‘Did you really see a ghost on Friday night?’

‘No,’ confessed Baby. ‘I was so pissed off with Dame Hermione masking me. Fainting was the only way to make sure they didn’t use that take. I must go and practise.’ Wandering out on to the terrace, he threw out his arms and opened his lungs: ‘“Drunk with love, full of an immense joy, Elisabetta, my dear, my happiness, I await you.”’

‘What a pity that guy’s gay,’ sighed Karen.

‘As fags go, I rather like him,’ confessed Gablecross. ‘But I wonder if he really was meeting anyone at the Manoir.’

Meanwhile, news of DNA testing had roused others from their beds in panic.

‘It’s so definite,’ grumbled Griselda. ‘I might have pricked my finger when I was turning down that dressing-gown for Alpheus, or put my saliva on it when I broke off the cotton with my teeth.’

‘And Alpheus might have left semen stains on it any time as he romped with Hermione, Chloe and Pushy,’ said Ogborne.

‘Ugh!’ said Simone.

‘And Mikhail could easily have gobbed on it during the quartet, or Dame Hermione, or Chloe, even.’

‘I do not gob,’ snapped Chloe.

‘Granny and Sharon were in the earlier part of the scene, Sharon slobbers on everyone, bless her,’ said Griselda.

‘And how many peoples might Rannaldini have bonked in it, since he neeked it from Alpheus,’ yawned Sylvestre.

‘I cannot find my passport anywhere,’ moaned Lucy. ‘We’ve got to produce proper identification. I wonder if my driving licence will do.’

Gablecross was dreading the next encounter. They found Granny gazing wistfully at a strip of wasteground. Covered in thistles, poisonous hemlock, mildewed burdock, gaudy pink willowherb, rusting sorrel, yellowing nettles, it divided the footpath from one of Rannaldini’s wonderfully cherished fields of wheat stretching golden to infinity.

‘This disgusting piece of land is called a set-aside,’ said Granny, his diction as silvery as his hair in the late-afternoon sunlight. ‘Unlovable and neglected, just as I feel having been cast aside by my young man.’

Linking arms with Karen on one side and Gablecross on the other, he led them gently into the shade of an elder tree, overhanging and snowing down pale star-shaped flowers on a fallen log, which he brushed clear so they could all sit down.

He was impeccably dressed, Karen noticed, in primrose-yellow cords, an off-white linen jacket and a grey silk spotted tie.

‘One must always wear a tie,’ said Granny, as if reading her thoughts. ‘It can double up as a noose, if things get too unbearable. I got my Dear John letter from Giuseppe this morning,’ he produced a page of scrawl with a shaking hand, ‘saying he and I are finished. He has dumped me after five years for a record producer called Serena Westwood. Just for a contract with Bravo he left me. It’s entirely Rannaldini’s doing. He knew Giuseppe was greedy, and as my career declined I would be less able to keep him in fast cars and expensive red wine, so he delighted in goading me by introducing my boy to rich, successful young women. It’s strange the departure of such a little hustler should cause so much anguish. I want to howl like a dog.’

‘I’m very sorry.’ Karen took his hand.

Gablecross asked him about Sunday night.

‘The tennis tournament was a lark. Gratifying for two old fossils like Grisel and me to get so far, but hard to concentrate with young Wolfgang gleaming like the young Siegfried on the other side of the net. We cheered ourselves up pretending Rannaldini was the ball.

‘Afterwards, we got even drunker and I searched for balls with Grisel, Bernard and Lucy, I think. It was awfully dark by then.’

The vibrations in his beautiful voice became more pronounced, as he described the cutting up of his patchwork quilt.

‘Ghastly to know someone hates you so much. One thing that has struck me: every time Tristan is nice to anyone — Lucy, Tab, Flora — something horrible happens to them. I was favori du roi on Friday. I was telling everyone in the canteen how Tristan had kicked ghastly Howie Denston up the ass for not getting me work, then offered me a dream of a part: Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier. A few hours later the patchwork quilt was in ribbons. Only a theory.’

‘An interesting one,’ said Karen. ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

‘We were in the middle of a party.’

‘Well, next day, then.’

‘I assumed it was Rannaldini, and he was quite above the law.’

Gablecross steeled himself. ‘Was this the reason?’

For a second, Granny stared at the photographs of himself, it seemed at first, in a giant airing-cupboard. Later photographs showed him shoving loot into a shopping-bag. He gripped Karen’s hand even tighter, and started to cry, tears falling quietly in time to the raining elderflowers.

