‘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.

‘I have to rise above the parapet,’ he confessed, ‘and geeve interview because so much money and people’s careers are involved. My father was well known in France.’

‘I loved his early paintings,’ said Karen, ‘the ones of the Garonne.’

Gablecross looked at his running mate with reluctant respect. Tristan was thawing by the second, but froze up instantly when Gablecross asked him when he had returned from Paris. ‘I drive through Channel Tunnel yesterday.’

‘At what time?’

‘Mid-afternoon.’

‘If you could let us have your ticket? Then what did you do?’

‘Always, as film is ending, I need to psych myself into next one, which will be story about Hercules. At the end, he is given poison shirt by jealous wife and, in his agony, tears up forests and builds his own funeral pyre. I need woodland location so I go to Forest of Dean and drive around for hours, thinking, and sleep in my car.’

Gablecross, if he lost a couple of stone, would make a good Hercules, thought Tristan idly. As he talked, he had been opening his post, systematically binning the letters and even a new cheque-book, and smoothing out envelopes on his blotter.

‘Can you tell us exactly where you spent the night?’ asked Gablecross.

Tristan ignored him. ‘Did you study my father’s paintings at school?’ he asked Karen, as she retrieved his letters and cheque-book from the bin.

But when she said she had, he gazed at her dumbly, unable to remember what he’d asked. Then his mobile rang.

‘’Ello, si?’ Having jumped on it, he immediately shoved Karen and Gablecross out of the caravan, slamming the door in their faces.

Resourceful Karen, however, who had attained A levels in French as well as English and Art, had deliberately left her notebook behind.

‘What was he saying?’ asked Gablecross, after she’d retrieved it.

‘He was talking very fast, but the general gist was that he wouldn’t say anything, and no-one had seen him arrive or leave and he’d speak to whoever the person was later.’

‘Well done,’ said Gablecross grudgingly.


43