by Jilly Cooper
‘I drove over to Paradise,’ he took a slug of whisky, ‘saw a light on in Rannaldini’s watch-tower. I was going to park my car in the woods above Valhalla and beat Rannaldini to a pulp. Without Flora, I already had a life sentence. But by the telephone box, around ten twenty-five, I saw this young girl, so ghostly I crossed myself. She had blood on her face and all over her dress and she carried a little dog. For a terrible moment, as she ran into my headlights like a moth, I thought it was Flora and Trevor. I just braked in time.’
Gablecross felt a lurch of excitement.
‘She wanted me to drop her on the Cotchester Road, but I took her all the way to Penscombe. The dog was dead. I wrapped it in 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.
Night-shooting on Thursday began with a hefty consumption of porridge, eggs, bacon and sausages. Sugar Puffs had also rocketed in popularity.
‘They are all comfort eating,’ sighed Maria, as she prodded a sizzling leg of pork for the midnight break. ‘Frightened out of their wits, seeking the security of being children again. No, I am sorry, Valentin, pet, you cannot even have a vin ordinaire.’
One of the sparks, drunk last night, had fallen off a ladder, pulling 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 sleep in the day with the dread of the murderer stealthily letting himself into 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 of the Scorpion, 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 with a Jockey Club ribbon tipped over his Greek nose, venting his spleen on Sexton for agreeing to pay an extortionate sum to Lord Waterlane for the loan of Rutminster polo ground on Monday and Tuesday. Plebs like Sexton were stupidly overawed by titles. 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 fervently 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. In 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.
‘I’ve just 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’d woken 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 of your feverish Frog imagination. 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 lighter to her cigarette. ‘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 large drink.
‘Rupert said we mustn’t,’ said Flora listlessly.
‘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 beastly 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 Sylvest
re terrible sound problems. There was increasing pressure on Gerald Portland 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 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 mantle 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 début 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 cry again, prayed Lucy, who had just added mascara to every single 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 crew with 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 soufflé.
‘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 attention-seeking.’
Flora burst into tears.
Rupert turned on Hermione. ‘Shut up, you fat cow.’
Hermione burst into tears. Down streaked her mascara from every individual lower lash. Lucy flipped.
‘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’d just 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 Scorpion 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 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 his photographs of anorexic Helen, Rubenesque Hermione, ravishing Tabitha, and Rannaldini himself wit
h Tristan’s mother, Delphine, more voluptuous than any page-three girl. That was a copy of Étienne 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 the gorgeous director.
Her mobile rang. It was Gordon Dillon. Had she any idea who killed Rannaldini?
‘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 Unicorn Glade, both places where, in the old days, Rannaldini had laid her. At the centre of the former she could make out the glimmering silver figure of a pawing, snorting 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. ‘“The feast has but started, and I already tire of its joyful noise.”’
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 of Dom Pérignon into the picnic basket.