‘Very commendable,’ said Gablecross sardonically.

Particularly when the bell rang again, and Clive, sulkily, had to admit Bobby Clintock, another of Gablecross’s contacts and the best safecracker in Rutshire, armed with rugs and explosives.

At five thirty-five, a loud thud set the horses neighing and the Rottweilers barking in their quarters below.

‘Shit,’ muttered Clive, peering through the smoke. ‘The Montigny’s not there, nor the Picasso. Must have been torched in the fire. That’s five million up the spout.’

Otherwise they found a lot of foreign currency, enough cocaine to make a snow-dwarf, a print-out of three hundred pages of the memoirs, and a pile of videos and photographs. Pushy Galore straddling a sofa didn’t do much for Clive and neither did Bussage roped to the table. Then he saw Chloe.

‘Jesus! Expect the goat’ll sell its story to Farmer’s Weekly.’

Poor old Granville Hastings. Gablecross picked up a photo of a devastated-looking Granny. No wonder he didn’t want the police called.

Rannaldini must have locked this stuff away on the Sunday afternoon before he died. There was even a copy of his last will, dated 8 July, leaving everything to Cecilia and her children, except for four million each to Hermione and Little Cosmo and a hundred thousand to Clive and Miss Bussage. Nothing to Helen or Wolfie.

No wonder Wolfie had been going to kill his father.

Flicking through a yellow memo pad, Gablecross found notes that Rozzy Pringle had throat cancer, the poor lady, and reminders to contact Rozzy’s husband Glyn and also Tristan’s aunt Hortense in the Tarn. In a Bible, he discovered a letter in French, on writing paper headed with a crest of a snake and a drawing of two lovers, and shoved it in his inside pocket to read later. Turning, he found Bobby Clintock salivating over Hermione’s naked body and Clive drooling over a book of medieval tortures with many of the pages turned down.

‘What was it with this guy?’ asked Gablecross in disgust.

‘He was bored with normal pleasure,’ said Clive flatly.

‘Where was his famous torture chamber?’

‘Didn’t exist.’ Clive’s pale eyes flickered.

‘Did you take that Rottie away from the watch-tower earlier so you could kill him without it barking?’

‘You’ll have to take my word on that.’

‘Thanks for your co-operation,’ said Gablecross, as Clive and Bobby, albeit with great reluctance, helped him to carry the safe to his car.


52


Gerry Portland was outraged when Gablecross emptied the contents of the safe on to his desk.

‘Tim-out-on-a-limb again. How dare you go off intimidating suspects and blowing safes? Nothing has been printed.’

‘There were two of them, and Bobby Clintock’s much bigger than me.’

‘You could have torched the evidence. What’s the defence going to say to this?’ Having bollocked him, however, Portland was soon immersed in the material. ‘Jesus! Jesus. How the hell did Rannaldini pull birds like that?’

As a result, the morning’s briefing was lively, excited and often ribald.

‘If you see steam coming out of my ears,’ announced Portland, ‘it’s because Tim’s got hold of a copy of the memoirs. We also have the missing tape from the answering-machine at Valhalla.’ He pressed the play button. ‘Oh, Wolfie, help me! Rannaldini’s just raped me, and he’s killed Gertrude. Oh, please get Sharon from the cottage!’

Tab’s clipped, breathless voice faltered as tears took over.

Despite the sun streaming through the window, a shiver went through the room.

‘It was after hearing this tape’, went on Portland, ‘that young Wolfgang announced he was going to kill his father. If he’d gone to the watch-tower and read the draft will, he’d have had the added incentive that he’d been disinherited. Rupert also received a phone call from Tabitha a few minutes later.’

‘Rupert looked capable of murder last night,’ admitted Gablecross.

Fanshawe, who was livid about Gablecross’s latest coup, and Debbie Miller had been to Magpie Cottage yesterday. The only unusual thing on Monday morning, Betty had told them, was that Tab’s and Isa’s double bed had been neatly made. On the other hand, the bathroom had been a shambles. Fanshawe had pocketed a pale coral lipstick, Lancôme’s Brilliant Beige, Clinique blusher, base and powder, and a hairbrush full of blonde hairs. Kicked under the bath, perhaps so Isa shouldn’t see it, had been the packaging from a newly opened bottle of scent called Quercus.

‘Perhaps she didn’t want her husband to know she was on the pull,’ said Debbie.

Gablecross reported on his and Karen’s visit to Miss Bussage. ‘The lady was very bitter about her sacking and unashamedly confessed she had meant to steal a copy of the memoirs and photographs. Said she was protecting Rannaldini’s reputation.’

