sham.

'No wonder my father - Christ, I mean Itienne - sneered at my
obsession with the family. No wonder his lip curl when kind people
say I inherit his talent and paint with light. Not one drop of
Montigny blood - oh, Christ.'

Then another devastating hammer-blow.struck him. 'iF i am not
Montigny, I have no claim to any of Papa/Etienne's money. I have
handed eet over to production. I am a thief.'
His voice rose, his eyes rolled crazily. As he jumped to his feet,
he caught sight of Etienne's painting. For a second Rannaldini was

alarmed he was going to tug it from the wall and smash it.

'Calm down. No-one has discovered secret in twenty-eight years.
Why should it come out now?'

'But I will be living a hideous lie.' Tristan turned, pleading, back
to Rannaldini. 'How can I be sure? Everyone says I am all
Montigny.'

'Adopted children pick up parents' mannerisms.'
Tristan slumped on the sofa. 'Why did ltienne keep me?'
'Guilt that he'd pushed Delphine over the edge, and after all his
boasting to his friends that he fathered beautiful son in his sixties
he was too proud to admit you weren't his. But you should be
proud of yourself,' continued Rannaldini warmly, 'knowing 'ow
much you've achieved from such unpropitious beginning. But I
begyou, never have cheeldren. Have a vasectomy at once. Perhaps,
one day, like Rupert, you can adopt. Maybe a geneticist would say
could produce normal children. But you must not risk it with
my Tabitha. She was so devastated to lose that baby.'

:Tristan gave a groan that was almost a howl. '"The knell of all

hopes has sounded,"' he mumbled. "I'he dream that has
Wed was so fair."'

'Oh, dreadful cruel fate."' Continuing the quote, Rannaldini
stroked Tristan's hair.

Rannaldini, are you quite sure?'

'My dear boy, if only I weren't.'

desk he took a dark red Bible, and from between its
gold pages drew out a yellowing letter. Everything was
the beautiful black script, the thick paper with the
edges, the Montigny crest of the chained snake, the little

of the entwined lovers in the top right-hand corner, that
often seen on letters sent to his brothers but never to
ltienne had written,

dear Rannaldini,

Thank you for all your understanding and kindness. Without

these, I doubt if I would have survived. I cannot imagine a crueller

but I must accept that Tstan is the product of this

union. Delphine took the easy way out, so I am

bring up the boy, although it will be a constant reminder
f his conception. I can never bring myself to


read more, Tristan thrust the letter at Rannaldini and

out into the woods. Cannoning offtrees like a drunkard, to uproot them and build his own funeral pyre like




216
	217


Hercules, he reached the park where he wandered, sobbing, 'Oh,
dreadful cruel fate,' over and over again.


At dawn he chucked his signet ring into the lake. Would that it
could have been himself but the water had almost dried up in the
drought. Beautiful, pale, like a sadistic marquis, totally untroubled
and unmarked by his night of vice, the moon on its side lay over
Rannaldini's woods.

The rising sun was already gilding the little wood that formed a
halo round Magpie Cottage. His halo had gone. Tristan longed to
level with Tab, but the truth was too hideous and he couldn't bear
to read the sickened distaste in her eyes, or to listen to her lame
excuses as she backed off. She needed perfect children to carry on
the beauty of her family. She deserved only the best.

Tab had waited up all night. When he told her he wasn't coming
back, her howled 'Oh, no!' were the most agonizing words he'd
ever heard.

'It's not anything you've done, my darling. It's my fault. You're
married. Try and make a go of it with Isa. I'm no good to you. One
day I'll explain.' Then, when there was total silence, 'Tabitha?'

'I've just lost another father,' whispered Tab, and hung up.


Lucy didn't want people to hear her crying, so as soon as shooting
had finished the night before she retreated to her caravan.James,
who was upset by tears, curled himself into the tiniest russet ball
on one of the window-seats, letting out occasional deep sighs to
rival Rannaldini's.

At first when Tristan hammered on her door, she thought he was
drunk: his shirt and jeans were ripped, his face was covered in
scratches, his eyes rolled wildly. He was shaking so violently that
she wrapped him in her duvet. As he sobbed his heart out, gabbling
in French, often quoting Don Carlos and occasionally laughing
inanely, he was difficult to understand, but gradually she pieced

together what Rannaldini had told him.

Lucy was furious.

'The bastard.' She handed Tristan a cup of black coffee into
which she'd poured a miniature Drambuie. 'He knows you're bats
about Tab, and Tab is bats about you.'

Oh, why was she cutting her own throat?

'He'sjealous you saved Tab's life and she was so frantic for you
to take her home. You're a Montigny, sure as oeufs is oeuj. I can tell
by your bone structure and your mouth and the height of your eyes
in your face. Why don't you nip back to France and ask Auntie
Hortense?'

'Non, non, non.' Tristan shook his head back and forth. 'It's all in
the letter. I am very fashionable, incest is hot, as Sexton keeps
saying.' His wild laughter turned into sobs.

:.. Sitting down beside him on the bench seat, Lucy gathered him
up, stroking his hair, trying to still his desperate shuddering.

'I love Tab so much, Lucy. Last night she was Holy Grail in my
arms.

'I know, I know.'

i Even a worried James leapt down, and nudged him with his long


'Dear James.' Avoiding his sore palms, Tristan smoothed the
laaggy head with the side of his hand. 'I can't stop thinking of that
monster raping my mother. She had no-one to turn to. If only
fl-i¢'d had an abortion.'

'No!' shouted Lucy, clutching him even tighter. 'That would

deprived the world of a fantastic director.' She gave a sob.

forget you're only twenty-eight, and you've kept this
great show on the road. You're exactly the same person

you all that junk. It's what

are that matters.'

But what can I do about the money I put into Carlos?'

Your fat-cat brothers aren't exactly skint. Carlos is
to be such a smash hit you'll easily be able to pay them back


the 'eart of an angel," quoted Tristan wearily. '"But
sleeps forever closed to happiness." Promise you won't tell


.refused to be comforted.


equally distraught. She had been offered a glimpse of
What was it about her that no-one could love?

moved in swifdy. 'My poor child, but you know
track record. He cannot commit himself. He 'ave you so

yOU. '

Wolfie was more hands-on. Woken by a pitiful telephone cM,1

he hunted down Tristan as he was leaving Lucy s
, and sent him crashing to join the debris of cigarette butts,

and cotton buds on the grass outside Make Up.
dare you lead her on, you smarmy Frog?' Then, as Tristan

his feet, Wolfie hit him again.

the din, Lucy empdedJames's water-bowl over Wolfie.
you revolting bully.'

against the steps of Lucy's caravan, Tristan told Wolfie

meant to hurt Tab, but he had learnt something last



218
	219



night that meant he was useless to her, or to any other woman.
When he wouldn't explain what it was, Wolfie stormed off unconvinced.

By this time heads, including Meredith's and Rozzy's, both in
rollers, were emerging from windows so Lucy patched Tristan up,
dressed his hands and sent him back to the set, where he heroically
carried on directing. But everyone noticed he wasn't all there and
the spark had gone. Soon rumours were flying around that he'd
blown Tabitha out, that she'd blown him out, along with all the old
chestnuts that he was gay, impotent, violent and incapable of
commitment.


Rozzy was angry and hurt Lucy wouldn't confide in her.

'I thought we were friends. Can't you trust me?' Then she
stormed off, when Lucy couldn't.

It really irritated Lucy, the reproachful way Rozzy Instantly
topped up James's water-bowl and tested the earth of her plants
whenever she came into the caravan. Even more maddeningly,
there were tears in Tristan's eyes later that afternoon, when he told
Lucy that 'Knowing we are haemorrhaging money, Rozzy offer to
work for nothing. She is so sweet.'

'Sweet,' agreed Lucy, bitterly remembering James Benson's bills.
Even darling Rozzy's getting on my nerves, she thought, in despair.

But that evening, as she put a patch of a greyhound's head over
one of the rips in Tristan's jeans, there was a knock on the door.
It was Wolfie, looking desperately tired.

'Sorry, I flipped this morning. We had a whipround for the greyhounds
in Spain.' He handed her a jangling brown envelope.
Inside was nearly three hundred pounds.

'Oh, Wolfie.' Fighting back the tears, Lucy hugged him. 'Come
in. Oh, thank you ever so much.' As she poured him a glass of wine, she said she couldn't tell him what Tristan had found out, but if it

were true she understood why he'd had to dump Tab.

'She is destroyed.'

'So's Tristan. He needs you.'

She also didn't want to upset Wolfie by letting on to him the part
Rannaldini had played.

From then on Wolfie carried Tristan, which aroused the enmity
of Bernard, Oscar, Sexton, even of Rannaldini, and most of all the
women, because he was so clearly now lefavori du roi.

into July. The birds fell silent. The heatwave intensi
had it that when the ponds of Valhalla dried up, the
of the house would die. Hoovering up shrivelled petals on
Mr Brimscombe noticed the dangerously low level
pond near the rose garden and moved the gasping carp to
mere beside the maze. He was just making a note to fill up both
the house mains, when he was called away to round up the
in search of grass, had forced their way into the woods


have to raise the voltage on the

told Tabitha.

can't do that to keep you in.'
limits cannot keep in love, my darling.'


electric fences,'



missed Tab desperately, but they were still so frighteningly

schedule and over budget that he plunged into work,
himself and the crew to a point of collapse.

incredibly forgetful, not finishing sentences or remem
names. Before, he'd kept the whole script almost to the line

now Wolfie had to remind him what scene he'd shot


i sweats, and hideous dreams torched flesh and a black cobra curling evilly round the
who would suddenly become his lovely, naked

How could he blame Maxim for brutal, incestuous lust,
was tortured himself by the same shaming desires for


he was seen wandering round Paradise at dawn,
'Rannaldini doesn't know what he's doing.'




220
	221



He was still stonewalling about the introductions. The plot was
now so cartoon simple he felt that constant reappearances of
Rannaldini, explaining what was going on, would hold up the
action. It would also mean agonizing cuts of other stuff, paring
people like Colin Milton, Cranny and Giuseppe down to nothing.

Not up to a tussle, however, he agreed that the Great Hall
should be turned into an opera-house with a royal box. Rannaldini
would then sweep in in his tails to conduct his overture.

Only two incidents marred the filming of this opening. Meredith
was sacked because a falling piece of scenery missed Rannaldini by
inches and Lucy, after everyone had raved that her make-up of
Granny and the characters in the royal box would win her an
Oscar, found an adder coiled in her make-up basket. A terrified
Lucy told only Baby, whom she had to make up immediately after
her discovery.

'Must have crawled in by itself.' Baby tried to cheer her up.
'Adder in the basket's better than chicken.'


Tristan had already shot two endings: Schiller's, in which Philip
hands Carlos over to the Inquisition, and Verdi's, which has the
ghost of Charles V, played by Granny's boyfriend Giuseppe,
emerging from his tomb (which looked, according to Granny, like
a 'public lavatory in Morocco') and drawing a terrified Carlos
inside.

Rannaldini now insisted on a third -with the principals of Act V
on stage singing the last minute of Verdi's version, then the film
ending with himself on the rostrum acknowledging the ecstatic
applause of the audience. The lighting rehearsal on his snow-white
shirt-cuffs alone went on all morning. Griselda was then sacked
because after twenty-nine fittings, he was unhappy with the cut of
his tailcoat.

Rannaldini was even angrier that Giuseppe, thinking he
wouldn't be needed, had buggered offwithout permission to sing
on a cruise ship in the Bosphorus.

'Get heem back by tonight,' screamed Rannaldini.

'Quite right,' said Granny approvingly. 'Show him who's
Bosphorus.'

"Granny was in a much happier mood. He had finished his patchwork
quilt, darling Rozzy was sewing the pieces up for him, and it
would look beautiful on his and Giuseppe's bed. Tristan, heeding
a word from Lucy that Granny was worried about work, had spoken
to him about playing the wonderfully comic role of Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier.

The day that Tristan shot Rannaldini's ending was also Mikhail's
thirty-fifth birthday. Having been bumped off in Act IV, Mikhail
was not needed and had been happily getting himself and
everyone else plastered all day, except Lucy, who was still shocked
by the adder and who had to stay sober because she had the loathome
task of making up Rannaldini. She had never met anyone so
vain. He wanted bronzer, blusher, white on the inside of his
eyelids, mascara, eyeliner and shading, and it took her hours to get
his glossy pewter hair just right.

' Familiar with Lucy's body from the relay race and his monitors,
Rannaldini kept making suggestive remarks and, when she was
ming the hair in his nostrils and terrified of nicking him,
a warm, caressing hand between her thighs.

Meanwhile, word was whizzing round the set that Mikhail had
so stoical about missing his wife, Lara, that as a birthday
- and sod the budget - Sexton was flying her over from
Moscow to emerge from Mikhail's birthday cake later that


was darkening Rannaldini's eyebrows, Wolfie popped
with glasses of champagne from Mikhail. Rannaldini refused.
:never drank before a concert, so Wolfie left a single glass on
table and told his father he was wanted on the set in two


sexually excited at the thought of being
camera. As Lucy removed the pale blue overall and was nearly

by Maestro, his aftershave, he rose, a magnificent
in white tie, black cummerbund embroidered with a silver
and beautifully cut black trousers.
had other sexual games planned for later in the evening, but

the tops on her bottles, he couldn't resist putting
her skirt.

,' he purred, 'and he loves only Tabitha,
don't be sad, Lucy, you have interesting body, and eef I give

lesson, you could be very passionate.'

probing fingers wandered upwards.

revolted, Lucy leapt back, jolting the table, spilling the

next moment she had slapped Rannaldini's face.
,don't care if you fire me,' she said furiously. 'And I'm not

those down,' she added, as her fingermarks reddened on

s cheeks.

laughed, smelling his fingers in ecstasy. Shrugging
.his new coat, the poetry of whose cut was undeniable, he

his gardenia, picked up the glass of champagne and

his lips as he strode towards the Great Hall. But before





he could take a sip, Hermione's top E, as she warmed up in her
dressing room, had shattered it. Rannaldini's smile broadened. He
had been right not to drink.

'Maestro Rannaldini,' tiny Simone stepped bravely into his path,
'you were not wearing cummerbund with death's head in opening
shots.'

'When did continuity take precedence over aesthetic consideration?'
said Rannaldini haughtily. 'The skull forecasts death of
Carlos and Elisabetta,' and, shoving Simone out of the way, he
strode on.

Half an hour later, Baby was tempted to walk out. Hermione had
obviously persuaded Rannaldini to substitute a different take of
the last duet to the one on the cassette, which he had been sent.
On that one she had had a disdnct wobble. Now, over the speakers,
she sounded wonderful and he distinctly off.

Fucking bitch! Baby wanted to kick her on the ankle as he gazed
soulfully into her eyes.

'Farewell, my son, farewell for ever,' sang Hermione.

One camera was trained on Rannaldini. A second, up on a crane,
kept cutting from stage to royal box to enraptured crowd.
Suddenly Philip, the Grand Inquisitor and a pack of paparazzi in
leather, their long lenses raised like machine-guns, charged in.
Philip had just grabbed Elisabetta, when the ghostly presence of
Charles V slowly emerged from his tomb.

Giuseppe has got back after all, thought Baby, in surprise, as his
glorious rich voice poured out of the speakers like the expensive
red wines of which he was so fond. As the rest of the cast fell back
in terror, Rannaldini whipped the orchestra through the last
deafening chords, but as the ghost put out his hand to seize Baby's,

Baby crashed to the ground in a dead faint.

'Pissed again,' said Ogborne.

'It was a ghost, a real ghost,' protested a terrified Baby, when he
came round. 'He cast no shadow on the wall, and his hand went
straight through mine.'

'I told you never to touch spirits,' chided Granny.

No-one, on the other hand, had seen Giuseppe arrive or leave.


Returning to her caravan still shuddering from Rannaldini's
grope, Lucy found that the spilt champagne had burnt a hole right
through the red checked cloth to the table beneath. Someone was
trying to kill either her or Rannaldini.

She gave a shriek as a tall figure loomed out of the darkness, but it was only a hollow-eyed Wolfie. Was she coming to Mikhail's
birthday party? Lucy was knackered, but she loved Mikhail. Hoping

might dull her sense of foreboding, she decided to
an hour, and went slap into a full-dress row.

and Mikhail had both had tip-offs that they'd landed the
. wanted in Samson and Delilah. A plastered Mikhail was
Chloe in congratulation, covering himself in crimson
when -with fiendish timing- Rannaldini urged Mikhail's
wife, Lara, to peep out of her bedroom window for
preview of her beloved. Her reunion with Mikhail was
most acrimonious, and no-one emerged from any

' cakes.

off by slapping Mikhail's face so hard he fell in a
empty fish-pond. She then turned on Chloe. 'You are scarlet

read about in Evening Scorpion on way down.'

Beattie's piece must have come out,' said Chloe, in excite Ifyou've got a copy, I'd love to see it.'

slapped Chloe's face as well Chloe's squawks, however,

to her hysterics when she tracked down the Scorpion. portrayed her as a ruthless careerist and husband

quoting all the bitchy remarks Chloe had made off
including the one about Hermione fardng every dine

note.

was an absolute cow,' said Baby reassuringly, 'so you'll
to play yourself, Chloe.'

fled sobbing to her room. Mikhail, trailing muddy pond

round Valhalla trying to find Lara. Everyone, as a
,wary ofa grungy crone in granny specs and flowing
who was reverently being hawked round the party by
as Eulalia Harrison of the Sentinel. Eulalia was doing

on the whole production that would redress the

by Beattie. Helen, who loved the arts pages in the
had even given Eulalia a bedroom in the south wing.

had already cornered Flora about her famous mother.

could spare me a moment in the foreseeable future

new album and your d6but in Carlos.'

that,' said Flora. 'The album's great, and thank good
you reminded me, I promised Rozzy one for her horrible

He's a mad fan of Mum's.'

b'¢-We all are" said Eulalia reverently.


buckets of wine couldn't make the party gel. There was no

boy to blow out the thirty-five blue candles on the big

olate cake. People loved Mikhail and hated seeing him so hurt
' humiliated on his birthday.

:..It was eerie in the shadowy garden: owls hooted, moths scorched




themselves on flambeaux, gasping unwatered plants failed to revive in the cooler night air. Baby's protestations that Charles V
had been a real ghost began to stack up, as Granny, summoned to
take a call from Giuseppe, found him still on his troop ship in the
Bosphorus.

In Bernard's office, Tristan, Oscar and Valentin were still
wondering after Baby's fainting how much of tonight's film they
could salvage. Having raved over Granny's patchwork quilt, which
was on display and lighting up the summer drawing room like a
rainbow, the rest of the guests had spilled out into the garden.

Sexton, who was heartbroken that his plan to bring Lara over
had misfired so tragically, had arrived with Hermione, who having
heard about, but not yet read, Beattie's piece was delighted at
Chloe's discomfiture. Considering herself an expert on the subject
of the press, she decided to charm the grotesque Eulalia Harrison.

After all, the Sentinds circulation nudged the Guardian's.

'Have you heard my latest CD?'

'I have indeed,' said Eulalia, in her refined ultra-intellectual

Islington twang. 'I am a long-term fan, Dame Hermione.'
'Then you shall come to luncheon at River House.'

Determined not to fall into Chloe's trap of bitching up others,
Hermione beckoned Lucy over.

'This is my personal make-up artist, Lucy Latimer. You'll want to
talk to Lucy about me, and probably to our Woman Friday, Rozzy
Pringle. By the way, Rozzy, my rose-lined green cloak has a tear.

Rosalind's very nifty with a needle, Eulalia.'

'And a great singer,' said Lucy defiantly.

'Come and meet Sexton Kemp.' Hermione took Eulalia's arm.
'Sexton went to Eton, you know.'

'Bitch, bitch, bitch!' said Lucy, to Hermione's broad departing
back. 'Omigod,' she screamed, as a ghostly apparition appeared
unexpectedly out of the ebony depths of the maze. 'Oh, thank
goodness it's you, Alpheus.'

'Either of you two seen Cheryl?' An enraged Alpheus glared
towards the terrace where Rannaldini, still in his tails, the skull
leering from his cummerbund, was now standing.

'How dare he say artistic consideration come before continuity?'
fumed Simone, as Rannaldini clapped his hands and announced
the cabaret.

Earlier in the shoot, after a particularly trying day, Meredith and
Rannaldini had joined Tristan in his caravan and, over a bottle of
whisky, they had discussed everyone. Rannaldini had taped the
conversation and now relayed it on speakers around the house and
garden.

226


Tristan had been enjoying the catharsis of a really good

sound of his laughter, which had not been heard since
dafg drew the outside revellers in round the terrace.
mimicked most of the cast, particularly Pushy and

Meredith had savagely taken the piss out of Sexton, but had been reserved for Hermione, as the wife of Bob, his
lover. Tristan had defended her manfully, only when
started impersonating her in a screeching falsetto could
heard crying with helpless laughter.

guffaws from the guests quickly faded into appalled
silence. Sexton looked as though he was going to cry. never knowed I was that common.'

dared look at Hermione, who for once was lost for words.
. Tristan wandered into the party, Rannaldini could be heard on the tape, 'Do you theenk we should replace Hermione?'
Harefield,' giggled Meredith. 'Well, Pushy's al
her top notes, so why not get some pretty actress, half to play her on film?'

an ass a quarter the size,' Tristan had suggested, to shouts


		that bloody thing off,' howled the real Tristan, and his

		were round Rannaldini's neck. 'I keel you, you bastard.'

		Bernard and a racing-up Valendn hadn't pulled him

	lie
	have strangled Rannaldini. 'D'you want to screw up

	we achieve, you fucking madman? Let me get at heem,'

	struggling to break free of their clutches.

	' sneered Rannaldini, straightening his collar, 'how

	you're getting over a bit of fun.'

	was distracted by Hermione screaming.

	i'|t im't true about my top notes?'

	was about to protest that of course it wasn't, but Pushy

	too quick for him. 'Ay'm afraid it is, Hermione,' she said

	tmugly. 'Roberto couldn't bear you to sound less than perfect.'

	that she would get both Pushy and Rannaldini, and

	ith Tristan again, Hermione flapped offtowards River

	', so like a great goose that everyone expected her to break


'Shame the river's too low for her to drown herself,' sighed Baby. But her departing screech was interrupted by a far more pitiful
In the summer drawing room, Granny was crouched
over his patchwork quilt, which had been slashed into
tiny pieces that, unlike Foxie, it couldn't be sewn together
. Like eaglets fluttering round a mother bird with an irrevo
broken wing, Lucy, Baby and Flora surged forward, frantic to



227




comfort him, but Granny refused to let Tristan call the police. 'No,
no, nothing can bring it and my darling boy back again.'


Ten minutes later, utterly unmoved by such tragedy, Pushy
returned from cleaning her teeth in Helen's bathroom (after all,
it would be hers soon) and, sidling up to Rannaldini, asked if it
were too early to slope off to the watch-tower.

'Frankly it is,' smirked Rannaldini. 'Because I 'ave subsequent
engagement,' and singing, 'Life is just a bowl of Cheryl,' he disappeared
into the dark.

Ten minutes later he let himself into the watch-tower.

'My darling,' he crooned to Mikhail's Lara, who Clive had just
smuggled down a newly strimmed ride. 'Don't spoil your lovely
eyes with tears. Suffering will make your wayward husband sing
even more beautifully, and you will have a night to tell your great
grandchildren about.'

Then, as a feisty blonde in a foxglove-pink and purple dressing
gown came down the spiral staircase, 'I don't think you know
Cheryl Shaw.'

228


next two and a haft days, thank God, were rest days. Tristan
' of TheLily in the Valleyin Paris on Saturday
and then a lunch party for Aunt Hortense's eighty-sixth
on Sunday. Night-shooting would start on Monday


iRoused early on Saturday morning from the same hideous night
Tristan found his light on and Rannaldini standing in his
doorway. With his bare muscular chest soaring out of
black trousers, he was hideously reminiscent of himself in The
Charmer.

'If I have any more hassle from you,' Tristan reached for a
a shaking hand, 'I'm taking my name off this film.'
'What name?' taunted Rannaldini. 'You're not a Montigny any
In fact, your lack of roots is showing, my dear.'

i.i.iTristan felt churning black loathing. Unless he jumped to
the bastard would tell the world ltienne wasn't


'Hurry or you'll miss that plane,' smirked Rannaldini, 'and do

my best to Claudine Lauzerte.'

Strolling down the landing, Rannaldini was greeted by his cat,
arastro, mewing with rage. Stooping to stroke him, Rannaldini

his white fur drenched. How could this be, when it hadn't
for weeks? Out of the window, through the pre-dawn half'light,
he saw Rozzy with a watering-can, like a nurse in the trenches,
tg to bring succour to his dying plants.

" ladding downstairs out into the garden, he caught her so red

she dropped the watering-can.

: trst, you water my cat, next my flagstones.



229




'I'm terribly sorry, Rannaldini. I'm so shortsighted I mistook
poor Sarastro for some white violas.'

'Rozzy, my dear,' said Rannaldini silkily, 'I had such an interesting
session with James Benson yesterday.'

The colour stole from Rozzy's cheeks as though she was bleeding
to death.


Flora woke when the sun was high in the sky to find Baby had
already left. It was too hot to wear anything but cotton, so she
wandered out to the facilities unit in her white nightie. As Trevor
rushed reproachfully around lifting his leg on wheels and guy
ropes, she could hear Meredith's voice issuing petulantly from
Make Up.

'How can I expect darling Sexton to re-instate me, when
Rannaldini plays that loathsome tape?'

'Baby sent his love, Flora, and said he'd be back some time on
Monday,' called Rozzy, as she emerged from Wardrobe clutching
a large Harrods bag. 'I've got the remains of Granny's patchwork
quilt in here,' she added conspiratorially, shoving it into the boot
of the car. 'I'm going to try and save it.'

'Poor old boy,' said Flora sadly. 'I bet Giuseppe's doing more
cruising than singing in the Bosphorus. Although I can't really
believe Baby saw a ghost.'

She handed Rozzy another carrier-bag. 'I got Mum to sign two
photos and her new album for Glyn.'

'Oh, you darling child.' Rozzy hugged her.

'It was the least I could do after you mending Foxie. Are you OK,
Rozzy? You look dreadfully pale.'

'I'm fine,' sighed Rozzy. 'I've got to be.'

'Well, don't work too hard. I hope Glynjolly well appreciates his
birthday party.'

'You look pretty pale too,' Rozzy called after her. 'Why don't you
ring your nice George?'

An almighty bang made them both jump. Wolfie, who hadn't put
a foot wrong throughout the shoot, had been bullied into filling
up Alpheus's Jaguar from Rannaldini's petrol pumps. Catching
sight of Tabitha leaving Magpie Cottage, however, he had driven
slap into Bernard's Peugeot. This gave Alpheus the excuse to storm
upstairs to Rannaldini's study where he found his executive
producer signing fan mail.

Alpheus flipped. Not only was his Jaguar totalled but how dare
Rannaldini also lie to Cheryl that he'd been humping Pushy, Chloe
and Hermione? Cheryl was threatening to divorce him and expose
him to the taxman if he didn't accede to her outlandish demands.

230


wants custody of Mr Bones, the family dog,' Alpheus
finally.

not surprised.' Admiring his beautiful hands, Rannaldini up a nail file. 'Eef Mr Bones can hold down job worth two
thousand dollars a year on your books and bite the
he's quite a find. I 'ave to confess I find that emerald stud labia minora quite enchanting, but I think she has the
Mikhail, so I suggest you get it insured before they get


Rannaldini...'

bellows of rage could be heard all over Valhalla.


just screwed up enough courage to punch out George's
when Rannaldini caffooted up, suggesting a walk round

Flora was so depressed she thought Rannaldini would
than no-one to talk to. She was wrong.
reached the pond near the rose garden, Rannaldini said,
when Baby will tell his little friend Isa that he'sjust tested


stopped in her tracks, breathing in a sudden stench of fox.

now?'

recommended him to a doctor,' said Rannaldini smoothly.

boy only heard this morning. He's demented, and so

darling.'

you sure?'

if you swing all ways and sleep around as much as Baby
'it was only a matter of time.'

my God.' Flora slumped on a stone bench.

disappeared after the fox. In the almost non-existent
pond, a couple of carp gasped andwrithed. Then, from

Rannaldini produced an even worse horror.

theenk of these pretty pictures?'

gave a groan because the top one was of Baby making love
on the lawn at Angels' Reach.

them to me,' she screamed, snatching the polythene


.Have them.' Rannaldini gave a sigh of delight. 'I have the negs.

should make George relinquish his plans for a Paradise

And, eef not, Gordon Dillon will adore them.' And

'This is my last, my finest day,' Rannaldini sauntered back
house, pausing only to switch on his mobile:

my dear, can you ring Fleet Water Board and get them
the lake and the ponds?'



231




lZlora whimpered with terror. Baby, who'd been mysterious about
his weekend plans, always switched off his mobile. There was no
way she could call him and check the truth. Looking round, she

saw that Trevor was tossing something in the air.

'Stop!' she screamed.

But by the time she had got there it was too late. It was a little
black mole, probably in search of water. Lost above ground,
blinded by the sun, the earth was baked too hard for him to tunnel
to safety. There was something so pathetic about his tiny pink
hands. Sobbing helplessly followed by an insufficiently contrite
Trevor, Flora set out to find a spade to bury him. She felt she had
bypassed Paradise for ever.


Entering Valhalla, Rannaldini had bumped into his leading
mezzo.

'"Dear Chloe, how blubbered is thy pretty face," he quoted, in
amusement.

'It's all because of Beattie's horrible piece,' sobbed Chloe.
'Howie's just rung in his undertaker's voice saying I haven't got
Delilah. Even worse he says the money's on Gloria.'

'She is a newer face, my dear. Your voice is not really strong
enough to fill the Garden. The last thing we need is terrible reviews
for Delilah, just as Carlos is previewing.'

Chloe was the second person in twenty-four hours to slap
Rannaldini's face.


And now he was in his watch-tower, working on his memoirs, the
evil smile playing constantly over his lips. Pushy had left several
furious messages on his machine. Having had access to helicopter,
orange Lamborghini Diablo and Rannaldini's bank balance for a

fortnight, she was now feeling the draught.

Rannaldini took her next call.

'You promised Ay'd be the next Lady Rannaldini.'

'You were queen for a night, my dear Gloria. Poor Eboli only had
two minutes of bliss. You had two weeks. Count yourself lucky.
Now, pees off.'

Rannaldini turned back to his memoirs. What a lot he had on
the rest of the cast.

That very morning, poor, silly Granny had been so unhinged
that Clive had snapped him doing something very stupid in
Rutminster. There was no way Hype-along would be able to buy all
the nationals once the story broke. And what a lot too he knew
about goody-goody Rozzy.

Then there was Chloe's frolic with the goat on the Internet. And

232

certainly wouldn't want to know what he'd been
up to with Baby, or Isa what Baby had been getting up to
Flora. How gay was Baby, really? And what a shame Mikhai!
last night. That marriage would take a long time to


with pleasure, Rannaldini picked up his photograph
What a lot of beautiful women he'd slept with! There was
a plump, ravishing schoolgirl, and Chloe, whose skin was
in texture, but who had been almost too easy to bed. And
mother Gina, hangdog because she'd loathed being
:d in the nude. Not a beauty but incredibly rich, she
him his start in life.

a page were Serena the nympho and Pushy, whose
talk had been very limited. Over the page was Beattie

who was helping him with his memoirs and who knew
too much about him. Beattie had been a marvellous fuck,
. second wife, Cecilia, an even better one. And there was his third
Kitty, so anxious to please, who had escaped to marry
. friend Lysander. One day he would get even with those


the centre spread was an emaciated Helen - what a
to Hermione: rosy, Rubenesque, probably the most
of them all, and certainly the best in bed. Yesterday he
punctured her self-esteem, but she was turned on by punish
and would soon bounce back.

the end of filming he would screw Lucy. She deserved a
And what a wonderful evening he had had last night,

Cheryl and Lara exploring each other's bodies. He'd
, been able to get a cock in edgeways.
But, flipping through the pages, there were two Everests still to
conquer: Rupert's women. There was only a head shot of the divine

taken at Tab's wedding, but by secreting hidden cameras
both her bedrooms, at Valhalla and at Magpie Cottage, he had

stunning shots of Tabitha, naked, slender and most
1 of them all.

Rannaldini felt chained to a lunatic by his lust, his cock about to
detonate. He had fantasized recently of marrying Tab, and giving her blond, beautiful babies.

But things hadn't gone to plan. Rannaldini found himself
increasingly identifying with Philip II. He had 'sought in the vast
leert of men, for a friend'. He had found Tristan, but Tristan had
flouted his authority and won Tab's affection.

Itwas the same with Wolfie. Rannaldini had wanted his son back
o much, but how could it happen that Flora once, and now it




233




seemed Tabitha, had grown increasingly fond of such a ham-fisted,
formal, slightly ridiculous, hopelessly romantic young man.

Tab was infatuated with Tristan, but Wolfie was busy gaining
ground. In his son's top drawer, under the lining paper,
Rannaldini had found Polaroids of Tab in her dunce's cap. He'd
kill rather than relinquish her to Wolfie. Suddenly he had a brainwave
and picked up the telephone.

'Clive, I want you to make a trip to Penscombe.'


was amazed and touched when Chloe rang her the following
which was a Sunday, asking her to come to Harvey Nichols'
was there to buy dresses for? Isa was as
and Tristan hadn't telephoned since he'd blown her
knowing that he wanted polo in Don Carlos and that
over the expense, Tab explained to Chloe
over to Rutminster Polo Club that afternoon, to
me of the England players, all mates of Rupert,
the film for a crate of Mot apiece.

i much of a hardship negotiating with those guys,' said
'At least drop in on the tennis tournament later.'
Chloe. Evenings are the only time it's cool enough to


look after yourself, little one.'

away the tears. How kind of Chloe to be so solicitous.


and the fact that it was 8July,
the real Carlos had been born, the tennis tournament had
for early evening in the forlorn hope that the heat

itwas hotter than ever, with black stormlike
the Grand Inquisitor's army in the west.
t flanked Hangman's Wood. Already
yellowing and every chestnut leaf was edged with
the smouldering trees seemed turned to stage
had redred to his watch-tower to drool over
arrived rushes of himself on the rostrum. Over and over

bars of the overture, like hunting horns deep in
advertised his evil presence.
to the tension, people who had fondly arranged to


234



partner one another weeks ago were no longer on speaking terms.
Pushy was playing with Alpheus, which would put Cheryl into orbit,
Chloe, a reputed demon on the court, with Mikhail, which would
equally enrage Lara.

After Friday's d6b$cle Mikhail had also decided he loathed
Chloe, and rolled up at the tennis tournament swigging vodka out
of a two-litre Smirnoff bottle.

'"'Appy birthday, Don Carlos, 'appy birthday to you,"' sang
Mikhail, 'And I hop' he had better bloody birthday than I 'ave on
Friday.'

'Today,' boomed Griselda, resplendent in a vast white tent dress,
'is also the birthday of Rozzy's husband, Glyn, probably an even
greater shit than the original Carlos, so horoscopes do work.'

'And it is my aunt Hortense's birthday,' piped up Simone. 'She
is terrible tart too.'

'I think you mean "tartar", sweetie,' said Griselda fondly.
'Uncle Tristan is probably sdll at her birthday party now,' said
Simone, glancing at her watch. 'She'll be very angry I rattled at the
last moment.'

'You couldn't miss a chance of having Wolfie as your partner,'
mocked Chloe, swiping at a passing wasp with her racquet.

Seeing poor Simone - who was unaware that her crush on Wolfie
was common knowledge - going absolutely crimson, Griselda said
quickly, 'Rozzy's been cooking chicken breasts to be wrapped in
smoked salmon, sea trout and raspberry Pavlova for that bastard
Glyn all weekend.'

Paid for by me, thought Lucy bitterly.

'Oh, look,' said Meredith, as a black helicopter approached from
the south-east and landed on the lawn of River House. 'Hermione
has returned from Milan. She's clearly not too mortified to make
use of Maestro's chopper.'

Meredith was partnering Flora, neither serious players, particularly
Meredith, whose Christopher Robin stmhat fell off if he ran
too fast. To everyone's amazement, they took out Mikhail and
Chloe, because Mikhail smote every ball into the dark midgy
canopy of Hangman's Wood.

'I hop' I break every window of his bloody vatch-tower,' he
growled.

'Why don't you take up golf?.' snarled Chloe, as they walked off
the court.

Afterwards they could be heard yelling at each other in the maze,
in which they would be filming next week.

'No doubt rehearsing the bit when Posa pulls a knife on Eboli,'
said Flora, collapsing on the burnt, scratchy grass to watch Bernard

Sexton's beautiful secretary, pounding balls at
Ogborne, who was still keeping the midges at bay with

wine-stained sunhat.

was coming apart at the seams, in floods one minute,

with laughter the next. Now she was crying because she

hear Tabloid, the Rottweiler, howling and stuck in baking
' confinement beneath Rannaldini's watchtower.
. doesn't bloody Clive take him for a walk?'

as the hunting horns from the rushes echoed through

's Wood again, 'If I hear that overture once more, I'll


horror of the photos Rannaldini had shown her had now
in. She hadn't come on yet. What happened if she was preg
a little HIV baby? If George saw those pictures,
never take her back. Every dme a mobile rang, she leapt three
in the air.

who was partnering Griselda, was equally suicidal. How
he have let himself go in Rutminster yesterday? Every time a

up the drive, he expected blue lights and sirens. Even
i cruelly, an indignant Howie had just confirmed that Serena
on the cruise ship with Giuseppe. Rannaldini's evil
had worked a treat. Granny's dreams were now as
as his patchwork quilt. But, being Granny, he refused to
ieveryone else's fun, and plucked his tennis racquet like a


said that he loved her but, oh, how he lied,"' sang Granny. how he lied, oh, how he lied."'

they were married and somehow she died. Somehow
.,"'joined in Flora.
glasses of white, and no food since Friday, Granny was
in a fuck-it mood. His sneaky underarm service was soon
over the net. Griselda, galumphing around in her white
out to have a murderous backhand. To everyone's

cheering surprise, they routed the number-one seeds,
Pushy.
white with rage to match her tennis kit,' muttered
to Lucy. 'I reckon Alpheus threw that game.'

r came off the court, Meredith was reading out a Sunday claiming that the coveted part of Delilah had not gone
or even Pushy, but to Rannaldini's ex, Cecilia. With a
' of bracelets and earrings, Pushy burst into tears.

promised me that part, and he promised Ay could
next Lady Rannaldini,' she sobbed.
been promised that,' said a mocking voice. 'It comes




after being told we've got the most beautiful voice in the world.'

Abandoning Mikhail, who'd passed out under a weeping ash,
Chloe had returned to the court.

'Oh, God,' her smile disappeared, 'here comes Helen and that
ugly cow Eulalia Harrison. I gather she had luncheon at River
House.'

Pushy's sobs subsided. She longed for an in-depth interview with the Sentinel

But Eulalia, pallid beyond belief, with the evening sun showing
up a moustache and a gap of hairy leg between flowing skirts and
leather boots, had her sights set higher.

'Chloe Catford,' she cried, 'I was appalled by that drivel Beatrice
Johnson wrote about you in the Scorpion.'

'The bitch completely misquoted me,' said Chloe, unfreezing
slightly.

'That was apparent. I resented the way she trivialized you.'
Eulalia's blinking unmade-up eyes behind her granny specs were
full of compassion. 'Could you spare me a moment tomorrow?'

'Why don't we do lunch?' Chloe turned to Lady Rannaldini, who
had drifted on ahead of Eulalia, clearly reluctant to get sucked into
the tennis. 'Hi, Helen, that is a gorgeous dress.'

Helen paused for a second, holding out the mauve silk,
patterned with purple lilac and pale yellow honeysuckle. 'Lovely,
isn't it?' Then, looking coldly at Pushy, 'My husband brought me
back the silk from Tokyo.'


Wolfie and Simone easily dispatched Lucy and Ogborne to reach
the final against Granny and Griselda.

'We're going to have trouble beating those two,' sighed Griselda.
'Wolfie plays like Boris Becket.'

'Boris Better. Wolfie's much nicer looking and such a good boy,'
said Granny approvingly, as Wolfie topped up everyone's glass and
handed round strawberries, giving Simone time to get her breath
back before the final. He had lost so much weight, his signet ring
kept falling off, so he gave it to Lucy to look after.


As the chapel clock struck half past nine, the finalists took up their
positions. Lucy and Simone are so sweet, thought Wolfie, as he
jumped from foot to foot on the baseline. Why was he too hopelessly
in love with Tab to consider anyone else? Glancing across the
valley he felt sick to see a car, looking suspiciously like his father's
Merc, creeping stealthily up the little lane to Magpie Cottage. An
ace from Griselda whizzed past his ear. He mustn't give in to weak

238


he was incapable of returning Simone's love, he could at ensure her victory.

. well played, Wolfie,' said Simone, five minutes later, as he
Granny for a second dme.

sitting away from the rabble on the other side of the
much envied the way Simone ran around picking up balls
Wolfie. It was high dme he had an adoring young woman in his

He picked up his mobile.

. were bashing against the floodlights. Even Rannaldini's

delphinium bed, the only thing watered in the garden,

colour in the dusk. A mobile rang, everyone dived hope,- but it was for Chloe.

she purred, 'terrific. I'll be with you as soon as I can.'
:Not having had any exercise, she announced she was going for

and, giving Mikhail a kick in the ribs as she passed the

ash, disappeared into the darkness. Shortly afterwards,
muttered about swimming his twenty lengths, drained his
of Perrier and also left.

; and Chloe must have started up again,' hissed Flora.

hate Rannaldini,' said Pushy.

do I,' agreed Bernard, stunning everyone, because he never


hates him as much as I do,' said Griselda, as she remem
Rannaldini wrecking Hermione's dress.

I must have been roused by Chloe's kick for suddenly he

up and sang, "q'hunder rumbles deep in the heavens, a
must die,"' then slumped back to sleep.

exchanged nervous glances, particularly when real

started to grumble round the hills in sympathy. A slight
rattling the summer-hardened poplar leaves sounded like
Lucy put her arms round a quivering James: she'd have to
him if the claps grew louder.

,Guess what I had to do earlier today,' she asked the remaining

as the players changed ends. 'Streak Clive's hair.'
'Whatever for?' asked Meredith.

The had an important date, he said. His bloodless face went quite

he was really sweet and told me about his mum, and tried to pay me afterwards.'

,Must be the first time,' shuddered Flora. 'Clive scares me more

Rannaldini. That black crow's been sitting on top of the
¢ypress for the last two hours. D'you think it's stuck?'

ts name is Death,' said Ogborne, with a sepulchral laugh.
Christ, that girl's got amazing legs.'



239




Everyone turned as Jessica, Sexton's beautiful secretary, loped
back from the house.

'You'll never guess what?' she gasped.

'You've been streaking Clive's hair,' said Ogborne.

'I just saw Tristan.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' said Bernard roughly. 'He's in Paris.
You've had too much to drink.'

'Keep your hair on, Bernie,' said Meredith. 'Baby saw a ghost
yesterday.'

'What was Tristan doing?' asked Flora.

'Nearly running me over, belting down the drive.'

'Must have been someone else,' insisted Bernard angrily.

'I find it a reliefTristan's away,' confessed Flora. 'He's so uptight,
and he was bitchy on that tape. I always thought he adored us all.
Oh, well played, Simone.'

Lucy hugged an increasingly trembling James. If only she could
explain to the others why Tristan was being so difficult.

'I miss the birds singing at twilight,' she said, looking up into the
trees.

'They're all exhausted feeding their young,' said Jessica. 'Mr
Brimscombe told me nightingales disappear in July. One morning

they're here, the next they've gone, departing silently in the dusk.'
'Like us next week,' said Ogbome.

Burying her face in James's coat, Lucy burst into tears, then
leaping to her feet fled into the wood.

nearly nine and even hotter when Tab got home from
;The Engineer. She went straight into the shower, then put
:oolest clean thing in her wardrobe, a virginal calf-length
cotton shirtwaister, which she had never worn but which her
had given her last summer for her birthday, prol>
hint she might curb her dissolute lifestyle.

it was stifling. She was already breaking out in sweat again.
would have got stuck into the vodka, but staying off
be the only achievement she had to cling on to.

missed Tristan so dreadfully. But as she breathed in a
and philadelphus, she was flatwith
longing for Penscombe. Tristan, however, had urged
work at her marriage. Isa was back in England, and as she
later she opened and applied the chic French
Simone had given her for her birthday. Then she
herself in Quercus, the disturbing, sweet yet lemony
Isa so loved.

downstairs she found Sharon panting on the kitchen
was on heat, and most of the local dogs, including James,
tabloid, when he escaped from his dungeon, had been
round Magpie Cottage. 'At least one of us has got
sighed Tab.

she switched on the wireless. They had all been so
up in Don Carlos, they had forgotten the outside world
Then she jumped to hear a soft, gruff, utterly familiar


of the children had taken her collar off for fun,' her step


no.'
Tabitha clutched herself in horror.


240
	241


'We were playing Grandmother's Footsteps in the woods,' went
on Taggie, 'and suddenly Gertrude had vanished. She's deaf and
blind. She must be so frightened.' Taggie's voice broke.

'What does Gertrude look like?' asked the interviewer.

'She's only a little black and white mongrel, but her black
patches are mostly white because she's eighteen.'

'A good age,' said the interviewer, 'and your husband Rupert has
offered an amazing ten-thousand-pound reward. A lot for such an
old dog.'

'She's special to us,' sobbed Taggie. 'She eats Bonios in her paws
like ice-creams. She was eating one yesterday, and this magpie, one
for sorrow, snatched it away. She'll be so bewildered. We just want
to know she's safe.'

'Well, I'm sure with a ten-thousand-pound reward we'll have the
whole of England looking for her. That's Gertrude, and the
number to ting is...'

Tears were flooding Tab's face. She had known Gertrude,
Taggie's dog, since she was eight, even before Taggie married her
father. Rupert had had to work hard to win over Gertrude.

Gertrude had also starred at Taggie and Rupert's wedding,
escaping up the aisle and standing panting between her mistress
and Rupert while the Bishop ranted about sexual mores. When
anyone had a row at home, Gertrude, the peacemaker, would rush
in rattling a box of Bonios. She had so much character.

Oh, poor Taggie, thought Tab. She must ting home at once. It
took her three goes to dial because she was shaking so much, then
the number was engaged. Feeling the need of Wolfie's solid
comfort, she dialled Valhalla.

Seeing Magpie Cottage's number coming up, Rannaldini picked

up the telephone. 'My little one.'

'May I speak to Wolfie?'

'He is out. The calls are being diverted to the tower. I've been

listening to your poor stepmother on the radio.'

'Oh, God, it's terrible.'

'Maybe not so much. Clive was driving back from Cotchesterjust
now and pick up small white terrier, smooth-haired and with curly
tail. Maybe it's Gertrude.'

'Has she got a greyish patch over one eye and on her tail?'
'She has.'

'I'll be over in a sec.'

Telling a reproachful Sharon she wouldn't be long, Tab put on
gym shoes so she could run faster.

Outside in the dusk it was even hotter. The once deep and
dangerous river was so low she could paddle across it. The lights

242



were on in Hermione's house. She could see Mr Brimscombe
still dead-heading roses in anticipation of night filming, and
waved as she raced past. From the shtieks issuing from the tennis
court, the final was reaching a climax. Someone called out but
she ran on.

By the time she reached Hangman's Wood, she was drenched in
sweat. She had never visited the watch-tower. A combination of
Rttweilers and Rannaldini's rapacity had deterred her. No guard
dogs patrolled tonight, but racing down a woodland ride, she
heard an impetious yap. Blind and deaf, yapping was the only way
in the big house at Penscombe that Gertrude could broadcast her
whereabouts to the family. Crashing open the door, Tabitha
stumbled upstairs.

'Here she is,' said Rannaldini.

-The little white dog sat in the middle of the room looking

mound anxiously with clouded, unseeing eyes. She gave another


i Tabitha dropped to the floor beside her.

my angel,' and suddenly Gertrude, who had often wriggled

the mornings, smelled someone familiar who
her of home. She whimpered incredulously, frantically

her tail, as she jumped off her front legs, to lick Tab's
tearful face. Gatheting up Gertrude, burying her face in

Tabitha also breathed in the smell of home.
Gertrude,' she sobbed, 'oh, thank God, Rannaldini.

so relieved. I must ting her at once.'

breath was coming in great gasps from running.

a drink,' said Rannaldini cosily, pouting her a vodka and

This is a celebration.'

reeked of Maestro and wore only Alpheus's coveted purple

striped dressing-gown. But Tab was too happy to notice,
. not wanting to be interrupted, he had just diverted the calls

the house.

t.' She took a gulp of vodka and nearly choked. 'I've
her back to Penscombe. It's all tight, darling.' She

Gertrude's forehead. 'Can I ting Magpie Cottage
to look after Sharon?'

wasn't home, so she left a message. As she rang off she
¢ noticed a disgusting painting of a black-haired Rannaldini

some naked tart.

'andsome in those days?' he demanded.
better-looking now,' said Tab, but without interest. 'Oh,

Finding Gertrude' - she smoothed the lipstick left on

's forehead - 'gives me the excuse to go home, and




maybe Daddy'll be so pleased he'll forgive me. I've missed him so
much.'

She had never looked more touching. Two blonde strands,
escaping from her black velvet toggle, framed her face. Her eyes
shone, her cheeks were hectic red, the innocent grey dress clung
to her still heaving breasts and wet body.

'I honestly don't want it.' Leaving the vodka, she jumped to her
feet. 'I don't know how to thank you.'

Putting her infinitely precious burden on the floor for a second,
she reached up to kiss him on the cheek. Rannaldini breathed in
her scent. Next moment he had grabbed her with the grip of a
madman. Then the solid wedge of his body hit her, winding her,
throwing her on the floor, and he was on top of her. Sending
buttons flying, he ripped open her dress, suffocating her with his
other hand. She could see the black hairs, feel the clash of the
wedding ring he had been given by her mother, against her teeth.

Struggling like a wild cat, Tabitha scratched his face and
pummelled his ribs, but lust doubled Rannaldini's considerable
strength. As he tore at her knickers, she jerked away her head and
screamed.

'You're so beautiful,' hissed Rannaldini, 'but you need to be
taught a lesson.'

Ducking her head to avoid him kissing her, she found her lips
crushed against his dressing-gown. Then he had rammed his cock
into her, not minding if his aim was off centre. At first it buckled
against her rightness then, tearing her because of her dryness,
forced itself inside.

But Tab's screams, like bats' shrieks, had roused Gertrude, who
could also see faint but frenziedly moving shadows. Edging towards
the noise, she encountered Rannaidini's leg and plunged her few
teeth deeply into it. Rannaldini gave a bellow, and groped for the
bronze of Wagner on a nearby marble table.

'No!' screamed Tab. 'Please - not Gertrude!'

Too late, Rannaldini had hurled it, catching the side of the little
dog's head with a crack, but still Gertrude the lionheart clung on.
Reaching down, Rannaldini grabbed her by the scruff of her
neck and flung her against a big carved cabinet. With a sickening
crunch and a faint yelp, Gertrude slid to the ground.

Rage gave Tabitha strength. Catching Rannaldini off balance,
she wriggled away from him, at the same time shoving his head very
hard against the sharp corner of a marble table.

'You've killed her, you murdering bastard.'

Jumping to her feet, she scooped up Gertrude, who was gushing
blood from a cut-open head, and stumbled down the spiral stairinto
the dark wood. She could still hear cheers and yells

If only she could reach the tennis court, but terror,
zand grief made her lose her bearings. Turning left away from

tripping over roots and bramble cables, she reached a

and paused, gasping for breath.

'Oh, please, don't be dead,' she sobbed.

Gertrude lay motionless in her arms. Frantically Tab tried to

the dog's heartbeat above the pounding of her own,
therewas nothing. Gertrude's merry, curly tail had wagged its


Crying hysterically, Tabitha reached the Paradise-Cheltenham

and a telephone box. Her grey dress was soaked in blood. She
no money and dialled 999.

	.i 'Emergency. Which service, love?'

I want you to get this number for me.'

	Y!Wolfie's machine was on.

Wolfie, help me! Rannaldini's just raped me, and he's
:ed Gertrude. Oh, please get Sharon from the cottage!'

heard a deafening crash and swung round in terror but it
only thunder. She clutched Gertrude to comfort her, because

dog had always been terrified of bangs, but now Gertrude
beyond thunder, shouting, loud music, Christmas crackers,

Sobbing and shaking convulsively, Tab jumped in
as the g. But it was only the worried operator.

reverse the charges to my father at Penscombe?'

was losing its warmth and growing heavy.

a reversed-charge call from Tabitha Campbell-Black. Will
for the call?' asked the operator.

was a pause, then she could hear Rupert's light, clipped
'Yes, of course. Hello.'

Daddy,' howled Tab. 'I've got Gertrude and it's a thunder

but she can't hear it any more because she's dead. I'm so
minT, Daddy, Rannaldini kidnapped her and raped nhe. Gertrude

him and saved my life, so he threw her against the wall and

Oh, Daddy.'

!i: It was so heartbreaking, for a second Rupert couldn't speak.

he said, 'It's all right, darling. Where are you?'

'I'm not sure. In a telephone box on the edge of Rannaldini's
, about a mile out of Paradise. Oh, Daddy, I'm sorry I didn't
rove her.'

	; tlf
	'

	. Gertrude saved you, Rupert tried to keep his voice steady,

	'that was the best possible way for her to go. Look, stay where you

	.re'e: I'll be with you in a trice. But, angel, you're too conspicuous

	in a telephone box.' He didn't want to terrify her that Rannaldini



244




would soon be after her. 'Hide behind a tree until someone turns

up.'

'I'll kill him if he comes anywhere near me.'


Rannaldini fingered the bump on his head where Tab had pushed
him against the table, and rubbed his leg, which was still bleeding.
Fucking dog. Tab would calm down. He'd buy her stepmother a
new puppy. He'd better find her before she caused trouble.
Picking up her glass of vodka, he went outside. The wood was very
dark. Not a star pierced the leafy ceiling. There was no sign of Tab.
As he wandered northwards, blackberry fronds clawed at his
dressing-gown, like women always wanting things.


Helen had spent most of the day packing. Everything was such an
effort these days. She was off to London first thing and, to her
heartfelt relief, Rannaldini appeared to be cooling off the
appalling Pushy and had even offered her his helicopter.

For years, Helen had boycotted Rannaldini's watch-tower as a
ghasdy phallic example of Pandora's box but, overcome by restlessness
and curiosity as to whether Rannaldini had really dumped
Pushy, she decided to take a late-night stroll through the woods.
Drawn irrevocably towards the tower, she was amazed to find the
door open and lights blazing. On the first floor, she found a glas
knocked over, a bronze of Wagner on the floor, a chair on its side,
and tidied automatically.

Seeing nothing of interest, except one of tienne de Montigny's
revolting paintings, she retreated to Rannaldini's edit suite on the
ground floor where he had been watching the rushes. Here, with
pounding heart, she discovered Rannaldini's memoirs: diaries
bound in red leather with crimson endpapers and, in a huge scrapbook
on the table, beautiful obscene photographs of her
husband's women.

There was that slut Flora, and Serena Westwood. Helen gasped
with horror. She had trusted and made a friend of Serena. And
look at Pushy straddling a sofa in a London flat! No wonder the
little tart had treated Valhalla as though she owned it.

As if she were watching some horror film, Helen flicked over the
pages faster and faster. Oh, heavens, there was Bussage roped to a
bed, like an elephant being airlifted to another safari park. She'd
been right all along about her and-- Oh, God! Blood seemed to
explode in her head. There was Tabitha, naked and, in her lean
beauty and her arrogance, hideously reminiscent of Rupert.

But there was worse to come: a photograph of Helen herself
across the gatefold, Belsen thin, her hips hardly holding up a
suspender belt, her silicone breasts jutting obscenely from a
skeletal ribcage.

'I'm going mad,' sobbed Helen.

As if in slow-motion nightmare, she turned to the diaries,
fumbling for the entries where Rannaldini had first met her.
'Prudish, pretentious, silly,' she read numbly. Then on the night
he had first made love to her in Prague: 'Used wicked doctor/shy
young patient routine. Helen a pushover.'

Reading on she realized that, throughout their courtship,
Rannaldini had not only despised her but had been making love
to other women, recording conquests even on their honeymoon,
and interspersed with all this was his craving for Tabitha.

'She smiled at me today. She was wearing a sawn-off shirt and
when she raised her arm I saw the underside of her breast like a

egg.

With a howl of anguish, Helen went on the rampage. Tugging a

. she found a draft will, dated 8July. Bussage
have typed it that afternoon. Rannaldini was leaving everyto
Cecilia, his second wife, to all his children by her and to

Little Cosmo. Not a cent to Helen or Wolfie.

Aflash of lightning lit up the wood as though it were day. A deafclap
of thunder ripped open the valley. Running outside,
threw up and up and up. Rannaldini must be stopped from

his memoirs, particularly if that fiendish Beattie

had any say in it. Suddenly she heard singing: ' These tears
my soul.'

must be on her way to the watch-tower. Jumping
a huge sycamore, Helen didn't notice at first the dancing

.g in a nearby field, and men jumping
t like an SAS raid and running across the grass.


had found no sign of Tabitha, but the voltage of the
he'd drunk and the bump on his head, which was still
blood into his hair, were making him dizzy. Wandering
direction of the watch-tower, surprised to hear sheep

he was suddenly distracted by someone singing
part in the final duet: 'These tears are from my soul,'
voice.


can see how pure are the tears women weep for heroes.
we shall meet again in a better world."



He was still a hero in Hermione's eyes. She was showing him that
no-one could sing the part better, and that she had forgiven him.
Her top notes sounded as pure and lovely as they had in Paris, eighteen
years ago. Hermione, who had given him more pleasure than
any other woman. Why was he squandering his energy on silly
young girls? Smiling, he walked down the ride and held out his

arnls.

'My little darling,' he called out.


ispite noisy encouragement from the spectators, Granny and

lost 6-3, 6-4 to Wolfie and Simone. Leaving the others
down at the court with plenty of drink, Wolfie loped back to the

to organize supper. In the larder he found a big plate of

d l'estragon, a ham, an asparagus and avocado salad, a
roulade, a large blue bowl of raspberries, and was just

God for Mrs Brimscombe when she hobbled, whiteand
gibbering, into the kitchen. She refused a stiffdrink and

minutes before she made any sense. She had seen a
mauve light, she said. 'It came bobbing out of Hangman's

across the big lawn, past the chapel and disappeared into
graveyard.'

have been someone with a torch.'

was no footsteps, it went straight through the big yew
and a wall. Bobbing and pale mauve it was, Wolfie.' Mrs

put gnarled hands, shaking like windswept twigs, to
'Lights like that have been seen in Paradise before, come
the dead soul to his grave,' she whispered.

stifling heat, Wolfie felt icy fingers on his heart.
there's been a death, Wolfie.'

ing a lift home, she stumbled into the dark.

was terrified. His father never allowed servants to sleep
house although, to Helen's distress, Clive and Bussage

at all hours. For once, he was relieved to hear 'old bag
tapping away on the keyboard in her office, and singing,
¢ on the radio, coming from Helen's little study down the


some bottles. Grabbing
from a kitchen drawer, he idly flipped on the


answering-machine, and received the full horror of Tab's message,
that she'd been raped and Gertrude murdered.

'This time I am going to kill my father!' he yelled.

Oh, God, where was Tab? He must find her before Rannaldini
caught up with her. The bastard! Wolfie dialled 1471 to discover
where she'd rung from, then found out from directory inquiries
that it was the call-box on the edge of Hangman's Wood. No-one
answered when he rang. It was so dark now, between flashes of
lightning. He decided it would be quicker to drive, and found
himself trying to open the BMW's door with the corkscrew. But
when he screeched to a halt beside the call-box, Tab had gone.
There was blood all over the floor and the telephone. A terrible
fear gripped him. Had that pale mauve light been guiding Tab?


Thunderclouds had blotted out the russet glare of Rutminster, the
tiny sliver of new moon had gone gratefully to bed behind the
wood. Down at the court, the conscientious, frugal Bernard
suggested everyone look for balls, whereupon most people sloped
off claiming the need to make urgent, telephone calls. Lucy, who
had returned after her storm of tears in time to watch the last game
and give back Wolfie's signet ring, set off with James clinging to
her heels for a last run round the south side of Hangman's Wood.

She soon regretted it. The wood exuded such evil. At any
moment she expected dark branches to grab her, or the Hanging
Blacksmith to thunder by. She was glad when the path curved and
she could see the comfortingly twinkling lights of Paradise village.
She was just wondering wistfully how Tristan had coped, knowing
he was no longer a Montiguy at such a tribal gathering as Aunt
Hortense's party, when James bounded forward, wagging his long
tail, giving excited little squeaks.

Peering through the darkness, Lucy could see nothing. Perhaps
James had caught a white glimpse of Sharon across the valley, but
settling back on his haunches, still wagging, he gazed in the direction
of the west gate. Perhaps he had seen a ghost. Turning in
terror, Lucy raced back to the tennis court, to find Ogborne
guzzling the last of the strawberries.

'All sorts of exciting crashing,' bellowed Griselda, emerging
from the wood.

'Probably cows,' said Bernard, appearing from a more northerly
direction.

'And lots of shooting,' added Griselda defiantly. 'OK, Bernard,
it probably was Teddy Brimscombe after pigeon. And a helicopter
landing and taking off.'

'I always feel this wood's watching me,' shivered Lucy.

250


still about twenty balls short,' sighed Bernard.

are two more.' Coming out of the wood, Granny dropped

, pink and a lime green one on the pile.

chapel clock struck a quarter to eleven, Ogborne filled up

glass.

we going to do about Rannaldini's balls?' he intoned.
'em off,' said Granny.

r funny but even Bernard was braying with laughter,
Lucy's mobile rang. It was Rozzy. Terrified, as the howls of
escalated, that Rozzy might think people were laughing at

spanked the air with her hand to shut them up.

'l:Iow did the party go, Rozzy? Really well, judging by the din in


however, sounded suicidal. After all her hard work to

Glyn's birthday special, Sylvia the housekeeper had given
a single of 'S'Wonderful', and he'd been playing it and

i with her all evening.

how was the food?'

seemed to like it, although Glyn fed his smoked-salmon
[ to the cat, and everyone's plastered.'

. Over drunken shouts of'Happy birthday, dear Glyn', Lucy could

itrains of 'S'wonderful, s'marvellous'.

a pig, Rozzy. How was your dress?'

round, Lucy saw Granny and Griselda playing

r violins and Ogborne holding his fat sides, and wandered
t from them.

admitted the dress had been a success.

.see it at the wrap party. Are you having fun?'

lied Lucy.

.I miss you all so much.'

:-.:-And we you, Rozzy. Where are you ringing from?'

I've got a migraine.'

	'Not surprising, if they're making such a noise.'

	Lucy could now hear roars of 'Why Was He Born So Beautiful?'

are you coming back?'

	'First thing tomorrow. 'Bye, Lucy darling.'

'
	'She's always been a masochist,' sighed Griselda, when Lucy had

				Rozzy's tale of woe.

	'In the old days, they were known as Glyn and Bear It,' said

			'Mind you, I'm one to talk.'

		's mobile rang and she blushed, feeling disloyal when it

	-tUrned out to be Rozzy again.

	'I forgot to say why I rang in the first place. Can you remind

	to get Hermione's cloak out of Wardrobe, or leave me a



251




key so I can mend that tear? I doubt...' Rozzy paused to listen to
the laughter at Lucy's end '... you lot'll surface before the after°
noon.'

'Griselda and Granny reached the finals,' began Lucy, but Rozzy
had rung off. 'She wants you to get out Hermione's cloak.'

'What a little treasure she is-- Whoops, sorry, dearie,' added
Griselda, as she cannoned off one of Rannaldini's bronze nudes.
'I'd better fetch it before I get really whistled.'

'Rozzy doesn't sound in carnival mood,' said Granny.

'She'd never have gone home this weekend if Tristan hadn't
shoved off to Paris,' observed Griselda. 'Oh, sorry, Bernie, I forgot
you had the chauds for her.'


Up at the house, unable to find Wolfie, the others were having a
rip-roaring party on the terrace.

'where's Mildaail?' giggled Simone. 'Still snoring under weeping
ash?'

'Shouldn't we wake him?' said Lucy.

'Oh, leave the bloody killjoy. With any luck he'll get struck by
lightning,' said a newly arrived Chloe, who was looking lit from
inside and wonderfully beautiful.

It's the first time I've seen her without bright crimson lips,

thought the eagle-eyed Simone. She looks so much softer.

Five minutes later, Griselda tottered in.

'Can't find that cloak anywhere. Madam must have taken it to
Milan. Hope she hasn't got it dirty. Here's the key.' Griselda
dropped it into Lucy's shirt pocket. 'Rozzy can find it. Why should
I bother if I've been fired?'

Alpheus arrived next. He had changed into terracotta trousers
and a blue checked shirt, and kept glancing sourly at his watch.
Everyone was deliberately staying up late in the hope of waking late
to get into the rhythm of night-shooting. But eleven thirty was a
ridiculous hour to dine.

'I'm starved. Where in hell's Wolfgang?' he said tetchily.

'Don't tell me the Nazi machine's broken down at last,' mocked
Chloe, ignoring a scowl from Simone.

'I'm off to raid the larder.' Going in through the french
windows, Ogborne went sharply into reverseas he met Helen, in
her honeysuckle and lilac silk dress, coming the other way.

Pretty woman, mused Alpheus. That would really annoy
Rannaldini. He was about to offer Helen one of her own drinks
when, most uncharacteristically, she poured herself a massive
vodka and tonic with a frantically shaking hand.

'Such a fascinating play on Puccini on Radio Three,' she told

:
	Bernard. 'I had no idea that he never finished Turandot and that
Toscanini conducted the premiere.'

i 'We won't get any dinner out of her,' murmured Ogborne to
..Lucy.

'My God!' shouted Griselda. 'Our very own auto dafe.'

Swinging round, they saw Hangman's Wood going up in flames
(iand a shower of sparks, like an orange inferno. The crackling could

heard four hundred yards away as parched trees and dry under
submitted
helplessly to the fiery furnace. They could feel
heat from where they were standing, as the blaze lit up the

	valley:

	i
					watch-tower's on fire,' screamed Helen. 'All his

				and compositions will be burnt.'

				,' said Granny, pouring himself a drink.

					knew they were junk and set fire to them himself,'

				Griselda, holding out her glass.

		Rannaldini's evidence against Tristan would be torched!

				giddy with relief.

				about the rushes?' asked Alpheus, horrified because he

			them.

				a duplicate set at the lab,' said Ogborne. 'Hadn't

				better call the fire brigade?'

					already had. With a manic jangling, a fleet of fire

				came pounding up the drive and were soon sending

				of water into the wood.


			later, the firemen were joined by an hysterical Flora.

	"
	run through brambles, thistles and nettles all the way from

		Reach, she was panting so hard she could only croak.

				Tabloid?'

			back, Miss,' shouted a fireman in a yellow tin hat, aiming

	hose at a blazing oak tree.

					Rottweiler.' Flora tugged frantically at his sleeve.

kennel's under the watch-tower - we've got to get him out.'

	Miss, place's been torched.'

	might be alive,' panted Flora in desperation, 'Please!


ith her arm, she inched forward, but jumped
as the oak tree crashed to the ground, narrowly missing her
spraying sparks everywhere. Someone grabbed her arm,

her down and yanking her to safety. It was several dazed

before she recognized Clive behind the blackened face
hair.

she sobbed.



'It's OI I took him back to the yard earlier.'

'Are you sure?' Flora yelled over the crashing and crackling.
She didn't trust Clive.

'Get back, for God's sake!' bellowed another fireman.

For a few seconds, the blaze had been pegged by the jets of water.
But as the flames merrily leapt back to life again, Flora, hastily
retreating, out of the corner of her eye, suddenly saw a body on
the ground.

For a crazed second, she thought it was some leering Silenus,
caught catnapping in the wood after a surfeit of dryads. Then,
slowly, horrifically, she realized that the lolling tongue, the
hideously engorged lascivious features belonged to Rannaldini.
Alpheus's pink and purple dressing-gown had fallen open to reveal

a mini watch-tower of an erection. Flora began to scream.
'That's Rannaldini! He's been murdered.'

'We have found a body,' admitted the chief fire officer
cautiously, 'and the police are on their way. iF i were you,' he added
to Clive, Td take this young lady back to the house.'

were always screaming at Valhalla, often to the accompa
of classical music. Cars frequently hurtled up the drive,
landed like swarms of fireflies, shots were heard in the
As television was so dire on Sunday nights, many of
inhabitants of Paradise had got into the habit of switching
!their lights, turning round their chairs and focusing their
on the great abbey.

watching the goings-on on Sunday, 8 July, included old
who took in ironing, pretty Sally and Betty, the
worked at Valhalla, Pat and Cath, two village beauties
and that Paradise worthy, Lady Chisledon.
clocked Dame Hermione's return from Milan and been
by no sightings of Tristan on the tennis court, the
had assumed the flaming watch-tower was part of
But when five fire engines had been followed by Detective
the area CID man, in his battered Rover, and
car with a flashing blue light, they
something was up.

were then delighted by the arrival of Detective Chief
Gerald Portland, a local pin-up, who was equally
to have just returned from sailing in Turkey with a
tan to flaunt at forthcoming press conferences.

seen that Rannaldini had not only been strangled but
shot through the heart, he ascertained murder had taken
and set in motion the wheels of inquiry. No doubt Chief
Swallow, a dinner guest at Valhalla, would soon ring
¢ Rannaldini to express his sympathy.

no time, two uniformed police had cordoned off not only
Wood with blue and white ribbon but also the



255




Paradise-Cheltenham road, which passed the main gates at
Valhalla, for two hundred yards in either direction. A uniform car
halted and took the names and addresses of everyone entering and
leaving.

Watchers all down the valley were even more excited to see
men in white hoods, overalls and boots, like astronauts landed on
the moon, moving around the smouldering remains under brilliant
floodlights. These were the scene-of-crime officers, videoing,
fingerprinting, taking soil samples, waiting for the fire and ashes
to cool, cursing under their breath that the fire brigade, who
were more concerned with saving lives than trapping murderers,
had drenched the place, hurrying as the storm drew nearer. The
pathologist, due from Cardiff in an hour or two, would get
soaked.

Up at Valhalla, two uniformed policemen were collecting names
and addresses. Within half an hour twenty more were swarming in
through the east gate, followed by three times as many press.


Rutminster Police were still recovering from the infamous Valhalla
orgy when PC, now DC, Lightfoot had rolled up to investigate
complaints about noise and only been returned to the station with
staring eyes thirty-six hours later.

Rannaldini had been cordially detested in the area. He had
bribed too many local councillors in return for planning permission.
There were endless rumours of rapes and unnatural
practices. Two of the comelier village girls had vanished without
trace in the past three years. Dark tales had always come out of
Valhalla. To the legends of the Hanging Blacksmith and the
Paradise Lad was now added that of the Strangled Maestro.

But despite their expressionless faces as, armed with torches,
they searched the sinister house and gardens, nothing could
suppress the excitement of the police, that this was bonanza time.
The eyes of Scotland Yard, Interpol and the world would now be
on little Rutminster. Every stop would be pulled out as they worked
from dawn to long after midnight to find the killer. This would
mean massive overtime to pay off mortgage and overdraft. Neither
was the hunt tainted with sick revulsion over some fearful child
abuse or loss of innocent life, only incredulity that no-one had
murdered Rannaldini before.

Detective Sergeant Gablecross stayed with the body until the
scene-of-crime men arrived, then made his way up to the house.
He lived in nearby Eldercombe and knew a local network of
villains, including Clive, as extensive as the secret passages under
Valhalla. A racing fanatic, appalled by Rannaldini's cruelty to
had been trying to nail Rannaldini for years, but it
the Grim Reaper had got to the Grim Raper first.

primary emotion was passionate relief that overtime
murder would pay for his daughter Diane's eighteenth

party, meanwhile, had retreated into the Summer

Room.

diabolical,' chuntered Alpheus. 'Rannaldini's name
.. billions to the film.'

and Hermione will get top billing now,' cried Griselda, as

round the room with Granny.

tombstone fell on him and squish-squash he died, squish
he
died,"' sang Granny, euphoric that with Rannaldini

police might not come and take him away. ' "She went to

"' he trilled, '"and flip-flap she flied, flip-flap she flied."
Chrissake, Granville,' snapped Alpheus. 'Most of us find this

strain.'

cond later, his mobile rang.

there, who did you say?' Alpheus turned his back on the

'The London Times? The New York, ah. Well, if it was

in a dignified fashion. Right, give me your number.
no need to call my agent, he only handles my performing

rights.'

smug, he switched off his mobile.

're about to sing to the rooftops,' giggled Meredith,

•
	entitled to his twenty per cent.'

had offers from the Express and the Mail,' said Chloe glee
I'm
not giving that lazy sod Howie a penny.'

a soldier used to death, was amazingly calm. His duty
to keep the film on course. Who would be needed for the

ball tomorrow? Flora, Mikhail, Baby, Gloria, Hermione
probably wouldn't be up to it), Alpheus and Granny were on

t and if it rained as forecast they'd have to do cover shots in
Great Hall.


police were setting up a major incident van with stateforms,
floodlights and its own generator.

its generator will mate with our generator. "Love is in
air," sang Meredith.
had thought to dim the chandeliers. Flora sat shudon
the sofa, clutching Trevor for comfort, working her way
trying to get Rannaldini's grossly contorted
of her head. She had never needed George more, but
was no answer from his house or his mobile.With her luck,



256
	257


the photographs would have been delivered before Rannaldini was
murdered. She wished Baby were here to cheer things up.

Sylvestre was comforting Jessica, DC Lightfoot Pushy, who was
one moment sobbing hysterically, the'next upgrading her parents'
house from 192 Station Approach to 'Cherrylands'.

Simone was talking to her mother in Paris. Lucy sat beside Flora,
James at her feet, occasionally twitching his toes against her ankle
to check she was there. Thank God Tristan was far away in Paris.
No-one had had more of a motive.

'Maman was very angry that I didn't make the party,' said Simone
in awe, as she switched off her telephone, 'but not nearly as angry
as Aunt Hortense, because Uncle Tristan never showed up and
Aunt Hortense had dispensed with protocol and put him, as her
favourite nephew, on her right. His older brothers, including my
father, were very angry. Tristan didn't even telephone Aunt
Hortense.'

'Couldn't tear himself away from Madame Lauzerte,' muttered
Ogborne.

'Shut up, she's in Wales,' hissed Sylvestre.

'I told you I saw Tristan at Valhalla,' poutedJessica.

That was why James had leapt forward earlier, thought Lucy, in
panic.

'Oh, look, you've spilt your wine over that lovely new settee,'
cried Pushy.

'Oh, God, I'm sorry.' Lucy gazed down as the stain, like a dark
red jellyfish, invaded the sea-blue silk. 'Rannaldini will murder

me.'

'It's all right, dearie.' Meredith patted Lucy's hanging head.
'He's dead now. Run and get some salt, Jessica.'

'And bring me some grub,' Ogborne called after her.
'Ooo, look at that lovely man just come in,' squealed Pushy.

'That's Detective Sergeant Gablecross, our local sleuth,' said
Meredith hastily arranging his curls in a nearby pier-glass.


Although his athlete's body had grown too big for his suits, as a
result of too many hastily snatched hamburgers and bags of chips,
there was an undeniable force about Tim Gablecross. His square,
ruddy, freckled farmer's face, with its uncompromising mouth and
jutting jaw, was only softened by light brown hair, which waved
when it rained, and turned-down emerald-green eyes. These were
fringed with such long, curly eyelashes, that as a uniformed officer
they had stopped his cap falling over his broken nose. Despite a
West Country drawl as slow as the smile that occasionally drifted
across his face, he was as tough as a police-canteen steak.

wife, Margaret, was crazy about opera o :nt:
, recognized Alpheus Shaw and Chloe Catford. No wonder
ffoot was going scarlet as he took down Chloe's name and

Last time he'd seen her, at the Valhalla orgy, she'd only
wearing Diorissimo. Gablecross also recognized Meredith

who was local, and Granville Hastings, who was waltzing

with Lady Griselda, whom he had often booked for
All three looked as though they'd won the pools.

on the other hand, gazed into space, cuddling a
and shaking uncontrollably. Gablecross remembered her
. in The Creation in the cathedral water-meadows, and knew
she lived with George Hungerford, almost more of a wide boy

Rannaldini.

The only thing he noticed about the others was that they were

and on their mobiles, except Bernard Gurrin who came
and introduced himself. Gablecross liked Bernard on

him ex-army, efficient, practical and with a sense of
Bernard had still failed to contact either Sexton or
who was probably already on his way back from France. As

clapped his hands, the room fell silent.

'You'll all know by now a body has been found,' announced

'and we are making inquiries. We would like you to coand
let us retain the clothes you are wearing or, if you've

the ones you were wearing earlier.'

you, Detective Sergeant, anything,' smiled Meredith.

who battled constantly against homophobia, didn't

back.

man hasn't asked me to take off my clothes for yonks,' said

with a shout of laughter.

'The police could use her dress as an incident tent,' hissed


happens to our clothes?' simpered Pushy. 'I was hoping
wear this little cardie to an audition next week.'

'They're labelled, numbered and put in brown-paper bags,' said


'You weren't wearing those clothes earlier, anyway,' the hawk
told
Pushy. 'Nor was Chloe.'

'Yes I was, smartass,' snapped Chloe, opening her long blue

shirt and pleated shorts, 'but Alpheus has


are back at Jasmine Cottage,' said Alpheus quickly.
get them.'

.. 'A police officer will drive you, Mr Shaw,' said Gablecross firmly.

i Ogborne was gazing out on the ever-increasing crowd of media.



258
	259


'I'm going to film them. Always wanted to be an operator,' he
muttered, sliding out of a side door.

'Why are all those men wandering around Hangman's Wood in
space suits?' askedJessica, coming back without any salt.

'To avoid contamination of the body,' explained DC Lighffoot
admiringly.

'Would have thought it was the other way round,' said Granny

sourly.

'I'll get my job back now.' Griselda collapsed on a sofa, drumming
her feet excitedly on the floor like a little girl.

'So will I,' said Meredith. 'I did redecorate this room nicely,
didn't I? Those onyx pillars are to die for. Wonder if anyone's told
Hermione.'

'Wonder how upset she'll be?' mused Griselda. 'They go back a
long way. She probably did it.'

'That singing in the wood sounded almost too good for her,'
observed Sylvestre, the constant listener. 'Perhaps Rannaldini had
replaced her with some young chick.'

'Then she certainly did it,' said Meredith.

'The murderer is most likely to be a member of the family,'
volunteeredJessica, who never missed an instalment of The Bill

'With four wives, eight kiddiwinks, and a million steps and illegits
to take into consideration,' giggled Meredith, as he handed
Sylvestre a bottle of red to open, 'the police will be spoilt for
choice.'

'"He went to t'other place and frizzled and fried,"' sang Granny
happily.

Christ, what a bunch, thought Gablecross, and leaving DC
Lighffoot and DS Fanshawe to get their clothes off them, went off
to break the news to Lady Rannaldini.

Sergeant Gablecross found Helen in a terrible state,
tidying her little study, straightening straight objects,

around with huge, darting eyes, her grey face such a
:he lilacs and honeysuckles blooming so luxuriantly on
beautiful silk dress.

desperately sorry for her, but with murder it was
duty to zap her and start scribbling straight away. 'I'm afraid
your husband's body in the wood, Lady Rannaldini.'
' Helen went utterly still, except for her darting eyes. 'Oh,
God, you don't mean he was caught in the fire? How terrible!
¢ say you suffocate first,' she pleaded.

no, Sir Roberto died from strangulation and gunshot


asn't an accident?'

Gablecross could have sworn it was relief that flickered over her
face. There was a long pause which he let her fill.

'Is everything in his watch-tower destroyed?'

'I guess so.'

: : 'All his precious compositions,' whispered Helen, a muscle
jumping in her freckled cheek. 'His life's work gone! I can't bear
it.'

'What were your husband's movements today?'

'He went to his watch-tower mid-afternoon.' She was twisdng her
very loose wedding ring round and round. 'Earlier I saw him
walking round the garden with Flora Seymour, who looked very
upset. He also rowed with Rozzy P,ringle and Alpheus Shaw - I
heard them both shouting, I don t know what about. Artistic
people shout all the time.'



260
	261



A red glass paperweight trembled like a raspberry jelly as she
straightened it.

'Then some very important rushes arrived of my husband
conducting the first and last scenes in the film, and Mr
Brimscombe, our gardener, and Clive, my husband's bodyguard,
carried this machine out to his tower so he could watch them. My

husband was very particular about how he looked on the rostrum.'
'Did he have anything to eat?'

'He had a late lunch of caviare with blinis and sour cream, and
some peaches from our conservatory, taken out to the watchtower
around four.'

'Who would have prepared that?'

'Mrs Brimscombe. Clive would have taken it out. Rannaldini
didn't like people...' she paused '... people he didn't want, to

visit his tower. Are you sure he suffocated first, Officer?'

'What did you do this evening?'

'I got my clothes ready for London. I've got several committee
meetings and a dinner in aid of the Red Cross tomorrow.
Rannaldini's letting me have the helicopter,' she added proudly.
'Then, at nine thirty, I listened to a play on Radio Three about
Puccini, by Declan O'Hara's son, Patrick. D'you know his work? It's
excellent. Did you know Puccini didn't finish Turandot?'

Like a tap whose washer had gone. Gablecross knew she'd give
him the whole plot, but he let her run on, captivated by her slight
American accent.

'Toscanini conducted the premirre but only as far as Puccini had
written.' Helen's eyes filled with tears. 'Toscanini knew my
husband, and rated him very highly as a conductor.'

'Did you leave your room while you were listening to the play?'
'The phone rang in the kitchen around ten past ten. But the
machine had picked it up by the time I got there, so I left it. The
calls are always for my husband.'

'That was the only time you left the room?'

'Yes, but I missed the end of the play, which was maddening.'
'Did you have any supper?'

'Mrs Brimscombe's so dear, she tried to tempt me with an
omelette but I'm afraid I chucked it down the john. It was so hot
and I had a headache.'

'You didn't feel like joining the tennis party?'

'I popped down earlier with Eulalia Harrison, a charming journalist
from the Sentinel who was actually interested in hearing my
views for a change.'

For a second her bitterness at always playing second fiddle
showed through.

	I didn't stay. Frankly, Officer,' she started to shake again, 'I

	like Clarissa Eden. The crew and the cast have been flowing

	this place as if it was the Suez Canal for three and a half

	I want my house back.'

	seen that lot,' said Gablecross drily, 'I'd feel more like

	Noah, frantic for a first glimpse of Mount Ararat.' He was

	by the gratitude that swept her face.

	you do understand. And now Rannaldini's not going to be

	to revel in those big rooms, which have been revamped like

	Palace. This is about the only place that hasn't been

	She glanced bitterly round the exquisite little study.

	do say you suffocate before the flames burn you.'

	was shuddering so violently she had dislodged a false


	a funny thing to wear to listen to the radio on Sunday

	thought Gablecross.

	keep expecting him to burst in, Officer. He was so dynamic.'

	like you to hand over the clothes you wore today.'

	haven't changed out of this dress.'

	,That's fine. Could you let us have it when you go to bed? I'd also

	;...' he consulted his notebook '... to speak to your son

	daughter Tabitha.'

	as if he had mentioned people she'd forgotten existed. In

	of grief and shock, people invariably look for others to

	'Why aren't they here?' exploded Helen.

	'Any idea where they might be?'

	'Wolfie was organizing the tennis. How dare he disappear when

	: should be here for me? Tab's just as thoughtless. My son Marcus

	uite different.' She picked up a silver-framed photograph of a

:beautiful boy seated at a piano. 'He won the Appleton, you know.
cus would never abandon me at a time like this.'

'Can you think of anyone who might have killed your husband?'
Gablecross let an unbearably long pause elapse, until Helen said
a low voice, 'Tristan de Montigny tried to kill him on Friday
night. Hermione, Chloe, and Gloria Prescott were all furious they
hadn't got a particular part. Particularly Gloria who everyone nicknamed
Pushy. My husband's been so kind to her, lending her the
limo and the helicopter. She took so much for granted.

'He had that terrible row with Alpheus this morning, and one
with Mikhail, and Hermione too. He felt she hadn't sung her part
very well. But my husband fights with everyone.'

A moth was banging like a muffled funeral drum against the
window.
'He can't bear music to be any less beautiful than he hears it in
.h head.'




262
	263



Her mobile rang. Helen snatched it up.

'Rannaldini? It's the Scorpion,' she whispered in terror.
Gablecross seized the mobile. 'Piss off,' he roared.

Next moment, two photographers had rammed their lenses
against the window. 'Look this way, Helen.'

'Bugger off,' bellowed Gablecross, yanking the dove-grey
curtains across their faces.

From now on, the media would move into Paradise waving their
cheque-books, like flies round a cowpat, eyes in their backsides,
making the work of the police ten times more difficult.

Turning back to Helen, Gablecross caught a glimpse of a photograph,
pushed to the back of a shelf, of Rannaldini smiling down
at a ravishing girl. She was the spitting image of Rupert Campbell
Black. It must be Helen's daughter.

'How did your husband get on with Tabitha?'

Images of the photographs in Rannaldini's watch-tower swam
before Helen's eyes, with a naked, scornful Tabitha on the top. As
she burst into tears, there was an impatient knock and a tall young
man in a dark blue polo shirt and tennis shorts barged in. With his
dark blue eyes, gold hair and thighs as strong, smooth and brown
as its onyx pillars, the drawing room, leading out on to the terrace,
might have been decorated to compliment his handsomeness, but
he looked much too large in here. Wolfie disliked Helen intensely

for neglecting Tab, but he hated to see anyone in distress.
'What the hell's going on?'

'I'm sorry, we've found your father's body, sir.'
The colour drained out of Wolfie's suntanned face.
'He had a heart-attack?'

'I'm afraid he's been murdered.'

The boy took it wonderfully calmly. Was it something he'd haft
expected, even longed for? It must have been a terrible burden to

have had Rannaldini as a father.
Wolfie turned to Helen.
'I'm so sorry.'

Crossing the room, he hugged her awkwardly, patting her
shoulder until her sobs subsided. In reality he was playing for time,
his mind racing.

'How did he die?' he asked, still with his back to Gablecross.
'He was strangled and shot.'

Wolfie felt a lurch of fear. Had Tabitha killed him? 'What time
did he die?'

'We don't know. The pathologist hasn't arrived yet.'

The police mustn't find out his father had raped Tab. He must
remove that tape from the machine in the kitchen.

	'Can I get you a drink or a cup of coffee?' he asked Gablecross.

	'I'm fine.' Gablecross could see Wolfie wrenching his thoughts

	into order, he could smell his sweat and see the gooseflesh on his

	bare legs and arms. 'I'd like a few words with you, sir.'

	'Let me just find someone to look after my stepmother,' and

	Wolfie had bolted.

	The kitchen was empty but, to his horror, so was the answering

	machine. Who could have whipped the tape? Sprinting down the

	. passage, he put his head round the Blue Living Room door.

