‘If it helps Roberto, of course.’

‘I don’t think you’ve met my colleague, DC Miller,’ said Fanshawe, beckoning a hovering Debbie from the public bar.

Pushy looked quite hostile until Debbie told her Alpheus had raved about her beautiful voice.

‘And I gather you knew Elisabetta’s part very well.’

‘Backwards. Maestro used my top notes instead of Hermione’s in the recording. Her intonation was very suspect.’

‘You and Rannaldini had an argument on Saturday morning,’ went on Debbie.

‘Only a lover’s tiff. I was upset his ex-wife got a role I wanted. But Cecilia is a name.’

‘People heard Elisabetta’s last aria in the wood. They said it sounded miraculous.’

‘That must have been my tape.’

‘Did you know Rannaldini was planning to reverse his vasectomy?’ asked Fanshawe.

‘What did I tell you? That was the only condition I’d have made before I gave him my body, I dote on kiddies. Rannaldini and Ay had agreed to be celibate for one another.’

Those were exactly the words she’d told Eulalia Harrison in their in-depth interview yesterday so they must be true.

Having got his statement firmly in the can, Sergeant Fanshawe kept his in-depth question to the end. Was it because Gloria had insisted on celibacy that Rannaldini had been reduced to raping Tabitha Campbell-Black?

In a flash, the innocent virgin became a fishwife.

‘The absolute fucker,’ screamed Pushy, not minding who heard her. ‘We agreed to keep ourselves chaste. I’ll have him for breach of promise.’

‘These photographs that have come into our possession do suggest your relationship was a little closer.’

‘The bastard swore no-one would ever see them. I want my solicitor,’ screeched Pushy.

Helen had been ashamed how relieved she was that Rannaldini was dead. No longer did she tremble to hear the front door creaking, and the cat’s feet padding stealthily along the corridor. She had been comforted by the flood of letters, many written by authors or television producers seeking her opinion, by the telephone calls fielded by the police and the obituary in The Times, which described her as the last and most beautiful of Rannaldini’s wives.

On the other hand, she couldn’t quite believe the lawyers’ assurances that the last will was unsigned and Tab’s naked photos danced slyly before her eyes. Then Gerald Portland had telephoned yesterday, asking her to appeal for information in a press conference. Helen had panicked. Faced with a barrage of questions, she’d break down and the truth would come out.

Yesterday, Tuesday the tenth, had also been a terrible day for Wolfie. The cast and most of the crew had taken refuge in their beds, but he, Bernard and the production office had had to work flat out all day in preparation for Rupert’s first night on the set.

In the middle of the afternoon, Wolfie had just realized the dustman he’d tipped twenty pounds to take away the empties had been none other than Nigel Dempster in disguise. He was also thinking that if Mr Brimscombe didn’t stop moaning about his missing petrol can there would certainly be a second murder, when he was summoned to the house to find his stepmother in hysterics. Perhaps shock had worn off and the loss of his father had kicked in. Despite the heat, he drew her into her study, shutting the door and all the windows.

‘Oh, Wolfie, I’ve done such a wicked thing.’

‘It can’t be that bad.’ Even if she’d killed his father, she’d had enough provocation.

‘I burnt down the watchtower,’ then, at Wolfie’s look of thunderstruck amazement, ‘with paraffin from Teddy Brimscombe’s petrol can. The memoirs were so hideous and in the new will he hadn’t left me a cent.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t valid.’ Wolfie was amazed Helen had had the nerve. ‘The lawyers will sort it out. Papa wasn’t ungenerous.’

‘Don’t you stick up for him! He cut you out too.’

Wolfie winced. ‘Did anyone see you?’

‘I don’t know, I heard Hermione singing, and I ran away. The memoirs were so dreadful.’ She was shaking so violently, Wolfie was forced out of pity to take her in his arms.

‘He said such humiliating things about me, he’d taken nude photographs of me, I looked like a skeleton. I had to stop them being published. Everyone was in them, Chloe, Hermione, Gloria, Serena, who I thought was my friend, that slut Flora!’ Her voice rose shrilly.

‘I’m sure he loved you best.’ Wolfie patted her jagged shoulder.

Like a cat reacting to human warmth, Helen pressed against him. Wolfie longed to pull away; he could feel her rubbery breasts and bony pelvis against him. Her freckles on her deathly white disintegrating face were like flecks of blood on the snow.

