by Jilly Cooper
‘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. ‘They’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 and 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 SM,’ 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 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.
‘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 our routine.’
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.’
‘Motto’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 Étienne confided in Rannaldini so much.’
‘Come, come. Those two were friends for thirty years, Étienne’s paintings are all over the house. You can do better than that. “Obscene incestuous union . . . I can never bring myself to love him.” Étienne 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 to Tab,’ her voice broke, ‘Rannaldini sent for him and told him this horrific thing, that he wasn’t a Montigny at all, and far, far worse, that his mad brute of a grandfather on the other side, had raped Delphine, his mother, because he was so wildly jealous that she’d married Étienne. The result was Trista
n.’
There, it was out.
Karen winced. Gablecross whistled.
‘Wow, so that was it. Thank you, Miss Latimer.’
‘Please don’t tell anyone. You forced it out of me,’ gabbled Lucy, in desperate agitation. Oh, God, what had she done?
‘You know how proud Tristan is of being a Montigny, how naturally aristocratic. He had no mother to bring him up, Étienne was so cold and dismissive, his great arrogant family of brothers all got preferential treatment. Unlike them, Tristan got nothing personal in the will. Being a Montigny was all he had to cling on to.’
She picked up 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 bottling 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 Montigny, 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.
It was 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 table outside the canteen, and realized it was Wolfie.
‘Can we join you?’ asked Karen, slipping into the chair beside him.
‘You can arrest me if you like,’ mumbled Wolfie. ‘Why shouldn’t I have killed my father? He left me nothing and stole the only two girls 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 nothing 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 Wolfie wasn’t listening. ‘I don’t give a stuff about the money, I can earn my own. Tab’s the only thing I care about.’ Then, getting to his 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.’
Over in his caravan, Tristan had neither been to bed nor had a moment to rejoice over the ecstatic reviews flooding in for The Lily 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 equally 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.
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 château in the Tarn.
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 kennel after a wet day’s shooting,’ grumbled Griselda.
‘The shooting ees to come,’ said Mikhail, admiring his .22.
Everyone else shivered and tried to read Rozzy’s copy of the Evening Scorpion.
‘Killed in Action,’ said a huge headline, above an incredibly glamorous photograph of Beattie.
There were endless delays. The moon sailing through an archipelago of angry indigo clouds was making lighting a nightmare.
‘Are we going to have problems with those police helicopters?’ Tristan asked Sylvestre.
‘Music should blot them out but we’ll have to watch the long pauses.’
They’d just finished rehearsing when the crush was intensified by Rupert’s ar
rival. As one who believed one should get back on to a horse immediately after a fall, he had dragged along a reluctant, scowling Tab. Wolfie promptly dropped Tristan’s shooting script 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 Beattie.
‘Friend of the Famous,’ said the caption.
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 Montigny . . .’ 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.’