	." 'Wolfie!'. shouted everyone.

		were all drunk. Who could he trust?

	:, 'Lucy,' he pleaded, 'could you look after Helen for me, and ring

	Mrs Brimscombe and ask he, r to come and help her to bed?'


		'I'm ever so sorry, Wolfie. Lucy jumped to her feet.

		'Perhaps we should ring James Benson,' suggested Meredith.

		'He'll be out at some smart dinner party,' said Griselda.

		'I'll come and check how she is the moment the police have

			,' Wolfie promised Lucy.

	'I'm going to fetch you a sweater first,' said Lucy.


interviewed Wolfie in the kitchen. The boy was now
coffee and wearing a red V-necked jersey, which he
;cause his stepmother Cecilia Rannaldini had given it to
for Christmas.

if there were never any question that he wouldn't, Wolfie said
he and Simone had won the tournament. Returning to orgahe'd
found a message from Tabitha, his stepsister, on


'D'you know where the tape is?'

'Must be still in the machine,' lied Wolfie. 'Tab went home

her parents' dog had disappeared. She's living in one of
father's cottages. As I had a second key, she asked me to fetch

and take it back to Penscombe.'

Gablecross admired a screen covered in hundreds of

of Rannaldini with the famous.

t Mrs Lovell's husband have taken the dog?'


inconsiderate of Mrs Lovell to expect you to drive over

.s in the middle of a tennis party.'

distraught about her parents' dog,' said Wolfie quickly.
a very old family pet.'

see anyone when you first returned to the house?'
Miss Bussage in her office, and my stepmother's wire


'Did you hear anything unusual?'

'Only Hermione singing in the rushes as I walked back to the
house. Sound carries much further on thundery nights.
Although...' Wolfie wrinkled his forehead, perplexed '... I don't

remember the bit she was singing being filmed on Friday.'
'What time was this?'
'Around half ten, I think.'

Switching the kettle on to boil for the fourth time, he made two
cups of coffee.

'Why didn't Mrs Lovell take the dog with her in the first place?'

'Sharon's on heat. Tab's father has a pack of dogs. Tab hadn't
seen him for two years. Probably didn't want to rock the boat.'

'Could a more major crisis have made her rush home?' asked
Gablecross.

'A dog going missing is a major crisis in that family,' said Wolfie
coldly.

'How long did you stay at Penscombe?'

'Only to hand Sharon over.' Wolfie was treading carefully now.
'Someone had just brought Gertrude - their missing dog - back.
She'd been run over so I didn't stop.'

As he handed Gablecross the sugar and a biscuit tin, he could
only think of Tab's tearful, choked words when she rang to thank
him on his way back to Valhalla.

'Please, don't tell anyone Rannaldini raped me. It would kill
Mummy.' He had wanted to drive straight back to Penscombe to
comfort her.

'Very attractive young lady, Mrs Lovell.' Gablecross helped
himself to a chocolate biscuit. 'Did that cause any tension between
your father and stepmother?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' snapped Wolfie.

'It still seems excessive to abandon your guests and drive all that
way in the middle of a party.'

'My guests,' said Wolfie dismissively, 'have been freeloading here
all summer. I felt they could fend for themselves.'

The iron has entered into that young man's soul, decided
Gablecross. He's not only madly in love with Tabitha Lovell but
lying through his extremely good teeth. Glancing at the screen
again, he nodced how colourless the famous people appeared
beside Rannaldini. You couldn't fail to respond to the flashing
whiteness of the smile, the hypnodc eyes, the undeniable
magnetism.

'Could you come and identify the body, sir?'

'Certainly,' said Wolfie, emptying the rest of his cup of coffee
into the wastepaper basket.

They found the forensic team sifting through the ashes, videoing

scattering grey aluminium powder on the remnants of
watch-tower, in the forlorn hope of finding fingerprints. The

who'djust arrived, was examining Rannaldini's body.

when the sheet was drawn back did Wolfie's composure
crumble.

The strikingly handsome Rannaldini now looked like his Spitting i!; Image puppet: a grotesque satyr, swollen almost beyond recogni
don, blood and saliva dripping from his nose and tongue, lips

back in a hideous leer. 'How horrified Papa would have
to be videoed without Lucy here to brush his hair,' said
. Wolfie, starting to laugh, then finding he couldn't stop.


	'It's all right, lad.' Gablecross put a hand on his shoulders.
Alpheus's dressing-gown had fallen open to show the muscular

the starchy white residue on his father's thighs,
. bite on the ankle, and the huge erecdon stiffening as rigor

, set in.

been dead for no more than two hours,' said the
replacing the sheet.

glanced at his watch. 'About half ten, then.'

had blackened the grass, washing away the earth, laying
Cotswold stone underneath. Wolfie wondered if someone

his father for Alpheus. Gripped again with terror

tve killed him, Wolfie lurched away, retching into
,brambles. As he returned, wiping his mouth on the back of his

he said defiantly, 'I don't care how many people slag him

was my.father and a great man.'




While Gablecross interviewed Helen and Wolfie, Ogborne had

	joined the mob swarming all over Valhalla, as they filmed,

	photographed and gabbled into tape-machines, describing every

	thing they could see in the darkness.

	Armed with Valentin's lightweight video camera, Ogborne had

	turned up the brim of Hermione's sunhat like a sou'wester. He was

	delighted to catch Alpheus leaving in a police car to collect his

	clothes, combing his rich auburn locks for the television cameras.

	'Where are you from?' asked a BBC cameraman.

	'Bourbon Television,' said Ogborne.

	'Never heard of it. Where're they based?'

	'Paris,' said Ogborne, who was now filming the paparazzi, who,

	like puppies fighting for their mother's teats, were jostling each

	other to get a close-up of Wolfie, returning stony-faced from iden

	tifying the body.

	'News travels fast.'

	'Director's a Frog, so's most of the crew,' explained Ogborne.

	'Huge story for us.'

	'We're trying to sign up the mistress,' said a reporter from the

	Mirror.

	'Which one?' asked Ogborne. 'He had lots.'

	'The big one.'

	'Hermione?'

	'That's it. Know where she hangs out?'

	'What's it worf?. '

	When two hundred readies had been thrust into Ogborne's

	hand, he pointed to River House.

	'She's very greedy,' he called after the departing reporter. Why

in hell hadn't he
	a
	before?

'Great hat,' said the man from the BBC.

'They're all the rage in Paris,' said Ogborne. 'You can have it for fifty quid if you like.'


Thoroughly overexcited by so many hunky young police officers
talking softly into their mobiles and flashing their torches, Clive
sought refuge in an ivy-clad ruin near the graveyard to ring Beattie


'Rannaldini's been murdered. How much are you going to pay
me for the memoirs and the photos?'

'We've already been offered them.' Beattie, like Rannaldini,

giving pain.

Shit. By who?'
'Wouldn't you like to know? We'll go with the cheaper. Talk to

in the morning.'

Possibly a million smackers the poorer, Clive switched off his

and froze as he saw a torch approaching like a will-o'-the,
from Hangman's Wood. Beside him, Tabloid started growling

Putting a hand down to quiet the dog, Clive felt
rigid bumps of his hackles. Then his own hair shot on end as
realized that the violet-tinged light was too big for any torch, I that it wasn't attached to any policeman.

Bobbing past him, it went straight through a yew hedge to

among the dark holm oaks of the graveyard. Clive
breathe. He felt icy sweat trickle down his ribs under his

Even if Rannaldini's body was destined for months
morgue, the violet light was trying to guide him to the

to join Valhalla's dead. The wind was getting up.
for once, in need of company, Clive raced towards the


had just returned with his clothes to the drawing room
Ogborne wandered in, carrying a plate piled high with
salad and chicken.

can you eat at a time like this?' snapped Alpheus, his

and watering simultaneously.

it's probably the last time I w/l/eat here,' said Ogborne

'Sexton had to dip into his own pocket to pay the

. and now Rannaldini's no longer here to fork out.'
all on contracts,' spluttered Alpheus.


tracking down Sexton on his car telephone, Bernard was

him the sad news. Sexton immediately got the contract
briefcase and checked the small print. He then gave a



269



	
whoop of joy: they were definitely insured against violent death.
Without Rannaldini's interference, they'd finish the movie twice
as quickly and they could scrap those pompous beginnings and
endings, include the polo - and he could be an extra in a Panama
hat.

Wally, the chauffeur, looked on in amazement as Sexton leapt
out of the now stationary car, did a little dance, punched the air
and said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.'

'Do we have cause for celebration?' asked Wally.

'We certainly do, tyrant's been toppled.'

Sexton then checked his pocket computer and punched out a
number. 'I'd like to speak to Rupert Campbell-Black.'

'He's out,' said a gruff, tearful voice. 'No, no, he'sjust come in.'
'Yes?' snapped Rupert.

'Rannaldini's been murdered,' said Sexton.

'So?'

'We've run out of dosh, because he was making impossible
demands. We've only got a week of night-shootin' left, and then a
day or two's polo. Polo's Tabiffa's baby. Shame, if we had to junk
it.'

There was a pause as Rupert did some sums.
'I'll come in if I can call the shots.'
'Naturally,' said Sexton.

Hanging up, he did another little dance.

'Turn round, Wally. We're going back to Valhalla. But don't
forget, Wally, we was in 'Olland Park all day, wasn't we?'

'Naturally,' said Wally, who also liked the idea of being paid.


Outside in the darkness, an Evening Standard reporter screamed as
she fell over Mikhail's sleeping body under the weeping ash.

'Sorry, sorry! D'you know anything about this murder?'

'Vot murder?'

'Someone's killed Rannaldini.'

'God is merciful,' said Mikhail and went back to sleep.


The moment he escaped from Gablecross, Wolfie rang Rupert.

'Mr Campbell-Black, this is Wolfgang Rannaldini. My father has

been murdered.'

'I know.'

'I thought it wouldn't look good to say he r-r-raped Tabitha, so
I said Gertrude had been r-run over and Tab came home to
comfort you and Mrs Campbell-Black.'

said 'Well done and thank you.'

Having given up her clothes, Flora looked like a pre-school boy
when she returned in Lucy's striped pyjamas. Trevor lay on the
floor beside her, legs stretched out like a frog.

As Clive and Tabloid entered the room, everyone reached
mentally for their swords. Clive had been Rannaldini's bninence
gr/se, the devil's right hand. For a second he and Tabloid hovered,
two dogs without their master.

'A favourite has no friend,' murmured Flora.

Lucy leapt to her feet.

'Sit next to me, Clive,' she said. 'I'll get you a whisky.'

'Fanks, Lucy,' said Clive, a tinge of colour creeping into his waxy
white cheeks. 'Fanks very much indeed.'

Itwas strange that the three fearsome dog rivals for Sharon's paw

down beside each other without a murmur.

: Clive was followed by Mr and Mrs Brimscombe, both looking
aged and shaken. Mr Brimscombe had taken off his boots.

'Pooh,' said Pushy, noticing his grimy toenails protruding

the holes in his socks.

ii Flora jumped up and hugged them both.

'This must be absolutely horrible for you, but don't worry,' she

d. 'I'm sure Lady Rannaldini'll keep you on. I know Mum

.would snap you up in a trice if she wasn't so broke.'

Griselda patted the sofa beside her.

'Come and sit down, Mrs B. Fantastic chocolate roulade - I've

thirds. How's Lady Rannaldini taking it?'

'In a shocking state.' Mrs Brimscombe lowered her voice. 'Poor

keeps crying and laughing. She won't go to bed. I wish Dr

was here to give her something.'

:.' She flinched as a flash of lightning pierced even the thickly lined

curtains, followed by a deafening clap of thunder. Both James
Trevor leapt into their mistresses' arms.

drag the lake to find the murder weapon,'Jessica
excitedly heard telling Sylvestre.

'The lake has dried up,' said Mr Brimscombe bleakly.


All?list it sounded like applause in extremely bad taste but the clapping
grew louder and louder until they realized it was the ratde of

on roof, window and very dry leaf.


•
	'It's raining,' screamed Flora, running out on to the terrace and

her face up into the deluge.

'Flora, Flora, Flora,' shouted the paparazzi, simultaneously

to shield their cameras and take a picture.


	clothes
	had at last been



270
	271


taken. They could now go home or to bed. Night-shooting would
start around six p.m.

'I still haven't been able to contact the DOP, the operator or the
director,' Bernard told Gablecross. 'It'll be a terrible shock to
Tristan - Rannaldini was like a father to him.'

At that moment, a spectacularly good-looking young man
wandered in. Rain had darkened and flattened his hair back from.
his forehead, throwing his angelic features into relief. A drenched
duck-egg blue shirt and white.eans clung to his body. Only under
the chandeliers could his grey complexion and red eyes be
detected.

Montigny, assumed Gablecross.

'Baby,' cried Flora, shooting in through the french windows into
his arms.

'Hi, sweetheart,' said the young man. Then, looking into her
anguished eyes, 'Hey, hey, what's up with you?'

'Bad news, I'm afraid,' said Bernard. 'Rannaldini's dead.'

Baby didn't miss a beat. 'About time too,' he said approvingly,
and crossing to the drinks tray poured himself a large whisky and

soda with a completely steady hand.

'Murdered,' said Alpheus sternly.

'Really?' Baby looked only mildly interested. 'I'll buy whoever
did it a huge drink. Miracle it hasn't happened before.'

'At least show some respect for Lady Rannaldini,' spluttered
Alpheus.

'"The widow howling for her dead husband".' Baby dropped his
voice an octave to sing Mikhail's line. 'And she's a very rich widow
now, which should appeal to you, Alpheus.'

'This is Detective Sergeant Gablecross, Baby,' said Bernard
hastily, 'who'll want to question you tomorrow.'

'The Grand Inquisitor,' sang Baby in amusement. 'You're so
rugged, Sergeant, it'll be a temptation to tell you everything.'

Totally undeterred by Gablecross's black, pugnacious scowl,

Baby went on, 'For a start, all these people have a motive.'
'Speak for yourself,' roared Alpheus.

'Undeclared tax and cuckoldry in your case,' drawled Baby.

'Sexual romps with ruminants in Chloe's.'

'I'll kill you!' screamed Chloe.

'Jocking off in Isa Lovell's case. Excessive cruelty in Helen's,
excessive cruelty to Tristan in Lucy's.'

'Stop it, Baby,' yelled Lucy, blushing furiously.

Utterly unfazed, Baby turned back to Flora and drew her into an
alcove.

'Rannaldini had photographs of us making love on the lawn at

Reach,' she said numbly. 'He was going to blackmail

and if George didn't back off about the bypass, he was
to send them to Gordon Dillon and, as if that wasn't enough,
said you were HIV positive.'

'Glad he thought I was positive about something. That man was

'
	uch a liar.' Baby rubbed Flora's hands to warm them. 'You poor
angel, what a terrible weekend you've had. But I promise you, I'm
dean. I had a medical for an insurance policy last month. And,
frankly,' he added, pushing the rain-soaked tendrils back from her

: forehead, 'we'll finish twice as fast now the bastard's dead. Then I

can take you back to Oz, away from all this squalor.'
'It's too late,' sobbed Flora.
Baby pulled her into his arms.

'For God's sake, a man has been murdered.' Bernard tapped

, furiously on the shoulder.

'May he roast in peace,' said Baby. 'Unless you're going to let me
identify the body to make sure the conniving shit really is dead, I'm
.off to bed. One must always leave a party early to give everyone a
!ance to talk about one. Come on, Flora darling.'

rumble of disapproval died on people's lips as Helen
.i': appeared in the doorway in a long white nightgown.

'I don't know what to do about locking up,' she told Gablecross,

a high, singsong voice. 'Rannaldini's not back yet and I hate
leaving the front door open.'

Next minute, she was thrust aside by Miss Bussage who, having

handed over her clothes, was now sporting a man's dressing-gown,
slippers and a hairnet that flattened her cropped hair. 'The
Maestro may have passed away,' she called out defiandy, 'but his

on. I've got all his compositions and his last will on disk,
not to mendon a copy of his memoirs and duplicates of all the

photographs.'

For a second, Gablecross noticed collective horror on everyone's
faces. Then there was a thud as Helen Rannaldini fainted.



272
	273


A strange quiet lay over Valhalla. The deluge had shredded roses
all over the lawn and flattened the dreaming spires of Rannaldini's
delphinium bed. Mr Brimscombe tugged on his boots and
hobbled as fast as possible to hoover up the petals before his master
surfaced, then suddenly realized that Rannaldini would never
shout at him again.

Waking, also realizing his father was dead, Wolfie was ashamed
to feel as ira poisoned spear had been yanked out of his side. Then
he blushed with shame and revulsion as he remembered Tab had
been raped. He longed to ring her but felt it would only remind
her of Rannaldini. Instead he got dressed and set about the long
haul of comforting staff and telephoning relations, including
Gisela, his mother, in Munich. Rannaldini's body still lay under
canvas in Hangman's Wood. They would all feel better when it left
for the morgue.

Meanwhile every radio station was playing Rannaldini's music.
Howie had been on to American Bravo and instigated a massive
re-press of all his records. BBC TV had already announced they
would be rerunning Rannaldini's masterpiece, Don Giovanni, starring
Hermione Harefield and Cecilia Rannaldini tomorrow
evening in conjunction with Radio 3. News programmes worldwide
led on the murder, showing clips of the Don Carlos press
conference with Rannaldini and Tristan swearing eternal brotherhood
and, to Ogborne's delight, of Alpheus rearranging the
police car driving-mirror in order to comb his hair before facing
the media.

By nine, uniformed police were trooping in in raincoats to start
a fingertip test through a drenched Hangman's Wood. Others
were going along the high street and up the drives of the big
s dotting the valley, asking people if they'd seen anything

even more extraordinary than usual last night.

As cast and crew woke from fitful sleep to clutch their hangovers,
euphoria that the fiend was no more was tempered by fear that his
killer was still at large. This was heightened by excitement, particularly
among the women, as news leaked out that Rupert
C, ampbell-Black would be pumping in millions to save the film, and
henceforth acting as executive producer.

. At midday Oscar had arrived from Paris with Valentin and three
crates of rouge, which might now last until the end of the shoot.

'No doub.t Peppy Koala will be telling me where to put my lights,'

he grumbled, and, adding that he hoped Rupert's temper was
.... :better than his daughter's, bore Valentin off to lunch at the

Host. There he was incensed to find every table taken by
media, who were equally incensed to be banished outside

main gates. The vast crowd there included journalists

jabbering away in every language under the
a fleet of television vans, arc-lights, satellite dishes, mobile

a bar and Portaloos, as everyone rampaged through
frantic for stories.

wielding even more mobiles than Sexton, and
' sombre in a black armband, flowered tie and flared pale

told the cast and crew that the police would prefer them
to talk to the media.

they offer you at least a hundred grand,' shouted Baby,

spent a lucrative hour on the telephone to the Sydney
Herald.

¢ had been woken within seconds of finally falling asleep by

excitedly and Rozzy banging on the door,
be able to find Hermione's cloak.

the place swarming with police?'
been murdered.'
stupid jokes.'
true, Rozzy.'

was furious that Lucy hadn't rung her before.

suppose I'm not important enough.'

Rozzy.' Groggily, Lucy switched on the kettle. 'You had a

we didn't want to disturb you.'

, was really upset - 'Rannaldini was a genius' - and wanted

the details. 'How's Tristan taken it?' she asked finally.
t think he's back,' said Lucy.

she tell Rozzy about Jessica's sighting and Simone's
of Tristan cutting Aunt Hortense's party? Rozzy got so

were left out.



	274
	275



All day the rain poured down on fans, who poured, weepmg, into Paradise to leave flowers wrapped in Cellophane at Valhalla's
gates.

'Maestro, take me with you to heaven,' Said one card. Many fans
also made pilgrimages of condolence to Dame Hermione's gates.
Alpheus, dropping off a large bunch of salmon-pink gladioli that
the Paradise garden centre were selling off cheap after the
weekend, was displeased to see the vast number of young people
among the crowds. Rannaldini's popularity had clearly not been
on the wane.

Outraged that someone had nicked all her lilies in the night,
Hermione arrived, veiled and smothered in black, with her arms
full of yellow roses covered in greenfly. As she knelt in prayer for
at least five minutes for the benefit of the world's press, she was
filled with fury that Rozzy had already left a beantiful bunch of lilies
in their own vase of water.


As the day progressed and the rain continued to gush out of
Valhalla's gargoyles, to the worry that they wouldn't be able to film
outside, was added the fear that Tristan had done a runner.

'We can't stop production. This picture's costing thousands of
pounds a day,' Sexton told Gablecross and the couples of plainclothes
men and women who'd arrived to question everyone on
the unit.

'Understood,' said Gablecross. 'You carry on. Where are you
planning to shoot?'

'If the rain stops, on the terrace, then in the maze.'

'OK, I'll move my team in. No-one must go near Hangman's
Wood - the area's cordoned off anyway. We'll draw people out as
we need them. We also need to fingerprint everyone.'

Gablecross was paired with the most ravishing black girl, wearing
a white, tightly belted trenchcoat, whom he introduced as DC
Karen Needham.

'Want to work in movies?' quipped Sexton, as he ushered her
into his office.

DC Needham giggled. Gablecross looked boot-faced and asked
Sexton what he had been up to last night.

'Dining at my house in town, then driving back to Valhalla,' lied
Sexton happily, as DC Needham started scribbling in her notebook. The and my driver, Wally, had just stopped for a sandwich
and some petrol around one o'clock. We've got all the receipts.
When Bernard rang me wiv the sad news, we agreed I should be
the one to tell Dame Hermione.'

'What was her reaction?'

spend the evening?' he asked idly. 'Several people
in the wood around the time of the murder.'

have been a tape or the rushes. Dame Hermione came
from Milan around seven thirty, watched Pr/de and Prejudice telly. A Jane Austen freak is Dame Hermione. What the
happened to Tristan?' he added, with unusual irritation.
fucker's always turning off his mobile because he wants to


. towards Paradise through the deluge Tristan noted spiky
. on the horse-chesmuts and a tangle of purply-blue cranes
and pink willowherb on the verges, echoing Alpheusis

Rounding a corner, he suddenly saw a flotilla of
L cartons, plastic coffee cups, fag ends and beer cans hurtling
the overflowing gutters towards him, and went slap into a
scrum of paparazzi, shouting, scribbling, banging tape

and lenses against his windows. Tristan ducked in
Had his hideous secret been rumbled?
on the gates refused to admit him until he had
them his name and address. As he stormed up the drive,
and Alsatians were weaving in and out of Hangman's Wood.
the German and Italian flags drooped at half mast.
by a terrible fear that Tab had taken an overdose, Tristan the house. Two minutes later he stormed into Sexton's


the hell's going on? They've dismantled the Great Hall
the royal box, and we haven't reshot. What's that fucker
up to now?'

had triple bags under his cavernous bloodshot eyes, his
hair looked as though it hadn't seen a comb for days.
buttons of his faded peacock-blue shirt were done up all
He had only slotted his belt through one loop of his jeans,
were far too loose. He was frantically chewing gum. He
angry, dangerous, a tramp off the street, reeking of


ablecross opened his mouth, but Sexton was too quick for him.

was murdered last night.'

suntan seemed to drain into his black stubble leaving
hisface dirty grey. 'Oh, mon Dieu, who killed him?'

gergeant Gablecross'sjob,' said Sexton, almost too cosily.

him, and his charmin' sidekick, DC Needham.'




276
	277



Tristan nodded then sat down in one. extn armchairs. In an instant his face was wet with tears. 'I cannot
believe it. Rannaldini was father to me. Often I wish him dead for
fucking up my movie, but he was great man. You are not having


Mindlessly parking his chewing-gum on the front of Sexton's
desk, he groped for a cigarette, then dully slapped his pockets.
lose my lighter. When did he die?'

'Around ten thirty last night.' Sexton reached forward with a
match. 'Someone torched the watchtower.'

For a second Tristan's face, like Lady Rannaldini's last night,
showed a flicker of something other than horror. Had he also
skeletons? wondered Gablecross.

'Everything was destroyed,' confirmed Sexton.

Tristan breathed in smoke so deeply he almost choked, then

opened his eyes in horror.

'He didn't die in fire?'

'No, he was strangled and shot,' said Sexton quickly.

Shut up, you fat git, thought Gablecross furiously. Let me get at
him before he organizes his alibi.

But Tristan had jumped to his feet, pacing round the room,
firing all the same questions, not taking in any of the answers.
Someone had sewn a patch of a greyhound's head on the back
pocket of his jeans.

'I told Detective Sergeant Gablecross we'd be shooting in the
maze when the weather's cleared,' interrupted Sexton.

This pulled Tristan together, as the drug of the film kicked in.

'I'd like to ask you a few questions, sir,' began Gablecross. Karen
Needham whipped out her notebook.

'Got to have a shower,' murmured Tristan and, before they
could corner him, was out of the door.

Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, reeking ofEau Sauvage
and looking again like Calvin Klein's favourite model, he had
disappeared into the production office with Sexton and a euphoric
Bernard, delighted to be needed and included again.

'Rannaldini would have wanted us to carry on,' were Tristan's
first words. He then ruthlessly scrapped Rannaldini's opening and
closing scenes, save for a fleedng glimpse of the inhabitants of the
royal box, of Gordon Dillon and of Rannaldini briefly exuding
magnetism on the rostrum.

'Then we won't have to reshoot the ending Baby screwed up.'

'So that means five days' night-shooting in the maze and on the
terrace, weather permitting,' counted Bernard on his big red


	at Sexton in excitement

afford polo?'

Campbell-Black,' said Sexton carefully, 'has agreed to
.,

'Non' was as loud as the shot that killed Posa.
iron, non.t How did this happen?'

said Sexton simply. 'It's all very well you 'avin'
t views about artistic integrity but without him I can't pay

I had nowhere to go, like a fart in tight jeans.'

. in it for Rupert?'

and Tabiffa sobbing her little heart out if we cut out the

She's persuaded all Rupe's toff friends to appear for
of bubbly apiece or somefink.' Sexton turned the screw

'Tab knew how much you wanted polo.'

can't have Rupert involved,' said Tristan mutinously, 'not
what happened with Tab and me. He must want to kill me.'

wasn't mentioned. I don't rink he knows. You wanted your

ungriteful bastard.'

row was interrupted by Griselda barging in, brick red with

but in tearing spirits. 'Hello, Tristan, isn't it awful and a

How was The Lily in the Valley?'

said Tristan, in a surprised voice. It was as if she were asking

event that had happened centuries ago.

got a problem,' went on Griselda. 'Hermione's in the first
this evening, and her pale green cloak's missing from

Her maid swears Madam didn't take it to Milan.'

pbell-Black is bankrolling us, you better send

Gulf to Paris to fetch another,' said Tristan bitchily.
have to make a new one,' protested Griselda.
don't rink Rupert will like us squandering his dosh,' said
in alarm.

sort it out, Grizel,' said Tristan. 'Hermione won't be fit to

. we'll shoot her later in the week and concentrate on

Mikhail and Baby in the maze this evening. I'd better go
see Hermione.' He leapt up restlessly. 'How's Wolfie taking


coping wiv everyfing,' said Sexton admiringly.
a bad way, can't stop crying.'

she's been cut out of the will,' said Meredith,

' his curls with a pale blue umbrella as he scutded in to
the evening's sets. 'Hi, Tristan, you missed all the fun last




278
	279



night. The rain's stripped offall the rose petals in the centre of the
maze. We'll have to use potted ones. Have you met butch Sergeant
Gablecross yet?'

'All tics are pigs,' said Tristan bleakly.


All over the unit, people gathered, whispering in sodden huddles.
Alpheus was incensed that, owing to Hermione's compassionate
leave and the scrapping of the scenes in the Great Hall, he and
Flora had been told to push off until the end of the week.

'I've never known such lousy scheduling,' he fumed. 'I'm never
working for Montigny again.'

'He could hardly have foreseen Rannaldini's murder,' snapped
Bernard.

'He threatened to kill the guy on Friday night,' snapped back
Alpheus, and stalked off to grumble to Sexton about his totalled
Jaguar.

'Don Carless,' giggled Flora.


Out of his caravan window, Tristan watched the deluge lay waste
to Rannaldini's domain. Once proud delphiniums prostrated
themselves on the paths, their petals swept away by the racing
muddy water. Torrential rain was bouncing a foot off the hard
ground, rattling on the caravan roof like a firing squad.

Could Rannaldini really be dead? Tristan had visions of his
godfather hobn9bbing with Wagner and taking the heavenly choir
apart. Perhaps Etienne was already introducing his old friend to
the sexiest angels.

'Can we have a word, sir?'

It was Gablecross and the ravishing Karen Needham.

'I'm busy,' snapped Tristan, as he dialled Oscar's number. 'Can
you and Valendn film the bashed-down delphiniums?'

'How was your screening?' asked Karen, perching on the
window-seat, and picking up Saturday night's glossy brochure of The Lily in the Valley. 'I think Claudine Lauzerte is the most
beautiful woman in the world.'

'I also. Now, if you'd excuse me...'

'Could you tell us where you were last night?' Gablecross sat
down beside Karen.

'I have no time now.'

Exhausted, shocked, obsessive or just plain arrogant, thought
Gablecross. Bloody Frogs! They were just like public-school boys,
not in any way superior, just assumed they were.

'With such a high profile,' said Karen sympathetically, 'you must
get really twitchy before a film comes out. Not just about the critics

	savaging it, but because the journalists get the opportunity to pick over your private life.'

Tristan looked into her kind, beautiful eyes, longing to lay his
head on her trenchcoated breast and sleep for a thousand years.
, 'I have to rise above the parapet,' he confessed, 'and geeve interview
because so much money and people's careers is involved. My
father was well known in France.'

. :'I loved his early paintings,' said Karen, 'the ones of the
Garonne.'

I .Gablecross looked at his running mate with reluctant respect.

was thawing by the second, but froze up Instantly when

asked him when he had returned from Paris. 'I drive
Channel Tunnel yesterday.'

.At what time?'


let us have your ticket? Then what did you do?'
as film is ending, I need to psych myself into next one,

be story about Hercules. At the end, he is given poison
ealous wife and, in his agony, tears up forests and builds

1 pyre. I need woodland location so I go to Forest of
drive around for hours, thinking, and sleep in my car.'

if he lost a couple of stone, would make a good
thought Tristan idly. As he talked, he had been opening

ally binning the letters and even a new cheque
and smoothing out envelopes on his blotter.

tell us exactly where you spent the night?' asked


him. 'Did you study my father's paintings at
he asked Karen, as she retrieved his letters and cheque

the bin.

she said she had, he gazed at her dumbly, unable to

at he'd asked. Then his mobile rang.

s,?' Having jumped on it, he immediately shoved Karen

out of the caravan, slamming the door in their


Karen, however, who had attained A levels in
as well as English and Art, had deliberately left her note


saying?' asked Gablecross, after she'd retrieved it.

fast, but the general gist was that he wouldn't
and no-one had seen him arrive or leave and he'd

the person was later.'

said Gablecross grudgingly.



280
		281


and the photographs so she and her sister could have a gloat
together. Only when she tried to print out the disks did she find
they'd been switched for blanks and the dirty pictures all replaced
with a pile of Rannaldini's fan photographs. Her howl of rage
could have woken Rannaldini in his chill chamber in Rutminster
Mortuary eighty miles away.


286


he rescheduling, Gablecross and Needham were anxious

the released singers before they dispersed. They

bronzed and glistening from his daily


thought Karen, feeling herself blush as Alpheus's

held hers a fraction longer than necessary as he crinkled
at her. 'I don't know if policewomen are getting younger,

getting more beautiful.'

aure keep in shape.'

no excuse for singers to gain weight,' said Alpheus,

rippling muscles.

you doing between nine thirty p.m. and eleven thirty
asked Gablecross sharply.

off a tennis match.'

play real good,' said Karen admiringly.

to be rated in the top fifty.'

vigorously rubbed his hair, Alpheus was frantic to sculpt

with a blow-dryer, but didn't want to appear a cissy in
of Karen.

only give you a few minutes, Officer,' he said. 'I've shifted

to Milan tomorrow and Lady Rannaldini is kindly
me the Gulf.'

throw the game?, asked Gablecross.

but not very strong partner, and my mind was

things.'

to our information, you left around nine thirty and
to watch the finals.'

didn't want to catch cold.'

),

287



was fading. As they moved through the yew rooms of Rannaldini's
garden, the rain had dusted and polished the nude nymphs
lurking in every corner. There would be no-one to fondle them

now.

'What happened when you got back to Valhalla?' asked Karen.
'I saw the watch-tower on fire, and thought of Tabloid trapped
in his kennel. So I left Trev in the car on the edge of the drive and
hurtled through Hangman's Wood.'

'Risky under the circs, whole place ablaze.'

'I got to know Tabloid well, when I was sleeping with
Rannaldini.'

'You didn't notice anyone in the woods?'

'Only firemen and Clive - God knows what he was doing. There
was a disgusting smell of burning feathers, probably Rannaldini's

mattress going up. Safety regulations weren't his forte.'

'Could you describe his tower for us?'

'Well, the top floor was all bed, with an appallingly narcissistic
mural round the walls of an audience in evening dress, cheering
him on to intenser orgasm. The next floor down was all dark blue
jacuzzi, the next was a red-wallpapered pouncing chamber, full of
low sofas and bowls of exotic fruit on marble tables, and a Picasso
on the wall.'

'You don't know where he kept his safe?'

'Nope.'

'Or where he worked?'

'On the ground floor. He had an edit suite.'

'Was that where he did his composing?' asked a scribbling
Karen.

'Decomposing now.' Flora giggled, then began to cry. 'I'm so
sorry.' She groped for a piece of orange loo paper. 'Jokes are the
only way I can cope.'

'It happened when my nan died.' Karen put an arm round
Flora's shoulders. 'It's.a typical reaction to shock.'

'Rannaldini nevertook you into any torture chamber?' asked
Gablecross.

'He didn't need a chamber,' said Flora bleakly. 'His presence was
enough.'

They had reached a balustrade looking over the fast-filling mere.
Reaching behind a cascade of bright pink roses for a tin offish food
Flora chucked a handful of pellets into the water. Goldfish, lying
still as autumn leaves, burst into activity, but a huge black fish, ten
times their size, suddenly swam to the surface, ravenous mouth not
only devouring the pellets but ready to swallow anything alive that
got in its way.

292


, Rannaldini,' shivered Flora. 'Don't ever kid yourself he

only met up, after he chucked me, because I sang Creation. He took me back afterwards to the watch-tower,

me up because I wouldn't stay the night. You can see why
hated me being around him this summer.'

!"Let us forget the universe, life and heaven itself!" A ravishing

floated across the hot, muggy air. ' "What matters the past?
. matters the future? I love you."

'It's Baby,' sighed Flora, collapsing on a stone bench in ecstasy.

he make even the hair on your legs stand on end?'
George jealous of Baby?' asked Gablecross idly.
no,' stammered Flora. 'Baby's just a friend.'

sure you didn't go to the watch-tower to get these back?
were in Rannaldini's dressing-gown pocket when he was

Gablecross splayed out the photographs on the bench
poker hand. Next moment the ground was covered in fish
and Trevor had rushed forward to hoover them up.

God,' whimpered Flora. 'Baby comforted me after George
I had our screaming match.'

him home?' Gablecross pointed to a shadowy angel


was gay. By the time I realized he wasn't, itwas too


to be enjoying yourself.'

I was, hugely.'

Rannaldini blackmailing you?'

threatened to give them to George or the Scorpion.' burn down Rannaldini's watch-tower?'

protested Flora. Huddled on the stone bench, she burst
again. 'I love George so much. I keep seeing Rannaldini

even in death. What'll they be doing to him


him up, weighing every organ.'

' won't find a heart.'

him?'

but I wanted to. I must get a taxi.'

,were interrupted by retching. Trevor had thrown up all the

to the mere. Instantly, the great black fish swarmed
b to the surface and swallowed the lot.

screamed Flora. Snatching Trevor and Foxie, she fled
thehouse.

,' said Karen indignantly, as she and Gablecross made
way through the twilight towards the maze. 'I'n sure she

do it.'



293




and the photographs so she and her aiter cotma

together. Only when she tried to print out the disks did she find
they'd been switched for blanks and the dirty pictures all replaced
with a pile of Rannaldini's fan photographs. Her howl of rage
could have woken Rannaldini in his chill chamber in Rutminster
Mortuary eighty miles away.


the rescheduling, Gablecross and Needham were anxious

the released singers before they dispersed. They

the pool, bronzed and glistening from his daily


hunk, thought Karen, feeling herself blush as Alpheus's

held hers a fraction longer than necessary as he crinkled
.at her. 'I don't know if policewomen are getting younger,

getting more beautiful.'

keep in shape.'

no excuse for singers to gain weight,' said Alpheus,
¢ drying his rippling muscles.

you doing between nine thirty p.m. and eleven thirty

asked Gablecross sharply.
off a tennis match.'
play real good,' said Karen admiringly.

to be rated in the top fifty.'

vigorously rubbed his hair, Alpheus was frantic to sculpt

with a blow-dryer, but didn't want to appear a cissy in
of Karen.

only give you a few minutes, Officer,' he said. 'I've shifted

to Milan tomorrow and Lady Rannaldini is kindly
me the Gulf.'
did you throw the game?' asked Gablecross.

a delightful but not very strong partner, and my mind was

things.'

to our information, you left around nine thirty and
to watch the finals.'

didn't want to catch cold.'

),


	286
	287



'To be truthful,' Alpheus pulled a face, 'I was choked about not
winning. Singers are overly competitive.'

After that, he said, he had swum his twenty lengths in the dusk.
'Then I jogged back to Jasmine Cottage, showered, changed, then
called my agent Christopher Shepherd of Shepherd Denston. My Carlos contract promised to release me by 8 July. I wanted him to
pacify the record company and negotiate a few days' vacation with

my wife before I start Don Giovanni.'

'What time did you ring him?'

'Around ten thirty, I guess, but it won't show on the phone bill.
My agent and I have a code. I let the phone ring four times so he
knows it's me and calls me back. He takes twenty per cent of my
earnings so he can pay for a few calls.'

'May we have your agent's number?'

Karen had studied body language. Alpheus was clearly nervous,
the way he kept fiddling 'with his hair.

'How did you get on with Rannaldini?' she asked.
'Between great artists there is a bond,' said Alpheus firmly.
'You were overheard having an argument on Saturday morning.'
'Of course we fought - artists do. I was angry he had favoured
Granville Hastings, not a great voice, on the tape. Rannaldini
wanted to justify his decision to employ him. All conductors do
this. My powerful instrument can stand it,' said Alpheus
pompously. God, if he didn't get to a blow-dryer soon, he'd have
an Afro.

'Is it true you were close to your tennis partner, Gloria Prescott?'
'It is the duty of the established singer to encourage talent,' said
Alpheus. 'It's even more gratifying when a fine voice belongs to a
charming young woman.' He winked at Karen.

'We've had information you argued with Rannaldini about her,
and about the attention Rannaldini was paying to your wife.'

'Rumour, rumour. If you say good morning round here people
think you're in a relationship. Little minds have little else to do
than fabricate stories about the famous.'

'Why did you move into Dame Hermione's cottage?'

'To spend quality time with my wife. We're big animal people.
Mr Bones, our German shepherd, pines without her. We can't
bring him here because of your goddam quarantine laws so Cheryl
never visits for more than a week.' That should endear me to a
traditionally dog-loving English cop, thought Alpheus sourly.
'When Cheryl is here, we like to be alone,' he went on, 'and,
frankly, not having been to an English public school like you,
Officer,' Alpheus crinkled his eyes again - let's flatter the square
faced bastard, 'I found the dormitory atmosphere at Valhalla

so Dame Hermione, a good friend, lent us Jasmine

if you'll excuse me...' Alpheus smothered himself
towelling bathrobe.

any idea who might have killed Rannaldini?'

be an outside job. No-one involved in this movie would
Rannaldini off the credits.'

a pink and purple dressing-gown to play Philip.'
Philip,' said Alpheus fussily.

know where it is?'

Wardrobe, I guess.'

was wearing it when he was murdered,' said


this jolted Alpheus: his wedding-ring glittered and quiv
as his shaking hand moved through his hair. Had Cheryl
the dressing-gown from the back of the wardrobe at Jasmine

he wondered, and given it to Rannaldini, who'd always
it?

someone could have mistaken Rannaldini for you?'
no enemies,' said Alpheus coldly.


Shaw claims to have no enemies,' said Gablecross.

has he many friends,' said Flora. 'But I mustn't speak ill of
alive, in case you take it down in evidence against me.'

found her slumped in Lucy's caravan, watched beadily by
her puppet mascot, and Trevor the terrier. She was three

down a bottle of white and was reading a small,

book in bad light. She looked wretched, deathly pale

l red-eyed,

allowed drink. Would you like a cup of tea?'
had about a gallon each,' said Gablecross sitting down
her. Karen edged wide-eyed towards Lucy's makeup


of Flora's book, Gablecross saw it was Macbeth.

Enjoying it?'

my mood,' shivered Flora.

.r'd murder"' she read out,' "... thus with his stealthy

With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves
ghost." Can't imagine anyone withered or ghostly being
enough to murder Rannaldini.'

Rage and adrenalin,' pronounced Gablecross, 'give the

person strength.'

puts little Meredith in the frame,' said Flora. 'He's never

Rannaldini for calling his auto dafe set suburban.'

were you?'




288
	289



'Rannaldini? No, I loathed him. He sedttced me when I was
sixteen, then dumped me. But it's still a shock.'

'What were you doing between nine thirty and eleven thirty last
night?'

'Getting pissed, mostly. Then I went home to feed the cat. My
parents live next door - you can see the stone angels through the
trees. I hadn't realized how dark it was so I skirted Hangman's

Wood, ran past the maze, with our pond on the right.'

'Who saw you at home?'

'Only the cat, who's not great on alibis.'

'Did you notice anything unusual on the way?'

'Like Hermione praising another singer?' Flora topped up her
glass. 'Sorry, silly joke. I heard her singing Elisabetta's last duet.
Might have been a CD or a tape. There were lights on in River
House and Magpie Cottage, I heard sheep bleating - they always
bleat when anyone comes through the wood, hoping it's the
shepherd with their hay. The grass is so poor.'

'Live at home, do you?' asked Gablecross, who knew the answer.
'No, I live with George Hungerford- at least, I did until recently.
I was going to marry him.' She accepted one of Gablecross's
cigarettes with a shaking hand.

'I'll pay you back. That lipstick really suits you,' she added to
Karen, who put it down hastily and picked up her notebook.

Flora dolefully relayed the drama of George landing his helicopter
in the middle of her snogging scene with Pushy.

'He went ballistic, I told him to fuck off,' she said, finally and
sadly.

'So George has landed his helicopter here before?' said
Gablecross quickly. 'Didn't you notice one landing last night
around ten thirty and someone running towards the watchtower?'

Flora's eyes flickered in horror. 'It couldn't have been George,'
she whispered. 'I'm sure he's in Germany.' She kept fiddling with

her mobile to make sure it was switched on.

'How did you get back to Valhalla?'

'I drove. It was dark by then. It gets very creepy - funny things
have been happening recently.'

Topping up her drink, she listed Granny's patchwork quilt, the
adder in Lucy's make-up box, slug pellets in James's water-bowl,

Tab nearly burning to death in the auto dale.

'Why didn't anyone call the police?'

'We were so desperate to finish the film - the budget was
spiralling like Rannaldini's staircase - that we avoided anything
that might hold it up. Oh, I forgot. Foxie,' she waved her puppet
fox, 'was cut to pieces. I was so lucky, Rozzy Pringle spent hours

him together, like surgeons in casualty labouring through


Foxie from her, Gablecross examined the joins.

'Gan I borrow him?'

'No!' Flora snatched him back. 'I need the luck.'

Outside a huge rainbow reared up on the other side of Paradise.
.qt's stopped raining. Let's go for a walk.'

Hearing the word, Trevor ran yapping out of the caravan. Flora

him, carrying her glass and Foxie. The fingertip team,
'd been struggling through Hangman's Wood all day, were

pricked, lacerated and stung. Handlers patrolled the
of the trees.

they sweet?' sighed Flora, as their Alsatians strained at

barking at Trevor, who yapped back, dancing
'Think of those brave pointed noses sniffing out


use dogs more to intimidate the public,' confessed

'Not very reliable at finding things.'

a dog-evading course once,' volunteered Karen. 'I hid in

set, covered myself with twigs, and a bloody great

came up, peed on me, then passed on.'

on.' Flora started to laugh, then shuddered.

there's Clive, no doubt flogging his story, which must be

steamy, to that disgusting crone, Eulalia Harrison Sentinel. When did Rannaldini actually die?'

to be accurate. Bodies cool very slowly on a hot night.'

if you don't find a body at once?' asked Flora, as
through puddles the colour of weak tea.

eaten by foxes and badgers.'

know why you didn't want any lunch,' Flora told Foxie


eyes go first,' added Gablecross. 'Crows peck them out.'

my God.' Flora *started to tremble. 'Rannaldini had

. conductor's eyes. He could transform an orchestra
at them.'
as her mobile rang.

she gasped in ecstasy, then slumped. 'Viking, how

sure it won't be too much trouble. I'm too pissed to
I'll get a taxi.'

one of my exes, Viking O'Neill,' 'she told Gablecross list

to stay with him and his wife for a few days.'

us the phone number and address.'

clock struck seven thirty. The deluge had swept
twigs on the paths into long brown snakes. The rainbow




was fading. As they moved through the yew rooms of Rannaldini's
garden, the rain had dusted and polished the nude nymphs
lurking in every corner. There would be no-one to fondle them

nOW.

'What happened when you got back to Valhalla?' asked Karen. 'I saw the watch-tower on fire, and thought of Tabloid trapped
in his kennel. So I left Trey in the car on the edge of the drive and
hurtled through Hangman's Wood.'

'Risky under the circs, whole place ablaze.'

'I got to know Tabloid well, when I was sleeping with
Rannaldini.'

'You didn't notice anyone in the woods?'

'Only firemen and Clive - God knows what he was doing. There
was a disgusting smell of burning feathers, probably Rannaldini's

mattress going up. Safety regulations weren't his forte.'

'Could you describe his tower for us?'

'Well, the top floor was all bed, with an appallingly narcissistic
mural round the walls of an audience in evening dress, cheering
him on to intenser orgasm. The next floor down was all dark blue
jacuzzi, the next was a red-wallpapered pouncing chamber, full of
low sofas and bowls of exotic fruit on marble tables, and a Picasso
on the wall.'

'You don't know where he kept his safe?'

'Nope.'

'Or where he worked?'

'On the ground floor. He had an edit suite.'

'Was that where he did his composing?' asked a scribbling
Karen.

'Decomposing now.' Flora giggled, then began to cry. 'I'm so
sorry.' She groped for a piece of orange loo paper. 'Jokes are the
only way I can cope.'

'It happened when my nan died.' Karen put an arm round
Flora's shoulders. 'It's a typical reaction to shock.'

'Rannaldini neverok you into any torture chamber?' asked
Gablecross.

'He didn't need a chamber,' said Flora bleakly. 'His presence was
enough.'

They had reached a balustrade looking over the fast-filling mere.
Reaching behind a cascade of bright pink roses for a tin offish food
Flora chucked a handful of pellets into the water. Goldfish, lying
still as autumn leaves, burst into activity, but a huge black fish, ten
times their size, suddenly swam to the surface, ravenous mouth not
only devouring the pellets but ready to swallow anything alive that
got in its way.

292


We only me-p after he chucked me, because! mg ' The Creation. He took me back afterwards to the watch-tower,

up because I wouldn't stay the night. You can see why
hated me being around him this summer.'

' Let us forget the universe, life and heaven itself!"' A ravishing
ivoice floated across the hot, muggy air. ' '%Vhat matters the past?
What matters the future? I love you."

'It's
	Baby,' sighed Flora, collapsing on a stone bench in ecstasy.
't he make even the hair on your legs stand on end?'

'Was George jealous of Baby?' asked Gablecross idly.

'Oh, no,' stammered Flora. 'Baby's just a friend.'

'Are you sure you didn't go to the watch-tower to get these back?

were in Rannaldini's dressing-gown pocket when he was
.murdered.' Gablecross splayed out the photographs on the bench

a poker hand. Next moment the ground was covered in fish

Trevor had rushed forward to hoover them up.

'Baby comforted me after George
had our screaming match.'

,So you took him home?' Gablecross pointed to a shadowy angel

background.

was gay. By the time I realized he wasn't, it was too


to be enjoying yourself.'

'Oh; I was, hugely.'

Rannaldini blackmailing you?'

threatened to give them to George or the Scorpion.'

burn down Rannaldini's watch-tower?'

no,' protested Flora. Huddled on the stone bench, she burst

'I love George so much. I keep seeing Rannaldini
sneering even in death. What'll they be doing to him


up, weighing every organ.'

t won't find a heart.'

kill him?'

to. I must get a taxi.'

were interrupted by retching. Trevor had thrown up all the

into the mere. Instantly, the great black fish swarmed
to the surface and swallowed the lot.

screamed Flora. Snatching Trevor and Foxie, She fled
thehouse.

,' said Karen indignantly, as she and Gablecross made,
way through the twilight towards the maze. 'I'm sure she

do it.'



293




'In the fight place, at the right time, with the fight motive.'

'She's terrified, isn't she? Mind you, I'd be terrified of losing a
lovely rich bloke like that.'

'Not so lovely,' said Gablecross grimly. 'What's carving up our
Flora is panic that George has done it.'


294


brought terror. The famous Valhalla Maze, planted in the
towered twenty feet high and extended more
a hundred yards in diameter. Even in daylight, people got lost
: hours but now round every twist and turn of the ebony ramparts
!murderer might be lurking.
Carlos sang of his ecstasy that at last his beloved Elisabetta
him by a letter signed 'E' to a midnight tryst, Chloe
the real writer of the letter, was being tracked through the
by Tristan and Valentin on the crane. Racing to meet
she believed loved her, Chloe paused to spray on scent
her breasts in the low-cut taffeta.

all newcomers, Gablecross and Karen Needham were
to the fascination of film-making. From the terrace, they
singers, almost sanctified by their wonderful
- Chloe in her crimson ball dress, Mikhail and Baby in
- but also the great paraphernalia of crew, cables
lights, with Bernard barking out instructions and Tristan
¢ absorbed, despite the tragedy that had broken over his
encouraging, bullying, shouting 'Cut!' over and over again.
he was patiently explaining the plot to Mikhail.

is turning point of play. Once Eboli realize Carlos loves the
she will shop them to the King. Posa realize that not only
t his beloved friend Carlos be burnt at the stake for cuckolding
King, but all his plans for liberating Flanders will go up in
he moves in to silence Eboli.'

won't need to act at all.' Fingering his flick-knife Mikhail


crew glanced round nervously. Their instinct was to huddle

but in doing so, could they be standing next to the killer?

295



As Tristan filmed an apprehensive, excited Baby in the centre of
the maze, Gablecross and Karen buttonholed Chloe in her
caravan. Her beauty was heightened by Lucy's make-up and the
crimson dress, which matched her sly, smiling mouth and showed
off her smooth golden shoulders. One eye was hidden by a black
patch. The other glittered like a yellow tourmaline.

'Traditionally Princess Eboli was blind in one eye,' explained
Chloe. 'Baby strokes my face in wonder then realizes as he reaches
the eye patch, he's declared passionate love to the wrong woman.'

As Chloe snuggled into a blue-checked armchair, sipping
botded water, and rotadng a slender ankle to prove her long skirt
wasn't concealing tree-trunks, she seemed to glow with inner
happiness, not entirely induced by a long lunch with Eulalia
Harrison.

She was devastated by Rannaldini's death, she told Gablecross.
He had been wonderful to her. She had spent Sunday afternoon
at Harvey Nichols' sale trying on hundreds of things but not buying
anything. She had been furious to be knocked out of the tournament.
Mikhail simply hadn't tried.

'Afterwards I dragged him into the maze, hoping to sober him
up enough to rehearse tonight's big scene, but we rowed because
I wouldn't go back to Valhalla and sleep with him. Like all men,
he was incensed that Lara, his wife, had rumbled us, but still
wanted to carry on the affaire. He passed out at about nine o'clock
under a weeping ash.'

'How did Lara rumble you?' asked Karen.

'Rannaldini was Lord of Misrule on Friday night. He dragged
Lara all the way from Moscow, then deliberately arranged for her
to catch her husband kissing offmy lipstick. Even worse, he relayed
over the speakers a tape of Tri.stan and Meredith bitching about
everyone, particularly Hermione. Tristan went berserk and tried
to strangle Rannaldini.'

As she talked, Chloe kept stretching like a cat, hollowing her
belly in ecstasy. As she looked up under her eyelashes at
Gablecross, he found himself squaring his shoulders.

'A crow with a sore throat has better intonation than Dame
Hermione,' went on Chloe, 'but she didn't deserve that humiliation.
And by playing the tape Rannaldini completely destroyed

Tristan's street cred as a nice guy.'

'D'you think he killed him?'

'Possibly. Rannaldini was a deal-maker, Tristan a dream-maker.
It was inevitable they'd fall out if they worked together. According
to Simone, Tristan cut his aunt's eighty-sixth birthday party in Paris
so he could have got back. I always suspected he was one of

illegits. Rannaldini was far nicer to him than to
On the other hand, Tristan could be gay, and in love with

Only that could explain how their relationship
such fearful rows.'
?You reckon?' Gablecross tried to hide his interest.

Karen's eyes were on stalks as she scribbled frantically to keep


Tristan's incredibly buddy-buddy with his foppish French
And he's taken all the attractive women in the cast out to

lifted a finger. Serena Westwood, who's beautiful,
next-door room to him in Prague. Not a pass was made.'

he like Tabitha Campbell-Black?' piped up Karen.

did Rannaldini, bats about her.' Taking another slug of

water, Chloe told them about the newspapers flaring up
Tab. 'That was probably the first murder. If Tristan hadn't

she'd have burnt to death - and good riddance
people, she's such a brat. Anyway, they fell into a showy
and he whisked her home, leaving Ranners foaming at the

md Tristan's admirers ready to slit their throats. But during
night something happened. Perhaps he couldn't get it up,

put the boot in, but the next morning he blew
The atmosphere was terrible. Wolfie's had to carry Tristan


smiled wickedly.

other soap updates would you like? Flora had a schoolgirl
on Rannaldini until he dropped her from a great height.

dropped Gloria, Hermione and Serena and didn't

hem either, and he was atrocious to Helen,

flaunting other women. Any of that lot could have done it.
'A lot of people,' Chloe pondered, 'might have bumped off

for being horrible to Tristan, who does inspire devo
I'm
sure Bernard's a closet gay and in love with him. Rozzy
got a real old lady's crush, posies in his caravan, darningt
the ready. And Lucy Latimer, our make-up artist, as they
to be called, shakes so much if Tristan drops into her caravan
risk getting your eyes gouged out with a mascara wand. Lucy's
of those plain women men leave children and dogs with rather

for. Anyone else?' Chloe glanced up at the telephone list
the mirror. 'Most of the Frog crew were in Paris on Sunday
but are quite capable of putting a cross-Channel hex on

Mikhail's a kleptomaniac - removes your earrings
he makes a pass and never gives them back.

'Wolfie's cute. He arrived carrying a torch for Flora, but trans
his
affections to the brat. Pushy Galore - that's what we call



296
	297


Gloria Prescott - heard Wolfie threatening to kill Rannaldini
around ten forty-five on Sunday night. I should wear a chastity belt
when you interview Pushy, Detective Sergeant. She's into hunks.'

Looking up from her shorthand notebook, Karen said tartly,
'Alpheus Shaw told us Gloria was a delightful young woman and a
lovely singer.'

In a second, Chloe's look of amused composure was wiped off
her face. 'Alpheus Shaw - "Offshore', to his accountant - is a serial
adulterer,' she hissed. 'He'll have to quarter his consumption, if
he's going to play Don Giovanni with any conviction. I don't know
who had the bigger ego, him or Rannaldini. But Rannaldini was so
incensed that Alpheus beat him at swimming he seduced Alpheus's
ghastly wife Cheryl and, playing Leporello, listed every woman
Alpheus had been up and down to this summer, which included
Hermione and Pushy. Alpheus has also been up to one Stradivarius
of a tax fiddle, putting, among other things, Mr Bones, his German
shepherd, on the payroll as his financial manager. Rannaldini
threatened to expose him, refused to replace the Jaguar Wolfie
totalled, and teased him about his big nose. Oh, Mr Shaw had

plenty of motive to murder Rannaldini.'

Slowly the quiver of rage subsided.

'On a happier note I guess we have to congratulate you,' said
Karen innocently. 'I'd love to play Delilah.'

Again, Chloe's face convulsed with fury. 'I'd got that part. That
bastard Rannaldini, who saw himself as a global puppeteer, pulled
strings and got it given to Cecilia, his geriatric ex-wife, no doubt in
lieu of alimony.' Again the rage cooled. 'This is all off-the-record,
of course.' Chloe smiled sweetly. 'Eboli is such a mischief-maker -
I was psyching myself into the part.'

'Would you like to make a statement?'

'Perhaps,' teased Chloe. 'Mikhail tries to stab me in the next
scene. Please stick around and guard me, Detective Sergeant.'

As she turned to the mirror, dabbing away a few beads of sweat

with a powder brush, Wolfie popped his head round the door.
'Five minutes, Chloe.'
Gablecross consulted his notes.

'At nine thirty you were heard down by the tennis court making
a call on your mobile, asking how things were going.'

'To my mother, I always ring her on Sunday night.'

'And you were phoned back at nine thirty-five, and said,' again
Gablecross referred to his notebook, '"OK, terrific. I'll be with you
as soon as I can." '

There was a pause.

'Sorry to disappoint you, Sergeant. It was Mummy ringing back.

298


arranging lunch. I'd be free, because of night-shdoting.
letting me know Wednesday was fine.'

we have your mother's phone number?'

!think
	I chucked it. She's touring abroad, and gave me lots of
probably some hotel.'

made a note to follow this up.

left the tennis after that?' she asked.

for dine, Chloe rummaged in her handbag for a silver
squirted it behind her ears and into her cleavage.
i-Lovely perfume,' sighed Karen.

'I can never remember what it's called.' Chloe turned back to

'I went for a jog round Paradise. The tennis had hardly arduous.'

,:You've been most helpful,' said Gablecross, leaping to open the


a jog at twilight," sang Chloe, disappearing into the night.
:woman is the biggest bitch,' stormed Karen. 'There isn't a

of the cast she hasn't slagged off.'

' useful.' Gablecross squinted at his reflection in Chloe's

perhaps he was hunky rather than fat. 'Wonder why she
married?'

to be the leisure activity of some guy cared for by a wife,'

dismissively. 'And her alibi is extraordinarily thin.'



299




'Look after her,' Gablecross was amazed to hear himself saying.
'The fat cow's lying through her teeth,' fumed Karen, as they
walked back to the car. 'Imagine thinking Emma Woodhouse was
the heroine of Pr/de and Prejudice. The only thing the silly bitch
reads is rave reviews and the directions on the Prozac bottle.'

'And Sexton had a lot to lose if the film went belly-up,' mused
Gablecross.

'And Rupert Campbell-Black had only just come in at one
fifteen,' said Karen. 'What was he doing in the meanwhile?' She
wished Gablecross would loosen up. As a cop you often had to
laugh to stop yourself crying. She wasn't looking foiward to him
wincing over her driving all the way to Abingdon to see Miss
Bussage.


arrived at his first night's filming in a murderous mood. If
hadn't spurued Tab and let her fall among thieves, she would

have married so disastrously. And Rannaldini would never
been reduced to kidnapping Gertrude. He felt directly

both for the rape and Gertrude's death, and his brain

he thought of it.

had agreed to save Don Carlos because he wanted to make a

uick buck and amends to Tab. But talking to her the
following day, he learnt of Tristan's treachery and only hung in

of her pleading.

'But the fucker blew you out.'

,i!I know,' sobbed Tab. 'But I still love him and maybe with

out of the way...'

was so near the edge, raging one moment, sobbing wildly
the next, or just gazing into space, he didn't want to push her

to the abyss.

( Over at Valhalla, excitement at his impending arrival had reached

pitch. Chloe, already buoyed up by fifty thousand from the
!i ly Mail, calls from La Scala and the Opera Bastille, and the press

'Chloe, Chloe, Chloe,' whenever she passed, was now

' lasciviously in front of the mirror in Make Up.

i:: 'I want an ace face for Rupert, Lucy Lockett.'

That wou/d be an Everest for you,' said Baby irritably, as he
pored over accounts of the murder in all the papers.

YThe prospect of having Tab as a stepdaughter would deter even
me,' sighed Chloe, 'but one could always dally.'

'Rupert's mad about his wife,' said Lucy crossly, as she clipped
Chloe's fringe to one side.


320
	321


Murder inquiries take over, you forget

'Have you got kids?' Karen asked Rozzy.

Td so love to have had,' sighed Rozzy. 'My husband has two from
a previous marriage. But how pretty you are, child.' Rozzy gazed at
Karen in wonder. 'I bet you're hungry. We've got basil in the
window-box outside, I'll make you some tomato sandwiches.'

'Piece of cake'll be fine,' said Gablecross, who wanted to start the
questions. 'You must be upset about Rannaldini.'

'Very.' Rozzy's eyes fired with tears. 'He had such a dreadful
childhood, you know. His father was a German officer, fighting in
Italy at the end of the war, his mother an Italian intellectual. They
fell in love, Rannaldini was the result. The officer went back to
Germany, the Italian intellectual was married anyway to a farmer,
but always felt little Roberto had blighted her political career. She
was terribly harsh on him.'

Putting three tomatoes in a bowl, Rozzy poured boiling water on
them. 'Then, when Rannaldini was only in his teens,' she went on,
'he realized his fairy godmother had given him good looks,
alarming charm and musical genius. The world was at his feet, and
I'm afraid it spoilt him. But underneath he was sick at heart,
because he'd had four wives and endless, endless women, but

never been able to maintain anything permanent.'

'What about Dame Hermione?' asked Karen.

'They made a huge amount of money for each other,' said Rozzy
tartly, 'ditto Cecilia Rannaldini.'

'How'd you know so much about him?'

'We often worked together.'

With the swiftness of the working stepmother, forced to do
things in a hurry, while she had been talking Rozzy had made a pot
of tea, put milk in a jug, laid out cups and saucers, skinned and
chopped the tomatoes, and topped them with basil, salt and
pepper. Now she slapped them between slices of buttered brown
bread.

' V0//g' She put the plate of sandwiches in front of Karen. 'Please
tuck in too, Detective Sergeant.'

Gablecross patted his gut. 'Can't get into any of my suits. Could
you describe your movements on Sunday?'

It seemed her husband's birthday party hadn't been much fun.
'I came out of the kitchen and found Glyn kissing Sylvia, our
nanny-stroke-housekeeper.' Rozzy's lip trembled. 'Stroke's the
operative word. She's very pretty, and it was his birthday.'

'This sandwich is yummy. Did you have a lovely dress?' said
Karen, longing to cheer the poor lady up.

'Rainbow-striped silk,' said Rozzy, 'I made it myself.'

302


going since lunchtime, i nay

to eleven I suddenly remembered I hadn't rung LUcy.
become such friends on Carlos. I was so distracted by the din

on at our end that I forgot what I'd rung up for, so I her back five minutes later to remind her to get Hermione's
out of Wardrobe. The wretched thing's gone missing. I

ff Mikhail's whipped it?'

¢ C, an I have your telephone number at home?' asked Gablecross.

I rang on my mobile. I found Sylvia's things by Glyn's
Itndmy bed,' Rozzy blushed scarlet, 'a horrid porn mag and ajar

oil, so I took refuge in the spare room, which doesn't have

n '

telepho e. She gazed down at her roughened hands.

i'What a bastard.' Karen attacked the chocolate cake. 'I'd have

him a smack in the face for his birthday.'

smiled. 'Flora got her mother, Georgie Maguire, to sign

t album and some photographs. Glyn is such a fan. He was
the moon, until Sylvia gave him a single of 'S'Wonderful'. He


plonker,' said Karen furiously.

Gablecross shot her a reproving look. He found Rozzy a little too

He knew the type: professional martyr, brave little wife,

.o hadn't the guts to walk out and who couldn't bear to relin
sympathy. Lacking love at home, they embraced the

Husband probably was a shit. Rozzy clutched herself
When she wasn't bustling about and blinked a lot. But Gablecross

relying on body language after he'd seen himself on
making a statement at some press conference, blinking and

enough to be the Yorkshire Ripper.

, 'When did you last see Rannaldini?' he asked.

On Saturday morning. He'd caught me watering his plants very
iearly. I couldn't bear the way he let them die in the drought. He

me into his study and shouted at me. It didn't last long.'
'He seems to have rowed with everyone recently,' Gablecross

starting on the tomato sandwiches. 'Didn't he and Tristan de

fight over Tabitha Campbell-Black?'

'I don't know what you mean.' Gablecross .had noticed that
women's voices grew shrill and men's thickened whenever
Tabitha's name was mentioned.

'We gather she was the only woman Tristan showed any interest

Gablecross knew it was cruel, but he wanted to test Rozzy.

'
	Rozzy went on pouring tea into his cup until it spilled over.



303




'Tabitha had nearly burnt to death,' she said sharply. 'She was

badly frightened. He was a grown-up comforting a child.'

'Whose fault was it that the newspaper caught fire?'

'Wolfie's. He hadn't checked properly and one can still contained
petrol.'

'Could he have tried to kill Tabitha?'

'Of course not, but Tab and Tristan are quite unsuited. He reads
Bach cello suites for pleasure in the evening. Tab's thick, insensitive,
and arrogant-just like her father. Tristan's interest in
her was over before it began.

'Rannaldini gave Tristan a hard time,' went on Rozzy, clearly not
wanting to discuss Tab any more, 'but he did love his godson.
Tristan and I get on really well too. He's doing Rosenkavalier at

Glyndebourne and he's asked me to sing Octavian.'

'Who could have killed Rannaldini?'

'I have no idea. Perhaps it was some Mafia plot.'

'When did you come back to Valhalla?'

'Early this . . .' She glanced at her watch. 'Heavens, it's after

midnight. Early yesterday morning.'
'How far's Mallowfield?'
'About fifty miles away.'

Seeing his detective constable was falling asleep, Gablecross ate
the last sandwich and called it a day.

'What a lovely lady,' sighed Karen.

'Bit too good to be true. We'd better talk to Glyn and check out
her alibi, but it looks as though she's in the clear. I wonder how
DC Miller got on with Rupert Campbell-Black.'

are some advantages to this job, if you get to meet Rupert
.,' said DC Miller in excitement. 'He's supposed to
handsomest man in England.'

' because he's loaded and owns a bloody great mansion,'
Fanshawe, slamming his foot on the accelerator as he
Rupert's drive in the hope of smearing the rose-pink
DC Miller was applying to her delectable mouth.

beeches, forming a halo round Rupert's lovely, pale gold
Anne house, were already turning. In the park below,
whisking tails had taken refuge from the heat
. The rim of brown rush above the water's
showed how much the lake had dropped. A dozen cars were
an open front door, but no-one answered the bell.
worried about burglars,' said Debbie Miller.

down a rose walk, ankle deep in petals, ducking to
spiky unpruned branches, they reached Rupert's yard,
was immaculate but deserted except for a comely girl
who was reading a handsome chestnut colt his Daily Mail


r Koala,' said Debbie in awe. 'Oh, can I stroke him?'

as good-looking as you are.' Fanshawe, who considay
with the ladies, smiled at the girl groom. 'Where
he asked, waving his ID card.

graveyard. I'd wait until they come back.'

a hurry, and paused only to take the serial
of the dark blue helicopter parked in a field behind the
Beyond a tennis court surrounded by a shaggy beech
under the shade of a huge cedar, half an acre of grass was
off, before the land rolled into fields. For generations, the




Campbell-Blacks had buried their best-loved animals here.

Grouped round a single grave were about a hundred people -
estate-workers, grooms, gardeners, Rupert's ancient housekeeper
Mrs Bodkin and her husband - most of whom were in tears.

'That's Lord O'Hara, and his wife Maud in the big black hat,'
hissed Debbie, who scoured the tabloids every day. 'They're
Rupert's in-laws, and there's Taggie's elder brother, Patrick - isn't
he to die for? And his partner Cameron Cook, she makes films, and
there's Taggie's sister Caitlin. She married Lord Baddingham's
son, Archie, and Billy Lloyd-Foxe, who show-jumped for England,
and his wife Janey, Beatde Johnson's great rival. Beattie's already
been digging up the dirt down at Valhalla. Next to her, that
gorgeous boy who's crying is Lysander Hawkley. Now this is interesting,
he's married to Rannaldini's third wife, Kitty - she's the
round-faced one comforting him. And oh, look, there's Picky
France-Lynch! Isn't he gorgeous? And his wife Daisy, the pretty
dark one, she paints. They must have driven over from
Eldercombe.'

'You ought to work for Hello.t,' said Fanshawe sourly. 'What the
hell's going on?'

Edging forward, they caught sight of Tabitha, who looked as
though she'd been struck by lightning. A big purple bruise on her
left temple and cuts down her right cheek added the only colour
to her deathly pale face. She seemed about to collapse, and was
being supported by Rupert's head groom, Dizzy. Next to them,
with a face of granite, stood Rupert, holding Xavier and Bianca by
the hand. In her other hand Bianca clutched a jam-jar full of harebells,
scabious and meadowsweet, while Xavier held on to a
carrier-bag and a Labrador as sleek and black as his face. A dozen
other dogs milled round, snapping at flies and panting but unusually
quiet, and on the other side of the fence, in silent sympathy,
stood Rupert's great horse, Penscombe Pride, Tiny the Shetland,
and several red and white cows.

Taggie Campbell-Black, paler even than Tabitha, biting her lip
to stop herself crying, held Gertrude, wrapped in an old orange
and blue blanket, in her arms. Dropping a last kiss on her white
forehead, she laid the little dog on her beanbag, already in the
grave. On a wonky wooden cross, Taggie had written the words:

'Gurtrude, are most preshous treshure, is berried hear.'

No-one had corrected her spelling.

Stepping forward, Xav dropped a packet of Kit-Kats and a box of
Bonios into the grave beside Gertrude, then took his mother's
hand. Suddenly Bianca ran forward and knelt by the grve.

qfyou're just pretending, Gertrude,' she called out, in a shrill
'now's the time to wake up.'
a second, laughter rippled round. Then Declan O'Hara

forward. Known to cry on every possible occasion, today


'We all loved Gertrude.' His deep, tender Irish brogue echoed
round the fields. 'She lived with us in London and the Priory oppo

eight years, and then with Rupert and Taggie for ten. But
:even this year she would struggle across the valley every morning

or a Bonio and a bowl of milk. What we will remember is

kindness and her merriness, but none of us would have
that such a frail body contained a heart as stout as Beth

C, elert.'

As Tab gave a sob, covering her face with her hand, Debbie
noticed the dark bruises along the side and up the little fingers.
Slae must have fought someone off like a wild cat. For a second,

swayed. As Rupert caught her, she buried her face in his
houlder.

'Nothing in Gertrude's life became her like the leaving it,'
: intoned Declan. 'She died as one--'

'Oh, for Christ's sake, Declan, get on,' snapped Rupert.

'We will never forget you,' Declan's voice broke, 'and on your

with shining eyes, may the Cotswold stars look down.' There were flowers everywhere. Xavier picked up a trowel to
help his father as, with gritted jaw, Rupert heaped powdery earth
over Gertrude's body. The moment he'd finished, muttering
about organizing drinks, frantic not to break down, he belted back
to the house.

'Pity, with such a turn-out, it wasn't video'd,' Declan's wife Maud
was saying fretfully.

Slumped in despair, Taggie stood alone by the grave. But as she
turned for home, Debbie and Fanshawe pounced. It was a while
before she took in what they were saying.

'Tab's had a terrible shock over Gertrude,' she muttered. 'I
don't think she can talk to you.'

'She was at Valhalla, yesterday,' said Fanshawe, flashing his teeth.
'We need to ask her her whereabouts. Uniformed police will be

along to fingerprint her later,' he added smoothly.

'You'd better come in,' said Taggie.


Tabitha was in an even worse state, shivering on the drawing-room
sofa, gazing into space. Debbie noticed her ankles, crisscrossed
with red weals.

'I'll ask the questions,' hissed Fanshawe.




306
	307


'Great turn-out for a little dog,' he began.

Tab looked at him uncomprehendingly.

'Wonder if you could tell us what you did yesterday from eight
o'clock onwards?'

'I worked my horse,' said Tab, in a high,jerky voice.

'What the fuck are you doing?' snarled Rupert, erupdng into the
room.

'Investigating the murder of Sir Roberto Rannaldini.' Determined
not to let nobs order him around, Fanshawe stood his
ground. 'We're checking Mrs Lovell's movements, in case she saw
anything unusual.'

'She didn't,' said Rupert coldly. 'She came home because
Gertrude died.'

'Can we ask her a few questions?'

'No, you fucking can't.' He turned to Tab. 'You OK, darling?'

From next door could be heard voices and the popping of champagne
corks.

'Could we ask you a few questions, then?' asked Debbie,

smoothing her blonde bob. Rupert really was gorgeous.

'If you want to, but you'd better be quick.'

Tll do this one,' hissed Debbie, as they followed Rupert into his
office.

Debbie was very much into the non-confrontational, non
judgemental police interview. She was unfazed by the fact that
Rupert was reading faxes, watching the first race runners in the
paddock on Channel Four, and filling in entry forms. At least it
meant he was relaxed.

'I'd like you to shut your eyes, make your mind go blank, Mr
Campbell-Black, and remember exactly what Tabitha said when
she called you last night.'

'I'll shut my eyes if you both will,' said Rupert, a shade more
amiably.

'OK,' said Debbie. 'What time did she ring?'

After a long pause, Fanshawe opened his eyes to see Rupert
vanishing through a side door. 'Mr Campbell-Black,' he shouted,
'you are impeding a police inquiry.'

'And we are in the middle of a funeral.'

'Only of a dog, sir.'

The fury on Rupert's face made them both retreat.

'We are investigating the murder of Mrs Lovell's stepfather,'
protested Fanshawe.

'Who was only a human,' said Rupert contemptuously, 'and a
particularly loathsome one at that. Now get out.'

'Arrogant shit,' fumed Fanshawe as he belted down the drive.

308


dare he talk to us like that. All those upper-class fuckers

:ther. Same when Lord Lucan copped it, they close ranks keep their traps shut.'

'And just think how Gablecross will sneer when he hears we've

thrown out,' sighed Debbie.



309




DS Gablecross was a deep thinker. He rose early, like the sun,
moved slowly round examining everything from a different angle,
before setting in the west, sleeping on things before he came to a
decision. Reassured by his lazy smile and deep, West Country
drawl, few people realized the bitterness and frustration
simmering beneath the surface.

In the middle eighties, the world had seemed at his feet. A loving
wife had looked after him, his three children hero-worshipped
him. Working on hunches, playing suspects against each other, he
and his running mate, Charlie, had been the most dazzlingly
successful villain-catchers in the West Country. Charlie had not
been above knocking suspects about. Like a foxhound, he was the kindest animal in the world until he got on to the scent of a quarry.

But then Gablecross's life had changed. His wife, Margaret, had
returned to teaching, the implication being that as he was more
interested in catching villains than angling for promotion, they
could no longer support three children on a sergeant's salary. She
had swiftly risen to deputy headmistress of the local comprehensive.
She was so conscientious that Gablecross often returned after
midnight to find her asleep over reports or exam papers. He had
preferred the old days: being greeted by charred steak and kidney
and Margaret feigning sleep through gritted teeth upstairs. His
children had also become teenagers, questioning his every attitude,
and regarding policemen at best as fascist pigs who
persecuted blacks, gays, women and teenagers.

Worst of all, last Christmas Charlie had been shot in a drugs raid.
His killer had been the brother of a young black guy, who had
committed suicide, after Charlie had forced a confession out of
him and banged him up for five years.

310


result f the 1984 Act, nunta, ......

and everything backed up with forensic or tale-recorded

to make it easier to prove guilt, this gradually

, out of investigation and only the safety players

As a result, Gablecross's battle-scarred contemporaries
taken early retirement or dull jobs in security. But being a

was the only thing Gablecross knew.

by the fresh-faced young turks of the inquiry team,

edgy, almost a figure of fun. Particularly, as if to rub salt
wound of Charlie's death, the dandified ego-maniac Gerald

had teamed him up with the only black on the inquiry
Karen Needham.

who had watched every instalment of Prime Suspect, to be the first woman head of Scotland Yard. A Naomi
l lookalike, with long shiny hair drawn back in a dark blue

had an undulating body and legs so long they made all
look like minis. Whenever she swayed through the incident

telephones and word-processors fell silent.

like Debbie Miller, was messianically into the peace inter
You made witnesses and suspects feel you were fascinated in
and what they had done. You utterly understood their tres

whether they had abused a dny child or bashed up an old
Faced with her sweet smile and big kind eyes, everyone sang

rooftops.

young turks told Gablecross he was a lucky sod to be
with someone so pretty and clever. But Gablecross, who

felt he was being sexist if he told Karen she looked

and racist if he complained about her slow driving and

slower way she took down evidence in her clear round
Other,rise she had only one drawback: she couldn't

her laughter, even during interviews, over the absurdities


Portland was crazy about her. In his most para
Gablecross imagined their pillow-talk.
you like to work with, Karen?'

like to zap that arrogant, geriatric, racist, homophobic
Tim Gablecross.'

found Portland hell to deal with. One of a breed
as 'butterflies', the handsome Chief Inspector had moved

to stadon, upping his status and his salary, ironing out
accent. He had a rich wife, children at private day schools, their

prominently displayed on his desk, and an old house
Rutminster, much modernized and crammed with



311




inglenooks. Pordand had been so busy going on courses he had
never had time to be a policeman. Although he was a good
manager and, out of laziness, able to delegate, he didn't want
anyone stealing his limelight. He would have preferred a team
composed entirely of keen, deferential youngsters, but to crack
this murder and cover himself with glory he needed Gablecross's
local knowledge and his genius at nosing out a killer.


Despite a shower, Gablecross felt crumpled and sweaty when he
rolled up for the first early-morning briefing on Tuesday. Portland,
on the other hand, his chestnut hair matching his smooth brown
face, looked as sleek and shining as a new conker. Having hung his
coat, with the Cardin label, on the back of his chair, loosened his
tie and rolled up his very white shirtsleeves to show off suntanned
arms, he smiled briskly at Gablecross.

'Lady Chisledon phoned to complain you didn't have enough
identification, Tim, when you popped in yesterday. Said the photo
on your ID card makes you look more villainous than any of your
suspects. Suggest you get a more flattering one and stop frightening
the witnesses.'

Sitting and standing around Portland's office, laughing deferentially,
were the Inner Cabinet. They consisted of two boffins
from the incident room, where a Home Office computer was
gathering all data on the murder, two reps from the uniformed
house-to-house task force, and twelve plain-clothes officers in
teams of two. These included Gablecross and Karen, Gablecross's
bitter rival, the fit, flat-stomached Kevin Fanshawe and Debbie
Miller, who'd fallen foul of Rupert yesterday, the blushing DC
Lightfoot, who'd been traumatized by the Valhalla orgy, and the
aggressive DC Smithson, who was, above all, present and politically
correct, sir.

From now on the Cabinet would meet every morning to absorb
what had happened the day before. Gerry Pordand's job was to
read autopsy reports, printouts and statements, corroborate all the
evidence and give each team lines to follow.

And then go and sleep on the sunbed, thought Gablecross.

On the wall, beside group photographs of Portland's various
courses, was a map of Paradise and Valhalla with Rannaldini's
watch-tower, the tennis court and Hangman's Wood ringed in red.
A day chart, listing the pairs of the inquiry team and the leads they
were following, was flanked by ablow-up of Hype-along Cassidy's
photograph of the entire unit.

The meeting began with a debriefing. Some officers had been
unravelling the tangled skeins of Rannaldini's last hours, when he
. to have upset everyone, some talking to the family, others
the houses of Paradise.

lroblem with this lot, guv'nor,' said Fanshawe, 'is they're used
I dodging awkward questions and evading the press. They're
but they're all shit scared. They can't believe the reign of
over.'

Won't be when Rupert Campbell-Black moves in,' snapped
. He was livid that Fanshawe and Miller had been chucked
. There was no way Rupert was going to walk all over his team.

'You sort him out, Tim,' he added, as a sop to the crack about
ID photograph. 'Nail him when he rolls up to kick ass on the

st this evening. Don't let Karen's legs distract him.' As he smiled
politically correct DC Smithson looked boot-faced: only
had she got the girlie calenders taken down
the male officers' walls.

;On their return from Penscombe, Fanshawe and Miller had
terviewed Mr Brimscombe. Dead-heading the rose walk, he had
Tabitha racing towards Rannaldini's watch-tower in a pretty
dress 'wafting perfume, and all dolled up' for the first time in
Empty-handed, she had waved and run on.

people, according to the house-to-house team, had seen,
ten fifteen, the ghost of Caroline Beddoes, clutching a little
with her ripped grey dress soaked in blood. After one sighting,
Paradise Cricket Club had rushed into the Pearly
for a quadruple whisky.

Rannaldini had claimed Tabitha went home because
i.r stepmum's dog went missing, said Gablecross.
now,' said Debbie Miller. 'Kevin and I stumbled on this
yesterday. Tabitha looked like a battered ghost.'

'Leave her a couple of days till we get the post-mortem, but her
looks very thin. Have a look at her cottage,' Portland told
'Talk to the servants at Penscombe and Valhalla, have a
with Tab's husband. We know Wolfgang switched on the
machine at Valhalla around ten forty-five,' he went on, 'and claims
asked him to take her own dog back to Penscombe.'

'Chloe Catford claims Wolfie swore he was going to kill his dad
hearing that tape,' said Gablecross. 'Unfortunately it's gone
• Wolfie probably whipped it.'

i The memoirs and Rannaldini's safe had also gone walkabout.

Miss Bussage was the chief suspect in the case of the former, but
tdae certainly hadn't smuggled the safe into the limo when she left.
'Go and see her, Tim,' grinned Gerald Portland. 'You're good
, with maiden ladies. Ask her if she knows why Rannaldini went to
the doctor on Friday, and if she knows the whereabouts ofa Picasso



312
	313


and the ltienne de Montigny hanging in Rannaldini's watchtower.
Both may have been torched in the fire, but if stolen, could
be a motive for murder.'

Other tasks included checking who had helicopters in the area,
other than Rupert Campbell-Black and George Hungerford, and
which one had landed beside Hangman's Wood on Sunday night.

Out of the window, through the trees, Gablecross could see the
Herbert Parker Hail, home of the Rutshire Symphony Orchestra.
He wondered what their boss, George Hungerford, had thought
of Flora's and Baby's photographs.

'Hungerford was seen driving towards Valhaila like a bat out of
hell around ten twenty-five on Sunday night,' said one of the
house-to-house team. 'And Montigny went the other way, only
earlier.'

'Tristan was seen at Valhalla by Jessica. God, she's gorgeous,'
sighed DC Lightfoot, 'and by that Russian, Mikhail Pezcherov, but
he was too smashed to be trusted.'

'Pezcherov claims he spent five minutes on Sunday night in the
maze with Chloe Catford. She says it was three hours,' volunteered
Gablecross.

'Time flies when you're enjoying yourself,' giggled Debbie
Miller.

Checks would have to be carried out on whether Chloe's mother,
Alpheus's agent and Rozzy Pringle had made phone calls when
they were said to have done. Lady Griselda, Bernard Gu6rin,
Granville Hastings, none of them fans of Rannaldini, had,all been
crashing around looking for balls near the watch-tower at'the dme
of the murder.

'Flora Seymour and Meredith Whaien have very thin alibis, but
Sexton Kemp looks in the clear,' said Gablecross.

'I spent most of last night trying to pin down Baby Spinosissy
something,' said Fanshawe crossly. 'Dame Hermione was aiso too
upset to speak to anyone, but I'm certain they're talking to the
press if not to us.'

'Hermione was heard singing in the wood around ten thirty,'
said Gablecross.

'Could have been another singer,' piped up Karen Needham.
'Flora Seymour or Chloe Catford.'

'She's a cracker.' Fanshawe raised his eyes to heaven.

'Or Gloria Prescott,' said DC Lightfoot, 'another cracker.'
'Which one's she?' Portland peered at the blow-up.

'That one. She's blinking but her boobs aren't,' said DC
Lightfoot excitedly, and got punched in the ribs by DC Smithson.

'Go and see Dame Hermione, Tim,' said Portland. 'You're good

with middle-aged nymphos too, but remember, her alarm's wired
by umbilical cord to the Chief Constable's navel, so watch it.'

Gablecross ground his teeth. The rest of the team laughed. The French crew had evidently been hopeless to interview. Their
English, which had improved so dramatically during filming, had
deteriorated equaily dramatically when confronted by DC
Smithson's truculence.

' "I was weeth heem, and he was weeth me and other heems, and
heem was with heem," snapped DC Smithson. 'They're more

obstructive than that appalling Campbell-Black.'

'But not quite as gorgeous,' sighed Debbie.

'We have a host of suspects.' Portland rubbed his hands together. 'Priority is to find the memoirs and Rannaldini's safe.'

'Clive may have got them,' said Gablecross. 'He was whispering to that ugly cow from the Sentind yesterday.'

'Well, nobble him today.'

: While Portland gave the others lines to follow, Gablecross's mind
dabbled back to something old Miss Cricklade, who took in washing,
had told him when he'd given her a lift into Rutminster that
morning. What with Dame Hermione, Miss Bussage in Abingdon,

if he could catch him, Rupert Campbell-Black on the set this

it was going to be a long day.

ii: He was brought back to earth by DC Smithson whining that

everyone at Vaihaila was a publicity-obsessed nutter.

'Well, as one not unacquainted with the media,' Portland examined
his fingernails, 'you have to know how to use them. I suggest

ask the help of Lady Rannaldini to appeal to the nation for


" .She was in bad shape yesterday,' said Gablecross quickly. i:But Portland wasn't listening. He loved press conferences and

He couldn't wait to wrap up the meeting so he could
the smashing photographs of himself in the morning's


'Doubt if you'd learn much,' Gablecross was saying. 'Certain it's

job.'

the best judge of that,' said Portland coolly. 'Lady R's a

she's chairman of Enid's NSPCC committee.'

could start by paying more attention to her own child,'

Gablecross.



315





Few people had seen inside Hermione's pretty Georgian Mill which
stood, hidden by trees, two hundred yards from the river
Fleet - because she was far too lazy and tight with money to enter


Gablecross was surprised therefore to find the dark green front
door open and his wife's favourite singer standing radiant and
smiling in the hall. Only when he'd waved his ID card at her did
he realize that he was about to shake the outstretched hand of a
replica of Hermione's waxwork in Madame Tussaud's. .'

'Pack it in,' he hissed, as Karen burst out laughing. 'Show some
fucking respect.'

Dame Hermione, veiled and clad entirely in black, lay on a dark
red chaise-longue, with Sexton and Howie dancing attendance.
Hermione had not forgiven Howie for being in the know about
Pushy's top notes and espousing her cause as Delilah, and was
determined he shouldn't get any cut out of her newspaper deals,
offers of which were pouring in from all over the world and being
handled by Sexton. Howie, who loathed the country, was equally
determined to hang in.

