‘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 Bogotá 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 rises 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 horse, which he would have understood, but by Chloe in hysterics.

‘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.


72


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 with. Montignys didn’t fuck and tell, as Rannaldini had, although Étienne 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 service 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 he had found her sobbing wildly over a newspaper report that he was 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 appropriately named Minister of Cultural Affairs, was universally acknowledged to be a brute.

And that was another reason why Tristan had identified with Carlos. He had experienced all the hell of loving a married woman, with a stern, undemonstrative, unfaithful yet possessive husband. He could never drop in on Claudine unannounced, never expect her to ring him in case the telephone number showed up on a bill closely scrutinized by Jean-Louis’s accountants, never ring her at home in case one of the spying servants answered. Nor could he 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’s jealousy 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 Étienne’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.

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.