‘I’m so ashamed. I don’t know what came over me, losing the patchwork quilt, which was pretty, or losing Giuseppe, who was even prettier. He only stayed an hour on Friday night, arrived in a chauffeur-driven limo from the airport, came out of the tomb, made Baby faint — he had that effect on men — then buggered back to London and Miss Westwood, without removing his make-up. I knew it was all up.

‘On Saturday morning I went into Peggy Parker’s. Clive must have followed me to Rutminster. I only took a couple of double damask tablecloths and some napkins. Goodness knows who I was planning to have to dinner. I’ve never done anything like this before but it’ll be all over the papers. Menopausal old queen remanded for psychiatric counselling.’

‘I’m sure Peggy Parker won’t press charges.’ Karen hugged him. ‘She’s such a music lover.’

‘She might ask you to sing at one of her soirées,’ said Gablecross drily.

‘Prison would be the favourable option.’ Granny wafted English Fern, as he mopped his eyes with a pale blue silk handkerchief. ‘You children have been so sweet to me.’

‘Why should anyone want to kill Rannaldini?’ asked Karen.

‘For peace,’ sighed Granny.

‘What a darling old boy,’ said Karen, as they trailed back to the car.

‘I’ll have a word with George Hungerford, when he gets back from Germany.’ Gablecross made a note. ‘He and Peggy Parker are on the board of the Rutshire Symphony Orchestra.’

‘George’ll owe you a few favours if he really was in Paradise at ten twenty on Sunday,’ said Karen.


55


Having conveniently discarded Debbie Miller and arranged to meet Pushy in the Pearly Gates at lunchtime, Fanshawe found her giving her own press conference to a crowd of reporters. Only his knowledge of the back lanes of Rutshire enabled him to shake them off and find privacy in the Green Dragon at Eldercombe.

Pushy looked enticingly pretty. Her simple black dress clung to her tiny figure, her newly washed blonde ringlets were tied back with a velvet ribbon, but she wore too much eye make-up for real mourning.

‘Roberto Rannaldini was the most vital person Ay’ve ever met,’ she confided, as she sipped a Babycham. ‘He begged me to be the next Lady Rannaldini, and although he was much too old, Ay felt Ay could grow to love him. Off the record, Kevin, it made folk very jealous.’

Having slipped the photos of a nude lip-licking Pushy straddling Rannaldini’s sofa into his hip pocket, Fanshawe asked if Lady Rannaldini had known her husband was having an affaire with Pushy.

‘Course not. Ay never slept with him. That’s why he respected as well as loved me.’ Gloria’s eyes filled with just enough tears not to swamp her mascara. ‘Roberto was so caring. When Ay left a party frock at home, he sent the helly to get it, if Ay wanted to go shopping he lent me the limo, but Ay was careful not to upstage Lady Rannaldini.’

Fanshawe got out his notebook. ‘What did you do on the night of the murder?’

‘Ay was so choked not to be in the finals Ay went for a walk — it was such a lovely evening. Then Ay came into the house to phone Mum — as Ay told you Ay always do on a Sunday night — because Roberto had urged me to use the Valhalla phones at all taymes.

‘Anyway, Ay nipped into Lady Rannaldini’s cosy den next to the kitchen to borrow her Harpers. Some play about Puccini was on the radio but she wasn’t there. So Ay borrowed her handset, Ay know it was cheeky, and settled into the big sofa in the hall between the kitchen and Lady Rannaldini’s den.

‘It’s very spooky, that part of the house. When Ay became Lady Rannaldini Ay was going to whaytewash all that dark panelling. Anyway, Ay’d rung Mum and was still reading Harpers, Tabitha’s dad and stepmum were in it. Ay don’t know if Ay’m telling tales.’

‘You mustn’t hold back anything that might help us to find your fiancé’s killer,’ said Fanshawe gravely.

‘Well, Wolfie came past around quarter to eleven, Ay’m so little he didn’t see me, and he switched on the machine in the kitchen. Next moment he came out, whayte as a sheet. “This time I am going to kill my father!” he shouted. There was a crunch on the gravel and he was gone.

‘But even stranger, around eleven fifteen — the clock in the ’all had just struck — Ay nipped back to return Lady Rannaldini’s handset and her Harpers, and it was most embarrassing. Even though I hadn’t heard her come back and I was outside the only door to that room all the time, she was back in there. Perhaps she emerged from some secret passage. Anyway, she reeked of paraffin and had torn that lovely dress, and walked straight past me. Next moment I heard her running up the back stairs.’

‘That is extremely valuable information,’ said a jubilant Fanshawe. ‘Would you like to make a statement?’