Spurred on by Gerry Portland's mockery and having often been
impeded in car chases by Dame Hermione's limo, parked slap
across Paradise High Street, Gablecross was determined to stand
no nonsense. This excited the hell out of Hermione, who loved her
men masterful. Whipping back her veil, she patted the sofa beside
her. 'I know we're going to be friends, let's call each other by our

given names. Mine's Hermione, and yours is... ?'

'Officer,' said Karen tartly.

'Shut up,' snarled Gablecross. 'It's Timothy.'

'Does she have to be in here?' Hermione glared at Karen.

'Yes,' said Gablecross regretfully.

'I've just been talking to my very good friend Chief Constable
Swallow,' announced Hermione.

Which, translated, thought Karen, means, 'Mess with me and you're a dead duck.' Looking round the room, she decided, you
could fall asleep counting the photographs, paintings and sculptures
of Hermione. Magazines with her face on the cover lay on a
nearby table. Among the trophies on the shelf was the Artist of the
Year award she'd won in October.

'I urged the Chief Constable to call a press conference,'
Hermione was now telling Gablecross, 'so I can beseech people to
come forward and shed light on this dreadful crime. My son, Little

has lost a father, I a cherished friend.'

'Lady Rannaldini might want to do it,' said Sexton, as he whisked

the room to get to the telephone before Howie.

Rannaldini has no experience of the media,' said

dismissively.

i:;:. !Nor is she as universally beloved as you, Dame Hermione,' lied


'Indeed.' Hermione bowed, then turned to Gablecross. 'I have

t thousand and twenty-three letters already, Timothy, and lost

in weight.'

thank goodness, was as adept at twiddling the knobs on

scales as Rannaldini had been on her recordings.
t feel I owe it to my public, and to Rannaldini, to appeal to the

on television,' went on Hermione.

t, Hermsie.' Sexton trotted back into the room and
her hand. 'They always turn out to be the one wot's


Sexton.' Hermione gave a low laugh. 'How wise you


Guardian on the phone,' whispered Sexton.

'I'll tell them you're out.' Howie leapt to his little feet.

thundered Hermione, as if she'd sallied forth on some
'I shall never go out again. I must speak with them, for

s sake.' She seized the telephone. 'Mr Rusbridger?


			my producer has brought me fresh fruit and Belgian

				to keep up my strength for the sake of my public.'

					Helen is wearing for the funeral?' she asked

			as she came off the telephone five minutes later. 'Could

		Lady Griselda to pop in this afternoon? I shall wear black,

				and a veil.'

				enough to show the tragedy etched on your lovely

				Howie was laying it on with aJCB.





Karen got the giggles again, and had to take her notebook over
to the window and gaze at the dried-up river as Gablecross tried to
pin down Hermione on her movements on Sunday night. People
had seen her returning around eight in Rannaldini's helicopter.

'I had been concertizing at an open-air gala in Milan. Because
the proceeds were going towards a new hospital,' added Hermione
virtuously, 'I only charged my charity fee of sixty thousand
pounds.'

That's more than I earn in four years, thought Karen in disgust.
'Around the time Rannaldini died,' Gablecross pressed on, 'at
about ten thirty, several witnesses heard you singing a number
from Don Carlos in the wood. They said a voice had never sounded
more exquisite.'

'Then it must have been mine,' twinkled Hermione.

'Did you walk through the wood on Sunday night?'

'Timothy, Timothy, if I sang pianissimo from the garden at River
House, my voice would float across to Valhalla, but I didn't go out.
It must have been a tape or a CD. Rannaldini had plenty. He was
clearly comparing them with the rushes.'

'People have said your voice was unaccompanied.'

'I often sang for him alone.'

'So you didn't leave home at all?'

'Certainly not. I rushed back from Milan to spend quality time
With my son Cosmo. I spent the rest of the evening recharging my
spiritual batteries. I needed to be fresh for Monday, in case
Rannaldini wanted to reshoot Act Five. Or, if he'd carried on with
the schedule, I had an important ballroom scene in Act Two, Scene
Two. I won't pass for nineteen if I don't get my eight hours,' she
added skittishly.

'What else did you do?'

'I was tucked up in bed with camomile tea, like the Flopsy
Bunnies,' Hermione put on a soppy face, 'by nine o'clock, to watch Pride and Prejudice. It's my favourite novel.'

'Who's your favourite character in it?' asked Karen innocently.

'Emma Woodhouse,' replied Hermione, without missing a beat.
'She's beautiful and headstrong. Fans have often compared us.'

For a second, Karen's eyes met Sexton's. She wondered if she
recognized pleading.

'And my husband Bobby rang me from Australia for a chat
around ten forty-five,' said Hermione airily.

'Does your husband mind Little Cosmo being Rannaldini's son?'
asked Gablecross.

'Not in the least. We have a very close and open marriage,
Timothy. Bobby is devoted to Little Cosmo.'


Gablecross couldn't dent her. Rannaldini's playing the evil tape
on Friday night, his flirtations with Pushy, Serena, Cheryl, Lara,
even Tabitha, his threats to replace her with a younger singer had
been all part of a game to goad her into singing more beautifully.

'What he loved about me, Timothy, was my ability to rise to the

challenge. Ours was a special relationship. Are you married?'
'My wife's your greatest fan,' blushed Gablecross.
Surreptitiously scraping a sticker saying 'American Bravo Library
Copy, Do Not Remove' from its case, Hermione brandished a CD
called Only for Lovers.

'What's your wife's given name? I've had two thousand five
hundred and twenty-two letters and lost over a stone, you know. I
simply can't eat.'

'I've roasted a little chicken for lunch,' said Sexton, bustling in
in a striped apron.

'Well, perhaps I could manage a slice,' admitted Hermione, as
she wrote her name on the CD sleeve.

Shoulders shaking frantically, Karen was gazing intently at the
river again.

'We're off, Karen,' said Gablecross icily.

'Leave the poor child,' cried Hermione. 'She is only weeping,
like the whole world, for Maestro's death.' Then, catching sight of
Rannaldini's photograph on the CD case, handsome and smiling

:th his hands on her bare shoulders, Hermione broke into
i genuine tears of despair. 'You will bring his killer to justice, won't

Timothy?'

On the way out, Sexton made a brief statement.

' I ought to fill you in on my movements on Sunday night, Tim.

it was Sunday, Bloody Sunday. I 'ad a hellish day trying to
up money. Rannaldini had fucked us with his delaying

refusing to release any dosh until Tristan gave in to his


after midnight, shattered. But I wanted to be there
morning in case tings turned nasty after Rannaldini
that evil tape on Friday night. Anyway, Wally and I was

come off the motorway wiv only the hard shoulder to cry

ard rang and said Rannaldini'd copped it.'

was that, sir?'

fifteen. I called Rupert Campbell-Black. Luckily he'd just

and agreed to come in and save the movie.'

that?' asked Karen.

that sort of bloke. Then we belted down to Valhalla, as

and I agreed,' there was pride in Sexton's voice now, 'I
be the one to break the sad news to Dame Hermione.'



318 i.


'Look after her,' Gablecross was mazed to n¢:, .....

'The fat cow's lying through her teeth,' fumed Karen, asthey
walked back to the car. 'Imagine thinking Emma Woodhouse was
the heroine of Pr/de and Prejudice. The only thing the silly bitch
reads is rave reviews and the directions on the Prozac bottle.'

'And Sexton had a lot to lose if the film went belly-up,' mused
Gablecross.

'And Rupert Campbell-Black had only just come in at one
fifteen,' said Karen. 'What was he doing in the meanwhile?' She
wished Gablecross would loosen up. As a cop you often had to
laugh to stop yourself crying. She wasn't looking forward to him
wincing over her driving all the way to Abingdon to see Miss
Bussage.


320


at his first night's filming in a murderous mood. If
spurned Tab and let her fall among thieves, she would
' have married so disastrously. And Rannaldini would never
been reduced to kidnapping Gertrude. He felt direcdy

both for the rape and Gertrude's death, and his brain
. with blood whenever he thought of it.

He had agreed to save Don Carlos because he wanted to make a

uick buck and amends to Tab. But talking to her the

day, he learnt of Tristan's treachery and only hung in
of her pleading.

But the fucker blew you out.'

know,' sobbed Tab. 'But I still love him and maybe with

out of the way...'

was so near the edge, raging one moment, sobbing wildly
the next, or just gazing into space, he didn't want to push her

the abyss.


Over at Valhalla, excitement at his impending arrival had reached

pitch. Chloe, already buoyed up by fifty thousand from the Mail, calls from La Scala and the Op6ra Bastille, and the press

'Chloe, Chloe, Chloe,' whenever she passed, was now

quirrning lasciviously in front of the mirror in Make Up.

'I want an ace face for Rupert, Lucy Lockett.'

'-That would be an Everest for you,' said Baby irritably, as he

over accounts of the murder in all the papers.

ii:..'The prospect of having Tab as a stepdaughter would deter even

sighed Chloe, 'but one could always dally.'

'Rupert's mad about his wife,' said Lucy crossly, as she clipped
Chloe's fringe to one side.

321



'That's a nice picture of moi.' Chloe glanced sideways. 'What
paper's that?'

'The Scorpion. They list you as a prime suspect, alongside most of
the cast, plus Helen, Wolfie and Tristan.'

'Ouch, carefu/,' squeaked Chloe, as Lucy knocked over a bottle
of base, narrowly missing three thousand pounds' worth of
crimson taffeta. 'Don't mention that name in our make-up artist's
presence.'

One flare-up was averted by Lucy's mobile ringing, which triggered
off another. 'No, I cannot do your roots, Meredith,' shouted
Lucy. 'I don't care if Rupert is due later, the cast has priority.'


From an upstairs window, Helen watched the press go berserk at

the bottom of the drive as her ex-husband's dark blue helicopter

landed.

It was absolutely typical. Not only had Rupert won Tab back, he

was now swanning in like a prince, stalking towards the maze, with

fat Sexton running to keep up, passingJessica and Simone, who

swung round in wonder. When would Rupert bloody well lose his

looks?

'You wouldn't have a moment to pop in and see Dime

Hermione?' panted Sexton.

'Not unless you provide guards and a chastity-belt,"replied

Rtlpert.

'Here comes Beauty-with-Cruelty,' sighed Meredith, adjusting

the baseball cap now hiding his roots.

The setting sun had lent a warmth to Rupert's sleek blond hair

and added a touch of colour to his unusually pale face, but his

mouth was set in an ugly line, and the glare he gave Tristan could

have halted global warming for several decades.

'It's very good of you to help us out.' Nervously, Tristan extended

a hand, which Rupert ignored. This was the bastard who'd broken

Tab's heart.

Having nodded curtly at Wolfie, and Lucy, who he knew slightly

as a friend of Tab's, and kissed Griselda, who he remembered from

deb dances in the early seventies, he said:

'OK, let's get on with it.'

Rupert had never taken on anything he couldn't do. Brilliant at

show-jumping, he had been a highly successful, if unorthodox, MP

and Minister for Sport, a hot-shot financial director of Venturer

Television and now, because he'd learnt patience at last and

refused to push horses that needed more time, he was one of the

leading owner-trainers in the world. But the snail's pace of filming

defeated him.
	you
	a
	and

a day on something quite so ridiculous? The caterwauling from the
speakers gave him a headache. The only time that number of
people had stood around at Penscombe in the last twenty years had
been at Gertrude's funeral.

'What the hell's going on?' he asked Tristan.

'Carlos receive letter summoning him to a rendezvous. He think
it is from his stepmother, who he adores. But it is from his father's

mistress, who adores him. So if you imagine your mistress...'
'I don't have a mistress,' said Rupert icily.
'Domraage,' chorused Chloe and Simone.
The crew grinned.

'Well, imagine your son being madly in love with your wife.'

'Impossible,' said Rupert, even more icily. 'Marcus is a homosexual.'

'Well,'
Tristan struggled on, 'Carlos is so carried away with
excitement, he declares passionate love to wrong woman.'

'Is he pissed? Then how could he possibly mistake Clareb?'
'Chloe!' interrupted Chloe in outrage.

'Sorry, Chloe for Hermione. Hermione's three times her size.'
Chloe blew Rupert a kiss.

'Why didn't you choose singers the same size?' persisted Rupert.
'They were chosen for their voices.' Tristan was just managing to
keep his temper. 'In the dark it is easy to mistake people.'

'It isn't dark.' Rupert glared round at Oscar's lights. 'We could

Blackpool at the height of the season.'

Later they'd moved on to the trio.

'Tbmorrow the earth will open up to swallow you," ' sang Chloe,

at Baby.

T the earth open up to swallow you,"' sang Mikhail, scowling
Chloe.

;:;'If only the earth would open up to swallow me,"' sang Baby.

shouted Rupert.

music ground discordantly to a halt.

rristan is directing this film, Monsieur Campbell-Black,'

an apoplectic Bernard.

do these singers keep repeating themselves?' demanded
sarcastically. 'I thought we were trying to make this film

this film shorter, this film shorter.'

corpsed again.

Chief Constable of Rutminster's called Swallow,' said

chattily.

Meredith,' howled Tristan and Bernard. "

why isn't that camera motorized?' Rupert pointed at a

pushing Valentin along the tracks. 'We gave up



322
	323



ploughing with horses forty years ago at Penscombe.'

'Why's that man with a beard sticking a knife into that pretty
girl?' demanded Rupert ten minutes later.

'He's a freedom fighter,' hissed Griselda.

'Typical leftie behaviour,' said Rupert scornfully. 'Why haven't
you given him sandals and an Adam's apple?'

After Mikhail had offered Rupert a slug of vodka, he decided he
was quite nice for a leftie.

There was a sticky moment during the break when a hopelessly
goaded Tristan made the mistake of assuming Rupert spoke as
little French as his daughter.

'How can that imbecile Sexton have brought in such an ignorant,
pig-headed, obstructionist ape?' he stormed to Valentin.

'Because you'd have folded, if he hadn't,' said Rupert coldly.

Like children who behave worse when their mother wants them
on their best behaviour, Tristan's cast started acting up.

' "I have stained the name of my mother," sang Baby piously, in
the middle of a perfect take.

'Vot colour 'ave you stained her?' sang back Mikhail.

'I have stained her Prussian blue-hoohoo.'

'Cut!' howled Tristan. 'Cut, cut, cut, you fuckers!' then stopped
in mid-blast as a mobile rang.

'Telephones are not allowed on the set,' roared Bernard.

"'It's mine,' mumbled Tristan, disappearing into the dark
labyrinths of the maze.


The trees on the horizon were still black silhouettes, but colour
was creeping into the foreground. Pigeons were cooing sleepily,
thrushes repeating phrases like singers, when at four thirty
Tristan called a wrap. Despite Rupert's constant interference, a
miraculous minute or two was in the can. Mikhail's flick-knife had
gone safely back to the props van. Everyone was glad to gather
round Maria's barbecue on which tandoori chicken, sausages,
and tomatoes stuffed with herbs sizzled enticingly. As an extra
treat after a long night, Maria had made a huge bread and butter
pudding. Bottles of red and white were on the tables.

Rupert was very hungry, and could have done with a drink,
but he was loath to fraternize. Back at Penscombe, his stable
lads would be out on the gallops in an hour, he hated to miss
anything.

Gablecross, who'd been waiting patiently all night, edged
towards him. 'Can I have a word, Mr Campbell-Black?'

'No, you can't,' said Rupert curtly. 'I'm off.'

Despite Rupert's antagonism, Tristan, having heard hideous
rumours about Rannaldini and Tab, had returned to his caravan
and was taking a huge bunch of freesias from a bucket. Wrapping them in the only pages of yesterday's LeFigaro not devoted to the murder, he caught up with his new executive producer as Rupert was leaving the canteen.

'Would you please take these to Tabitha and give her, er, my love?'

Suddenly, in front of the entire unit, Rupert's rage boiled over.
'Not after the way you fucked her up, dumping her the moment you pulled her.'

Tristan was greyer than the predawn sky but he held his ground.
'It is not as you think.'

'Don't tell me what I think, you fucking Frog. I may have made
it possible for you to finish your poxy film, because Tab put so much work into the horses, but, believe me, sunshine, it has
g to do with you. Back off and leave her alone.'

Lucy couldn't bear to look at Tristan, she had never hated myone as much as Rupert, particularly when he snatched Tristan's flowers to chuck them on the barbecue. But suddenly Rozzy
from nowhere.

T!' she screamed, grabbing the flowers
him.
choked on his half pint of red, Bernard on his bread and
pudding. Everyone who had turned away in embarrassment
.: turned back in amazement. Rozzy swearing?

L judge without knowing the facts,' she shouted. 'If hadn't risked his life dragging Tab from the fire she
t be alive today. Naturally Tab was terrified, and Tristan
her. You ought to go down on your knees with gratitude got a daughter, you loathsome brute.'

' Rupert looked at Rozzy incredulously. 'My God, the mouse has roared.' 'And how d'you know he seduced Tab?' said Rozzy furiously.
only got her word for it, just as you've only got her word
:that Rannaldini

'Shut up, you bitch.' Wolfie was shaking Rozzy like a rat. 'Take


Instantly Bernard moved in to separate them, and Rozzy

in his arms.

'Much more exciting than Verdi,' said Meredith, selecting

spicy sausage. 'Why don't you film this instead, Tristan?'
A piercing shriek from the direction of Wardrobe stopped

in their tracks. Wearily putting clothes back on their




324
		325


hangers, Griselda discovered Hermione's new willow-green roselined
cloak had been delivered from Paris during the night.
Assuming someone had signed for it, Griselda had picked up the
receipt. On the dotted line in unmistakable emerald-green ink was
scrawled the word 'Rannaldini'.

'I know he's alive,' gibbered Griselda as, with purple turban

askew, she lumbered elephantine and quaking into the canteen.
'Pissed again,' muttered Ogborne.

But as everyone crowded round, the signature on the receipt,
which Gablecross promptly pocketed, was agreed to be perfect.

'Perhaps Bussage is getting her revenge for being fired,' said
Wolfie, who'd gone as green as his father's signature. 'She faked
Papa's name on enough fan photos and documents.'

But when Bernard rang the messenger, who was speeding
towards Dover, he insisted that a gendeman, smelling very strongly
of scent and wearing a long black cloak with a turned-up collar,
had signed for the parcel. It had been very dark. He had assumed
it was one of the cast.

'It must have been the cloak Rannaldini wore to sweep on to the
rostrum on Friday night,' whispered a terrified Griselda.

'There's obviously a perfectly simple explanation,' said Rupert,
escaping to his helicopter and the safety of Penscombe.


All the birds were singing, the grumbling of the crows in the
beeches providing the fauxbourdon, as Simone, Baby and Lucy
trailed wearily back to their beds.

'I don't know which is worse,' shivered Lucy, 'a murderer mad
enough to dress up as Rannaldini, or the return of Rannaldini
himself.'

'I'm sure I saw him yesterday at that blocked-up window.'
Simone's pointing finger trembled.

'Well, he made a copy of everything else,' drawled Baby. 'Why
not of himself?'

Thank God the sun was rising, shining cheerfully into their faces.
Lucy fell into bed but not to sleep. How wonderful Rozzy had been.
Oh, why hadn't she been brave enough to stick up for Tristan?

drawn a blank with Rupert, Gablecross was driving wearily

of Valhalla in the hope of a couple of hours' sleep when he
lights on in Clive's flat over the stables. Remembering his
yesterday with Miss Cricklade, he pulled in.

Cricklade, the local busybody, lived on the west side of
Street. Between training her binoculars on Valhalla
watching Pr/de and Prejudice on Sunday night, she had seen
, Clive, Rannaldini's dreaded gminence grise, calling on Nicky Willard

door around eight o'clock. He had only stayed ten minutes
but, during this time, a little white mongrel had been yapping
continually in his car.

she went on like that,' Miss Cricklade had told Gablecross
'she would have lost her bark, like my Judy did when
into kennels. I was about to complain when Clive came
Out and drove off.

'But he was back to see Nicky around nine thirty,' Miss Cricklade
. gone on. 'Nicky's mum and dad had gone to Bath for the
. evening. I gave a scream when I saw Valhalla going up in flames.
Next moment, Clive came out of Willard's house like a bat out of
hell. I don't think George and Grace Willard would have liked him
being there. I don't trust that Clive.'

. Nor did Gablecross. He had waived sentences against him in the
past in return for information. Now itwas time to call in the marker
- particularly as Bussage had implied that Clive knew where
Rannaldini's safe, containing a second set of memoirs, was hidden.

He had to lean on the bell for five minutes before he was let in
by Clive, clearly furious at the interruption. There was not a speck
of dust in the upstairs flat, which was furnished with chrome and
black leather. Sado-masochistic literature and videos filled the



326
	327



bookshelves. Posters of muscular youths on motorbikes with tufts
of blond hair emerging under bikers' caps adorned the walls. On
the mantelpiece was a photograph of-a young Clive and a middle
aged woman with pigeons on their shoulders in Trafalgar Square.

Even though it was five o'clock in the morning, Clive was fully
dressed in leather trousers and a very white vest, showing off tattoos
of bleeding hearts and black widow spiders

Gablecross realized he must keep his wits about him if this
especially slippery fish wasn't to slide through his fingers, and
baldly kicked off with the fact that several independent witnesses
had reported Clive spending several hours at Nicky Willard's house
on Sunday night. Nicky Willard was only sixteen going on forty-five.
Unless Clive wanted to be banged up for five years, he had better
sing to the rooftops.

Clive promptly played, then handed over the tape he'd stolen
from the answering-machine at Valhalla on Sunday night. No
wonder Wolfie had wanted to kill his father, thought Gablecross.
No wonder Rupert had wanted to kill everyone.

'Where does the little dog come in?' he asked sternly.

Clive displayed uncharacteristic shame. He admitted stealing
Gertrude, but hadn't realized Rannaldini would use her as bait.

'Rupert will kill me if he finds out. I want a safe house,' he
whined.

'He'll certainly rearrange your features. Where are Rannaldini's
keys? There was no sign of them in the ashes.'

'The murderer must have whipped them, which means he's got

the master key to every bedroom.'

'Good God!'

'More than that. Every room - including the dressing rooms,
the caravans and the cottages - was bugged for sound. There
were hidden cameras everywhere so he could watch people, or
video their goings-on. He had a stranglehold like the Spanish
Inquisition.'

Suddenly Gablecross didn't feel tired any more.

'What exactly were your movements on Sunday night?' he asked,
as Clive made him a cup of black coffee.

'I delivered Taggie's dog to the watch-tower around eight
fifteen, brought Tabloid back here, walked him and Rannaldini's
other Rotties and gave them their dinner. Then I went over to
watch the box with Nicky around nine thirty. Around eleven thirty
we saw flames coming out of the watch-tower so I drove back to see

if I cottld rescue Rannaldini or anything.'

'What's happened to the safe?'

'Dunno. Rannaldini was always movin' it around.'

Come on. Stealing that little dog, consorting with a minor,
d'you want to be banged up for seven ),ears?'

Clive didn't. By that time, Nicky Willard would be twenty-three
and have lost his bloom. On the other hand, he didn't reveal all
his cards. He had failed to flog the memoirs to BeattieJohnson on
the night of the murder because she'd obviously had an offer from
Bussage. Unable to get into the safe without Rannaldini's keys,
Clive had subsequently ransacked Bussage's files, substituted
the blank disks and fan photographs and flogged her set of the
memoirs for two hundred thousand to Beattie, with a further eight
hundred thousand promised on publication. None of this did he
tell Gablecross. But, feeling flush, he admitted, 'quite by chance',
that Rannaldini's safe was currently hidden in the priest-hole
behind the mantelpiece.

'See? It's 'ollow.' Clive banged a panel, which swung open to
i, eveal a large cupboard containing lots of cobwebs and a large steel
'Rannaldini kept it in his indoor school - didn't endrely trust
I moved it 'ere after the murder.

funny.' Clive poured Gablecross more coffee. 'Since it's 'ere, I keep thinking the bugger's alive.' With a shiver, he
around the flat. 'I'm sure I saw him outside the chapel last


you intend to do with the safe?'

in when I got a moment.'

z commendable,' said Gablecross sardonically.

' when the bell rang again, and Clive, sulkily, had to
Bobby Clintock, another of Gablecross's contacts and the

in Rutshire, armed with rugs and explosives.
five thirty-five, a loud thud set the horses neighing and the

barking in their quarters below.

muttered Clive, peering through the smoke. 'The

not there, nor the Picasso. Must have been torched in
That's five million up the spout.'

they found a lot of foreign currency, enough cocaine

a snow-dwarf, a print-out of three hundred pages of the
and a pile of videos and photographs. Pushy Galore

a sofa didn't do much for Clive and neither did Bussage
to the table. Then he saw Chloe.

Expect the goat'll sell its story to Farmer's Weekly.'

old Granville Hastings. Gablecross picked up a photo of a

g Granny. No wonder he didn't want the police


must have locked this stuff away on the Sunday after
before he died. There was even a copy of his last will, dated




8 July, leaving everything to Cecilia and her children, except for
four million each to Hermione and Little Cosmo and a hundred

thousand to Clive and Miss Bussage. Nothing to Helen or Wolfie.
No wonder Wolfie had been going to kill his father.

Flicking through a yellow memo pad, Gablecross found notes
that Rozzy Pringle had throat cancer, the poor lady, and reminders
to contact Rozzy's husband Glyn and also Tristan's aunt Hortense
in the Tam. In a Bible, he discovered a letter in French, on writing
paper headed with a crest of a snake and a drawing of two lovers,
and shoved it in his inside pocket to read later. Turning, he found
Bobby Clintock salivating over Hermione's naked body and Clive
drooling over a book of medieval tortures with many of the pages
turned down.

'What was it with this guy?' asked Gablecross in disgust.
'He was bored with normal pleasure,' said Clive flatly.
'Where was his famous torture chamber?'
'Didn't exist.' Clive's pale eyes flickered.

'Did you take that Rottie away from the watch-tower earlier so
you could kill him without it barking?'

'You'll have to take my word on that.'

'Thanks for your co-operation,' said Gablecross, as Clive and
Bobby, albeit with great reluctance, helped him to carry the safe to
his car.

330


Portland was outraged when Gablecross emptied the

of the safe on to his desk.

'Tim-out-on-a-limb again. How dare you go off intimidating

and blowing safes? Nothing has been printed.'

were two of them, and Bobby Clintock's much bigger


torched the evidence. What's the defence going

to this?' Having bollocked him, however, Portland was soon
in the material. 'Jesus! Jesus. How the hell did
pull birds like that?'

. a result, the morning's briefing was lively, excited and often


see steam coming out of my ears,' announced Portland,

got hold of a copy of.the memoirs. We also have
.the missing tape from the answering-machine at Valhalla.' He

the play button. 'Oh, Wolfie, help me! Rannaldini's just

me, and he's killed Gertrude. Oh, please get Sharon from the cottage!'

Tab's clipped, breathless voice faltered as tears took over.

II.: Despite the sun streaming through the window, a shiver went
through the room.

'It was after hearing this tape,' went on Portland, 'that young
Wolfgang announced he was going to kill his father. If he'd gone to the watch-tower and read the draft will, he'd have had the added

that he'd been disinherited. Rupert also received a phone call from Tabitha a few minutes later.'

'Rupert looked capable of murder last night,' admitted
Gablecross.

Fanshawe, who was livid about Gablecross's latest coup, and



331




Debbie Miller had been to Magpie Cottage yesterday. The only
unusual thing on Monday morning, Betty had told them, was that
Tab's and Isa's double bed had been neatly made. On the other
hand, the bathroom had been a shambles. Fanshawe had pocketed
a pale coral lipstick, Lanc6me's Brilliant Beige, Clinique blusher,
base and powder, and a hairbrush full of blonde hairs. Kicked
under the bath, perhaps so Isa shouldn't see it, had been the packaging
from a newly opened bottle of scent called Quercus.

'Perhaps she didn't want her husband to know she was on the
pull,' said Debbie.

Gablecross reported on his and Karen's visit to Miss Bussage.
'The lady was very bitter about her sacking and unashamedly
confessed she had meant to steal a copy of the memoirs and

photographs. Said she was protecting Rannaldini's reputation.'
'I reckon she was going to flog them,' piped up Karen.

'Certainly enjoyed being flogged,' said Portland, grinning down

at the photo of Bussage roped to the kitchen table.

'Disgusting,' chuntered DC Smithson.

'Anyway,' went on Gablecross, 'she reckons everything,
including the draft will, was switched in the files before she put it
in her briefcase, which she did immediately after Wolfie sacked her
on Monday afternoon. He allowed her only an hour to pack
because she'd slagged offTab, and she had the key to the briefcase
on her. Bussage suspects Wolfie and Lady Rannaldini, because
they were both disinherited - and, of course, Clive. But no-one
featured in those memoirs would be too happy to have them
floating about.'

'The riveting thing she told us,' said Karen in excitement, 'was
that Rannaldini visited James Benson on Friday to discuss having
his vasectomy reversed.'

This made everyone sit up.

'Not the most pleasant or successful of operations,' observed
Portland. 'Rannaldini must have been thinking of having more
children. Any idea who with?'

'Hardly Lady Rannaldini,' said Fanshawe, who was desperate to
regain the ascendancy. 'That marriage was into injury time. Gloria
Prescott claims he proposed marriage to her.'

'He was clearly closer to Harriet Bussage than her unprepossessing
appearance would suggest,' said Gablecross, 'and he was
cuckoo about Tabitha.'

'He was shooting blanks on Sunday night,' mused Fanshawe.
'But one way to torture Lady Rannaldini, Wolfgang, Dame
Hermione and Rupert Campbell-Black in one stroke would have
been to have got Tabitha pregnant.'

As he talked Sergeant Fanshawe was edging backwards so he
could look at the photographs over Pordand's shoulder. His jaw
dropped at the sight of a naked Tab.

'Christ, she's beautiful. Any man would kill for her. Although,'

edged closer, 'judging from that pickie, she and Rannaldini
must have been familiar for a long time - the leaves are off the
trees. Perhaps she's lying about the rape.'

'May not have known the photograph was being taken,' said
Gablecross, and he explained about Rannaldini having every room
fitted with bugs, hidden cameras and two-way mirrors. 'Every night
he watched his guests in bed on television monitors.'
: 'Did they know and perform?' mused Portland.

: 'Can I have a seat in the stalls?' pleaded DC Lightfoot, and was
cked by DC Smithson.

'So the murderer's not only got the keys to every bedroom but

i: the code to every safe, secret cache and priest-hole in Valhalla,'

said Gablecross.

'What we've got to establish is, was Rannaldini the murderer's
:only 'target? Did he or she kill to stop the memoirs? Christ.'
Portland shuddered at a hideously humiliating photograph of a

..::.Belsen-thin
	Helen Campbell-Black. 'Or to steal them from the
and flog them to the press for some vast sum? Also,

a second set on the loose, stolen from Bussage's briefcase, the
murderer may kill again to get hold of them.'
: There had been another sighting on Sunday night of Tristan de
Montigny, said DC Lighffoot.

'Janice, Rannaldini's groom, saw him sneaking into the south

in a dark green polo shirt and white chinos around nine ten.
But he rolled up at Valhalla the next day in jeans and a peacock
blue
shirt, so he changed his clothes for some reason.'
'Who's close to him?' asked Portland.
'Lucy Latimer,' said Gablecross.
'You and Karen go and see her.'

Janice had also volunteered that Tabitha's husband, the Black
Cobra, had also, most unusually, rolled up at the yard to look at
Rannaldini's horses at around eight thirty, and had received a call
on his mobile, DC Smithson consulted her notebook, around nine
twenty-five. 'He said, "It's no good, I can't manage it, the coast isn't
clear," and rang off. He left the yard around nine thirty.'

'He presumably wouldn't have been very pleased that
Rannaldini had raped his wife.'

'Doubt if he'd show it. Cool customer, quite cool enough to
murder.'

'You're a racing buff, Tim,' said Portland. 'Go and chat him up.'



332
	333



'And how did you get on with Rupert Campbell-Black, Tim?'
asked Fanshawe, who knew that he hadn't and who was livid
Gablecross seemed to be Portland's pet today.

'We couldn't get near him,' said Gablecross tersely. 'Baby
Spinosissimo interests me. He's as elusive as Campbell-Black, but
all that drinking and extravagant camping it up means something's
eating him.'

'Probably Flora Seymour,' quipped Fanshawe, pointing to one
of the photographs of Flora and Baby entangled on the lawn at
Angels' Reach. 'He's clearly not all gay.'

'Try and pin him down today, Tim,' said Pordand. 'And what
about Dame Hermione?'

'We couldn't dent her either,' sighed Gablecross. 'Swears she
never left home on Sunday night. Claims to have been talking to

her husband in Australia while the murder was taking place.'
'Melbourne CID can check that,' said Portland.

'She wasn't watching Pride and Prejudice,' protested Karen
proudly, 'and I had a word with her maid Ortrud, who detests her,
who said Hermione had wild flowers and grass all around the hem
of her n6glig next morning.'

'Well done,' Portland beamed at her. 'You go and see her,
Kevin,' he added, as a sop to Fanshawe. 'She likes charmers.'

'She asked DS Gablecross to call her Hermione,' giggled Karen.
'It was hilarious when he shook hands with her waxwork when we
arrived.'

Fanshawe's guffaw was easily the loudest.

I hate that man, thought Gablecross.

Portland was flipping through the photographs, wincing as he

came to the ones of Granny. 'Anything on Granville Hastings?'
'He's due back tomorrow,' said Karen.
'And that sexy Gloria Prescott?'

Fanshawe blew a kiss to heaven. 'We had a brief word as she was
leaving on Monday, said she was calling her mum at the time of the
murder, which checks out. Debbie and I've arranged to see her
tomorrow.'

'Lucky sod. And what did Lady Griselda have to say?' Portland
asked DC Lightfoot and DC Smithson.

'She's made a statement,' DC Lightfoot went rather pink, 'that
she was looking for "bloody balls" while Rannaldini was murdered
or she'd have done the "bloody job" herself, because she was so
furious with Rannaldini for ripping up the beautiful dress she'd
made for Dame Hermione.'

'Meredith Whalen was even more forthright.' DC Smithson
pursed unpainted lips. 'He said why didn't we buck up and bury


so he could organize a grand ball for three hundred to dance on his grave?'

-
	so everyone else did.

got an alibi?' he asked.

out his cheeks and went even pinker. 'Well,

to have sloped off and had a half-hour lovey-dovey chat

his boyfriend, Hermione's husband Bobby, in Australia after
:'d finished umpiring the finals - oh my God!'

. lad,' chipped in Gablecross. 'That was when Dame
claims she was having a lovey-dovey chat with Bobby in


'Perhaps they were on a conference call,' giggled Karen.

can sort that out too,' grinned Portland. 'Rozzy
poor lady, checks out,' he went on. 'But why did

make a note to ring Glyn, her husband? You and Karen
see him, Tim.'

. have cheered when Rozzy told that MCP Campbell-Black

said DC Smithson.

Every surface of Portland's immaculate office was now covered

overflowing ashtrays. As other pairs were given
orders, Gablecross fought sleep. Buoyed up by the findings

the team were now exhausted at having to assimilate so
t information and in need of another fix.

from the gallant fingertip team who, having crawled

brushwood, brambles and netdes, had finally concluded
eir search. Their findings had been passed on to the lab to be

and analysed, but included, said Portland, as he opened

file, an opaque glass lighter patterned with lilies.
Tristan de Montigny was looking for his on Monday morning

he made a film called The Lily in the Valley,' said Karen excit


'Good girl. An empty two-litre bottle of vodka. That'll be Mikhail
Pezcherov's,' said Fanshawe.

'Green chewing-gum, probably chucked out by some young lady
sweetening her breath for a lover's tryst,' went on Portland. 'Vomit
containing sweetcorn, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, a
tumbler engraved with Rannaldini's initials and marked with coral

pink lipstick, a handsome gold signet ring, a dark crimson lipstick.'
Chloe, thought Karen, with satisfaction.
Among other discoveries were a blue petrol can reeking of
paraffin, several used condoms, a dog lead, a number of green and
pink tennis balls and a bullet lodged deep in the ground. Also noted had been a crushed clump of deadly nightshade, hemlock
and agrimony.



334
	335


'We'll provide you with the list.' Portland glanced at his watch.
'That should give you plenty to be going on with.' Then, turning
to DC Lightfoot with a sceptical grin, 'Any more on Rannaldini's
ghost in the highwayman's cloak signing Lady Griselda's receipt?'

Lightfoot shook his head. 'Nothing, except we searched
Wardrobe and Rannaldini's house. Not a trace of the cloak
anywhere.'

'Oooh, how creepy,' shivered Debbie.

'People on the unit think so too,' said DC Lightfoot. 'They're
very jumpy.'

'Clive is certain Rannaldini's still around,' volunteered
Gablecross.

'They're a bunch of hysterics,' said Portland slowly, 'but we
mustn't rule out the fact that the murderer could be impersonating
Rannaldini to give himself anonymity and putting the shits
up everyone. Now, bugger off, all of you.' He waved the video tapes,
'I'm going to spend the morning at the pictures.'

Then, as everyone shuffled out of the room with their paper cups
and ashtrays, he said, 'Mind staying on a second, Tim?'

Fanshawe looked delighted: Gablecross was clearly in for a
bollocking. Gablecross thought so too, until Pordand smiled
engagingly.

'Count yourself publicly reprimanded,' he said, slamming the
door. 'But well done, we've made a big step forward. Let's chew
the cud and have a decent coffee,' he added, switching on the
percolator, 'then go and see what the pathologist has to tell us. Her
report's going to be longer than Rannaldini's memoirs. I called off
the press conference. You were right. Lady Rannaldini's off the
wall, and Dame Hermione wanted to charge twenty thousand for
the use of her services.'

post-mortem revealed a wonderfully fit body, showing no sign
of ageing, with the huge shoulder muscles of a conductor and an
athlete.

'It would have taken a super-strong person to strangle him,' Dr
Meadows's freckled face was perplexed, 'or someone fuelled by

a hatred or fear. He died,' she consulted her notes, 'some
time between ten fifteen and eleven fifteen. There were broken

vessels and deep tissue injuries to the neck, and whoever

strangled him was wearing a large stone or a signet ring, probably
on the little finger of the left hand. The stone cut into the flesh
and appears to have swung round to the palm side, perhaps
because the wearer had lost weight.'

'Check on everyone wearing rings,' said Portland.

For a second, Gablecross had visions of Rupert's big gold ring
glinting in Oscar's lights.

'	He was shot through the heart by a gun of the .38 type,' went
on Dr Meadows, 'but the angle of the exit wound in his back
suggests it happened when he was lying down, fired by someone
about twelve feet away.'

'At the same time?' asked Gablecross.

'No, I reckon about fifteen minutes after the strangulation.'
'He had lacerations on his face and a big gash on the side of his
head, which suggests he was pushed or fell against a sharp object,
or perhaps the murderer hit him with an iron bar or a spade.'

'There was also,' she went on, 'saliva on his chest hair, traces of
saliva in his mouth, saliva, canine, and human blood on his
dressing-gown and a bite on the ankle from an old dog with very
few teeth. In addition there was perfume and lipstick, human hair



336
	337



and flakes of skin on his dressing-gown, and flakes of skin under
his fingernails.'

'Quite a lot of activity,' said Portland.

'There was also extensive bruising on his chest and face, a couple
of cracked ribs, semen stains down his left thigh and vaginal fluid
on his penis, suggesting brief penetration then ejaculation after
the victim managed to struggle away.'

'That figures.' Gablecross and Portland exchanged glances.

'Carpet fibres on the elbows and outside edges of the forearms
also suggest that intercourse or rape took place indoors.'

'On the lounge floor of the watch-tower?' suggested Gablecross.
'The rape victim clearly put up one hell of a struggle,' added
Dr Meadows, 'but from the colour of the bruises and the drying
of the semen - now, this is interesting - the rape took place a
good twenty minutes before the point of death. As I already
surmised, the shooting took place a good quarter of an hour after
that.'

'So he pushed his victim on to the carpet,' mused Gerry
Portland, 'raped her. Maybe the dog - probably Campbell-Black's

dog, Gertrude - bit and distracted him, and the victim escaped.'
'He pursued her into the wood,' said Gablecross.

'And walked some seventy-five yards looking for her - grass seed,
enchanter's nightshade and traces of hemlock were all found on
his bare feet and dressing gown,' volunteered Dr Meadows. 'There
was no evidence he was dragged outside.'

'Perhaps the rape victim waited behind a tree and surprised
him,' suggested Portland.

'Perhaps, but the evidence shows he was retracing his steps,
because he fell backwards, as he was strangled, with his feet
pointing to the watchtower.'

'Probably heard Dame Hermione singing,' said Gablecross,
putting his palms to his forehead, desperately trying to visualize
the whole thing. 'It would be impossible to strangle someone while
they were raping you then shoot them as well. You'd have to pull
the trigger with your little toe.'

'Another abnormality,' went on Dr Meadows. 'At the moment of
death there was extreme sexual arousal but no hint of panic or
fear. He was completely relaxed so the murderer appears to have
been someone he knew and was delighted to see.'

'Dame Hermione?' pondered Gablecross. 'He'd had a helluva
row with her. Perhaps he was delighted she'd rolled up to make it
up. Or perhaps he thought Tabitha had forgiven him.'

'Or someone disguised as them,' murmured Gerry Portland.

It would be hard to discern features at that hour of night,

thought Gablecross, like Carlos mistaking Eboli for Elisabetta.

'Finally,' Dr Meadows turned over a page, 'Rannaldini's body was near enough to the watch-tower for the murderer realistically to hope he'd be torched in the fire and all the evidence of rape and DNA destroyed with him. There was ash on his body, but no smoke breathed into his lungs, so he died well before the watchtower
caught fire.'

'Which the fire brigade think was started by paraffin around
eleven twenty,' said Portland, 'presumably from the blue can
found in the wood.'

'From which all the fingerprints had been carefully wiped,' added Gablecross.

, 'So.' Again the two men gazed at each other.

'If one person had done all these things,' said Portland quickly,
!they would have been raped in Rannaldini's watch-tower, strangled
him outside, blasted him with a .38, h,ad a butcher's at the memoirs and decided to torch them as well.

./They would have to have humped a can of paraffin and a gun
into the wood,' continued Gablecross. 'And Mr Brimscombe said

:Tab was empty-handed when he saw her running towards the watchtower.'
could have used those hands to strangle him. Or after being she could have escaped, run to the phone, alerted Wolfgang her dad, both of whom could have rolled up separately and


'They both wear signet tings on their little fingers.'

'Perhaps Tabitha or someone strangled Rannaldini, found they

strong enough and finished him offwith the gun.'

shrugged. 'Possible but unlikely, bearing in mind
time lapses occurring between the two events.'

'Unless someone quite separate from the rape,' said Gablecross,

with a gun, shot him to steal the Montigny, the Picasso memoirs.'

them both for a fucking fortune. Good thinking.
be the work of four isolated people, or a gang of people

Let's DNA everyone who doesn't check out.'
turned to Meadows. 'You have been a miracle as usual.'

to kiss her hand but then, dubious at where it might
kissed her freckled, blushing cheek instead.

Karen buzz off,' he added to Gablecross, 'and see what can find out from Lucy and Baby. Try to nail Isa Lovell and

Hastings as soon as possible. I'm off to the one and





Back at Valhalla, James, no respecter of the rigours of night
shooting, decided that ten thirty was time for a walk and squeaked
and pawed the cupboards of the caravan until his weary mistress
dressed and took him outside.

Walks, once her favourite pastime, gave Lucy no pleasure now.
Every time James froze or dived into the undergrowth she expected
the murderer to jump out. Resolutely avoiding Hangman's Wood
she headed north-east towards Cathedral Copse.

James, however, decided this was boring and swinging round,
totally ignoring Lucy's shrieks, hurtled towards Hangman's Wood,
bent on games with German shepherds.

Lucy had no option but to tear after him. Nothing much grew
under the towering beeches of Cathedral Copse but in
Hangman's Wood, beneath ancient limes, chestnuts, oaks and
sycamores broad enough in girth to conceal any lurking killer,
thrived a treacherous tangle of traveller's joy, nettles, brambles
and goosegrass.

Everything reminded Lucy of death and decay. Ivy hung
brown and sere from tree-trunks; moss on the banks was dusty,
parched and yellow. Only an occasional torchbeam of sunlight
penetrated the tree ceiling pushed down by Monday's downpour.
The German shepherds had left, but there were rustlings and
bangings everywhere.

'Oh, come back, please,James,' shrieked Lucy.

Then she heard footsteps thundering after her, and broke into
a run, tripping over the roots that groped the path like arthritic
fingers. They were getting nearer. She let out a scream of terror,
then felt a complete idiot as, with lurcher acceleration, which on
the hard ground sounded like a herd of buffalo, James shot past
her, shimmied round and landed at her feet with nonchalandy
wagging tail.

'Bloody dog.' Grabbing his green collar, Lucy shook it furiously,
'Don't you dare run offlike that again!'

Next moment, Karen and Gablecross pounded round the
corner. 'You all right, Miss?'

'Fine,' muttered Lucy, in embarrassment. 'James hurtled up and
frightened the life out of me. We're all a bit uptight- every shadow
seems a ghost.'

Gablecross introduced Karen and said he hadn't bothered Lucy
before because she'd seemed so busy, but could he ask her a few
questions after they'd checked out the wood?


James had had his breakfast and, stretched out on the bench seat
pensively licking liver gravy off his whiskers, had no intention of

relinquishing his position, so when Karen and Gablecross
appeared Lucy cleared a couple of chairs and switched on the kettle . As she put her brushes and combs to soak in a bowl of Fairy
Liquid, she described the tennis tournament. 'I gave Wolfie back
hi signet ring after the last match,' she said finally, 'then I came
back to Valhalla and rang my mother.'

'Everyone seems to have rung their mother,' observed
Gablecross.

'It was Sunday night - you feel a bit low.'

. 'She was pleased to hear from you?'

'Not awfully,' confessed Lucy. 'She was asleep. I hadn't realized

it was gone eleven o'clock. Then I went along to the party.'

, 'Any idea who might have done it?'

: Any of us, I suppose, except Oscar, and Valendn, and darling

]tmzy, who was at her vile husband's birthday party,' Lucy got a
out of the cupboard, 'and Mikhail, who was
do anything.'

es, who'd been corrugating his long nose in search of fleas,

a long yellow eye as Lucy took off the wrapping.

dog,' said Karen from a safe distance.
: : 'They're known as gazehounds because they hunt by sight

scent, and funnily enough when I was taking him for
a quick run round Hangman's Wood after the tennis he suddenly

forward, wagging his tail as though he recognized

: i'omeone. '

like?'

::WelI, Tabitha, Wolfie, Baby, Granny, Flora, Rozzy, of course. He adores Alpheus too. Alpheus loves dogs, and misses his German

Mr Bones.'

:% i Tristan?' asked Gablecross innocently.

'Oh yes,' Lucy's voice softened, 'James adores Tristan, but it
couldn't have been Tristan, he was in France.'

'Mikhail says he saw him.'

He'd have seen him in quadruple, he was so drunk.'

Gablecross liked Lucy. She looked so reassuringly normal. Her

after the initial screaming was so soft, he liked her large

green eyes, and her turned-up nose and big generous
plenty of openings in an open face.

'Rozzy Pringle adores Tristan, doesn't she?'

difficult,' said Lucy quickly. 'He's been so kind to her, and
I don't know what we'd have done without her. She sewed up

when some fiend cut it to pieces.

anpleasant things have been happening,' she went on.
the kettle boiled and switched itself off, she told them about





the slug pellets, and the champagne that burnt a hole in the tablecloth.

'What happened to the glass?'

'It shattered as Rannaldini took a sip out of it. Dame Hermione
sang a top note. Rannaldini doesn't normally drink before
conducting, maybe Hermione meant it for me and launched into

song when she realized he'd picked up the glass. Oh, God.'
'Who brought the glass in?' asked Karen.

'I don't remember,' lied Lucy. 'We were so busy that night. I'd
always assumed it was Rannaldini, or Clive on his instructions

doing these horrible things, but now...' Her voice trailed off.
'People talk to you,' said Karen admiringly.

'Like they talk to minicab drivers and hairdressers,' said Lucy,
with a shrug. 'There's no eye-contact. They tend to babble things
out because they're nervous of going on the set, and you're not
likely to meet them socially after the movie,' she added, with a trace
of bitterness, 'so they feel they can let their hair down.'

'Does Rozzy Pringle's husband know she's got cancer?'
'Oh, no,' whispered Lucy in horror. 'Who told you that?'

'We're not free to reveal our sources,' said Gablecross sententiously.

'Oh, goodness.' Lucy collapsed on the bench seat, too close to
James, triggering off a low growl and a flash of long fangs. 'Oh,
poor Rozzy, she's frantic for people not to know. It could finish her
career. I have to cover for her each time she goes for treatment.
Oh, please don't tell anyone.' With frantically trembling hands she
gathered up the empty blue mugs she'd put in front of Gablecross

and Karen and shoved them back in the cupboard.

'Who else knows?'

'Only Tristan. I shouldn't have told him, Rozzy would kill me,
but I was so upset. Tristan was wonderful, he offered her a part in Der Rosenhavalier, way in the future, which she'll never be able to
take up, but just to keep up her spirits.'

'Tristan de Montigny has admitted he was in England on Sunday
night,' said Karen, noticing Lucy's eyes darting in terror. 'Said he
was looking for locations in the Forest of Dean.'

'That's utterly logical,' gabbled Lucy. 'He hadn't slept for weeks,

keeping the whole show on the road.'

'Talked a lot to you, didn't he?'

'Probably because I didn't want to know my motivation for
putting on blusher.'

'Women got very jealous he spent so much time with you,'
persisted Karen. 'But he doesn't seem to have wanted to sleep with
any of them.'

'He was too involved in the film,' muttered Lucy. 'Goodness, I've
forgotten to make you those coffees.' She switched on the kettle
again. 'He didn't want to sleep with me or anyone else,' she stammered,
'because he's in love with my friend, Tabitha, and felt he could talk to me about her.'
;,Could he have killed Rannaldini?'

'Certainly not, he adored him,' said Lucy, too quickly. 'He put
up with murder - oh, God - from him.'

i 'Was he in love with him?'

'What a horrible thing to say!'

,: 'You claim he adored your friend Tab, but the night he got off
with her Rannaldini made him back off. Any idea why?'

'No,' squeaked Lucy, getdng three cups out of the cupboard
with a terrific clatter. Had they found out about Maxim
ing Delphine?

-.Could Rannaldini have threatened to out Tristan?' asked


'Tristan finds it hard to form close relationships.' Lucy was
great difficulty in unscrewing the Gold Blend jar because
: hands were shaking so much. 'His mother died just after he
born, so did his brother Laurent. Tristan's vile father never
Tristan for being the one who lived. He was brought up by
old aunt who never praised him. He may have been
of love, but he's the kindest, most thoughtful person in
: world.' Glancing down, Lucy saw she had emptied the kettle
jar of coffee and burst into tears.

like my coffee strong,' said Gablecross gently, relieving her of
. scalded herself. The only reason Lucy might have
Rannaldini, he thought regretfully, was because she was
in love with Tristan de Montigny. But he still had to go for


know Rannaldini raped your friend Tabitha on Sunday
and killed her stepmother's dog, Gertrude?'

don't believe it,' gasped Lucy, shaking her head from side
so the sudden cascade of tears flew around. 'Oh, poor
Tab. Oh, poor Gertrude and poor Taggie. No wonder
was so upset and horrible last night. If only people knew

That must be why Tab hasn't answered my calls.'

she have led Rannaldini on?' asked Gablecross.

no.' Lucy fumbled for a piece of kitchen roll to mop her
'She's far too cool, and she simply doesn't need to.'

off to see Baby,' said Gablecross, getting to his feet. 'Any
where he might have been on Sunday night?'





'Why does Chloe loathe him so much?'.

'Because he's walking away with the film, and because he,
Granny, Flora and me are always giggling in corners. Chloe says
we're like a ladies' doubles match and just as boring. I love Baby.'
Lucy's voice broke again. 'Beneath that flip exterior, he's determined
to become a great singer. He'd only have killed Rannaldini
for twiddling the knobs on his recording.'

After they'd gone, Lucy dug out her Switch card - she still
couldn't find her passport - and dialled the flower shop in
Rutminster.

'Mrs Lovell's a very popular young lady,' sighed the florist. 'A
gorgeous-sounding foreign gendeman'sjust spent a fortune on an
arrangement.'

Lucy proceeded to bawl her eyes out, then felt bitterly ashamed.
Why wasn't she thinking of poor Tab, who deserved to get together
with Tristan again?

The heatwave had returned. The catmint round the terrace
mu'med with butterflies.

'Red admirals, peacocks, painted ladies of both sexes,' said
'Sums up the lot of them.'
In the summer drawing room they found the biggest peacock of
m all. Having abandoned any attempt to sleep during the day,
,was reading V/z and already, at eleven thirty, half-way down a
gin and tonic. 'The Grand Inquisitor,' he sang, 'and DC
Nodding at Karen, he rose to his feet and fell back
'This is the room,' he went on, 'to which I am summoned
m the polo field for a pep talk from my father. Plus aa change.' Gablecross's lips tightened. 'OK, Mr Spinosissimo,' getting out
:word was like navigating a lorry round Hyde Park Corner, 'put ' and tell us what you were doing on Sunday.'

'I went to Oxford. I drove my own car - a red Ferrari - then
ked at Magdalen and Christchurch. I checked in at Le Manoir
around teatime. Learned my words for Act Two,
Two, which was scheduled for Monday night. I was rather far
a bottle of Krug when I realized I'd been stood up, so I
one. Then I must have passed out.'

.Which room were you staying in?' asked Karen, who was feeling
sorry for him.

i'It was called Hydrangea. You'll find it booked under Alpheus
There's so much press interest in this film, one cannot be
.' Then, seeing the disapproval on Gablecross's square

	'It's a
	Detective Sergeant.'

r one. How did you pay?'

huge difficulty- sorry, another joke, falling even flatter. I
cash. I had a win at Ascot on Road Test.'





'A good horse,' said Gablecross, remembering the peace interview
technique. 'Did anyone see you arrive?'

'Of course - and leave around two o'clock. I'd sobered enough

to drive home. I patted the night porter on the head.'

'Did you stop on the way back?'

'For petrol, I don't remember where.'

'Did you keep the receipt?'

'I guess not. My ambition is to be so rich it doesn't matter if I do.'
'Was there a balcony outside your room?'

'Yes, I went out and practised a bit. Act Two, scene Two changed
Carlos's life - and mine, too, for that matter.' Getting to his feet,
Baby poured another gin and tonic for himself, then long glasses
of iced orange juice for the others.

'Presumably there was a fire escape by which you could have left

and come back,' said Gablecross.

'I didn't check.'

'Did anyone see you during those,' Gablecross counted on his
fingers, 'nine hours?'

'A waiter brought me the second bottle of Krug - Raymondo, I
think his name was. I'd have delayed him if he'd been prettier.'

'What was the name of the lady who stood you up?' snapped
Gablecross.

Baby was ashen beneath his suntan, his jaw rigid with pain, but
still he joked, 'Even for those eyelashes- really, you must dye them

for full impact, Sergeant - I am not going to tell you.'
'You need an alibi,' pleaded Karen.
'I don't care.'

Out in the park, Baby could see a black horse rolling, its back
legs whisking from side to side like a bottom-slimming exercise.
When it struggled to its feet, grey with dust, much bigger than the
horses around it, Baby recognized The Prince of Darkness.

'It was a guy,' he said flatly, 'married, very high profile, wouldn't
do either of our careers any good and would create a frightful
scandal, which would break his very straight family's hearts.' Then,
seeing Gablecross frowning and perplexed, Baby laughed. 'No, it's
not Alpheus.'

'You need this other gentleman's corroboration, even if he
didn't show up,' said Gablecross mulishly. 'Two bottles of Krug
don't constitute an alibi.'

'And a bar of chocolate and somejellybeans?'

'Don't upset the detective,' said Gablecross angrily. 'If you play

ball with us, we won't shop you.'

'I can't.'

Seeing the hurt in his eyes, Karen said, 'Were you very close?'

closeness, I guess, was on my side. He pleases himself. What me off is I've been had - or, rather, wasn't had on Sunday


t know Rannaldini had two-way mirrors and bugs in every
even Lucy's caravan?'

Baby cheered up instantly. 'No wonder he was so vin

after hearing the terrible things people said about him.'
r idea who might have killed him?'
' q-Iarder to think who might not - question of bottle.'
*.=¢What about Tabitha?'

.: 'Only thing she'd kill for is cruelty to animals, although I gather
that Rannaldini killed her stepmother's dog. My money'd be
on...' Babylooked furtively round the room '... our hostess. She'd
cut out of the will. According to Clive, there was a horrific

of her in the memoirs.'

to the attack. 'You weren't meeting Tristan

)'


' 'I wish,' sighed Baby. 'Tristan's definitely not gay. He asked me

to the cinema and didn't put his hand on my crotch once.'
i:i:i:Karen burst out laughing. Gablecross snorted in disapproval.

e man you went to meet, does his wife know he's gay?'

'I have no idea.'

lying,' snapped Gablecross. 'It was Flora Seymour stood
wasn't it? Because Rannaldini showed her these.'

As Baby gazed at the photographs, he looked shocked for
time. 'Where did you find those?'

'in the pockets of the dressing-gown Rannaldini was wearing

murdered.'

' 'Does Flora know where you found them?'

I told her on Monday.'

Oh, hell, she told me Rannaldini had pictures of us. But she'd
. flioved offto London by the time I'd come offthe set on Monday

night. I suppose George Hungerford's seen them by now.'

-. Two witnesses saw George in Paradise around ten thirty.
:Well, there's your murderer.' Baby had regained control of
mself. 'They're very good.' He picked up the pictures. 'I must

have lost ten pounds and my double chin's gone.'

'Did you really see a ghost on Friday night?'

'No,' confessed Baby. 'I was so pissed offwith Dame Hermione
masking me. Fainting was the only way to make sure they didn't
ue that take. I must go and practise.' Wandering out on to the
rrace, he threw out his arms and opened his lungs: '"Drunk with
love, full of an immense joy, Elisabetta, my dear, my happiness, I
await you." '




346
	347


'What a pity that guy's gay,' sighed Karen.

'As fags go, I rather like him,' confessed Gablecross.
wonder if he really was meeting anyone at the Manoir.'


'But I



.Meanwhile, news of DNA testing had roused others from their beds
in panic.

'It's so definite,' grumbled Griselda. 'I might have pricked my
finger when I was turning down that dressing-gown for Alpheus,
or put my saliva on it when I broke off the cotton with my teeth.'

'And Alpheus might have left semen stains on it any time as he

romped with Hermione, Chloe and Pushy,' said Ogborne.
'Ugh!' said Simone.

'And Mikhail could easily have gobbed on it during the quartet,

or Dame Hermione, or Chloe, even.'

'I do not gob,' snapped Chloe.

'Granny and Sharon were in the earlier part of the scene, Sharon
slobbers on everyone, bless her,' said Griselda.

'And how many peoples might Rannaldini have bonked in it,
since he neeked it from Alpheus,' yawned Sylvestre.

'I cannot find my passport anywhere,' moaned Lucy. 'We've got
to produce proper identification. I wonder if my driving licence
will do.'


Gablecross was dreading the next encounter. They found Granny
gazing wistfully at a strip ofwasteground. Covered in thistles, poisonous
hemlock, mildewed burdock,, gaudy pink willowherb, rusting
sorrel, yellowing nettles, it divided the footpath from one of
Rannaldini's wonderfully cherished fields of wheat stretching
golden to infinity.

'This disgusting piece of land is called a set-aside,' said Granny,
his diction as silvery as his hair in the late-afternoon sunlight.
'Unlovable and neglected, just as I feel having been cast aside by
my young man.'

Linking arms with Karen on one side and Gablecross on the
other, he led them gently into the shade of an elder tree, overhanging
and snowing down pale star-shaped flowers on a fallen
log, which he brushed clear so they could all sit down.

He was impeccably dressed, Karen noticed, in primrose-yellow
cords, an off-white linen jacket and a grey silk spotted tie.

'One must always wear a de,' said Granny, as if reading her
thoughts. 'It can double up as a noose, if things get too unbearable.
I got my Dear John letter from Giuseppe this morning,' he
produced a page of scrawl with a shaking hand, 'saying he and I
are finished. He has dumped me after five years for a record
called Serena Westwood. Just for a contract with Bravo
..: It's entirely Rannaldini's doing. He knew Giuseppe was

; and as my career declined I would be less able to keep him
cars and expensive red wine, so he delighted in goading me

my boy to rich, successful young women. It's

departure of such a little hustler should cause so much
I want to howl like a dog.'

sorry.' Karen took his hand.

asked him about Stmday night.

:tennis tournament was a lark. Gratifying for two old fossils

get so far, but hard to concentrate with young

gleaming like the young Siegfried on the other side of
net We cheered ourselves up pretending Rannaldini was the


'Afterwards, we got even drunker and I searched for balls with
Bernard and Lucy, I think. It was awfully dark by then.'

his beautiful voice became more pronounced,
described the cutting up of his patchwork quilt.
to know someone hates you so much. One thing that me: every time Tristan is nice to anyone - Lucy, Tab,
horrible happens to them. I wasfavori du roi on
I was telling everyone in the canteen how Tristan had
ghastly Howie Denston up the ass for not getting me work, offered me a dream of a part: Ochs in DerRosenkavalier. A few
:llours later the patchwork quilt was in ribbons. Only a theory.'

:'An interesting one,' said Karen. 'Why didn't you call the


'We were in the middle of a party.'

'Well, next day, then.'

'I assumed it was Rannaldini, and he was quite above the law.'
Gablecross steeled himself. 'Was this the reason?'

For a second, Granny stared at the photographs of himself, it

at first, in a giant airing-cupboard. Later photographs
showed him shoving loot into a shopping-bag. He gripped Karen's

hand even tighter, and started to cry, tears falling quietly in time
to the raining elderflowers.

'I'm so ashamed. I don't know what came over me, losing the
patchwork quilt, which was pretty, or losing Giuseppe, who was
even prettier. He only stayed an hour on Friday night, arrived in a
chauffeur-driven limo from the airport, came out of the tomb,
made Baby faint- he had that effect on men - then buggered back
to London and Miss Westwood, without removing his make-up. I
knew it was all up.

'On Saturday morning I went into Peggy Parker's. Clive must




348
	349



have followed me to Rutminster. I only took a couple of double
damask tablecloths and some napkins. Goodness knows who I was
planning to have to dinner. I've never done anything like this
before but it'll be all over the papers. Menopausal old queen
remanded for psychiatric counselling.'

'I'm sure Peggy Parker won't press charges.' Karen hugged him.
'She's such a music lover.'

'She might ask you to sing at one of her soir6es,' said Gablecross
drily.

'Prison would be the favourable option.' Granny wafted English
Fern, as he mopped his eyes with a pale blue silk handkerchief.
'You children have been so sweet to me.'

'Why should anyone want to kill Rannaldini?' asked Karen.
'For peace,' sighed Granny.


'What a darling old boy,' said Karen, as they trailed back to the car.

'I'll have a word with George Hungerford, when he gets back
from Germany.' Gablecross made a note. 'He and Peggy Parker are
on the board of the RSO.'

'George'll owe you a few favours if he really was in Paradise at
ten twenty on Sunday,' said Karen.

Hang conveniently discarded Debbie Miller and arranged to meet Pushy in the Pearly Gates at lunchtime, Fanshawe found her
her own press conference to a crowd of reporters. Only his
of the back lanes of Rutshire enabled him to shake i, off and find privacy in the Green Dragon at Eldercombe.

:'i,Pushy looked enticingly pretty. Her simple black dress clung to
figure, her newly washed blonde ringlets were tied back
!i: a (,elvet ribbon, but she wore too much eye make-up for real

g"

:., .Roberto Rannaldini was the most vital person Ay've ever met,'

as she sipped a Babycham. 'He begged me to be the
Lady Rannaldini, and although he was much too old, Ay felt

grow to love him. Off the record, Kevin, it made folk very


slipped the photos of a nude lip-licking Pushy straddRannaldini's
sofa into his hip pocket, Fanshawe asked if
' Rannaldini had known her husband was having an affaire Pushy.

not. Ay never slept with him. That's why he respected as
me.' Gloria's eyes filled with just enough tears not to
her mascara. 'Roberto was so caring. When Ay left a party
he sent the helly to get it, ifAy wanted to go shophe
lent me the limo, but Ay was careful not to upstage Lady


got out his notebook. 'What did you do on the night
murder?'

was so choked not to be in the finals Ay went for a walk - it

lovely evening. Then Ay came into the house to phone
Ay told you Ay always do on a Sunday night - because




350
	351


Roberto had urged me to use the Valhalla phones at all taymes.

'Anyway, Ay nipped into Lady Rannaldini's cosy den next to the
kitchen to borrow her Harpers. Some play about Puccini was on the
radio but she wasn't there. So Ay borrowed her handset, Ay know
it was cheeky, and settled into the big sofa in the hall between the
kitchen and Lady Rannaldini's den.

'It's very spooky, that part of the house. When Ay became Lady
Rannaldini Ay was going to whaytewash all that dark panelling.
Anyway, Ay'd rung Mum and was still reading Harpers, Tabitha's
dad and stepmum were in it. Ay don't know if Ay'm telling tales.'

'You mustn't hold back anything that might help us to find your
fiancCs killer,' said Fanshawe gravely.

'Well, Wolfie came past around quarter to eleven, Ay'm so little
he didn't see me, and he switched on the machine in the kitchen.
Next moment he came out, whayte as a sheet. his time I am
going to kill my father!" he shouted. There was a crunch on the
gravel and he was gone.

'But even stranger, around eleven fifteen - the clock in the 'all
had just struck - Ay nipped back to return Lady Rannaldini's
handset and her Harpers, and it was most embarrassing. Even
though I hadn't heard her come back and I was outside the only
door to that room all the time, she was back in tb.ere. Perhaps she
emerged from some secret passage. Anyway, she reeked of paraffin
and had torn that lovely dress, and walked straight past me. Next
moment I heard her running up the back stairs.'

'That is extremely valuable information,' said a jubilant

Fanshawe. 'Would you like to make a statement?'

'If it helps Roberto, of course.'

'I don't think you've met my colleague, DC Miller,' said
Fanshawe, beckoning a hovering Debbie from the public bar.

Pushy looked quite hostile until Debbie told her Alpheus had
raved about her beautiful voice.

'And I gather you knew Elisabetta's part very well.'

'Backwards. Maestro used my top notes instead of Hermione's
in the recording. Her intonation was very suspect.'

'You and Rannaldini had an argument on Saturday morning,'
went on Debbie.

'Only a lover's tiff. I was upset his ex-wife got a role I wanted. But
Cecilia is a name.'

'People heard Elisabetta's last aria in the wood. They said it
sounded miraculous.'

'That must have been my tape.'

'Did you know Rannaldini was planning to reverse his
vasectomy?' asked Fanshawe.

'What did I tell you? That was the only condition I'd have made
before I gave him my body, I dote on kiddies. Rannaldini and Ay
had agreed to be celibate for one another.'

Those were exactly the words she'd told Eulalia Harrison in their
in-depth interview yesterday so they must be true.

Having got his statement firmly in the can, Sergeant Fanshawe
kept his in-depth question to the end. Was it because Gloria had
insisted on celibacy that Rannaldini had been reduced to raping
Tabitha Campbell-Black?

•
	In a flash, the innocent virgin became a fishwife.

'The absolute fucker,' screamed Pushy, not minding who heard
her. 'We agreed to keep ourselves chaste. I'll have him for breach
of promise.'

These photographs that have come into our possession do
tuggest your relationship was a little closer.'

'The bastard swore no-one would ever see them. I want my solici
.r,' screeched Pushy.


been ashamed how relieved she was that Rannaldini
dead. No longer did she tremble to hear the front door
and the cat's feet padding stealthily along the corridor.
had been comforted by the flood of letters, many written by
or television producers seeking her opinion, by the telecalls
fielded by the police and the obituary in The Times,
d her as the last and most beautiful of Rannaldini's


the other hand, she couldn't quite believe the lawyers' assurthat
the last will was unsigned and Tab's photos danced
before her eyes. Then Gerald Portland had telephoned
asking her to appeal for information in a press conferHelen
had panicked. Faced with a barrage of questions,
break down and the truth would come out.


Tuesday the tenth, had also been a terrible day for
The cast and most of the crew had taken refuge in their
Bernard and the production office had had to work
day in preparation for Rupert's first night on the set.

middle of the afternoon, Wolfie had just realized the
he'd tipped twenty pounds to take away the empties had

none other than Nigel Dempster in disguise. He was also
that if Mr Brimscombe didn't stop moaning about his
can there would certainly be a second murder, when
:l to the house to find his stepmother in hysterics.
had worn off and the loss of his father had kicked

•



in. Despite the heat, he drew her into her study, shutting the door
and all the windows.

'Oh, Wolfie, I've done such a wicked thing.'

'It can't be that bad.' Even if she'd killed his father, she'd had
enough provocation.

'I burnt down the watch-tower,' then, at Wolfie's look of thunderstruck
amazement, 'with paraffin from Teddy Brimscombe's
petrol can. The memoirs were so hideous and in the new will he
hadn't left me a cent.'

Tm sure it isn't valid.' Wolfie was amazed Helen had had the

nerve. 'The lawyers will sort it out. Papa wasn't ungenerous.'
'Don't you stick up for him! He cut you out too.'
Wolfie winced. 'Did anyone see you?'

'I don't know, I heard Hermione singing, and I ran away. The
memoirs were so dreadful.' She was shaking so violently, Wolfie was
forced out of pity to take her in his arms.

'He said such humiliating things about me, he'd taken nude
photographs of me, I looked like a skeleton. I had to stop them
being published. Everyone was in them, Chloe, Hermione, Gloria,
Serena, who I thought was my friend, that slut Flora!' Her voice
rose shrilly.

'I'm sure he loved you best.' Wolfie patted her jagged shoulder.
Like a cat reacting to human warmth, Helen pressed against
him. Wolfie longed to pull away; he could feel her rubbery
breasts and bony pelvis against him. Her freckles on her deathly
white disintegrating face were like flecks of blood on the snow.

'Even Tab,' she hissed, 'naked, whole rolls of film, and she was
tarted up in a black C-string in some of them.'

'I don't believe it.' Wolfie leapt away with clenched fists. It was
as though she was branding the words on his heart with a red-hot
poker.

He wanted to shout that his father had never left Tab alone, but
ringing in his ears were Tab's anguished pleas not to tell Helen
about the rape.

'Oh, Christ,' he groaned, slumping on the sofa, his head in his
hands.

'She led him on,' said Helen spitefully, 'even at our wedding.
Look!' She thrust a photograph, which Wolfie had so often
admired of late, of a sixteen-year-old Tab smiling into Rannaldini's
admiring eyes.

'He'd just bought her a fucking horse,' snarled Wolfie.

'And soon she got a socking great allowance, a cottage and a
Svres vase, which she smashed. You've no idea how they both
tormented me.' Then, when Wolfie didn't answer, 'Please, don't
tell anyone I set fire to the watch-tower.'

'I'll sort it out,' said Wolfie wearily.


Knowing that Gablecross and Karen were due to see Lady
Rannaldini, Fanshawe, having relayed the dramatic findings of his
interview with Pushy to Gerald Portland, then magnanimously and
patronizingly passed those relevant to Helen on to his rivals.

Thus armed, on Wednesday afternoon Gablecross and Karen
found Helen in her little study, painting a not very good picture of
the valley. Was it Freudian, Karen wondered, that she'd left out
Magpie Cottage? Gablecross noticed her skeletal thinness, the
staring eyes, the deathly pallor, the spread of grey in the fox-red
, and thought how much she must have suffered. As before, she didn't offer them even a cup of tea.

Two other officers, DC Smithson and DC Lightfoot, he began,
had spoken to Mrs Brimscombe.

'She told them,' Karen continued gently, 'that you had two

made up from the mauve silk, patterned with lilac and
fioneysuckle. The second one was the one handed in to the police.
The first must have been the one you wore earlier.'
' "That's rubbish,' stammered Helen.

Mrs Brimscombe says she came down to the udlity room after

Sunday night and found the first dress in the

with all the colours run. "Lady Rannaldini's so
" she told DC Smithson. "She always insists silks are


i. She must have put it on herself.' Helen was frantically straight

	"
	papexweights. 'She was off-the-wall that night. She told

		she'd seen a purple will-o'-the-wisp bobbing through

		towards the cemetery. It's supposed to mean death at


truth is, Detective Sergeant, when I put on my first mauve dress on Sunday afternoon I noticed a rip in the other one.'
; carefully now, as though she was reciting a poem
t quite memorized. 'So I left it in the utility room for Mrs
She's so on the blink she obviously thought it needed
then panicked because she'd put it on the wrong wash.

was probably terrified,' her voice hardened fractionally,
I wouldn't keep her and Teddy, now Rannaldini's gone.'
calmer, but when Gablecross told her Pushy claimed
.lae smelt paraffin on her ripped dress as she rushed upstairs , she lost her temper.



355





	'That evil creature!' she hissed. 'She tried to destroy my

	marriage, now my husband's gone she's trying to destroy me. She

	humiliated me in every way, using my phone and my bathroom,

	pinching the cars and the helicopter when I needed them. How

	could she think I'd burn down the watch-tower' - her voice rose to

	a shriek - 'destroying all my husband's precious compositions?'

	'Of course not.' Karenjumped to her feet and putting an arm

	round Helen's shoulders, settled her back in her chair. 'Let me get

	you a glass of water.'

	'They're both lying,' moaned Helen, 'Brimscombe because she's

	old and confused, Gloria because she's a vindictive bitch.'

	'Mrs Brimscombe,' Gablecross flipped back a few pages,

	'confirms she made you a sweetcorn and smoked-salmon omelette

	for your tea, the vomit of which was found ten yards from your

	husband's watchtower.'

	'I never!' gasped Helen. 'I told you, I chucked my omelette down

	the john. She must have made a second for someone else. Film

	people are always demanding things.'

	But when Gablecross pointed out that they would be able to

	check Helen's DNA profile, which had been taken that morning,

	with the saliva in the vomit, Helen caved in and burst into tears.

	'I did go into the woods. I so prayed my husband's passion for

	Gloria was dying out and I wanted to check if they were together.

	I found myself drawn to the watch-tower around half past ten. The

	door was open.' Helen was rocking back and forth, clutching

	herself. 'On his table I found this l-l-loathsome photograph of

	Gloria with nothing on. I tore it up. Then I heard a noise - I was

	so upset and so terrified it might be my husband, furious with me

	for destroying the photo, that I rushed into the wood, and threw

	up. Then I ran home. It was horrible.' She raised streaming eyes

	to Gablecross, who grunted sympathetically.

	'Did you notice any keys anywhere?' he asked.

	'Sure.' Helen wrinkled her freckled forehead. 'They were on my

	husband's table.'

	'That's very useful information,' said Karen, returning with a

	brimming glass, which she placed on the table beside Helen's

	chair. 'Try to remember,' she added soothingly, as Helen leapt to

	her feet and shoved a little flowered mat under the glass. 'You were

	in such a state, Lady Rannaldini, one often blocks these things out.

	Did you strangle your husband?'

	'Oh, no, no,' Helen licked her lips in terror, 'he'd have been far

	too strong. And I'd never set fire to his watch-tower. Bussage may

	have taken copies, but all the originals of his compositions and

memoirs were there. I
	him so much as a
	He

used to write beautiful letters.' Helen had moved to another table,
straightening, lining up, picking up a little ivory fan. 'I remember
him quoting Donne: '"No spring or summer beauty has such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face."'

'/oung beauties force our love and there's a rape,"' Karen
continued the poem, then raised an eyebrow at Gablecross who
nodded.

'Did you know Rannaldini is alleged to have raped Tabithajust

before he was murdered?' she asked softly.

There was a crack as the little fan broke.

'She must have led him on,' said Helen, with sudden, appalling venom. 'She was always flaunting herself. Omigod,' she looked at
them appalled, 'she's got a fiendish temper. You don't think she
killed him?'

When Helen had calmed down a little, Gablecross asked if she'd een anyone else in the wood.

'Promise you won't say who told you.' Helen's eyes were rolling

cra again.

'Of course not,' said Gablecross cosily. 'You've been a marvellous
witness.'

'I saw my ex-husband, Rupert,' whispered Helen, 'in the wood
with a gun in his hand.'




356
	357


'Jesus, Sarge!' Karen was jumping up and down in excitement as
they emerged out of the dark panelled hall into the lavender,
yellow roses and falling sunlight of the forecourt. 'Hadn't we better
tip off Gerry and go and nail Rupert?'

'Too early, he's at Newmarket, and we'll need far more evidence
than a crazy ex-wife's terrified impressions in a pitch-dark wood.
She may well have wanted it to be Rupert.'

'Do you think she hates him enough to shop him?'

'Possibly. I think she's pathological where he and Tab are
concerned, particularly now she knows Rannaldini raped Tab.I
certainly wouldn't rule her out as the killer. Let's go and talk to
another side of the triangle, Isaac Lovell, who hates Rupert even
more than she does.'


'I'm expecting Isa within the hour,' Janice, the head groom, told
Karen and Gablecross when they walked into Rannaldini's yard.

Slim, foxy, knowing, a goer in the sack,Janice was soon confiding
that she would happily have murdered her late boss for the way he
treated his horses.

'That was his torture chamber,' she added, pointing the yard
brush at the indoor school. 'He used to lock himself in with a green
young horse, and do terrible things to make them go the way he
wanted.'

She had stayed with Rannaldini, she said, because she was so
sorry for the horses, and as Gablecross stretched out a hand
towards the heads hanging out of the boxes, they all flinched away
- except for The Prince of Darkness who, safely mttzzled, scraped
angrily at his half-door.

rith his feet, or crush you against a wall, if he can't
his teeth,' saidJanice.

For Sunday night, she had the perfect alibi: a skittle contest,

nine thirty and midnight at the Pearly Gates.

was choked when Isa turned up at the yard at eight thirty - I

't expecting him. He always slides in, well, like a cobra, never
you any time to tart up. He's gorgeous, the bastard,' she
to Karen.

i 'Iwas dying to get away, but he insisted on looking at every horse,
case they'd lost condition in the drought. We're turning them
Out just at night because of the flies.'

, 'How did Isa get on with Rannaldini?'

'Worse and worse. No-one pushes horses harder than Isa. It's an
• insult to his genius to expect him to flog them home, but

aldini wanted more winners. He went berserk when Peppy
on.the Derby. Last week.'Janice glanced round the yard in terror.
I.¢an't believe he's not here any more, he threatened tojock Isa
and drop Jake as trainer. That's like an ad agency losing the
ola account. It would ruinJake.'
., .:Was Isa upset?'

.Not outwardly- that's what makes him so attractive, never shows

he's thinking.'

i 'Not a lot probably - except about horses,' said Gablecross,
noticing an empty box with stickers on the green half-doors,
aying, 'Champion' and 'World Beater' and 'The Engineer'
linted in blue letters above them. The damsel in distress, and now
her charger, had fled.

,'Rupert Campbell-Black's groom, Dizzy, collected Engie this
morning,' explained Janice. 'Good thing Rupert didn't come.
There'd have been bloodshed if he'd seen Isa.'

In the tack room, she handed out chipped mugs of orange
quash, and settled down to clean a bridle.

,,. 'Isa was paranoid about his private life staying private,' she went
on, 'I'm sure Rannaldini hoped to share groupies and experience
but Isa wouldn't play ball. He's a terrific stud, but he likes to poach
under cover of dark, like a gypsy. He was well pissed off on Sunday
night. His mobile rang - it must have been around nine thirty
because the stable clock was striking - and he couldn't walk out of
earshot because he and I were both in The Prince's box. So he
pressed the receiver to his mouth, and muttered that he wasn't
going to be able to make it, then he switched off his mobile and
aid he was off to Magpie Cottage. 'q(ou'd better keep it switched
off, Casanova," I said to him, "in case any of your ladies ring when



358
	359



Tab's there." He threw me such a filthy look I went cold. He can
put the evil eye on you. By the time I'd turned out The Prince, he
was gone.'

'What d'you reckon to his marriage?' asked Karen, who was busy
taking goosegrass out of the stable cat's tail.

'Pretends he doesn't give a sttrff. She's a madam but you can't
help loving her and she doesn't deserve a pig like Isa - any more
than her stupid, neurotic mother deserved Rannaldini. I heard
Rannaldini and Isa rowing again last week, just before he left for
Australia. "I'm taking my horses away because you haven't made
my poor stepdaughter very happy," Rannaldini was saying, in his
oiliest voice, and Isa hissed back, "That's because you want her
yourself, you fucker. Well, stay away from her."

'Perhaps he loves her,' sighed Karen romantically.

'It sounds really weird,' Janice dug her sponge into the saddle
soap, 'but because of the blood feud between the Campbell-Blacks
and the Lovells, I think Isa feels bitterly ashamed about wanting
Tab so much, almost like a paedophile fighting to stop himself
jumping on a little kid. So he rejects her. Does that make sense?'

'Utterly.' Karen nodded wisely as the stable cat settled, purring
happily, between her luscious thighs. 'A Puritan conscience
coupled with an over-aberrant libido seldom leads to an easy love
life.'

Gablecross gave her an old-fashioned look.

'Did you see anything unusual on your way to the Pearly Gates?'
he askedJanice.

'Only Tristan de Montigny screeching down the drive in that
fuck-off car, nearly running me down. Here's Isa! Please don't tell
him I've been gossiping - I might want a reference.'

Gablecross had long hero-worshipped Jake Lovell, as a show
jumper then a trainer, and no jockey had captured the public's
imagination more than his son. Other riders feared Isa, whispering
of the risks he took, how he slithered through gaps of which no
one else was capable, how he hurtled past uttering gypsy curses,
turning dark evil eyes on the opposition until it melted away.

But as he got out of a second-hand Merc, chewing gum and
dressed in patched black jeans and a nettle-green shirt, dark glasses
hiding the evil eyes, he looked harmless enough. About five foot
eight, the same height as Rannaldini but half the width, he stood
watching them, as narrow and dark as a cypress at noon.

Having taken in Karen's beauty, he ignored her, addressing all
his remarks to Gablecross, who immediately softened him up by
congratulating him on winning the Grand Annual in Australia last
week. Gablecross then displayed so much knowledge about The

Prince's form last winter that Isa took him over to be introduced.

Having ruffled The Prince's mane and scratched him behind his
ears, Isa removed his muzzle before giving him a Polo. But as
Gablecross approached, his equine hero darted huge teeth at him
with a furious squeal

'Shurrup.' Isa cuffed The Prince affectionately on his black nose.
In his soft Birmingham accent, he confirmed Janice's statement
that he'd dropped in on Sunday night to check the horses and his
wife, who he hadn't seen since his return from Australia in June.

'Long time to leave such a beautiful young woman,' chided
garen.

'Times are hard for jump jockeys,' snapped Isa. 'You go where the work is.'

At first he flatly denied taking any calls at the yard.

'We have evidence,' Gablecross flipped back through Karen's
notebook, 'that your mobile rang around nine thirty, and you
cancelled an arrangement to meet someone because the coast wasn't clear.'

'Is that a fact?' Isa was feeling The Prince's legs for swelling. He
: a bad habit of galloping round on this hard ground. 'People
seem to know more about my life than I do.'

.,..
	Who were you talking to?'

There was a pause.

- !I don't remember, my mobile rings all day- probably my father,
arid .me telling him Rannaldini was at home and we couldn't
remove a horse.'

:., 'Which horse?'

; 'Sparkling - that grey on the left. Rannaldini had a bee in his
bonnet the horse wasn't doing well enough, wanted to give it a

blood transfusion before its next race in the autumn. Sometimes
. itpeps them up, more often it wrecks them.'

we have your father's number, so we can check on the
' time?' said Karen.

Creating a convenient diversion The Prince lunged at Karen's

sending her scuttling across the yard.

:: He's ex-directory. I'll get him to call you.'

Mrs Lovell when you got back?' asked Gablecross idly.
missed her. She left a message on my machine saying she was

back to Penscombe because Rannaldini'd found her step

dog and she'd be back around midnight.'

got the tape?'

but the message will have been wiped by now.'

have been disappointed.'

His hands tested The Prince's back.





'Your cleaner,' Karen peered at her notebook, 'said there was
evidence that Mrs Lovell had been, er, dolling herself up, makeup
unscrewed, powder spilt on the dressing-table, place reeking of
perfume, new dress, packaging and labels on the floor,' Karen was

taunting Isa now, 'and, more unusual, the bed was made.'
'First time since we were married,' said Isa.
'Why d'you think she made it?'

'Turning over a new leaf, perhaps. She wasn't domesticated.' He
took another piece of green chewing-gum out of his hip pocket.

'Or expecting someone else? What did you do while you were at
the cottage?'

'Opened a can of Diet Coke, ate a chicken leg, fed Sharon, read
my mail and the racing pages of the Sundays - there was a good
piece on the Grand Annual in the Sunday Express.'

He bolted The Prince's door and moved on to the grey,
Sparkling, who greeted him with evident pleasure.

'I also picked up my washing,' he added bitchily, 'which my wife
hadn't touched since before I left for Oz, and took it home to my
mother.'

He had been spending most of his dme over at Jake's yard
because of his father's deteriorating strength.

'He can't look after thirty horses on his own. Baby's horses are
here,' he pointed to a bay, and two chestnuts down the row, 'but
I'm thinking of taking them back to Warwickshire. The grass is
better there.'

'Friend of Baby's, are you?'

'I find horses and ride for him.'

'No idea who he might have been meeting at Le Manoir aux
Quat' Saisons on Sunday night?'

'None,' said Isa flatly. 'Our relationship is strictly business.'
'How did you get on with Rannaldini?'

'He was an owner. They're always easier when you win for them.'
'Did you argue a lot?'
'Yes.'

'Did anyone see you leave Magpie Cottage on Sunday?'
'No, but I was back in Warwickshire by midnight.'
'So you had plenty of time to murder Rannaldini.'
'Why take out my most important owner?'

'Because he was intending to take all his horses away.'

'He wasn't. If you've been on this case since Sunday, Sergeant,
you must realize Rannaldini was a control freak who tested
everyone.'

'Who owns his horses now he's dead?'

"Imagine it's his son Wolfgang, not my greatest fan. He's got a

stupid public-school crush on Tab, so that wouldn't be a motive to
kill his father, would it?'

'Did you know his last will cut out both your mother-in-law and
Tab, so you don't stand to gain a penny?'

'So I was much better offwith him alive, wasn't I?'

'Did you know your wife's claiming that Rannaldini raped her
on Sunday night, and there are traces of lipstick, perfume and
powder on his dressing-gown and his body?'

Ia's face was expressionless, but Sparkling jumped away with a

snort of pain, as his fingers tightened on her foreleg.

'I didn't. Rannaldini always had the hots for her.'

'People said she'd never looked more beautiful or excited as she
ran towards the watch-tower. Odd she should tart up like that to
pick up a dog.'

'She had opened a new perfume called Quercus,' added Karen.

i 'I gave it to her,' said Isa roughly. 'She knew I was coming round.
Ha it entered your thick heads that she was tarring up for me,
when the loss of her parents' dog put everything out of her head?'

