by Jilly Cooper
‘Glad he thought I was positive about something. That man was such 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 clean. 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 Baby 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 chance to talk about one. Come on, Flora darling.’
The rumble of disapproval died on people’s lips as Helen appeared in the doorway in a long white nightgown.
‘I don’t know what to do about locking up,’ she told Gablecross, in 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 defiantly, ‘but his genius lives on. I’ve got all his compositions and his last will on disk, not to mention 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.
42
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 if a 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 search through a drenched Hangman’s Wood. Others were going along the high street and up the drives of the big houses 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 Campbell-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 doubt 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 Heavenly Host. There he was incensed to find every table taken by the media, who were equally incensed to be banished outside Valhalla’s main gates. The vast crowd there included journalists and photographers jabbering away in every language under the sun, a fleet of television vans, arc-lights, satellite dishes, mobile canteens, a bar and Portaloos, as everyone rampaged through Paradise frantic for stories.
Hype-along, wielding even more mobiles than Sexton, and unusually sombre in a black armband, flowered tie and flared pale blue suit, told the cast and crew that the police would prefer them not to talk to the media.
‘Unless they offer you at least a hundred grand,’ shouted Baby, who’d just spent a lucrative hour on the telephone to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Lucy had been woken within seconds of finally falling asleep by James squeaking excitedly and Rozzy banging on the door, distressed not to be able to find Hermione’s cloak.
‘And why’s the place swarming with police?’
‘Rannaldini’s been murdered.’
‘Don’t make stupid jokes.’
‘It’s true, Rozzy.’
Rozzy was furious that Lucy hadn’t rung her before.
‘I suppose I’m not important enough.’
‘Oh, Rozzy.’ Groggily, Lucy switched on the kettle. ‘You had a migraine, we didn’t want to disturb you.’
Rozzy was really upset — ‘Rannaldini was a genius’ — and wanted to know all the details. ‘How’s Tristan taken it?’ she asked finally.
‘I don’t think he’s back,’ said Lucy.
Should she tell Rozzy about Jessica’s sighting and Simone’s account of Tristan cutting Aunt Hortense’s party? Rozzy got so upset if she were left out.
All day the rain poured down on fans, who poured, weeping, 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 beautiful 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 plain-clothes 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. ‘Me 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?’
‘Gutted. She and Rannaldini go back a long way.’
And up a long way, thought Gablecross irrationally, remembering the rampant cock.
‘How did she spend the evening?’ he asked idly. ‘Several people heard her singing in the wood around the time of the murder.’
‘Must have been a tape or the rushes. Dame Hermione came ’ome from Milan around seven thirty, watched Pride and Prejudice on the telly. A Jane Austen freak is Dame Hermione. What the hell’s happened to Tristan?’ he added, with unusual irritation. ‘The fucker’s always turning off his mobile because he wants to think.’
Driving towards Paradise through the deluge Tristan noted spiky conkers on the horse-chestnuts and a tangle of purply-blue cranesbill and pink willowherb on the verges, echoing Alpheus’s dressing-gown. Rounding a corner, he suddenly saw a flotilla of pizza cartons, plastic coffee cups, fag ends and beer cans hurtling down the overflowing gutters towards him, and went slap into a rugger scrum of paparazzi, shouting, scribbling, banging tape-recorders and lenses against his windows. Tristan ducked in horror. Had his hideous secret been rumbled?
The policemen on the gates refused to admit him until he had given them his name and address. As he stormed up the drive, police and Alsatians were weaving in and out of Hangman’s Wood. Ahead, the German and Italian flags drooped at half mast. Gripped by a terrible fear that Tab had taken an overdose, Tristan dived into the house. Two minutes later he stormed into Sexton’s office.
‘What the hell’s going on? They’ve dismantled the Great Hall and the royal box, and we haven’t reshot. What’s that fucker Rannaldini up to now?’