‘I reckon she was going to flog them,’ piped up Karen.

‘Certainly enjoyed being flogged,’ said Portland, grinning down at the photo of Bussage roped to the kitchen table.

‘Disgusting,’ chuntered DC Smithson.

‘Anyway,’ went on Gablecross, ‘she reckons everything, including the draft will, was switched in the files before she put it in her briefcase, which she did immediately after Wolfie sacked her on Monday afternoon. He allowed her only an hour to pack because she’d slagged off Tab, and she had the key to the briefcase on her. Bussage suspects Wolfie and Lady Rannaldini, because they were both disinherited — and, of course, Clive. But no-one featured in those memoirs would be too happy to have them floating about.’

‘The riveting thing she told us’, said Karen in excitement, ‘was that Rannaldini visited James Benson on Friday to discuss having his vasectomy reversed.’

This made everyone sit up.

‘Not the most pleasant or successful of operations,’ observed Portland. ‘Rannaldini must have been thinking of having more children. Any idea who with?’

‘Hardly Lady Rannaldini,’ said Fanshawe, who was desperate to regain the ascendancy. ‘That marriage was into injury time. Gloria Prescott claims he proposed marriage to her.’

‘He was clearly closer to Harriet Bussage than her unprepossessing appearance would suggest,’ said Gablecross, ‘and he was cuckoo about Tabitha.’

‘He was shooting blanks on Sunday night,’ mused Fanshawe. ‘But one way to torture Lady Rannaldini, Wolfgang, Dame Hermione and Rupert Campbell-Black in one stroke would have been to have got Tabitha pregnant.’

As he talked Sergeant Fanshawe was edging backwards so he could look at the photographs over Portland’s shoulder. His jaw dropped at the sight of a naked Tab.

‘Christ, she’s beautiful. Any man would kill for her. Although,’ he edged closer, ‘judging from that pickie, she and Rannaldini must have been familiar for a long time — the leaves are off the trees. Perhaps she’s lying about the rape.’

‘May not have known the photograph was being taken,’ said Gablecross, and he explained about Rannaldini having every room fitted with bugs, hidden cameras and two-way mirrors. ‘Every night he watched his guests in bed on television monitors.’

‘Did they know and perform?’ mused Portland.

‘Can I have a seat in the stalls?’ pleaded DC Lightfoot, and was kicked by DC Smithson.

‘So the murderer’s not only got the keys to every bedroom but the code to every safe, secret cache and priest-hole in Valhalla,’ said Gablecross.

‘What we’ve got to establish is, was Rannaldini the murderer’s only target? Did he or she kill to stop the memoirs? Christ.’ Portland shuddered at a hideously humiliating photograph of an emaciated Helen Campbell-Black. ‘Or to steal them from the watch-tower and flog them to the press for some vast sum? Also, with a second set on the loose, stolen from Bussage’s briefcase, the murderer may kill again to get hold of them.’

There had been another sighting on Sunday night of Tristan de Montigny, said DC Lightfoot.

‘Janice, Rannaldini’s groom, saw him sneaking into the south wing in a dark green polo shirt and white chinos around nine ten. But he rolled up at Valhalla the next day in jeans and a peacock-blue shirt, so he changed his clothes for some reason.’

‘Who’s close to him?’ asked Portland.

‘Lucy Latimer,’ said Gablecross.

‘You and Karen go and see her.’

Janice had also volunteered that Tabitha’s husband, the Black Cobra, had also, most unusually, rolled up at the yard to look at Rannaldini’s horses at around eight thirty, and had received a call on his mobile, DC Smithson consulted her notebook, around nine twenty-five. ‘He said, “It’s no good, I can’t manage it, the coast isn’t clear,” and rang off. He left the yard around nine thirty.’

‘He presumably wouldn’t have been very pleased that Rannaldini had raped his wife.’

‘Doubt if he’d show it. Cool customer, quite cool enough to murder.’

‘You’re a racing buff, Tim,’ said Portland. ‘Go and chat him up.’

‘And how did you get on with Rupert Campbell-Black, Tim?’ asked Fanshawe, who knew that he hadn’t and who was livid Gablecross seemed to be Portland’s pet today.

‘We couldn’t get near him,’ said Gablecross tersely. ‘Baby Spinosissimo interests me. He’s as elusive as Campbell-Black, but all that drinking and extravagant camping it up means something’s eating him.’

‘Probably Flora Seymour,’ quipped Fanshawe, pointing to one of the photographs of Flora and Baby entangled on the lawn at Angels’ Reach. ‘He’s clearly not all gay.’

‘Try and pin him down today, Tim,’ said Portland. ‘And what about Dame Hermione?’