'Did she tell you Rannaldini'd raped her?' asked Gablecross,
then swore as they heardJanice calling from the tack room.

'Sorry to bother you,' she smirked. 'But it's Cecilia Rannaldini
returning your call.'

: For once, Isa had the grace to blush.

why's he talking to her?' hissed Karen.

::'
	Gablecross shrugged.

'Presumably she's his new boss.'

'Quite capable of murdering anyone,' fumed Karen as they left

yard. 'I wonder if that was his chewing-gum found near the





'Your cleaner,' Karen peered at her notebook, 'said there was
evidence that Mrs Lovell had been, er, dolling herself up, makeup
unscrewed, powder spilt on the dressing-table, place reeking of
perfume, new dress, packaging and labels on the floor,' Karen was

taunting Isa now, 'and, more unusual, the bed was made.'
'First time since we were married,' said Isa.
'Why d'you think she made it?'

'Turning over a new leaf, perhaps. She wasn't domesticated.' He
took another piece of green chewing-gum out of his hip pocket.

'Or expecting someone else? What did you do while you were at
the cottage?'

'Opened a can of Diet Coke, ate a chicken leg, fed Sharon, read
my mail and the racing pages of the Sundays - there was a good
piece on the Grand Annual in the Sunday Express.'

He bolted The Prince's door and moved on to the grey,
Sparkling, who greeted him with evident pleasure.

'I also picked up my washing,' he added bitchily, 'which my wife
hadn't touched since before I left for Oz, and took it home to my
mother.'

He had been spending most of his time over at Jake's yard
because of his father's deteriorating strength.

'He can't look after thirty horses on his own. Baby's horses are
here,' he pointed to a bay, and two chestnuts down the row, 'but
I'm thinking of taking them back to Warwickshire. The grass is
better there.'

'Friend of Baby's, are you?'

'I find horses and ride for him.'

'No idea who he might have been meeting at Le Manoir aux
Quat' Saisons on Sunday night?'

'None,' said Isa flatly. 'Our relationship is strictly business.'
'How did you get on with Rannaldini?'

'He was an owner. They're always easier when you win for them.'
'Did you argue a lot?'
'Yes.'

'Did anyone see you leave Magpie Cottage on Sunday?'
'No, but I was back in Warwickshire by midnight.'
'So you had plenty of time to murder Rannaldini.'
'Why take out my most important owner?'

'Because he was intending to take all his horses away.'

'He wasn't. If you've been on this case since Sunday, Sergeant,
you must realize Rannaldini was a control freak who tested
everyone.'

'Who owns his horses now he's dead?'

'Imagine it's his son Wolfgang, not my greatest fan. He's got a

stupid public-school crush on Tab, so that wouldn't be a motive to
kill his father, would it?'

'Did you know his last will cut out both your mother-in-law and
Tab, so you don't stand to gain a penny?'

'So I was much better off with him alive, wasn't I?'

'Did you know your wife's claiming that Rannaldini raped her
on Sunday night, and there are traces of lipstick, perfume and
powder on his dressing-gown and his body?'

Iaa's face was expressionless, but Sparkling jumped away with a

snort of pain, as his fingers tightened on her foreleg.

'I didn't. Rannaldini always had the hots for her.'

'People said she'd never looked more beautiful or excited as she
ran towards the watch-tower. Odd she should tart up like that to
pick up a dog.'

'She had opened a new perfume called Quercus,' added Karen.
: 'I gave it to her,' said Isa roughly. 'She knew I was coming round.
H it entered your thick heads that she was tarting up for me,
when the loss of her parents' dog put everything out of her head?'

'Did she tell you Rannaldini'd raped her?' asked Gablecross,
then swore as they heardJanice calling from the tack room.

'Sorry to bother you,' she smirked. 'But it's Cecilia Rannaldini
returning your call.'

':.For once, Isa had the grace to blush.

: *why's he talking to her?' hissed Karen.

i' Gablecross shrugged.

.. 'Presumably she's his new boss.'

capable of murdering anyone,' fumed Karen as they left

'I wonder if that was his chewing-gum found near the




Late on Wednesday afternoon, PC Brown and PC Jones rolled up
at Lucy's caravan. Tracking down the relevant cast and crew had
been a nightmare.

'Miss Lucy Latimer?'

'Yes.'

How nice to see a smiling face, thought PC Jones.

'We've come to give you a DNA test.'

'That's fine. Thank God, I've just found my passpo, rt. I've been
searching all day. Would you like a cup of tea? This is James, he
won't bite.' She pointed to a shaggy red dog taking up most of the
available seating.

'Very nice lady,' said PC Brown, as they ticked Lucy's name off
their list twenty minutes later. 'Sergeant Gablecross said she was a
cracker. '

'Bit long in the tooth,' said PC Jones, who was all of nineteen.
'Never really fancied older birds, unless they look like Claudine
Lauzerte or Joanna Lumley.'


By the time Lucy had finished making up the cast that night, she

was really feeling her age, and her back was killing her.

'I'll have to go and see James Benson.' She groaned.

'Let me give you a massage in the break,' said Rozzy, 'might save
you the money.'

Lucy stretched on the table, stripped to the waist, breathing in
oil of rosemary, almost falling asleep as Rozzy's wonderful healing
fingers crept round the back of her neck, unknotting the muscles.
Next moment she jumped out of her skin, as James let out a furious
growl, hackles up, long teeth bared. Something loomed in the
window. Was it Rozzy's shadowy reflection? Then Lucy screamed

as a lens crashed against the glass, and she saw the blurred outline
of a cameraman. James continued to bark his head off.

A second later Hype-along barged in through the caravan door,

and had used up halfa roll of film before Lucy could grab a towel.
'Now I know what you girlies get up to.'
'You bastard,' yelled Lucy.

'Don't do that to us,' chided Rozzy. 'Thank God we've got a
guard dog. Good boy, Jamesie.' She held out a hand, but James was
still growling and barking.

'You frightened him,' said Lucy indignantly. Tve got a bad
back.'

'And a gorgeous front.'
'Gimme that role of film.'
'Naaah, nice for my scrapbook.'

Hype-along sat down in Lucy's make-up chair and, picking up a
powder brush, pretended to mop his brow. 'Give us a drink.'

-, As Lucy got a bottle of white out of the fridge, he swung round
to face them with shining eyes.

'Latest gossip is that Rannaldini had the whole of Vallhalla wired
up like Fort Knox, and the police have the memoirs, and steam is
Coming out of Glamour Pants Portland's very clean ears.'

Oh, GOd, thought Lucy numbly, that's how they knew about
Rozzy's cancer. Had Gablecross and Karen already known about
Maxim being Tristan's father? Were they flying kites when they
interviewed her?

'Now, you're not to spread naughty gossip,' chided Rozzy,

the dangerously tilting bottle from Lucy, 'or I'll water your
flowered tie.'

'Don't be daft!' said Hype-along. 'This is the best fuckin'
publicity I've ever had on a film. If Don Carlos doesn't earn out in
ira first weekend, I'm a flying Dutchman.'

Having interviewed so many people in on, e day and left poor Karen
type up their statements for tomorrow s meeting, Gablecross felt
too hyped up to go home and hung around the set, watching,
listening and once again failing to nail either Rupert or Tristan,
were still bitching at each other.

the fourth night running, therefore, guiltily aware that he
in, Gablecross drove through Eldercombe village long
After the splendours of Valhalla and the pretty
along Paradise High Street, with their front gardens full
and standard roses, his house on the Greenview estate
poky.

on a mortgage back in the seventies, a Hungerford



house had been every young couple's dream. Newly painted in
pastel colours, with friendly neighbours and the morning sun
streaming into a modem kitchen, it had had a genuinely green
view across Eldercombe valley to Ricky France-Lynch's house
floating in woods like a grey battleship.

But in no time at all developer George Hungerford had started
slapping more and more houses around them, blocking out any
view, filling the estate with less friendly neighbours, where children
took drugs, heaved bricks through windows and resented having a
cop living so near.

The value of Gablecross's house had plummeted and a move to
a larger one, where the children could have rooms of their own
and surrounded by fields, was only looking possible with the added
boost of Margaret's income as deputy head.

Tim was proud of his wife's achievement, but he wished the
name of the headmaster, Brian Chambers, a smiling leftie with a
brown beard who drove a P-reg Volvo Estate, fell off her tongue a
little less often. Chambers and Margaret shared a love of opera and
swapped CDs. Tim knew he was getting a taste of his own medicine
for spending so much time over the years with comely women
witnesses. He knew Margaret longed to hear about the goings-on
at Valhalla, how she would have given anything to meet Hermione,
Chloe, Alpheus and Granville Hastings, but he was still resentful
of Brian.

Gablecross thought the pack at Valhalla were crackers and he
needed to mull over them with his wife. He hadn't sussed Tristan
de Monfiguy or Mikhail at all. Finding her awake last night, he had
asked her if she'd ever heard of Baby Spinosissimo, but at the first
'Brian thinks he's remarkable', he felt himself shutting up like a
clam, and the signed CD from Hermione had stayed in the glove
compartment.

Difficult crimes always pushed away the rest of Gablecross's life.
Over the years, Margaret had learnt to cope with the defensive
walls, the pensive silences and the dawn homecomings. Her first
pay packet had been spent on a microwave.

Expecting earache, Gablecross was amazed to be greeted by an
empty house. Going into the kitchen, he found a tomato salad, a
French stick, a quarter of Dutch cheese still in its Cellophane wrapping,
and a Tesco's lasagne awaiting him. Against the lasagne was
propped a note: 'Five minutes in the microwave, gone to a staff
meeting.'

No doubt tucked up in some bar, or worse, with Brian Chambers,
thought Gablecross savagely. He ignored the lasagne, making do
with a pickled onion, a slice of ancient pork pie and the Rutminster

Echo, whose first four pages were given over to the murder and,
infuriatingly, included excellent photographs of Gerald Portland
and fucking Fanshawe, grinning beside Gloria Prescott.

Tomorrow, he must go and see Tabitha, and try to pin down
Tristan. He put aside the paper, and tried seriously to work out who
might have killed Rannaldini, but he couldn't concentrate with
Margaret still out. It was only when he went into the lounge half
an hour later for a large Scotch to calm his rage that he found his
wife fast asleep on the sofa, the Independent open at the murder.

Fetching the duvet from their bed, he laid it over her. He mustn't
forget their wedding anniversary on Sunday.




The great excitements of Thursday's Inner Cabinet meeting were,
first, that Bob Harefield had been in the air flying to Adelaide on
Sunday night when both Hermione and Meredith claimed to have
been telephoning him and, second, Mikhail's two-litre Smirnoff
bottle contained traces of H0 but absolutely no alcohol.

'So the bugger was pretending to be drunk the whole time,'
chuntered Gerald Portland.

Mikhail had also pretended to pass out under the weepingash
for four hours until an Evening Standard reporter tripped over him
but, in the meanwhile, could have been quite sober enough to nip
into the wood and strangle Rannaldini and, although his English
wasn't good enough to understand the memoirs, he could have
burnt down the watch-tower after making off with the Montigny
and the Picasso.

Mikhail, who also flatly refused to admit he had nicked
Gablecross's initialled Parker pen, even when he was caught
signing autographs with it in Paradise on Thursday morning, was
without contrition.

'I 'ate Rannaldini,' he said, dragging Karen and Gablecross into
the Heavenly Host for late breakfast. 'Whoever kill heem is an 'ero.
Eef people think me drunk they leave me alone. After Rannaldini
take my Lara, I do not sleep for twice nights. Of course I drop off
under whipping ash.'

'Why was your vodka bottle lying near Rannaldini?' said
Gablecross sternly. 'I suppose it sleepwalked.'

Karen, who was deboning Mikhail's kipper, got the giggles.
'You realize you have no alibi.'

'I have no rife either. Vot is life without her? She says I am piss
ardst, next day I go on vagon.' ' '

.: 'So why was your bottle... ?' began Gablecross.

:- "I go to votchotower to kill Rannaldini for making me cockhold,
but forest fire stop me getting hands on heem. I hope fire does my
york. And now, perhaps, someone will believe I only spend five
minutes with screeching beetch Chloe on Sunday night and that I saw Tristan in Valhalla around nine thirty.'

Suspicion, in fact, was hardening on Tristan, who was flatly
refusing to have a DNA test.


To stop Rupert throwing his weight around and demoralizing
Tristan even fttrther, Sexton had arranged for him to see a rough
cut of the film so far, which Rupert had reluctantly adored. He

loved Sharon eating Alpheus's slippers, he loved the hunting and all Tab's horses. He cried buckets when Posa died and, after a long

.ilence at the end, said in a disappointed voice, 'Isn't there any

Montigny's a shit,' he added, as an afterthought, 'but an
extremely clever one. I even forgot they were singing and he's
' made Valhalla look almost as good as Penscombe.'

Being tone<leaf, however, and unable to appreciate Alpheus's
heavenly deep voice, Rupert thought he was the weak link:

'More like the chairman of the local Rotary Club than a king.'


poor Alpheus had just arrived back from a masterly Boris
where he had taken twelve curtain calls. Why wasn't he
more reverence at Valhalla? He'd only popped back,
for a tiny scene praying in the chapel before his corona
lion, and intended to push offand sing in New York on Friday and
Saturday, returning in time for the polo shoot on Monday. But
, on Rupert's orders, refused to let him go.

'You've been overpaid for these extra days, Alphie, so stay 'ere
in case we need you.'

Alh ......

. . p eus was hopptng, particularly as he djust read Hermtone s

ternew m the Dady Telegraph: Now Rannaldim has passed away,

it is my duty to shine more brightly as the only star in Don Carlos.' Alpheus was also brooding over the loss of his Jaguar, which a
newly steely Sexton was refusing to replace.

At ten thirty on Thursday morning, therefore, Alpheus drew
Fanshawe and Debbie into his caravan and confessed he had been
withholding information because he wanted to protect his
colleagues. After wrestling with his conscience since Monday, he
felt he must reveal that, on his jog through the dusk to Jasmine
Cottage on Sunday night around ten thirty, he had seen Sexton's
maroon Roller parked under Dame Hermione's Judas tree.

Having taken a statement, trying not to betray their glee that they




368
	369



were about to rush in where Gablecrosspatch had failed to dent,
Fanshawe and Debbie also, at long last, found a chink in Simone's
frantic schedule.

As she stuck Polaroids of Mikhail, Baby and Chloe into a huge
scrapbook, she said how furious she was with Chloe.

'How dare she tellflics I had said my uncle Tristan never went to
Aunt Hortense's birthday party. She eavesdrip my private conversation
with Lucy. No-one appreciate pressure in making this movie.
Tristan's head was too much in it to go to a party. Can you imagine
Beethoven stopping composing Ninth symphony to go to aunt's
bunfight?'

Furiously Simone drew a black Pentel moustache on Chloe's
Polaroid.

She was very young, Fanshawe told Simone, to have such a
responsible job.

'I am Tristan's niece. Everyone theenkfavori du roi so I must be

better than everyone.'
'You notice things?'
'It is my job.'

'Bet you didn't notice ten things out of the ordinary on Sunday
night,' said Debbie Miller.

'Bet I did.' Simone covered Chloe's dimpled chin with a black
beard. 'Mikhail change his shoes and put on loafers before he
finally come into house. And I notice lots about Chloe. For first
time she come in without lipstick- always she wears bright crimson
colour and she look much better without it. She had also changed

her clothes. She sdll wore tennis skirt.., but.., folds?'

'Pleats?' suggested Debbie.

' Oui, 0ui, but the pleats were bigger, and on her T-shirt the blue

stripes were paler and wider, but look same.'

'Why?'

'She must have change for a man,' said Simone darkly, 'but
didn't want to show it.'

'Well done. Who d'you think it was?'
'Probably Alpheus they leave at same time.'
'That's six things,' said a counting Fanshawe.

'And Sexton,' Simone giggled, 'he had re/he deprin his hair and
steeking out of the back of his trousers, and gaillet in the buckle of his Guccis and in his medallion.'

Debbie Miller was writing frantically. 'what's rune de pr and gaillet?'

'Wild flowers.'

'Should have been London Pride,' giggled Debbie. 'He claimed
he was in town.'


'Perhaps itwas Sexton rolled in the grass with Mees Chloe Super
bitch, that's eight things. And Bernard 'ave ash in his hair, and
Helen come in wearing false eyelashes and black pencilled
eyebrows as eel she cover up singeing.'

' Very good,' said Fanshawe delightedly.

'So Bernard and Helen could have been in the wood,' squeaked
Debbie.

'And Sexton up to no good,' shrugged Simone. 'Chloe could
also have been with Mikhail or Alpheus, although I think now they
both hate her.'

'who around here wears signet rings or rings on their left hand
tittle finger?' asked Fanshawe.

'Rupert Campbell-Black.' Simone glanced up at the telephone list. 'Granny. Tristan, although he hasn't worn it recently. Now,
Sexton is interesting. He used to wear a signet ring on wedding
ring finger, but since 'Ermione thinks he go to Eton, he move it
to leetle finger, and it is too loose, so he 'old it on like Prince
Charles.

'Valendn, Oscar and Bernard all wear wedding rings,' she
continued. 'Griselda wear bloodstone on little finger, 'Ermione
often wear big diamond Rannaldini gave her, Gloria like flaunting
big sapphire, probably a fake, Rannaldini also give her that too. Wolfie's signet ring keeps falling off because he lose so much

weight too, so in the finals he gave it to Lucy to wear for him.'
'Was Lucy there all the time?'

'No, she take James away for queek run. He was whining but she
was back before we finish and she give ring back to Woffgang.'

So both Lucy and Wolfgang could have nipped into the wood
and done the business, thought Fanshawe.

'Why d'you want to know?' Simone gave Chloe's Polaroid a
squint.
wh,'We have reason to believe the murderer was wearing a big ring

en he strangled Rannaldini.'

Then, it could have been me,' laughed Simone. On the little

finger of her tiny left hand glinted an amber in a gold setting.
'That's beautiful,' gasped Debbie. 'Who gave you that?'
'A secret admirer - too precious to tell anyone.'

"
	'You had no motive to kill Rannaldini,' teased Fanshawe.

'Only for putting artistic consideration before continuity,' said

8imone, with unconcealed venom.


After all this evidence, Sexton's alibi of speeding in his maroon
:Roller down the M4, after a weekend of heroically raising money,
and Hermione's, of watching Pride and Prejudice, ringing her



370
	371


husband Bobby, and spending q{aality time with Little Cosmo, were
looking thin.

Fanshawe and Debbie found Hermione alone and just managing
to polish offa large tub of pistachio and ginger ice cream. She had
lost a stone and a half, received six and a half thousand letters, she
told them, and was ready to return to the set tomorrow because
she couldn't let down Rupert Campbell-Black.

Hermione rather liked Fanshawe's sleek dark hair and flat
stomach until he accused her of not watching Pride and Prudice.

'Don't be ridiculous, it's my favourite novel. Why isn't Timothy
conducting this interview?'

'Nor did you ring your husband.'

'Oh, well, it must have been the day before. When one is jet
lagged and wrestling with artisdc problems, dme ceases to have any
meaning.'
'Evidently. How d'you explain the fact that Mr Kemp's Rolls
Royce was parked under your Judas tree at around ten twenty, and
Mr Kemp's clothes, when he finally rolled up at Valhalla some time
after two o'clock in the morning, were covered in lady's bedstraw
and meadowsweet? In fact, Mr Kemp lied to us about being on the
M4 at the time of the murder, Dame Hermione. He was at River
House with you.'

If Sergeant Fanshawe had expected a battle of wits he was disappointed.

'Indeed,' Dame Hermione bowed her head, 'I must tell you the

truth, Officer. Are you married?'

'I have a partner.'

'I am a married woman, but Sexton and I found we cared deeply
for each other, and our love tryst occurred in the summerhouse
on Sunday evening. Sexton laid down a carpet of lady's bedstraw
and meadowsweet, which was what Elisabetta would have lain on
in the sixteenth century.'

'Didn't you notice the fire engines and the police sirens and the
watch-tower going up in flames?' asked Fanshawe in amazement.

'The summerhouse is behind River House, so one cannot see the
watch-tower - and frankly, Officer, we were too busy setting each
other aflame.'

Debbie Miller had contracted Karen's complaint, and was

laughing so much she had to gaze out of the window.
'Why did you lie about this, Dame Hermione?'
'I couldn't humiliate my husband, Bobby.'

'You and Rannaldini managed to humiliate him for the last few
years,' snapped Fanshawe, 'presumably your husband knew which
side his bread was buttered when the royalties came in.'

372


'Unkind, Officer.' Hermione bowed reproachfully.

'Did you know that Rannaldini was planning to have his
vasectomy reversed so he could have children?'

'I am not past childbearing age. Cosmo would have adored a
little sibling.'

'Numerous independent witnesses heard you singing in the
wood on Sunday night, Dame Hermione. I suggest Rannaldini had
humiliated you and Mr Kemp intolerably on Friday night. He was
about to pull the plug on the sham of your marriage and replace
you as Elisabetta with Gloria Prescott. Your career was on the slide,
and Rannaldini had plans to marry again and make a total fool of
you in his memoirs.'

'Nonsense,' squawked Hermione. 'I insist on talking only to
Timothy.'

Fanshawe, however, had the bit between his teeth. 'I think you
went into the wood, distracted Rannaldini with your lovely voice,
and Mr Kemp did the business, getting his clothes and shoes
covered with wild flowers in the struggle.'

'Nonsense, nonsense! You have no proof. It was my Bentley you
sawin the bushes. Sexton arrived with armfuls and armfuls of lady's
bedstraw and meadowsweet.., the most tender and cherishing

lover... I shall ring my friend Chief Constable Swallow at once.'
'Where was Little Cosmo while this was going on?'

'Tucked up in bed, of course, where all good boys should be.'


Unfortunately for Sexton, a complaint had just been logged by the
incident room from a couple driving towards the M4 around one
a.m. last Monday morning.

They had been pushed into the hogweed on the verge by a
lunatic overtaking in a maroon Roller, number plate SK 1. To their
apoplexy, twenty minutes later, the road-hog had hurtled past in
the same Roller but in the other direction going towards
Rutminster, and shoving them into the hogweed again.



373




Outraged to learn that Sergeant Fanshawe had made a breakthrough
on his patch - bonking on lady's bedstraw indeed! -
Gablecross set off for Penscombe, determined to succeed where
Fanshawe had failed by nailing Tabitha. Not wanting anyone
censoring his questions, however, he and Karen lurked over
excellent fish pie in the Dog and Trumpet until the dark blue helicopter
had carried Rupert, Lysander and Xavier offto Newmarket.

All round the pub walls were photographs of generations of
Campbell-Blacks triumphing at horsy events. Noticing the ferocious
intensity on Tabitha's face as she rode a much older and
larger boy off the ball in some Pony Club polo finals, Gablecross
thought she would have had little difficulty in strangling
Rannaldini. One of the specialities chalked on the blackboard was
'Campbell-Black Chowder'.

'What's that made from? Shark and piranha?' asked Gablecross,
as he paid the bill.

'No way,' laughed the landlady. 'That's Taggie's recipe. She's
the best thing that ever happened to that family. Got her hands full
at the moment. Tab's still in shock and won't eat. Floods one
moment, shouting the next. Rupert's a continually erupting
volcano. Just seen Taggie, dark glasses hiding her poor red eyes,
driving off to Cotchester with Bianca.'

Better and better, thought Gablecross. With Taggie out, they
must lose no time.

'Shit,' muttered Karen, as she drove up to the gates. 'There's
even more paparazzi here than at Valhalla.'

Rupert's beautiful house, pale gold as a drowsy lioness in the
burning afternoon sunshine, made Gablecross's Hungerford
home seem even pokier. Fucking nobs.

374


Ann-Marie, the au pair, knocked nervously on

shrill voice shouted, 'I don't care what Daddy or T

ag say, i'm nllunch.'--

having

	any

Having admired Tab's amazing beauty in the silver frames in

Helen's sitting room, and without clothes between the pages of

Rannaldini's memoirs, Gablecross was appalled by the reality.

Her normally flawless skin was grey and blotchy, the bruise on

her cheekbone parsnip yellow, her eyes reddened and staring. The
drastic weight loss had given her the prematurely aged look of a
terminal anorexic. Her very loose signet and wedding rings
dashed as she ran a hand covered with more yellow bruises
through her lank hair.

Despite the heatwave, she wore grey cords and an inside-out dark

green cashmere cardigan. On a nearby table were a billowing
ashtray and a three-quarters-drunk vodka and tonic. All over the
floor, open at the murder hunt, were today's papers, which Tab had pinched from the kitchen, despite Taggie trying to hide them.
Newmarket was on Channel Four with the sound turned down.

Slumped on a blue and white striped sofa, Tab was flipping

through a photograph album. When Gablecross and Karen flashed
their ID cards, she said would they please go away. To make up for her mistress's rudeness, Sharon jumped off the sofa, grabbed a
lemon-yellow silk cushion and carried it over to Gablecross singing
with delight.

. 'Lovely dog.' Gablecross patted her.

'Lovely flowers,' said Karen enviously. 'You are popular.'

'It's like a funeral parlour. Can you get me another vodka and

tonic,' Tab shouted, in a slurred voice, to Ann-Marie.

Mixing tranks and booze, thought Karen, as she clocked a Stubbs

of, two chestnut mares and a Turner of Cotchester Cathedral

against a rain-dark sky on the walls.

D'you want a cup of tea before you go?' asked Tab.

'We've just had lunch, thanks.' Gablecross nearly shattered his

coccyx as he sat down heavily on an ancient beef bone. Removing

it from the bowels of the armchair, he placed it on the floor.


	Tab went back to her album, patting the sofa for Sharon to sit

beside her, exhorting her to admire the pictures of Gertrude. 'There she is at.Daddy and Taggie's wedding, and there she is
disapproving of Daddy's helicopter. God, she was sweet,' then, in
case Sharon was hurt, 'but so are you.'

Having glanced at Gablecross, who tapped his head and

mouthed 'plastered', Karen took out her notebook.

' At first Tab denied everything, discounting the people who'd

seen her racing towards the watch-tower and later weeping



375




bloodstained on the edge of Hangman's Wood. Her fingerprints
were all over the telephone box, and on a glass found in the wood,
persisted Karen. Her lipstick was on the glass, and her powder and
traces of Quercus were all over Rannaldini's dressing-gown.

'Really,' drawled Tab disdainfully, but her hand trembled as she
pointed to a picture of Gertrude wearing a green paper crown at
Christmas.

'Why did you doll up and put on a new dress on Sunday night?'
'It was an old dress, a present. I hadn't worn it before, because I
didn't like it. I'd been riding all afternoon. It was baking, I was
expecting Isa, I hadn't seen him for ages, so I tried to look nice.
We've only been married six months. Then I heard Gertrude was

missing and forgot everything.'

'So you rang Rannaldini?'

'No, Wolfie,' snapped Tab, 'but I dialled the house instead of his
mobile by mistake, and it was switched through to Rannaldini, who
said he had Gertrude.'

'What a coincidence,' said Gablecross sarcastically. 'So you
dolled yourself up to go and see him.'

'No.' For a second Tab closed her eyes, clenching her fists
against the memory of a hurtling weight knocking her to the floor.
'But I wanted to get to Gertrude.' She paused for a second, feeling
her way. 'She'd cut her paw. Rannaldini didn't want me to take her.
He's bats about Taggie and probably wanted to return her personally.
So I grabbed her and ran off, but I tripped over a bramlte
cable. Gertrude hit her head on a stump as I fell - that's why she
bled so much. Then I realized she was dead.' There was a rattle of
ice as Tab grabbed her vodka and tonic. 'Her grave's behind the
tennis court.'

'why did you leave that message on Wolfie's machine that you'd
been raped?'

Tab's eyes flickered in terror, her tongue ran over her gnawed,
reddened lips. 'No-one raped me,' she whispered.

'You're lying. Rannaldini had a nasty dog bite, dog hairs and
dog's blood on his dressing-gown. I'm afraid,' Gablecross gave a
sigh, 'the only way to find out the truth is to dig up Gertrude and
do a post-mortem.'

Tab caved in completely.

'No, no, please not,' she gasped. 'It'd destroy Taggie. All right,
Rannaldini did rape me.'

She was shaking so violently, Karen put down her notebook.
'You're being too rough on her,' she hissed. 'Let me talk to her.'

Pushing Sharon offthe sofa, she sat down and put her arm round
Tab's shoulders.

too far with boys, smoking dope at school. Rannaldini was
tunningly attractive.' Karen picked up the Telegraph arts page,
which had a big picture of him conducting. 'Look at his beautiful
hands. Your husband's been away a long time, probably neglecting

. roll.' ,

: Tab s eyes filled with tears. 'Yes, he has.'

'Rannaldini didn't neglect you. He'd given you a wonderful
horse, paid for you to go to America, paid for your wedding, given you a cottage and a wonderful job working on Don Carlos.'

'I know,' sobbed Tab, 'but - he screwed up my mother, and
Tristan's film and I'm sure he screwed up Tristan and me.'

'Only because he wanted you so badly, and you found him
atiactive. No, let me finish,' Karen was holding Tab's hand and

:
	troking it. 'It was a hot summer evening, you weren't getting it from Isa, you have a bath and wash your hair, you ring
Rannaldini, and he suggests you go over, so you put on a pretty
dress and make-up for the first time in weeks, and wafting
ffume you arrive all hot and excited and Rannaldini greets you
wearing nothing but a dressing-gown, but knowing his reputation, you still go in.'

'I wanted to see Gertrude, for Christ's sake.'

'The last telephone call Rannaldini made in his life was to you.'
'That was me,' protested Tab furiously, 'ringing Isa, telling
him I'd found Gertrude and was taking her straight back to emcombe.'

'Thereby giving yourselfa pink ticket for as long as you liked with
aldini,' interrupted Gablecross brutally. 'Meanwhile, you
ccepted a drink from him.'

.
	'He poured a vodka and tonic while I was on the telephone.'
'What did you talk about?'

.
	'I said how excited I was to have a chance to go home and make
it up with Daddy. Gertrude was in my arms doing a lot of wagging.
Ieouldn't bear to waste any more time, so I put her down, and was
t pecking Rannaldini goodbye, when he swung his head so his
mouth landed on mine. Then he pushed me to the floor--'

'Why didn't you scream for help?'

'Rannaldini had his hand over my mouth, I saw the black hairs
like bristles on crackling.' Tab started to shudder again, her face
beaded with sweat.

' 'You're quite safe,' soothed Karen. 'Sergeant Gablecross and I re here. Ann-Marie's in the kitchen, look, the nice old gardener's outxide.'



377




To Tab, Mr Bodkin seemed miles away, merging into the heathaze
shimmering on the gravel and the smoky-blue trees beyond.

'I tried to bite him, my teeth clashed on his wedding-ring - the
wedding-ring my mother gave him, for God's sake.'

'Tell me what he did to you.' Karen was stroking Tab's hair. 'It's
quite OK to be frightened.'

Tab described the rape quite dispassionately, breaking down
only when she came to Gertrude. 'He hit her with a bust, then
threw her against the carved chest. Bastardl' Her voice rose to a
scream.

'It's OK to be angry.'

'I pushed him against a table and snatched up Gertrude, who

was pouring blood, and stumbled down the stairs into the wood.'
'What happened to your glass?'
'I don't know.'

'It was found by his body.' Gablecross was on the warpath again.

'Sure you didn't kill him because you were so angry?'

'No.'

'Or lie in wait once you found Gertrude was dead, and kill him

when he came out looking for you?'

'No.'

'Why didn't you run back to the tennis court where all your
friends were?'

'I lost my bearings. I was so terrified he'd come after me, I just
wanted to get away.'

'How'd you get home?'

'I was waiting by the telephone box. I heard someone singing
and footsteps. I thought it was Rannaldini. I ran into the road and
a big car coming from Paradise screeched to a halt. I begged the
driver to give me a lift. He wanted to take me to Casualty in
Rutminster, I asked him to drop me on the road to Cotchester but
he swung his car round and took me the whole way home.'

Tab didn't remember anything about the car or the man except
that he was kind.

'He wrapped a rug round me and Gertrude - she was bleeding
all over the car. He turned the heating up so high he was pouring

with sweat by the time we got home.'
'How old was he?'
'Old, at least forty.'

Karen suppressed a smile as Gablecross winced.

'No-one you recognized?'

'No, and he wouldn't come in. I thanked him for saving me, and
he said, in this funny accent, "I've got to thank you for saving me
from something much bigger," and drove off.'

notice this picture in the watch-tower?' Gablecross held
Out a photograph of The Snake Charmer.

,? Yuk, said Tab. 'It was on the wall in the sitting room.'
	\ •

::, :Are you sure?'

'Quite. Rannaldini pointed it out, saying wasn't he handsome in

those days. I told him he looked better now. I wasn't leading him
.on. It was true. He looked like an Italian waiter when he was

Y°a took a slug of her now tepid vodka. Maybe the worst was
over. Karen got up and prowled round the room. Gablecross
renewed the attack.

'Why did you really kiss Rannaldini?' he asked. 'Did you lure him
on to rape you so you had an excuse to strangle him in selfdefence?'

.
'For the hundredth time, I kissed him because I was so grateful
he'd found Gertrude. What crucifies me is the thought of her
terrible last hours, kidnapped, totally confused and terrified
because she was deaf and blind, and then murdered.'

'All very touching,' said Gablecross sarcastically. 'I think you
tmcied your stepdad something rotten and if, as you allege, this
.was the first time, how the hell d'you explain these?' Like a straight
:flmh, he triumphantly splayed the photographs in front of her.

For a minute, Tab was speechless as the colour swept her face,
merging with the blotches until it was all the same ugly red, as she
gazed down at her own lascivious beauty, the half-closed eyes, the
curling tongue, the thrust-forward breasts, the pink lips glistening
between the long slender white thighs.

. 'The full split beaver,' said Gablecross roughly.

'My father had a dog called Beaver,' said Tab slowly. Then she
flipped. 'How absolutely gross.'

. She struggled to her feet to grab the photographs then, finding

her legs wouldn't support her, collapsed back on the sofa.

; 'It's a trick, my head on someone else's body.'

'But in your own bedrooms at Valhalla and at Magpie Cottage,'
said Gablecross. 'We checked out the background. You have been
a',busy girl.'

'I have nod' Tab's scream was so raw that Sharon, who'd been
trembling and swallowing throughout the interview, crept under
the sofa. Her bone was black with buzzing flies now. Gablecross
chucked it out of the window.

'I never took off my clothes for Rannaldini,' whispered Tab.
"God, how revolting.' A horrible thought struck her. Perhaps Isa
had taken them and given them to Rannaldini, perhaps
Rannaldini had hidden in the cupboard, perhaps Clive... ? 'Oh,



378
	379


Christ, I swear I never knew they were being taken. Where did you
find them?'

'Taking pride of place in Rannaldini's memoirs. Are you sure
you didn't catch a glimpse of them on Sunday night and burn
down the watch-tower?'

'No, this is the first time.' God in heaven, why couldn't this
sweating, red-faced thug leave her alone?

Karen was flipping through the little cards that had come with

the flowers. 'Did you ring anyone else after the rape?'

'No, only Wolfie and Daddy.'

'Not Tristan de Montigny to tell him what had happened?'
'Why ever should I? He was in France.'

'Tristan threatened to kill Rannaldini on Friday. He was seen in
Valhalla at the time of the murder.'

Tab started in horror, the colour deserting her face, leaving a
grey wasteland.

'If you'd tipped Tristan off Rannaldini had raped you,' accused
Gablecross, 'you could have pushed him over the edge. Perhaps he
heard your message on Wolfie's machine.'

'No.' Clapping her hands over her ears, Tab frantically shook
her head. 'No, no, no!'

'Wolfgang threatened to kill his dad after he heard that tape,'
taunted Gablecross. 'Hope you weren't telling porkies. Might 'ave
encouraged that young man, even your father, to kill Rannaldini,

or did you tell your husband?'

'I didn't.'

'Hello, I'm back. Lovely basket of fruit arrived for you, Tab,
darling.'

As a slender, very tall girl walked in, Gablecross leapt guiltily to
his feet. This must be Rupert's wife, Taggie. She looked hardly
older than her stepdaughter. Unfortunately he was too late to stop
Sharon wriggling out from under her chair. Frantically searching
around for a present, she snatched Tabitha's photographs off the
table, and proudly bore them over to Taggie.

'Drop, Sharon, for God's sake!' Tab stumbled forward,
snatching the photographs, then crumpling to the floor, sobbing
hysterically. 'They think I killed Rannaldini, that I led him on to
rape me. Please don't look at those pictures.'

Seldom had Karen witnessed such fury; a tigress protecting her
cub.

'How dare you b-b-bully her after all she's been through, you

horrible, horrible beast!' yelled Taggie.

Even Gablecross stepped back.

'You're right, he is a beast,' agreed Karen. Together she and

		lifted a weeping Tab to her feet. For a second, she froze,

	rigid with revulsion, then collapsed weeping in Taggie's arms.

	'I didn't want anyone to know about the rape. I wouldn't have

	blurted it out to Dad or Wolfie. I was just so devastated about

	Gertrude.'

	'I know, darling.'

	'I feel so awful about Mummy. She's had such a terrible time with

	the press over the years. Imagine the f-f-field day BeattieJohnson's

	going to have when she finds out Rannaldini raped me, particu

	larly if the police say I led him on, and what will the Lovells say?

	Jake hates me, and Isa's never forgiven me because of Peppy Koala.

	Oh, Taggie, I've made such a mess of my life.'

	'You haven't.' Taggie tugged the red scarf from her dark hair,

	holding it for Tab to blow her nose on, as if she'd been Bianca.

	'You're good, brave and beautiful.'

	'Like a beautiful car that doesn't work,' wailed Tab. 'I loved


	Lysander, Isa and Tristan so much. Why didn't any of them love

	me? Because I'm bad luck, that's why, and I don't want to bring

	any more to Mummy. I love her so much too, but she's never rung

	to see if I'm OK I expect the police have already told her I pulled

	her husband. What's she going to think when she sees those

	pictures?'

:
	What would you think if you knew your sainted mother had
grassed about your beloved father's gun? wondered Gablecross
bitterly.

What will she say when it all comes out?' mumbled Tab.

'Perhaps it can be hushed up?' Taggie turned beseechingly to

Kareno

': :.'Tabitha's been very co-operative,' said Karen, who was feeling
thoroughly ashamed of herself.

Taggie turned back to Tab. 'Look, why don't we ask Mummy to stay for a bit?' Her far too kind heart was already sinking as she made the offer.

BuLa tiny spark had ignited Tab's face.

Could we? Oh, Taggie, you are kind. I hate her rattling about

in that creepy house, stalked by Rannaldini's ghost.'

'And you must open your lovely basket of fruit,' said Karen.

'Mangoes and persimmons. Someone wants you to start eating

again.' She handed Tab the tiny envelope.

They were from Wolfie.

'Perhaps he might drop Mummy off,' sniffed Tab. 'I'd love to see

Wolfie again.'



381




Gablecross was profoundly depressed. Karen had bawled him out
for bullying Tab, Rupert Campbell-Black had lodged a ferocious
complaint with the Chief Constable, Gerry Portland was threatening
to take him off the case altogether, and he had absolutely
no idea who had killed Rannaldini.

It was nearly dark. Walking towards the Valhalla car park he
nearly had a fit as he saw a young boy sobbing in Rupert's arms.
Then he realized it was Flora, back for a brief appearance as
Elisabetta's bodyguard, who'djust been subjected to another short
back and sides for the sake of continuity.

'George is a ghastly bore and a pleb, darling,' Rupert was saying,
'and far too old for you.'

'You're older than Taggie, and you're happy,' wept Flora.
'We're not talking about me and I'm certainly not a pleb. George
is so insanely jealous, no-one as gorgeous as you stands a chance.
If he's kneecapped old biddies in the past, he's quite capable of
doing you a mischief and putting a contract on Rannaldini.'

'That's what I'm afraid of,' sobbed Flora. 'I love him so much.'
Passing Wardrobe, Gablecross saw Rozzy Pringle getting dress
shirts ready for the extras in the ball scene. Looking at the big hot
iron in her hand, the scissors and pinking shears hanging from the
walls and the safety-pins and needles spilling out of boxes, he
thought there were plenty of murder weapons here.

'Sergeant Gablecross,' called Rozzy, blushing slightly, 'you've
been working so hard, I thought you might have forgotten your
wedding anniversary on Sunday so I got a card and wrapped up
some presents.'

'You shouldn't have done that.' Gablecross spoke roughly to
hide the lump in his throat. 'How much do I owe you?'

a present - or presents.' She laughed. 'You've been so sweet


'Not what Rupert Campbell-Black thinks.'
'He's a brute.'
:. 'You've saved my bacon. I had forgotten,' said Gablecross gratefully,
as he scribbled, 'All my love, Tim,' in a Happy Anniversary
card. 'Thanks so much. Every man should have a woman like you.'
• 'I wish my husband thought so,' sighed Rozzy.


Itwas a highwayman's night, with racing black clouds and the stars
making only cameo appearances, except for blazing Jupiter, still
pursuing a glittering yellow haft-grapefruit of a moon.

Gablecross couldn't wait to get home to Margaret. He needed
to run his latest suspicions past her and have a moan about Karen
getting on his nerves. Approaching the Greenview estate, passing
the waiters wearily closing up the Chinese restaurant, he reached
in the glove compartment for Hermione's CD, saw Brian
C, hambers's blue Volvo coming the other way, and nearly drove
into a wall. Passing his house he saw Margaret in the kitchen in
her dressing gown. She didn't look glammed up. Maybe they'd

had sex, or she knew Brian well enough not to bother too
uch. Swinging the car round, Gablecross drove over to
Rutminster Hall.

He knew, having got away with a solo raid on Clive, and having
a warning from Portland this afternoon, he was putting
his career on the line. But, like a junkie needing a fix, he had to
follow his hunch. If George Hungerford had experienced a
quarter of the murderous rage he himself had just felt towards
Brian Chambers . . . And he was not taking Karen. A tough,
uncommunicative businessman would never open up in front of
a woman.

Rutminster Hall lay on the other side of town, as far as possible
from the Greenview estate. George wouldn't spoil his own rolling
hillside with eczema rashes of little houses, thought Gablecross
avagely. No lights were on, but music was pouring so loudly out of
the speakers that George didn't hear the car coming up the drive.
Only people who lived in magnificent parks could get away with
playing music that loudly. Only when Gablecross banged the car
door did George come racing round the side of the house.

'Flo ,ra!' For a second he seemed to disintegrate with disappointment,
then seeing Gablecross's ID card, he brusquely invited
him in.

'I haven't got long.' It was a lie; he had all eternity to long for
Flora.



382
	383


Gablecross knew George was a mate of the Chief Constable, so
he'd better tread carefully. He was also aware that George was a
major player in the world property market who had often sailed
too close to the wind, but who had showed a softer side as
managing director of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, where
he had fallen in love with its youngest player, Flora Seymour.

This was the man who had ruined Gablecross's view and made
the value of his house plummet, but he couldn't hate him because
George looked so desolate. Thin, unshaven, black beneath the
eyes, he hadn't slept since his row with Flora, and was now, like
Citizen Kane, dying of loneliness inside his vast ugly castle.

They sat on the terrace, George with an untouched whisky,
Gablecross with a Pettier. Below them lay new-mown hay like a
choppy pale grey sea. Through a gap in the trees, as if mocking

them, stood a moonlit temple of Flora.

'Nice place.'

'Morgue without Flora.'

When asked what he had been up to on Sunday, George claimed
he had stayed in to watch a video of the orchestra's recent tour of
Switzerland. They had played Britten's piano concerto and
Glazunov Three. His staff had Sunday night off, so there were no
witnesses.

'A helicopter landed in Valhalla.'

'Wasn't mine. Never left its hangar.'

It was no secret, said Gablecross, that George had hated
Rannaldini, and had intended to slap a bypass or even a motorway
through his land.

'Bastard hated me back. Tried to take over my orchestra, furious
that Flora preferred me. Should never have let her get into his
clutches. Look what happened! Rannaldini cut her hair, forced
her into a man's suit and onto some dyke. No wonder she ricocheted
into the arms of that Aussie poofter. Rannaldini set the
whole thing up.'

George knew the world was swarming with gays, that it was cool
for girls to get into passionate friendships with them. Flora had
adored Campbell-Black's son, Marcus. Gays understood women,
were more sympathetic. He knew he was hamfisted. Shyness made
him inarticulate.

'In theory,' he confessed, 'I shouldn't deprive the world of such
a beautiful voice. In practice, I want her home where I can look
after her.'

'Same with my wife,' agreed Gablecross. 'All I can say is there's
a very, very unhappy young lady at Valhalla.'

'I've been preoccupied,' admitted George. 'I owed forty million
to German banks.'

Gablecross agreed it made his two-hundred-pound overdraft
seem rather paltry.

'I'm out of the woods now, but I wasn't nice to live with. I even
grumbled about her little dog - miss him like hell, he's so clever.
If I came down to breakfast in a tie, he knew I was going to the
office and there was no point in getting his lead for a walk.'

'This is Don Carlos, isn't it?' Gablecross listened instead to the
music as Philip launched into his great soliloquy.

George nodded. He'd got hooked on it when he was helping
Flora learn her part and had identified increasingly with Philip.

' But having found a jewel, would he kill someone who'd pushed
her into infidelity? wondered Gablecross.

'I'll have that drink after all,' he said. 'Why don't you call her?'
George said he'd been going to ring her on Sunday when a
courier had arrived with an envelope: 'Photographs - Do Not
Bend.' Heart - Do Not Break.

Inside had been pictures of an ecstatic Flora on the lawn at Angels' Reach with a ridiculously handsome youth with no double
chin, beer gut, or grey hairs.

'Shouldn't deprive her of happiness with someone younger.'
'Baby's a charmer but he's very queer,' said Gablecross gently.

'"If you have betrayed me,,",' Philip II's voice reverberated round
the park, '"by Almighty God, tremble, I shall have blood."'

'What were you really up to on Sunday night?' asked Gablecross.
'I stayed at home.'

'Come off it, Mr Hungerford. You were seen driving through

around ten twenty-five.'

George looked down at the temple of Flora, no longer floodlit,
the moon crept behind a cloud.

I drove over t.o, Paradise, he took a slug of whisky, 'saw a hght
on in Rannaldini s watch-tower. I was going to park my car in the
above Valhalla and beat Rannaldini to a pulp. Without

I already had a life sentence. But by the telephone box,

ten twenty-five, I saw this young girl, so ghostly I crossed
She had blood on her face and all over her dress and she

dog. For a terrible moment, as she ran into my head
a moth, I thought it was Flora and Trevor. I just braked


felt a lurch of excitement.

wanted me to drop her on the Cotchester Road, but I took
the way to Penscombe. The dog was dead. I it in



385




an old tartan rug of Trevor's - poor little thing still bled all over

my car. '

'What did she look like?'

'Blonde, about five eight. From her profile I twigged she was
Campbell-Black's daughter. I rang the house and said I was
bringing her home. She had no idea who I or anyone was. Didn't
address a word to me, except to thank me when I dropped her off
at around half eleven. I waited till Rupert came out, and folded her

in his arms.., never felt lonelier in my life.'

'See anything else odd on the way?'

'Only a man in a light-coloured bloodstained suit crossing the
Cotchester Road, as we drove out of Paradise, but I reckoned by
then I was just seeing things.'

The helicopter that landed on Sunday night must have been
Rupert's. Christ, what a break! Gablecross knew it was unprofessional
but when he'd taken George's statement, he rang Taggie to
say they'd identified the man who had brought Tabitha home and
it was unlikely that either of them had murdered Rannaldini.

on Thursday began with a hefty consumption of
eggs, bacon and sausages. Sugar Puffs had also rocketed


i. 'They are all comfort eating,' sighed Maria, as she prodded a

;leg of pork for the midnight break. 'Frightened out of their
seeking the security of being children again. No, I am sorry,

pet, you cannot even have a vin ordinaire.'

•
	'i: One of the sparks, drunk last night, had fallen off a ladder,

,r two huge lights on top of him and holding up production

for an hour. Consequently Rupert had banned drink from the set
and the canteen. The entente had never been less cordiale.

All this put a terrible strain on Tristan as tempers shortened and
the crew grew more bolshie from exhaustion. It was impossible to
leep in the day with the dread of the murderer stealthily letting

one's bedroom. With the short nights, there were only
five hours of real darkness to film two complicated scenes; and with
Dame Hermione returning to the set, they'd be lucky if the camera
turned over before dawn.

Filming had moved to another part of the garden, by a fountain
overlooked by huge sycamores. White roses swarming over a
pergola, shedding an increasing carpet of petals on to the damp
grass, were an increasing continuity problem for Simone.

Rupert had already rolled up in a foul temper. He'd had no wins
at Newmarket and Helen was coming to stay. He was hopping with
Gablecross for upsetting Tab, but even more unhinged by a telephone
call from Beattie Johnson, his vicious ex-mistress,
threatening to reveal yet another scandal from his past.

'I knew you'd cheat on Taggie in the end, you bastard.'

Rupert was slumped in Rannaldini's executive chair, a straw hat



386
	387


with a Jockey Club ribbon tipped over his Greek nose, venting his
spleen on Sexton for agreeing to pay an extortionate sum to David
Waterlane for the loan of Rutminster polo ground on Monday and
Tuesday. Plebs like Sexton were stupidly overawed by tides. Sexton
himself was sweating over Fanshawe's visit to River House.

'Police fink we've done it, Rupe.'


Flora, meanwhile, had returned for a last night's shooting, a ghost
of herself. Three days in London with Abby and Viking, utterly
mad about each other and wildly excited about the fast
approaching birth of their baby, had made her loss of George even
more acute. As her eyes were too red and swollen even for Lucy to
repair, Tristan had agreed she could be filmed in dark glasses.

Having changed into a rather shiny dinner jacket, her bodyguard's
disguise for the ball, she had nipped into the production
office on her way to the set in the forlorn hope George might have
left a message in the last hour. There was nothing.

Hollow with desolation, she slouched towards the ruined
cloisters that flanked the chapel. Broken columns and arches,
smothered in ivy and moonlight, cast jagged shadows on paving
stones almost worn away by the pacing of monks over the
centuries.

Did any of them ever pray for anything as fervendy as she was
now begging for George's return? Poor God must feel like an
undertaker. His services only sought at the death of a love affaire.

Then Flora's despair turned to terror as she breathed in indescribable
menace. She couldn't move. A scream froze in her throat,
she was being suffocated by chloroform. Then she realized it was
Maestro, Rannaldini's aftershave, as a figure emerged from the
darkest shadows and swept up the cloisters, his black cloak slithering
after him like a peacock's tail. By the moonlight, as he
opened the chapel door, she could see a pale, cruel, carved profile
and a handsome head of pewter hair.

Screaming, Flora fled back to the production office. Thank God,
a group was chatting outside.

Tvejust seen Rannaldini,' she shrieked. 'I saw him, I swear I saw
him.'

Bernard was quite gently telling her she was imagining things,
when Valentin, with rare animation, announced that he, too, had
seen Rannaldini disappearing into the chapel earlier. By the time
he'dwoken his father-in-law, Oscar, and they'd screwed up enough
courage to follow Rannaldini inside, he had vanished.

'Probably returned to grab the Murillo Madonna,' said Rupert
contemptuously. 'There are no such things as ghosts. It is a figment

388


of your feverish Frog imagin, adon. Another reason for not-drinking
until night-shooting's over.

'I saw heem,' said Valentin sulkily. 'He had that queek walk with
his head thrown back.'

'I saw his cloak slithering,' whispered Flora, who was having difficulty
getting her cigarette to her lighter. 'I think he's still alive.'

'Don't be fatuous,' snapped Rupert. 'Rannaldini is dead.'
'How d'you know for certain?' asked Baby, who had rolled up
eating a Danish blue sandwich studded with whole garlic cloves to
ward off Hermione, Pushy and Chloe through the night. 'Did you
actually see the body?'

'Wolfgang did,' said Rupert sharply. 'If you've been bullied by
some bastard for twenty-four years, you tend to recognize them.'

'Very true,' agreed Baby. 'I couldn't mistake you, and you've only
been bullying me since Tuesday.'

Bernard brayed nervously, but before Rupert could retaliate,
Baby put an arm round Flora's quivering shoulders and bore her
off to his caravan for a lge drink.

'Rupert said we mustn't,' said Flora lisdessly.

"Fuck him.'

'I nearly did earlier. He was so sweet to me, said George and I
are totally unsuited.'

'He's right. Marry me instead.'

'That is the loveliest compliment I've ever been paid,' said Flora,
in a choked voice. 'I can't think of anyone I'd be happier with, but
I'm stuck with loving George.'

Blowing her nose firmly, she looked up at Baby, worried how
grey and pinched he looked.

'Suitably lovesick for Carlos,' said Baby, handing her a large
vodka and tonic. 'Dame Hermione assured me earlier that she
didn't believe a word of the beasdy rumour that I had Aids.'

'Bitch! God, I wish the memoirs weren't on the loose. Every time
I open a paper, I expect to see you and me cavorting naked on the
lawn at Angels' Reach.'

'Doubt if they'd find space for us, they're so obsessed with
Rannaldini.'

The murder was still dominating every radio and television
bulletin and every newspaper. Press and police helicopters
prowled overhead, giving poor Sylvestre terrible sound problems.
There was increasing pressure on Gerald Pordand to find the
killer. Rannaldini's records were expected to dominate the charts
for months to come.

'Very shrewd career move to cop it,' mused Baby. 'Even shrewder
if he hasn't. And, talking of dreadful things, I saw Clive in an



389





extremely expensive new beige leather suit, secreting himself into
Eulalia Harrison's bedroom just now. What d'you think that
means?'

'Something horribly sinister. Perhaps the Sentinel's bought the
memoirs.'


Eleven o'clock - it was dark at last. Illuminated by the powerful

lights from beneath, like giants with hollowed eyes and great black

devouring mouths, Valhalla's trees glowered down. Thunder

rumbled behind the black mande of cloud. Everyone had been

ready for hours, but still Dame Hermione had not emerged from

her caravan.

Glancing up at the house, Rupert saw one of those aggressive,

cropped-haired harpies he used to tangle with when he was an MP,

glaring out of an upstairs window. She looked vaguely familiar.

'Where the fuck is Tristan?' he howled.

'Winding Hermione up like Big Ben,' giggled Chloe who, ready

and ravishing in her crimson taffeta, was making sly, sliding eyes at

Rupert.

'Christ, she's looking good,' muttered Sylvestre. 'Who the hell's

giving her one?'

'Valentin, Oscar again, Wolfie, Mikhail again, you again, me

again, Alpheus again, Rupert probably, the goat again,' intoned

Ogborne. 'God, I could murder a beer.'

Back in her caravan, which, like the canteen, had been towed up

to the set, Hermione's determination to look even lovelier than

Chloe was not helped by her breaking down every few minutes.

'How could Sergeant Fanshawe think Sexton and I killed

Rannaldini? I loved him so much.'

'You are the belle of this wonderful ball,' Tristan was telling her

for the hundredth time, 'but you daren't dance with Carlos

because all the court is spying on you.'

Tristan looked so strung up and defeated Lucy wanted to kiss

away the migraine that was crushing and pincering his tired brain

like one of Rannaldini's tortures. But instead she carried on

pressing powder into Hermione's forehead, which was wrinkling

again.

'You were there, Tristan, when I made my dbut as Elisabetta in

Paris. Rannaldini was my handsome prince, my forbidden Carlos,

married to Cecilia - who's now got all the money,' Hermione

snorted indignantly. Then, reverting to tragedy, 'Can you believe

he has gone?'

		Oh don't
	had just added mascara

	lower lash.

They all jumped at an imperious rat-tat-tat on the door.

'It'll be sunrise in a second,' shouted Rupert. 'What the hell are
you doing?'

'Briefing Hermione,' said Tristan evenly.

'Brief is not the word. You've been in there two hours.'

'I am directing this movie,' said Tristan haughtily.

'Even more deeply into the red. For Christ's sake, move it.'
'Is that Rupert?' cried Hermione in excitement.
'No, it isn't,' said Rupert, running away.
Chloe and Pushy thought this was hysterical.

Despite the delays, everyone clapped dutifully when Hermione finally arrived, because Hype-along had bribed the entire crewwith
miniature bottles of Jack Daniels - very welcome at a time of
Rupert's enforced abstinence.

As Chloe had slagged off Hermione in the Mail that morning,
and Hermione had slagged off Chloe in the Telegraph, and Pushy,
in her pink satin, had trashed them both in the Mirror ('Roberto's
chopper was always at my disposal'), the mood was far from sunny.
All three women claimed they'd been 'utterly misquoted' and that
Eulalia Harrison would set the record straight when her definitive
piece appeared.

Despite her alleged weight loss, Hermione's gold flesh was
spilling over the top of her vermilion strapless dress like a cheese


'Wonder bravissimo,' called out Ogborne.

'Helen could use that cleavage as a cache-pot,' said Rupert.

'Hopefully for a cactus,' giggled Chloe. 'She looks like the town
tart with all that slap.'

Realizing that Hermione had resorted to some last-minute
blusher, a cursing Lucy rushed forward to tone down her cheeks.

'Leave her alone,' exploded Rupert. 'She's masked for most of
this scene.'

At last everyone was in position.

'Quiet behind the camera,' shouted Wolfie.

'Cut,' shouted Tristan, a minute later. 'What is the matter,
Hermione?'

'Flora is masking me.'

'I'm guarding you,' protested Flora.

'And why's she wearing dark glasses? So affected and attentionekingo'

Flora burst into tears.


	Rupert turned on Hermione. 'Shut up, you fat cow.'
Hermione burst into tears. Down streaked her mascara from

' individual lower lash. Lucy flipped.




39O
	391


'You stupid man, I'll need at least twenty minutes to patch her

up.'

Rupert had just fired Lucy for insubordination, when Baby
strolled out of the darkness. Unbuttoning his dinner.jacket, he
flashed a white T-shirt, saying, 'Come back, Rannaldini, all is
forgiven.'

There was a horrified silence.

Rozzy, who'djust arrived with beautifully ironed dress shirts for
him and Mikhail, gave a gasp of disapproval. 'How could you,
Baby? Show some respect for the dead and consideration for
poor Wolfie and Lady Rannaldini - and even Dame Hermione,'
she added, as an afterthought.

Rupert looked at Baby for a second then, to everyone's amazement,
he began to laugh.


Beattie Johnson had successfully passed herself off as Eulalia
Harrison for nearly a week. Her most pressing problem was what
to pack into Sunday's six-thousand-word spectacular for the
Scoon and what to hold back for the book she intended to rush out, to be entitled With a Thong in My Parts.

The material, based on Rannaldini's memoirs and the dirt she had picked up in the last few days, was God - or, rather, devil given.
She would have loved more time on the piece, but Valhalla gave her the creeps, she wanted to go back to dressing like a human
being, and she was terrified that when Clive discovered that out of
the promised million he would only get the already paid two
hundred thousand, he would come after her with a bicycle chain.

The police also had a copy of the memoirs and were such
frightful gossips they might leak some of the juicier material before
Beattie got it into the paper. Finally her boss, Gordon Dillon, was
clamouring for copy by early tomorrow and she had to break off
tonight to dine with Alpheus who, she hoped, would put icing on
the more outrageous cakes.

Sighing with pleasure, Beattie scrolled down potential headlines:
'How Fun-loving Flora Swapped Her Dreary Developer For
A Tasty Tenor.' 'How Champion Jockey Isa Lovell Swings Both
Ways.' 'How Dame Hermione and Alpheus Were Caught In
Flagrante.' 'How Granny Took a Trip to Parker's Department
Store.' 'The Dark Secret of Rosalind Pringle's Lost Voice.' 'How
Lust For My Stepdaughter, Tabitha, Consumed Me.' 'The Woman
Tristan de Montigny Loves and Why He Must Never Have
Children.' (That was a chaud pomme de terre and needed to be
checked out on a trip to Paris.) 'Why Lady Griselda Never
Married.' 'Why Hermione's Hubby Encouraged Me To Keep Her


392
	393


Happy In Bed.' 'Helen Campbell-Black on Tabitha the Tramp and
Taggie the Thicko.'

That would put Rupert into orbit, but not half so much as
Rannaldini's favourite canard: 'How Rupert, Posing As the Perfect
Dad To Adopt Two Kids, Flew to Buenos Aires to Seduce Abigail
Rosen.'

Poor saintly Taggie would be very upset.

There were darker secrets: the sado-masochistic lengths to
which Rannaldini had gone to titillate his jaded palate, the
attempt to murder his stepson, Marcus, during the Appleton
piano competition.

'You were rotten to your rancid core, Roberto,' crooned Beattie,
as she flipped through the photographs of anorexic Helen,
Rubenesque Hermione, ravishing Tabitha, and Rannaldini
himself with Tristan's mother, Delphine, .more voluptuous than
any page-three girl. That was a copy of Etienne de Montigny's
painting The Snake Charmer. Who the hell had stolen the original?
The Scorpion had reporters looking for it everywhere.

Beattie's favourite was Chloe and the goat. Such a shame that
her proposed caption, 'How Public-school Girls Love Their
Nannies', was too hot even for the Scorpion, and would have to wait
for the book.

Outside, in the dark, haunted garden, she could see Tristan
talking to Oscar. Her one regret was that, despite sleeping down
the landing from him all week, she had neither pulled nor interviewed
him.

Her mobile rang. It was Gordon Dillon. Had she any idea who
killed Rannaidini?

'None at all, the police are being singularly inept. They think it's
some psychopath who'll kill again.'

'Sooner you get that copy filed the better. If you pinpoint the
chief suspects, we can run a competition next week asking readers
to guess the murderer.'

'We might market a board game like Cluedo, or, "Haven't Got a
Cluedo', in Portland's case.'

'You sure no-one's rumbled you?'

'No-one. They're all so self-obsessed. I'm having dinner with the
worst.'

'Well, take care of yourself.'

'I've never had a story like this, Gordy.'

Out of the window, she could see the dark rings of the maze and
Rannaldini's Bower of Bliss, both places where, in the old
days, Rannaldini had laid her. At the centre of the Bower of Bliss.
she could make out the glimmering silver figure of the pawing,
morting unicorn. Nearer, a fountain and a cascade of white roses
were illuminated by huge lights.

'"Come, Eboli." Hermione's voice soared gloriously into the
darkness. 'I'he feast has but started, and I already tire of its joyful


She'd better organize her own feast, reflected Beattie, which
included gulls' eggs, wild salmon, and raspberries and cream.
'With this web, I will snare such a fly as Alpheus,' murmured
Beattie, as she put an ice-wrapped bottle ofDom Prrignon into the
picnic basket.

She always sweated like a pig as she approached a deadline. What
a relief, in her role as grotty Eulalia, that she didn't have to bath
or tart up for her date.


Alpheus's long nose was thoroughly out of joint. Having seen a clip
of him riding, Rupert Campbell-Black had pronounced he made
a sack of potatoes look like Frankie Dettori and refused to let him
take part in polo on Monday.

'We can't afford the insurance if you have a fall.'

Nor did Alpheus feel remotely compensated by the beautiful
3000 pounds suit Griselda had hired for him to wear as a kingly spectator.

Going into the production office on Thursday night, he found
it deserted except for Mikhail, four forks sticking out of a dinner

jacket pocket, gabbling endearments into the telephone.

'It will not be much longer, my darlink.'

Alpheus, who had picked up enough Russian while singing
Boris, pursed his lips. Mikhail was clearly getting over Lara very
quickly. Realizing he'd been clocked, Mikhail hastily hung up and
clanked off. This left Alpheus to conduct a long telephonic interview
with Le Monde, until he had made sure that Rozzy had
departed carrying Mikhail and Baby's dress shirts, and was able to
nip into Wardrobe and appropriate his new three-thousand-pound
stut0

Alpheus was pleased about his dinner with Eulalia. A doublepage
spread in the Sentind would be most useful, particularly if it
could be held over until September when he had a Wigmore recital
and a new solo album, which would need every help to knock
Rannaldini off the number-one spot.


'You must be the handsomest man in opera. If you didn't sing, you
could make a fortune modelling,' sighed Eulalia, putting in
another roll of film. 'So few men can carry offwhite suits.'

Having embarked on a rare third glass of Dom Prignon,
Alpheus was feeling romandc and manly. In the dusk of Jasmine



394
	395


Cottage, the dog daisies glowed like little moons. Down in the
valley, tractors with headlamps were cutting Rannaldini's hay, blotting
out the din made by Hermione and Chloe.

'Turn your head slightly, you've got such an imposing profile,'
went on Eulalia, 'I'm sure when the Independent described you as
wooden last year it was only in the context of a great tree sheltering
the whole production.'

	She was probably right, reflected Alpheus.

Eulalia, he decided, looked like a fashion model in a left-wing
paper, with granny specs dominating a pale, set face, leg and
armpit hair marginally longer than the hair on her head and long
floating black dress giving no advance information about the
figure underneath. Pushing her on the swing earlier, he had
deduced from the dark shadow between her hairy legs that she
wasn't wearing any panties.

Unfortunately, from Eulalia's point of view, Alpheus was far
more interested in analysing himself and his art and singing
snatches of Don Giovanni with an engaging smile than in dishing
the dirt. He had no idea who Tristan was screwing or who might
have killed Rannaldini.

Having spent a further haft-hour relaying how he sang his first
Philip II, Alpheus leant forward, removed Eulalia's spectacles, told
her she had lovely eyes and suggested they try some of that delicious
picnic to mop up the bubbly.

'What a nurturing young woman,' said Alpheus, selecting a gull's
egg. 'You've even remembered the celery salt.'

Alas, the totally undomesticated Eulalia had not realized gulls'
eggs needed boiling, and the first one Alpheus cracked went all
over his new white suit. Eulalia was unfazed.

'Elderflower boiled with hemlock and comfrey will get egg yolk
out of anything,' she said and, next moment, had pushed Alpheus
back on to the damp grass, released his cock, spread it with celery
salt and had her incomparably wicked way with him.

Alpheus had never encountered such vaginal muscles: they were
like the strong fingers of some pink-cheeked milkmaid. What
couldn't he do with a helpmate of such intellect, who could also
cater so deliciously to his physical needs? Under those ethnic
clothes and all that hair, Eulalia had a surprisingly lovely body. If
she flossed and showered a bit more and wore the right clothes...

'Oooooh, oooohooo.' Looking up at the newly emerged stars,
Alpheus felt himself ejaculate with all the splendour of the Milky

.,' he said graciously.

	Then Eulalia
	it all
	asking if s was a better

Chloe or Dame Hermione
	if he
	' her

to get his own back on Cheryl for going to bed with Rannaldini.
It is diffictflt to hit the roof when one is lying under a woman
journalist.

Who had told her such monstrous untruths? spluttered Alpheus,
'I don't figure the Sentinelwould be interested in such sleaze.'
He had never cheated on Cheryl. Anyone who implied differently
was jealous, probably Chloe, who had become overly
possessive when he'd formed a working partnership with Dame
Hermione.

'Bollocks, you lying old hypocrite.' Eulaliajumped to her feet.
In her floating black dress, her spectacles glinting evilly in the
starlight, she suddenly looked like the Grand Inquisitor. Snatching
up a handful of grass and wildflowers, shoving them between her
legs, she ran down the mossy steps to her car.

Going inside, Alpheus discovered his lovely suit was covered in
grass stains as well as egg yolk. He was not hunting for comfrey and
hemlock at this hour. The grandfather clock in the hall was striking
half twelve. Checking the kitchen calendar, which featured a
guillemot with a fish hanging from its beak, rather like Bernard's
moustache, Alpheus realized it was now Friday, the thirteenth, and
shivered.

The only answer was to burn the suit and blame its disappearance
on Mikhail, who had admired it hugely. Then he
remembered all the photographs Eulalia had taken. Somehow
he'd got to stop her using them.



397




When Hermione and Chloe's little scene still wasn't in the can by

twelve thirty, a despairing Tristan called a break. He was sure the

crew were deliberately going slow. There were dark mutterings as

they set off sulkily for the canteen. How could they be expected to

flourish on roast pork, minty new potatoes, spring rolls, red

cabbage and apple pie and cream without a few glasses of red?

'Just one glass,' Tristan pleaded with Rupert. 'It's getting cold.'

'No,' said Rupert, switching on his mobile.

Immediately it rang.

'Don't want to alarm you, Rupe,' confided an old racing crony

from the Sun, 'but we're convinced that Eulalia Harrison's Beattie

Johnson in disguise.' Rupert felt icicles dripping down his spine.

'Any chance of us getting your side of the Abby Rosen story?'

'No,' snarled Rupert, and hung up.

No wonder Eulalia had seemed familiar. Over the years Beattie

had nearly destroyed him and everything he loved. This time she

wasn't going to get away with it. He had never bedded Abby Rosen.

He would kill to protect Taggie.

The telephone rang again. Talk of the angel. It was Taggie with

brilliant news. Gablecross had found the man who'd driven

Tabitha home on Sunday, who could give her an alibi. Rupert had

never dreamt he would feel passionately grateful to George

Hungerford. 'Whatever happens,' he told Taggie, 'I want you to

know I've always loved you.'

Looking up he saw what must be Eulalia/Beattie's window in

	Everyone was
	The

	his
	to
	the

	friend on the
	. no
	the news

of Beatde's
	to Hermione,

helping of roast pork, to Chloe, who went green, and to Flora, who
looked about to faint. Soon the rumour was circulating to universal
panic: nearly everyone had spoken on and offthe record to Eulalia.
Suddenly the large police presence, hovering in the surrounding
bushes or watching from the top floor of the south wing, seemed
totally inadequate.

'Beattie's not answering her mobile,' said a shaken Griselda.

'She was talking to Clive earlier. Probably buying the memoirs
for the Scorpion.'

Tristan. had gone very white but, determined to limit any
damage, said that Rupert's friend from the Sun had probably been
fishing.

'We must stay calm,' he told Oscar.

The crew were sourly drinking Perrier. Mikhail was appropriating
more forks. Bernard retreated to a quiet corner of the
canteen with a roll, a piece of Brie and his crossword. He was glad
there were people around. The park beyond was very shadowy and
dark.

Then he gave a gasp as his crossword swam green before his eyes.
'It's been completely filled in by Rannaldini.' His hoarse voice
was falsetto with fear. 'Even his Ms are the same, like football posts.'
He brandished the pages with a frantically shaking hand, as
everyone gathered round.

'Mort Dieu.' Valentin crossed himself. 'Where did you leave it?'
'On the set - on top of my briefcase, beside Tristan's chair.'

' Wolfie had gone dreadfully pale. 'I don't believe it,' he stammered,
returning the crossword to Bernard. 'I swear the body was
my father's.'

'Of course it was! How often do I have to tell you there are no
such things as ghosts?' snapped Rupert.

'I'll take that newspaper, if you please,' said DC Lightfoot.


'Lucy!' cried Simone, dragging Flora into Make Up, pointing to
the white strip on her neck above the suntan, which had been
revealed by her latest short back and sides.

'That strip shows the executioner where to drop the axe,' sobbed
Flora, as Lucy blended it in. 'If Beattie dumps, George and I are
finished.'

A worried Trevor couldn't lick away her tears fast enough.

A bored James whined irritably from his bench seat.

'Oh, shut up, James,' wailed Lucy despairingly.

'I'll walk him and Trev for you after the break,' said Rozzy



398
	$99


Helen was packing five suitcases of clothes to be unhappy in at
Penscombe, when a trembling Mrs Brimscombe rushed in.

'Oh, my lady, they're saying that woman typing next door all
week is that BeasdyJohnson.'

'Omigod!' Helen clutched a bedpost. Eulalia had been far more
supportive than the bereavement counsellor. They had spent
hours and hours discussing Helen's hangups about Tabitha,
Rupert and Taggie. 'She must be stopped,' she whispered.


Meanwhile, talk of Bernard's briefcase had reminded Rupert his
own was still on the set. With Beattie on the prowl, he had better
retrieve it.

A chill breeze scattered another snowstorm of petals from the
rose arch and shook the pearly drops of the fountain. An owl
hooted; ahead a cigar glowed like a dny brakelight. Then, as
Rupert's eyes became accustomed to the dark, his blood ran
cold and his heart stopped. For there, on the set, sitting in his executive
producer chair, was Rannaldini. The collar of his
highwayman's cloak was turned up, caressing the planed cheeks of
his cold, haughty face; his pewter hair gleamed in the moonlight.
In a garden heady with the scent of lilies, honeysuckle and night
scented stock, Rupert was suddenly asphyxiated by a waft of
Maestro.

'Who are you?' he managed to croak.

But as Rannaldini slowly turned towards him, Rupert bolted.
Crashing through the dark garden, hurtling into the canteen,

sending cast and crew flying, he rushed up to the bar.
'Gimme a quadruple whisky.'
'Mr Sexton insist no drink.'

'Don't be so fucking silly, I've just seen Rannaldini.'

'Mr Sexton say no drink,' persisted Maria.

'I thought you didn't believe in ghosts,' said a grinning Baby.
Having gone behind the bar and poured Rupert a large Bell's,
Wolfie went in search of the briefcase, but when he returned with
it five minutes later, he said the set had been deserted.

'Well, there's no way I'm putting up with this sort of thing,' said
Rupert shiftily. 'I'll leave you to it,' he told Tristan, who tried not
to look relieved. At least, they'd get on quicker.

'I want everyone back on the set by one thirty,' he shouted, as he
picked up his mobile and vanished into the darkness.


Beattie returned to Valhalla, kicking herself for wasting time on
such a jerk. As she let herself into her suite, however, she found a
note, typed on dove-grey production-office paper, shoved under
door. 'Meet me in the Unicorn Glade at one fifteen and I will
tell you who killed Rannaldini.'

Beattie wanted to bay like a bloodhound. Hell! It was ten past
already. She hoped she wasn't too late. This was going to be the
greatest exclusive ever. The scoop de grace.

Quickly checking that no-one had tampered with her machine,
she pressed the save button and set out for the Unicorn Glade.
Thank God, when she was having an affaire with Rannaldini, she
had memorized the shortcut through the maze. It was so dark and
claustrophobic you could easily lose your bearings. She ran so fast
she kept cannoning off the sides, the rough, clipped yew twigs
scraping her face and arms.

'Right, left, right,' she panted, 'and right towards the Pole Star,'
she could hear the crew chatting as they returned to work, 'and
left, right, left towards the great constellation of Pegasus,' and she
was out on the other side, leaping in terror as an icy hand clawed
her face. Then she laughed, realizing it was only a weeping willow,
wet from an earlier shower. Jumping the Devil's Stream,
Rannaldini's only spring still flowing, running under a rose arch,
she was into the Unicorn Glade.

Based on a fifteenth-century tapestry, hanging in the Mus6e de Cluny in Paris, this small, exquisite private garden had only been
open to outsiders since Rannaldini's death. Filled with scented
flowers and herbs, it was populated with little stone foxes, weasels,
cats and greyhounds lying down with crossed paws beside rabbits
to symbolize that even natural enemies can live in harmony.

Legend had it that the unicorn could only be tamed by a virgin,
and in the original tapestry a chaste lady sat in the centre of the
garden with the unicorn crouched beside her, his front hoofs on
her knee as she stroked his neck.

But, as the joke went, there had never been any virgins in
Valhalla, so this touching tableau had been replaced by a lone
unicorn, gleaming silver in the starlight as he tossed his head and
pawed the grass.

Beattie could almost hear the proud little fellow snorting, as she
leant against him to regain her breath. Caressing his smooth back,
she ran her fingers up his mane, and his grooved horn, which was
raised like a sword on guard. As a child, she had always longed for
a pony. Rupert's horses and Olympic gold for show-jumping had
been one of the reasons she'd fallen so much in love with him. If
he hadn't dumped her, she would never have been bringing the
gorgeous bastard down.
Glancing round at opulent shrub roses, towering delphiniums
and massed white foxgloves, any of which could conceal the writer



401




of the letter, she was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of doom
and froze with terror as one of the shadows separated and came
towards her.

Then, as the moon emerged from a scurrying black cloud, she
saw Rannaldini's face, colder and whiter than any moon, but with
eyes crueller and hotter than hell. The dark cloak slid over the
dewy grass, as he swept towards her on his way to conduct a
requiem.

The words 'I never meant to slag you off' withered on Beattie's
lips. She couldn't scream, only retreat, as he came nearer and
nearer. Then she tripped backwards over a little stone fox, and felt
herself falling. The pain was unimaginable.


By three o'clock in the morning the wind had risen, all the crew
had put on jackets, and Hermione had grumbled bitterly enough
about the treacherous night air to have appropriated Rozzy's dark
red mohair cardigan and Bernard's duffel coat.

Noticing Rozzy shivering uncontrollably and fighting a racking
cough, Tristan took off his bomber jacket and put it round her
shoulders. 'You must take care of that throat.'

In fascinated horror, Lucy watched Rozzy turn her head and
drop a kiss on his hand as it rested for a second on her shoulder.
Her ecstasy was unmistakable. Earlier in the day, Rozzy had been
into Rutminster for treatment for her cancer, but recently Lucy
had noticed her poring over the score of DerRosenkavalier, marking
in the part of Marschallin with yellow Pentel. Had Rozzy convinced
herself she could sing in the opera after all?

Wolfie, constantly taunted by nightmarish visions of Tab being
photographed in the nude by his father, glanced up at Valhalla,
where chandeliers blazed in nearly every window to create an
illusion of a ball in progress. A light was still on in Helen's
bedroom. 'She shouldn't be going to Penscombe,' he muttered
furiously to Lucy. 'She'll only upset Tab. Christ, I miss her.'

'Poor Wolfie.' Lucy hugged him. 'She'll be back for the polo
shoot.'

'When you've finished snogging, Lucy and Wolfgang...' called
out Tristan, but so acidly no-one laughed.

'Quiet, please,' brayed Bernard.


At three forty-five, Pushy, deciding no-one on the set was paying
her enough attention, suggested that as she was so much younger
than Chloe and Hermione, she and Flora should have a carefree


little bop together for the sake of continuity, while the 0/der women
discussed the ball. 'We did have a love scene earlier.' She pouted.

'No,' cried Flora in revulsion. It was the scene with Pushy that
had wrecked her and George.

Seeing Flora about to bolt, and knowing he wouldn't get another
night's filming out of her, Tristan told Pushy to pack it in. 'We've
got to get this ball scene in the can before sunrise and before
Rupert come back and knock our 'eads together!'

'No way he'll return till Rannaldini's safely back in his coffin,'
said Ogborne, in a sepulchral voice.


Three-quarters of an hour later Oscar, pretending to look into his
view-finder, had fallen asleep. Flicking his fingers for Ogborne's
help, Valentin laid his father-in-law across two chairs. A faint pink
flush in a very pale sky heralded the approach of sunrise, pigeons
were cooing, blackbirds pecking the lawn for worms.

'Cut and print. Well done, everyone, particularly Chloe,'
shouted Tristan. Thank God there were pros like her, who could
dispatch a scene in one take. Thank God the deepest anxiety could
be dispelled temporarily by a good night's work.

Beyond the set, emerging from the uniform greyness of night,
he could see urns overflowing with pink geraniums, white and
yellow roses swarming up dark yews and cypresses. Beyond, the tall

chimneys of River House soared like pale lupins.

Why aren't I filming dawn? Tristan sighed.

As the crew dismantled the camera tracks, took down lights and
prepared the film cans for the courier to take for processing, Lucy
wearily removed make-up and wigs, and thought longingly of her
bed. Everyone was cheered up by a particularly sumptuous breakfast
of fluffy buttery scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and bagels,
followed by strawberries and cream. DC Lightfoot, Gablecross and
Karen, who didn't want to miss the fun, and half Rutshire
Constabulary, who'd been flatfooting round like the chorus of The
Pirates of Penzance, were soon tucking in as well. Even the French
contingent managed to crack a smile when Rupert rolled up with
several crates of white and red.

'You can drink yourselves insensible now.'

Having nervously glanced around for Rannaldini's ghost, he
dragged a newly arrived Sexton into the production office.
Expecting another bollocking about overpaying Lord Waterlane,
Sexton was amazed when Rupert announced that George
Hungerford was a seriously good guy.

'I fort you loathed him, said he was more of a yobbo than me.'
'Only because he was threatening to ram a motorway up my

404


estate. He's given Tab an alibi and he's offered us his polo field for
nothing. And he says we can have the wrap party there too, get us
away from Valhalla.'

'What about Lord Waterlane?' asked a wistful Sexton, who'd
been invited to lunch at the House of Lords.

'It'll really piss him off, the greedy sod,' said Rupert happily.
'And his vulgar wife too, who was expecting to nail the cast to open

her ftes for the next forty years. Good bloke, George.'

'You are so bleedin' irrational,' sighed Sexton.

'I know how to save money, and I'm also dazzling at playing Cupid.'


Flora, who had changed out of her dinner jacket into a pair of grey linen shorts and a red and yellow striped blazer, looked as young

desolate as a small boy going back to prep school for the
econd tenn. Everyone was hugging her, taking her telephone
.number and saying they'd see her at the wrap party.

'Yes, lovely, I'll be there,' lied Flora, through numbed lips.

.... She'd send them a crate of champagne - or rather plonk in her new impoverished state - and be at the bottom of the River Fleet
by then.

As she walked wearily down to Make Up to collect Trevor, an
early bumble bee was burying its face in a dark blue delphinium,
the clouds overhead were turning from yellow to pale pink, a black
crow swayed on top of one of the Lawson cypresses. In the fields
below, black plastic bags of hay lay on the gold stubble like slugs.
Any minute Rozzy would rush out and scatter little blue pellets. One magpie for sorrow rose out of the Unicorn Glade.

Even the sight of Trevor, standing on top of James to see out of
the caravan window and wagging his tail so hard he nearly fell off,
didn't bring a smile to her lips.

As she opened the door, both dogs hurtled down the steps.
Having had pees that went on for ever, crapped extensively and
examined all the croquet hoops on the lawn to see what foxes and
badgers had been about, they belted off, Trevor to woo Maria in
the canteen, James to find Lucy.

It was now light enough for Flora to define the stones in the
regard ring George had given her on the eve of filming. Rfor Ruby,
E for Emerald, G for Garnet, A for Amethyst, R for Ruby, D for
Diamond, spelling the word Regard. At the thought that her
darling George would never have regard for her again, Flora
collapsed against a huge oak tree sobbing piteously. Everyone
swung round, a hush fell at the utter desolation of the sound.

Baby was about to race over and comfort her, when Rupert put



405





a restraining hand on his arm and nodded towards the rose walk
where, from arches of acid-green hop fantastically garlanded with
a pink rose appropriately called The New Dawn, emerged George
Hungerford. He was wearing a dark red polo shirt, dirty white
chinos, which looked about to fall down because he'd lost so much
weight, and odd shoes. His dark hair was all over the place, and in
his hands, in gaudy contrast to Rannaldini's exquisite pastels, was
a hastily snatched-up bunch of marigolds, salmon-pink gladioli,
scarlet roses and mauve dahlias, which quivered increasingly, like
some exotic butterfly.

No-one uttered a word as he approached. Then, in front of four
of the finest singers in the world, in a croaky strangulated bass, he
started to sing 'Ztrliche Libre', Beethoven's little rondo about
tender love, which Flora had sung to him so often. He started too
high, couldn't reach the top notes and had to begin again. Blood
was trickling from hands clutching the roses too tightly. At one
moment his voice was so choked by tears he couldn't go on, and
the cooing pigeons had to fill in the gap.

Flora appeared frozen to the oak tree; only her knees were quivering
as much as George's flowers. Next minute Trevor had
erupted jauntily from the maze, nose caked in mud from burying
a pork bone, and giving a joyous bark he hurtled across the grass,
squashing the flowers as he landed in his master's arms. Once
again George nearly ground to a halt, but having dried his eyes on
a wriggling Trevor, he managed to falter to the end.

There was a long silence, followed by a burst of cheering and
clapping. Swinging round, blinking incredulously, Flora catapulted
across the grass, crashing into George's chest. The arm that
wasn't holding Trevor and the flowers clamped around her.

'Don't say anything. It's my fault, I'm such a stupid tosser,'
mumbled George, as he led her off down the rose walk into the
sunrise.

'Oh, how sweet,' sobbed Lucy, running offinto the park. Tristan
wanted to race after her and apologize for being so sarcastic
earlier, but he still had so much to do.

'Why can't Don Carlos have a happy ending?' said Griselda,
wiping her eyes on a tablecloth.

Even Rupert and Gablecross blew their noses noisily.

'I've always thought Flora a drama queen,' said Hermione
sourly.

'Now, now, Hermsie,' said Sexton reprovingly, as he topped up
her glass, 'Flora's a sweetheart, and didn't Rupert make a terrific
Cupid bringing them togewer?'

Baby, however, who'd been in low spirits all evening, drained his

turned to Rupert with an expressionless face and said,
'Thank you, Mr Cupid-Black, for ruining the only chance of happiness
I've ever had,' and wandered off unsteadily towards the house.
'Another drama queen,' said Chloe scornfully.

'What's the stupid queer going on about?' asked Rupert, in
bewilderment.

'Irrespective of his sexual orientation,' said Tristan sharply,
'Baby really loves Flora.'

'At least George and Flora's is one relationship BeattieJohnson
hasn't screwed up,' said Sexton. 'What's up for this evening?'

'We'll really have to motor,' Tristan reeled offa punishing list of
cover shots, 'and we've got to shoot Alpheus praying before his
coronation and Hermione walking up the aisle to join him, and I
must reshoot Carlos removing Posa's knife. I've decided it would
work better with a gun, and the scene in the centre of the maze
didn't work either, too small and claustrophobic. The Unicorn
Glade is framed with yew hedge. We could fake it as the centre of
the maze.'

'Let's go and look,' said Oscar, helping himself to a second plate
of scrambled eggs for the journey. A yawning Valentin brought a
bottle and glasses as well.

'See you in 'alf an 'our, Princess,' whispered Sexton to
Hermione, before belting after the others.

A thrush was singing joyfully, 'Night is over, night is over.'

Had Rannaldini deliberately grown roses up his nymphs to see
thorns plunging cruelly into their naked flesh? wondered Rupert.
A faun, leering wickedly out of ferns snaking above a water trough,
seemed to wink at him.

'what arewe going to do about that BeattieJohnson?' muttered
Sexton in an undertone.if Hermsie found out he hadn't been to
Eton, she'd drop him like an 'or coal.

'Take her out,' said Rupert. 'George has some ideas, we'll thrash
it out after this.'

Noticing crows circling like vultures above the Unicorn Glade,
he quickened his step, admiring the stone rabbits and hounds frolicking
peacefully with cats and foxes amid the flowers. But
although the sun no longer cast a rosy glow, the little white unicorn
snorting and pawing in the centre had become a strawberry roan,
and Eulalia in her flowing black robes, resting against his raised
head, had become a hermaphrodite.

As the men moved closer, they noticed an expression of terror
grotesquely contorting her features. Then they realized it was her
blood streaming over the unicorn's noble head and running in
rivulets down his shaggy mane. His grooved horn had pierced




406
	407


through her back and was now rising from her belly like a bloodstained
phallus.

'Jesus.' Rupert was the first to speak. 'It's Beatfie.'

'Are you sure?' drawled Oscar, hastily refilling his glass, draining
it, then filling it for Valentin.

'Quite,' said Rupert, lifting her skirt as he had so often in the
past. 'Look, there's a cat tattooed on the inside of her left thigh.
To get into the part she's even dyed her bush black.'