Tristan had triple bags under his cavernous bloodshot eyes, his lank, damp hair looked as though it hadn’t seen a comb for days. The buttons of his faded peacock-blue shirt were done up all wrong. He had only slotted his belt through one loop of his jeans, which were far too loose. He was frantically chewing gum. He looked wild, angry, dangerous, a tramp off the street, reeking of sweat and sex.
Gablecross opened his mouth, but Sexton was too quick for him.
‘Rannaldini was murdered last night.’
Tristan’s suntan seemed to drain into his black stubble leaving his face dirty grey. ‘Oh, mon Dieu, who killed him?’
‘That’s Sergeant Gablecross’s job,’ said Sexton, almost too cosily. ‘Let me introduce him, and his charmin’ sidekick, DC Needham.’
Tristan nodded then sat down in one of Sexton’s leather 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 me on?’
Mindlessly parking his chewing-gum on the front of Sexton’s desk, he groped for a cigarette, then dully slapped his pockets. ‘I lose my lighter. When did he die?’
‘Around ten thirty last night.’ Sexton reached forward with a match. ‘Someone torched the watch-tower.’
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 of Eau 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 fleeting 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 fingers. ‘Followed by two or three days’ polo, which means we could wrap by Wednesday the eighteenth.’
Tristan glanced at Sexton in excitement.
‘Can we afford polo?’
‘Rupert Campbell-Black’, said Sexton carefully, ‘has agreed to bail us out.’
Tristan’s outraged ‘Non’ was as loud as the shot that killed Posa.
‘Non, non, non! How did this happen?’
‘I phoned him,’ said Sexton simply. ‘It’s all very well you ’avin’ lah-di-dah views about artistic integrity but without him I can’t pay any more wages. I had nowhere to go, like a fart in tight jeans.’
‘What’s in it for Rupert?’
‘Money, and Tabiffa sobbing her little heart out if we cut out the polo scenes. She’s persuaded all Rupe’s toff friends to appear for a crate of bubbly apiece or some-fink.’ Sexton turned the screw blithely. ‘Tab knew how much you wanted polo.’
‘We can’t have Rupert involved,’ said Tristan mutinously, ‘not after what happened with Tab and me. He must want to kill me.’
‘You wasn’t mentioned. I don’t fink he knows. You wanted your flick saved, you ungriteful bastard.’
The row was interrupted by Griselda barging in, brick red with hangover but in tearing spirits. ‘Hello, Tristan, isn’t it awful and a relief about Rannaldini? How was The Lily in the Valley?’
‘OK,’ said Tristan, in a surprised voice. It was as if she were asking about some event that had happened centuries ago.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ went on Griselda. ‘Hermione’s in the first set-up this evening, and her pale green cloak’s missing from Wardrobe. Her maid swears Madam didn’t take it to Milan.’
‘Since Meester Campbell-Black is bankrolling us, you better send Rannaldini’s Gulf to Paris to fetch another,’ said Tristan bitchily.
‘They’ll have to make a new one,’ protested Griselda.
‘And I don’t fink Rupert will like us squandering his dosh,’ said Sexton, in alarm.
‘You sort it out, Grizel,’ said Tristan. ‘Hermione won’t be fit to work tonight, we’ll shoot her later in the week and concentrate on Chloe, Mikhail and Baby in the maze this evening. I’d better go and see Hermione.’ He leapt up restlessly. ‘How’s Wolfie taking it?’
‘Immaculate, coping wiv everyfing,’ said Sexton admiringly. ‘Helen’s in a bad way, can’t stop crying.’
‘Probably suspects she’s been cut out of the will,’ said Meredith, protecting his curls with a pale blue umbrella as he scuttled in to discuss the evening’s sets. ‘Hi, Tristan, you missed all the fun last night. The rain’s stripped off all the rose petals in the centre of the maze. We’ll have to use potted ones. Have you met butch Sergeant Gablecross yet?’
‘All flics 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 hobnobbing with Wagner and taking the heavenly choir apart. Perhaps Étienne 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 Valentin 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.