'And green,' said Oscar, pointing to the handful of wild flowers
Beattie had earlier stuffed between her legs.

A little tape-recorder had been attached to her thigh, but the
tape had been removed.

'Her spectacles are broken.' Tristan picked up the buckled,
paneless granny glasses.

The resourceful Ogborne, never without a camera, was taking
pictures even of the ashen Wolfgang throwing up into some mauve
campanula.

'She's also been shot,' said Sexton, walking round the body.
'There's an exit wound big as a grapefruit on this side. You all
right?' he asked a returning Wolfie, who, wiping his mouth on his
sleeve, looked terrified and absurdly young.

Wolfie nodded. 'Here's a note.' He retrieved a grey crumpled
piece of paper from some catmint.

'Meet me in the Unicorn Glade at one fifteen,' read Rupert.
'I'll have that, if you please, Mr Campbell-Black,' said Gablecross
firmly. 'No-one is to touch the body. After we've searched Miss
Johnson's room, I'd like statements from all you gentlemen.'

As Gablecross and Karen panted up the stairs they were met by
Helen in a coffee-coloured silk dressing-gown and a frightful
state.

'I haven't had a wink of sleep. Every light in the place has been
blazing all night. Liberty Productions are damn well going to pick
up the bill. Eulalia's phone's been ringing all night too, and her
room's locked so I can't get in to answer it. It's too bad, after all
the hospitality we've given her.'

She was even more hysterical after Beattie's door had been
broken down to find drink rings and cigarette burns all over the
Jacobean furniture, black coffee spilt on the priceless Persian rugs
and scrumpled tissues all over the floor.

Gablecross's first impression was that Beatfie had done a runner.
Except for an ashtray brimming over with fag ends, her desk had
been cleared. There was no hard copy, notebooks, floppy disks,
tapes of interviews or telephone conversations. All the drawers

were empty. In the bathroom, however, was a sponge-bag and a
• bottle of black hair dye.

As they discovered her computer smashed on the floor, her
mobile rang. 'Answer it,' snapped Gablecross. 'Pretend you're
Beattie.'

*Hi, there,' purred Karen.

'Where the luck have you been?' It was the graveyard tones of

Gordon Dillon. 'And where's the fucking copy?'

'What copy?' asked Karen innocently.

'Stop playing games. Six thousand fucking words. I've been

to get you all night. I hope you locked up the fucking


memoirs?' Really, reflected Karen. As a journalist Mr




Dillon should know not to use the same adjective more than once
on the same page.

'Rannaldini's, for Christ's sake. Are you pissed?'

'There's nothing here.'

'Something must have been saved on the machine.'

'Nothing. I'm afraid the computer's been dropped and its
entrails are spilling all over the floor. You could consult them like

the Romans did. They might tell you who killed Rannaldini.'
Karen's accent had slipped westward.
'Who the fuck's that?'

'Detective Constable Karen Needham of Rutminster CID,' and
ignoring Gablecross's horrified expression and furiously waving
hands, 'I'm afraid a body has been found, and Miss Beattie

Johnson appears to have been spiked like her rotten copy.'
'You'll get fired,' roared Gablecross.

'No, I won't,' said Karen, who could hardly speak for laughing.
'Gerry absolutely loathed Beattie.'


Once again Gerald Portland was absolutely hopping.

'I put twenty men on night duty at Valhalla,' he shouted at the emergency meedng, three hours later, 'and they spend all night
drooling over Gloria Prescott, stuffing themselves with roast pork
and don't notice a socking great murder two hundred yards away.

'We'll be a laughing stock, and the Scorpion will lynch us. They
are alleged to have paid a million for those memoirs. They're going
to bill that fucking bitch as the greatest journalist since Homer. They're offering fifty thousand for information leading to the
capture of her murderer, so no-one will call us any more. Jesus!'

Portland had indeed been no lover of Beatde. While the rest of
the media had nicknamed him Pin-up Portland, she had .called
him Inspector Portly, just because he'd gained a few pounds on a
Caribbean cruise, and described his upwardly mobilized accent as
'so camp you could cut it with a Boy Scout's penknife'.

'How come none of you realized it was her?' he shouted at his tealll.

'Bloody good disguise, Guv'nor.' DC Lightfoot scratched his
head. 'Could have sworn she was the spinster maiden-aunt type.'

'I'd forget that line of reasoning if I were you,' snapped Portland.
'Pathologist says she's got a vagina like the MI.'

'I beg your pardon.' DC Smithson pursed her lips as the men
grinned.

'So many people have been up and down, stupid, it's very well
worn. It's early days, but the pathologist also reckons she was killed
between one and two, and had intercourse perhaps half an hour

that. The plants stuffed up her vagina appear to contain
ome rare specimens.'

'Mustard and cress,' giggled Karen.

'Someone,' Portland threw her a look of fond reproof, 'appears to have bitten Beattie's shoulder - we can DNA that. Her specs were broken so we're looking for fragments on the murderer's
clothes.'

They had already found the murder weapon, a .22, chucked into

the long grass by the Devil's Stream. It had been taken from Props.
'Who has a key?' Fanshawe asked.

'Everyone in that department, but the prop master said the
doors are often open all day, it would be easy for the murderer to get a key cut. 'It's a single-shot gun,' he continued, 'so the killer
would not be expecting to miss. It'd been handled in filming
during the auto da fe by Baby and Mikhail, and covered in their
prints which Forensic are isolating.'

It had been a pretty lively evening, according to DC Lightfoot, what with the sightings of Rannaldini and the filling in of
Bernard's crossword, which had gone off to the graphologist. As a
final act of defiance, one of Rannaldini's cigars had been found
stubbed out in Beattie's ashtray.

'Wow,' sighed Karen. 'D'you think our murderer's really
dressing up as Rannaldini, and that's what terrified Beattie? She
probably wrote worse things about him in her pieces than anyone else.'

'Possible,' mused Portland, examining the note again.

' "Meet me in the Unicorn Glade at one fifteen." This was written

by someone familiar with a keyboard - it's not a two-finger job.'
'Who would have wanted to murder Beattie?'

'Everyone,' said Pordand, with feeling. 'If she had the memoirs,
and if she hadn't, they'd all blabbed or been stitched up by her.'

Paddy, Rupert's racing crony on the Sun, had quickly been on to
Portland, saying he'd tipped off Rupert and all the big names that
Eulalia was Beattie just after twelve thirty.

'Sounded like a turkey farm in mid-December,' Paddy had added gleefully. 'Most of them were only too happy to give their side of the story for a consideration. News travels so fast on a film
set, everyone must have known Beattie was Eulalia by the middle
of the break.'

'Still didn't give them much time to send her a note and murder
her before they had to start work again,' said Gablecross.

'If the murderer had a master key,' said Karen excitedly, 'they
could have let themselves into Eulalia's room much earlier, discovered
she was Beattie and waited till Friday, just before she filed




410
	411


copy, to kill her and whip the piece so they could get hold of as
much sleaze as possible.'

'Good girl,' said Pordand approvingly.

'Mrs Brimscombe says Beattie went out about ten thirty,' said DC
Lighffoot. 'Murderer could have nipped in then, nicked all the
stuff, printed out the piece and left a note under the door.'

'Risky,' said Karen. 'If Beattie returned, found the memoirs and
disks missing and the piece run off, she might have smelt a rat or
two and not gone to the Unicorn Glade.'

'More likely,' said Fanshawe dismissively - anyone would have
thought DC Needham was running this meeting, 'the murderer
killed her, then returned to her room, fucked the computer,
having printed offand nicked Beattie's stuff, then hidden that and
returned to the set by one thirty as though nothing had happened.'

'Unlikely it was as early as that,' said Gablecross, who was pissed
off with Karen but wasn't having anyone bullying her. 'Sylvestre,
the sound man, who can hear mobiles three streets away, heard a
scream around one twenty and assumed it was some singer acting
up but swears he heard a crash as late as one thirty-five.'

'By which time most of them would have been back on the set.'
'Not Mr Campbell-Black,' said Gablecross darkly. 'He hates
Beattie most of all. He pretended to see a ghost and buggered off
to visit George Hungerford, or so he says. They came back
together, both quite capable of putting out a contract on Beattie.
Tristan de Montigny disappeared into the darkness with his
mobile.

'Alpheus Shaw,' Gablecross pointed up at the unit photograph,
'says he made a few phone calls in the production office, where he
was seen by Mikhail, then he returned to Jasmine Cottage for an
early night. Baby says he was with Flora.

'Immediately Chloe, Gloria, Hermione, et cetera, learned it was
Beattie,' he continued, 'they were trying to get on to her, begging
her not to shop them. I imagine those were the phone calls Lady
Rannaldini heard through the night. She swears she had no idea
that Eulalia was Beattie. I think she's lying. She's now shoved off to
Penscombe to stay with Rupert and Taggie. Sexton Kemp rolled
up on the set at four thirty.'

'Funny time to be wandering around,' said Fanshawe, who was
still hoping to nail Hermione and Sexton for the murder. 'Lucy
Latimer spent most of the evening giving Dame Hermione
resprays, Rozzy Pringle ferrying clean shirts.'

'Very easy to come and go on a film set.' Gablecross shook his
head. 'Never use everyone at the same time.'

'Better search their rooms,' said Portland.

:'Can't at the moment.' DC Lightfoot looked at his watch.
iey'll be sleeping. They get wake-up calls around five.'

: 'Funny old time for Beattie to cop it,' mused Portland, 'missing
the nationals.' Then, answering his telephone, 'Great, thanks, I'll
be along.' Rubbing his hands, he told his team, 'They've identified
the fingerprints on the .22 and the wheel marks in the field off
Rannaldini's drive.'

But as Portland left the room, Gablecross followed him into the
corridor, looking extremely sheepish.

'Could I have a word, Guv'nor?' Then, pulling a letter and a bit
of paper out of his inside pocket, 'I'm afraid in the excitement of
blowing Clive's safe, I forgot I'd left this in my other jacket. It was
in French. Karen's translated it.'


Having made a statement about Beattie's murder, Helen had left
for Penscombe. This in turn left her maids, Betty and Sally, with
more time on their hands. They were so terrified of hearing
Rannaldini's cloak slithering along the corridors that they always
worked as a pair now.

They were concerned about their beloved Tristan. He had always
been so courteous and grateful. Filming all night, caught up in
admin all day, he looked absolutely dreadful. They had learnt
never to touch his papers, but after they'd emptied the ashtrays
mad removed the cups, chewing-gum papers and glasses on the
morning of Friday the thirteenth, they decided to turn his
mattresses. No-one deserved a good sleep more. Having worked at
Valhalla, Sally and Betty were not easily fazed. They had found
strange sex toys in the past, but were truly shocked to discover
between Tristan's mattresses a little pornographic painting of their
late master, with a long whip in his hand, flicking the lash round
the neck of a beautiful girl.

'Never thought Tristan was into SIN,' muttered Betty, as they
hastily remade the bed.

At lunchtime, Betty had a drink with Fanshawe in the Pearly
Gates, and after the second vodka and bitter lemon confessed of
their finding.

'Blimey!' Fanshawe had never downed a St Clement's faster.
Belting back to the house, gathering up Sally on the way, up in
Tristan's bedroom, they found the Montigny had vanished.

'I know it was here,' panted Sally. 'We saw the horrible thing.'

'Tristan must've come back, seen you'd cleaned the room, and
whipped - pardon the pun - the evidence,' said Fanshawe.

But all was not lost: his eyes lit on a pair of off-white chinos and
a bottle-green polo shirt lying newly ironed on the bed.



413




'When were those washed?'

'First thing Monday morning,' replied Sally. 'We always go round
the rooms gathering up the washing. Even on the morning after
he was murdered, and everyone was flapping around because
Tristan hadn't come back, Wolfie said it'd be better if we kept to

on1" Foutine.'


Gablecross and Karen were both dreading their next interview. It
coincided with an unexpected hailstorm, which had sent the press
racing for shelter. Lucy's caravan was empty. They found her
rescuing a meadow brown from the stony deluge and setting it
down under the protection of a hawthorn bush. Her day's sleep
had been wrecked by flickering nightmares of Rannaldini, by a
restless James barking at prowling police and paparazzi, and by her
churning misery that Tristan, as never before, had not apologized
for bitching at her.

Her eyes were red and swollen, her skin shiny and unhealthily
sallow, her dark brown curls in need of a wash, but her smile was
welcoming and she was still, thought Gablecross, easily the most
attractive woman on the unit. He and Karen accepted cups of tea,
but neither had the stomach for Battenburg cake.

'James hates marzipan too,' said Lucy, going back to sticking
Polaroids into a scrapbook with toupee tape.

Initially the questions were innocuous. What had she been doing
in the break? Had she noticed anything odd?

'I didn't really have time to notice anything.'

'Sweet little kids.' Karen admired Lucy's nieces round the
mirror, as she took out her notebook.

At first when it spun glittering gold on the table, Lucy thought
Gablecross had thrown down a coin. Then she realized it was a

signet ring. Had she seen it before?

'Of course, it's Tristan's.'

'Morro's in French, know what it means?'

For a second, Lucy looked at the chained, hissing serpent,
peering at the tiny words beneath. '"If you disturb the Montigny
snake,"' she said slowly, '"the Montigny snake will come looking

for you," i.e., "Leave us alone, and we won't hassle you."'
'Rannaldini didn't leave Tristan alone, did he?'

Careful, thought Lucy, not realizing she had stuck Hermione in
upside down.

'Take a look at this,' said Gablecross. 'We found it in
Rannaldini's safe.'

The same snake crest headed the yellowing sheet of writing
paper. Beneath was an exquisite little drawing of two entwined

lovers. The writing was so beautiful you were inclined to believe
anything it told you.

'My French is hopeless,' she mumbled.

'Here's a translation,' said Karen.

'"My dear Rannaldini," ' read Lucy. As the colour drained slowly
out of her face, she forced her other hand to grab and ground the
frantically shaking hand holding the letter. 'So it was true,' she

whispered, before she could stop herself.

'What?' said Gablecross sharply.

'Nothing,' stammered Lucy. 'That ltienne confided in
Rannaldini so much.'

'Come, come. Those two were friends for thirty years, ltienne's
paintings are all over the house. You can do better than that.
"Obscene incestuous union... I can never bring myself to love
him.." ltienne clearly wasn't Tristan's dad. Was that why Tristan
killed Rannaldini?'

'Don't be ridiculous.' Lucy glanced up at Gablecross's square,
bullying, ruthless face.

'Why did he lie that he wasn't back in Valhalla on Sunday night?
Why's he refusing a DNA test? He was clearly in shock when he

finally rolled up on Monday.'

'That was something else.'

'We believe he killed Rannaldini and then Beattie because he
Was terrified of the truth coming out. His fingerprints are all over
the gun that killed Beattie.'

'They can't be,' whimpered Lucy in terror. 'Oh, please, he was
in shock not because he killed Rannaldini but because, when he
. reeled home rapturous, goofy from making love for the first time
:': :"Tab,' her voice broke, 'Rannaldini sent for him and told him

thing, that he wasn't a Montigny at all, and far, far

that his mad brute of a grandfather on the other side, had
:rped Delphine,, his mother, because he was so wildly jealous that

she'd married Etienne. The result was Tristan.'

it was out.

Karen winced. Gablecross whistled.

: 'Wow, so that was it. Thank you, Miss Latimer.'

don't tell anyone. You forced it out of me,' gabbled Lucy,

agitation. Oh, God, what had she done?

know how proud Tristan is of being a Montigny., how natu!ii
aristocratic. He had no mother to bring him up, ltienne was
: .ao cold and dismissive, his great arrogant family of brothers all got
preferential treatment. Unlike them, Tristan got nothing personal

i. Being a Montigny was all he had to cling on to.'

the signet ring.



'Maxim, Delphine's father, was sectioned and a violent
psychopath, according to Rannaldini. Tristan's so honourable he
felt that as a result he shouldn't have children.'

The hailstorm had turned to rain weeping down the windows.
There was such a long pause that Lucy stumbled into more revelations.
'I'm sure Rannaldini made the whole thing up, probably
forged this letter. He was crawlingly obsessed with Tab. He couldn't
bear Tristan near her - he'd have made up anything to stop him.'

'Probably why Tristan killed him. Why did he lie about botding
out of his favourite auntie's eighty-sixth birthday party?'

'Can't you understand?' pleaded Lucy. 'She wasn't his auntie if
he was no longer a Mondgny, any more than Simone was his niece,

or his brothers his brothers. He'd have felt a fraud at that party.'
'And he claimed to have spent all night in his car.'

'I've told you about that.' Lucy's voice was rising. 'He was
exhausted, everyone drains him. This film has been so awful. The
next one, now his roots have been severed, was all he had.'

An embarrassed, upset James had curled up almost as small as

Tristan's signet ring, which Gablecross was holding up to the light.
'He dropped this beside Rannaldini's body.'

'I don't believe it. He hadn't worn that ring for ages. It was so
loose it kept falling off.'

'Beside Rannaldini's dead body,' intoned Gablecross. 'The
Montigny snake went looking for Rannaldini and coiled itself

round his neck until it squeezed the life out of him.'
'No, no!' Lucy clapped her hands over her ears.
'Same reason he stole The Snake Charmer.' 'Course he didn't.'

'Betty and Sally found it under his mattress on Thursday. By the
time they'd alerted a police officer, he'd whipped it. Rannaldini
was going to publish a copy of the painting in his memoirs. Tristan
couldn't cope with a pornographic photograph of his mum being
on display so he killed Rannaldini and Beattie.'

'No, no.' Lucy burst into tears, head on the table, clenching and
unclenching her hands.

'Cooee, cooee,' said a voice.

Itwas Chloe, avid with excitement, eyes swivelling, reeking of the
same beautiful scent.

'I hope you're not bullying darling Lucy, Tim. She's got a long
night ahead, and I don't want my lip-liner looking like an is-he
alive, is-he-dead heartrate in Intensive Care.'


Leaving Lucy's caravan on the way back to the car park, both
feeling sick, Gablecross and Karen saw a lone figure slumped at a

416


outside the canteen, and realized it was Wolfie.

Can we join you?' asked Karen, slipping into the chair beside


You can arrest me if you like,' mumbled Wolfie. 'Why shouldn't
i i have killed my father? He left me nothing and stole the only two

I've ever loved.' His teeth were chattering frantically.

'It's all right, lad.' Gablecross patted the boy's shoulder. 'Your
dad had cameras and bugs installed in every room, even at Magpie
? Cottage. Tabitha never posed for him, I could swear it.'

'And,' went on Karen, taking Wolfie's hand, 'I'm sure he left you

' because he was jealous of you.'


	Wolfie raised incredulous, swollen, bloodshot eyes.

	'Because Tab liked you so much,' added Gablecross. 'I read it in

	the memoirs.'

	Papa was jealous of me?' Suddenly Wolfie was grinning from

	pink ear to pink ear. 'Because of Tab?'

	: 'Certainly was,' said Karen. 'It was you she turned to after he

	raped her.'

	: But Wohqe wasn't listening. 'I don't give a stuffabout the money,

	I can earn my own. Tab's the only thing I care about.' Then, getting

	tohis feet and going, somewhat unsteadily, towards the bar, 'Let's

	have a drink. The only problem,' he added wryly, 'is that she's

	madly in love with Tristan. Still, it's a start.'


in his caravan, Tristan had neither been to bed nor had a
moment to rejoice over the ecstatic reviews flooding in for TheLily
in the Valley.

There had been so much to do. Someone had nicked Alpheus's
white suit from wardrobe. The .22 stolen to kill Beattie had had to
be replaced. Helen had gone ballistic about the electricity bill and
been ringing all day from Penscombe. Mr Brimscombe had gone

ballistic because the police had trampled over all his
flowers. Rupert and George, who were all buddy-buddy now, kept
wanting to have meetings about polo shoots.

He tried to work out tonight's reshoot of the attempted murder
of Eboli, an action sequence that required multiple angles and
shots so it could be edited to look fast. It would have been complicated
even in the Unicorn Glade. This, however, was now
gift-wrapped in red and white ribbon and crawling with scenes-of
crime officers, so they'd have to go back to filming in the centre of
the maze.

Then there would be several hours spent lighting Alpheus's nose
before he prayed in the chapel, but at least that was an interior,
which wouldn't be sabotaged by any sunrise.



417




Tristan was reeling from tiredness. Then another hammer-blow
struck: Dupont had rung to say that Aunt Hortense had been diagnosed
with cancer of the pancreas, which could finish her off at
any moment. She was heavily drugged and hardly conscious, down
at the chateau in the Tam.

Tristan was devastated. Hortense might not be his real aunt any
more, but she was all he had. He had been saddened and amazed
to hear how upset she'd been that he'd cut her party. Perhaps she
was a little fond of him, but he had been too traumatized by events
to call her to apologize. The moment they finished shooting
tomorrow he'd fly out to Toulouse. He felt his world crumbling. If
she died before he got there, he'd never discover if Rannaldini had
been telling the truth.

'She keeps asking for you,' chided Dupont.

Tristan also felt bitterly ashamed that he wished Hortense had
waited until he'd finished shooting to decide to die. Visions of
Beattie's stinking, impaled body swam before his eyes. He felt
himself retching.

'just like rush-hour on the Piccadilly line,' grumbled Chloe, as
most of the unit, including several plain-clothes policemen,
squeezed into the centre of the maze. 'Ouch, someone goosed
me.'

'Only my brolly, bad luck,' boomed Griselda.
Everyone giggled nervously.
'Quiet, please,' roared Bernard.

Who knew if they were standing next to the murderer? Shirts
already soaked in sweat were additionally drenched by the
towering rain-soaked yew walls. Even Tristan was wearing his
director's cap back to front to stop the drips running down his
neck.

• 'Now I know how labs feel when they're rammed into their

after a wet day's shooting,' grumbled Griselda.

' 'The shoodng ees to come,' said Mikhail, admiring his .22.

else shivered and tried to read Rozzy's copy of the


'Killed in Action,' said a huge headline, above an incredibly
glamorous photograph of Beattie.

There were endless delays. The moon sailing through an archi
clouds
was making lighting a nightmare.

going to have problems with those police helicopters?'
asked Sylvestre.

should blot them out but we'll have to watch the long


"They'd just finished rehearsing when the crush was intensified
one who believed one should get back on to
immediately after a fall, he had dragged along a reluctant,

Tab. Wolfie promptly dropped Tristan's shooting script



418
	419



in the mud, which went unnoticed by Tristan, who also felt his
heart fail. Tab looked so thin, so pale, so impossibly, ferociously
adorable. Griselda hugged her, which made Tab scowl more than
ever.

'How ridiculous! We're overcrowded enough as it is,' hissed
Rozzy, as she turned over a page of the Scorpion to find a large
picture, taken years ago, of Rupert arm in arm with Beatde.

'Friend of the Famous,' said the capdon.


Having left Tab in the care of an utterly tongue-tied Wolfie, Rupert
pushed off to talk to Sexton. The only thing that had driven her
out of the house, Tab hissed to Lucy, was the arrival of Helen.

'She insisted Mrs Bodkin unpack for her, then grumbled she
couldn't find anything, then pushed Taggie's divine food round
her plate all lunch going on and on about Beattie and nurturing
a viper in her bosom. Daddy said, "Any self-respecting viper would
die of malnutrition trying to survive on all that silicone." He's such
a bitch but he does make me laugh. Oh, God, Luce, isn't Tristan
divine? I'm not cured at all.'

Glancing surreptitiously across at Tab, Tristan found her gazing
at him with such longing it burnt him. He mustn't weaken. If only

he could bring himself to explain about Maxim.

'Stand by to shoot,' shouted Bernard.

'We'll have to wait thirty seconds for this cloud, Tristan,' called
Oscar, lowering his view-finder from his eye.

'Oh, here's Timothy. I wonder if his wife liked her present,' said
Rozzy, as Gablecross, Karen and two uniformed men with their
hats on forced their way in.

'The Grand Inquisitor,' sang Baby. Then, as the music died in
the speakers, he launched into '"A policeman's lot is not a happy
one, happy one'.'

'Hello, Tim,' cooed Chloe, kissing him on both cheeks.

'Tristan de Mondgny...' began Gablecross, furiously wiping off
lipstick.

'Oh, go away,' said Tristan irritably, 'we're about to shoot.'
'Tristan de Montigny,' repeated Gablecross sternly, 'you are
being arrested on suspicion of the murders of Roberto Rannaldini
and Beatrice Johnson. You don't have to say anything but you may
harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something
you rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in
evidence.'

There was a scream from Rozzy, and a rumble of horror that rose
to a roar. No, thought Lucy, in horror. I shopped him. Only the
......


hemming her in kept her from fainting. As chests were

out in outrage and the moon went in again, the maze

$eemed even more terrifyingly claustrophobic.

- 'You cannot arrest me,' said Tristan haughtily, 'I am making a
film, and I have to fly out first thing tomorrow to Toulouse where
my aunt is seriously ill.'

'
	And that's the last we'd see of you, matey, thought Gablecross.
'Unfortunately that's irrelevant,' he said. 'You've been arrested

on suspicion of murder.'

'At least we finish the scene' said Bernard firmly.

There was a murmur of assent. Gablecross looked round at the

solid phalanx of crew, muscular arms folded like a rugger team,
blocking any escape, and felt there was no way an English lorry
could get through a French blockade.

'Stand by to shoot. Nice and quiet behind the camera,' called
Bernard.

. Up started the strings, out sailed the moon. Gablecross had to

admire the professionalism, particularly Tristan's.

'Roll sound, turn camera,' he said quietly, standing there, as if

without a care in the world, never taking his eyes off his singers.


Eboli, with heavy sarcasm, was now attacking Elisabetta's hypocrisy for posing as a virtuous wife when she was all the time having an affaire with Carlos, until Mikhail whipped out his .22, spinning it
over and over like a hired killer.

The yew walls seemed to expand as people flattened themselves
against them. Suppose the gun was loaded? Then Baby leapt
forward, squeezing Mikhail's hand like a dog's muzzle.

'Why d'you hesitate?' taunted Chloe, yellow eye flashing.
Everyone jumped as the .22 clattered to the ground.

Lucy felt her eyes filling with tears of despair, as Mikhail begged
Baby to hand over to him any incriminating papers he might be
carrying to stop them falling into the hands of the Inquisition.

'To you? The favourite of the King?' sang Baby, in bitter irony.
It is the only moment in the opera when Carlos doubts Posa's
loyalty. Mercifully, no helicopters interrupted the long, long
pause. Then, puppy-like, Carlos became all apology, handing
over his 'important papers', not realizing he was fatally incriminating
his friend, before falling into his arms.

The acting had been so wonderful, for those few moments
people had forgotten the murders. As the entire orchestra
pounded out the friendship theme, Lucy frantically mopped her
eyes.




420
	421



	'I have betrayed my friend,' she thought in agony.

	'Cut. That was perfect,' Tristan told everyone. 'Well done. If the

	gate's clear, print.'

	'We'll wrap now, call a weekend break,' said Bernard, who was

	quivering with rage, 'and by then you'll be bailed.'

	'I may not. You, Oscar and Valentin know exactly what to do.'

	Taking off his director's cap, Tristan plonked it on Bernard's head.

	'Now's your chance to play Truffaut.' Then he kissed Bernard on

	both cheeks, handed him. his shooting script and added, with a

	break in his voice, 'Here are my important papers.'

	Finally he turned to Gablecross, mockingly holding out two

	clenched fists.

	'Put on the handcuffs.'

	Ogborne and the crew closed in menacingly, but when Tristan

	shook his head they fell back.

	All this was too much for Tab. With a scream of rage, she flew at

	Gablecross, hammering him with her fists.

	'He's innocent, you stupid asshole, Tristan wouldn't hurt a fly.

	You just need a conviction. Yesterday you thought I'd killed

	Rannaldini.'

	'With some justification,' murmured Chloe.

	'Once you get him into that horrible place,' went on Tab hyster
	ically,
'you'll trick him into a confession.'

	'Bb6 bb6 stop it, please.' Tristan turned back in anguish and

	pulled Tab off Gablecross. A second later she had fallen against

	him, sobbing pitifully.

	'It's all right.' His arms closed round her. 'I didn't do it, I

	promise.' For a second, he laid his ashen face against her pale hair

	and they clung to each other, like souls in torment.

	'Mr de Montigny,' said Gablecross, not unkindly.

	Tristan searched the appalled, often weeping, faces for one he

	could trust.

	'Lucy, please look after her.'

	But as he was led away, Tab had to be prised off by Wolfie.

	'He'll be OIL' Lucy made heroic attempts to sound convincing.

	'How d'you know?' screamed Tab.

	'It's all a terrible mistake,' reassured Wolfie.

	'How d'you bloody know either?' Tab was about to fly at him,

	when she caught sight of the photograph of Beattie and her father.

	'Stop reading that shit.' She snatched Rozzy's newspaper and

	tore it to shreds, before storming, like Eboli, out of the maze.

	She found her father heaping abuse on Gablecross: 'Tim-Dim
	ButNotAtAll-Nice
strikes again,' he yelled, then, turning to

Tristan
	bail you first thing tomorrow.'

Having poured so much money into Don Carlos, there was no way

Rupert was going to lose his director before filming was completed.
'Poor, poor Tristan but also poor me,' sighed Sexton.

They were insured against violent death but not against the
director murdering the producer, although it must be a fairly
frequent occurrence. He had better get on to the backers to reassure
them.

As Tristan vanished into a police car, which in turn vanished
under a black tidal wave of press, Hermione could be heard
complaining, 'It's very inconsiderate of Timothy. My last night on
the set, a most taxing scene. Who will now give me direction?'

'The wrong man's been arrested,' screamed Tab. 'Can't you
think of anyone but yourself?.' She picked up Valendn's discarded
plate of porridge and was about to ram it in Hermione's perfectly
made-up face when Wolfie grabbed her wrist.

'Pack it in. You're behaving like a stupid child.'

'I'm not stupid. Why don't you do something to help Tristan

rather than standing round like a stuck pig?'

After that Rupert took her home.

There was no time to think then until Alpheus and Hermione's
little scene in the chapel was safely in the can, but as dawn broke
on Tristan's first morning behind bars Wolfie realized Lucy was
missing. He found her sobbing in Make Up.

:
	'It was my fault he was arrested. I let out his terrible secret.'

. She didn't want to hurt Wolfie by revealing his father's part in
it, but she had to tell someone she could trust.
..' Wolfie was totally practical.

: 'As soon as we get away tomorrow, we're going to France to track
down Aunt Hortense and the truth. We'll take the Gulf and leave
,before anyone finds we've gone.'




Gerald Pordand had been determined to fight off any takeover by
Scotland Yard. 'They hear the West Country burr,' he said furiously,
'and think we're turnip-heads down here.'

Pressure from the media and the public, not to mention those
viragos in their newly printed 'I loved Rannaldini' T-shirts who
were doorstepping Rutminster police station, had been so intense
that Portland had rushed Gablecross into making an arrest before
he had sufficiendy gathered his evidence.

Fortunately, by the time Tristan had been booked in and his
clothes, including his beloved peacock-blue shirt, had been
whisked off to Forensic, and he'd been forcibly DNA-tested, by
having a cotton bud rammed under his tongue, and strip-searched
- 'Christ, did you theenk I had Beattie's floppy deesks shoved up
my ass?' - it was too late to start questioning him.

Tristan, meanwhile, had been transformed into a snarling wild
animal. The final indignity was when he was forced to re-dress
himself in the nadir of chic - a papery white boiler-suit.

'I am totally eenocent of murder, but not for much longer,' he
yelled, as the custody officer rammed him in a tiny cell with only
a single mattress on a low, flat board for a bed and one small
frosted-glass window. But at least it had its own bog, and he was so
exhausted and so relieved not to have to brief Hermione that not
even the arrival of a caterwauling drunk at three in the morning - which he thought, for a hideous moment, might be Mikhail -
roused him for long from the best night's sleep he'd had in
months.

Prisoners must be checked every twenty minutes. The hatch on
Tristan's door was going up every twenty seconds, as women

424


and secretaries made flimsy excuses to visit the cells.
i Winnie, the Polish cleaner, only four foot ten, who had once

cornered an escaping serial killer with her Squeegee mop, was
.continually standing on top of her upturned bucket to peer in.

'He's getting better viewing figures than Four Weddings and a
Funeral,' grumbled DS Fanshawe.

All this at least gave Gablecross a chance to work out his line of
questioning, and gain three hours' sleep beside a tight-lipped
Margaret before a quick briefing of the Inner Cabinet.

'We think we've got our man,' announced Pordand. 'Application
has been made to the French justices to search Montigny's
flat in Paris. Police have already raided his rooms in Valhalla, where they found a packed case so he may have been going to do
.a runner.

Then, turning to Gablecross and Karen, he said sternly, 'Just
remember Montiguy's got to cope with what he's done. Don't try
to traumatize him any further. You're not there to trick him, just
unlock his memory. Never underestimate the blackest villain's
longing to be thought well of so don't be judgemental or hostile.
Are you hearing me, Tim? All you want to know is what happened
and how it came about.'

'Let me get at him,' muttered Gablecross.

	'Get us a curl of his hair, Karen,' whispered Debbie Miller.
Karen was terribly nervous. It was the first time she'd had to

interrogate a murderer. The minute they'd exhausted a forty-five'minute
tape, Gerry Pordand would seize a copy for a listen. It was
suddenly so set in stone. It scared her that, as the interviewing
officers, she and Gablecross had priority and could order members of the investigating team to follow up leads for them.

"'But Karen was not as nervous as Tristan when he woke up and
reality kicked in. It was not just backs-to-the-wall but shoulders
rammed against the skeleton cupboard, the lock of which
Gablecross would soon be relendessly picking. Christ, he had so
much to hide. How could he hold together a brain disintegrating
like a paper handkerchief in the bath?

He had refused a lawyer. There was no way he wanted grey, desiccated
Dupont jetting over at thousands of francs an hour, crying
croc .odile tears, then telling his brothers, and all Paris, 'Now I know
why Etienne rejected the boy...'

All Tristan wanted, for the moment, was a telephone, nearly
giving the duty officer monitoring his call a coronary as he broke
into rapid French to find out how last night's shoot had gone.

Surprisingly well, according to Bernard. They'd finished all the



425





cover shots and Rupert's briefing of Hermione - 'Walk up the
sodding aisle and kneel down beside that American dickhead' had
been terse but effective.

Bernard admired Rupert more and more, particularly when this
piece of information made Tristan laugh, but only until he'd asked
for news of Hortense.

'Drifting in and out of consciousness, but sinking fast, I'm
afraid.'

'I've gotta get out of here,' raged Tristan.

'Don't worry. Rupert's been on to the French Ambassador and
the Home Secretary half the night. Are you OK, mon enfant?'

'Well, no-one's tugging out my toenails or threatening to burn
me at the stake.'

He had regained his cool by the time he entered the interview
room, which was windowless, oblong, furnished with only a square
black table and chairs and, he remarked, almost as minimalist as
his flat in Paris.

Karen giggled, Gablecross rolled up his sleeves, loosened his tie
and switched on the tape-machine, which clung to one of the
cracked walls like a leech.

To relax him, Karen at first asked him about his childhood,
drawing him out on hoary old Hortense, on the hostility of his
father, on his admiration for Laurent, the freedom fighter, who
never squealed under torture, and on Rannaldini's affection,
which had done so much to dispel Tristan's sense of failure as

a son.

Then, making sterling efforts not to sound hostile, Gablecross
switched to the day of Rannaldinrs murder, and Tristan told the
same story, how he'd returned in the middle of Sunday, driven
round the Forest of Dean looking for locations.

'In particular the final scene, when Hercules rip up enough oak
trees to build his own funeral pyre.'

'Like films about fires, do you?' asked Gablecross casually. 'Have

you any idea how Rannaldini's watch-tower caught fire?'

'I tell you, I was miles away in Dean Forest.'

He had bought a half-bottle of brandy at an off-licence, he
added, but had lost the tab, and had slept in a field.

'I need peace. For three months, to avoid importuning courtiers,
I scutde down passages like Louis XIV. I was unhappy with
Rannaldini's opening and ending. They were too self-indulgent. I

needed to plot my campaign.'
'What was the field like?'
Tristan shrugged. 'Just a field.'

you wearing when you came utt,s ........

on Sunday?'

Careful, thought Tristan. 'A blue shirt and jeans.'

'How d'you explain this, then?'

Karen produced an Evening Standard photograph, obviously
mapped by some fan, of Tristan in a bottle-green polo shirt and
off-white chinos outside his car in Dover.

'Maybe I was wearing that. I don't notice clothes. I search for
trouser for five minutes yesterday morning before I find I had them

on.' Tristan smiled helplessly - the lovable eccentric.
Gablecross wasn't beguiled.

'Betty says before you left for Paris on Saturday you were looking
everywhere for that blue shirt, which Sally, knowing it was a
favourite, had whipped to mend a rip in the shoulder and sew on more buttons. She left the shirt washed and ironed on your bed on Sunday morning. On Monday morning before you got back it had
gone, and both Sally and Betty found your white chinos and green
polo shirt in the dirty-clothes basket.'

Tristan raised his eyes to heaven. 'They drag clothes off me -
Rozzy too. They 'ave millions of clothes to wash, how can they
remember the days?'

. 'You didn't drop into Paradise to change?'

:'Certainly not.' He daren't light a cigarette in case his hand shook.

But just as Betty and Sally had lovingly chronicled the progress
of his clothes, so two village groupies with binoculars had seen his
dark blue Aston parked in a secluded field down Rannaldinrs
drive. Wheelmarks had been found here. Traces of similar plants,
hemlock, water dropwort and lesser rosewort, had been found on

Tristan's wheels.

'They probably flower in Dean Forest,' said Tristan vaguely, as
he started to sketch Karen. The damson bloom of her skin, even
under the fluorescent light, was exquisite.

'The lesser rosewort is only indigenous to Rutshire,' snapped
Gablecross.

Round and round went the wheels of the tape, taking down
evidence to be used against him. Underneath the outward languor he's shit-scared, thought Gablecross.

Tristan expressed no surprise that his prints were all over the
murder weapon. 'I was unhappy with the scene I'd shot. Earlier we
use knife. While everyone sleep on Thursday afternoon, I took gun
from Props, and try out hand movements in front of big mirror in
my room. Having replaced it and the key, I type memo on




426
	427


Production writing paper saying I need .22 as well as Carlos's

important papers for reshoot on Friday night and leave it in
Jessica's in-tray.'


At first Tristan deflected every question coolly. He was enchanted
by the recovery of his Lalique lily-patterned lighter which, he
explained, had been a present from the crew after The Lily in the
Valley, and which had vanished from his desk last week, and his
signet ring, which he'd lost on the night of the auto dafe. 'I lose
weight. It must have slipped off.'

He's lying, thought Gablecross. There was no way that shiny ring
had been exposed to the elements for nearly three weeks.

'Both lighter and ring were found near Rannaldini's body in
Hangman's Wood,' he said.

Careful, thought Tristan, for the hundredth time.

'I must 'ave dropped them when I went to see Rannaldini
previous.'

'You often walk in the woods?'

'Of course. I am man in love with the dark. I spent my childhood
in cinemas or watching videos with curtains drawn.'

'Your cr6me-de-menthe-flavoured chewing-gum was also found
near the body.'

'Anyone could have peenched that. I leave packs everywhere. My
dear Detective Sergeant,' Tristan yawned so hard he nearly put his
jaw out, 'I have been working on film about murder for nearly a
year. I am not so stupid I litter possessions round Rannaldini's
body like Millais' Sower and leave my prints all over murder

weapon. Someone is framing me.'
'Any idea who?'

'Probably Rannaldini from the grave.'

At one moment, he nearly fell asleep. 'I am bored talking about
myself. Can't we talk about you, Sergeant, or more excitingly you?'
He smiled at Karen, who blushed.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, she kept praying Tristan
hadn't done it. He was so glamorous - she admired the flawless
bone structure beneath the smooth olive skin, the curls dark as
winter dusk, the greyhound grace exaggerated by the ten-pound
weight-loss. And he was so polite, opening doors when she went
out, leaping to his feet when she came back. When he wasn't
pacing up and down, he was drawing or scribbling. 'Why d'you
keep making notes?' she asked.

'To stop me going crazy. I am in last stage of making film. It's
like a marathon winner being dragged away ten yards from the
tape. Worst still, greatest scene in Don Carlos takes place in prison.

428


I had had these experiences to draw on when I direct it.

The claustrophobia, moths concussing themselves against overhead
light, the tiny cell that makes Carlos's dungeon look like
Trafalgar Square. How much more realistic would I have made the
Grand Inquisitor?' He glared at Gablecross, who, refusing to rise,
proceeded to take Tristan in minute detail through the early hours
of Friday the thirteenth.

'What did you do during the break?'

'Caught between Hermione and Rupert, with everyone rowing
and running off on wild-ghost chase, I have 'orrible migraine and
need strong pills to zap it. I go back to the house. Even more
'orrible I see Eulalia 'Arrison approach down south-wing landing.
Since she arrive she hassle me for interview and plus, so I leap
behind big cupboard.'

'You should have told her you had a migraine,' said Gablecross
sardonically.

Tristan almost smiled. 'She goes into her room. I hide in mine

and take pills. They were called Imogram.'

'You didn't call anyone?'

'Certainly not.' Tristan steeled himself to look Gablecross in the eyes.

Making a note to check the lack of calls with his mobile company,
Karen asked what had happened to the rest of the Imogram.

'In my room, or maybe I put them in jeans pocket. I heard
Eulalia leave room some time after one, then I must have dropped
off, because a crash wake me, like medicine cupboard falling off
wall. I looked at my watch, realized to my horror it was two o'clock less twenty-five minutes and race back to the set.'

'There is evidence, intercourse took place before Beattie died.
Did you give her one?'

Like James emerging from the lake, Tristan gave an exaggerated

shudder: 'It would have been easier to kill than fuck her.'

The tape ran out.

Every time there was a break, one tape was sealed, untouched,
in case it was needed in court. Knowing Portland would be
listening acutely to the other, Karen was relieved she wasn't interviewing
Tristan alone. Hearing his heartbreakingly husky voice, she increasingly couldn't concentrate for wondering what he
would be like in bed. Imagining that wonderful sulky mouth
kissing hers, the long powerful body crushing her own: violent
images. God, she must pull herself together.

His body language told her nothing. He sat very still, never
pulled faces, fiddled with his hair, licked his lips or blinked. Even
in that white paper boiler-suit, he looked like a hopelessly



429




glamorous intern in a hospital soap. He had drawn a beautiful
picture, turning her into a fawn, and was working on a cross
looking warthog.

'What were you asking me?' he drawled insolently.

Was he really so tired that he forgot a question before he could
answer it, she wondered, or was he playing for dme?


430


At mid-morning on Saturday, Wolfie popped into Rutminster
Police Station, bringing Tristan a running order for Monday's polo shoot and a sprig of honeysuckle from Lucy.

Hearing, during a break in interrogations, that he'd been in,
Gablecross had huge delight in ordering Fanshawe and Debbie

Miller to drive out to Valhalla and check a few of Tristan's statements
with Wolfie.

Rolling up at Valhalla, however, a fuming Fanshawe and Debbie were greeted by Rozzy, devastated about Tristan's arrest, and
begging them to take a posy of gentians, a picnic of quiche,

chicken breasts, peaches and a Thermos of 'proper' coffee back to
the station for his lunch.

YI can't get away, Sergeant Fanshawe, I have to dog-sit for Lucy.'
James, looking unbelievably boot-faced, was taking up
Wardrobe's entire sofa.

. 'Where's Lucy gone?' demanded Fanshawe.

'Away with Wolfie,' said Rozzy, in a worried voice. 'She wouldn't
tell me where but she's taken her passport.'

'Everyone on the unit has been ordered not to leave the
country,' said Fanshawe, in outrage.

Even a furious Oscar and Valentin had had to forgo their Bastille Day jaunt.

'I begged her,' wailed Rozzy. 'Oh, when are they going to let
poor Tristan out?'

'When he starts levelling with us,' said Fanshawe. 'You've no idea
where Lucy's gone?'

'To have a nice break with that yummy Wolfgang,' giggled
Debbie. 'Gablecross will be choked - he thinks she's gorgeous.'

431



Outside Rutminster Police Station, television vans and the cars
of the press, desperate for news, clogged up the weekend traffic
like autumn leaves. Time had ceased to have any meaning. Tapes
and breaks came and went. Antagonism intensified between
Gablecross and Tristan, who had drawn a whole family of bullying
warthogs. In the airless room the shadows deepened beneath all
their eyes. Gerald Portland, still listening to the tapes, was stepping
up the pressure.

'Show him his dad's letter, ask him about the Montigny. Tell him
we can't find any migraine pills or memos about pistols in anyone's
out-tray, and if that doesn't work, tell him they've trashed his fiat

in Paris and found some interesting stuff.'

	Karen switched on the tape again.

'Have you seen this painting before?' She waved the photograph
of The Snake Charmer.

'Just beautiful.' Gablecross examined Delphine's naked body.
'Give me that!' howled Tristan. But as he dived across the desk
Gablecross's pudgy fingers closed over the photograph. 'Not so
fast, baby boy. Betty and Sally found the original under your
mattress on Thursday.'

'For Christ's sake, what more lies are they going to tell? I never
saw that painting except in Rannaldini's watch-tower. In film we
are making, Philip search for letters under Elisabetta's mattress. If
I was going to steal painting, I would hide it somewhere more
subtle.'

'Rannaldini was going to publish the photo. It says "Chapter
Four, Myself When Young" on the back. Wonder if he gave her
one. You didn't want a porn pickie of your mum doing the rounds,
did you?'

'Of course I fucking didn't,' shouted Tristan, draining a paper
cup of black coffee as if it were whisky, and fumbling for a
Gauloise.

'Tabitha Campbell-Black was distraught when you were arrested.
Why did you blow her out the morning after you got offwith her?
Was this anything to do with it?'

As Gablecross threw down a copy of ltienne's letter with the
crest of the chained serpent, Tristan let out a hiss far deeper and
more venomously fearful than any snake.

'Rannaldini disturbed the Montigny snake, didn't he?' persisted
Gablecross. 'Was that why you went looking for him? There were
signet-ring marks on his neck.'

	'I told you I lost it ages ago.'

	'D"
		is?

		;r from
	;r to

'But was he your father? What does he mean about your being
the product of an "obscene incestuous union"?' Gablecross
lingered brutally on the words. 'And saying as a result he could
never love you.'

'I've no idea.' Shaking violently, Tristan stubbed out his hardly
smoked cigarette. His face was fog-grey, his eyes darting with
terror. Karen longed to take his hand.

'Was that why you cut Auntie Hortense's party - because you

weren't a Montigny any more?'

'No!'

'Was your mad granddad your father? Was that the secret
Rannaldini had discovered?'

'who told you that?' Tristan went berserk, lunging across the
table, catching Gablecross by the shoulders, shaking him. 'Who
fucking told you?'

The duty officer would have intervened at this juncture if he
hadn't gone flat on his back, slipping on Winnie's over-polished
floor outside the interview room.

'Stop it,' shouted Karen. 'She didn't mean to blurt it out.'

'She?' For a second Tristan froze, then releasing Gablecross's
shoulders, he turned on Karen. 'which she?'

'We don't reveal our sources,' she mumbled,jolted by the horror
and incredulity in Tristan's eyes.

'It was Lucy. She was the only one who knew.'

'She was only trying to explain why you were so traumatized,'
stammered Karen.

'You stupid bitch,' sighed Gablecross.

Tristan slumped on his chair. 'How could Lucy?' he repeated


It was as though Horatio had betrayed Hamlet, or Posa his
friend Carlos. After that the fight went out of Tristan.

: ' 'Rannaldini showed me the letter,' he told Gablecross, 'and I
everything. I look at great beech trees posed like divers on
,. I ask myself how they stand so towering and
they can hold up the sky. It is because their roots like steel
deep into the earth. Rannaldini sawed through my roots


his head in his hands, he groaned. 'He wreck my picture,

any hope with Tabitha, he want to publish disgusting
of my mother. For God's sake, I thought he loved me.'

tears.

said Gablecross gently, echoing the words he
to Woifie. 'He treated you appallingly.'

up in anguish, Tristan noticed for the first time the



understanding and compassion in Gablecross's eyes: the 'long
headed legend'.

'You were doing a public service, lad, ridding the world of
Rannaldini,' went on Gablecross, almost caressingly.

There was a long pause, just the faint whisper of the turning
tapes and the sound of a late-night drunk kicking a beer can along
a pavement. Then Tristan realized he was being set up.

'I am not that public-spirited,' he said flatly, and continued to
deny everything.
'If you're not prepared to help yourself...' snarled Gablecross.
As his cell door banged and he was left alone with the script of
Hercu/e, which he would never now make, Tristan was kneed in the
groin by desolation. He thought of Aunt Hortense gasping her last,
of sunflowers, cicadas, frogs and tractors, their lights going back
and forth like low shooting stars in the night. He'd never see her
or France again.
The honeysuckle was filling his cell with sweetness, like Lucy's
slow, shy, warm smile. Since he had been in prison, the thought of
her had kept drifting into his brain like an aria. Now he couldn't
trust her any more. With a sob of despair, he picked up the sprig
of honeysuckle and ripped it to pieces. "

434


Lucy was speechless with admiration for the way Wolfie calmly
hijacked Rannaldini's Gulf and, ignoring furiously waving
policemen and ground staff, flew off to the south-west of France.

'I learnt to fly before I could walk,' he explained. 'Grisel saw us
leaving so the whole unit will think we've sloped off for a dirty
weekend.'

'Cause a lot of gossip.'

'Let it,' said Wolfie cheerfully. 'Might make Tabithajealous.'
" Valhalla had been hot, but the Midi seemed a hundred times
hotter. The wind, blowing like a hair-dryer about to fuse, whipped
Lucy's curls into a frenzy.

" 'Now I know how a frozen chicken feels when it's shoved into the
microwave,' she grumbled.

Stupid from lack of sleep, she was passionately grateful for the cool efficiency with which Wolfie hired a car, located the village of
Montvert and booked into its best hotel, appropriately named La
Reconnaissance.

Having departed in such haste, Lucy was dismayed she hadn't packed deodorant, a hairbrush, or base to tone down her shiny,
increasingly flushed face.

'At least we'll get a decent dinner this evening,' said the ever
practical Wolfie, who was consulting the menu and the wine list as she came down. 'And there's the chateau,' he added, pointing up at the disdainful back of a large grey house nestling in woodland on top of the hill.

'The Montigny family never forgave the villagers for burning the place down during the French Revolution,' said Lucy, as they got back into the hired car, and she eased her bare legs gingerly on to the scorching leather seat. 'When the family returned from exile,



435





they pointedly built the new chateau facing away from the village

and overlooking the Pyrenees. Oh, what a sweet dog. Can I ring

Rozzy to ask if James is OK?'

'Certainly not. She'd want to know where we were and promptly

grass to her friend Gablecross. We don't want Interpol muscling

in. Anyway, we'll be back tomorrow.'

As Wolfie swung off the main road and headed for the moun
tains,
Lucy groped for her dark glasses to ward off the dazzling

golden glare of the sunflower fields.

'Am I too under-dressed?' she asked nervously, glancing down

at her orange T-shirt and grey shorts. 'Hortense sounds a martinet.

Tristan says she's been having little heart-attacks for ages, growing

more and more eccentric. She used to play golf with the Duke of

Windsor and once smashed a Louis XIV chandelier demonstrating

some iron shot. Evidently she cuts up Le Monde every morning and

lays all the stories she wants to read on chairs so no-one can sit

down.'

'She'll need a fleet of sofas to accommodate the coverage of

Tristan's arrest,' said Wolfie.

'Probably been kept away from her, if she's so ill. I do hope she'll

see us. Tristan also said she was terribly mean. The estate's next to

a golf course, and she rushes out, grabs any lost balls and wraps

them up for her nieces and nephews for Christmas. Tristan

realized she was losing it last birthday when she sent him a black
board
with the letters of the alphabet round the frame.'

Wolfie stopped Lucy's ratding by asking her irritably if she

remembered everything Tristan had ever told her.

'Probably.' Lucy flushed an even more unbecoming shade of

red.

Wolfie nodced the anguished way she glanced at every farm

building they passed as if she was expecting some horrific content

of battery hen or veal calf.

'Oh, no,' she wailed, as he slowed down behind a lorry, 'they've

got lambs in there. I bet they haven't been watered for yonks.'

Nearly removing the side of the hired car, as he shortened her

misery by overtaking the lorry, Wolfie snapped that she'd got to

toughen up.

'You can't suffer for every squashed earwig in this world.'

'Hortense suffered,' protested Lucy. 'She claimed that the best

years of her life were spent fighting for the Resistance, despite

being captured and tortured by the bloody Krauts--- Oh, Wolfie,

I'm sorry.'

	used to it,'
	Then,
	of two

fat men towing trolleys and sweating in plus-fours, 'Here's the golf
course, and there's the ch$teau.'

To epel intruders, two hissing stone Montigny snakes were
chained to the pillars on either side of the big iron gates. Ahead at the end of an avenue of limes and flanked by ancient arthritic oaks
stood a grey, square house with its pale grey shutters closed against
prying eyes and the afternoon sun.

The good news was that all Hortense's greedy relations had
temporarily pushed off to another family house in Brittany to celebrate
the sixty-fifth birthday of Tristan's eldest brother Alexandre,
the judge. With them, leaving the coast even clearer, had gone the
even greedier Dupont, who was already carrion-crowing at the
prospect of a large cut of Hortense's estate.

The bad news was that Hortense, who'd kept such iron control
of her life, was now lying upstairs under a mosquito net, diamorphined
up to the eyeballs, recognizing no-one.

'Yesterday, she was convinced the Bolsheviks had taken over the
chSteau,' sighed Florence, the kind, plump housekeeper, who was
almost as old as her mistress. 'Today the Nazis have moved in, and
she's back in the Resistance. So I'm afraid you won't be very
welcome,' she added apologetically to Wolfie.

'But Tristan could be in prison for life,' begged Lucy. 'The police
think he killed Rannaldini to stop him spreading some vicious tale
about his parentage.' If she hadn't seen a flicker of fear in
Florence's faded grey eyes, Lucy might not have persisted.
'Hortense is the only person who might know the truth,' she went
on. 'Please let me stay in case she regains consciousness.'

Florence was wavering when there was an imperious skidding
crunch in the gravel and Rupert, resplendent in a pale yellow suit

shirt, emerged from a cloud of dust and a hired
Mercedes. Apparently unaffected by the heat, he made Lucy feel

hotter than ever.

:: 'What are you doing here?' she snapped.

'Resisting arrest, disobeying the orders of Gablecross, casing the

Bonjour, Madame.' Slipping into effortless French, Rupert

all his charm on Florence.

:Absolutely bloody typical, fumed Lucy. She'll take one look and

over. But fortunately it seemed that Aunt Hortense loathed

those who looked like blond Luftwaffe pilots,
s much as Germans. Rupert was sent packing as summarily


who was allowed to stay on for a little while, couldn't hide
that both men were glad of an excuse to escape.





	'	We'll go back to La Reconnaissance and chivvy ambassadors,'
said Rupert, sauntering toward	s the Mercedes. 'Join us for dinner
if you can get away.'

'We'll leave everything in 'your loyal hands",' quoted the ever
pragmatic Wolfle, clearly delighted at a chance to ingratiate
himself with Tabitha's father.

Frandc with thirst, Lucy gulped down a whole jug of orangepress. Heat was coming in great waves through the kitchen window. Only
endless sprinklers kept the garden green. Beyond, like purple
shagpile, stretched fields of lavender.

Once the maid had disappeared to shop in Montvert, Florence
relented and got out the family scrapbooks she'd kept since Tristan
was a little boy. It wrung Lucy's heart to see him always hovering at
the edge of family groups,.like an outfielder desperate not to miss
a smile that miraculously Etienne might one day throw him.

At least the later scrapbooks were crowded with Tristan's
cuttings. Florence had already pasted in the marvellous reviews of The Lily in the Valley, dominated by the luminous beauty of
Claudine Lauzerte.

To stop herself falling asleep, Lucy begged to be given a tour of
the house. Downstairs big high rooms papered in cranberry reds,
Prussian blues and deep snuff browns were the ideal setdng for the
Impressionist collection, acquired ahead of fashion in the late
nineteenth century, and for Etienne's great powerful oils, but not
to lighten the heart of a little boy. Everywhere frayed tapestries of
hunting scenes hung above cabinets lovingly painted with fruit,
flowers and birds. Leggy gold tables and chairs seemed poised to
race through the french windows into a park shimmering with

heat-haze. You couldn't see the mountains for dust.

The great hall housed the family portraits.

'That was Louis who died at Cr6cy, and Edouard who was
wounded at Agincourt, and there's Blaize,' Florence ran her finger
inside the frame to test for dust, 'who died in Spain on a secret
mission. He was murdered by the Spanish Inquisition.'

Lucy peered at Blaize in excitement. Handsome, hawk-faced,
with dark cynical watchful eyes, he was definitely a Montigny, and
one of the reasons Tristan had embarked on Don Carlos.

'And there's Henri, painted by David,' said Florence proudly,
'Such a great general that Napoleon coaxed him out of exile to
fight at Austerlitz and Borodino. The Montignys have always been
a great military family.'

Soldier-citizens of the world like Posa, thought Lucy.
'Tristan's brother Laurent was brave, wasn't he?'

'More hotheaded,' said Florence, somewhat disapprovingly. 'A

off a ladder here one day. Madame Hortense
rang six doctors but none would treat him. Laurentjumped in the
Jeep, drove to the nearest, put a shotgun to his temple, and didn't
remove it until he'd come back and set the leg.'

'How romantic,' sighed Lucy. 'No wonder Tristan hero-worships

his memory. Why isn't there a painting of him?'

Florence glanced round nervously.

Laurent's portrait had hung in the hall, she admitted, soiling a
welcome to everyone coming through the front door. But Etienne
was so devastated when he was killed, the painting was locked away
with everything else in his room.

'But surely after Itienne's death...' protested Lucy.

'He left instructions in his will that the door was to remain
locked.'

'At least let me look at Tristan's room.'

'It was very small.' Florence looked unhappy. 'When Tristan

went to university ltienne turned it into an en suite bathroom.'
Don't show your anger, Lucy had to keep telling herself.

'There should be a portrait of Tristan. He's the handsomest of
the lot,' she said crossly.

In answer Florence looked up at the gilt Montigny snake chained
to the lintel. '"Seek not to disturb the serpent,"' she whispered,
her face creasing into a hundred folds of anxiety.

'I'm only seeking to disturb the wretched thing,' Lucy was nearly
in tears, 'because I want to find out the truth. Tristan was desperate
to question Hortense about his parents, but he was too busy with Carlos to fly out, and now it may be too late.'

'It was a secret, Madame swore to ltienne she would take to the
grave.' Florence glanced up at a gold Empire clock, which featured
Neptune brandishing his trident. 'The nurse will be going in ten
minutes. You can sit with her instead of me.'


Aunt Hortense had blurred, weather-beaten features and wild
white hair, like a gargoyle caught in a snowstorm. She lay without
covers, her long nightgown rucked up to show purple bruised shins
and a plaster on every toe. Beside her on the bed were two
marmalade cats and a tiny brindled Italian greyhound, which one
of her gnarled, ringed, gardening-begrimed hands repeatedly
caressed.

Opposite the bed, filling the wall, was a ravishing Rubens of
milkmaids tending a herd of paddling red cows and chatting up
a swain driving a horse and cart.

'We hung it there last week,' whispered Florence. 'Madame
wanted something beautiful to look at.'




438
	439



To the right hung a small photograph of a young Hortense being
handed the Croix de Guerre for her courage during the Resistance.
With her boyish brown curls, her deep-set dark eyes and
quick smile, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Tristan.

Perhaps? wondered Lucy. But Hortense would have been too old
at fifty-five. Could she have had an illegitimate daughter? She must
have a story to tell.

In moments of consciousness, Aunt Hortense played/a grande
dame for all her worth. 'I wouldn't dream of discussing family
matters with a complete stranger,' she told Lucy coldly.

'I just wanted to talk about Tristan.' Carefully Lucy explained the
situation. That Tristan had been arrested for two murders that he
hadn't done.

Hortense, however, was only interested in why he hadn't come
to her party. 'I broke totally with protocol and put him on my right
and had to talk to air all lunch. I suppose his film and Claudine
Lauzerte were more important.'

'He sent you a lovely present,' said Lucy, recognizing Rozzy's gift
wrapping on the Louis XV desk. 'You haven't even opened it.'

'Why d'you stick your nose into everything?' snapped Hortense.
'Are you a journalist?'

'Tristan stayed away from your party because he felt a fraud,' said
Lucy desperate.ly. 'Rannaldini had just told him he wasn't a
Montigny, that Etienne wasn't his father at all.'

Stammering, Lucy went throug.h all the palaver of Maxim being
so jealous of Delphine marrying Etienne that he'd raped her. For
a second, Hortense's eyes opened a centimetre like an old crocodile.

'Really?'

'So Tristan's father was his grandfather, and on his deathbed
ldenne kept rambling on about fathers and grandfathers.'

'We once had a footman called Maxim,' confided Hortense.
'Oh, for God's sake,' exploded Lucy.

There was a knock on the door, the nurse was back to give
Hortense a shot.

'Oh, please don't,' cried Lucy in despair. 'She'll go even more
doolally.'

'I will not,' said Hortense tartly. 'I'll have you know, young
woman, I'm in considerable pain, and there's no need to shout.'


Lucy fought sleep. It was still unbearably hot and the scent of
jasmine growing up the still warm walls was almost sickly. The
melon frames gleamed in the moonlight. She watched the tractors,
hung with lamps, going back and forth, labouring to get the

harvest in before next week's forecast storm. The combines roared
so loudly it was like working in a munitions factory, grumbled
Hortense.

Down in the village they were celebrating Bastille Day. Fireworks
rose and fell against a pearly grey night, Lucy could hear the accordion
playing 'La Vie en rose'.

Glancing at Hortense, she noticed tears trickling down her wrinkled
cheeks and took her hand.

'I'm so sorry to hassle you. Could Rannaldini possibly be
Tristan's father?'

'I wouldn't put anything past that devil, always hanging round

Delphine like a wasp round a melon.'

'Or Bernard.'

'Have you seen the ghost of the Mondgny snake yet?' said
Hortense, as she drifted off to sleep.




44O
	441


'At last I've found someone I can charm,' announced Rupert.

The proprietor of the Reconnaissance had sloped offto a Bastille
Day party, but his busty, henna-haired wife had taken one look at
Monsieur Campbell-Black, personally cooked him and Wolfie foie- gras pancakes and miraculous coq au vin and unearthed several
bottles of the best claret Rupert had ever tasted.

For five hours, he and Wolfie had not drawn breath, not
chivvying ambassadors but discussing everyone, on the unit, and
particularly the polo shoot. They had enjoyed a glorious bitch
about Isa and Helen, and Rupert was touched by the way Wolfie's
rather solid face lit up whenever Tab's name was mentioned. Now
they had moved on to Tristan and a large bottle of Armagnac.

'I'm sure he's not Papa's son.' Wolfie decided against a second
piece of Camembert. 'If Papa had fathered such a genius he
could not have resisted boasting about it. Also Papa was half
German and I don't think Tristan's got any German blood.
With him one thinks of the shifting subtlety of composers like
Ravel and Debussy rather than heavyweights like Brahms,
Beethoven and B ruckner.'

'Does one?' yawned Rupert. 'I wouldn't know. I suppose
Rannaldini could have made up the story about Maxim years ago
just to crucify ltienne. He was such a manipulative shit.'

'He could have,' reflected Wolfie, fiIling their glasses. It was a
relief to talk about his father objectively: people always pussyfooted
round the subject.

'Why are you actually here?' asked Rupert suddenly.

'Because I owe Tristan,' replied Wolfie. 'My father fucked him
up and I've got to find out the truth. And because I adore Tab.'
Wolfie's drunkenly crossed eyes filled with tears. 'And I can only

compete with Tristan when he's no longer crippled by this awful
stigma. It's like fighting a man with both hands chained behind his
back.

'Anyway,' Wolfie smiled slightly, 'Tab told me not to hang
around like a stuck pig, and get Tristan out of prison. And also I
really love the guy, he's so great to work for. You feel like a dry leaf
suddenly swept up by the warm south-west wind of his enthusiasm.
I couldn't go back to straight law again.'

'Hum,' said Rupert. 'Did you kill your father?'

'When Tab told me he'd r-r-raped her I wanted to, but it seemed more important to find out if she was safe.'

Wolfie longed to ask if Rupert had killed his father. He felt the man was quite capable of murder but also had enough sense of fair
play that, if he had killed Rannaldini and Beattie, not to want
Tristan to take the rap.

Was that why Rupert was so sure Tristan wasn't guilty? On the
other hand, had he come down here to check out the Montignys as suitable in-laws for Tab, or was he merely a commercial animal
in search of his director?

'I know Tabitha loves Tristan,' Wolfie added wistfully, 'but I'm
in that state of love so well described by Stendhal, "utter despair
poisoned still further by a shred of hope".'

He is a clever boy, thought Rupert, probably too clever for Tab.
'Tab's not perfect,' he told Wolfie. 'She's got my terrible temper, she can be an appalling drama queen, and she doesn't have the greatest sense of humour.'

'Nor do I,' sighed Wolfie. 'People always tell me I'm too serious.
I've heard all those jokes about slim volumes containing two thousand
years of German humour.'

: 'I like Krauts,' said Rupert. 'I knew a lot on the show-jumping
circuit - good blokes, feet on the ground but knew how to party.'

Getting up, he wandered unsteadily over to the window,
unzipped his flies, peed into the garden, causing scuffling and
angry mewings from Madame's two cats, and only just zipped up
in time as a besotted Madame returned with an even more ancient
bottle of brandy. If Monsieur Campbell-Black would come into the
back room, Tristan's arrest was on the late-night news.

Clips were being shown of Valhalla, of Rannaldini conducting,
of Tristan arriving at the police station and ofltienne in a big straw hat painting in the chtteau gardens. When Hermione appeared,
opening her big eyes and saying she had every confidence because

friends Chief Constable Swallow, Rupert Campbell
Black and Sexton Kemp were now at the helm, Rupert and Wolfie
collapsed with howls of drunken laughter.



443





'I'm suffering from Dutch Helm Disease,' said Rupert, pretending
to fall over.

'Poor old Tristan, but bloody good publicity,' said Wolfie wiping
his eyes.

'Christ, she's beautiful,' sighed Rupert, as Claudine Lauzerte was

shown talking to Tristan on the set of The Lily in the Valley.

" Trs jolie, trs chic,' agreed Madame.

'Oscar's lighting helped,' said Wolfie quickly. 'Tab's much more
beautiful.'

'So's Taggie,' admitted Rupert. 'Even so, I wouldn't mind having
Madame Lauzerte as my luxury on Desert Island Discs.'

'Thank you,' said Wolfie, as Madame filled up his glass. 'I should
like to pick up the tab on this,' he told Rupert firmly. 'I should like
to pick up Tab any time,' he added.

Perhaps he did have a sense of humour after all.

'You have a very charming son,' Madame told Rupert skittishly.
'It is rare for fathers and sons to get on so well.'

'Very,' agreed Rupert, then turning to Wolfie, 'If Tristan had
really loved Tab, he wouldn't have backed off after a one-night
stand. I don't believe in that kind of sacrifice.'

'Yes, you do,' said Wolfie resolutely. 'Tab told me you backed off
for nearly a year because you didn't feel you were good enough for
Taggie.'

'Maybe I did.' Rupert scratched his head in pleased surprise. 'Maybe I did. And, talking of self-sacrifice, why's Lucy here?'

'Because she wants to slay the dragon of this frightful calumny,'
said Wolfie. 'And unconsciously in the hope that Tristan will be so
touched by her enterprise and nobility, he'll realize she's the one
he loves not Tab.'

'He won't, unfortunately. Men don't love buckets like that, just
for their virtues.'

'Lucy's not a bucket,' protested Wolfie. 'She can look gorgeous.'
Rupert raised a sleek sceptical blond eyebrow.

'I wouldn't ask you to shoot on a cocks-only day,' he drawled.
'Telephone,' called out Madame.
It was Lucy.

'Any progress?' Wolfie asked her.

'None.' Lucy lowered her voice. 'She's a stubborn old bat. She
wouldn't squeal when the Gestapo tugged out her toenails and
she's not likely to tell me anything. She was wandering so badly this
evening that she insisted on having the blackout put up in her
room.'

Hearing a burst of music, Wolfie looked round and saw Madame
was teaching Rupert the can-can and started to 1.augh.

'Do you want us to come and get you?'

'Neither of you sounds capable,' snapped Lucy, then after a
pause, 'I'm sorry, it's been a long day, but Florence is letting me
stay the night. She made me a gorgeous Grnytre omelette and
opened a bottle of Sancerre. I just wish... Are you OK, Wolfie?'

'Hunky-dory. Thingsh will be better in the morning. Goo' night,
Lucy.'

Lucy couldn't remember ever being more tired. But just as she
was about to fall into the arms of Morpheus she thought of Tristan
in his small cell, and how much she would prefer the arms to be
his. By this time, Morpheus had retreated in a sulk, and Lucy was
left to agonize until four in the morning, when the roar of the
combines and the waiting started again.

She went downstairs and raided the family albums, poring over
photographs of picnics, balls and shooting-parties, of weddings
and christenings, when the limes in the avenue were only shoulder
high and the jasmine round the house wasn't planted. Etienne was
everywhere, always surrounded by adoring women, while Hortense and his three elder sons looked on, stolid and disapproving. But
lae found no sign of Laurent, unless he was that beautiful young
man with the li;¢ely, restless, not-very-happy face to the rear of one
group, gazing down at a girl whose slim back was to the camera and
whose long dark hair was tied back with a scarlet ribbon.

: Around ten on Sunday morning Lucy was toying with a croissant,
black cherry jam and coffee so dark brown it reminded her of
Tristan's eyes, when a bell jangled in the kitchen.

'I'm plunged in pitch darkness, I don't know if I'm alive or dead,'
a querulous voice over the intercom. 'Will someone immedi

me a cup of tea?'

take it,' Lucy begged Florence.


t you gone?' snapped Hortense, as Lucy opened the


, yet. I haven't got what I came for.'

I suppose you're in love with my nephew like the rest of them.

painting.'

well, judging by some of the oils downstairs,' said Lucy.

to be as fat as the Rubens nude or as bloated as that
Bacon cardinal.'

gave a snort of laughter.

love you?'

of mine, a most beautiful girl.'




'Married, I suppose.'

'Not acutely. She's got a horrid husband and Rannaldini told
Tristan he couldn't marry her because he wasn't a Montigny, and
because of his bad blood because Maxim had raped his mother.'

Carefully, laboriously, Lucy went though the whole story until

Hortense said sharply, 'You told me all that last night.'

Lucy raised her eyes to heaven.

'But you haven't told me whether it's true.'

'I swore to my brother ltienne never to discuss the matter.'
'But it's so unfair to Tristan.'

'Life has always been unfair to Tristan. He was such a sweet little
boy - I was far too strict with him. I didn't want him to grow into a
cissy. I knew women, and possibly men, would spoil him later.'

There was a patter of feet as the little Italian greyhound scampered
in, leapt on to the bed and covered his mistress's grey,
wrinkled face with kisses.

'Still they love you. I've spoilt my animals so dreadfully. What will
become of them when I'm gone?'

'Tristan would look after them if you got him out of prison. Who
is Tristan's father? If it wasn't Rannaldini could it be Oscar, or even

Bernard Gu6rin? He and Tristan are incredibly close.'

'It's a secret I'll take to my grave.'

'You're not going to your grave. Let me wash your hair.'
'Whatever for?'
'I'm a hairdresser!'

'And you have designs on my nephew!'


'Don't treat my head as though it was a glass bauble,' snapped
Hortense, a quarter of an hour later. 'Give it a good hard rub.'

Despite pointing out that the fluffy fringe over her forehead was
very common, Hortense was grudgingly delighted with the result,
even making Lucy hold up the mirror at the back where a pink bald
patch had been covered over. Afterwards she let Lucy make her
up.

'They'll be doing that to me in my coffin very soon,' she added.

'Don't be so macabre. Do you want me to come back and do it
for you then?'

'Not if you make me wear that lipstick. I look like a Jewess.'
Lucy giggled.

As soon as Florence had gone off to church, Hortense decided
she'd like to give her make-over an outing and announced she

wanted to pay a visit to her brother's grave.

'It's horrendously hot.'

'A good dress rehearsal for hell fires.'

446


don't think you're well enough.'

best judge of that.'

outside was evidence that Hortense had lost her
the place. A jungle of plants, their huge leaves pressing

glass, was struggling to get out of the conservatory. Ivy

the shutters. An emerald carpet of algae covered the
Grass had grown over the stepping-stones of the path

to the fields of lavender.

'ltienne had painted with a palette, and Tristan with light,

had created as dazzling effects with plants. As Lucy her down the garden, she pointed out some pale yellow

pink centres.

*,Those came from Monet's garden at Giverny.'

a brass section about to explode, to the right was a proud
of Regale lilies.

?Pick them for my brother,' ordered Hortense.

rwould do her nut, thought Lucy, as she laid the lilies across

knees.

. 'what a pity we couldn't have used this for Charles V's tomb.'

as they approached a splendid mausoleum.
,Etienne Alexandre Henri Blaize de Montigny, 1905-1995,
she read out in a shaky voice.

Although ltienne had died eight months ago, there were as
.many flowers outside the tomb as at Valhalla. Pilgrims, acolytes,

and admirers came from all over the world and, denied access to the chfiteau, paid .homage at the grave.

'Now leave me,' said Hortense. 'I'll call you when I want to go
back.'


The noonday sun was punishing. Beads of sweat were breaking
through Hortense's make-up, red lipstick was escaping down the fines round her mouth as Lucy wheeled her back.

'Those lilies were struck down in their prime, like Laurent,'
reproved Lucy. 'Why didn't they fly his body back and bury him
here?'

'Because he was blown up,' said Aunt Hortense tardy.

. 'By his own side, Tristan told me,' persisted Lucy. 'Why didn't
Etienne insist on an inquiry? He had the clout.'

'Would that have brought Laurent back?'

As Lucy eased Hortense back into bed, her flesh felt as soft as
marshmallow.

'Was ltienne buried or cremated?' she asked.

'Buried, of course.'

'Great,' crowed Lucy. 'That means his body can be dug up and



447




DNA-tested to see whether he's Tristan's father or not.'

'How dare you suggest that, you conniving hussy?' gasped
Hortense hoarsely. 'Coming in here, stirring up trouble.' Then,
after an eternal silence, she seemed to cave in. 'All right, ltienne
wasn't his father. Now are you satisfied?'

'No,' stormed Lucy. 'I'm not leaving till I know who it was.'
But Hortense, whether deliberately or not, had fallen asleep.


After that Lucy lost any sense of time. As night fell and lightning
flickered round the hills illuminating the clouds, she made one last
attempt.

'Please, please, Tristan can't marry and have children if he
believes a psychopath rapist was his father. He needs a family of his
own so badly to give him the love none of you provided. All he ever
did was try to please ltienne.'

The clock ticked, the cicadas chirped, Lucy longed to pick up La
Grande Mademoiselle's velvet-handled musket, which Hortense

kept always by her bedside, and empty it into her.

'I have nothing to say.'

But as the nurse frogmarched Lucy out, Hortense called after
her, 'Goodbye, Miss Latimer. Don't forget to put your name and
address in the visitors' book.'

'I bloody well won't,' shouted Lucy. 'What d'you want me to say
- that you're a stubborn old bitch who, through your pigheadedness,
sent Tristan to prison for life?'

She wept all the way back to the .hotel. 'I handled her all wrong,'
she told the chauffeur. 'If, by any chance, she changes her mind,
here's my mobile number.'

She found Wohqe only just recovering from last night's excesses.
Rupert had flown home. All she knew was Tristan would be
charged in court tomorrow.

448


Back in Rutshire, as Gablecross and Karen were tied up full time
with Tristan, other detectives took over their leads. Fanshawe had
never been happy with Chloe's alibi about jogging round Paradise
in the dusk. She would also have more to lose than most, if Beattie
.had dumped about her in the Scorpion.

. So, late on the afternoon of Saturday the fourteenth, Fanshawe

Debbie went over to Valhalla and found Chloe working out in
gym. She was wearing shorts and a pale blue sleeveless T-shirt.
Fanshawe, having gone into a frenzy of hair-smoothing and tooth
licking, couldn't keep his eyes off her glistening cleavage and her

mmooth buttocks, continually on display as she stretched and
.twisted at the bars.

-' 'Sunday was a sad day for me, Sergeant,' she told him soulfully.
..... After a long affaire, Mikhail dropped me because his wife found

out.'

'Your mother phoned you from abroad at around nine thirty.'
Fanshawe frowned at his notes. 'You were going to find out where she was staying.'

'I completely forgot. I'll do it tonight.'

. 'Then you went for a jog round Paradise.'

'I was depressed, the tennis had hardly been taxing.' Shoving her fists into her armpits, Chloe rotated her elbows so her breasts
thrust forward. 'I jogged over the River Fleet up past Magpie
Cottage. I wanted to see if Tab was in. She'd been terribly down
since Tristan blew her out. How's he bearing up, by the way?'

Such was Chloe's egoism, it was the first time she'd thought of
Tristan. At least, as he'd been arrested, this must only be a routine
call.

'We haven't heard,' said Debbie.



449




Tristan collapsed in his chair. Suddenly it came spilling out. 'OK,
I came back to Valhalla. I need my address book to call an actor,
Colin Firth, to see if he was interested in playing Hercule. I parked
the Aston in a field off the drive, I didn't want to be pestered. I
sweat like a peeg, so I had a shower.'

'And changed back into your favourite peacock-blue shirt and
jeans.' Karen couldn't contain her excitement.

'Oui, and then I buggered off to Forest of Dean.'

'Did you call Colin Firth?'

'Non.' And beyond that he wouldn't budge.


'He can bloody well appear in court tomorrow,' said a furious
Gablecross, as, armed with Hermione's CD and Rozzy's cards and
presents, he set off to his anniversary party.

He had looked almost attractive, conceded Karen grudgingly, as
she wandered round the incident room, gazing at the map of
Valhalla, flipping through statements, looking for silly little details
in the jigsaw puzzle. As a detective you had to keep pushing yourself
beyond the point you were able or wanted to go, continually
asking how, when, why?

Even in the group photograph of the unit, Tristan looked sad.
There were enough tears in those haunted eyes to put out any
funeral pyre. Why was he so sad?

Karen glanced through the Sundays, which had all led on
Tristan's arrest. Rannaldini's fans were still streaming into
Paradise. A lynch mob had tried to burn down Tristan's caravan.
Portland had put a uniform man outside. The Scorpion had bussed
down a lot of actors clutching more tulips in Cellophane, and
photographed them weeping and pretending to be Beattie's fans.
Much was being made of Tristan's cutting Hortense's party, his
rows with Rannaldini, his callous dumping of Tabitha, the raid on
the Paris flat. Tristan's family had all said, 'Je ne dis rien', but
Alexandre, the judge, huffing and puffing with disapproval, was
expected to fly over for the court hearing tomorrow.

In the Sunday Times there was a big piece by George Perry
describing Tristan's ever-flowering genius, and comparing
Claudine Lauzerte with Garbo.

'Oh, what a beautiful woman,' sighed Karen, admiring
Claudine's huge, languorous eyes and the thick, dusky hair.

Madame Lauzerte, went on the piece, was currently filming in
an adaptation of Rose Macaulay's novel, The World Is My Wilderness,
in Wales. Why should Tristan need an address book and clean
clothes to drink brandy in a field? pondered Karen. Who was he
in French to on the telephone when he came back after

Rannaldini's murder? The incident room was having difficulty in
tracing the owner of the mobile as the number was unlisted. How
could such a devastating man have had no suspicion of a relationship
- except for a disastrous skirmish with Tabitha - for the past
three years?

Karen picked up a telephone. 'How would you like that drink?'
Ogborne, having read down the right side of the Heavenly Host
menu all summer and chosen the most expensive food, was so fat
he could only fit into tracksuit bottoms. Undaunted, he met Karen
at the Old Bell in Rutminster during the break.

The willows trailing in the river Fleet were already turning
yellow, holidaymakers were hanging over the bridge.

'Shooting polo's been a shambles,' confided Ogborne.
'Mildaail's fallen off three times. All he's interested in is getting his
new crocus-yellow Range Rover resprayed before he goes back to
Russia - I'm sure it's nicked. Tab has been yelling non-stop. With
no Tristan to smarm, charm and calm, and no Rupert, Lucy or
Wolfie, we might as well have stayed at home. How's Tristan? Bet
he's enjoying the peace. He'll be auditioning for Hercu/e soon, so
they can send potential leading ladies in with his caviare every day
- can't be bad.'

;Is Claudine Lauzerte going to be in Hercu/e?'

'I'm sure. If Tristan had had his way, she'd have played
Elisabetta, but she's even older than Dame Hermione.'

'Did she give him that peacock-blue shirt and jeans he never
takes off?.'

:;-.'Dunno,' said Ogborne, going vague. 'Secrets and Lies is on at the
Odeon. Fancy going to see it this evening?'

Did the crew give him a Lalique lighter covered in lilies
atthe end of the shoot?'

+; .'Naah,' said Ogborne. 'Bit upmarket for us.'

•
	Karen thought she'd better offer some plums of gossip.

be getting the DNA results tomorrow or Tuesday, Tristan's

, if they pull their fingers out,' she said. 'Botanists in Forensic
frightfully excited. Among the plants shoved up Beattie's

she lowered her voice as the couple at the next table

'was a really rare white rock rose and an even rarer
the monkey orchid, the chimpanzee, which hasn't been
in England for fifty years.' She collapsed with laughter. 'So

added pressure to locate their place of origin.'

t fink they needed any potting compost up Beattie's

Ogborne.

Claudine like?'

Ogborne deliberated, 'Valentin described her as a



bourgeois 'ousewife whose face had been touched by the finger of
God.'

'Did anything happen between her and Tristan?'

'I gotta go back to the set. You coming to that movie?'

'Yeah, sure.'

Ogborne glanced round furtively.

'Tristan was giving Madame Vierge direction one day,' he
murmured. 'She was in costume, long-sleeved purple dress, little
lacy gloves. Tristan was squatting down, holdin' her hands, talking
intensely, as he often does with Hermione and Chloe, or even Baby
and Mikhail, but I noticed his finger was caressing the gap between
her sleeve and her glove.'

'I'll see you outside the Odeon at the start of the big film,' said
Karen.

She was not at all pleased when a call on her mobile asked her
to whizz over to Penscombe to investigate the whereabouts of
Rupert Campbell-Black. Interpol had had no success in finding
him, so Gerald Portland wanted her and Gablecross to pump
Taggie.


Neither of them talked on the drive. Karen's head was full of
Tristan and how to prove his innocence. Gablecross was feeling
beleaguered. All his Brownie points over Hermione's CD and
Rozzy's presents had been cancelled because he'd had to leave his
silver-wedding lunch in the middle of the speeches. Nor would
Margaret ever forgive him for snatching up the pink roses and
silver foliage, sent by her sister and Australian brother-in-law, to
hand over as a peace-offering to Taggie after his mauling of
Tabitha last Thursday.

'No-one's got any right to live in such a big house,' fumed Karen,
as she pressed Rupert's doorbell with unnecessary force. 'This
place would make a wonderful hospital.'

Xavier and a pack of dogs answered the door. For a second he
and Karen gazed at each other. Then he said, 'My mother can't be
disturbed, she's crying. My sister Bianca is comforting her.'

What a beautiful child, thought Karen, wondering how he fitted

into such a privileged white right-wing environment.

'Why's she crying?' she asked.

'Because her dog died. Shall I give her those flowers?' Xav eyed

the pink roses in Gablecross's hand.

'No, we'd like a word with her.'

'She's down at the graveyard,' explained Xav. 'I'll take you, if you
promise not to upset her. My father left me in charge.'

Karen's disapproval evaporated when Xav introduced her to

Peppy Koala on the way. She had won twenty-five pounds on him
in the police sweepstake and bought a ribbed scarlet sweater,
which she had worn to dramatic effect at the local disco.

'When did your dog Gertrude die?' asked Gablecross, admiring
the handsome glossy chestnut.

'Tab brought her home on Sunday night. I woke and looked out
of the window. She had blood all over her dress. Daddy went off in
the helicopter earlier.'

'Did he?' Gablecross stroked Peppy Koala's sleek, arched neck
only a little faster.

'He took his gun because he was so angry.'

'When did he get back?'

'Before Tab. When she arrived with Gertrude, Daddy went out
and hugged her. He hadn't seen her for years. She cries a lot and
look past you. Gertrude's funeral was the next day. Mummy won't
cry in front of Tab, but Tab's gone to polo today. Daddy promised
us Gertrude has gone to heaven, but Bianca's worried Rannaldini's
gone there too and might hurt Gertrude again. But Daddy said
Rannaldini would be sitting in a bonfire with demons sticking
these into him.' As he closed Peppy's half-door, Xav tapped a pitchfork
leaning against the wall. 'Tab's mother's staying too. She's a
drip. Daddy hates her.'

....
	'Are you sure your father took the helicopter on Sunday night?'
'I said so, didn't I?'
'Where's he now?'

'Abroad, to find out more about Tab's boyfriend who's in
prison.'

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, thought Gablecross
in jubilation.

They found Taggie planting heartsease and polyanthus round
Gertrude's grave. Bianca was helping her with a toy trowel. Both
children were dispatched to the kitchen to organize cups of tea.
..... The moment Gablecross laid the roses beside Gertrude's wonky
cross, Taggie started to cry again.

...... I'm so sorry.' She collapsed on to the grave of Rupert's great
Olympic horse, Revenge. 'But Gertrude was with me the whole
time before I married and when I lost the babies, and when Beattie
Johnson dumped twice. I thought she'd be jealous when we
adopted Bianca and Xav. We had to leave her for six weeks when

went to Bogota, but beyond the odd sniff, she loved them,
finished up the food they didn't like. She always kept a biscuit

hidden in her basket so she could rush out and eat it very slowly in

of the other dogs. I'm sorry.'

raised streaming eyes to Karen and Gablecross. 'She was



such a mascot. I live in such a lovely house, but it seems so empty
without Gertrude. I feel our luck's running out.'

'No, it isn't,' protested Karen, putting an arm round Taggie's
shoulders. 'You've got everything to live for. Those kids are so
cute.'

'It's probably because Rupert's first wife's staying,' confessed
Taggie, wiping her nose with the back of her hand and covering
her face with earth. 'She keeps saying Gertrude "had a good
innings", like some stupid cricketer. Oh, God, I'm being a bitch.
Lysander, Rupert's assistant, has an incredibly clever, handsome
headmaster father, who's coming to supper tonight. He and Helen
can quote poetry at each other.'

The afternoon sun peering through a lime tree showed up her
dreadful pallor.

'Mrs Campbell-Black,' said Gablecross, feeling a louse, 'I know
this is distressing, but BeattieJohnson's last call on Friday night was
to your husband. According to Gordon Dillon on the Scorpion, she
had some dirt on him and some other woman while you've been
married.'

Taggie looked up in bewilderment, Karen in horror.

'Your husband was overheard telling Beattie he'd bury her. He
left the set at midnight. An hour and a half later she was dead. Have
you any idea of his movements that night?'

Taggie almost fell off Revenge's grave, frantically digging a hole
in the still iron-hard earth with Bianca's trowel.

'He was so pleased George Hungerford had given Tab an alibi,'
she mumbled, 'he rushed off to persuade him to get back with
Flora.'

'He hardly spent all night playing Cupid,' said Gablecross sarcastically.
'Are you worried your husband might have killed
Rannaldini and Beattie?'

'Of course he didn't,' gasped Taggie. 'Oh, bugger.' In her violence she had snapped the little trowel in two. 'Oh, poor Bianca,
of course he didn't.'

A witness, went on Gablecross relentlessly, had seen Rupert
taking a gun and leaving Penscombe by helicopter. A helicopter
had also been seen landing at Valhalla and two men running into
the wood near Rannaldini's tower. Another witness had seen
Rupert with a gun in his hand.

Taggie sat back on her heels, mouthing in horror.
'He had plenty of motives.' Gablecross ticked them off on his
fingers. 'Tab being raped by Rannaldini, Gertrude being killed,
Rannaldini arranging for Tab to marry Lovell, Rannaldini trying
to murder your stepson Marcus.'

456


I 'Rannaldini did that?' whispered an appalled Taggie.

'And your husband had more than enough reason to kill Beattie.
Where is he, anyway?'

'Abroad,' said Taggie numbly. 'He didn't leave a telephone number.'

'Oh, come on, Mrs C-B. Your husband wouldn't cross the lawn

without leaving a phone number.'

'How's Tabitha?' asked Karen.

Gablecross, like a hound tugged off the scent, kicked her ankle.
'Better, I think.' Grateful for the distraction, Taggie planted a
polyanthus upside down. 'Wolfgang's been so wonderful to Tab.
He keeps ringing to see if Helen's OK. Helen's convinced he
fancies her, but I'm sure he's only hoping to get Tab. Oh, help, I'll
be punished for being a bitch again.'

Gablecross returned to the attack. 'What time did your husband
leave the house last Sunday?'

'I don't remember, I was so upset about Gertrude.' Taggie began to cry again.

As the stable clock struck five, Xav and Bianca came round the corner carrying a trayful of tea in which floated three cups and
some melting chocolate biscuits. They'd been joined on the way by
a beautiful young man and a Jack Russell, who was rough-housing noisily round the graves with Xav's black Labrador.

'How dare you bully my mother?' said Xav in outrage.

'Whatever's the matter?' asked the beautiful young man in
horror.

'It's all right.' Taggie mopped her eyes on her T-shirt.

'I'll give you a pound each if you go and find my cigarettes,' the
young man told Bianca and Xav. 'Now, what the hell's going on?'
He turned furiously on Gablecross.

'He thinks Rupert murdered Rannaldini and Beattie,' sobbed
Taggie.

'Right.' The young man squared his shoulders. 'My name's
Lysander Hawkley. I'm Rupert's assistant and it's time I made a
statement.'

'It's nothing to do with you,' pleaded Taggie.

'I was with Rupert last Sunday,' went on Lysander, 'when Tab
rang and said Rannaldini'd raped her. We took the helicopter.

Rannaldini, incidentally, is the most evil person in the world.'
'How d'you know, sir?'

'He was married to my wife Kitty for five years, nearly destroyed
her. I had to give her a lot of therapy when we were first married,'
Lysander added solemnly. 'Anyway, Rupert swore he was going to
kill Rannaldini, and I wanted part of the action. We landed in the



457





park just after ten thirty. We couldn't find Tab, but about ten
minutes later we stumbled on Rannaldini lying on his back in the

middle of the wood. It was a bit dark for sunbathing.'

'How did he look?'

	'Not well. He'd been strangled.'

'Was he dead?'

'Very, so Rupert emptied his gun into him.'

'What kind of gun?'

'A .38. He bought it in Bogotfi when he adopted Xav and Bianca.
It's got a silencer on it, and it sounds like a wet fart. If I'd had a
gun I'd have done the same thing. As it was I kicked Rannaldini
very hard in the ribs. We didn't hang about. We'd already tried to
find Tab but the telephone box was redder inside than out. Rupert
was going bananas with worry, then Taggie rang him to say
someone with a Yorkshire accent was bringing Tab home.'

'And you're prepared to sign a statement that's what happened?
You're not just making this up because Rupert's your boss?'

'No. I'm far too stupid to do that.'


Over on George's polo field, they were coming to the end of a long,
shambolic day. Valentin had just filmed Baby hitting a ball around
and being drooled over by Chloe and a lot of groupies. The sun
was setting; they were waiting for the gate. Baby had moved away
from the others under the shade of a huge sycamore tree and was
sharing a Kit-Kat with his weary chestnut mare. Anything to do with
horses reminded him agonizingly of Isa. They had not spoken
since the night of Rannaldini's murder, but would have to soon,
about the future of Baby's three racehorses.

At least a couple in the next-door room at Le Manoir aux Quat'
Saisons had come forward and confirmed that they had heard Baby
singing on the balcony between ten and eleven on the night of
Rannaldini's murder.

'We thought, Oh, my God,' they had said. 'Then, once he
opened his mouth, we sat back and enjoyed it. Is he going to be
the next Domingo?'

So Baby had an alibi. On the other hand, the police had found
the bottle of Quercus he had left behind in his bathroom at Le
Manoir so he wasn't altogether in the clear.


'You know Isa?' A voice interrupted Baby's thoughts. It was Chloe,

who'd been in a strange, excited mood all day.

'He's my trainer.'

'I was with him the night Rannaldini was murdered. We've been
having an affaire.'

'You what?' Baby's pony, picking up the sudden tension, tossed
up her head and pulled away.

'I confessed it to Fanshawe, who has such a divinely uppity bum
in that grey tracksuit,' went on Chloe. 'I felt awful shopping Isa but
I needed an alibi. The police know I was in the wood earlier
because I dropped a lipstick, and they've found the scent Isa gave
me, called Quercus, on Rannaldini's dressing-gown. Baby?'

Seeing his horrified face, Chloe launched mockingly into Eboli's
lines:

'Oh, heavens, what thought makes you blench stock still,

Your word freezing on your lips ?

What ghost ises in between us ?"

Then, when Baby still seemed incapable of speech, she asked
plaintively, 'Will Tab go berserk, and d'you think Isa'll back me
up?'

Baby reached up a hand to scratch his restless pony behind the
ears. 'Good girl,' he murmured affectionately, 'which is more than
can be said for you, Chloe. You're a whore.'

'That's unkind,' pouted Chloe. 'I have to have a man in my life.'
'Have someone's husband, you mean.'

'Tab was keen enough to get her long claws into Tristan.'
'Tab was lonely and neglected.'

'You've never stuck up for her before. Loosen up, Baby. What
will Rupert do?'

'Give you a medal. He loathes Isa. Isa, on the other hand, will go
apeshit.'

'Isa's bats about me,' said Chloe defensively, then leapt back as,
for a terrifying second, she thought Baby was going to hit her with
his stick.

'"Bat" is the operative word,' said Baby harshly. 'Isa's a bloodsucker.
He's got a perfectly good mistress, called Martie,
bankrolling him in Oz. He didn't break up with her when he
married Tab, who turned out to be not rich enough because
Rannaldini wouldn't help out. I bet Isa suggested you buy some
horses for him to train.'

Then, ignoring bellows from Bernard that the gate wasn't clear,
Baby vaulted on to his pony and galloped off in the direction of
Valhalla.


It took Chloe some hours to trace the ex-directory number of Jake
Lovell's yard.

:. Having gone to bed early, Isa was woken not by the news of a sick

, which he would have understood, but by Chloe in hysterics.




458
	459


'Who the hell's Martie?' she screamed.
'My business partner.'
'A bit more than that.'

'Well - it's all over anyway. Who told you about her?'

'Baby. I told him about us.'

Isa sat bolt upright. 'You what?'

'The police found my lipstick near Rannaldini's body and
Quercus on his dressing-gown. I needed an alibi.'

'Well, I'm not giving you one, you stupid bitch. Anyone who
kisses and tells deserves all they get.' And Isa hung up.


Tristan paced in torment up and down his baking, airless veal crate
of a cell. The light was fading outside his frosted window, but he
could see nothing except the inside of his own heart. He knew that
a gentleman never named the women he had slept witl.a.. Montignys
didn't fuck and tell, as Rannaldini had, although Etienne had
fucked and painted enough.

For the last three years he had been having an affaire with
Claudine Lauzerte, so discreetly that not even Rannaldini's secret
ervice had rumbled them. He had fallen in love with her back in
1977 when she'd joined their table, the first time Rannaldini had
taken him to Don Carlos.

His dream had come true in 1993 when he'd cast her as the
object of a young man's adoration in Le Rouge et Le Noir. As she had
grown in beauty under Oscar's lighting and his direction, so had
their passion for one another. At first she had held off. Only when
lte had found her sobbing wildly over a newspaper report that he
wa sleeping with some starlet had he broken down her defences
and they'd become lovers.

:".But at what price? Claudine's husband Jean-Louis, the appro
liately named Minister of Cultural Affairs, was universally
to be a brute.

that was another reason why Tristan had identified with
i ilos. He had experienced all the hell of loving a married woman,
a stern, undemonstrative, unfaithful yet possessive husband.
could never drop in on Claudine unannounced, never expect
him in case the telephone number showed up on a bill
scrutinized byJean-Louis's accountants, never ring her at
in of the servants answered. Nor he

461



write because Jean-Louis or his secretary, also a spy, frisked the
post.

As Claudine became even more adored because of Tristan's
films, and was voted the Most Admired Woman in France, Jean
Louis'sjealousy increased, and so did the interest of the press who
followed her every move.

At first she had been reckless and while they were on location
spent all night in Tristan's arms. This had compensated for the
endless taunts that he was a closet gay, impotent, incapable of
sustaining a relationship. He had also had to endure the hostility
of beautiful women like Chloe and Serena, who couldn't understand
why he rejected their advances, not to mention the endless
matchmaking of his brothers' wives.

He had prayed Claudine would leave Jean-Louis and move in
with him or, better still, marry him. He didn't give a toss about the
twenty-four-year age gap. Sometimes, when life became unbearable,
she had come near to it.

But just before ltienne's death, one of Claudine's friends had
rung to say a newspaper was on to her and Tristan and about to
blow her saintly Madame Vierge image sky high. Claudine had no
desire to relinquish the moral high ground, so she had retreated
into her arid marriage. Gradually, for Tristan, hope had died, but
he couldn't stop loving her.

Until suddenly he had been jolted by Tab, and believed, by some
miracle, there might be life and love after Claudine. But
Rannaldini had promptly stamped on that flower.

In his most despairing thoughts since then, Tristan had dreamt
that Claudine, having four children of her own, might not
mind that he couldn't give her children. He had so longed to see
her again at the screening of The Lily in the Valley: he knew Jean
Louis was in Tuscany and was devastated when she'd failed to show
up, on the excuse that filming commitments in Wales were too
heavy.

He had forced himself to go to Hortense's party the next day,
but the sight of numerous Montignys, a tribe to which he no longer
belonged, milling around the lawn - Aunt Hortense in navy blue
pinstripe, the Croix de Guerre in her lapel, his self-regarding
brothers and their braying wives, and the smell of crayfish drifting
over the white rose hedge - had sent him fleeing back to Valhalla.

Here he collected the address book with Claudine's telephone
number in Wales, showered, changed into the peacock-blue shirt
and the jeans she had given him, and on which Lucy had put the
patch of a greyhound's head, and set out for the sleepy village of
Llandrogan.

462


He had rung from Valhalla to say he was on his way, his mobile cutting out before Claudine could say no. He had driven like the
devil and arrived while she was getting ready, her hair, which she hadn't had time to wash, still in rollers, with only one eye made up and her tummy still blown out from an early supper.

As he bounded upstairs like Tigger, she had sent him down again to pour himself a huge drink, which, by the time she had joined
him, had become two. She had looked so exquisite, he had swept her back up to bed, which had not been a success. He had come
instantly. In the old days, he would then have made love to her with his tongue and his hands, until he was raring to come again. Now he sensed her relief.

'It couldn't matter less, c/dr/, we're both exhausted. I have lines
to learn and I've got to get up at six. I'm not as young as I was.'

It was a far cry from The Lily in the Valley when they had made love
all night, and the violet shadows beneath eyes softened by happiness had only enhanced her haunting beauty.

Claudine herself, that Sunday evening in Llandrogan, had
suddenly felt too old and set in her ways. Reason has reasons the heart knows nothing about. She didn't want him to stay the night. She longed to take off her make-up and cover her face with skin
food. Worry about the lurking paparazzi would keep her awake
when she needed to look good on the set, and if she fell asleep she
might snore.

When Tristan told her about the problems with Rannaldini, she had been unsympathetic. All directors became increasingly twitchy
as the end of a shoot approached. Unable to bear it any longer, he had dropped the bombshell that Maxim was his father. To his
amazement, she wasn't very interested.

'The aristocracy have always been irregularly conceived, c/dr/.
My sister wasn't my father's daughter. I'm not sure I was either.
Jean-Louis's father was a naughty old boy too. Whenever we go
shooting on the estate I notice how the beaters all look like Jean
Louis.'

'For Christ's sake, it's not the same. My grandfather was a
psychopath who raped my sixteen-year-old mother, so I'm three
quarters his mad, minted blood.' Tristan had wanted to hit her, but had shaken her instead.

'Stop it, you're hurting me,' she had cried.

And what the fuck d'you imagine you're doing to me? thought
Tristan.

'I cannot have children,' he said bleakly.

Claudine had shrugged.

'There are too many children in the world. They're nothing but



463





trouble. Marie-Claire is threatening to marry a pied-noir. Patrice is
divorcing. Batrice is pregnant by her Egyptian boyfriend. Jean
Louis is out of his mind with worry.' Then, seeing, Tristan's
blackening face, 'Anyway, c/dr/, you have elder brothers, it is not as
if there's any need to carry on the Montigny line.'

When he tried to explain, he knew he was boring her. He would
have liked to have left then, but he had drunk too much brandy,
and was too tired so instead he had crashed out on her bed. She

had shaken him awake at three thirty. It would soon be light.
'I'm so terrified of the English press - they're everywhere.'

It wouldn't do to forfeit being the Most Admired Woman in
France, thought Tristan savagely.

As he had driven away from Llandrogan into the desolation of
dawn, and pulled into a field to sleep, he had been reminded of
the time he had broken the news of Maxim being his father to Lucy
and how she'd given him black coffee, laced with Drambuie,
wrapped him in her duvet, held him shuddering in her arms and
listened and listened, and how her hair was the same soft brown as
rain-soaked winter trees.


Coming back to earth, still pacing his cell, he remembered how on
the day after the murder, for the first time in months, Claudine
had actually slipped into a telephone box in Llandrogan to ring
him, pleading with him not to use her as an alibi. She must know
he'd been arrested, but she was clearly not coming forward to save
him. There was no light in the little frosted window. And no dawn
for him.


As Karen walked into the Pearly Gates with Ogborne after the
cinema, Jessica dragged her outside into the drizzle.

'I found this in my bag. I wrote Oscar's mobile number on the
back of it on Thursday. It's a memo from Tristan to Bernard and
the props department, saying he was planning to reshoot part of
Posa and Carlos's pistol scene in the Unicorn Glade on Friday
night, and he would need the .22 out of the props cupboard. Is it
important?'

Karen didn't even notice the drizzle become a downpour.
'Yes, it is,' she said joyfully.

'And, by the way, Mikhail's looking for you,' said a relieved
Jessica. 'He's in the production office.'

Karen found Mikhail utterly despondent about his crocus-yellow
Range Rover.

'I telephone ten garage today and ask how much they charge for
botde-green blow-job. They all shout 'orrible things and hang up.'


'I think you mean respray.' Karen had only just contained her
laughter, when Mikhail said he wished to make a statement.

'I took the Montigny from the votch-tower and I borrow lighter
with lilies from Tristan two or three days earlier. I must have
dropped it in the wood. I went there to kill Rannaldini about ten
forty-five, but he was already dead, strangled and shot. I also must
confess I actually make friends again with my wife, Lara, on night
before murder. When Rannaldini took her to votch-tower for
bonk, he boast Montigny painting on wall was vorth three million.
Finding Rannaldini dead, I took painting instead.'

'What did you do with it?' Karen's pen would hardly write for
excitement.

'Hid it under Tristan's mattress for safe-kipping.'

'Whatever for?'

'Tristan wasn't bonker like Sylvestre or Alpheus and wouldn't
squash painting. But when I go to remove it on Friday morning it
had vanish...'

Mikhail was amazed but greatly cheered when Karen gave him
an ecstatic hug. Gablecross was never going to speak to her again,
but she was more and more convinced Tristan was innocent.


The Llandrogan Badger Action Group held their monthly meet:ings
at the Leek and Grasshopper hotel on Sunday nights. The
badger setts along Chantry Wood were the pride of the area, and
at least forty badgers were known to travel nightly through the
wood, over Jackson's Meadow, skirting Catmint Cottage, down to
the stream which divided the valley.

i In summer months, the Action Group (or BAG, as they liked to
be known), anxious to observe the badgers' habits and protect
them from baiters, fierce dogs and even fiercer farmers concerned

about bovine tuberculosis, set up a camera to record these
nocturnal perambulations and their time and date.
. On Sunday, 15 July, Gareth Stacey, BAG's bearded secretary,
who spent a lot of time in the field and who stank worse than any
badger sett after a rhubarb raid, was about to give a slide show of
this month's findings.

: 'Come on, buck up,' grumbled Major Holmes, the village bully,
.who didn't care much for badgers but longed to get stuck into the
wine and light refreshments that followed.

'It's like magic,' said pretty Tracey Birkett, who taught at the
i local primary, 'that the brocks don't know we can see them all


	went
	click, went Stinker
			On the

	a
		the
	.



464
	465



	'Upside-down,' barked Major Holmes.

	Click, click, the right-way-up badger was followed by a barn owl,

	Lady Wade-Williams's Burmese cat, a couple of cubs, then a huge

	bull badger, who produced roars of applause.

	This woke up Keith, the junior reporter on the Llandrogan Echo,

	furious at having to cover the event when he could be in the pub,

	and who in the dark couldn't keep himself awake gazing at pretty

	Tracey Birkett.

	Click, click, click, click.

	'Look you, Gareth,' said Merv the milkman, 'we have an

	intruder.'

	'By Jove, we do,' said Major Holmes. ,,,

	As Stinker Stacey repeated the slide, ef¢yone could see a tall

	dark man in a peacock-blue shirt, jeans and loafers coming out of

	the wood.

	'He's yummy,' sighed Tracey.

	'Wouldn't mind having a teddy bears' picnic with him,' said Mrs

	Jones, the local baker, with a cackle.

	'Looks familiar,' said the Vicar, cleaning his glasses.

	'It's Lady Wade-Williams's handyman - he's always on the

	poach,' said Merv the Milk.

	The handsome intruder was followed by several rabbits, a fox,

	more badgers - two of them humping to loud cheers - and Mrs

	Owen's Jack Russell on a late-night spree.

	'There he is again,' said Jones the baker, in excitement.

	'Got one of them greyhounds on his back pocket,' said Merv the

	Milk.

	'Lovely bum,' sighed Tracey Birkett, earning a look of reproach

	from the Vicar.

	'He's some actor chappie,' said Major Holmes. 'Seen him

	before.'

	'No, he isn't.' Keith the reporter snatched up the evening paper
	and thrust it into the beam of the projector. 'It's that Froggy

	they've arrested for murdering Rannaldini.'

	'The time was three forty a.m., ninth of the seventh, ninety-six,'

	read out Tracey Birkett.

	'The murder's supposed to have taken place between ten and

	eleven,' said Keith, who was now leaping up and down in excite

	ment. 'Turn back to the first slide of him.'

	Click, click, click, click, went Stinker Stacey.

	Everyone peered forward in excitement.

	'Ten fifty
	on the ei
	yelled Keith in jubi

lation. 'He couldn't have done it. It's a
	hundred and

miles
	here to
	.


Even the Vicar forgave such language.

'Golly,' said Tracey Birkett. 'He must have been going into the
back gate of Catmint Cottage to see Claudine Lauzerte. Didn't they
make a film together?'

'It's him, all fight,' said Stinker Stacey. 'We'd better go to the
police.'


'It's him all right,' said DC Beddoes of North Wales CID. 'Must
have nipped into Catmint Cottage, given Madame Lauzerte un,
deux et trois, and nipped out again. Puts him in the clear. Couldn't
have strangled Rannaldini. You told anyone else?'

'Only the Daily 2¢;t, but it's too late for tomorrow's paper.
Story'll break with a bang on Tuesday.'

'Madame Lauzerte's not going to like it,' said DC Beddoes, disapprovingly.
'Terrible thing. She'd have let him do life.'

'Must love her not to squeal,' sighed Keith. 'What a story. Froggy
would a-wooing go.'


Even when Gablecross and Karen confronted him with the
evidence of the Badger Action Group, Tristan still defended
Claudine.

'There was no affaire. I worry about film. She and her husband
were friends of my father. She was like mother to me, we just talked
last Sunday.'

'At eleven at night?' chided Gablecross. 'And five hours later
you're seen coming out- long time to read the meter. Anyway, the
French police have blown your safe and found Madame Lauzerte's
letters, which are not those you'd write to a son.'

Even the news he was free to go didn't cheer Tristan.
'Her name must be kept out of the papers,' he pleaded.
'Might have been if you'd levelled with us in the first place.
Migraine on Thursday night indeed! When you were nearly three
qu, arters of an hour on the phone to her.'

Trying to reassure her the story wouldn't come out,' said Tristan
despairingly.

'Terrific for her street cred she's been pulling such a gorgeous
young guy,' sighed Karen.


Over at Valhalla, a devastated Baby had, like Tristan, paced his
room most of the night. How could Isa have stood him up for
someone as two-faced and trivial as Chloe? Monday's dawn and his
heart were breaking simultaneously as he went out into the park.
Torrential rain washed away his tears and the remnants of Rozzy's
make-up, which hadn't been nearly as flattering as Lucy's. Having



466
	467



caught and loaded his three horses into one of Rannaldini's
lorries, he set off very slowly, stopping every few minutes in case
rage and shock made him drive into a wall.


Rupert's house was ash blond in the early-morning sunshine. His
dark woods lay as still as possible, like shaggy dogs knowing their
coats will be too hot later in the day. As Baby rumbled into the yard,
Rupert had just flown in from France. He was talking to a ravishing
youth and to Dizzy, his comely head groom, who were both about
to ride out. One beautiful horse after another, like a conjuror's silk
handkerchiefs, was emerging from the boxes.

Still in his polo gear, his face grey against his crimson shirt, Baby
jumped down from the lorry.

'D'you want to train my horses?'

'I'd be delighted,' said Rupert. Then, as he gave the ravishing
youth a leg up, 'I don't think you've met my assistant, Lysander
Hawkley.'

'Hi,' said Baby, looking Lysander up and down. 'Paradise was in
Rutshire, but it appears to have moved.'

'Let's unload your horses,' said Rupert, 'and then come and
have breakfast.'


This latest development enraged Isa. How dare Baby team up with
Rupert! Had he neatly forgotten he owed Isa for the last quarter?

'I owe you nothing, you little toad. If you breathe a word of
complaint, I'll tell your father-in-law you were shagging Chloe the
night of Rannaldini's murder. Then I'll tell the world how white
you bled me.'

Gerald Portland's gameplan was in tatters. A mob of reporters had fought their way through the deluge into the Rutminster courtroom,
or failing that had ringed the building, spilling down
adjacent lanes like the water hurtling down gutter and pavement.
They had already written their intros about the Fall of the House
of Montigny and the most deadly snake of them all. When news
leaked out that Tristan had been freed, they immediately charged
to write bitchy pieces about utterly incompetent West Country
police wasting public money and being no nearer to finding the
killer. The Scorp/on, who'd already set the headline 'Beattie's

over a snarling photograph of Tristan, changed it to
'Thickos' in even larger type and decided to launch their poll .g readers, 'Who Killed Beattie and Rannaldini?'

Only the Daily Mail rubbed their hands over Tristan's secret
tryst with Claudine and pored over copy and headlines for
tomorrow's paper in a security block. The rest of the media took

like starlings to Rutminster Hall to harass the polo shoot, where they were furious to find that George's security guards kept them outside the front gates and that Rupert, still a chief suspect,

gone racing.

'We've become a laughing stock,' shouted Gerald Portland,
tho'd specially put on a new lilac-striped shirt to wow the press and

.felt it was utterly wasted on his Inner Cabinet. They would have to
all the suspects.
weariness came over his utterly weary team.

people who'd covered for each other, like Tab and George

or Rupert and Lysander, or Griselda, Granny and
who'd all claimed to be searching for balls together in

Wood,
could be lying. Chloe claimed to have seen





both Alpheus and Isa, but neither of them had seen her. Hermione
was still sticking to the story that she'd been in bed with Sexton.
Meredith, Simone and Pushy had no-one to vouch for them at all,
neither did Wolfie and Lucy, who'd pushed off abroad and, so far,
neatly evaded Interpol. Even those with cast-iron alibis away from
Valhalla, like Rozzy, Oscar and Valentin, would have to be checked
out again.

There was a lot of money on Lady Rannaldini, who none of the
investigating team liked very much. Bearing in mind that she
claimed to have seen Rupert around ten twenty-five, but Lysander
had sworn that he and Rupert didn't discover Rannaldini's dead
body until they first approached the watch-tower as late as ten forty,
meant someone was lying.

'IfRannaldini was happy and excited at the moment of death, as
the PM revealed,' mused Karen, 'the murderer must be someone
he was thrilled to see.'

'Which certainly wasn't Rupert, Wolfie or Alpheus,' chipped in
Debbie, 'but most likely Hermione, Bussage or Tab.'

'We'll wait for the DNA results before we tackle Tab again,' said
Portland, who didn't want any more earache from Rupert.

DC Lighffoot, who'd fallen asleep with his head on the edge of
Portland's desk, was gently shaken awake and dispatched with DC
Smithson to Rutminster Hall to try to find out if Alpheus and
Mikhail had been telling porkies. Fanshawe and Debbie were given
the task of re-interviewing Hermione and then Lysander on the
timing of his and Rupert's raid on Hangman's Wood.

Gablecross and Karen, who were right at the bottom of the list
for letting Tristan off the hook and hassling Taggie Campbell
Black, were allotted the dreary task of trailing over to Mallowfield
to interview Rozzy's feckless husband. Gablecross was in despair.
Only Karen's enterprise had proved Tristan's innocence. His
loathed rival, Fanshawe, was poised to make a strike and Margaret
wasn't speaking to him because he'd left the anniversary party so
early.

As she had also refused to make him any breakfast, Gablecross
popped into the Paradise village shop to buy several Yorkie bars to
misery-eat on the way to Mallowfield. Ahead in the queue, he saw
Little Cosmo Harefield shoving some photographs and a letter
into a large brown envelope. As Cosmo stopped to rest the envelope
on a pile of Rutminster Echos, Gablecross noticed he was
addressing it to the editor of the Sun.

'Please register and express this on my mother's account,'
Cosmo told Eve, the proprietor, grandly.

'What have you got there, sonny?' demanded Gablecross.


'Nothing,' lied Little Cosmo.

'Let me look.' Grabbing Little Cosmo by his T-shirt, Gablecross
relieved him of the envelope.

'Gimme that, you bugger,' hissed Little Cosmo, trying to knee
Gablecross in the groin.

Two photographs got slightly torn in the scuffle, but were still
clearly discernible as Hermione and Sexton on the job.

In custody, and possession of one ofGablecross's Yorkie bars and

a cup of black coffee, Little Cosmo thawed a fraction.
'Obviously you were upset about your dad's death.'
'Very,' sighed Cosmo.

His father, he grumbled, had divided his inheritance between
Cecilia, his ex-wife, Cosmo and all his step-siblings, except Wolfie.
This meant Little Cosmo only ended up with four million, which
was quite insufficient, after estate duty, for a growing lad, particularly
one intending to own racehorses. Cosmo had therefore
decided to augment his income.

'Give us a fag,' he added, looking longingly at Gablecross's pack.
Gablecross, however, was not going to risk it, in case Cosmo's
mother's friend, the Chief Constable, walked in. He and Karen
then learnt that on the night of Rannaldini's murder, Hermione's
notion of 'quality time' had consisted of shoving Little Cosmo
upstairs with 101 Dalmatians and ajar of humbugs. Regarding this
.as insufficient, Cosmo, who had inherited his father's specialist
interest, had borrowed his mother's camera and crept across the
lawn to the summerhouse. Peering through the windows, he had
discovered and photographed his mother and Sexton romping on
their carpet of lady's bedstraw. Cosmo liked Sexton and thought he would suit very well as a stepfather. Luckily for his mother and
Sexton, Cosmo had taken a mid-shoot break for sloe gin and
maoked salmon, and unintentionally recorded both ten twenty-five
and ten forty on the large clock on the summerhouse wall.

.Although this gave Hermione a vagina-fight alibi, Gablecross had ticked off Little Cosmo roundly for shopping his mother at a
time of mourning.


Hermione, who'djust endured another most unchivalrous grilling from Fanshawe and Debbie, was extremely displeased to see DS
Gablecross and Karen.

'I didn't do it, Timothy.' She opened her eyes very wide. 'Why
should I want to murder Little Cosmo's father?'

She might, however, feel like murdering Little Cosmo, said
Gablecross, spreading the photographs on the table in front of her.

For a moment Hermione was lost for words, then her face lit up.



470
	471


But, Timothy, these are quite beautiful. Far more flattering than
anything Valentin or Oscar could produce. I never knew my son
was so talented. They compare very favourably with the work my
good friend Patrick Lichfield did for the Unipart calendar. Such a
lovely texture.' Hermione ran her finger over her naked body.
'And I look so fragile beside Sexton's manliness. Even in his
birthday suit, Timothy, you can tell an Old Etonian by his
commanding air.'

Hermione was so carried away, she didn't notice Karen doubled
up with helpless laughter as she fled from the room. Gablecross,
chewing his lip, just managed to keep a straight face. 'But Cosmo
was sending these pictures to the Sun, Dame Hermione.'

'Very enterprising. I told Cosmo he wouldn't get a penny until
probate came through. I know Higgy will adore them. We could
even try Charles Moore on the Telegraph, such a charmer. That one
of me on my own is so lovely, Serena could use it on the next CD.
Bravo, Cosmo.'


'You're the kiss of death,' Gerry Portland chided Karen and
Gablecross, as they gathered round his office table later that
morning to admire the Live Sexton Show, as it was now called.

'Moment you start interviewing a perfectly legit suspect -
Tristan, Rupert, Hermione - an alibi comes jumping out of the
woodwork. I suppose we can assume she was unlikely to have
jumped out of bedstraw to murder Rannaldini.'

'It would have taken her at least a quarter of an hour even to run
from River House,' said Gablecross, 'and if she'd been out of
breath, she couldn't have sung Elisabetta's last aria so beautifully.'

'She's got a marvellous body,' said Portland, 'and knows a few
tricks for an old 'un.' 'Hermione agrees with you,' said Karen, who was still laughing.
'I hope the lad isn't too traumatized.'

'Camera's only thing likely to be upset,' said Gablecross, 'That
boy's more evil than his father.'

As a result Gablecross and Karen didn't reach Mallowfield until
teatime.

Having admired the grandeurs of River House earlier,
Gablecross's first angry impression was that Rozzy, as a well-known
and much beloved singer, ought to be living in a better house.

Clearly no-one had been watering the garden during the
drought or washed the milk bottles, sour and queuing up outside
the door. The carpets were threadbare, the paint peeling. Flowers
Rozzy had obviously arranged beautifully for Glyn's party the
Sunday before last had shed their petals on dusty surfaces. There

472



were no portraits or photographs of Rozzy, even in her radiant
youth. Any cups or awards she'd won over the years had been
hidden away. The colours were beautiful, but Gablecross had the
feeling, looking at shelves denuded except for cards, that most
things of value had been hocked.

He was further irritated to find he quite liked Glyn, who had an
unlined face, a beer gut, and who was eating pizza, drinking his
way down a pint mug of red, and watching Rutshire bowl out
Oxfordshire. Half rising to his feet, he apologized, but without
much conviction, for the bottles still littering the place from his
party.

'Know I ought to make a trip to the bottle bank but it's easier to
bung the dustmen, and they always come before I get up. Tend to let things slide when Rozzy's away. But SyI will have the place like
a new pin for when she comes home - on Wednesday, isn't it?'

Sylvia, the housekeeper, was extremely pretty with big blue eyes,
a shiny red bob and a regulo-nine smile, which could be turned off
as quickly. She was obviously better at keeping herself beautiful
than the house. Karen understood why poor Rozzy had sleepless
nights over Sylvia.

'Have a drink,' urged Glyn. 'Both of you can't be driving. Get
some glasses, Syl, love. How's it going at Valhalla?'

'Must be spooky,' shuddered Sylvia, as she reluctantly left the
room.

'I gather you had a wonderful birthday party,' beamed Karen, who found herself sitting very far forward in an armchair stuffed
tapestry cushions.

Wonderful, agreed Glyn. 'Syl wanted to help. But Roz insisted



	On doing everything. Loves to feel needed. I wanted to get in
rers,' added Glyn expansively. 'Roz wouldn't hear of it. We never save any money. Ex-wife costs a bomb, two kids at boarding

'chool.'

: :'When do they come home?' asked Gablecross.

'Wednesday,' said Sylvia, without enthusiasm, as she returned

a jug of orange juice, cans of iced beer and another bottle of

So Rozzy'll be back to look after them, thought Karen crossly.

t put yourself out for anyone.

Rozzy enjoy the party?' she asked.

the old girl has been working so hard on Don Carlos,

about the film's budget and our budget, and tidyand
cooking, she redred to bed with a migraine.'

that was diplomatic, thought Karen, accepting a glass of
Perhaps Rozzy'd caught hers from Tristan.



'

"What time did she go to bed?' she asked, getting out her notebook.

'Ooo, if we're going on record, we'd better check our facts,' said
Sylvia skittishly. 'Around, er...' She glanced at Glyn.

'Eight thirty,' said Glyn. 'Loads of people were still here. I
checked she was asleep at nine thirty. Syl checked her at ten, I put
my head round the door about ten thirty and eleven.'

Those up to no good check all the time, thought Gablecross.

'I finally went to bed around midnight,' boasted Glyn, reaching
for the corkscrew to open the red. 'Tripped over the landing

carpet, woke Rozzy up. She came out looking all in.'

Sylvia got up to put on a record.

'What did Rozzy give you for your birthday, apart from the
party?' asked Karen.

'She got me a signed copy of Georgie Maguire's latest album,
and a signed photo,' said Glyn. 'Syl loves Georgie too, don't you,
Syl?'

'S'wonderful, s'marvellous,' sang the record player.

'Lovely single, isn't it?' said Glyn fondly. 'We played this and
Georgie's album all day.'

'When did you cut your cake?'

'Around eight, I should think. There were still people here at
midnight - I left them to it.'

'Your wife made two calls to Valhalla during the evening.'

Glyn laughed. 'She likes to check up, always checking up on me.'

He winked at Karen who didn't wink back.

'Why didn't she use the house phone?'

'She was in the spare room - doesn't have a phone. We often
sleep in separate rooms. I tend to snore, particularly when I've had
a few. The spare room looks north over the back of the house so it

was a bit quieter during the party.'

'You ever meet Rannaldini?'

'Sir Roberto? Only after performances in the old days.
Charismatic bloke.'

'Think of any reason why anyone should kill him?'

'I could have done a few years ago - he was always jumping on
Rozzy.'

'You didn't tell me that,' snapped Syl.

'Why should Rannaldini have made a note to ring you the day
he died?' asked Gablecross.

TheI' said Glyn somewhat flattered. 'I've no idea. Perhaps
Rozzy's singing hadn't been up to scratch, or she might have overtired
herself. She's always been delicate.'

She obviously hasn't told Glyn about the throat cancer, thought

He ought to mention it, instead he said, 'Perhaps her
could shed some light. Can you let me have his name?'

'Of course. I know she was worried about the young chappie
directing it.'


'That is the most loathsome creep,' stormed Karen, as she drove through the dripping dusk. 'Bernard would make Rozzy much
happier.'

But Gablecross was talking on his mobile to the incident room.
'Interpol had a tip-off that Rupert was staying in Montvert,' he
told Karen as he switched it off. 'Casing the Montignyjoint pre
ably, but when they rolled up at the hotel early this morning
the bird had flown. Another couple who sound suspiciously like
Wolfie and Lucy, who also stayed there, gave them the slip.
Rannaldini's Gulf, on the other hand, has been clamped at
Toulouse airport. Now, what the hell can that mean?'

'That at least Lucy's safe, Sarge,' said Karen, patting his ann.




474
	475


74



Very early that Monday morning, Lucy had been woken by a telephone
call from Wolfie.

'We gotta move it. Two plain-clothes men are downstairs looking
for Rupert. Madame didn't tell them we were here, but suggests we
leg it as soon as possible out through the back garden.'

Wolfie was just gathering speed down the high street, when a
loitering gendarme mistook his blond hair and suntanned face for
Rupert's, and whistled up his mate to give chase. Wolfie, who drove
almost as fast as he flew, had no difficulty shaking them off. The
airport was in sight, they could see Rannaldini's Gulf jet merging
into the heat-haze on the runway, when Lucy's mobile rang. When
she switched it off thirty seconds later she was as pale and trembling
as a white poplar.

'Hortense has changed her mind, but we've got to hurry. Dupont
and the rellies are expected back before lunch.'

Lucy's heart sank when a waiting Florence said Hortense didn't
want to see them. She led them upstairs and, with a lot of cursing,
unlocked a bedroom door. As the door creaked reluctantly open,
she stood back.

'Madame said you'll find all the information you need in here.
You're to be locked in for security reasons. Press that bell when you
want to be let out.'

At first it was a question of not choking to death. As their eyes
grew accustomed to the dark, it was plain that nothing had been
touched for years, possibly centuries. By yanking open the shutters,
Wolfie triggered off an avalanche of dust. Cobwebs, woven on top
of cobwebs and dotted with flies and wasps, formed net curtains
across windows and in corners.

On the walls, a little Van Gogh and several of ltienne's
enchanting drawings of dogs fought for space with school and
army photographs and peeling posters of Jane Birkin, Juliette
Greco and Bardot. Asttrix leered up at them from the yellowing
duvet covering the bed in the corner.

A half-full bottle of brandy, Roger et Gallet cologne, LPs of Sergeant Pepper, the Stones and Manfred Mann, hairbrushes, their
silver backs blackened, Esquire and Playboy, Paris-Match and Shooting Timeswere all jumbled together on the shelves. Newspapers on the
table, faded to the colour of weak tea, were all dated 1967.

'What the hell's all this about?' asked Wolfie, trying to open a
window.

'Must be Laurent's room,' pondered Lucy. 'Florence said
ltienne never allowed anyone in here after his death. But I still
don't see.'

Leaning against the wall was a gold-framed portrait. Wiping away
the dust and grime with her T-shirt, Lucy gave a gasp because a
younger, happier, bolder Tristan smiled back at her. Then her heart stopped as she noticed the now-towering trees of the lime
walk then only reached his shoulders, and that he was the same young man who'd been staring down at the girl whose long dark
hair was tied back with a scarlet ribbon.

'This must be Laurent painted by ltienne,' she said, in excitement.
'God, he's good-looking.'


	:: Wolfie, rooting round a desk, had found a pile of letters.

'These must have been sent him when he was in the army in
G-'had. "My darling, darling Laurent,"' read Wolfie. 'Sounds
exciting. And here's another pile with West Africa stamps on
them.'

Swinging round Lucy knew, even before she saw them, that the
' letters would be tied together with scarlet ribbon.

'
	: 'Give them here.' She snatched the package with a shaking hand,
:ad, tearing open the top one, read, '"My darling angelic
Delphine," and knew everything.

my God, listen, Wolfie. "Don't be frightened," Laurent

"I'll be home in two months to take care of you. Is our baby
-.. still kicking in your beautiful belly? If it's a boy let's call him Tristan,

but he's not going to be destined for tragedy, only joy." God, they got that wrong. Then Laurent goes on, "I love you so desperately.

r about Papa. I just can't bear to think of you in the same
led as him or even that he's your husband. I know it's important

to humiliate him, that this should never have happened, but
fact that you and I love each other is all that matters."




476
	477



'Oh, God, Wolfie.' Lucy looked up in horror. 'Poor Itienne,
cuckolded by his own son.'

'Like Philip and Carlos.' Wolfie shook his head in bewilderment.
Lucy skimmed the rest of the letter. Laurent had been full of
plans for the new life he and Delphine would start in Australia with
their baby. He'd get a job, and they'd have love to live on.

'Here's a letter from Delphine to him,' said Wolfie, 'dated
November the fourteenth. That must have been just after Tristan
was born. She's enclosed a little pencil drawing of the baby, look.'

'Oh, how sweet.' Lucy mopped her eyes. On the back she recognized
ltienne's elegant handwriting: 'Tristan Laurent Blaize, a
beautiful boy, one hour old.'

'I thought you'd like to see your son and heir,' Delphine had
written. 'Isn't he adorable? Etienne is so proud of his imagined
offspring. I feel so guilty. Oh, Laurent, please come home, he's

nagging me to have sex again. I can't bear him to touch me.'
'Here's an even earlier one,' interrupted Wolfie.

'"Darling Delphine, it's the best news in the world you're pregnant.
It seals everything. Let me finish my stint here, there are
things I must do." Wolfie looked up at Lucy. 'That must have been
for the rebels. 'q'hen I'll come home and take you away, you will
divorce Papa and marry me. Everything will be very simple." Christ,
little did he know.'

'Here's another horrible one,' cried Lucy, in distress, smoothing
out the letter, holding it up to the dim light from the windows.
'Must be early in her pregnancy, she sounds just like Elisabetta.
"ltienne made love to me outside today. I noticed his grey
eyebrows and chest hair, the liver spots on his hands, the pleats in
his flesh, when he raised himself on his wrinkled arms. Oh, Laurie,
I know he's your father but he revolts me."

'I can't read any more.' Lucy thrust aside the letter. 'Itienne was
a vain old goat, but he must have been crucified by the son he
adored, then constantly reminded of this betrayal as Tristan grew
more and more like Laurent. And that,' Lucy choked on the
swirling dust in the excitement of her discovery, 'was what he was
rambling on about on his deathbed, trying to tell Tristan that he
was his grandfather not his father.'

Wolfie was neatly stacking the letters and tying up Laurent's with
their scarlet ribbon.

'If Tristan is Laurent and Delphine's son,' he said soberly, 'he's
not only a Montigny, but can marry and have children by whoever
he likes.'

Lucy's hair was white with dust, her face filthy and streaked with

tears. 'So we found out what we came here for,' she said slowly,
then realizing the full implications: 'Oh, Wolfie, I hope it works
out for you.'


Hortense burst out laughing when she saw Lucy's dusty hair. 'You

look older than I do. I hope you were surprised by what you discov
ered.
'

'Stunned.' Sitting on the bed, Lucy took Hortense's hands. 'I'm

sorry I was so horrible yesterday. I'm terribly glad for Tristan, but

those letters are appalling. I understand totallywhyyou didn't want

it to come out. Poor Edenne. But why did someone so gorgeous as

Delphine marry such an old man in the first place?'

'Rannaldini encouraged her,' said Hortense. 'She was a bit of a

"raver", I think it's called, and wanted to escape from her strait
laced
family. Maxim detested Rannaldini and that's why, in

revenge, Rannaldini reinvented him as a sex-crazed rapist.

Rannaldini persuaded Delphine of the doors Idenne would open,

of the exciting life she would lead among the famous, how she'd

be immortalized in his paintings.'

'But what about Maxim?'

'I always suspected,' Hortense lowered her voice conspiratori
ally,
'that he wasn't Delphine's father. Her mother had an affaire

with some actor called Sammy somebody. They were all

Bohemians,' she added with a sniff. 'Maxim certainly doted on

Delphine and immediately recognized Rannaldini as a rotter. He

was even more distraught when she married ltienne, a notorious

womanizer, even older than himself.'

'So he wasn't sectioned as a mad psychopath?'

'Certainly not, he went a bit dotty at the end, as we all do, and

died in a perfectly respectable nursing home.'

Thank goodness Wolfie was downstairs, not hearing more

evidence of his father's featl lies.

'What happened to Laurent's mother?'

Hortense stroked her little greyhound reflectively.

She was Etaenne s third or fourth wife. Played bridge all day and,

when ltienne pushed off, graduated to gin. Tripped over a black

Labrador coming out of her bedroom in the dark one night and

broke her neck falling down the stairs. Wonderful way to go.'

'So that disposed of one granny,' giggled Lucy. 'I don't mean to

laugh, the whole thing must have been terrible.'

'Terrible. ltienne was so excited about his new baby, then a

	late.r, we heard Laurent had died in some explosion
fire, it s called, ldenne was inconsolable, so was Delphine,




his unhappiness and at least they had a new life to look forward to
together.

'Then Laurent's things were sent home, with all Delphine's
letters and, cruellest of all, ltienne's little drawing, ltienne went
on the rampage, found all Laurent's letters locked in her jewel
case, and nearly killed her. Next day she took an overdose, sent me
a note begging my forgiveness and asking me to bring up Tristan.'

A farm dog bayed down in the valley. The little greyhound
pricked up its velvet ears and stretched.

'Everything was locked in Laurent'.s room just as it was when he
went off to Chad. Everyone thought Etienne was heartbroken, but
it was the far more painful heartbreak of betrayal.' Hortense lay
back exhausted, her face very grey. 'I probably shouldn't have
told you.'

'You should. Tristan has to know, so he can understand ltienne
and forgive him.' Then, as she heard wheels on the gravel, banging
doors and voices outside, 'I must go.'

'Dupont et cetera must be here,' grumbled Hortense. 'They'll
be devastated I'm not worse. You'd better escape out the back.'

'I've been doing that all day. Look,' Lucy plumped up
Hortense's pillows, 'I wish I didn't have to go. It's been a privilege . . .'

'Don't go all sentimental on me,' snapped Hortense. 'Look after
my boy.' She handed Lucy a square package that felt like a picture.
'Give this to him. You've got all the letters, haven't you? Show them
to him when the time is right, but don't let them fall into other
hands.'

'You'll see him again,' said Lucy reassuringly.

'Hurry,' gasped Hortense. 'The others will try to stop you.'

Still Lucy lingered, then tugging off her gold locket, she hung it
round Hortense's neck.

'There's a lovely dog inside,' she stammered. 'He'll bring you
luck.'

'I'll need it where I'm going,' said Hortense wryly. 'There's no
return ticket.'


'D'you think Tristan will fire us?' asked a worried Lucy as Wolfie
considerably shortened the hired car's life, jolting it over dusty
cart-tracks.

'Hardly, he's still in prison.' Wolfie swung into the road to the
airport. 'Don't worry, we'll be home by the tea break.' Then, seeing
the crowd of gendarmes round the Gulf, 'On second thoughts
perhaps we won't. I'd better drive.' He swung the car round again.

480


'
	Cecilia's now. At least I've flown it over half-way to Rome for


'But it's nearly lunchtime, we won't get home until early

r morning.'

'Or until tomorrow midday, if we stop somewhere nice for the
i ight. You've pulled off a miracle and we're going to celebrate.'



481





The moment he was released on Monday morning, Tristan showered
away every speck of prison dirt and drenched himself in Eau
Sauvage. To match his mood, he then selected black jeans, a black
shirt and, because the temperature had dropped fifteen degrees,
a dark brown cashmere jersey he'd never worn before.

Pale and more shadowed than ever under the eyes, he had shed
another half-stone in prison, and looked as dramatically elongated
and demon-haunted as an E1 Greco saint.

To forget the horrors of prison and to blot out the even more
nightmarish prospect of the Mail outing him and Claudine
tomorrow, Tristan, aswas his custom, plunged into work. But as he

hurtled the Aston towards George's house, his dreams of using a
polo match under a burning sun as a ritualized symbol, of confliCto
were shattered. After a night of torrential rain, George s pol field
was as full of lakes and as green as Ireland. His only compensation
was driving through a huge puddle and drenching the
paparazzi hanging around outside George's massive electric gates.

Inside, it was difficult to distinguish the massive police and press
presence from George's heavies and the fleet of extras who'd been
bussed in to act as policemen, paparazzi and Philip's bodyguards.

Behind the house, which crouched ox-blood red and elephantine
on a hill, a stretch of park had been levelled into a polo field
surrounded by huge bell-shaped trees now dark and swollen with
rain. Overhead, like a flotilla of batdeships, hung charcoal-grey
clouds.

On the edge of the field, outside a yellow and white striped tent,
whose roof as buckling under the downpour, a small band in red
uniforms was dispiritedly wringing out their instruments. Seeing
his arrival, the commentator stopped telling the shivering extras

in their flowery dresses and pale suits that the gallant Marquis of
Posa had just scored a goal, and welcomed back 'our director',
Tristan de Montigny.

Tristan was in no mood for pleasantries. Ignoring the ripple of
applause and the large 'Bienvenu, Tristan' banner, he drove over
to the unit, where the place was under water and in uproar,
because neither Lucy nor Wolfie had turned up. Tristan was
appalled. It was like coming home on a bleak winter night to find
the pipes frozen and the central heating kaput. No-one had seen
them since Saturday morning.

'I know they'll be found face down in a field,' sobbed Simone.

'Don't be fatoous,' snapped Tristan, who'd gone cold at the
same thought.

All around him singers, who'd been soothed and flattered by
Lucy for the past three months, were having tantrums and making
fearful fusses about catching cold. A fleet of make-up artists had
been bussed in anyway to handle all the extras. The most experienced,
hijacked to look after the stars, must have graduated from
the set of the Hammer House of Horror.

Granny looked about as menacing as a Brylcreemed Barbara
Cartland. Tab, Pushy and Chloe had vermilion lips and black
ringed eyes like Brides of Dracula. Mikhail's drink-reddened face
dashed horribly with his crimson polo shirt.

'Why isn't Lucy here to sort out my bags and my double chin?'
grumbled Baby, who, having played polo undl the stars came out
with Rupert's cronies then pigged out on Taggie's sea trout, three
helpings of loganberry torte and copious glasses of wine, was now
trying to alleviate his hangover with a massive gin and tonic.

Alpheus was so furious that Griselda had hidden his noble brow
and chestnut locks under a straw hat with a Blues and Royals
ribbon that he'd surreptitiously fed the offending headgear to
Sharon and Trevor, who'd rushed on to the field noisily tearing it
to shreds.

Nemesis had struck swiftly. The new make-up ardst didn't have
Lucy's blow-drying and colouring skills, and Alpheus ended up
with corkscrew curls the colour of mango chutney and looked like
Paddy Ashdown in a Shirley Temple wig.

Simone was in hysterics that any continuity had been shot to

'How could Lucy do this to us?' she stormed.

'Manage without her,' snapped Tristan.

Nor had Tristan dreamt, as the day progressed, how much he

miss Wolfie to field telephone calls, to keep track of his
belongings, and control the extras. Rupert had highhandedly
ent over a couple of his grooms with all his dogs, and all his





polo-playing friends' dogs because they all wanted their dogs in the
film and because one always sees lots of dogs at polo. The dogs
proceeded to fight and bark and mount each other. Rupert, meanwhile,
had buggered off to a race meeting at Ayr.

'I vish his bloody daughter had gone too,' grumbled Mikhail.
One of the first sounds Tristan heard and ignored was Tab,
yelling her head off in true Campbell-Black fashion. She was
desperately nervous about making her polo film dtbut playing
against world-class players, even if she had known them since she
was a child. She had wanted to look ravishing for Tristan's return,
and been turned into the Town Tart by this ghasdy make-up. It was
all Lucy's fault. And where was utterly bloody Wolfie to hold her
hand, find her whip and absorb abuse like a punch bag?

Even worse, as Mistress of the Horse, she felt it her duty to see
the singers played properly. Baby was good, but Mikhail had an
unnerving habit of dropping his reins and swinging his stick round
with both hands like a Tartar warlord as he thundered down the
field.

'For Gawd's sake, watch him,' Sexton pleaded with Tab. Having
insurance claims already on a murdered producer and a recently
absentee director, he didn't want Mikhail taking out Picky France
Lynch the England captain, or his forwards Seb and Dommie
Carlisle.

Mikhail was sulking because George's open house had suddenly
become closed when one of Georgie's heavies had caught him
sidling out with a little Watteau and a Sickert under his polo shirt.

'I know the murderer's still at large,' giggled Flora, 'but Mikhail
seems to be taking bulletproof vests to extremes.'

She still looked haunted and desperately tired as she and George hardly left each other's side. As soon as the wrap party was over,
they were off to Cornwall with Trevor.

Everyone was relieved to have moved away from Valhalla's dark
mazes and haunted cloisters. Rannaldini's doomladen overture,
pouring out of the speakers, however, was a constant reminder that
his killer had not been caught.

The violence of the polo was equally unnerving, ponies thundering
over grass as slippery as buttered spinach, sticks clashing,
balls hurtling like cannon shot, often into the crowd, players deliberately
colliding. The ponies kept jumping out of their thin
thoroughbred skins and taking off, because the cast, upstaging
each other, continually broke into snatches of their next opera or

song cycle to prove there was work after Carlos.

'Telephone, Tristan,' shouted Bernard.

It was Claudine in hysterics. It was all Tristan's fault, for barging

into the cottage in Wales, the police had already been round, her
maid was threatening to dump to the Express, and Jean-Louis to
divorce her.

And she would have let me swing, thought Tristan savagely. He
remembered Gablecross telling him that in big murder cases
several marriages always broke up.

Couldn't he get his friend Rupert Campbell-Black to pull strings
and stop the Mai wailed Claudine. Tristan said he'd try and
hung up.

'I don't want to be bothered with any calls,' he orderedJessica, who was nervously standing in for Wolfie.

While they were waiting for the cameras to reload and reposi
tion, he finally got through to the ch$teau. Hortense was obviously
a little better, as she was in a meeting, unable to be disturbed.
Tristan might not have been so sanguine ffhe'd known with whom.
He left a message with Florence that he'd be down on Wednesday
after the wrap party.

When they broke for a late lunch,Jessica said a French lady had
rung five times on the unit mobile.

'Non, non, non,' howled Tristan, as it rang again. 'I can't talk to
anyone.'

Next moment he had been buttonholed by Alpheus, complaining
about both Tabitha and the make-up artist, and Chloe
complaining that Baby was being gratuitously offensive, and had
nearly ridden his pony over her.

They were soon joined by Pushy.

'Could we have another make-up artist? I know I can look prettier
than this, Tristan.'

God, he missed Wolfie to send them packing. Leaving them, in
mid-bellyache, on his way to his caravan, he passedJessica telling
Bernard that Lucy expected to be back by mid-morning tomorrow.

Tristan swung round in fury. 'Lucy rang? Why didn't you put her on?'

'You didn't want any calls.'

'I didn't mean Lucy, you stupid bitch. Get her back at once.'

'I didn't take her number,' stammeredJessica, appalled by such
unaccustomed rudeness.

'You bloody idiot.'

nto tears.


couldn't remember being so angry. All he had wanted his lunch break was to pour out his heart to Lucy about the
prison and the difficulties of filming polo. Also, because
had been so wonderfully comforting when he had found out



484
	485



Maxim was his father and had been forced to give up Tab he felt
he should perhaps have provided the last piece of the jigsaw, and
levelled with her about Claudine. He wanted to explain, before
Lucy read about it in tomorrow's Mail, that the love that had
obscured his vision for the past three years had suddenly been
blown away like mist at sea. But if Lucy wasn't getting back till midmorning,
it would probably be too late.

'Oh, you're wearing my sweater. It really suits you.'

It was several seconds before Tristan realized the happy voice
belonged to Rozzy, who was looking really pretty. All the lines in
her face seemed to have ironed out. He'd forgotten she'd given
him this jersey.

She tried to cover up for Lucy, which was difficult when James
shot out of Wardrobe and did four pirouettes, nearly strangling
himself on his lead, because he too was pleased to see Tristan.
Then he slunk back in despair because he wasn't with Lucy.

'I've had to tie him to the table leg because he keeps following
me on to the set.'

'Poor old boy.' Tristan unclippedJames's lead. 'Where the hell's
your mistress?'

'She'll turn up,' said Rozzy. 'I've got a surprise for you,' she
added, leading him towards his caravan. 'Which did you like best,
my tarte aux oignons or the quiche Lorraine?'

'They were both marvellous,' mumbled Tristan, who'd been far
too uptight to eat anything in prison. 'My God!'

For a second he thought he'd let himself into the wrong caravan.
There were vases of wild flowers everywhere.

'Marjoram, honeysuckle, scabious, forget-me-not, bellflower,
thyme, wild basil and those dark purple bugle-like flowers are called self-heal. I picked two vases of them, because I know you will
heal after your horrible experience.'

'You're so kind,' muttered Tristan, breathing in the honeysuckle,
which reminded him of Lucy's lone sprig in prison.

How dare Rozzy ponce up his caravan! All the books and magazines
had been straightened. All the notes secured under a
paperweight. The floor was hoovered, even the windows cleaned,

so everyone could see when he was there. He wanted to scream.
'It's very kind, Rozzy.'

'It's been a pleasure.' She added playfully, 'I've made you a sort
of brunch. I know how strong you like your coffee. Sit down and
relax. I've made you an omelette and Mrs Brimscombe picked me
these with the dew on them this morning.'

'Rozzy, please.' Tristan opened his mouth in protest, and Rozzy
popped a raspberry into it.

'Anyway,' she added, as the rattle of rain on the roof increased,

'you can't film at the moment.'

'You're incorrigible.'

'I'm not taking "non" for an answer.' Rozzy got a couple of croissants
out of the microwave, and dropped one on his side plate.

For a second, Tristan was tempted to pour out his problems. But
Rozzy had enough troubles of her own.

Having cut him a slice of omelette, primrose yellow and oozing
herbs and butter, she poured him coffee and orange juice, and
shoved the butter plate against his side plate. As she reached
behind him to get the pepper-pot out of the cupboard, he felt her
breasts brush against him and had to steel himself not to flinch.
Rozzy put a hand on his shoulder.

'You're so tense, I'll give you a massage later.'

Suddenly the caravan seemed tiny. James, sulking on the sofa,
was no chaperon. Next moment Rozzy's hand had clenched on his
shoulder as the rain rattle on the roof was augmented by a rat-tat
tat on the door.

'I am not going to let people hassle you,' hissed Rozzy.

'Hi, chaps, that looks scrnmmy.' Griselda's green and purple
striped turban came round the door.

'I'm trying to persuade Tristan to eat,' said Rozzy evenly.
'Don't force the poor boy. Nice to have you back.' Griselda
added to Tristan, 'We've got a problem. Alpheus's white suit has
been nicked for the second time. I've ordered another from Paris
because he won't wear a blazer. But if you could wait to shoot his
little scene until midday, by which time Lucy should be back to fix
h face. I wondered if we could ask her and Wolfie to make a
detour through Paris to pick up his new suit.'
i-i There was another knock. It was Bernard this time, wanting a
word with Rozzy.

'I do hope they've had a nice jaunt,' said Griselda, slapping
unsalted butter and strawberry jam on a croissant, as Rozzy ran
the caravan steps to the shelter of Bernard's yellow striped
brella.

such a smashing chap,' went on Griselda, with her
mouth full, 'and had such a bad time with his father copping it,


	. ,.t,. Lucy's such a lovely girl, but lonely in a way.'

I,
	,!What the hell are you talking about?'

and Lucy went off in the Gulf on Saturday morning.
a jolly good passion wagon. Always thought they fancied


talk such fucking rubbish!' yelled Tristan, walking out of
slamming the door behind him.




Jumping offthe sofa,James tried to follow him, scraping his long
claws against the caravan door and whining.

'Hum,' said Griselda, helping herself to a slice of cold omelette.
'Tristan seems to miss Lucy almost more than you do, old boy.'

Haft-way across the field, Tristan found he was still clutching one
of Rozzy's rose-patterned cups. Next moment Alpheus had
descended from one side, Mikhail from another, Pushy from still
another.

'Tabitha has been so rude to me,' they shouted in unison.

'I wish I cared,' snarled Tristan.

After two and a half days of Gablecross's interrogation, he could
cope with scenes only if he were making them. He'd been so
worried that finding out about Claudine was going to break Lucy's
heart, and now she'd buggered offwith Wolfie and clearly couldn't
give a stuff.

'"What news from the court in France, that lovely country of
elegant ways?"' sang Chloe to his departing back, and everyone
giggled.

Then Tristan watched Saturday night's rushes, which he thought
were quite awful and said so. Oscar and Valentin, who'd worked
very hard and been rather proud of their efforts, looked utterly
deflated.

'What has got into our boy?' sighed Oscar. 'The tics obviously
put him through it.'

They had all been ecstatic about Tristan's release, but instead of
acknowledging their cards and welcome-home banner, he'd just
stalked in and criticized everything.

'I'm not working with that fucker any more,' said the crew and
cast in unison.

Two things relieved the impasse. The rain stopped, and Bernard
frogmarched Tristan into his now empty caravan and bawled him
out.

'You're behaving like a spoilt child. Everyone's jumpy. You're
meant to reassure them - and as for bullying poor Rozzy,' Bernard
went an even deeper shade of burgundy red, 'when she spent so
long mucking out your caravan and praying for your release in the
chapel.'

After that Tristan settled down, forgot his problems, and filmed
m616es, skirmishes, and Baby exchanging sizzling eye-meets with
groupies and chucking down his stick in fury when Philip ordered
him off the field.

It was still gloomy and overcast, however, and the only patches
of sky blue were the opposition's shirts, which must have been
specially chosen by Griselda to bring out the colour of Tab's

furiously flashing eyes. Riding wonderfully wildly and as fiercely as
the men, a blue toggle holding back her hair and showing off her
glorious jawline and cheekbones, she seemed to be goading
Tristan to watch only her.

But Tristan found his eyes drawn to the ponies, glossy black, dark
brown, silver-grey, gleaming bay and chestnut, so polished and
rippling with fitness. They were so helpful, so responsive, so neat
and athletic, so gallant and outwardly unfazed, despite being sworn
at and clouted round their delicate heads and legs by sticks and
balls. They reminded him of Lucy.

When rain stopped play again, he locked himself in Bernard's
caravan and watched a rough cut. Gradually his confidence came
back. Tomorrow they had only to film Baby careering down the
field, shoving his pony against Tab's, pushing her off the line of
the ball to score the winning goal. This would be followed by
Alpheus in his splendid white suit summoning Carlos inside for an
already-filmed pep talk: a light day's shooting, which should be
over by two, giving them time to tie up any loose ends before the
wrap party in the evening.

Tristan felt an almost Christ-like elation that here were the
makings of a great film, which even Rannaldini would have been
proud of. The old monster looked divine on the rostrum, thanks
to Lucy's make-up. She really did deserve an Oscar. And darling
Rozzy had been wonderful in her crying scene with Hermione.
Christ, he'd been a shit to her after all she'd been through. He'd
better go and apologize.

The film had been so dark, particularly in the last terrible scene,
that he was amazed to come out to a watery orange sunset, dancing
midges and house-martins swooping on insects. People were
gossiping outside their tents and caravans. But as he paddled
across the drenched field towards Wardrobe, he heard a bloodcurdling
scream, followed by a dreadful howling.

.. Racing through the puddles, his heart thumping, he leapt the
four steps up to the Wardrobe caravan. Steeling himself for more
unimaginable horrors, he found James shuddering in the far
corner, and Rozzy crouched on the floor keening. In the first
crazed second, he thought that she had knocked over Lucy's blue
bowl of pot-pound. Then, drawing nearer, he saw the petals were
tiny pieces of silk, as though someone had shredded the rainbow.

'Oh, my God,' groaned Griselda, behind him. 'It's her wrapparty
dress. She's spent months making it from fragments of silk.'
It had literally been cut to ribbons.

	should
	hate me so

	t don't.
		Pullin




her in his arms, stroking her hair, feeling her tears drenching the
jersey she had given him.

A hovering, desperately concerned Bernard produced a brandy,
which triggered off a terrible fit of coughing, reminding Tristan
once again how ill she was.

'Don't cry, ch/e, I'll buy you another dress.'

Within seconds, relieved that something at last had happened,
twenty police, led by Fanshawe and Debbie, had surrounded the
caravan. They were disappointed the crime was going to be hard
to date.

'I hung the dress in the back of the cupboard, when I came back
after Glyn's birthday party exactly a week ago,' gasped Rozzy,
between sobs.

Debbie took her hand. 'Who knew it was there?'

'Lucy, Grisel, Simone, I don't know.'

As the shredded fragments were shoved into a plastic bag for
Forensic, Debbie gathered up a handful. 'Silk isn't torn or severed,
looks as if it's been chopped up by big pinking shears.'
And Tristan shivered, as he remembered the speed with which
Lucy often cut upJames's liver with a big pair of scissors, claiming
he hated it in lumps. Oh, God, it couldn't have been Lucy.

Two policemen were left to guard Wardrobe. Everyone else
drifted away, leaving Rozzy with Tristan whose hand she still
clutched. To make a break, he crossed the caravan to comfort
James, who only betrayed his upset by a frantically shuddering body.

'You still haven't eaten,' gulped Rozzy. 'Let me make you
supper.'

Feeling an absolute rat, but unable to cope with her dark
anguish, Tristan pleaded exhaustion.

'I'll collapse if I don't crash out. I've got to hold the centre
tomorrow. Your dress being cut to bits is bound to freak everyone
out, then there's the wrap party. Forgive me,' he said, as her tears
started to flow again. 'I'll buy you dinner next week, and please go
and get yourself a new dress tomorrow.'

Reaching in his back pocket, he gave her three hundred pounds,
then a hug. Outside he found his hovering, desperately worried
first assistant director.

'Try and comfort her,' he begged, then his mind careered off.
'In case Lucy doesn't get back in time to make up Granny, can you
ask Berman's to put a monk's black robes with a pointed hood in
a taxi first thing?'

'What d'you think to that?' asked Fanshawe.

'Ugly,' said Debbie. 'Such a nice lady. Who'd deprive her of a
lovely dress when she's got so little?'

'Might be someone with an ancient grievance because she had
such a beautiful voice. We should recheck those ladies who might
have been singing in the wood. Chloe, Gloria, Hermione, even
Flora, and all the soprano extras.'

Debbie sighed, then said, 'She was evidently in Tristan's caravan
for twenty minutes this morning. He was so sweet to her tonight.
Gould it be the murderer not being able to bear him being nice to
anyone?'




Back in his caravan, soaked to the skin, Tristan realized he was out
of whisky, which would not have happened if that little traitor
Wolfie had been here. Nor would a pile of post, rising almost to
the ceiling, have been left unopened. Without Wolfie and Lucy, he
felt totally defenceless, particularly when there was a knock on the
door, and a reporter from the Scorpion barged in, brandishing a
bottle of champagne to celebrate his release. Having seen the first
edition of the Mail, she wondered if they could have a word about
Claudine Lauzerte.

'Madame Lauzerte's been having her g$teau and eating it,
according to her maid, who's dumped in the Express, and who is
very much on your side, Tristan.'

'Fuck off,' howled Tristan, as she held out her tape-recorder.
After that the reporters descended like a pack of wolves. Tristan
thought they would rip him to pieces. Fortunately George's heavies
were even better at manhandling the press than bribing planning
officers or kneecapping little old sitting tenants, and had soon
escorted Tristan to the safety of George's drawing room.

'Stay the night,' said Flora, handing him a quadruple Bell's.
'Most of the unit seem to be. They're too scared to go back to
Valhalla.'

Tristan didn't need any persuading. He went straight to bed and
fell into a dreamless sleep.


Alpheus was sweating. His American agent had been unable to
produce any record of calling him on the night of Rannaldini's
murder, and both Chloe and Isa had seen and heard him singing
outside Magpie Cottage. On Monday morning, therefore, he had
had the humiliation of giving a disapproving DC Smithson and a
smirking DC Lightfoot a revised version of his movements on the
night of Sunday the eighth. He had indeed jogged home from the
tennis but, on seeing a light in Magpie Cottage, had decided to call
on Tabitha.

Having showered and changed into the first white suit, he had
nipped into River House to pick Tab a posy from Hermione's 'well
stocked garden'.

What he did not reveal was that as he was breaking off
Hermione's lilies, he had been transfixed by the sight of his co-star,
re-enacting their great shove-and-grunt scene in the summerhouse
with another, and stayed and watched them for a minute or two.
Burning with lust, he had set out for Magpie Cottage, and told
Smithson and Lightfoot, who should have stopped grinning like a
jackass, that he had indeed sung a favourite aria under Tab's
window, and received a bottle of red wine over his white suit. 'I
couldn't see who had thrown it.' Alpheus was damned if he was
going to give Isa and Chloe an alibi.

He also admitted that next morning he had bagged up the wineoaked
suit and given it to the dustmen. Unfortunately, charred
fragments of the second, gulls' egg and grass stained, white suit,
together with white rock rose and chimpanzee orchids, identical
to the ones used by Beattie to plug herself, were found in the
garden at Jasmine Cottage. Suspicion was therefore heavily on
Alpheus.


Alpheus's day had not improved. He was furious about his Shirley
Temple curls and Rupert not allowing him to play polo.

If the third white suit didn't arrive in time, he would be forced to wear some tacky blazer, and Tab had been so rude. He was
fitrious with himself for sdll fancying the brat rotten. Even worse,
the. DNA tests were due back tomorrow, which would certainly
identify his semen, and Lord knows what else, inside Beattie.

Returning to Jasmine Cottage after filming, he poured himself
.a rare whisky, and jumped nervously as the. doorbell rang. He hoped to God it wasn't any more grizzled lady botanists rolling up ,to revere the chimpanzee orchid. It was very dark outside and at
farat he thought no-one was there. Then, looking down, he saw
Little Cosmo.

One of Cosmo's best buys, acquired for 20p at the Paradise
f6te, had been a second-hand Scout uniform, in
h he always dressed when he was collecting house to house for


Once



Cosmo into Jasmine Cottage to clean
inside Little Cosmo produced his favourite





photographs of Alpheus outside the summerhouse watching
Hermione and Sexton, with twelve lilies in one hand and an enormous
hard-on in the other.

When Alpheus tore up the photograph, Cosmo, echoing his late
father, replied that he had the negs.

'Let us do a deal,' suggested Cosmo. 'I'd like cash before I hand
over the negs. Otherwise I thought I'd offer copies as going-away
presents at the wrap party tomorrow night.'

Considerably richer, Little Cosmo left Jasmine Cottage. Closing
the gate behind him, he broke into Elisabetta's last aria in a flawless
treble, then pedalled off on his bike into the gloom with a
maniacal cackle. Alpheus gave a shiver. Could Little Cosmo have
murdered his father and Beattie to gain control of the memoirs?


Having been too tired to draw the curtains, Tristan was woken at
four by Pegasus, Aries and Taurus, a veritable zoo of brilliant stars,
blazing in through the big square window, and a silver glow in the
east. Switching on the wireless he learnt of storms causing havoc
to flights and cross-Channel ferries. He hoped a returning Wolfie
and Lucy would be struck by lightning or horrendously seasick.
Then he remembered despairingly that he was still Maxim's
bastard son without any money, and that in a few hours the world
would be picking over his affaire with Claudine. Perhaps her
husband would call him out and he would die impaled on a sword,
like Beattie on Rannaldini's unicorn.

His musings on the ruins of his life were interrupted by a forecast
of a beautiful day with temperatures in the nineties. Opening
the window, he breathed in the smell of meadowsweet and wet
earth, and felt a warm breeze caressing his skin. Then he noticed
the cathedral spire, black on the horizon as the Grand Inquisitor's
pointed hood, and remembered he had only one day left to make
a great film.


Oscar was aghast to be woken so early. Anticipating a light half
day's shooting, he and Valentin had been out on the toot. On the
bedside table was a half-eaten Parma ham and artichoke baguette,
an empty Mot bottle and a glass of red wine in which several
moths had drowned. By hastily pulling up the duvet overJessica's
russet curls, Oscar revealed her bright mauve toenails.

'It's going to be a scorcher,' announced Tristan. 'And we are
going to reshoot all yesterday's scenes.' Then, cutting short Oscar's
stream of expletives, 'We can do it if we really motor. I want polo
under a burning sun as a contrast to the hunt in winter.Jessica has
booked everyone's plane tickets and tomorrow they will disperse,

to the right place,' Tristan waggled Jessica's left

'but to different parts of the world. This is our last chance.
Bernard to round everyone up, I want to start shooting by


This is the last time I work for you,' said Oscar, draining the glass
red, moths and all.


a miracle, Rene, the finest make-up artist in France, who had

Claudine look so delectable in The Lily in the Valley, had

' been discovered to be available. For a fat fee and a favour
Tristan, and an even fatter fee from Paris-Match for an interview on his day's work, by eight o'clock he was busy transforming hung
over geese into swans.

By nine o'clock, by even more of a miracle, all Tristan s troop
-in various states of disarray - including Rupert s polo t ends,
had assembled on George's field for a pep talk. Giving them no
time to gossip over the Daily Mail or let the Alka-Seltzers melt in
their glasses, Tristan quietly told them exactly how much they
had to get through, and how long they could allow for each set::
'This is the clock,' he pointed to the big, tickless clock that timed the polo chukkas at the end of the field, 'this is the schedule. There will be no tantrums. We are going to concentrate and get it right
on the first take.'

Surreptitiously reading the Mail, folded to the size of a CD case,
Oscar's eyebrows were getting nearer and nearer to his widow's


'No wonder Tristan was uptight yesterday,' he murmured to
Valendn. 'And where does this put Tabitha?'

'Oooh!' squawked Jessica, looking over Oscar's shoulder.
'You're in the paper, Tristan, "Froggy would a-wooing go". What a
gorgeous picture of you, and oh, my goodness--'

'Put that away and just shut up.' Tristan's voice wiped any incipient
grins off people's faces.

'I would, dearie,' whispered Meredith, stemming Jessica's
protest with half a buttered croissant. 'He's not as sunny as usual.
Have a read in the break.'

'There will be no breaks,' said Tristan icily.

'We've got our director back,' muttered Ogborne to Bernard.
'At least on a polo field there won't be any pretty ornaments for
Meredith and Simone to fight over.'

'Except the players,' giggled Meredith, gazing in wonder at
Rupert's friends, Picky France-Lynch and the Carlisle twins.

Oscar glanced round at rain-fluffed, already turning trees, at the




494
	495


emerald-green pitch, the wonderful view, dotted with russet
villages, fields striped where the hay had been cut, and pale gold
where the wheat ripened, the blue curve of the River Fleet
emerging from the mist, and sighed with pleasure.

'Tristan was right to reshoot. But what the hell is Rupert going
to say?'


'Of all the fucking two-timing shits,' roared Rupert, brandishing the Mail

'Whatever's the matter?' said Taggie, aghast.

'Fucking Montigny's been screwing Madame Lauzerte for the
past three years. They only released him from gaol because he was

caught bonking her in Wales the night Rannaldini was murdered.'
'Oh, the beast,' wailed Taggie.

'And all the time he's been two-timing darling little Tab. I never
liked him, poncy intellectual, you can't trust the Frogs. And he had
the gall to summon her onto the set by nine o'clock. She mustn't
see the Mail it'll break her heart.'


Tristan was very white when he came off the telephone to Rupert.

'He's one to talk,' said Meredith indignantly. 'There was a
frightful scandal some years ago when it came out that he'd been
rogering Amanda Hamilton, who was not only aeons older than
him and the wife of the finance minister but also liked being
spanked. Rupert's conveniently forgotten all that. Don't let it
faze you.'

'I won't,' said Tristan.

He knew exactly what he wanted, rattling out orders like a
Kalashnikov, driving everyone. Seldom had there been such
tension on a film. But despite police everywhere and a murderer
in their midst, by one thirty they had beaten the clock by one
minute twenty seconds. They had shot m616es, cavalry charges, throw-ins, and polo groupies slavering over Baby chucking down
his stick. The temperature was rising steadily, the grass drying off
fast. Mist swirled upwards all over the park. At any moment the
puddles would boil over. The extras, even if they did all look like
Claudine Lauzerte, had co-operated all the way; the discipline of
the crew, despite thumping headaches, had been superb. There
was just Alpheus's little scene and Tab's big one when she rode
Baby off, and they could wrap.


'Claudine's pompous husband is close friend of Papa,' Simone
whispered to Griselda. 'Should I accept huge sum for interview with the Daily Express?'

496


course, sweetie. Imagine Tristan and Claudine being an

r humiliating for little Tab to lose out to a woman nearly

i three times her age.'

Tab, the only person not co-operating, was in a worse mood than
yesterday: sending Alpheus and Bernard flying with her pony,
yelling at Wardrobe because her polo shirt had suddenly become too loose, her toggle too shiny, her hat too big and her boots too
revoltingly new.

She had also refused to let Rene make her up - 'I don't want to
look like fucking Claudine Lauzerte' - even though Ren was
raving over her beauty.

'Look at the length of her nose and the eyes, and the moulding
of her face. She must steal the show.'

'That's another reason for wanting to murder her,' said Chloe
ourly. 'I think we can take it she's read the MaiL'

Now Tab was bawling out the props department.

, 'You've put out the wrong fucking saddle for my pony. Mine's
got a blue and black check saddlecloth. None of this would have

if flaming Wolfie had been here.'



497




Wolfie and Lucy learnt in St Malo that Tristan had been released,
and duly celebrated. The following morning, they caught the early
boat. While Lucy was buying a large bottle of Femme for Rozzy for
looking after James, Wolfie picked up the Mail, turned green and
hastily hid it. The bastard, he thought furiously. How could Tristan
have done that to poor, darling Tab? He must get home and
comfort her.

Having dumped the hired car at St Malo, they took a taxi back
to Valhalla. To steady her nerves, Lucy took increasing nips from
a bottle of brandy she'd bought for Tristan. Last night she had
written him a long letter, explaining everything she had learnt at
Montvert and then sealed it into a huge brown envelope, which
contained all the other relevant material. Then she wrote 'Tristan
de Montigny, Private and Confidential' on the outside. She had
also washed her hair, shaved her legs, bronzed them with Piz Buin.
Then, in a St Malo boutique, she had spent too much money on a
lovely short-skirted sleeveless dress in wild rose pink and on a sexy
sophisticated scent called Fracas to wear at the wrap party.

Now she could only think, In a few minutes I'll see Tristan and
I'll die of excitement, but after tomorrow I won't see him any more,
and I'll die.

At Valhalla she was disappointed to find no James in her caravan.
Rozzy must have taken him on the set. Unzipping one of the bench
seat cushions, she hid all Tristan's parcelled-up papers and paintings
inside. It was so hot, she changed into her new pink dress, took
another slug of brandy and, because of her shaking hands, rather
over-drenched herself in Fracas.

Someone had taken Wolfie's Land Rover over to George's
house, so instead he grabbed Rannaldini's pearlescent orange

498


Lamborghini, which looked much in need of a jaunt. He whistled
as Lucy jumped in beside him.

'That dress is sensational.'


George's gates were so swarming with police and press, Wolfie had
to produce his passport.

'Why did you and I go through all that,' he asked wryly, as he
stormed up the drive, 'just to enable two people we're absolutely
crazy about to end up together?'

'At least we'll be giving Tristan the best wrap-party present ever,'
said Lucy, raising the bottle to her lips. 'Thank you, Wolfie, for
everything. It's a pity,' she added wistfully, 'you and I don't fancy
each other.'

'I've known more unlikely things,' said Wolfie, pulling up on the
edge of the field. Thinking how pretty she looked with her pale
cheeks flushed and her pink dress showing off her long legs, he
amazed himself by taking her in his arms and burying his lips in
hers.

'Wow,' gasped Lucy, when he finally let her go. 'You are the most
terrific kisser.' Pulling his blond head down, she kissed him again.

Unfortunately pearlescent orange Lamborghini Diablos are very
noticeable, particularly with Meredith turning pale and crying out
to everyone as they reassembled after the break.

'My God! Rannaldini's car's just rolled up on the opposite side
of the field.'

Most people were therefore vasdy relieved when, instead of a
black-cloaked ghost, Lucy and Wolfie, hasdly wiping off lipstick,
emerged giggling from the Lamborghini.

'Must go and find James.' Lucy set off unsteadily towards
Wardrobe.

'Must go and make my peace with Bernard,' said Wolfie, setdng
off nervously towards the set.

God, there were a lot of police around. The extras in the stands,
Granny in his press box, the marquees, the band were all massed
on the south side of the field to allow the camera team in their car
to race unimpeded up and down the north side.

'Wolfie!' bellowed Mikhail, cantering up on a smart bay pony.
'How was your dirty veekend?'

Everyone screamed with laughter and surged forward, tripping
over cables to hug him. It was just the tension-breaker they needed.

'Have a drink,' said Ogborne, thrusting a beer can into Wolfie's
hand. 'Thank God you're back to defuse Tristan and Tabitha.'

On cue, up thundered Tab, leaping off her pony and
pummelling her way into the crowd.



499




'Hi there,' mumbled Wolfie, turning very red.

Next moment he'd turned even redder, as Tab whacked him
viciously across the face with the palm, then the back of her hand.

'Bastard!' she screamed. 'How could you leave everyone in the
lurch and let Tristan down like that? How am I expected to
organize the ponies on my own and star in the film? You've let me
down as well. I hate you.' She was about to slap him again when,
seeing how handsome he was, even with his navy blue eyes watering
with pain, she burst into tears and pummelled her way out of the
crowd again.

'Don't worry, Wolfie.' Griselda clouted him on the shoulder.
'There isn't a soul she hasn't bawled out - girl's suffering from
post-Tristan tension.'

Lucy, meanwhile, was waiting for a rail of dresses or one of the
trestle tables covered in pastel-covered shoes suddenly to take off
towards her as a tethered James bounded forward in rapturous
excitement. To her horror no dog materialized.

'Where's James?' she asked Rozzy, after she'd hugged her and
handed over the bottle of Femme.

'In your caravan. He's not? Then he must have jumped out of
the window. Mrs Brimscombe's Cindy's on heat. He'll turn up.'

'Why didn't you bring him?' asked Lucy, trying not to sound
panicky or accusing.

'He ran on to the field after a squirrel yesterday, and nearly
brought down one of the ponies. Tristan banished him,' said
Rozzy, slightly defensively. 'He wouldn't eat or settle while you
were away. Then he got all excited on Sunday night when I said,
"Mummy's coming home," but when you didn't, he gradually lost
heart.' Then, seeing Lucy's anguished face, Rozzy added hasdly,
'Don't worry, I'm sure it's some bitch.'

'Lucy,' yelled Griselda, rushing up with an armful of polo boots,
'thank God you're back. Dear old Rent's taken over and made
everyone including Mikhail look like Claudine Lauzerte. Can you
do Granny first, Alpheus second?'

'I daren't tread on RenCs toes,' said Lucy in horror.

'Well, for a start you've got to do something about Alpheus's
hair.'

'He's now called Surly Temple,' said Baby, leaning down from
his pony and hugging Lucy. 'We have missed you.'

'I must find James, and Tristan and Tab to explain,' muttered a
distracted Lucy. Then, catching sight of a pile of tack on a nearby
table, 'That's Tab's saddle, the one with the blue and black check
saddlecloth.'

5OO


i'm not giving it to her in her present mood,' said Rozzy.
it, Lucy.'

.he carried the saddle past handsome players on their shining
and breathed in the intoxicating smell of old leather, dung,
horse and expensive aftershave, and heard the thun
of hoofs, the bagpipe skirl of excited neighing and the
of the crowd accompanying Rannaldini's overture, she
how right Tristan had been to want polo to kick-start the

moment, Granny had erupted from the press box, tearing

his hot black inquisitor's robes to roars of applause and

an elegant body adorned only by lavender silk boxer

Lucy, I'm roasted alive in these clothes. Please turn me

i Gordon Dillon again.'

him right for burning all those heretics,' giggled

'I must say the old dear's kept his figure.'

Lucy, how was my beautiful France?' shouted Oscar.

shouted back Lucy, embarrassed but touched as
gathered round.

that is, except Tristan, who by sheer will-power had
his army on through the morning. Victory had been in

.
	Now anarchy had broken out as all the troops deserted their
to welcome Lucy. Nor had his temper been improved, on

through Valentin's long lens, to see Wolfie and Lucy in an
.orange Lamborghini and a passionate embrace.

'Monsieur de Mondgny, could I have a word about Claudine

asked Lynda Lee-Potter, who was snazzily disguised as a

..... ' t
		syllable. I talk enough to the fl/cs,' snarled Tristan.

	No a single

. to fucking work,' he roared at the crowd around Lucy.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sexily smudged, her long legs
smooth and brown below the clinging pink dress. Moving closer
Tristan caught a whiff of brandy, which annoyed him almost as
much as the Fracas wafting muskily from her hot, excited body,
instead of the usual sweet, delicate Bluebell.

The diatribe pouring forth was mostly in French, but Lucy got
the gist: that Tristan felt she had been totally irresponsible; that she had wrecked yesterday's shoot by buggering up any hope of

	1 . and had now come back to rot up this one. Totally

	continu'ty 	'-:ssin- drinking red wine

	,.,.uoAthatamouththatwasmattelom . '

	V-v' 	- ,J L- .t.outin such terrible things,
	and quoting poetry snoum oc ,

	remained speechless.



501





	'Couldn't you ha,v,e waited two more days to ush off

	dirty little weekend howled T,q 	P , - on your
	'You've
	.. 	,t,m. oet out, you re fired.'


	to---'
	got it wrong,' stammered Lucy, 'We only went to France

'I don't want to know,' interrupted Tristan. 'Collect your cheque
from Production and get out.'

'You ungrateful bastard!' screamed Lucy. 'after all Wolfie and I
have done for you.' And still clutching Tab's saddle, she fled back
to Wardrobe.

have'Whaddjaa strike dOon that yourf°r?'hands.'Baby turned furiously on Tristan. 'You'll

'Strike and you won't be paid a penny!' yelled Tristan. 'Get back
on that pony, and you get back into those black robes,' he roared
at Granny, then scowling round, 'Where's Wolfgang, so I can fire
him?'

'Too late,' sighed Meredith happily. 'Grisel's just dispatched
him to Bristol airport to collect Alpheus's suit.'


'Tristan's just fired me.' Lucy stumbled into Wardrobe, sobbing
helplessly.

'Oh, darling,' cried Rozzy, putting down her steam iron to hold
out her arms. 'I'm so sorry, don't cry. He'll calm down. He'sjust
got so much on his plate.'

'He's still an ungrateful bastard. He's convinced Wolfie and I
have been bonking all weekend, when we've been working our
backsides offproving he can marry Tab after all. I don't know why
we bothered.'

'Have you told him?' Rozzy handed Lucy a wodge of Kleenex. 'No, Wolfie can.' Then, hearing Tab yelling outside, 'Oh, God, I've still got her saddle, I can't cope with her bawling me out as
well. You give it to her. I must go and find James. Hell, I haven't
got a car.'

'Take mine,' said Rozzy.


Tears blinding her, Lucy somehow reached Valhalla. She was so
furious and upset, she went straight to the production office and
wrote a furious letter to Tristan.

'This is to let you know you're a Montigny and can marry your
precious Tabitha and be happy after all, you ungrateful pig. Don't
be horrible to Wolfie. I'm going to give all the papers and photos
and things you need for proof to Rozzy.'

Having printed off the letter, she wrote 'Dearest Tristan' at the
top and 'your loving Lucy' at the bottom, and streaked the ink with
her tears.

She was shoving the envelope into Tristan's pigeon-hole when she caught sight of a ravishing photograph of him on the front of the Daily Mail. How young and carefree he looked. She was just
tearing it out, when she noticed the pictures beneath: one of
Claudine Lauzerte, and another, slightly blurred, of Claudine with her hair - rather too long for a middle-aged woman, some would say - streaming down her back, as she kissed a beautiful dark
haired boy, who was fingering her cheekbones in wonder. Their eyes were shut but their long, long eyelashes tangled.

Lucy gave a moan. Slowly, agonizingly, she read the copy and
understood why Tristan had never made passes, why he disappeared
to his room early but never seemed to sleep much, why he
was always so sad, the prince with the heavy heart. And how ludicrous
had been all those speculations that he was impotent or
terrified of women or in love with some smooth, older man, like
Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, when all the time he was sleeping
with the most beautiful woman in France.

How idiotic for Lucy herself to pretend she had thought of
anyone but him since December or that every drop of makeup, every false eyelash hadn't been put on his singers to please him. It had been the best make-up she had ever done because it had been
an act of love. She had only gone to France in the faint hope that
Tristan might realize he loved her not Tab. But all the time neither Tab nor she had been in the frame. How he must have loved
Claudine not to betray her.

I love him, she sobbed in a frenzy of despair. No pain could be
more unendurable. But there could be. When she got back to her
caravan there was no James to whack his tail against the walls and
squeak with joy.

Neither the police nor any of the local rescue kennels had news
of him when she rang in increasing panic. With a shiver she
remembered the gypsy encampment outside Paradise, which had
moved on since she and Wolfie had left for France. Maybe they had
stolen James, or he had gone back to his own people to die.

Noticing Rozzy's end-of-shoot presents, all beautifully wrapped
in purple paper and shocking pink ribbons, Lucy was creepily
reminded of Alpheus's dressing-gown. Weeping with despair she
plunged into the woods in search of James.


Back at Rutminster Hall, Gablecross and Karen had watched the
filming of Baby's winning goal. Now the crew was setting up for
Baby's and Tabitha's ride-off. Looking round at the ravening
media baying for blood and the massive police presence watching
from the house or mingling with the extras or hiding in the trees




502
	503


that surrounded GcorgCs increasingly churned-up polo field,
Gablecross felt a growing unease.

'All this attention only exacerbates the problem,' he muttered
to Karen. 'Murderers get off on it. They're turned on when they
read about themselves. It pushes them into overdrive. But, even
more ominously, Tristan and Madame Lauzerte have shoved our
killer off the front pages. The only way he can get back again is to
commit another murder. He's outwitted a massive international
murder hunt, but ultimately he gets his biggest buzz out of
someone knowing exactly how clever he's been. Which means he'll
have to kill again, so that beforehand he can boast to his victim how
he did it.'

Karen shivered. The polo had been so glamorous, she had
hitherto thoroughly enjoyed herself. Several photographers had
taken her picture. The dashing Carlisle twins had asked what she
was doing later. Glancing round, she said, 'We've got an almost full
cast of suspects.'

'Except Wolfie and Lucy,' replied Gablecross, whom Interpol
had alerted of their arrival in England.

'Hello, Tim, hello, Karen.' It was Rozzy with two cups of coffee,

'I gather you went home yesterday. How did you like Glyn?'
'Very much,' lied Karen.

'He's a charmer,' said Rozzy wistfully. 'Was Sylvia much in
evidence?'

'No,' lied Gablecross.

'I hope you'll catch the murderer today,' Rozzy lowered her
voice, 'because we're all dispersing tomorrow. I'll miss you both so

much. '

'The feeling's mutual. Have you seen Lucy?'

'She was here,' confided Rozzy. 'She and Wolfie went all the way
to France to clear Tristan's name and the beast has gone and fired

her. The poor darling's rushed off to Valhalla in floods.'

'Sorry to hear about your lovely dress,' said Karen.

'Horrible, wasn't it?' For a second Rozzy's eyes brimmed. 'But
Tristan, who's a darling, when he's not being a beast, gave me some

money to buy another so I rushed into Rutminster first thing.'
'Find anything nice?' asked Karen.

'In Peggy Parker's, of all unlikely places. I thought she was all
Lurex and sequins.'

Gablecross looked at his watch. Tristan and Oscar were still
fussing over lights. Anxious to get going before their ponies
became maddened by flies, Picky France-Lynch and the Carlisle
twins were pointedly hitting balls to one another.

'Ouch,' yelled Sexton, as one hit him on the ankle. 'Ow, Christ,

comes trouble,' he added as, parting crowu ,u,, ..........

Comb, Rupert stalked up to Tristan.

'Have you got some sort of death-wish?' he hissed. 'How dare you

•
	oot everything when we're so pushed for time and money?
d if you think I'm going to put a farthing into your crappy

roduction after the way you screwed up my daughter! Why didn't
P level with her that you were regularly ramming ten inches of

	you. .	-- :-- that reriatric Claudine Lauzerte? Amazlng

	larislan saes ?;te co)ebs. Don't clench those Frog fists at

You haven't got ajambe to stand on.'

Rupert seized Tristan's arm and was clearly about to thump him,

Sexton bravely interceded.

'Look, Rupe, we all know you're fired up, but we are against the
dock, so why don't you castrate and incinerate Tristan and tug out

his toenails after we've wrapped?'

i Valentin burst out laughing. Rupert was dickering whether to

deck Sexton and Valentin as well, when everyone was distracted by
the arrival of Hermione, flanked by outriders, waving graciously
from the back of an open limo. Like gulls following a plough, a
flock of paparazzi had crashed the party in her wake.

'I have come to stand by my director, Tristan de Montigny, in his
hour of need,' she was loudly confiding to hundreds of black taperecorders.
'My heart also goes out to Claudine Lauzerte, and her
husband Jean-Louis, the Minister of Cultural Affairs, at this difficult
time.'

'Were you aware, Dame Hermione, that Tristan was having a far
from cultural affaire with Madame Lauzerte?' shouted James
Whitaker.

'Below the belt, James,' said Hermione reproachfully.
'Tristan certmnly was, said Adam Helliker, to howls of mirth.

'Are you in this scene, Dame Hermione?' asked Classic FM
Magazine.

'Indeed,' Hermione inclined her huge flamingo-pink picture
hat, 'but only as a face in the crowd.'

'You can't, Hermsie.' Seizing her hand, Sexton helped her out
of the limo. 'The point of this scene is that Carlos is ordered by
Philip to dump his polo totties and marry an unseen Frog princess,
namely you. It blows your cover if you're seen in the crowd.'

•
	l'

'But polo is internauona, pouted Hermione. 'It would be
logical for Elisabetta to jet down for a chukka or two.'

'God in heaven.' Tristan clutched his head. 'We'll have to shoot
round her.'

'Now where is my son, whose photography...' Hermione turned
back proudly.



504
	505



But. Little Cosmo had jumped limo and was ringing Ladbrokes,
who were taking bets on who had killed Rannaldini. Cosmo was
gratified that his mother was 10-1, but decided to put a couple of
hundred each on his stepbrother, Wolfgang, and Meredith, his
putative father's boyfriend, neither of whom appeared to have any
alibi.


The burning sun was boring through Tabitha's hat. At any
moment she'd burst into flames. Having screamed at everyone on
the set, she was now leaning against her pony, a beautiful grey
gelding called The Ghost, unable to mount until her missing
saddle turned up. Flora, who'd been gossiping to Baby, came over
with a glass of iced orange juice.

'Gee, thanks,' said Tab listlessly. 'You are lucky keeping Baby as
a friend. Tristan won't even speak to me. Even George seems to
like Baby now.'

'George now knows that Baby's only a friend, and that his heart
lies entirely elsewhere,' said Flora, then realizing what she'd said,
added hastily, 'Oh, look, Granny's back in the press box in his
black robes. Such a surreal, sinister touch.'

'Last time I acted with Granny I was nearly burnt to death,' shuddered
Tab. 'Oh, my God,' she whispered.

For there, away from the crowd, his glossy black hair gleaming,
his shadow as misshapen and knowing as a Velazquez dwarf, the
personification of darkness in that burning afternoon sun, stood
Isa.

'What the hell are you doing here?' croaked Tab.

'Come to wish my wife and my old friend good luck,' mocked
Isa, never taking his eyes off Baby.

Oh, help, thought Flora in terror. Isa's the one. He's just the
right height to pass himself off as the ghost of Rannaldini and he
exudes such evil.

Up galumphed Griselda, oblivious of any tension.

'I've found Tab's saddle, at last. It was under a table,' she
shouted, as she handed it to Rupert's groom, Dizzy, who slapped it

onto The Ghost, tightened his girths and pulled down the stirrups.
'He's ready, Tab,' she cried.

But Tab was gazing up at Baby, who'd gone even whiter than she
had. 'So you're the one Isa loves,' she whispered. 'No-one fucking
told me. You bastard, Baby!'

"Dkpchez-vous, Tab,' shouted Bernard.

'How long's it been going on?' hissed Tab. 'Before our marriage, I suppose. 
You'd like me out of the way, wouldn't you?' She was
taunting Baby now.

506


his reins. -

		'Isa probably wants your horses back,' hissed Tab. 'My father

		won't want to train them when he hears what you've been up to.'

		Picking up the vibes, Baby's mare nearly took off.

		'Come on, Tab, everyone's waiting,' chided Dizzy, giving her a

		leg up.

		Rozzy rushed forward to give her boots a last polish, Griselda

i:
		tucked in her shirt and smoothed down her breeches. Ren took

		the shine off her nose with a powder brush.

		'Your collar's sdcldng up, Tab,' cried out Simone.

		'Alittle piece of hair's come loose from your toggle,' cried Rozzy.
		'Oh, fuck off, the lot of you," screamed Tab.

		. .'Gool it, Tab,' yelled Ricky France-Lynch.

		'Please don't shout,' grumbled Dommie Carlisle, 'I've got a

		bloody awful headache. Shouldn't have spent Iast night shagging

		someone called Pissy or Cushy.'

		Ogborne rewed up the car. Valentin in the passenger seat could

		,e through his long lens the players shoudng at each other, the

		ponies' legs a jumble against t.,he pink faces and pretty clothes of

		it he excited crowd. Rannaldini s overture was echoing round the

		: field.

		'Quiet, please, everyone,' yelled Bernard. 'We're turning over.'

		: 'Seeing the loathing on Baby's face, Tab panicked.

		He's going to kill me, she thought, but it was too late.

		As Ogborne trod on the accelerator Tristan, in the back of the

		car, had shouted, 'Action.'

		Ricky France-Lynch stroked the ball to Baby, who hit it perfectly,

		galloping after it towards goal. Too fast, thought Rupert, in sudden

		terror, as Tab came thundering in at an angle to push him offthe

		ball. But Baby's pony held firm, and dapple-grey and chestnut

		shoulders met in a shunt so forceful it took both horses off the

		ground in a cloud of dust, but gave Tab the slight advantage to

		stroke the ball back up-field to safety.
		'Wonderful,' breathed Tristan. 'Keep rolling.'

		But as Tab leant over, putting her whole weight on her right

		stirrup to take the backhand, the leather gave way like a broken

		arm. There was no way she could save herself. She was toppling

		over. Next moment the ground came hurtling up to meet her.

		The crowd gave a collective scream of horror.

		Fuck, Iwonder if we've shot enough, Tristan was horrified to find

		himself thinking, particularly when Tab remained in a huddled

		heap.

		The Ghost was running around trailing his reins. Ambulances




507






and police cars were careering across the field. Baby was instantly

off his pony, pleading as he knelt down beside Tab.

'Oh, angel, I'm sorry, please be OK.'

But Tab didn't move, whiter than the burning sun above. From
the horrible angle of her head to her body, Baby knew she had
broken her neck.

Rupert, who'd vaulted on to someone's pony, beat the police
cars and ambulances. 'Turn that fucking music offi Why'd you
have to hit her so hard?' he yelled at Baby. Then, catching sight of
his motionless datghter, he dropped to his knees beside her. 'Oh,
my Christ.'

Her stirrup, with its broken leather, was still attached to her foot.


Driving back with Alpheus's suit, taking a short-cut through one of
George's side gates, Wolfie heard awail of sirens. Through a screen
of hogweed, blond grasses and mauve willowherb, he saw an ambulance
belting towards the main gates.

Abandoning the Lamborghini in the gateway to the field where
all the unit was parked, he tore after the ambulance, which was
temporarily trapped behind a hay lorry.

'Who is it?' he begged a cameraman running in the other
direction.

'Campbell-Black's daughter. Looks nasty.'

Catching up with the ambulance, Wolfie drummed his fists frenziedly
on the back door undl it opened a fraction.

'You can't come in,' said an ambulance man, putting his head
out.

'I bloody can. What's the matter with her?'
'Are you a relative?'
'Brother,' gasped Wolfie.

Seeing his blond hair and normally ruddy face now as white as
Tab's, they allowed him in, then were slightly startled when he
began gabbling away in German, beseeching Tab to live.

Wolfie was magnificent. He comforted and found cups of tea for
liis sobbing stepmother and, later, for a stunned, horrified Taggie.
He conjured up a large whisky for Rupert and, by acting as
mediator, defused the situation when Rupert's explosions of rage
looked like antagonizing the hospital staff.

. I-Ie also remained icily calm when the specialist listed the terrible
alternatives so he could translate the details - albeit watered down to the 
others, who were too shocked to take them in.

.Tab had been rushed into Intensive Care, where X-rays had
mercifully ruled out a broken neck or a fractured skull. But they

have to watch out she didn't develop a subdural oedema.

the fuck's that? Can't you speak English?'

specialist's lips tightened. 'A blood clot inside the cavity of

. Mr Campbell-Black. We'll keep examining her pupils for
of bleeding under the skull.'

you find them?' Wolfie's voice shook only slightly.

her straight offto a neuro-surgeon and drill straight
the skull.'
s sobs redoubled.

	'She'll be all right.' Wolfie put an arm round her shoulders.
'How d'you fucking know?' snapped Rupert. 'And how long

we find out?'


/kber Cog, beseeched Wolfie, for the thousandth time, don't

something so vibrant and lovely.

anyone so pale. Against Tab's face, the white

spattered with blood from another nosebleed, seemed
as ivory. Nothing could be more inert than her little hand,

¢ in his as cold and as still as a pebble on the shore. Helen,




5O8
	509




snivelling gently, was holding the other hand. In the corner sat a
motionless Taggie and a silent Xavier, who had insisted on coming
but who looked absolutely frozen with shock. Rupert, pacing up
and down outside, was the first to see Fanshawe and Debbie.
'Whaddja want?'
'How's Mrs Lovell?'
'Unconscious.'

Fanshawe steeled himself.

'I'm sorry, sir, but I'm afraid we're treadng her fall as attempted
murder.' Then, seeing the fury in Rupert's face, 'Her right-hand
stirrup leather was cut through, probably with a penknife.'

'And that happened in a place crawling with cops! Why the hell
should anyone want to kill Tal?'

Fanshawe refrained from pointing out that Tab had achieved an
all-dme high in bloodiness over the last few days.

'That's what we're trying to find out, sir. Can you remember who
was near her while she was mounting? Nicking the leather would
have only taken a couple of seconds.'

'Dizzy, my head groom, saddled the pony,' said Rupert, 'but
she's been with me for ever. She adores Tab. Also,' Rupert screwed
up his eyes, 'Dizzy gave her a leg up so no weight would have been
put on the leather. Grisel brought the saddle over. Grisel's an old
softie - she wouldn't hurt Tab. There was that make-up poofter,
Ren, and Simone, she's a duck, and Rozzy, that drip who's bats
about Tristan. Isa, her bastard of a husband was there, Baby,
Mikhail. Everyone, really.'

'Lucy Latimer was holding the saddle when Tristan sacked her,'
said Debbie, 'but she's done a bunk, evidently searching for her
dog.'

'We gather Mrs Lovell was upset because someone put the wrong
saddle on her pony,' added Fanshawe, 'and there was a long delay
before Lady Griselda discovered the right one under the table in
Wardrobe.'

'Tab's saddlecloth is avery distinctive blue and black check,' said
Rupert. 'Everyone on the unit would have recognized it and known
Tab would be wanting it later.'

'So the murderer could have cut the leather much earlier.'
'And will strike again. He's tried to kill Tab before,' snarled
Rupert. 'Why the hell haven't you put a hundred men round this
hospital?'


Tab was in a twilight of pain. Black clouds whirled before her eyes,
then became smoky grey mist but, as if they were thick elasticated
cobwebs, try as she might she couldn't struggle through them.

shone a blinding light. Perhaps she was dead and had

. the other side. To the right she could make out a shadowy
with a clipboard, who was ricking people off as they disap

into the lighL Tab was frantic to go through too.

she croaked, 'I must say I'm sorry to Gertrude.'

not here at the moment.' The angel consulted the clip

'And we're not ready for you either. There are people on
who need you.'

had groaned as the mists came down again.

. suddenly they were clearing again and she could see Wolfie

on a chair. He looked so sad, but try as she might she
e.ouldn't call out to him. Not even when a little white dog with a

trotted into the room.

Gertrude! Again Tab tried to speak, but no words out. After licking her hand, 
the little white dog trotted

over to Wolfie, and nudged his knees until he bent
picked her up. Having licked his face, which seemed to

with tears, Gertrude curled up with a contented sigh

knee.

again, Tab battled to speak, but the mists descended

than ever. Then they cleared and Gertrude had gone. It
most enormous struggle but finally she managed to
'Wolfie, I'm here.'
' minute her hands were seized and Wolfie was gazing down

trying to stop more tears pouring out of his reddened eyes,

unable to speak than she was.

Wolfie,' she whispered, 'Gertrude's ghost came in and

on your knee. She was so happy to be there, I know she

me she's forgiven me, and you're the one, and every

to be all right. Oh, Wolfie, you have got a halo. I love
much.' Her voice faded as she drifted off to sleep again.

stumbled into the corridor where he found Rupert.
came round.'

Christ! Did she make sense?'

all. She was gabbling on about Gertrude's ghost. Then

loved me.' His voice broke. 'She must be delirious.'

he had collapsed on the sofa, put his head in his
and burst into agonizing sobs. 'I'm so sorry to be a wimp,

but I thought she was going to die, and I love her so much.'
know you do,' said Rupert, in an unsteady voice. 'But she's

tobe OK.'


|uestion when she came round was 'Why did you go to




510
	511




'Because you told me to.'

'And why have you been crying?'

'I was worried.' Then, steeling himself because he felt he must
level with her, 'Tristan backed off from you earlier in the summer
because he'd been told by my father that there was bad blood in
his family and he should never have children. Lucy and I went to

	i
	'

	France to prove t wasn t true so now he can marry you, if you want

	him to.' He took her hands again.

'You and Lucy went all that way.' Tab's forehead wrinkled trying

	to understand. 'So you're not in love with Lucy?'

	'Of course not.'

	'Why were you kissing her, then?'

	'There's nothing wrong with "
	'

		y0urmemory, said Wolfie, trying

	to smile. 'We were comforting each other. We thought you loved

	Tristan.'

	'I've been so jealous,' mumbled Tab. 'This is seriously embar
	rassing,
but once you'd gone away I realized it was you I loved, not

	Tristan.H'e s so ratty and obsessed with his film. I feel safe with you.

	I've wanted to kill Lucy for the last few days.'

	Wolfie was struck dumb again as the colour flooded his incred
	ulous,
bewildered, hopeful face.

	'Your father?' he mumbled. 'He'd never approve. I'm three

	quarters Kraut, a quarter Italian, a Rannaldini, and a disinherited

	one at that.'

	'That doesn't matter a stuff. Dad really likes you.' Tab stretched

	up her hand to touch his face. 'You're much more his cup of Earl

	Grey than Tristan. He loathes intellectuals.'

	'How d'you feel now?' Wolfie trapped her hand, covering the

	palm with kisses.

	'My head aches, but my heart doesn't any more.'

	'You mustn't try to talk.'

	'I don't want to talk, I want to kiss you.'

	I shouldn't be doing this to Tristan, thought Wolfie, but he bent

	his head and very gently kissed her dry lips, which immediately

	opened.

	'Stop that at once, you must not excite the patient,' said an

outraged nurse, who'd bustled in with a torch to check Tab's

pupils.

	'Yes, he must.' Tab's hand clamped round Wolfie's neck. 'It's

exactly what she does need.'


Outside, Rupert, trying to get through to Gerald Portland, had to
cope with another casualty. This time it was Xavier, sobbing his
Rupert was touched. Perhaps, at last, his son was
towards his stepsister.

' fault,' wailed Xav. 'Tab was so horrible this morning,
. she'd die.'

a second Rupert had difficulty in keeping a straight face. 'It

pray hard enough,' he said gravely. 'She's getting

by the minute.'

she be coming back to live with us?' Xav asked gloomily.

through the glass into Tab's room, Rupert could see
taking offTab's wedding ring and throwing it in the bin. 'I
doubt it,' he said.

think her horrible mother could go and live with them


minutes later, walking at speed along the corridor, Tristan
; slap into Rupert and steeled himself for more abuse. But

seemed in an excellent mood.

come round. Go and say hello.'

Tristan tiptoed in, Wolfie slid out without a word. Outside he

hot forehead against a cool corridor window, raising two
of crossed fingers to the skies.

darling, 'ow are you?' Tristan took Tab's hand.

She forced herself to look at him. After a day in the sun,

brown again. She'd forgotten how handsome he was.

' she muttered, 'I know I threw myself at you. Wohqe told me
you backed off, but you mustn't feel guilty about Claudine

love with Wolfie.'

her ringless finger and her mud-splattered face.
i the ticking clock broke the long, long silence. 'I know you


up, Tab was amazed to see happiness and sweetness in


you gave me the most beautiful night of my life.'
thought I was so in love with you.'

you, and I still think Wolfie is the luckiest guy in the


'You shouldn't look so relieved,' grumbled Tab. 'It isn't very flat


im't very flattering that your father looks ecstatic as well. I'm
orry, chkr/e, I've been like a bear with a hurt head and you had that

[.'

'Wolfle thinks you'll be cross with him.'

"Au contraire. I come not for Wolfie's blood but his car keys. When




512
	513



he saw ambulance, he leave Lamborghini across gateway so the
unit cannot get in or out. His burglar alarm is going off every
second so Sylvestre is going ape-sheet. Worst of all, Alpheus's suit
is locked inside so we cannot film last scene.'


The moment Tristan returned to the set an anxious Rozzy asked
after Tab.

'Out of danger,' said Tristan happily, 'and absolutely crazy about
Wolfie, which lets me off the hook.'

'Oh, I'm so pleased for them both,' sighed Rozzy, taking
Alpheus's suit from him. 'I wonder if it needs a press.'

'Don't bother,' said Tristan. 'Oh, Rozzy, I was such a bastard to
Lucy earlier. Now I'm worried stiff. Someone tried to kill Tab, they
slashed your dress yesterday, the murderer's on the rampage, and
Lucy's not answering her mobile.'

'Leave a message on her bleeper.'

'I've been leaving them all day. I need her to make up Alpheus.
We can cover his Shirley Temple curls with straw hat, but only Lucy
can give those commonplace features an air of nobility. And to tell
the truth,' confessed Tristan wryly, 'I shouted at her because I miss
her so much.'

'I'll find her.' Rozzy patted his shoulder. 'Don't worry.'

Rupert managed to catch the five fifty news on a hospital television.
That pompous ass Gerald Portland was giving a press conference
at Rutminster police station. He was flaunting a purple spotted tie
with a purple striped shirt and kept smoothing his chestnut hair
for the cameras.

'We are treating this incident as attempted murder,' he was
telling the rugger scrum of reporters. 'But happily I can confirm
that Tabitha Lovell is no longer in a life-threatening condition.'

After that, Portland's emergency meeting of the Inner Cabinet
was most embarrassingly interrupted by an apoplectic telephone
call from Rupert. 'I merely said she was no longer in a lifethreatening
condition, Mr Campbell-Black.'

'Don't be fucking stupid. The person who's just tried to kill her
for a second time has already killed two people and tried to bump
off half a dozen more, and is still on the loose. If that isn't fucking
threatening her life, I don't know what is. All you overpaid cretins
do is waste tax-payers' money chasing the wrong people.'

'We are about to make an arrest,' said Portland huffily.

'Well, until the killer's behind bars, I want a dozen men guarding
Tab at the hospital - and while you're on, never, never, never wear
spots with stripes.'

'Bastard!' Portland slammed down the telephone.

But nothing could dent his euphoria. The DNA testing had at
last produced a match.

'Who is it, Guv?' begged DC Lighffoot in excitement.

Gerry Portland turned to Gablecross, not without a certain satisfaction.
'I'm afraid it's your girlfriend Lucy Latimer, Tim.'

'I don't believe it.'



514
	515




'Nor do I,' said Karen indignantly.

'She never had a cast-iron alibi,' went on Portland. 'She was
allegedly walking that dog when both Rannaldini and Beattie
copped it, and her DNA profile showed up in Rannaldini's saliva
and in the bite on Beattie's shoulder. She was carrying Tabitha's
saddle when Tristan fired her - that probably pushed her over the
top. And her fingerprints and fibres from Tab's stirrup leather
were found all over the penknife on her key-ring, which Kevin and
Debbie,' Portland grinned at Fanshawe and Debbie, 'unearthed
from a bin-bag outside Wardrobe. Latimer must have been frantic
to get rid of it.'

'The murderer must have stolen her keys,' snapped Gablecross,
who had only recently come off the tel,ephone to Wolfie. 'Why
should Lucy want to kill Tab when she d just come back from
France, where she'd specially gone to clear Tristan's name so he
could marry Tab?'

'Very subtle,' said Fanshawe nastily. 'After such altruism, no-one
would suspect her of murdering Tab. Then she could have Tristan
for herself. Her total, total obsession is behind the whole thing.
You and Karen were the first people to suss how crazy she was about
him.'

'Then why did she kill Rannaldini?' demanded Karen.
'Because he was going to tell the world Maxim was Tristan's
father,' explained Gerald Portland. 'She killed Beattie for the same
reason. Rannaldini had humiliated her by making a pass at her it's
in his memoirs. Psychopaths can't stand being belittled, and
Rannaldini was also threatening to tell Tristan she was crazy about
him. She tried to kill Tab because she couldn't bear her to have
Tristan.'

'Doesn't add up,' muttered Gablecross.

"Fraid it does,' said Fanshawe patronizingly. 'Everyone Tristan
favoured got warned off. Granville's patchwork quilt, Flora's fox,
poor Rozzy's dress cut to ribbons, putting petrol in the water cans,
all the work of a mad person.'

'What about the adder in Lucy's make-up box?' pleaded Karen.
'A plant - made her look like a victim, same as showing Tim the
burn from the poisoned champagne on her tablecloth. She's
diabolically clever, like all psychos. She failed twice with Tab, but
she'll strike again.'

'I swear she hasn't done it.'

'The DNA's conclusive, Tim. It's always the quiet ones,' said
Portland, not unkindly. 'Latimer spent so much time making other
people beautiful, but they got the clapping. For the first time in
her life, she's got a bigger audience than they ever will.'

Then he turned briskly to Fanshawe and Debbie. 'Go and pull her in. Well done, 
both of you.'

'Where is she?' asked Gablecross dully.

'Searching the Valhalla woods for her dog, but we've got tails on her and she 
keeps ringing to check if he has been handed in. Next
time we'll nail her. You and Karen better go and keep an eye on
Tabitha at Rutminster General, Tim. We don't want any slip-ups.'

The ultimate put-down, thought Gablecross savagely, the hound demoted to guard-
dog.


Lucy had been searching for hours, shouting herself hoarse,
ing herself into a state of collapse. To add to her frustration, her mobile 
wouldn't work in the wood so she had to keep
returning to the house or the Paradise-Cheltenham road to ring the police and 
the local dog sanctuaries.

lish-black clouds were massing on the horizon and the wind her hair. After 
yesterday's downpour, the wood|
floor was impossibly slippery, her legs were lacerated by
cables and nettles, her face and arms scratched, her knees
and bleeding where she had continually fallen over. But



	pain except desolation.

	voice echoed mockingly back at her. The hot

	air carded every sound except a joyful bark. To the clay

	banging away in anticipation of 19 August was added a

	Untranquillized, James would bolt half-way to

	Returning to the road once more, she punched out the

	police stadon.

	Lucy Latimer again, ringing about James, a big red shaggy

	He slipped his collar so he hasn't got a name tag.'

	did you say?'

	Latimer.'

	could hear a hand thudding over the receiver, then a man's

	calm but quivering with excitement. 'Where are you, Lucy?'

	north of Hangman's Wood.'

	back to the big house.' Then, after a pause, 'We've got

	news for you.'

	God! He's red and shaggy.'

	the one. Meet us at your caravan, Lucy.'

	with relief, her loafers squelching in sympathy, Lucy ran

	way. Oh, please, please, please, let it be James. An extra

	garish light was gilding the wheatfields, turning the

	a Day-glo emerald. Silver streams were hurtling

	r into an ever-rising lake. Outside her caravan beside

a bowl of food she'd left to was so




516


heaving with maggots she nearly threw up. She was about to chuck
it out when, glancing into her caravan, she saw that her suitcase
had been opened, her drawers up-ended and her bag emptied on
the table.

Tristan's papers, she thought in horror. Leaping up the steps,
unzipping the bench-seat cushion, she sighed with relief. The
parcel was still there. She must lock it safely in her make-up box,
but where were her keys? Normally they hung on a hook beside
her nieces' photographs.

'Lucy Latimer,' yelled a voice.

lames, where is he?' croaked Lucy as, still clutching Tristan's
parcel, she bounded down the steps.


Debbie Miller had never confronted a murderer before. This one
certainly looked crazy: muddy and bloodstained, with scratches on
her arms and legs, a torn dress, hair like an electrocuted bird's nest
and frantically heaving breasts.

'Oh, please, give me back my dog,' gasped Lucy.

Then police were fanning round her, and Lucy caught a glimpse
of handcuffs, or was it a gun in Fanshawe's hand?

'Lucy Latimer,' he said triumphantly, 'we are arresting you for
the murders ofRoberto Rannaldini and Beatrice Johnson, and the
attempted murder of Tabitha Lovell.'

'Wha-a-a-t?' whispered Lucy. 'You tricked me. You haven't got
James at all. Bastards!' Her voice rose to a scream.

Seeing a gap to the left, she shot through it. Terror gave her feet
wings - she had not run for Cumbrian Schoolgirls for nothing. She
also knew Valhalla better than any of the police. Racing across the
caravan park, jumping box hedges, running towards the car park,
for a second she left whistles and baying Alsatians behind, then
went slap into Rozzy.

'Darling, whatever's the matter? Fve been looking for you everywhere.'

'The police! They think I'm the murderer,' sobbed Lucy. 'Oh,
Rozzy, help me, I didn't do it.'

'Of course you didn't. How ridiculous!'

'I can't let them arrest me until I've found James.' Lucy took off.
across the grass again.

'You certainly can't. Funnily enough, I keep hearing squeaking.
I just wonder if the old boy's got himself shut in somewhere.
Clive's back. He might have been poking around, and left a door
open.'

'Oh my God, Clive stole Gertrude! He might steal James!'

'I can't keep up with you,' gasped Rozzy. 'I've got a stitch. I know

518


I,bere you can hide.' She tugged Lucy behind a yew peacock as a

ing, sweating,Fanshawe pounded past.

Grabbing Lucy s hand, Rozzy led her through iron gates across

	east courtyard in throug.h, the back doo.r al.ong endless d,k

	es, then up shiny pohshed dark struts nto Rannaldini s

	-dy, which had a musty, neglected smell. There were no fan
		tographs stacked on the big oak desk now, no-one to

	"- 	Dn Tuan astride the ladv of the manor, in the ltienne

ontigny on the right of the nrepmce.

: '!iRozzy went straight to the left of the painting and started to tap

	,"What are you doing?' asked Lucy, through desperately chat

	..... teeth. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn but outside she

	hear shouting.

	Looking for the priest-hole. I'll find it in a second.'

	'Please hurry,' begged Lucy.

	Rannaldini showed me,' Rozzy gave an almost coy giggle, 'when

	once had a little fling, and Cecilia, his then wife, came home

	, but he swore me to secrecy. Now how does it work?'

	,' beseeched Lucy. The raised voices and excited

	;were getting nearer.

	: it.' Suddenly, with an arthritic creak, the panel swung back

	i reveal a big dark cupboard.
	,
	-
i: 'I don't want you to be done for aiding and abetting, gibbered

cy; 'Oh, Rozy, you do believe I'm innocent? I adore

	Tab.'

I know you do.' Dropping to her knees, Rozzy reac,hed ln.si, d,e
: cupboard and removed the floorboard. 'Get insicte, qucnty.

h, golly. Half inside the cupboard, Lucy realized she was still
;:,gin on to Tristan s parcel, and gave a so .

)"Vlaaheart that loves you will never be closed to you,"' she stem.
'Here are my important papers." Oh, please, guard them

l see that Tristan, and no-one else, gets them. And
arrested and he comes back,' Lucy's voice cracked again,
care of James. Production's got my wages, that should
going for a bit.'

Don't worry about anything.' Taking the parcel, Rozzy leaned
to kiss Lucy's muddy, tearstained, quivering cheek. 'Good

down through the hole, Lucy groaned as she landed
rubble, wrenching her ankle.

someone's coming.' Rozzy picked up the floorboard.
sticking-out brick - no, to the right of it. If you press that,

open to a secret passage down to the lake, but don't



519





u umess you have to. I'll put the police off the scent, then find
Sergeant Gablecross, who'll spring you the minute the coast's
clear. Never fear, Aunt Rozzy's here!'

In slotted the floorboard above Lucy's head, leaving her in total
darkness. Then she heard the panel in Rannaldini's study creaking
shut and was overwhelmed with terror.

How could they think she was the murderer? Had she been wise
to trust Rozzy, who must have had one hell of an affaire with Rannaldini to know 
all those things? Would Rozzy leave her
boarded up for ever like the Canterville ghost? Would Aunt
Hortense ever forgive her ifTristan's papers fell into police hands?
At least Tristan should soon pick up the note in his pigeon-hole.
Oh, God, she mustn't go to pieces.

Leaning against the wall, she regained her breath and steadied
herself, then pressed the brick and Sure enough a door creaked
open. Feeling her way round the walls she found an opening, but
it was only four feet high and very narrow. The air smelt damp and
musty. She screamed as something wet, furry and cold scuttled over
her foot. She would have stayed put rather than embark on the
dark journey if she hadn't heard the faintest whining.

'James,' she called out, not daring to shout, in case she could be
heard in the study or out in the garden. There it was again, the
faintest whimper.

'Oh, my poor old boy.'

She crawled along, jagging her scratched, bleeding hands and
knees even more on the rocks, giving little screams as icy water
dripped on her head and slimy walls grazed her sides. She only
kept going because of the whining and because, as the passage
jinked and twisted, she would have got stuck if she'd tried to turn
round.

Just as her eyes were getting accustomed to the dark, it lightened
ahead. A clap of thunder rocked the tunnel like an earthquake,
followed by another even more deafening. The whining grew more
frantic.

'Oh, please,' she prayed out loud, 'please don't let James have
broken anything. I'll never be able to carry him back to safety. I'm
coming, my angel[' she cried.

She could hear rushing, pounding water. She must be near the
lake. The roof was getting higher: soon she'd be able to walk. Then,
as she took another turn, her blood froze to a thousand degrees
below zero. Her hair shot on end. Her heart stopped as, like
dreadful chloroform, she was asphyxiated by the stench of
Maestro. Glancing ahead she saw the back of a black figure, terri
firing in its utter stillness. She couldn't move, she couldn't cry out.

520


heard the snake-crawling swish of a cloak on the rocky
and in the dim light could make out the silvery hair, the

arrogant profde, the burning eyes, the evil smile as he

slowly towards her.

God, was Rozzy in league with Rannaldini?

gave another agonizing howl as though someone was

him.

ilqo, Rannaldini,' croaked Lucy. 'Don't come near me. Don't

Oh, please, no,' and she crumpled to the ground in a

faint.



521





It was the last set-up of Don Carlos. Flocks of birds and a pink and
yellow hot-air balloon were drifting up from the Bristol Channel.
On the horizon an orange sun, striped with black stratus clouds,
waited like a curled-up dger to erupt over the horizon.

'Tristan's a cool customer,' Grisel muttered to Simone. 'If he'd
had a suitable stand-in, he'd have reshot that ride-offstraight away.'

Tristan was now calmly briefing Alpheus. 'You don't have to look
heavily disapproving, just a flash of outrage because your son is
suddenly attracting the best girls.'

'Quiet, please,' shouted Bernard, for the hundredth time, as an
incredible tension spread through the crowd round camera and
actor.

'Mark it,' shouted Bernard.

'Scene two hundred and fifteen, take six,' shouted the clapperloader.

'And
action,' shouted Tristan.

Happily, at that moment Alpheus caught sight of Little Cosmo,
showing some photographs to a gigglingJessica, and had no difficulty
looking outraged.

'Cut,' shouted Tristan in delight. 'Formidable, Alpheus.Just check
the gate.'

Simone pressed her stop-watch. Total silence fell. Two hundred
yards away uniformed police could be seen examining the
cordoned-off area in front of the far goal posts where Tab had had
her fall.

The gate was clear.

'Shall we say it now?' went up the chorus.

'Oui,' said Tristan.

'It's a wrap,' yelled everyone, whooping and cheering.

'I wanted to say it.' Simone's dark Montigny eyes filled with tears.
'Latin, latin,' said Griselda, blowing her nose noisily.
Solemnly Tristan shook hands with Bernard, Oscar, Valentin,
Sylvestre, Ogborne, followed by the crew. Then they all posed for
a last photograph, taken by Hype-along, already resplendent in a
pink seersucker suit for the wrap party.

"Have you heard from Lucy?' Tristan asked Bernard yet again.
'No, but I'm sure she'll turn up later.'


Over at Rutminster police stadon, Gerald Portland was going
ballistic. 'How could twenty-four of you lose Lucy Latimer? What
the fuck am I to tell the press? They're all outside.'

After consultation, however, he decided to put a massive guard
on George's house and go ahead with the wrap party.

:,Try to contain people in the wailed garden,' he told his men. 'If

. that obsessed with Mondgny, she'll roll up to kill again.
got her handbag, her passport, her car keys, she can't get


road at Rutminster General, Gablecross was striding up

the foyer, muttering, 'I'm not a fucking guard-dog.'
his old running mate, would be turning in his grave. The

i with press.

'Come on, Tim, who's done it?' asked the Mail on Sunday.

to say.'

Constabulary, and Sergeant Gablecross in particcan't
even catch the clap,' yelled Rupert, dummying past the

journalists and racing for the front door.

Karen joining in the laughter, Gablecross turned on her
'And you can bugger offdown to the station and flash your

he roared, 'in case anything interesting's come in with

stuff.'

me down. It's not my fault I'm not Charlie,' sobbed

and sending a nurse and a trayful of medicines flying, she
out into the street.


interesting on Lucy Latimer?' she asked five minutes
herself a languorous flutter of the eyelashes.

the exhibits officer, had in the past lost a lot of sleep over
Making sure no-one was around, he muttered, so she had
to hear him; that a rude letter from a bank manager
,'s handbag. 'She's very overdrawn, and the
seems relieved funds are coming in at the end of filming.
got some bank statements.'





'What's she been spending her money on?' Karen brushed her
breasts in the cream shirt against Andy's arm.

'Sends two hundred and fifty a month home to her parents,' said
Andy, consulting the statement. 'Subscribes to a number of animal
charities, but most of it seems to have gone to someone called
Rozzy Pringie. She's given her nearly three grand in the last two
months.'

Karen whisded. Could Rozzy be blackmailing Lucy?


Parker's department store in the high street was having an after
hours preview of new stock for account customers. Heading for
Evening Gowns, Karen tried on a spangled horror in shocking
pink.

'That looks gorgeous,' said the sales girl truthfully, who was used
to Peggy Parker's friends, who needed a shoehorn to get into a size
twenty. 'You part of the Don Carlos crew?'

Karen shook her head. 'But I know a lot of them shop here.'

'We had that Rozzy Pringle in last Thursday,' said the girl
wistfully. 'Bought a floaty grey Belinda Belville dress.'

'Are you sure it was/ast Thursday?' squeaked Karen.

'Quite sure. It was my afternoon off. I always miss the celebs.'


Karen was fighting for breath by the time she reached Gablecross,
who was hovering outside Tabitha's hospital room. 'Sarge, you'll
never guess. Lucy's given huge sums of money to Rozzy, and Rozzy
bought her wrap-party dress on Thursday afternoon, the day she
claimed to have been going to the doctor. She must have slashed
her rainbow dress yesterday to avert suspicion.'

For a second, Gablecross digested this: Rozzy was such a lovely
lady too. 'Doesn't make her a murderer,' he said. 'She needn't
have cut up her dress. Cancer makes people behave strangely- but
good girl, well done.'

Blushing with pleasure, Karen peered into Tab's room, where
she could see a smooth, rakishly handsome man shaking Wolfie by
the hand. 'He's nice.'

'James Benson, the Campbell-Black and Rannaldini family
doctor,' said Gablecross. 'Charges a fortune for being fazed by
nothing.'

James Benson was smiling broadly as he came out.

'Not much to worry about there,' he told Gablecross, 'although
young Wolfgang must have had a harrowing afternoon. Never a
dull moment with that family. I delivered that little tearaway nineteen
years ago. Glad she's found the right bloke at last.'

'Wolfie's a good lad,' agreed Gablecross.

Needs a big family to cosset him and Tab neeos.guyl
we have a word?'

, Benson looked at his watch. 'I've got two patients to see,
. and I'm due out to dinner at nine.'

'Won't take long. This is my colleague, Detective Constable


: '- James Benson smiled in delight. 'Oh, well, then I'm sure I can
are a few minutes.'

He led them into the Consultant's office.

'I wonder if we can find some sherry- it's been a long day. How
can I help you?'

'D'you have a patient called Rosalind Pdngle?'

i James Benson stopped in his search. 'Funny you should ask that.
Rannaldini wanted to know the same thing, the Friday before he
:.ed. Came to see me about having his vasectomy reversed, said

i'd heard I was treadng her. Take a seat both of you,' he went on,

on the arm of a sofa. 'Said I wished I had been, always

Pringle the most dishy lady, got all her LPs, used to

round the stage door at Covent Garden when I was a student
i the Middlesex. Funnily enough she's exactly the same age as I

Rannaldini'd heard a rumour she'd got throat cancer. I said

not, tragedy to wreck that heavenly voice, but that I'd

. her for that or anything else. Funny, I'd forgotten all
it, undl you reminded me.'

"You've been incredibly helpful, sir,' said Gablecross. 'If you'll


'That means not only was she bleeding Lucy white under false

,' bleated Karen excitedly as they ran down the stairs, 'but
have sung Hermione's last aria in the wood.'

' 'Still circumstantial,' panted Gablecross. 'Not going to cancel

a DNA profile.'

BUt popping into the incident room at the stadon, they learnt
it Rozzy's local doctor had confirmed he had no knowledge of her having cancer.

.. 'Have they brought Lucy in yet?' asked Karen.

'She gave them the slip,' sighed the Custody Officer.

/ Immediately the smile of satisfaction was wiped off Gablecross's

face.

. 'The stupid fuckers!'

'I thought you'd be pleased, knowing she's your pinup.'

'You thought bloody wrong. She'd be safe in custody. If she's on
:.the loose, she's in terrible danger. Come on Karen.' Gablecross

raced towards his car.




524
	525



'Ought we to tell Gerry Portland?'

'Certainly not, we're going to show him and Rupert Campbell
Black we can catch villains.'


But the tale of murder twists and turns. Wolfie, working a sixteen
hour day for the past three and a half months, was unused to so
much happiness. He still couldn't believe Tab was going to be OK
and all his, at the same time. Every sound seemed to threaten the

head that he loved. So he swore as his mobile rang.

It was Rozzy in tears.

'Oh, Wolfie, they're trying to arrest Lucy.'

'Whatever for?'

'Killing your father and Beattie, and trying to kill Tab.'

'That's ridiculous,' said Wolfie appalled. 'Look, Tab's asleep, I'll
go into another room. We're not supposed to use mobiles in intensive
care, it buggers up the equipment. Get onto Rupert, he'll
vouch for Lucy's innocence, so will Gablecross. He's in the hospital
somewhere, I'll go and find him.'

But as Wolfie ran down the poorly lit and deserted corridor, Isa
appeared from the Emergency Stairs at the other end, carrying a
bunch of blood-red roses.

Having not been clocked by Gablecross and Karen as they
rushed out of the front door, Isa had had no difficulty getting past
the uniformed policemen guarding the lift. After all he was Tab's
husband and the champion jockey and gave them an excellent tip
for Goodwood.

'Hello, my darting,' said Isa softly, as he catfooted into his wife's
room. 'Time you and I had a little talk.'

526


Hews either travels faster round a film crew than the fleetest greyhound or it 
never leaves the starting gates. No-one, even two hours
hato the wrap party, was aware that Lucy was now prime suspect and
still evading a massive murder hunt. But they knew Tab's fall had not been 
accidental, and the presence of policemen everywhere,
king still arriving guests, taking their cars apart, murmuring
to radio mikes, added to the general edginess. Guests had spilled
t into the walled garden, where the scarlet and orange rambler roses clashed 
less gaudily by night. Beyond lay shadowy shrub.
beries, but there was no incentive to escape into the bushes with someone who 
might be the killer. The revellers clung close to the house in the light cast by 
George's big golden windows, discussed
in lowered voices who might have tried to bump off Tab, and
jumped if someone touched them accidentally.

Maria had excelled herself with a huge cold turkey and salads,
laid on a side table in George's big drawing room. But everyone
was too hot and jumpy to eat - as to fear of the murder was added
of tomorrow, when they would no longer be a close-knit
community. How would they cope without Lucy to listen to their
problems or Sylvestre to mend their hair-dryers or Hermione to
bitch about? So they all kept busy filling their Filofaxes with names
and addresses they probably wouldn't be able to put faces to in a week or two.

'Do drop in at Cherrylands, if you're ever in Surrey,' Pushy kept
telling everyone.

Revellers even fell on the suntanned neck of Granny's ex
boyfriend, Giuseppe, when he had the temerity to roll up with
Serena Westwood, who was flashing a large ruby engagement ring.



527





'What is the French for arsenic and strychnine?' murmured
Granny, who pointedly ignored them both.

'Arsenic and strychnine,' said Oscar, waking up to slot another
Gauloise into his jade cigarette holder. 'Malevolence is universal.'


'The point of a wrap party,' announced Ogborne, who was
motoring down his second bottle of Mo6t, 'is to make your number
with the director and producer so they'll employ you again, then

get rat-arsed and pull as many women as possible.'
'I've pulled them all anyway,' said Sylvestre.
'You never pulled Simone,' taunted Valentin.

'Unsimple Simone.' Sylvestre glanced across the room. 'She
looks pretty in that flowered dress. Maybe tonight is the night.'

'I'm saving myself for my beautiful wife,' said Valentin. 'The only
woman approaching her is Tabitha, and Rupert and lucky Wolfgang will put the 
biggest guard round her tonight.'

Oscar had fallen asleep again on the sofa, his head in Jessica's
lap. Tristan's boys were very happy. They had worked hard and
been well paid. Tomorrow they would go home to even better
food, August in the country, then start work on Hercu/e in a few
weeks.

Only Bernard was sad. After tonight he wouldn't see Rozzy. He
had had an original La Scala poster of Don Carlos, with Callas
singing Elisabetta, framed for her as a wrap present. She was blow
drying her hair when he dropped it off. The hot blast swept the
tendrils off her face, emphasizing the good bones but also the
wrinkles on which one could play noughts and crosses. I would love
her when she grew old, he thought despairingly.


Knowing singers love singing, George had booked a trio from the
Rutminster Symphony Orchestra. Installed at the end of the big
drawing room with a crate of red, they were now accompanying
Alpheus. '"Some enchanted evening,"' he sang, crinkling his eyes
at Serena. He'd missed out on her during the recording but had
always thought her very lovely.

'It isn't enchanted at all,' said Pushy fretfully. 'No Wolfie, no
Mikhail, no Rupert or any of his tasty polo friends, and George,
although perfectly gracious, would clearly far rather be alone with
Flora. And none of those hunky PCs are allowed to dance with us,
and where on earth are Sexton and Tristan?'

'They've got an awful lot of loose finishes to tie up,' explained
Simone.

'It's called "supervising the winding-up of production",' said
Flora who, as the thunder grew more ominous, was trying to get a

528


down a panting, shuddering lrevor,-wmcn, m

is probably a euphemism for pleasuring Dame

T without Lucy,' saidJessica indignantly, looking
mountain of presents piling up for her on the table. 'I got

silver lurcher brooch from Past Times. I did want to

it.' , her a little eighteenth-century drawing of a greyhound,
Meredith. 'I wanted to see her open it too.'

'Why the hell did Tristan fire her? Here he is at last,' saidJessica,

i riggling out from under Oscar's head. 'i'm going to give him a

of my mind.'

,You won't have much left, then,' snapped Chloe, who was feeling
rly miserable. She was thirty-six. There was no man in her life.

she had not merely lonely hotel bedrooms but also a solitary

flat to look forward to. How could Isa have dumped her?

The only bright spot, she told Flora, was four performances of

in Vienna.
'Brilliant casting,' said Flora enthusiastically, 'it's so rare to have

: whose veils people really want to come off.'

'Chloe's an old hand at taking off clothes,' drawled Baby, who
missing Isa, jolted by Tab's fall and extremely drunk. 'Is there

in Salome?. Has anyone seen Chloe's video? It's called No

'Shut up, Baby,' muttered Flora.

'Look out!' yelled Valentin.

For Chloe had grabbed a carving knife offthe table andjumped on Baby, screaming, 
'Take that back, you little fag-fucker.'

The band stopped and a gasp of horror went round the room.
'Was that why you killed Rannaldini and Beattie? To shut them
up?' taunted Baby and, showing surprising strength for someone
so languid, yanked the hand holding the knife down to thigh level.


	'No, I did not,' shrieked Chloe.

For a few seconds, they struggled in a deadly embrace, eyes filled
with loathing six inches apart.

'You fucked up me and Isa,' hissed Chloe.

"Correc-shon. You fucked up me and Isa.'

'You and Isa?' whispered Chloe in horror. 'I don't believe it, you
bloody liar. I'll ki//you.'

Tangled in the folds of her mesh dress, the knife quivered like a
hooked fish.

'George!' screamed Flora.

But as he raced in through the French windows, Hermione made her entrance from 
the hall with her head held high.



529






'Good evening, everyone.' Then, catching sight of Baby and
Chloe locked in their dance of death, 'Good gracious, I had no
idea you two were an item.'

For a second, Baby's face twitched, then Chloe corpsed too, and
they had collapsed in helpless laughter.

'I'll have that,' said George, as the carving knife thudded on to
the autumn-leaf-patterned carpet.

'We'd better have another bottle and compare Black Cobra
bites,' said Baby, ruffling Chloe's hair.

'I'll never understand singers,' sighed Ogborne, piling on a
second helping of strawberry Pavlova.

'Gifts for all, gifts for all,' cried Hermione, beckoning in Sexton,
who was buckling under a log basket of presents.

'How exciting,' squeakedJessica, tearing off the paper. 'Thank
you, Dame Hermione.'

'What have you given us?' asked Grisel.

'Calendars,' smiled Hermione.

'How clever of you to get next year's so early,' said Pushy. After
all, she might want to work with the old boot again.

'They're this year's,' said Grisel in outrage. 'And it's halfway
through July.'

'No-one's interested in dates,' said Hermione airily. 'Particularly
if one's bookings extend beyond the millennium, as mine do.

What matters is the lovely photographs.'

'What are they of?.' asked Ogborne.

'why, me, of course. Next year, I'm hoping to show some of
Cogmo's oeuvre.'


'"There is nothing like a dime," sang Sexton, as he bopped happily
with Hermione. 'I love you, Hermsie.'

'D'you feel you can truly care for Little Cosmo?'

'I love 'im already,' said Sexton truthfully. 'He's so sharp, I'll be
able to veg out in his pram while he goes to the office for me.'

A tranquillized, cross-eyed Trevor was now lying in Flora's arms
like a baby.

'Why are you looking so cheerful?' she asked Meredith.
'Tomorrow I'm flying to Oz.'

'To meet up with Hermione's husband, Bobby?'

'But not for much longer.' Meredith nodded at a bopping
Hermione. 'It looks as though Madam is at last going to give Bobby
a divorce.'

'I'm so pleased.' Flora kissed him on the cheek.

'Come on, Meredith, on your feet,' boomed Griselda.

'New trousers.' Halting in mid-bop, Hermione looked beadily at

Grisel's Day-glo pink harem pants. 'I'm sure you'll find them very
useful.'

'Useful for getdng the entire harem in there as well,' murmured Flora to Simone, 
who, in her pretty flowery dress, was leaning
against the wall, sipping iced water.

'I think Griselda's days of promiscuity are over,' said Simone
gravely. 'I want you to be the first to know, Flora, that Grisel and I are an 
item.'

Flora nearly dropped Trevor.

'Was that why you got over Wolfie so fast?' she squeaked.

Simone nodded. 'I have never been so in love in my life. We are

flying down to the Tam to meet Mama and Papa tomorrow.'
'Will they approve?'

"They will probably feel Grisel is a little old for me. She's six

months older than Mama, but once they meet her...'

,Have you told Uncle Tristan?'

,No, he doesn't take much on board at the moment.'

Having immediately crossed the drawing room to admire
George's Picasso when he arrived, Tristan had hardly moved.

Normally at wrap parties he felt elated and disembodied: if omeone rolled back 
the stone, he wouldn't be there. But tonight there was no elation. His mind kept 
slipping into reverse gear as he bitterly castigated himself for being so brutal 
to Lucy. He

to drive over to Valhalla and find her, but having just
i arrived, he couldn't abandon his cast and crew, who had endured

O much.

Normally also at wrap parties he felt like a prince on a walk

with everyone shaking his hand and thanking him for a
wonderful shoot. But tonight, although no-one was openly

hostile, he could feel their reproach, as palpable as the ever

mountain of presents for Lucy on the polished table
him.
'What's the matter with you all?' he snarled at Valentin.

'People may not want to work on Hercu/e unless you hire Lucy

,' snapped back Valentin. 'She was so good at calming down
ers, and Oscar reckons she's the best he's ever worked with.'

'That's because the lazy sod gets more sleep if he doesn't have
: tpend hours adjusting lights to compensate for the inadequa

of some make-up artist,' said Tristan sourly.

'Why d'you have to fire Lucy?' demanded Ogborne, his mouth

of Danish blue.

for Christ's sake.' Tristan turned away and, for the thou,
punched out Lucy's number.

bug the guy,' Sylvestre chided the rest of the crew. 'You






all seem to forget that while he was losing three crucial days'
filming he was in prison on a murder charge, being put through
the mangle by theflics. He's entitled to the odd tantrum.'

'The Vodaphone you have called is not responding,' the operator
was now telling Tristan, 'please try later, please try later,' until
he wanted to wring her neck and hurl his mobile through George's
huge window-pane. If only Wolfie were here, he'd have found
Lucy.


'You'll never guess,' hissed Flora to Baby, 'Grisel and Simone are
an item.'

'Good God, d'you think she takes her turban offin bed?'


"(ou're lovely to look at, delightful to know and heaven to kiss,"'
sang Alpheus, as he foxtrotted past with Serena.

'"He said that he loved 'er, but, oh, 'ow he lie, oh, 'ow he lie, oh,
'ow he lie,"' sang Giuseppe in Granny's ear. 'Serena is so boring. I
want to come back, I miss you.'

'Well, you can't,' said Granny, with decreasing conviction.
'Howie get me Don Giovanni at La Scala,' murmured Giuseppe,
'so I can take you on long holiday and pay for all things. Please,
Granville.'

'Oh, my dear boy.'

'Excuse me, Granville.' Hermione was scrabbling like a terrier
in Lucy's pile of presents. 'I've forgotten Maria. D'you think Lucy'll

mind awfully if she didn't get one of my calendars?'

'I expect she'll live,' said Granny.

Tristan shivered. 'I'm not sure she will. I am bloody worried,
Granny.'

'Monsieur de Montigny,' said the editor of ClassicalMusic, who'd
disguised himself as a waiter, 'about Claudine Lauzerte?'

'Who?' said Tristan, as though he was dredging up some long

abandoned wreckage from the bottom of the sea.

'Could we have a word?'

'The word is "Non",' snapped Tristan, shoving dancers aside,
until he reached Bernard. 'For Christ's sake, try Rozzy again. Ask
her if she's seen Lucy.'

'Where's Mikhail?' grumbled Baby. 'I want to sing the
Friendship Duet with him.'

'Perhaps he's eloped with Rozzy,' giggled Simone.


It was Mikhail's last night in the capitalist sweet shop. As a going
home present for Lara, he had decided to remove the Murillo
Madonna from the chapel. But finding Valhalla awash with police

he returned home after the final wrap, he decided to sleep things quietened 
down.

i Waking just after eleven, he took a considerable swig from his
flask and set out. The house was sculptured grey in the moon
a sudden chill wind sent the cypresses hissing like snakes.
:Filiding through the shadows, Mikhail passed two nervously
uniformed policemen and wished he had had slightly more to drink.

He froze at the sound of more footsteps. Slow, lonely, then quickening,
coming relentlessly towards him, from the swirling mists emerged a black-cloaked 
figure gliding down the cloisters, then
disappearing through the chapel door. Frandc for company,
Mikhail fled in terror back to the production office, but found it
totally deserted - everyone must have left for the party. Deciding
this was very unPosa-like behaviour and ghosts couldn't produce footsteps, he 
crept back again.

The chapel was unlocked, no-one appeared to be inside. Feeling
his way along the smooth edges of the pews and then the choir
malls, guided by the light of the rising moon now spilling like milk,
then like royal blue ink, now like red wine through the stained
glass windows, he reached the Madonna. How beautiful she was, more radiant than 
any moon. How she would enjoy an exciting to Moscow.

Mikhail got out his screwdriver and pliers. Somehow she must
wall. But as he started to tap and feel round her gilded
frame, he nearly jumped through the vaulted roof.

The panel to which she was attached had swung open,
revealing utter darkness, a horrible smell of Maestro and footsteps
echoing far in the distance. Climbing inside running a
shaking hand round to the left, Mikhail found a key. Someone had been stupid or 
careless enough to leave it in a lock. Turning
it, he felt a door open; groping inside, he found a light switch,
and nearly fainted.

He was in a tiny cubby-hole. All round the walls were grotesquely
graffiti'd photographs of Tabitha, Flora, Claudine Lauzerte,
Granny, Beattie, Hermione and Rannaldini. Ears had been lopped
off, squints and beards added, and everything smeared with blood
.and excrement. But interspersed with these horrors, beautiful and
tmmaculate, were pictures of Tristan at all ages.

Also hanging from hooks were wigs, pewter grey, blond, dark
and light brown, and Hermione's apple-green cloak with the pink
rose-lined hood, except bloodstains were now rose-patterning the
green aswell. The table was piled high with body-paints, knives,
ammunition, huge, cruel scissors, a half-full bottle of Maestro,




532
	533



videos, tapes, tape-recorders, Rannaldini's cigars, bottles marked
'poison', cans of petrol and a brown-paper parcel marked 'Tristan
de Montigny, Private and Confidential', which had been ripped
open. And against the table, a going-home present for Lara for the
taking, was the Montigny Snake Charmer. Beside it, the floor was
littered with fragments of cut-up photograph.

Mikhail was nearly gagging on the stench. Who could do these
sick things? Grabbing the painting, he nearly dropped it, as a voice
snapped, 'What in hell are you doing here? I wouldn't do anything
silly, sir,' as Mikhail lunged forward to grab a knife.

Mikhail had never dreamt he'd be pleased to see a policeman.
Karen, who was following Gablecross, thought Mikhail looked like
a bear raiding a larder. Then she saw the walls behind him and had
to clap her hands over her mouth.

'I find vicar's hole full of interest,' announced Mikhail.

'How the fuck did you get in here?' Shoving him out of the way,
Gablecross took in the contents of the table. 'Jesusl'

'I enter chapel to pray my rife will return,' said Mikhail piously,

'I just examine york of art when wall open.'

Lying bastard, thought Gablecross.

'Look, Sarge, here's a parcel addressed to Tristan - in Lucy's
handwriting,' said Karen, in excitement. 'And there's a wig exactly
like Rozzy's hair and one like Hermione's. Why should anyone
want to pass themselves off as Rozzy?'

They had been unable to track her down in Make Up, and she
wasn't answering her mobile.

'She must be on the way to the party, unless the murderer's got
her too... Oh, God.'

Crouching down on the floor, Karen gathered up fragments of
photographs, horribly reminiscent of Rozzy's cut-up dress.

'Let's go,' said Gablecross. 'Put that painting down, Mr
Pezcherov.'

Outside, having alerted two of the uniformed officers to keep an
eye on the cache, Gablecross took the wheel and they set out for
the wrap party.

No wonder he complains about my slow driving, thought Karen,
as they hurded through overgrown tree tunnels, down narrow
lanes where great banks of elder and wild rose obscured any views
of things coming the other way. Black trees and telegraph poles
flew past the window.

Karen was being thrown from one side of the back seat to the
other, as with the light on and a road map on her knees as a table,
she tried to piece together the shreds of photograph.

'It still points to Lucy,' she said sadly, as they shot past a sign

saying four miles to Rutminster.

"Why?' snapped Gablecross.

'These cut-up photographs are all of Rozzy. Perhaps Lucy
couldn't stand Tristan giving Rozzy all that money for a new wrapparty
dress.'



,534
	535




Lucy regained consciousness into darker nightmare. She was
trapped in a chair, her wrists clamped to its arms by what felt like
iron manacles padded with velvet, her ankles and knees similarly
secured to the chair legs so her thighs were forced humiliatingly
apart. This must be the debtor's chair in which Rannaldini had
once imprisoned Tab. The room was cold and dreadfully airless. It
smelled like a slaughter-house, of blood, sweat and fear.

As her eyes grew used to the dark, she realized she was in a large
steel container. She and the debtor's chair were on a lower level in
a kind of pit. Up some steps, on a higher level, stood an imposing
carved armchair - like a bishop's throne - a bed and a dressing
table pushed against the wall. From the only wall that wasn't
mirror, dully gleamed a highly sophisticated collection of whips
and knives.

Then she heard hoarse, unearthly screaming. It was several
seconds before she realized it was coming from herself.
Shuddering with horror, she pieced together earlier events,
Tristan firing her, the police arresting her, Rozzy hiding her in the
priest-hole, then Rannaldini's utterly terrifying ghost, or had it
been Rannaldini himself?. Thank God, Rozzy would seek help and
could be trusted to give Tristan his important papers.

Then she remembered James's cries growing more and more
piteous. Someone must have tortured him. She started to cry, but
as her eyes and nose streamed she had nothing on which to wipe
them. Her ankle ached where she'd twisted it, her legs throbbed
with nettle stings and, in the mirror opposite, her dim reflection
showed her face, arms and legs cut even more to pieces from stumbling
down the stony secret passage. She looked like a victim of
Third World brutality.

Glancing at the whips and knives, she knew the churning fear
Carlos and Elisabetta must have felt, aware that torture awaited
them. The light was too faint to read her watch. She tried to pray.
Rozzy wouldn't let her down. But as the hours crawled by, and she
grew colder and more dehydrated, her legs racked by agonizing
cramps, hope faded.

She must have nodded off. She was woken by terror beyond
imagination. Instead of her own reflection, glaring evilly back from the mirror 
was Rannaldini. Maybe she had died, or her mind was
slowly unravelling. Then he was gone, and her blanched, bloodstained,
lacerated reflection gazed back at her again.

There was a creak. Jerking her head round as far as it would go she saw a steel 
panel on the upper level slide back and there was
Rannaldini, a monstrous black vulture, poised to swoop down and itear her apart.

no, please not.' Her screams echoed round the chamber,
then died on her lips. As the steel door clanged shut, off came the

.cloak, the pewter wig, the mask. Lucy breathed in a heavenly waft
.ofFemme and wept with relief.

'Oh, you angel, thank God.' Then the questions poured out in

gasping rush. 'Are the police still looking for me? Have
you found James? Did you give Tristan the parcel? What a brilliant

You fooled everyone.'

As
	Rozzy flicked on a side light, and arranged her newly washed
Lucy saw she was wearing a beautiful dove-grey chiffon dress

grey gloves.

this horrible chair,' she begged. 'What time is it?

am I?'

:"Nearly midnight. You're in Rannaldini's torture chamber.'

voice was strangely high and hard. 'Quite the Grand

adventure playground, isn't it? Soundproofed like a
studio, so no-one can hear the screams.'
you mean?'

by little, terror was taking over again.

brought the pretty ones down here,' mocked Rozzy.


jumped as the telephone rang. In an instant Rozzy

her mobile, whipped a gun out of her bag, and
down the steps, rammed the muzzle against Lucy's


a sound,' she hissed.

with horror, Lucy could hear Bernard's bray so close she I have reached out and 
stroked his glossy black moustache.

been delayed again, Bernie darling.' Rozzy's voice was




536
	537




caressing. 'Lucy? I haven't seen her.' As Lucy gasped, the gun was
rammed harder into her head. 'She must have pushed off home
to Cumbria. One more pressie to wrap, then I'll be over. No, no,
dearest, you've been drinking - at least, I hope you have. I'll make
my own way. Keep the champagne on ice.'

Flicking off her mobile, Rozzy peered at the buttons for a
second. 'I'll turn it offaltogether,' she said chattily. 'We don't want
to be disturbed.'

Retracing her steps up the stairs, she placed the gun and the
mobile on the dressing-table. 'That was Bernard. The silly old fart
was looking for you.'

'You're the murderer,' whispered Lucy.

'I thought you'd never guess,' said Rozzy acidly. 'The whole

world is searching but no-one has a clue.'

'And I gave you Tristan's papers.'

Lucy's chattering teeth became a terrible shaking, jolting her
body like an earthquake. 'Please let me have your cloak for a
second. I'm so cold.'

'Poor child,' said Rozzy sympathetically, then suddenly burst
into maniacal laughter. 'You'll be burning hot where you' re going.
Where were we? Oh, yes, in Rannaldini's torture chamber. He
strapped them just where you are, in the debtor's chair.'

What had Gablecross told her? Lucy tried to marshal her crazed
thoughts. With psychopaths you had to be passive, respectful,
admiring.

'I can't believe you killed Rannaldini.' Every word had to be
forced out. 'You're far too slight and, anyway, you were in
Mallowfield.'

'Since I'm going to kill you in a minute I'll tell you while I do my
face. Now, are you sitting comfortably?'

Settling down on the bed, Rozzy calmly took a tube of moisturiser
out of her make:up bag.

'I killed Rannaldini,' she said dreamily. 'He put me down so
much he deserved it. It was so easy to slip away from Glyn's party,
I pretended I had a migraine. The land slopes up steeply behind
our house - such a small drop on to the lawn from the spare-room
window. Everyone was too drunk to notice my car had gone. I drove
to Valhalla and parked up a little pebbled track in Paradise woods.
Then I climbed over the west gate into Hangman's Wood.'

'So James did see you. He wagged his tail and peered into the
gloom. Oh, Rozzy, where is he?'

'Don't interrupt,' hissed Rozzy. Then, giving a mirthless laugh,
even more sinister than her mad cackle, she went on, 'I saw that
tramp Tabitha staggering out of Rannaldini's watch-tower. Got her
comeuppance at last. No-one heard her screams. They were too
busy cheering on the finalists. I wore Hermione's green cloak.
Pretending it was Granny's cut-up quilt, I'd smuggled it out of
Wardrobe on Saturday.' With an adoring smile, Rozzy was
smoothing base into her face and neck. 'Wandering up one of
those rides like the rays of the sun, I saw Rannaldini wearing
.Alpheus's smart dressing-gown. He was out looking for Tab. So I
launched into Elisabetta's last duet.'

The next minute Lucy thought her eardrums would rupture as
Rozzy's voice exploded like an atom bomb in the tiny room.

'You can sing,' she gasped.

'I always could, as soon as I recovered from the laryngitis I had at the 
recording.' Rozzy rocked with obscene laughter once more.

to have cancer was such an easy way of milking you.

Rannaldini bugged your caravan. The Saturday

before he died he told me he'd seen James Benson. The I , Itard was going to 
expose me as not having cancer at all.'

But I gave you so much money,' said a shattered Lucy. Then

for a second not to be judgemental, 'This ought to be

chair.'
you cheek me,' screamed Rozzy.

one of the knives, she ran down the steps, eyes roiling,
clenched, and drew the blade along Lucy's cheek. 'It was you

Tristan I had cancer, you meddling bitch, because you

to give me any work. Shut up!' she yelled, as Lucy


sauntering back up the stairs, Rozzy proceeded to use the
to sharpen an eye pencil as she continued her story.
of Hermione's cloak, enchanted by how much his
voice had improved, he strode down the ride, took me
arms and kissed me. As he broke away, my hands closed
his neck.' Rozzy's voice trembled with excitement. 'His last
t's "Dear God, it's not the Queen." I saw the terror
and felt his windpipe give. GOd, I enjoyed that. Hell!'
and began to pare away the wood


could you, Rozzy?' whispered Lucy, then, hastily forcing
sound admiring, 'Rannaldini was as strong as an ox.'
him so much and I was wearing Tristan's signet ring for

had given it to me as a keepsake. My hands are smaller
it must have fallen off.'

the knife up carefully beside her mobile and the gun,
drew a dark line along the top of her lashes with an utterly
r hand.




538
	539




'It was like Piccadilly Circus in Hangman's Wood that night.
Having killed Rannaldini, I was about to whip the memoirs from
the watch-tower, but I only had time to snatch his keys, when a helicopter
landed and Rupert Campbell-Bastard came running into
the wood, shortly followed by Mikhail, who stole the Montigny.
Then I ran back to the west gate, shoved the bloodstained cloak in
the boot and called you.'

'But you were at Glyn's party,' protested Lucy. 'I heard everyone
singing "Happy Birthday" and "Glyn's a Jolly Good Fellow".'

'I taped it when Glyn cut his cake much earlier,' said Rozzy. 'I
only had to slot the cassette into the car stereo. I rang you twice
- the second time to remind you about the cloak - and established
the perfect alibi. I drove home singing my head off. I didn't even
have to climb back in through the window. I'd put a pillow in my
bed, and a melon inside the wig you so caringly made for when my
hair fell out from the chemo- 'You'll look just as beautiful, Rozzy",
you patronizing cow.' The sickening little-girl voice soared to a
scream and exploded into gales of terrible laughter.

'I walked upstairs to the spare room.' Rozzy clutched her shaking
sides. 'Glyn and Sylvia were having a luck in the "master bedroom",
as the common little slut insists on calling it. Naturally they didn't
notice my return. There are pluses in having an un-uxorious
husband. Ten minutes later, Glyn came out on to the landing to
check I was asleep and tripped over the carpet.'

Gradually the laughter ebbed away. More terrifying were the
uncharacteristically foul language and the mood-swings. Beth in Little Women one 
moment, Lady Macbeth the next.

'Clever to murder Beattie,' mumbled Lucy. 'She was such a
bitch.'

'And so short-sighted. Never once asked me for an interview,
when I've got the most beautiful voice in the world and wonderful
stories of all the greats I've sung with. And Beattie was gagging for
Tristan. Shit.' Rozzy's mascara wand had slipped, leaving a blob on
her cheekbone. 'She bought the memoirs from Clive, you know,
who stole them from Bussage. Beattie was going to expose Tristan
as being Maxim's incestuous bastard. Why didn't you tell me about
that, Lucy? That wasn't friendly to have secrets.' The voice was hard
and cruel again. Lucy steeled herself as Rozzy picked up the knife,
but for the moment her venom was transferred to Beattie.

'I didn't want Tristan exposed. I didn't give a stuff that Maxim
had fucked his own daughter because Tristan and I never want
children. But I do fancy being Madame de Montigny.' Rozzy
removed the blob of mascara with a cotton-bud. 'It has such a
nin, ring, like a novel George d.

Perhaps I should have asked you to do my eyes.' Meditatively Rozzy
admired her reflection.

'You look stunning,' stammered Lucy. Praise her, keep her
talking, she told herself. She was racked by cramp in her leg, her
eyes watering with pain. 'How did you kill Beattie, with so many
people around?'

'Best thing about my job on Carlos was that no-one knew where
I was supposed to be at any one time. Earlier in the week I'd let
myself into Beattie's room and read the filth she intended to
publish. The night she was killed and you were so busy brown
nosing Hermione I saidI'd walk James and Trevor, but I never did.'

That was why James had made a puddle on the caravan floor and
I shouted at him, thought Lucy, in anguish.
'Instead,' went on Rozzy, 'I shoved a note I'd typed on the
production unit word processor under Beattie's door. Then I
dressed up as Rannaldini. I felt so safe disguised as him - even that
arrogant shit Rupert bolted like a frightened hare. Beattie was so
terrified she backed on to the unicorn. Its horn came up through
::::;.her belly like a corkscrew,' Rozzy's voice quivered with delight
her blood spurted out like a fountain. But I couldn't
so I finished her offwith the .22 from Props. I
7 cut back in June. I was wearing gloves. See - I can even
:make up in them now. I'd no idea Tristan had left his prints on the
gun when he'd tried it out that afternoon.

Still dressed as Rannaldini, I raced back through the night to

	.
	room. There I stole memoirs, photographs, videos and

	out Beattie's piece to give me all the gen and

	e computer on the floor.' Rozzy couldn't speak for wild

	:laughter. Then I went into the chapel to pray for Beattie's

				soul, and hid everything in my little priest-hole behind

					Madonna.'

			did all that in the break? You are clever.'

		' 'I ought to get the Nobel Prize for ridding the world of those


ought.' Lucy was casting round frantically for things to ask. The Snake Charme.. 
'

often found things hidden under Glyn's mattress,' Rozzy
the tragedy queen for a second, 'that out of habit I often
Tristan's room. The only thing I discovered was the

and I knew Mikhail had stolen that so I hid it in my
-. Isn't this a nice lipstick? Revlon's Fire and Ice. It exactly
this feather boa Tristan bought me. He chose the dress


I have had fun.' Rozzy's voice dropped to cosy intimacy. 'I




540
	541



devastated that silly old poof,Granny, by slashing his patchwork
quilt. I got so many Brownie points for sewing up Foxie after I'd
cut him to pieces. And I had so many goes at you, Lucy. Who put
the adder in your make-up box? Who poisoned your champagne?
I knew Rannaldini didn't drink before concerts, although he
lapsed on that occasion. If Hermione hadn't shattered that glass
with her top E, he'd have died that evening instead. And I put slug
pellets inJames's bowl.'

'I thought you loved James.' Lucy made heroic efforts to keep
the hysteria out of her voice. 'Oh, please, where is he?'

'I've no idea. I had two goes at that arrogant tart Tabitha. I substituted
the can of petrol, I put on gloves to cut her stirrup leather
today with the little penknife on your key-ring. Then I dumped the
key-ring in Wardrobe's dustbin, which even those dolts from
Rutminster CID couldn't miss.'

'You tried to kill Tab today,' cried Lucy in horror. 'That must be
her attempted murder they were arresting me for. Oh, God, is she
all right?'

'Tragically,' Rozzy paused dramatically, 'she is- the little whore.'
'I still don't understand why the police suspect me.'

'Oh, my child,' said Rozzy gently, as she drew lipstick outside the
lines of her mouth, 'because your DNA profile's on Rannaldini's
dressing-gown and in his saliva where I kissed him and on the bite
on Beattie's shoulder. I just loved plunging my teeth into her,
knowing it would incriminate you, and it's in the blood on
Hermione's cloak, and your fingerprints are all over Tab's saddle
and the penknife.'

'But I never had a DNA test.'

'No, but you lost your passport, remember.' Rubbing cream into
her hands, Rozzy clasped them in ecstasy. 'I stole it and stuck my
passport photograph on top of yours, and when the two flat-footed
cretins rolled up at Make Up, I said I was Lucy Latimer, showed
them your passport and took a saliva test in your name. I wasn't on
the list of suspects due for a DNA test, because the police knew I
was in Mallowfield.'

Lucy could take no more. 'That's the most horrible part,' she
sobbed. 'I thought we were friends.'

Radiant, smiling, the great diva making her entrance, Rozzy
glided down the steps and stroked Lucy's hair. 'You poor darling,'
she said, in such a sweet, sad voice that Lucy knew the whole thing
had been a bad dream. Then Rozzy grabbed her hair, yanking it
back until she screamed.

'You stupid bitch! I did love you until you started meddling. Why
did you go to France to free Tristan? He'd have been so much

542



prison, safe from all those drooling, ravening bitches.
visited him every week.

, didn't you and Wolfie take me with you? You deceitful cow,
up to his family.' Rozzy's eyes were glittering, foam
along her mouth, mad laughter echoing horribly off the
'I know you're crazy about Tristan,' Rozzy was hissing in her
it with saliva, 'but having spent his life surrounded by
people, how could he settle for someone as plain and
as you?' Seizing Lucy's face, Rozzy wrenched it towards

the mirror. 'Look at yourself, you ugly bitch!' As Rozzy slapped her

face back and forth, Lucy felt blood trickling from her nose to join
i her tears, choking her.

' 'I suppose he was kind to you,' said Rozzy reflectively. 'Kindness

an aphrodisiac to ugly women. What would the Montignys

of you?' she added mockingly.

got on with Aunt Hortense,' gasped Lucy.

'She must have been appalled. A hairdresser with a broad
(3umbrian accent! I'll teach you to have ideas above your station,


My stadon, thought Lucy, in crazed anguish, is Carlisle. Above

soar the mountains, olive green, filled with lakes, criss
with stone walls. She'd never see them again. And she'd
see her darling mum and dad, or her sister, or her little
- and they'd be told she was a murderer.

Rozzywas back at the table, spraying Femme between her breasts

legs.

:'What did you do with Tristan's papers?' whispered Lucy.

i' 'I'll burn them when I get a moment.'

-.,I promised Hortense he'd get them,' said Lucy despairingly. 'At

give him ltienne's self-portrait and Laurent and Delphine's

he'll understand why his mother copped out and why
1tienne rejected him.'

: 'Don't tell me what to do!' snapped Rozzy. 'Tristan needs love
land understanding.'

'He needs roots,' sobbed Lucy. 'Hortense'll tell him the truth.'
'I think not.' Rozzy rose to her feet, Lady Macbeth's presence
dominating the room. 'I took your passport to the chemist and
bought rat poison.'

'Please, no,' shrieked Lucy. 'She's dying anyway. She's such an old duck.'

'Old dyke, you mean. I'm off,' said Rozzy coolly.

'Don't leave me.'

'You know it all now, sweetie. You've got to die. It's so easy. There
are two buttons to flood the torture chamber. As I'm leaving I'll


543






just press the one outside the door,' Rozzy murmured lasciviously,
'and Madame Guillotine over there will slide up and the lake will
come pouring in. How convenient of Wolfie to fill it up - and we've

had so much rain. It takes five minutes to flood the pit.'

'Please, not,' gabbled Lucy.

Rozzy posed before the mirror, the flame-red boa warming her

face, the grey chiffon giving wondrous curves to her slight body.
'You look beautiful, Rozzy. Your eyes are like stars.'
'They're the last stars you'll see.'

'What time is it?' gasped Lucy, trying to cling on to some reality.
'Nearly twenty past twelve. Cinderella shall go to the ball.'

Rozzy dropped her wig and mask, followed by the gun and her mobile, into her 
bag.

'Shame you haven't time to read in the memoirs about
Rannaldini's favourite games, Lucy. Either he'd fuck them in the
pit as the water came over their noses so their cunt muscles, in their
imagined death-throes, clamped round his cock. President
Kennedy pushed whores under the bath-water for the same buzz.'
Rozzy smiled, as if she were telling a bedtime story.

'Or he'd sit up here watching them drown, then press a button
to release them from the debtor's chair, so they floated choking
upwards. But in your case, Miss Goody Two Shoes, I won't press
that release button till tomorrow.' Rozzy's face contorted with
hatred. 'And you'll float out into the lake, not pretty like Ophelia,

but bloated and smelly with wrinkled fingers.'

'The police'll know I've been strapped in.'

'No, they won't, those manacles are very soft. Rannaldini knew
about hurting people without marking them. And they'll find your
sweet little suicide note. I tore up your last letter to Tristan - '/our
loving Lucy", you presumptuous bitch - and retyped it: "Dear
Twistan..."' it was Rozzy's obscene baby voice again, '"I'm sowwy
I killed all those people and did all those wicked things, but I had
to be favori du woi." Well, I'm favtni du roi now,' added Rozzy
viciously, 'and I'm excellent at forging your signature. I've done it
on enough cheques.'

Lucy flipped. 'How dare you write a suicide note on my behalf?.'
she yelled. 'I'd never do that, because of James.'

'James is dead,' said Rozzy indifferently. 'I didn't tell you because
I didn't want you snivelling while I did my make-up. He whined so
much I let him out on the motorway.'

Lucy rolled her head in agony as she remembered James pirouetting
with joy or leaning against her or darting offwith a biscuit,
or sitting quietly the rain after a heatwave.

the button so the steel door slid flung on

Rannaldini's cloak and escaped quickly, in case Lucy's howl of
desolation reached the outside world.

'I'm doing you a good turn,' she called back softy. 'According
to Schiller, "the peace of death" is the only escape from the pangs
of unrequited love.'

As one steel door clanged shut, the metal guillotine keeping out
the lake slid upwards and water started to trickle in.





Over at the wrap party, it was ten minutes to twelve. Most people
had anaesthetized themselves with drink against the terrors and
were now dancing. But a shiver went through the room as Clive
strolled in, holding a bunch of white lilies. Here was Rannaldini's
hitman, who knew far too much about all of them, as difficult to
ignore as a mamba sliding across the floor.

'Where's Gablecross?' murmured Clive to DC Lighffoot.
'Guarding Tabitha Lovell at Rutminster General.'
'He isn't. I just called there.'

'Where the hell have you been anyway?" demanded DC
Lightfoot. 'Everyone wants to question you.'

'That's why I haven't been here. Where's Lucy?' Clive's pale,
lashless eyes flickered round the room. 'I bought these flowers for
her. Always liked Lucy. No-one streaked my hair better. And
there's tasty Tristan.'

Tristan was smiling for the first time that evening because Hypealong
had just presented him with an album of stills through which
Tristan was flipping with exclamations of delight. There was Baby
looking romantic, and Mikhail heroic, and Hermione naked and
enormous from behind, and Oscar asleep, and Rupert narroweyed
and mean in his executive producer's chair.

'Thank you, Hype-along, it's all here to remind me,' said Tristan,
kissing his press officer on each sideboard.

On the last page, finding two photographs stuck in side by side,
he gave a gasp of pleasure. In the first Lucy, naked except for a
pink towel, was stretched on a table with Rozzy massaging her

shoulders. In the
	she had reared up in alarm,
	ous

breasts

'Look at
		O

peering over Tristan's shoulders. 'How d'you get her to do that,
Hypie?'

'Banged on her caravan window after dark.'

As people crowded round, Tristan seized the album, not wanting
everyone to drool. Then his heart stopped as he noticed the venom
on Rozzy's face as her fingers closed round Lucy's neck.

'Oh, my God.' Glancing up in horror, he saw Gablecross and

Karen running through the door. 'Where's Lucy?' he yelled.
'I hoped you were going to tell us that,' said Gablecross.
'Regardez.' Tristan thrust the photograph album at him.

For a second, Gablecross studied the two pictures, then he drew
Tristan into George's study next door.

'Where the hell is she?' asked a grey and shaking Tristan.

'She was last seen around seven thirty outside Make Up,' said
garen.

'Then she evaded arrest and ran off into the garden,' added
Gablecross.

'Arrest?' snarled Tristan. 'Whatever for?'

on to my lapels won't do any good. Just let go,' said
ablecross irritably. 'Lucy was arrested for the murder of

Beattie and the attempted murder of Tabitha.'

' 'That's crazy! Lucy couldn't kill an earwig.'

explained that her DNA profile matched up. 'Since
she vanished into thin air.'


sign,' sighed Karen.

either hiding her, she's hiding out in the wood, or
s got her,' said Gablecross. 'It would help if Rozzy

up. '

my Christ.' A distraught Tristan was pacing up and down,
and thinking. 'And they've searched Valhalla?'


Griselda rushed in, shaking with horror.

Karen, Sergeant Gablecross, listen to this horrible
on my machine.'

was followed by Flora, George, Bernard and Simone.
was trembling so much they had to endure several
whirring speeded-up chatter before she found the right

tape. The voice on the machine was so high and terrifirst
no-one recognized it.

your cloak for a second, I'm so cold.'
gasped Tristan, looking round with desperate bloodshot


child.' At first the second voice was sympathetic, then it




burst into gales of dreadful crazy laughter, then became chillingly
hard and cruel. 'You'll be burning hot where you're going. Where
were we? Oh, yes, in Rannaldini's torture chamber. He strapped

them just where you are, in the debtor's chair.'
'That's Rozzy's voice,' said Bernard hoarsely.
George put an arm round Flora's shoulders.

Tristan jumped to his feet. 'Do something, for Christ's sake.'
Gablecross raised a shaking hand for silence, as Lucy, in a high,
terrified voice, spoke again: 'I can't believe you killed Rannaldini.
You're far too slight and, anyway, you were in Mallowfield.'

'Since I'm going to kill you in a minute,' it was Rozzy's voice,
amused bitchy, 'I'll tell you while I do my face. Now, are you sitting
comfortably?'

'What time was that call made?' barked Gablecross.

'Someone called me before that,' said a trembling Griselda.

'It was me playing seely buggers.' Simone had gone scarlet. 'I
rang you on the upstairs phone, Grisel, around twelve less ten
minutes.'

As if trying to help the police with their inquiries, the clock on
the mantelpiece chimed midnight.

'So it could have been as little as ten minutes ago,' said Karen,
making lightning calculations.

'I don't understand why those obscene outpourings are on my
machine,' wailed Griselda.

'You're in her memory,' said Bernard, who'd gone as grey as
Simone had scarlet. 'Rozzy's as blind as a bat. I called her just after
eleven forty-five to ask if she'd seen Lucy and check when she was
coming over. She probably meant to switch her phone off after
that, not wanting to be interrupted, and pressed your number
instead.'

'We've got to get Lucy out.' Tristan was suddenly roused from

shock. 'Where the fuck's the torture chamber?'

'I can show you,' said a soft voice.

Clive was hovering in the doorway. Never can so many people
have been pleased to see him. He was still clutching Lucy's lilies.

Pray God, they aren't desdned for her grave, thought Tristan in
horror.

'If Rozzy slams the door and flicks the switch to let the water in,

Lucy's got five minutes at best,' said Clive.

'Take my plane,' urged George.

But as they rushed out of the front door towards the hangar,
there was a tick, tick, tick and ajudder overhead. Like a troupe of
dancing stars, a helicopter landed on the lawn. As Rupert opened
the door, his blond hair in the

Tristan, Clive and Bernard, cursing as he stubbed his toe on a
reconstituted-stone cherub, raced towards him. But Karen
outstripped them.

'Quick,' she panted. 'It's Lucy, in terrible danger. We've got to
get to Valhalla and rescue her.'

'The Famous Five,' drawled Rupert, glancing at the others
behind her. 'That lot have as much chance of rescuing anyone as
Mr Blobby.'

'Oh, for Christ's sakC' howled Tristan.

'Rupert' came an excited cry as Hermione ran out of the house.
'Now the party has really begun.'

'You're on!' said Rupert, shooting faster than light back into the
helicopter. 'AS long as Karen can sit on my knee - but I'm not
taking that murderer.' He glared at Clive. 'He stole our Gertrude.'

'You must,' pleaded Karen. 'He's the only person who can lead
us to Lucy.'

As she wriggled past Rupert to get into the back seat, she felt the
hard bulge of a gun, but decided it wasn't the moment to quibble.
Anyway, they might need it.

Gablecross, still on the ground and on his mobile, was alerting
fle uniform boys at Valhalla.

'Whatever you do, don't arouse suspicion. She's mad and
• extremely dangerous, and she's got Lucy Latimer in there.'

they flew over a pale lunar landscape, dark grey trees, black
:houses lit by a molten moon, Clive briefed them in his soft sibilant

,lisp: 'The torture chamber's fifteen feet from the lake and ten feet

below the water level. The moment Rozzy presses the switch, the

door slides up.'

could swim under the guillotine and free her,' urged Tristan,

for some action.

'You haven't time. You'd need a blow-torch to saw through the

manacles and that wouldn't work under gushing water. The switch
' unlock the debtor's chair is unfortunately inside the torture

chamber just to the right of the light switch. Rozzy must have a key

tO .the chamber. We've gotta get it off her to get inside at all. And
"eve only got five minutes. There are three underground

the torture chamber,' he went on. 'One, you can go
on hands and knees from Rannaldini's study but only if
a slim build, and that takes nearly twenty minutes. Another

runs from the chapel and takes ten minutes. That's the
Rozzy'll come back up, once she's slammed the door on

which I don't imagine Rozzy knows about because

years, consists of steep steps down from the
maze. Takes about four minutes. The helicopter can




drop us on the edge. Those steps come out through a side door
into the passage which goes up to the chapel, about twenty yards
from the entrance to the torture chamber. If someone,' Clive
glanced round the helicopter, 'could intercept Rozzy as she
came out of the torture chamber and lure her past this entrance,
at least one of us could run down the tunnel and switch off the
water. Then once we'd relieved her of the key, we could get into
the chamber and unlock the debtor's chair.'

'I can see exactly why you were Rannaldini's hired assassin, up
to every trick,' snarled Rupert. Ahead he could see the lights of
Paradise High Street.

'We'll be there in a minute,' said Clive.

'Tristan's got to lure her out,' announced Gablecross. 'Rozzy's
absolutely nuts about him.' Then, turning to Tristan, 'You must
wait for her to come out, tell her you love her and you're frantic
to get her away from the murderer.'

Tristan, who'd been going round every circle of hell, looked at
Gablecross aghast. 'I can't tell Rozzy I love her.' With his track
record, the gods would punish him for lies like that by not saving
Lucy. 'I couldn't convince her.'

'For Lucy's sake, you bloody well can,' snapped Rupert. 'If you
hadn't fired her this morning, none of this would have happened.'

'Rupert's right,' begged Karen. 'If you can tempt her out of
the way and get her off her guard by indulging in some serious
snogging.'

'Fantasize she's Madame Lauzerte,' said Rupert sarcastically.
'You've had enough practice at screwing geriatrics.'

'Shut up,' howled Tristan, seizing and violently shaking Rupert's

shoulders so the helicopter lurched as it started its descent.
'Pack it in, you two,' ordered Gablecross.

Narrowly missing the floodlit spire of All Saints, Paradise, flying
over sleeping cottages in the high street, and Hermione's house
with its tall chimneys, Rupert followed the silver ribbon of the river
Fleet and swung left at the glimmer of Rannaldini's lake. Tristan
gave a groan at the thought of all that water pouring into Lucy's
gasping, choking throat. There was the black dartboard of the
maze, with policemen like ants closing in from all sides.

'D'you know the way to the centre?' asked Tristan, as he and

Clive jumped down from the helicopter.

'If I concentrate.'

A minute later, they had pounded down a yew corridor slap into
a dead end.

'For Christ's sake,' yelled Tristan, doing a U-turn.

For a moment, as they backtracked, Clive lost his nerve, then the
helicopter was overhead and a hovering Rupert was aiming a spotlight
and leading them to the left and then to the right, backwards,
forwards, sideways, across. Perhaps itwas God's hand guiding them
as well, because Tristan never stopped praying. Then, miraculously,
the honeyed scent of philadelphus swept over them. They
had reached the centre of the maze.

This time Clive's memory didn't fail. As he kicked the stone
alcove three times, it swung sideways and darkness loomed. They
could smell damp, rotting wood and weed.

'The steps are very slippery,' warned Clive.

It was like a yew corridor without any ceiling. Clive led the way.
Tristan was as soaked with icy sweat as from the dripping walls of
the stairway he kept crashing against. Often he was too hasty, and
felt himself falling against the snake-like caress of Clive's leather
suit. The steps seemed greased with goose fat.

'I haven't got a head for depths,' he confessed, as he batded
against an ancient phobia of being trapped underground: an irate
nanny had locked him once in a dark cellar.

Lucy was what mattered. Oh, please, God. But it was to Hades,

of the Underworld, he should be praying. Please spare my
He kept imagining the water choking Lucy until her

heart gave out and he'd never be able to tell her how
he loved her. He was losing his balance, about to stumble

the darkness. Clive was far too slight to support his
Then, suddenly, they'd reached level ground and

thankfully, against a solid oak door.

Behind them, they could faintly hear Gablecross on his mobile.

boys have located the entrance to the torture chamber
the lakeside,' he was telling Karen. 'They can't see any sign

being sucked inside.'

Rozzy hasn't left?' whispered Karen hopefully.

the door into the passage now,' Gablecross hissed down
to Clive. 'We may be able to pre-empt her.'

door was warped by damp and opened inwards, after a lot

	and kicking.

right,' muttered Clive to Tristan. 'The passage kinks
to the left. Lurk behind there until she comes out.'

	had never known such darkness: the total blindness of

Inquisitor. No-one dared shine a torch in case Rozzy saw
ahead as she came out, but she must hear the thunderous

of his heart as he edged along the wall.

emerged, he mustn't betray his fear. His mouth tasted

		lemon,
		he reeked of

	knees were
	he



550
	551



round the rocky bend. However could he act well enough to
convince Lucy's murderer that he loved her? Then he was aware
of dim light. Whipping round he heard a clang of steel, a heavy
door creaking shut, a switch being flicked on, followed by arpeg

gios of crazy laughter. He nearly turned and fled.
'Now!' hissed Clive.
'Rozzy?'

'Who's there?' called out a high, terrified voice.
Tristan could see the outline of a cloaked figure.

'Rozzy, it's me.' His voice, sounding surprisingly deep and
strong, seemed to echo round the dripping walls.

But before he could add 'Tristan', he heard a bang and felt an
agonizing pain in his right shoulder. She had shot him. Reeling
back from the shock, he crashed against the side of the tunnel
cracking his head.

The, Tristan,' he gasped. Then, righting himself, he stumbled
forward. 'Rozzy, are you OK? I've been so worried.'

'Tristan?' whispered Rozzy in horror. 'I thought you were the
police.'

As he came towards her, she saw blood seeping into his pale grey
shirt. 'Oh, my poor darling,' she cried. 'I'm so sorry, I must
bandage that wound.'

She looked so normal, and unusually beautiful, her big eyes so
full of concern and tenderness that, for a fleeting moment, Tristan
thought they'd all been imagining things. Then, through the

dimness, he saw the switch to the tight of the door.

'How could I have hurt you?' moaned Rozzy.

'It's nothing.' Tristan moved towards her, then, taking a deep
breath, 'The murderer's on the loose. I was so scared for you.'

If he rammed her against the torture chamber door and kissed
her, he could surreptitiously reach up and turn off the switch.
Unfortunately, she was bearing down on him. 'Let me wrap this
round your shoulder,' she tugged off her red feather boa, 'till we
reach the outside world.'

As she coiled it round his neck, hanging on to the two ends to
contain him, he nearly bolted. .

'I've come to take you to the wrap party.' He forced himself to
sound light-hearted. 'Everyone's waiting.'

'There's no hurry,' said Rozzy coyly. 'Orphfe.'

'There is, because you're in danger.' He seized her left hand and
found it empty. The gun must be in her bag, or concealed in the
folds of Rannaldini's cloak. 'I love you.' Tristan crossed his fingers
as he led her up the tunnel.

'I did, said

As they passed the entrance where Clive and the others were
lurking, Rozzy stopped and so did Tristan's heart. 'Look at me,'
she insisted.

'Orpheus wasn't allowed to look at Eurydice.' Tristan tried to
sound playful.

'Take me away,' begged Rozzy, 'to Paris and then your house in
the Tam. I want to meet Aunt Hortense and see where you grew up.

If he got his arms round her, he could clamp hers down, but he
didn't know whether his right arm was strong enough - it didn't
seem to belong to him any more. He felt increasingly dizzy and the
feather boa was tightening terrifyingly round his neck. But as he
lured her round to the fight, he could see Clive stealing, like a
ghost, out of the side entrance.

'What's that noise?' she asked sharply.

'Probably a rat - oh, Rozzy.'

She jumped as she heard another footstep, but as she spun
round, Tristan grabbed her. 'You look so young.' He took her face
between his hands.

	'You don't still love Claudine?'

'Of course not,' breathed Tristan. 'I just never in a million years
presumed someone as beautiful as you could love me back.'

Utterly repelled, he felt her scrawny fingers, entrapping his neck
like a sea anemone, the bumpy fibs, the razor-sharp collarbones,
the slack breasts beneath the grey chiffon. By contrast her tongue

hard as she rammed it between his lips almost down his
and rubbed her body feverishly against his. The sour milk
of her breath was enough to make him gag.

, .Make love to me, Tristan.'

.With Lucy drowning? he thought in fury.

.i Then he felt her clawing fingers tightening round his neck and

black bag, which was still hanging from her arm, pressing
st his chest.

'You're in danger,' he mumbled, dickering as to whether to grab

bag. 'Lucy'll take out anyone I love.'

taken ce of.' Rozzy smiled beatifically, and Tristan

looking into the eyes of true madness, as Rozzy went

'We needn't worry about Lucy any more.'
To stop her laughter, Tristan kissed her again, on and on as, in

rage, he grabbed her arms forcing them behind her back,

her tighter and tighter, until the pain in his shoulder
unbearable.

me go, darling.' Rozzy was laughing and struggling.

she was strong, as she bucked and writhed against him.



553


He was going to black out, he couldn't hold on any longer.

Then, mercifully, he was aware of shadowy figures approaching
and seizing her. But Rozzy had wriggied out of their grasp.

'Bastard! You double-crossed me!' She was ranting, screaming,
foaming at the mouth, lunging forward to plunge her teeth into
Tristan's chest, trying to knee him in the groin and claw his face,
as Rupert and Gablecross dragged her off. It took all their strength
to yank her arms back, so Karen could clip on the handcuffs.
'Gotcha!' yelled Gablecross.

As Rozzy's bag fell to the floor, Karen leapt forward and upended
it. Out fell gun, mobile, mask and wig. Karen pounced on
a huge set of keys, glindng in the torchlight.

'Which one belongs to the torture chamber, Rozzy?' she asked gently .

'I'm not telling you,' giggled Rozzy. 'You're too late. The randy
bitch'll be dead by now.'

She went into more crazed laughter, which turned into a howl
of agony as Rupert seized her arm. 'I'll break it unless you tell us.'

'I can take pain, you bastard, aaaaaaah!' screamed Rozzy. 'It's
the purple Yale. Christ, let me go!'
'And to open the inside door?' With no compunction, Rupert
applied more pressure.

'Ouch! Oh, no!' Rozzy's head fell forward. 'It's the steel one
splashed with blue paint,' she whispered.

Rupert raced down the passage to where Clive and Bernard were
trying to break down the door. Uniformed police were pouring
down the stairs. Everyone was yelling instructions.

Tristan stumbled after Rupert, his shirt totally red now.

Rupert fumbled with the key. 'Give me some light, for Christ's
sake.'

Four torch beams found the keyhole.

The door swung open, and a blast of icy wind from the lake
slapped them in the face. All they could see in the dim light was
churning rising water.

'We're too late,' thought Karen in despair.

Reaching past her, Clive pressed the button. As Tristan jumped
down into the pit, turning the water red with his blood, the manacles
sprang back and he groped and found Lucy and with his last
ounce of strength dragged her to the surface.

How white and still and dreadfully cold she was.

'Oh, please don't die,' he groaned.

Next moment Rupert, Karen and Clive were in the water helping
him lift her on to the bed.

Trying to remember his first aid, Tristan dragged himself up

beside her, fighting to stop his lips trembling as he put them on
her frozen ones. Oh, God, that the first kiss he gave her should be
the last. He tried to breathe in, then collapsed, covering her torn
pink dress with blood.

'I'll do it,' said Rupert, gently shoving Tristan out of the way.
'You've lost too much blood.'

'Get the fucking paramedics!' shouted Gablecross.

They all watched, frantically willing and praying, as Rupert
breathed in and out.

'Come on, Lucy, don't give up on us,' pleaded Karen.

But after a minute or two, Rupert stopped and for a moment
rested his head on Lucy's shoulder. 'I think it's too late.'

'Let me have a go.' Tristan lurched forward, slumped against
Lucy, his arms round her. 'Lucy darling, don't leave me, I love you.'

Suddenly she gave a shudder and a gulp, then water gushed out
of her mouth, as the paramedics stormed in.


'She's going to be OK, lad.' Gablecross patted Tristan's hand as he
was lifted on to a stretcher. 'We'd better get you both to hospital.
Of the two of you I'd say you were in the worst shape.'

i 'Well done.' Briefly Rupert squeezed Tristan's thigh. 'Was Sarah
Bernhardt one of your relations?'

,Probably,' said Tristan, and passed out.


;i'Rosalind Pringle,' said Gablecross, 'I am arresting you for the
of Roberto Rannaldini and Beatrice Johnson, and
attempted murders of Lucy Latimer, Tabitha Lovell and
Mondgny.' But as he reeled off the names, he had an
that the murderer had vanished, and he'd never be

to get a conviction on this discreet, gently smiling, suddenly
kept nodding and saying, 'Where's Tristan? I mustn't
he's taking me to tea with Aunt Hortense.'








It was six in the morning when Gablecross received a summons
from on high. He had just spent two hours debriefing Lucy and
steeled himself now for a mega-bollocking and probably the sack.
A couple of hounds catching the fox on their own may be very
clever, but it doesn't endear the Master, the whips, the horses and
particularly the rest of the pack to them.

'Your behaviour has been utterly reprehensible,' thundered
Chief Constable Swallow.

'Tim-Going-Out-On-A-Fucking-Limb again,' shouted Gerald
Portland. 'Why didn't you and DC Needham keep in touch?'

'There wasn't time, Guv'nor, and you mustn't blame DC
Needham. I chewed her out for not being as good as Charlie but
she did brilliantly. She discovered Rozzy had been taking vast sums off Lucy for 
private treatment for non-existent cancer. Then we
found Rozzy's cache - that was a piece of work. There DC
Needham discovered some photographs cut to shreds. When she
pieced them together, she found they were three passport
photographs of Rozzy Pringle. She'd used the fourth on Lucy
Latimer's passport, so her DNA profile on Rannaldini and Beattie
would show up as Lucy's.

'She confesses most of it on this tape.' Gablecross chucked it
down on the table. Then, seeing both Portland and Swallow still
looking boot-faced and knowing their weakness for a rifle, he
added, 'It was on Lady Griselda's machine. Karen's still debriefing
Lucy. We wanted to get in touch, sir, but at the end we were only
playing with minutes.'

'How's Rozzy Pringle?'
'Dagenham.'
'What?'

'Two stops up from Barking.'

'You ought to be fired and probably prosecuted,' said Portland,
after Swallow had bustled off importantly into the next room to
take a telephone call. 'You left Tabitha Lovell unprotected at
Rutminster General. You risked the lives of Tristan de Montigny
and Rupert Campbell-Black - no bad thing in itself, admittedly not
to mention that little toad Clive.'

'He did brilliant,' protested Gablecross, 'performed like a

trooper. Pity we can't recruit him.'

'How's Monfigny?'

'Only a flesh wound, bullet lodged in the muscle. They're operating
now. Rozzy Pringle was so bats about him that he was the only

one who could lure her out. He did fantastic too.'

'And Lucy Latimer?'

'I wanted to talk to you about her,' said Gablecross. 'She's
outwardly OK. In shock, of course, she had a terrible experience,
devastated as well that her dog was killed. We don't want
the defence to nobble her, and if the press get onto her the
whole case will collapse. She's desperate to get away. I said we
might be able to arrange a safe-house for her abroad until after
the trial.'

In the next room they could hear Swallow's voice rising.

'All right, all right, Mr Campbell-Black, that's entirely up to the
Police Promotions Board. I don't care if you do go over my head.

'Jesus, that bastard gets on my wick,' said Swallow, as he returned
very red in the face. 'Now where were we?'

Gablecross was so tired he didn't at first take in that, in their
roundabout way, both Swallow and Portland were congratulating
him.

'You saved our bacon,' admitted Portland. 'Not sure how much
longer we could have gone on spending tax-payers' money.'

'You've done well, Tim. Better go home and put on a clean shirt
before the press conference,' said Swallow. 'And I think DC
Needham's going to be every bit as good as Charlie.'

It must be tiredness and the fact that the Chief Constable had never called him 
Tim before but, for a hideous moment,
Gablecross thought he was going to cry.

'I absolutely agree, sir,' he muttered.


Tristan came round to find his room full of flowers and sunlight.

throbbed, but he could move his arm, and the

keeping any pain at bay. Sergeant Gablecross was
first visitor, carrying a bunch of purple chrysanthemums and a

parcel.




556
	557




'Where's Lucy?' demanded Tristan. 'Is she all right? I want to see
her.'

'She's being debriefed,' said Gablecross carefully. 'She's very
anxious you should read this.' He put the packet on the bedside
table. 'She handed it over to Rozzy for safe-keeping when she was
arrested. Rozzy was intending to burn it. We'll need it as evidence
later. The sister said I mustn't stay long. We'll take a statement
when you're feeling stronger.'

How beautiful the boy was, he thought enviously. Even when he
was running a temperature, the dark hair falling over the white
forehead and the flush on the hollowed cheeks reminded you of
black trees and snow warmed by a winter sunset.

Tristan, slumped back on his pillows, was constantly reminded
of the horror of Lucy's inert frozen body. 'Are you sure she's OK,
or as OK as she can be? Is James really dead?'

'We think so. Rupert's going to advertise, so are we.'

'I must get her a puppy.' Tristan turned fretfully to the package.
'"Private and Confidential". I suppose that means everyone at
Rutminster Police Station's had a look.'

As soon as Gablecross had left a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the
door, Tristan opened the package.

The enclosed letter was headed 'Hotel de Ville, St Malo', dated
16July, and smelt faintly of the disturbing, overtly sexy scent Lucy
had worn the morning he'd sacked her. Tristan shuddered at the
memory.


Dear Tristan [what kind, generous handwriting Lucy had! ]

I hope I bring you tidings of very great joy, but the facts are so
overwhelming I thought you'd prefer to take them in when you're
on your own. Although Wolfie and I can answer any questions as
best we can later.

Your aunt Hortense swore to your dad she would never tell the
truth, but in the end was persuaded that promises should occasionally
be broken.

You truly are a Montigny, Tristan, and tienne was speaking
the truth on his. deathbed rambling on about your father being your

grandfath.. The problem was, Rannaldini got the wrong
grandad. Etienne was your grandfather, Laurent your father.


Tristan slumped back against the pillows, reeling from the shock.
He read on incredulously:


So in a way tienne was Philip II and Laurent Posa, a soldier of
noble lineage who hated staying idle, so he stirred up trouble in
Chad, and got blown up for tying to right wrongs. On the other
hand, he was also Carlos because he fell madly in love with your
mum. She was just back from a disastrous honeymoon with

tienne, where she'd found she couldn't bear him near her.
Laurent came home all suntanned and handsome. Sh.e fell madly

in love with him and fell pregnant with you, while Etienne was
away painting in Australia.


The paper was shaking so violently, he could hardly read, let alone
turn the page.


When Laurent died, all his things were sent back. Love-letters from
Delphine, plans for naming the baby Tristan, if it was a boy, plans
they would run away together the moment he came out of the army,
how Laurent wanted to be there when Delphine broke the news to
tienne because he knew what a temper his father had.

The extraordinary thing is that Don Carlos must be in
your genes, because Etienne's humiliation and heartbreak
must have been so like Philip's. You can now understand his
animosity and harshness towards you. How would Philip have
reacted, if he'd been left to bring up Elisabetta's and Carlos's
orphaned son ?

All the letters and photos are here for you and, perhaps most
important, a self-portrait painted by Etienne the year you were born,
just after he found out about Laurent being your father. I think it
must be the saddest, most beautiful and humane painting he ever
did. Hortense said he wanted you to have it after his death, so
perhaps you could understand and forgive him.


The words swam before Tristan's eyes. The whole thing was too
enormous for him to take in. His hands were trembling so much
and he was so weak, it was a struggle to open the envelope.
Letters and photos cascaded all over the bed. There was Delphine,
Christ, she was sweet - not at all like the tawdry temptress of The
Snake Charmer, and so pretty, despite the ghastly high-heeled boots,
square fringe and pastel lipstick of the sixties. There was
Laurent, so dashing in his uniform, the ideal Monsieur Droit, and
the letters so passionate they burnt the page.

Tristan felt rage welling inside him, as he examined the little
pencil drawing of himself as a newborn baby. There was pride in
every centimetre. 'Tristan Laurent Blaize, a beautiful boy. One
hour old,' ltienne had written on the back.

The self-portrait was in bubble wrap. It was small, fifteen inches
by twelve, but an undoubted masterpiece. The tears glittered like




558
	559




Rutshire streams as they flowed down ltienne's wrinkles; all the
hurt pride and pain was contained in the narrow eyes and the
clenched mouth.

'.Papa, Papa,' cried Tristan.

Etienne was still his father, and at last he understood everything.
What an absolute shit Laurent must have been. If only he could
ring ldenne beyond the grave to tell him how much he loved him.

He lay for a long time listening to the wood pigeons cooing and
the distant rumble of traffic. But only when he glanced up at the
red plastic bag of blood dripping strength and vitality back into his
body, did he realize the full implications. He was a Montigny, of
the blood, if on the wrong side of the blanket. He was nothing to
do with Maxim. He could marry and have children with whom he
chose.

Giddy with happiness, he glanced at the bottom of Lucy's letter.
'With all my love', she had written.

There was a knock at the door. Ignoring the 'Do Not Disturb'
sign, Woltie walked in. He was grey with fatigue, but it would have

been impossible to find anyone looking happier.

'How's Tab?' asked Tristan.

'Seriously wonderful,' sighed Wolfie. 'Oh, Tristan, I am so lucky.'
Then, with typical lack of ego, 'But how are you feeling? I hear you
saved Lucy's life.'

'You and Lucy give me back mine,' said Tristan, pointing to the
letters and photographs strewn over the bed.

Wolfie picked up Etienne's self-portrait. Taking it to the window
he whistled. 'I didn't see that. Christ, it's powerful - Christ-like in

a way, carrying that weight of suffering in one face.'

'I can't take it in. Tell me what happened.'

'Lucy did it. She put up with a hell of a lot of stick from Aunt
Hortense and eventually won her over. We were summoned back
as we were leaving and allowed to go into Laurent's room - which

reminds me, I must find out what's happened to Papa's Gulf.'
'Lucy did all that for me?' said Tristan, in bewilderment.
'She wanted you to find happiness.'

'And I fire her because I was furious she let me down, and I back
off even last night, because I didn't think . . . I must find her.'
Reaching up, he kept his finger on the bell.

'Where is Lucy Latimer?' he demanded, as a fleet of alarmed
nurses rushed in.

When he discovered Lucy had been discharged several hours
ago, he went berserk, panic-stricken she was dead. He'd forgotten
to salute that single magpie that flew past the window just now; he
was being punished for pretending to be in love with Rozzy. He was

about to pull out all the drips, and leap out of bed, when

Gablecross and Rupert came running in.

'where the fuck's Lucy?' he snarled.

'You must persuade him to stay,' said a worried sister. 'He's
running a high temperature and he's lost so much blood.'

'Lucywanted out, Tristan.' Gablecross sat down on the bed. 'She
had a terrifying ordeal. And if the press or defence get hold of her

the whole case could collapse. We've found her a safe-house.'
'How can she be safe without me?'
'Very easily,' drawled Rupert.

'Shut up,' snapped Gablecross. 'She'll be quite OK,' he added,
prising himself out of the stranglehold of Tristan's good arm. 'But she was 
insistent that no-one should be given the forwarding
address.'

'For how long?' whispered Tristan in horror.

'Nine months, perhaps a year.'

Tristan slumped back in bed, the picture of desolation.

'This is crazy, I need to thank her. I need her.'

'Best thanks you can give her at the moment,' said Rupert, who
was reading about his heroic exploits in the Daily Express, 'is to leave
her alone.'

'But I am in a different position now. I thought I was Maxim's
bastard child without any money, a maimed being who could not have children.'

'You've hardly got a good track record.' Rupert turned to page
three, smirking over the headline: 'Rupert's Kiss of Life Saves
Lucy.'

'But she must feel something for me to have gone to France.'
'She was freeing you for Tab,' said Rupert bluntly. 'She didn't
know anything about Claudine Lauzerte. That knocked her for six. iF i were you, 
pretty boy, I'd get on with what you're good at, editing
otlr film.'

At that moment an excited nurse popped her head round the door. 'I know you're 
not taking any calls, Tristan, but it's Claudine
Lauzerte on the line.'

'We'll leave you to her,' said Rupert, and sauntered out.

In the corridor, he turned to Gablecross. 'Let the young puppy sweat. Let him 
find out he's really missing her.'


Rupert was extremely happy. Peppy Koala was favourite for the St
Leger. He was convinced he had masterminded Lucy's rescue and
produced what was going to be an incredibly successful film.
Outside the window, a sea of press and television cameras filled the
park right up to the door.





He was delighted that Xavier had taken a terrific shine to Karen.
This afternoon they were going offwith Bianca to choose a puppy
for Taggie's birthday.

Rupert was also enchanted with his future son-in-law. All that was
needed was to organize a quickie divorce for Tab. Helen didn't
seem wildly keen on the idea, she'd always felt Wolfie was her
admirer and that it was all too close to home. Tab's grandfather,
Eddie, wasn't wild about it either.

'How can you marry a Kraut, darling? I spent half the war
fighting them in the Middle East.'

The only cloud on the horizon for Rupert was that Bluey, his first
jockey, had yesterday announced that he was going to live in
America, having conveniendy fallen in love with a trainer's
daughter. But as one door closes...

When Isa Lovell had walked unannounced into his office at
Penscombe that morning, Rupert had reached for his gun, which
was back in his desk drawer. But to his amazement, Isa held out his
hand.

'This feud's gone on too long. I'm sorry I fucked up your
daughter because I hated you so much. But it looks as though she's
found the right bloke at last. I came to say my father's been forced,
for medical reasons, to jack in the yard. He and Mum'll need
supporting, so I wondered if you'd like me to come and ride for
you.'

It took a lot to silence Rupert. Finally he said coldly:

'We're almost entirely flat here now.'

'I know,' said Isa, 'but yesterday I tried out a mare who could win
the National and the Gold Cup.'

Rupert stared at Isa's pale, impassive gypsy face, so like Jake's
twenty-five years ago. It must have taken courage to come here.
Getting to his feet, he took Isa's hand. 'I'll have to check with
Wolfie and Tab, but I've never turned down a good offer or one
that might irritate my first wife. And I reckon if you and I joined
forces no-one in the world could beat us.'

'Except, perhaps, Little Cosmo,' said Isa drily.


Bernard comforted Tristan the most by putting things in perspective.

'When ltienne sent Laurent into his own regiment, hoping it
would straighten the boy out, he asked me to keep an eye on him.
I tried but Laurent was bent on bucking the system. They were
torturing prisoners in Chad, Laurent hit a senior officer across the
mess and there were persistent rumours of anti-French activities.
Of course there was outrage at the time that he'd been taken out
by his own side but I think it would have happened sooner or later.'

'I hate Laurent and my mother for what they did to Papa.'
Tristan's face was haggard.

'Laurent was the best-looking lad I ever saw,' admitted Bernard.
'He was your father's most adored son, the truefavori du roi, which
made the betrayal much worse. He had all Posa's charisma and
courage.'

'And his ruthlessness,' snapped Tristan. 'Pretty shabby cuckolding
your own father.'

'He was terribly young, only twenty, and she was sixteen. I loved
Laurent,' confessed Bernard. 'I held him in my arms as he lay dying
and he said, "Look after my son."'

'So you knew?' said Tristan in amazement. 'That's why you came
out of the army, and went into films, and became my first assistant,'
his eyes filled with tears. 'You've been my guardian angel,' he
mumbled, grabbing Bernard's hand.

'Guardian angels don't have brick-red faces and black moustaches.'

There was a pause. Tristan longed to pour his heart out about

Lucy, but felt under the circumstances it was tacdess.

'I'm sorry about Rozzy.'

Bernard shrugged. 'I've got a family at home. They've never
seemed more precious.'


The Shaven Crown was packed out with members of the Inner
Cabinet getting drunk. Gablecross usually felt sad at the end of a
murder, even if they'd caught the criminal: it didn't bring back the
victims. Beattie had probably had a mother who was fond of her.
But it was hard to feel upset about a monster like Rannaldini.

'Well done, Karen.' Gablecross patted her arm. 'My second
Charhe.'

Karen's face ht up. But embarrassed, because she felt so
colossally honoured, she immediately changed the subject. 'Poor
Rozzy seemed such a nice lady. What made her do it?'

'Low self-esteem. Couldn't hack not being loved by everyone.
Kill anyone who slighted her. The exposure made her feel
important, the centre of attention. She's a singer, after all. Then
she got a taste for it. In the end she'd have killed Tristan because
he couldn't have reciprocated her love. I'll drive you home,' he
went on, seeing Karen suppress a yawn.

It was such a beautiful night. Moths danced in the headlamps.
Shooting stars careered across a drained blue sky. The scent of
limes drifted through the car windows. Gablecross had dropped
Karen off and was turning off the Paradise Road towards



563





Eldercombe. He was just congratulating himself on being home
early for Margaret for once, so they could discuss Diane's
eighteenth birthday party, which he could easily pay for now, when
he heard singing:

'She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes, She'll
be coming round the mountain when she comes, Singing ay yay
yippy, ay yay yippy...'

Some nutter was turning up his stereo at full blast. Next moment
a huge maroon Roller roared past, shattering the peace of the
evening.

Gablecross gave chase. But every time the road widened enough
for him to catch up, the Roller's driver put his foot down, and the
laughter and singing grew more raucous. He finally managed to
block them in as they swung into River House's drive. Inside he
found Hermione and Sexton.

'"She'll be coming round the mountain--" Sergeant
Gablecross!' cried Hermione, in amazement. 'We thought you
were our good friend the Chief Constable going home.'

Gablecross got out his notebook, and was just pondering
whether to book them for speeding, drunk-driving, not wearing

seat-belts, or creating a nuisance when Sexton said:

'Come in and celebrate.'

'You both appear to have been celebrating for several hours, sir.'
'Indeed,' Hermione bowed, 'and with cause, Timothy. We want
you to be the first to know. We are with child. A sibling for Little
Cosmo.'

Gablecross hoped it would be a little brother, or Cosmo would
certainly put her on the game.

'We've got a smashin' bottle of Krug in the fridge,' said Sexton
cosily.

'Bubbly for the bobby, bubbly for the bobby,' chortled
Hermione, as she weaved up the drive.

Gablecross sighed. He obviously wasn't going to get home to
Margaret for a while.

In a mad frenzy of superstition, Tristan locked himself away editing
twenty-four hours a day. Only when Don Carloswas finished and an
unqualified triumph would he feel worthy of seeking out Lucy. It
was an agonizing task because every frame with people in it was a
testament to her genius.

How could she have made his cast so beautiful yet so full of character?
Hermione looked not a day over twenty-five, Flora
disturbingly boyish, Baby so pale, wan and fond, Chloe so
languorously seductive, Mikhail so noble, Granny so unrelentingly
evil, Alpheus so tortured yet kingly.

'She's actually made that prat look like a gent,' observed Rupert,
who popped in most days and got frightfully excited over the
special effects. Tristan's filming of the grey, writhing traveller's joy
in winter suggested a wonderfully ghostly Charles V.

On each visit, Tristan begged Rupert for information about
Lucy's whereabouts. Every day he telephoned Gablecross but met
the same stonewalling refusal. Too much money was invested
in the trial to allow any slip-up.

Another reason Tristan worked through the night was the bad
dreams that racked him if he tried to sleep, of Lucy drowning in a
sea of blood, of the painting of Cleopatra and the asp in
Buckingham Palace - except it was Lucy's face not Cleopatra's
from which the colour was draining.


Having finished editing, Tristan had to bite his nails until he
he?Wed ,the final.cut to the press on 11 January and went into even

eper tlespair tlaat the whole thing was junk.

'You're too close to it,' said Woifie soothingly.



564
	565




'But will the man in the street like it?'

'You couldn't get more philistine than my future father-in-law,'
confessed Wolfie, 'and he's mad about it. Admittedly, he's
convinced he directed the entire film. I even heard him singing
"Morte de Posa" in the bath the other morning.'

But Tristan wasn't to be reassured. He was always cold, always
miserable. He dreamt of crumpets, big log fires and Lucy winning
the mothers' race. The only glimmer of cheer was that The Lily in
the Valley had been nominated many times over in the incredibly
prestigious Academia Awards in Edinburgh, which boded well for
the Oscars in February. It was widely rumoured that Claudine
Lauzerte would be flying up to Scotland for the ceremony. If so,
she must have been tipped off she'd won Best Actress. She
wouldn't put her head on the block otherwise.


January 11 and 12 were a hellish two days for Tristan: carrying the

coffin at Aunt Hortense's funeral on the Tuesday morning, flying

to London for the premiere and press screening of Don Carlos,

followed by interviews, which would probably go on all night, with

a breakfast script conference for Hercu/e first thing Wednesday

morning, then off to Edinburgh for the Academia Awards cere
mony.
Tristan arrived at the premiere in Leicester Square in dark

glasses so no-one could see his reddened eyes. He had been icily

in control during Hortense's funeral, and only given way to help
less
weeping when he'd reached the sanctuary of his room at the

Savoy. He had grown increasingly close to her in his frequent visits

to Montvert in the last six months, as they had unlocked his past

together. Hortense was also his last link with Lucy. He arrived at

the premiere alone, which fuelled the gossip-mongers, who knew

he was meeting Claudine tomorrow. Leicester Square, swarming

with police keeping back the huge crowds and the paparazzi, was

also horribly reminiscent of Valhalla. He longed to bolt into the

cinema.

Alas, the red carpet had already been appropriated by

Hermione, resplendent in extremely low-cut purple velvet, arm in

arm with Sexton, posing for the huge pack of cameras and press

photographers, determined even the RutminsterEcho should have

the chance of a decent picture.

'Hermione.' 'Hermione to me.' 'Big smile, Hermione.' 'Who's

your date, Hermione?'

'Why, didn't you know? It's Sexton Kemp, our producer.'

	'Look
		'To me.
	'Sexton.

		xn
	Tristan was
		the roof.

"rhenever I feel afraid, I hold my cock erect," sang a voice in
Tristan's ear. '"And whistle a happy tune." Can't you give the old
cow direction to move on?'

It was Baby, straight out of an Australian summer, his bronzed
beauty enhanced by a dinner jacket with black satin facings, worn
with a black silk shirt and a satin bow-tie.

The press were going nuts trying to identify him.

'They won't have to ask after tonight,' said Tristan, as they finally
fought their way in. 'Everyone will know who you are.'

More than can be said for you, thought Baby. Tristan had lost so
much weight he was almost unrecognizable.

Outside, the press was going into further frenzy, as a blond

couple emerged from an orange Lamborghini.

'Must be Chloe Catford,' said the Mirror.

'It's Tabitha Campbell-Black,' said the Sun. 'Isn't she fucking
gorgeous?'

'She's Tabitha Lovell now,' said the Mail, 'about to be
Rannaldini. She's marrying Wolfie next month. He's the hunk
beside her, and here's Rupert.'

A great cheer went up from the crowd.

'Been saving any more lives, Rupe?' 'Put your arm round
Taggie.' 'A bit happier.' 'To me, Rupe.' 'Can we have all four of
you for a family group?'

'That's quite enough,' snapped an extremely uptight Rupert,
shoving them all inside.

After that people arrived in a great rush: Alpheus and Cheryl just
on speaking terms, Chloe ravishing in Prussian blue taffeta, Flora
and George flashing wedding rings and wall-to-wall smiles for the
photographers, Mikhail and Lara in splendid form, until Mikhail
caught sight of Alpheus, turned as green as a cooking apple and
fled to the gents.

'Russians don't have the big-match temperament,' said Alpheus
dismissively.

'Bollocks,' murmured Baby, grabbing two glasses of champagne
and handing one to Chloe. 'Mikhail's gone to whip offthose priceless
diamond cuffiinks, which he's just remembered he nicked
from Alpheus during the recording. He'll have pickpocketed
another pair by the end of the screening. Doesn't Tristan look
appalling?'

'Probably sick with nerves,' said Chloe. 'I know I am. The
advance publicity's been so overwhelming there's bound to be a
backlash. Oh, here's Simone and Griselda who's wearing a dinner
jacket. Gosh, they look blissful, and so do Granny and Giuseppe,

cannoned off 1




566
	567



'Pissed already,' said Baby. 'Who's that stunning guy with
Helen?'

'Lysander's father, David Hawkley,' whispered Flora. 'He's a
headmaster, a classical scholar and rather glam in a geriatric way.'

'Perfect for Helen because he'sjust got his K,' boomed Griselda.
'She loved being Lady Rannaldini, but Lady Hawkley sounds even
more kosher. I must say, she looks great.'

'Naturally, I'm in mourning for my late husband,' Helen was
telling the Times Diary. 'The police are still refusing to let us bury
him. Have you met Sir David Hawkley?'

Hermione's great white breasts, meanwhile, were nearly
popping out of her low-cut dress in indignation.

'Helen's only wearing black because she knows it suits her,' she
hissed to Sexton. 'Purple is the colour of mourning. And have you
seen how dreadful Tristan looks?'

Everyone was moaning the fact that Lucy had been spirited away
by the police and would miss the fun yet again.


'Regards, some colossal stars must have arrived!' Little Simone was
jumping to see over the crowds as a white-hot firework display of
flashbulbs exploded up the other end of the room.

'They certainly have.' Griselda lifted her up to have a look. 'It's
DS Gablecross and DC Needham.'

'She looks stunning,' raved Simone, 'and the pretty woman with
them must be Madame Gablecross.'

'And there's Abby and Viking,' giggled Flora. 'They keep waking
their baby up with a torch in the middle of the night to see if it's
OK. Must be rather like the Nuremberg trials. Oh, look at my
George blushing because Alexei Nemerovsky's remembered him
from the gala two years ago. Nemerovsky's Marcus CampbellBlack's
boyfriend,' she added to Griselda and Simone. 'And
there's Marcus.' Belting across the room, Flora fell into her old
friend's arms.

'Goodness, you look well,' they cried in unison.

'I'm so pleased we were asked and not Gerry Portland and the
Chief Constable,' muttered Karen. 'It's Detective Sergeant
Timothy Gablecross, Mrs Margaret Gablecross and Detective
Constable Karen Needham,' she happily told the photographer,
who had produced a notebook. 'Nice to see someone, rather than

us, scribbling things down. Who's it for?'

'Tatler,' said the photographer.

Karen glanced at the Gablecrosses and went off into peals of
and
on asked

'Only that it's coming up at the end of April,' said Gablecross
firmly.

It was such a jolly party, most people didn't feel nervous until
they spilled into the dimly lit cinema.

'How's Rozzy?' Simone whispered to Karen.

'Very, very mad now.'

Tristan, Rupert and Taggie, who'd taken refuge in a side room,
slid into their seats at the last moment.

'I'm so nervous for Uncle Tristan,' muttered Simone, catching
sight of his grey, frozen face as the lights dimmed.

But she needn't have worried. From the moment the royal family
appeared in the royal box, there was cheering and clapping,
followed by screams of delighted recognition, at the shot of
Granny, as Gordon Dillon, glowering across at them from the
opposite box, then a shiver of excitement as Rannaldini swept in.

God, he was attractive, though Flora, with a shudder, as he tossed
aside his highwayman's cloak, brought down his stick and the
orchestra exploded.

Then there was the beautiful shot of the armies meeting on the
skyline, merging into the hunt streaming down the valley, which
in turn merged into the hard colours of heatwave and the violence
of the polo then back to Baby singing in Cathedral Copse.

'Listen to the clapping,' murmured an amazed Rupert to Taggie,
as applause broke out again and again, at Valhalla in the snow and
sunset, at Meredith's red drawing room, at the wonderful horses,
at Griselda's inspired costumes, and at the end of every aria, but
not for too long, in case something was missed.

And the music sounded glorious. 'Who composed this stuff?.'
demanded a bigwig from Disney at the end of 'Morte de Posa'.
,Can't we sign him?'

Things were also pepped up by the sub-plot of the murders.

. 'That was just after Tab's leather was cut,' whispered Griselda to
Anne Robinson, as Tab and Baby collided in front of the goal. 'And

that was when Tristan was arrested,' she added, as Baby, Chloe and
Mikhail squabbled over pistols in the maze.

...There was an added frisson as Rozzy made her solo appearance,
which Tristan had refused to cut.

'"Do not cry, my dearest friend, do not cry,"' sang Hermione, as
• he stroked a sobbing Rozzy's face.

'Boo,' hissed Baby from the back stalls. 'I'd watch out, Hermsie,

Rozzy's probably got a flick-knife hidden in the folds of that skirt.'
,.,:There was a long, horrified silence, followed by howls of

There was laughter, too, when Sharon chewed up




Tristan had been apprehensive about the nude scenes. But they
were so magically filmed and lit, so genuinely erotic, and so
wonderfully woven into the fantasies of the characters, that
everyone loved and clapped them.

Roars of applause and end-of-game whistling, however, greeted
Hermione's honk with Alpheus, and at one moment eager fans
started singing, 'England, England,' in time to her bobbing
bottom.

'One is more popular than the other singers,' whispered a gratified
Hermion. e to Sexton.

But the audience needed these brief moments of laughter to
relieve the heartbreak of the story and the horrors of the auto da
fe. All round the cinema people were hiding their faces as the
executioners set fire to the piles of newspaper beneath the
heretics.

Tab, who loathed classical music and had intended to neck in
the back stalls with Wolfie, except when Sharon or the horses came
on, had watched every second.

'Daddy keeps crying,' She murmured to Wolfie. 'Normally he
only cries in Lassie or The Incredible Journey.'

Wolfie was simply dying with pride, because despite the feuds,
the tensions and even the murders, Tristan had produced the most
beautiful and thrilling film he had ever seen.

The two hours seemed to flash by. Carlos and Elisabetta had
bidden their poignant farewells. Then Carlos was led off by
Charles V, leaving Elisabetta, looking very like Princess Diana, to
face the paparazzi lining up with their long lenges like a firing
squad, until she fell to the ground riddled with bullets. Then the
paparazzi became the Inquisition in their black habits with
Valhalla's four massive triangular cypresses echoing them along
the skyline, cutting briefly to Rannaldini on the rostrum, handsome
head thrown back, eyes closed, bringing the music to a
triumphant close.

There was total, total silence. But as the end ddes rolled up,
before the lights went on, the cinema exploded. Hugs were
exchanged, hands clasped, cheeks kissed, everyone was
embracing, jumping up and down, cheering their heads off, as
though a war or lottery had been won.

It was no longer a question of whether Carlos was going to be a
hit, but how much bigger it was going to be than anything in years.

'I must go and congratulate Tristan,' cried Tab, as everyone
surged into the ballroom next door. 'He looked like one of his own
ghosts earlier. Oh, I wish Lucy was here.'

'No-one is to ask questions about the murders. It's all subjudice,'

Hype-along was frantically telling the press as they fell on the bar
and the food.

Oscar, Valentin and Sylvestre were already getting plastered.
'Well done, well done, rues amis,' said Dupont, the Montignys'
lawyer, kissing each of them, most uncharacteristically, on both
cheeks. 'What a film! ltienne couldn't not be proud of Tristan
after that. I must get hold of a tape to show his brothers, but I'd
like to tell Tristan personally how much I enjoyed it.'

Tristan's brothers were livid, added Dupon.t, lowering his voice,
because Aunt Hortense, in reverse ratio to Etienne, had left her
entire spare quarter to stray dogs and Tristan.

'In his present crazy mood,' sighed Valentin, 'some might say the
two were indistinguishable. Where the hell ees he? Merde a/ors.t
Leefle Cosmojust march in with Pushy Galore. Perhaps he make
her next Lady Rannaldini after all.'

The roar of the party and the Friendship Duet pouring out of
the speakers made it difficult to make oneself heard.

'Tristan's portrayed the press as so irredeemably bloody,'
shouted the Independent. 'We'll have to be nice about his picture to
redeem ourselves.'

Gordon Dillon, on the other hand, was tickled pink to be
portrayed as himself. The Scorpion was going to do a big feature, he
told Granny, immediately inviting him to lunch in the boardroom.

'Only if Giuseppe can taste the food and drink first,' said Granny
drily.

'No chance of your bringing that Lucy Latimer as well?' asked
Gordon Dillon foxily.


There was no doubt that Baby had stolen the show.

'What are you doing next?' asked the Guardian.

'Fat Franco's broken a rib falling out of someone else's bed,'

drawled Baby, 'so I'm taking Otello over from him at the Met.'
'Wow, the tenor's Everest,' said Opera Now in admiration.
No, thought Baby wistfully, Isa Lovell was the tenor's Everest.
'Did you enjoy shagging Dame Hermione?' asked A. A. Gill.


Alpheus was in ecstasy, with so many charming young women journalists
to crinkle his eyes at. He had even hung his dinner jacket
over the back of a chair to show off his manly figure. George and
Wolfie propped up the bar, getting pissed together, keeping an
eye on Flora and Tab in case any journalist asked awkward
questions.

'It was the proudest moment of my life,' sighed George, 'seeing
Tebaldo, sung by Flora Hungerford, coming up on the credits.'





'Hello, Wolfgang. Hi, George,' called Helen. 'I don't know if
you've met Sir David Hawldey.'

'Hello, Mummy.' Tab, breaking away from her circle of press
admirers, came rushing over. 'It's so cool. Lynda Lee-Potter's
coming down to Penscombe tomorrow to interview me and Sharon. Dog News are 
putting her on the cover, and Celia Haddon
is going to make her Pet of the Week in the Telegraph.' Then when
Helen didn't respond, Tab asked lamely, 'Did you enjoy it?'

'Enormously,' enthused Helen, 'Tristan is so clever, and the
acting was wonderful. Even Hermione was better than usual.
Meredith's sets were surprisingly effective, so was Lucy's makeup
and Valhalla looked stunning. Wolfie's also been a tower of
strength,' she continued warmly.

'I thought your little yellow Lab stole the show,' said David
Hawldey, smiling at Tab.


'When is your baby due, Dame Hermione?' asked the Sunday
Telegraph.

'Early April,' Hermione put on a soppy face, 'an Aries bairn.'
'Where are you having it?'

'In the Hippopotamus House at London Zoo,' Baby whispered
to Flora, 'David Attenborough's on standby.'

'Where are you staying in New York?' Flora asked him.

'With Rupert's younger brother, Adrian, who owns an art gallery
and sounds distincdy promising,' confided Baby. 'So tomorrow
might be another good day.'

Looking down from the balcony, Hype-along was gratified to see
all his stars still ringed, six deep, with frantically questioning press.
But they were all waiting to talk to Tristan. Many of them had held
their pages and were desperate to telephone their copy.

'Where the hell is he?' asked Hugh Canning. 'It's like Hamlet without the 
Prince.'

Hype-along tracked down Rupert, on a window-seat, talking to
Taggie. 'I love you,' he was saying.

'Sorry to interrupt,' apologized Hype-along, 'but you're the only
person Tristan might listen to.'

As Rupert fought his way round the edge of the room, he heard
Alpheus saying, 'Now where in hell did I leave my dinner jacket?'

At the bottom of the stairs, he passed Wolfie in deep conversation
with Helen. 'As you're going to be my mother-in-law for the
rest of your life,' Wolfie was saying icily, 'it would be nice just occasionally
if you could tell Tabitha how brilliantly she'd done.'

'That's my boy,' said Rupert, patting him on the back.

*
	*

Rupert found Tristan in a small office gazing out on the passersby
and the plane trees of Leicester Square. His face was orange from
the street lights, his shoulders hunched, his desolation palpable.

'You must be over/a lune,' said Rupert cheerfully. 'You've made
a bloody marvellous flick, and the press are all downstairs waiting
to tell you so.'

'What is life to me without her?' said Tristan idly.

Next moment he had grabbed the lapels of Rupert's dinner
jacket and thrust him against a filing cabinet with the strength of
a madman.

'I've made you a fucking fortune, you bastard. I'm not speaking
to anyone until you tell me where Lucy is.'

For a moment, Rupert gazed at him, seeing the depths of his
loneliness and despair.

'OK. I'll lean on Gablecross. If he tells me, I'll fax it up to the
Caledonian tomorrow.'




572
	573



Melanie, one of the Academia Awards publicity team, very young, pretty and 
silly, met Tristan at the airport and made him feel that
by catching the right flight he had successfully landed on the
moon.

'It's s0 good of you to come all this way - may I call you Tristan?
We all love Lily in the Valleyso much -we're going to give away little
bottles of Diorissimo by the way. It's fast becoming a cult movie
with my generation. Madame Lauzerte,' she added reverently, 'has
already arrived. She asked me to give you this letter.'

She was obviously so dying to know what was in it that Tristan
had to sit with his back to the taxi window to stop her reading over
his shoulder.


My darling [Claudine had written],

I am so longing to see you. It has been such a difficult seven
months.Jean-Louis is still adamant he doesn't want a divorce, but
he has agreed to turn a blind eye to you and me as long as we are
incredibly discreet. I am staying at One Devonshire Gardens in
Glasgow tonight. You can join me there this evening, without even
having to go through Reception. Call me at the Caledonian as soon
as you get in. Your loving Claudine


'Which of us is happy in this world?' quoted Tristan bitterly.

'Which of us has his desire, or having it, is satisfied?'

Seven months ago that letter would have orbited him into the

seven hundred and seventy-seventh heaven. Now he felt like a

small boy being shunted into care.

	Melanie had
	' seen the
	r Alexander

had
	Don
	' in the
	Now she was

574



on and on, reeling off the celebs and incredibly distinguished
academics who'djetted in from all over the world.

'We feel the Academia is more prestigious than BAFTA or the
Csars or even the Oscars. Oh, look at those queues for Don Carlos already going 
round and round and round the cinema.'

They had reached the outskirts of Edinburgh, passing square
charcoal-grey houses and sooty gardens where the first daffodils
were being blown horizontal by the east wind. There was the cardboard
cut-out of the castle against an angry sky of racing clouds.

Tristan gasped at the cold as he jumped out of the taxi, but as
he scuttled towards the warmth of the Caledonian, he noticed a
beggar slouched on the pavement. An empty whisky bottle lay
beside him. In an upside-down tweed cap on the pavement
gleamed a few coins. But what caught Tristan's already watering
eyes was the total despair of the beggar's dog, a very old, lanky
lurcher, whose opaque rheumy eyes gazed into space and who,
despite his matted russet coat, was shivering uncontrollably.
Thinking how uncomfortable the unrelenting pavement must be
for his bony hocks and elbows, Tristan handed the beggar a tenner.
'And bloody well spend it on dog food,' he snapped.

At the sound of Tristan's voice, however, the old dog suddenly
pricked up his brown velvet ears and staggered to his feet, making
little whining noises in his throat. Next moment his long tail was
frantically hitting his sticking-out ribs as he lumbered unsteadily
forward.

'James,' croaked Tristan incredulously, 'oh, James,' and dropping
to his knees, he hugged the dog until he had red hairs like
larch needles all over his smart navy blue overcoat. 'We thought
you were dead. Where did you find this dog?' he demanded furiously.

'He's not mine,' said the beggar, in a surprisingly educated
voice, hastily pocketing the tenner. 'I think he came from some
gypsies,' he added defensively. 'He lives in a squat, but we all
borrow him. He looked so thin and pathetic all the passers-by used
to fork out for him. Now, he's lost heart and doesn't sell himself,
and people tend to walk by in embarrassment. We're going to club
together and invest in a cute little terrier. Much better returns.'

Tristan rose to his feet, somehow controlling the fury gathering
force inside him. 'Go and drink yourself into an early grave,' he
shoved a wad of notes into the beggar's hand, 'and give me that
dog.'

'Oh, there you are, Tristan.' It was Melanie, braving the cold
again in her twinset, short skirt and very high heels. 'You'll be late for pre-
lunch drinks. So many people want to interview you,' she





went on, through the streaked blonde hair that blew across her
mouth. 'Madame Lauzerte rang again, and this,' she handed over
a fax with an excited little giggle, 'has just come in from Rupert
Campbell-Black. He's a cult figure for our generation too. Tristan.
Tristan:'

But Tristan and James had vanished into very thin air.


Lucy's safe-house was a rescue kennels outside Boston. She had
begged Gablecross to find her a place where she could put her
terrors and utter anguish in perspective by looking after those
even worse off than herself. But nothing had prepared her for the
sadness of falling in love with one terrified, often dreadfully
maltreated dog after another, nursing it back to health only to
find it had to be put down after a few weeks to make way for a
newer, younger arrival. She was tormented that she had no idea
what had really happened to James and, as her longing for him
and Tristan grew more desperate, she felt as in need of rescuing
as the dogs, and wished she could plunge the fatal needle into
herself.

There were moments of happiness when a dog was rehomed,
and the other kennelmaids, who seemed to love their work, sensed
her misery and were incredibly kind. But she always refused their
invitations to come out in the evenings in case she broke down.

She had had little contact with England since she left. Her family
had been told nothing except that she was safe. Karen and
Gablecross had been over and were now painstakingly piecing
together the prosecution's case, but Rozzy had become so mad it
seemed doubtful she would ever be brought to trial.

'But don't feel sorry for her,' warned Gablecross. 'She's an evil,
cold-blooded psychopath, and clever enough to be faking.'

Constantly, Lucy woke screaming from nightmares of drowning
in the torture chamber, of Tristan covered in blood being dragged
away from her and, worst of all, of Rozzy's crazy laughter as, like a
tolling bell, she listed Lucy's imperfections, 'Too common, too
dull, too ugly, too presumptuous.'

As a result, Lucy had steeled herself not to ask Gablecross



about Tristan. By now he must have got it together with Claudine
or Tabitha, and moved back to his own world.

She had no access to English or French newspapers, but occasionally
came across snippets about Don Carlos. Flipping through
yesterday's Boston Globe during her lunch hour on 13January, she
stumbled on a photograph of Claudine and Tristan.

'Scent of Victory Brings Lovers Together Again,' proclaimed the
headline to a story that the French film The Lily in the Valley was
tipped to sweep the boards at the prestigious Academia Awards
that evening, which would be broadcast on PBS the following
night.

Looking at Tristan's young, happy face as he gazed so proudly
down at Claudine, Lucy gave a wail of misery. She had been given
a new name, Linda Gilham, a new passport and a new socialsecurity
number. Why couldn't someone provide her with a new
heart? As she stumbled out into the yard, dogs everywhere started
barking their heads off, scrabbling against the wire fencing.

'Oh, shut up,' screamed Lucy, then, knowing she'd been
horrible, ran forward to stick her fingers through the wire to be
nuzzled and frantically licked.

Like a vicious cancer, her longing for Tristan had grown more
unbearable every day. There was no morphine to ease the pain, but
as some compensation she could record tonight's awards and play
the tape over and over again.

It was her turn that evening to muck out the kennels. Afterwards
she went straight into the shower, scrubbing herself clean and
washing her hair, which as part of her disguise hung blonde and
straight an inch below her collarbone. As she put on a nightie,
which Tab had once given her, with a picture on the front of Peter
Rabbit eating a carrot, she reflected that Tristan probably wouldn't
recognize her now. He met so many people, he might not
remember her anyway. At least she had a lovely warm bedsitter,
centrally heated against the East Coast winter and with views over
the kennels and the park where she walked the dogs for their
allotted twenty minutes a day.

She had bought a litre of white and poured herself a large drink
to steady her nerves. The sweat was already coursing down her ribs.
Over and over she checked the tape was working and that she'd
got the right channel.

But in the end the awards passed in a blur. As the cameras roved
around the tables, Lucy was conscious of the depressing number
of ravishing women. Then she gave a cry of delight, as through a
cloud of Gauloise smoke emerged Oscar, Valentin, Bernard,
Sylvestre and Ogborne, all getting plastered. But as she searched
in vain among the other flushed self-satisfied luncheon guests
there was no sign of Tristan or Claudine.

Up and down, up and down, gush, gush, gush, went the winners,

thanking everyone from Auntie Glad to the guinea-pig.

'Oh, get on with it,' implored Lucy.

But at last it was Best Actress. In the clips from The Lily in the
Valley, Claudine looked so beautiful that Lucy groaned. It was
impossible Tristan couldn't still be in love with her and, sure
enough, it was her name Stephen Fry drew out of the gold
envelope.

From an aerial view, the round tables covered in white damask,
all with their rings of green Perrier bottles at the centre, floated
like water-lilies on the bluey-green carpet, as Claudine glided
between them up onto the stage. She was wearing a beautiful suit,
the colour of bramble fool, which brought out the violet in her
wide-apart eyes. Lovingly stroking her award, which was gold and
in the shape of an owl, she murmured a few platitudes only
redeemed by the sexiness of her French accent. Although it
wouldn't seem so sexy to Tristan, thought Lucy, helping herself to
another glass of wine, because he was French anyway. Claudine
didn't look a bundle of laughs, nor did she get tumultuous
applause. She had lost too many Brownie points not coming
forward to save Tristan in July.

Valentin won the award for Best Cameraman. The prize for .
Director of Photography went to Oscar, who caused huge laughter
by being caught fast asleep on camera when his name was read out.
But he woke up enough to tell the audience Tristan was the finest
director he'd ever worked with.

'Hear, hear,' shouted Lucy. 'But where/s he?'

The Best Actor Award went to Anthony Hopkins, which was an
excuse for another glass of wine, and at last it was Best Director.
Tristan was competing with Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and
Steven Spielberg. Lucy's nightgown was drenched in sweat, she
couldn't stop shaking. 'Please make him win,' she prayed, 'so that
at least I see him.'

As more clips were shown of Claudine in The Lily in the Valley,
Lucy hurled a cushion at the television set, narrowly missing her
fast-emptying bottle. Julie Christie, just as beautiful as Claudine,
was slowly opening the envelope, tantalizing, taking her time.

'And the best director is Tristan de Montigny for The Lily in the
Valley.'

Lucy's scream of excitement was lost in the roar of applause as
the whole audience rose to their feet to pay tribute to the courage
with which Tristan had faced his terrible problems in the past year.



i78
	579



But Lucy's tears ofjoy turned into wails of despair as, after a roll of
drums, the spotlight once more tracked bloody Claudine coming
back through the tables up onto the stage.

And her make-up's been redone, thought Lucy savagely.
Claudine wasn't looking very sunny, however, particularly when
there were groans of disappointment and a flurry of booing and
shouts of 'Where's Tristan?'

'I am afraid Treestan de Monteegny ees eendisposed,' said
Claudine defensively, 'and cannot accept this award. But I know
he would thank you all for this wonderful honour. I am so 'appy to
accept it on his behalf because he is most wonderful director I ever
worked with and the one with the most integrity.'

'Which is more than can be said for you,' shouted a drunken
Ogbome.

Poleaxed with disappointment, Lucy switched off the television
and threw herself on her bed. The pain was unendurable. Hearing
his name, seeing the others in the crew had brought everything
back. How could she exist for another second without him? She was
crying so hysterically, at first she didn't hear banging on the door.

'Linda, Linda, Linda,' shouted Bella, the senior kennelmaid,

'what in hell's the matter? Please open the door.'

'Go away,' sobbed Lucy. 'Leave me alone.'

'Gee, I'm sorry to bother you, but you know about lurchers and
some guy's brought one in. I told him to come back tomorrow, but
he seems desperate. I said you'd take the dog's particulars and
settle it in.'

'We don't want any more dogs,' wept Lucy. 'It'll mean another
one put down to make room for him.'

Wiping her face on the counterpane, seizing a handful of tissues
to blow her nose, mumbling that she simply wasn't up to it, Lucy
stumbled downstairs into the freezing cold night to discover it had
been snowing. The dog pens on either side of the rough track
leading up to the check-in office were empty of dogs but blanketed
in snow. Snow lay on the roofs of the kennels behind, where she
hoped the dogs were sleeping and wouldn't wake up when she
installed the lurcher. Newcomers were often traumatized by the
din.

Snow, already freezing on the wire fencing and the dogs' nameplates
on each pen, reminded her unaccountably of Valhalla. And
then she saw him tiptoeing tentatively out of the office, a big grey
shaggy dog, and her eyes were full of tears once more because in
the moonlight he looked like the ghost of James. He was a little
rickety on his legs, but as she drew nearer he suddenly noticed her,
stiffened and his tail began sweeping back and forth, almost
touching his ears as he broke into a lovely loping canter.

He must be a ghost, he must! But as she ran forward, and he
bounded towards her, swifter than eagles, she could see his dark
paw prints stretching out behind him in the snow. Then he sank
down on his ancient legs, squeaking and pirouetting four times in
the moonlight, and, sneezing in excitement, he collapsed at her
feet.

Totally immobile for a few seconds, Lucy fell to her knees,
hugging him, wailing as she felt the razor sharpness of his ribs and
backbone, but all the time his tail beat frenziedly as his long tongue
shot out to lick away the waterfall of tears.

'Oh, James darling, how come you're in America?'

Wiping her eyes on his fur, Lucy raced up the snowy path in her
bare feet with James bounding beside her.

'It's a miracle,' she screamed, 'someone's brought in my James.
Tell me I'm not dreaming.'

Then she heard a voice, the most heartbreakingly husky voice in
the world, saying indignantly, 'No, I didn't make myself clear. I

want to keep the dog. It is your kennelmaid that I want to rehome.'
'Tristan,' croaked Lucy. 'Oh, Tristan.'

In the doorway to the waiting room her knees gave way, with
James's shaggy body the only thing propping her up. As Tristan
came through the other door from the general office, she gave a
gasp because snow was melting in his hair as it had been that first
day at Tabitha's wedding, and because he was even thinner than
James and, under the fluorescent lighting, looked greyer and more
ghostly than James had in the moonlight.

It must be a dream. Her eyes were so wet and her throat so dry,
she couldn't cry out, and neither, it seemed, could he. They just
gazed at each other. The only sound was the brisk drumbeat of
James's tail against a metal filing cabinet.

'Where did you find him?' At last she stammered out the words.
'In Edinburgh, outside my hotel. Some bastard use him to beg
for money. He was so thin I didn't recognize him. He was the clever
one who recognized me.'

As someone closed the door discreetly behind him, Lucy's
thanks came tumbling over each other. Wiping her eyes and nose
on the sleeve of her nightie, she crouched down beside James,
clinging to him, kissing him over and over, as he snaked against
her in ecstasy.

'I thought I'd never see him again.' Her voice broke. 'Oh, how
did you find me?'

'Gablecross finally admit you are 'ere, or I would have arrived
seven months earlier.'



580
	581




Lucy gazed down, thinking how tearstained and soppy and
Pollyannaish she must look in her Peter Rabbit nightie with her
yellow hair in bunches. But Tristan was only aware of her sweet,
trembling mouth and the way her cheekbones shone like mother
of-pearl as the tears slid over them. Then, suddenly roused from
shock, he noticed her bare feet and how little she was wearing.

'You mustn't catch cold.' Whipping off his coat, he wrapped it
round her. Breathing in the tang of Eau Sauvage on the dark blue
collar, fighting the temptation to fall into his arms, Lucy collapsed
instead on to a leather sofa.

'I didn't wake you?' asked Tristan.

'No, I was watching the Academias. Lily in the Valley won everything.
You got Best Director.'

,I did?'

'You don't sound very excited. It's a huge honour.'

'Other things matter more.'

'How's Don Carlos?' Anyone would think she was at one of
Helen's drinks parties.

'People seem to like it. Everyone loves your make-up, and have
bet you get Oscar.'

Soothed by Lucy's stroking, James had collapsed on the floor,
but kept one eye open - after all, his future was at stake. All round
the walls hung photographs of beautiful, happy, rehomed dogs,
cheek to cheek with adoring but often extremely plain owners.
Maybe, thought Lucy hopefully through a haze of white wine, one
didn't need to be beautiful to be loved. Then she made the mistake
of asking how Tab was.

'Blissful,' said Tristan happily. 'Rupert's revving up for a massive
wedding at Penscombe in April.'

How lunatic she'd been to hope. Smoothing the feathers on
James's legs, Lucy felt the tears starting again.

'That's great.' Desperately she tried to keep the conversation
light. 'I can be godmother to your first child.'

'I'd much rather you were its mother,' muttered Tristan.

But Lucy wasn't concentrating, only noticing that he seemed to
be edging across the room towards her, like James trying to get on
to her mother's double bed when they stayed in Cumbria.

'Lucy darling, please stop crying,' begged Tristan, 'I can't bear
it. Listen to me. Hortense die last week.'

'Oh, no, I'm so sorry.' Lucy looked up in horror. 'She was such
a darling.'

'She love you too, and eef you hadn't sought her out, I would
never have known I was son. That was most

	I ever I can never thank too

'But it's me who should thank you. You saved my life, you
brought James back. We'll have to settle abroad,' said Lucy, in a
worried voice. 'He'd never cope with quarantine, nor would I.'

Tristan was so close now, she could again breathe in the familiar
heady cocktail of Eau Sauvage, peppermint chewing-gum and
Gauloise, and her heart started to hammer as his knees brushed
against hers.

'James and I 'ave long conversation on the plane coming over.'
Was she imagining it or had his hand just stroked her hair?
'James detest crate I have to put him into,' continued Tristan.
'He didn't believe I was taking him to you. He was so depressed
and nervous I had to sit in the hold and hold his paw. It was very
uncomfortable for both of us. There were two parrots with us, who
both learn to say "I love Lucy" by end of flight.'

Still unable to take in what he was saying, Lucy gave a shaky
laugh.

'James want to live in France,' insisted Tristan.

'We don't know anyone in France,' said Lucy, in a choked voice.
'You know me.' Crouching down beside her, Tristan put one
hand over her mouth, 'Tais-toi, my darling, for just one second.
Since you go away nothing in my life has been so dreadful. I
suffer over Claudine, but nothing to the purgatory of life without
you. Those months of filming, you bring such sunshine into my
life.'

With the other hand he was now stroking her forehead,
fingering her feathery eyelashes, wiping away a fresh supply of
tears, running his finger down her nose in wonder. 'You are really
real,' he whispered. 'I have nightmares every night that you are
dead.'

'Oh, so do I,' breathed Lucy, appalled to find she couldn't stop
kissing his fingers.

'Hush, I talk. First, I kid myself you are sweet little sister I never
had. When you take care of me after Rannaldini tell me about
Maxim, I kid myself you are mother I never had. But then you come
back from France looking so beautiful in that pink dress, and I sack
you because I am so white-hot jealous you're having affaire with Wolfie, I 
suddenly realize you are true grand passion I never have.
When you nearly died, I died with worry, but when you went away,
I died worser.' Tristan removed his hand from her mouth and
waited. 'Lucy, Lucy. Please look at me and say something.'

But she was so stunned by the wonder of his words, she could
only stare down and ask herself how the hell Peter Rabbit
could stuff his face with carrot at a time like this.

Tristan picked up one of her bunches. 'You look so sexy with





blonde 'air.' Then a horrible possibility dawned on him. 'There is
not someone else?'

'Someone else?' squeaked Lucy incredulously. 'Of course not.
I've never loved anyone but you since that moment I saw you with
snow in your hair. The Prince with the heavy heart.' Then she
remembered the occasion and cried out despairingly, 'But what
about Tab and the wedding?'

'What's she got to do with it?' asked Tristan in amazement.
'Tab's marrying Wolfie. Oh, my God, did you think it was still Tab
and me? Oh, my poor angel.' Kneeling up, he pulled her against
him, feeling the frantic pounding of her heart, as she in turn felt
the exquisite pain of being crushed against the hardness of his big
gold blazer buttons.

'That's wonderful for Wolfie,' gasped Lucy, 'but weren't you
heartbroken?'

'Not in the least. They will have pretty blond babies.'

'And Wolfie'll look after her so well, he adores her so much.'
'Not as much as I shall adore and look after you.' For a second
Tristan sounded almost beady. 'And you and I will have lots of
babies with dark curly hair, who will be even prettier. I know how
you love kids.' He picked up Lucy's hand and kissed each finger.
'As Maxim's son, I couldn't give them to you so I back off. By the
time I open parcel and learnt the truth you had gone. Why did you
run away? It broke my heart.'

'I couldn't bear the pain.' Tentatively Lucy's hand crept up to
the dark stubble along his jaw. 'I thought you were in love with
Claudine or, at least, Tab - that's stiff competition and Rozzy...'
Her voice trailed off in embarrassment.

'Rozzy what?' demanded Tristan, forcing her face upwards.
'She, well, she said I was too plain, ugly and common, and your
family would be furious. Ouch!' Lucy screamed, as Tristan's hand
clenched on her chin, then gasped in alarm because his eyes had
become black whirlpools of hatred.

'Eef that evil monster weren't in security prison,' he spat, 'I break
in and tear her to pieces. How dare the beetch! You have sweetest
face in the world. And my family will love you. Whether you will
love them is different matter. My brothers are very pompous. And
it's me they are furious with at the moment because Aunt Hortense
leave me so much money, and,' Tristan smiled suddenly, 'they
don't quite know how to handle Griselda. I adore your face.' Very
gently he covered it in kisses. 'And now it will grow as familiar as
the paintings on my bedroom wall.'

But Lucy wasn't ready for certainty. 'What about Claudine? I
read the MaiL'

584



Tristan scrambled to his feet, pulling Lucy up against him.
Despite his thinness, his chest was still broad, and his arms incredibly
strong as they closed round her.

'I should 'ave level with you,' he muttered, 'my love for her die,
the night Rannaldini die. I drive to Wales and find I am chasing dream.'

'Did you see her in Edinburgh?'

'No, I run away. I call her from airport. She was furious. "Are you
seek?" she shout. "No," I say, "I am seeking."

Running his hands deep into Lucy's hair, he gazed down at her.
'You 'ave not need of Oscar's lighting.'

Then, breathing in faint traces of Bluebell, he knew spring had at last 
returned. As he kissed her Lucy could feel his wonderful big
bruised lower lip crushing hers, and his tongue caressing her
tongue. Just for a second her eyes flickered open and saw that his
were closed in ecstasy, the thick dark brown lashes fanning his
beautiful cheekbones. As she swivelled her head sideways so he
could kiss her even harder, she felt as though she was being drawn
up to heaven like one of Chagall's angels. And what her head still
couldn't quite take in, her heart accepted completely, that he truly
loved her.

As they broke for breath, she flung her arms round his neck. 'You
are the most blissfully gorgeous man who ever walked this earth,
and I'm going to love, cherish and adore you for ever.'

'Eefyou don't, I shall be 'orriblyjealous,' said Tristan. 'Even of
Pierre Lapin.' He fingered Peter Rabbit. 'Look at lucky heem, lying
against those wonderful breasts.'

'How d'you know they're wonderful?' mumbled a blushing Lucy.

'I 'ave Hype-along's picture in my wallet. I show it you later. But
first you must have this.'

Reaching down to his coat which had fallen on the floor, he took
a little black velvet box from the inside pocket. 'Aunt Hortense
leave me ring, which once belong to Marie Antoinette. You geeve
me back my name, Lucy, now I want you to share eet with me.'

Lucy's hands were trembling so violently, Tristan had to open
the box. Inside, like mistletoe berries waiting for kissing lovers,
gleamed three pearls.

As a tear splashed on one of them, Tristan said shakily, 'I would
be safest, 'appiest guy in world, if you would wear it always.'

They were brought back to earth by a great snore rending the
air. With his future assured, James felt Safe to fall asleep.





EPILOGUE


The police had finally allowed Rannaldini to be buried in huge
pomp. Unwilling to attend the funeral, Tristan came alone to
Valhalla to pay his last respects. It was a bitterly cold, dark afternoon:
the east wind howled and lashed the naked trees. A 'For
Sale' sign swung dismally outside the main gates.

Tristan went straight to the graveyard. Here, amid a sea of
flowers and higgledy-piggledy ivy-clad graves, soared a splendid
white marble headstone, on which had already been inscribed the
words: 'Roberto Rannaldini, Maestro and Composer, 1949-1996.'

As he stood in the fading light, Tristan relived the past year,
remembering Baby serenading Hermione in the snow, Tabitha
screaming at the hunt, Granny silencing the rabble with such terrifying
authority, Alpheus singing with such kingly anguish, and
Mikhail as he lay dying reducing everyone to tears.

Tristan thought of Simone, Wolfie and Bernard working themselves
to the bone, of Valentin and Oscar creating radiance even
when they seemed at their most languid and inattentive, of dearest
Lucy, always comforting and smiling, of Sexton giving him full rein
and heroically raising the money, and the rest of the crew backing
him all the way despite their grumbling.

But without Rannaldini it would never have happened. Without
Rannaldini's kindness and continual encouragement in the early
days he would never have emerged from the shadow of ltienne's
disdain and become a director. And what would Rannaldini, who
had never settled for less than perfection, think of his film, which
was now in a little black oblong box for present and future generations
to judge?

More important than winning any Oscars, Tristan hoped that,
whatever form or being he was now, Rannaldini would be proud.

586


Strange that one narrow grave could contain so much vitality,
strange that so much tragedy and passion should be contained in
one small, black videotape, which Tristan now laid on Rannaldini's
grave. On top he placed a white gardenia.

But as he stood in silence, he could have sworn a pale violet light,
like a torch beam or a peacock butterfly left over from summer,
landed on the grave, and danced for a second before disappearing
into the earth. He shook his head. It must have been a trick of the
light.

Leaving the graveyard, he wandered past Meredith's cuckoo
clock lying upside down in the park. The patch of yellow grass
beneath Lucy's caravan was green once more, the love-in-a-mist in
her abandoned window-box turned to seed pods. Tristan put a
couple in his pocket.

Looking over the valley with the ghosts of the past swirling
around him, he was overwhelmed by sorrow that Don Carlos was over and Rannaldini 
gone for ever. But as he walked swiftly back
to the car park he felt only joy as he switched on his telephone and
dialled his future:

'May I speak to Lucy de Montigny, please?'



587






ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


In 1985 Robin Baird-Smith, then of Constable the publisher, sent
me to Death Valley to write a short book about Patrick Lichfield
photographing three ravishing nude models for the 1986 Unipart
calendar. As well as Patrick's crew, there was a second film crew
videoing the shoot for television. Everyone was obsessed with their
own agenda. With temperatures hitting 140°F, the rows were as
pyrotechnic as the high jinks. Returning home a wreck, but eternally
grateful to everyone involved for such riotous fun, I vowed
one day to write a novel about a film crew on location.

The result, fourteen years later, is Score!: the subject no longer
a calendar shoot but the filming of Verdi's darkest opera, Don
Carlos, with the resultant tensions leading to murder. Only when I
had embarked on the story did I realize that in addition to filming
and recording I would need to research opera and the ways of
singers as well as the infinitely complicated police procedure of
solving a murder. This consequently means a huge number of
people to thank for their help. Singers, and those who work with
them, seem to have particularly large and generous hearts.


On the filming front, I must start by thanking my dear friend


	1

	Adrian Rowbotham, an independent director, who not on y

	talked to me for hours, but later nobly ploughed through the

	manuscript for errors. I am also eternally grateful to the charis
	matic
Peter Maniura of BBC Television, who was brilliant on

	directing the film of Dido and Aeneas, and the ebullient Mick Csaky

	of Antelope Films, who rolled up to lunch with a complete and

marvellousl funn brief on how to fund the film of an opera.

	Y
	Y
	--
	"
	o

Mick also introduced me to the divine soprano Susan Danml, wh

of starring in the film of Carmen with Placido Domingo.

Brilliant filming advice was given me by Ray Marshall, Chlo and
David Hargreaves and Alison Sterling of Fat Chance Productions,
Alan Kaupe, Clifford Haydn-Tovey, James Swarm, Nick Handel,
Bill and Susannah Franklyn and, in particular, Irving Teitelbaum
and Rob Knights, who allowed me to range freely on the set of Mosley, the 
excellent series they produced and directed for ITV.
During this time I had terrific conversations with actors Jonathan
Cake,Jemma Redgrave and Roger May, as well as Chris O'Dell, the
director of photography, Rudi Buckle, sound, Charlotte Walter,
wardrobe, Heather Storr, continuity, Shelagh Pymm, publicity,
Patricia Kirkman, make-up, and an ace caterer called Melanie.

My heroine in Score! is a make-up girl, always the still centre of
any shoot, so I would therefore especially like to thank all the
make-up artists over the years who soothed and transformed me, as well as 
beguiling me with anecdotes. They include Maggie Hunt,
Valerie Macdonald, Jacqui Jefferies, Becky Challis, Rozelle Parry,
Sally Holden, Clayton Howard, Juliette Mayer, Sarah Bee, Jenny
Sharpe and Celia Hunter.


Several chapters in Score! are set in France. Here I am deeply
indebted to star journalist Suzanne Lowry as well as my French
publisher, Valrrie-Anne Giscard d'Estaing, for thinking up glamorous
names;Jonathan Eastwood for being brilliant on French law;
Jill de Monpezat for kindly reading the French chapters for
accuracy; Caterina Krucker for correcting my French; and my
brother and sister-in-law, Timothy and Angela Sallitt, who lived for
ten years in a stunning house in the Tam, and who have been a
constant source of information and inspiration.

On the music front, I am quite unable to express sufficient
gratitude to Bill Holland, head of Polygram Classics and Jazz, easily
the nicest and most generous man in the record business, who not
only lent me numerous books and plied me with the relevant CDs,
but also endlessly answered my questions, waded through the
chapters on recording and finally produced a glorious double CD
of the music featured in Score!

Bill also invited me to a miraculous productionof Berg's Lulu at
Glyndebourne. Again I am extremely grateful to the then General
Director Anthony Whitworth-Jones for letting me wander everywhere,
and to Humphrey Burton and Sonia Lovett and their crew
at NVC Arts, who were filming Lulu for Channel 4, for allowing me
to attend production meetings and sit in the control room and
beside the cameramen during the performance.

Going back to the seventies, I must thank my friend Guelda





Waller for first taking me to Don Carlos at the Royal Opera House,
thus igniting a passion, which has grown with the years. It was
therefore a colossal thrill to be allowed to sit in on Phillips Classics
recording sessions of Don Carlos in Walthamstow Assembly Rooms
in 1996. I would especially like to thank the executive producer,
Clive Bennett; the legendary Christopher Raeburn, who produced
the record; the mighty Bernard Haitink; the sublime chorus and
orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the beguiling
language coach, Maria Cleva; the endearingly laid-back orchestra
manager, Clifford Corbett; and the magnificent cast, including
Richard Margison, Robert Lloyd, Galina Gorchakova, Robin
Leggate and Roderick Williams. I also had particular help from
Patricia Haitink, Jan Burnett, the co-ordinator, James Jones, in
charge of publicity, and the PA James Ross, a rising young
conductor, who talked to me for hours about the opera and made
some excellent suggestions when the book was in synopsis stage.


My characters sing a lot in the book. I am therefore extremely
grateful first to Theodore Lap and Hugh Graham and secondly to
Avril Bardoni for permission to quote from their excellent English
translations of the Don Carlos libretto, which in Hugh's case was for
the 1997 EMI recording conducted by Antonio Pappano, and in
Avril's for the programme when Don Carlos was performed at a
1997 Promenade concert.


I must thank Ingrid Kohlmeyer of English National Opera and
Helen Anderson and Rim Grudzien of the Royal Opera House,
who were constantly helpful. I am also indebted to Katherine
Fitzherbert, who runs English Touring Opera, which brings such
joy to music lovers around the country. Katherine allowed me to
sit backstage with the DSM Helen Bunkall at a production of Rigoletto and work 
the lightning flashes. She also invited me to
Werther followed by a riotous, end-of-tour party. Here I had the luck
to meet the conductor Alistair Dawes, then Head of Music Staff at
the Royal Opera House, and his wife Lesley-Ann, a singer and
teacher, who have since become extremely close friends, letting
me sit in on lessons, taking me through the Don Carlos score and
answering endless questions.

Other singers who have given me wonderful advice include
Susan Parry, Penelope Shaw, Andy Busher, Christine Botes,Joanna
Colledge and John Hudson.

I must thank my musician friends, who sometimes have rather
trenchant views on singers. They include Chris and Jacoba Gale,
Ian Pillow, Diggory Seacome, Luke Strevens, Jack and Linn

590


Rothstein, Lance Green, who thought up the tide So.ore!, and his wife Justine, 
Richard Hewitt and Steena and Marat Bisengaliev.

I have also been royally entertained and enlightened on the
subject of opera by dear Sir Ian Hunter, Nicholas Kenyon, Michael
Volpe, George Humphreys and Paul Hughes.

As Don Carlos in my book is set in modern dress, I spent an utterly
magical two hours recce-ing the state rooms at Buckingham Palace for ideas. This 
was kindly organized by Claire Zammitt. These
rooms are only open to the public from early August to early
October. My director in Score!, however, visits the rooms in early
spring, which was the only time it could be fitted into the plot. I
hope Her Majesty will forgive the poetic licence.

St Peter's Grange, a beautiful fifteenth-century retreat nestling
in the wooded grounds of Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire, is the
model for the abbey, around which filming and murder take place
in Score!. I was very privileged to have Father Damien of Prinknash
and Peter Clarkson to show me repeatedly over the house and
garden and to answer endless questions on its dark and romantic
history.


Score! is my first and almost certainly last whodunit. After battling
with the complexities of murder, I rate the genius of Agatha
Christie and P.D. James even higher than that of Einstein. I would
have given up altogether had it not been for the kindness and cooperation
of Gloucester and Stroud Police. No matter what hour
I rang, no matter how famous the query, they entered into the
spirit and never failed to provide an answer. Their only disagreement
was whether the male member remains erect after the
moment of death, Stroud maintaining it did, Gloucester it didn't.
Other police officers beguiled me with thrilling tales of murder
and later waded through the manuscript for errors. They know
who they are and the extent of my gratitude.

Gloucester Fire and Ambulance Services were just as helpful,
particularly their assistant divisional officer, Graham Jewell.
Gloucester Reference Library kindly checked names for me. The
British Polio Fellowship, the British Film Industry and Weatherbys
were also always ready with answers.

A writer does not automatically expect kindness from her own
profession, but few could have been more welcoming and
generous with their time than David Fingleton, Mel Cooper,
Charles Osborne, Michael Coveney, Malcolm Hayes, Norman
Lebrecht, Keith Clarke and Richard Fawkes of Classical Music, and James Jolly 
and Christopher Pollard of Gramophone.



591





I must also thank the authors of five books which were invaluable
in helping me to understand my subject: The Colin Clark Diaries: The
Prince, the Showgirl and Me; Ring Resounding, the marvellous account
by the late John Culshaw of the first recording in stereo of Wagner's Ring; The 
Jigsaw Man, a study of criminal psychology by Paul
Britton; John Baxter's wonderful biography of Steven Spielberg
and the late Sir Rudolph Bing's Five Thousand Nights at the Opera.

My friends as usual came up with endless ideas. They include
Teddy Chad, Vanessa Calthorpe, Flavia Cooper, Val Hennessey,
Huw Humphreys, Annabel Dinsdale, Richard Stilgoe, Graham
Ogilvie, Harriet Capaldi, Godfrey Smith and his grandson, Max
Cordell-Smith, Louise Naylor, Michael Cordy, Simon Craker,
Marjorie and Peter Hendy, Jill Reay, lJizzy Moyle, Rowena Luard,
Sarah King, Claire Williams, James and Georgie Carter, Maurice
Leonard, Maria Prendergast, Philip Jones, Rob and Sharon
Morgan. Alistair Home and General Sir Peter Davies were brilliant
on French soldiering; Peter Davies, the art writer, on French
painters; Micky Suffolk on helicopters. Andrew Parker Bowles,
Charlie Mann, Charlie Brooks on racing, Astrid St Aubyn and
Zahra Hanbury on ghosts, my doctors Graham Hall and Pat
Pearson and their staff at Frithwood surgery on medical matters
and our vet, dear John Hunter, on animals.

Animals play a hugely important part in Score!, particularly the
heroine's dog,James, who is based on a shaggy red rescued lurcher
of the same name, the adored pet of Alan Little of Gardners. No
one else in the book, however, is based on anyone, unless they are
so famous - as David Mellor and Nigel Dempster are - that they
appear as themselves. Score! I must emphasize is a work of fiction,
and any resemblance to any living person or organization is purely
coincidental.

I wish I had space to thank everyone who helped me. Those
named were usually experts in their own field, but I took their
advice only as far as it suited my plot, which in no way reflects on
their expertise.

I am extremely grateful to Transworld for publishing Score! and to Broo Doherty 
for working so hard to edit it; to Neil Cower for
drawing such a beautiful map; and to my agent Desmond Elliott
and his assistant Douglas Kean for all their support and kindness.
I'd also like to thankJo Xuereb-Brennan, who provided marvellous
advice when cuts in the original manuscript were asked for.


The real heroines of Score.t, however, are my five friends, Pippa
Birch, Annette Xuereb-Brennan, Anna Gibbs-Kennett, Mandy
Williams and Caterina Krucker, who typed the huge manuscript in
all its endless drafts and rewrites. I cannot thank them enough for
their enthusiasm, industry and advice on everything from polo
backhands to pregnancy kits.

I must especially thank my dear PA, Pippa Birch, for looking
after me so beautifully, and my cleaner, Ann Mills, to whom Score! is dedicated, 
who has restored our house to order for the last
fifteen years and is simply one of the nicest people I know.

The lion's share of my gratitude as usual goes to my husband
Leo, my children Felix and Emily, and my dogs, Hero and Bessie,
who have put up with murder, literally, for the last three years, and
have been constantly comforting and inspiring.