‘Even Tab,’ she hissed, ‘naked, whole rolls of film, and she was tarted up in a black G-string in some of them.’

‘I don’t believe it.’ Wolfie leapt away with clenched fists. It was as though she was branding the words on his heart with a red-hot poker.

He wanted to shout that his father had never left Tab alone, but ringing in his ears were Tab’s anguished pleas not to tell Helen about the rape.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he groaned, slumping on the sofa, his head in his hands.

‘She led him on,’ said Helen spitefully, ‘even at our wedding. Look!’ She thrust a photograph, which Wolfie had so often admired of late, of a sixteen-year-old Tab smiling into Rannaldini’s admiring eyes.

‘He’d just bought her a fucking horse,’ snarled Wolfie.

‘And soon she got a socking great allowance, a cottage and a Sèvres vase, which she smashed. You’ve no idea how they both tormented me.’ Then, when Wolfie didn’t answer, ‘Please, don’t tell anyone I set fire to the watchtower.’

‘I’ll sort it out,’ said Wolfie wearily.

Knowing that Gablecross and Karen were due to see Lady Rannaldini, Fanshawe, having relayed the dramatic findings of his interview with Pushy to Gerald Portland, then magnanimously and patronizingly passed those relevant to Helen on to his rivals.

Thus armed, on Wednesday afternoon Gablecross and Karen found Helen in her little study, painting a not very good picture of the valley. Was it Freudian, Karen wondered, that she’d left out Magpie Cottage? Gablecross noticed her skeletal thinness, the staring eyes, the deathly pallor, the spread of grey in the fox-red hair, and thought how much she must have suffered. As before, she didn’t offer them even a cup of tea.

Two other officers, DC Smithson and DC Lightfoot, he began, had spoken to Mrs Brimscombe.

‘She told them’, Karen continued gently, ‘that you had two dresses made up from the mauve silk, patterned with lilac and honeysuckle. The second one was the one handed in to the police. The first must have been the one you wore earlier.’

‘That’s rubbish,’ stammered Helen.

Mrs Brimscombe says she came down to the utility room after putting you to bed on Sunday night and found the first dress in the washing-machine with all the colours run. “Lady Rannaldini’s so particular,” she told DC Smithson. “She always insists silks are hand-washed.”’

‘She must have put the machine on herself.’ Helen was frantically straightening paperweights. ‘She was off-the-wall that night. She told Wolfie she’d seen a purple will-o’-the-wisp bobbing through hedges towards the cemetery. It’s supposed to mean death at Valhalla.

‘The truth is, Detective Sergeant, when I put on my first mauve silk dress on Sunday afternoon I noticed a rip in the other one.’ Helen was talking carefully now, as though she was reciting a poem she hadn’t quite memorized. ‘So I left it in the utility room for Mrs B to mend. She’s so on the blink she obviously thought it needed washing, then panicked because she’d put it on the wrong wash. She was probably terrified,’ her voice hardened fractionally, ‘thinking I wouldn’t keep her and Teddy, now Rannaldini’s gone.’

She seemed calmer, but when Gablecross told her Pushy claimed to have smelt paraffin on her ripped dress as she rushed upstairs at eleven fifteen, she lost her temper.

‘That evil creature!’ she hissed. ‘She tried to destroy my marriage, now my husband’s gone she’s trying to destroy me. She humiliated me in every way, using my phone and my bathroom, pinching the cars and the helicopter when I needed them. How could she think I’d burn down the watchtower’ — her voice rose to a shriek — ‘destroying all my husband’s precious compositions?’

‘Of course not.’ Karen jumped to her feet and putting an arm round Helen’s shoulders, settled her back in her chair. ‘Let me get you a glass of water.’

‘They’re both lying,’ moaned Helen, ‘Brimscombe because she’s old and confused, Gloria because she’s a vindictive bitch.’

‘Mrs Brimscombe’, Gablecross flipped back a few pages, ‘confirms she made you a sweetcorn and smoked-salmon omelette for your tea, the vomit of which was found ten yards from your husband’s watchtower.’

‘I never!’ gasped Helen. ‘I told you, I chucked my omelette down the john. She must have made a second for someone else. Film people are always demanding things.’

But when Gablecross pointed out that they would be able to check Helen’s DNA profile, which had been taken that morning, with the saliva in the vomit, Helen caved in and burst into tears.

‘I did go into the woods. I so prayed my husband’s passion for Gloria was dying out and I wanted to check if they were together. I found myself drawn to the watchtower around half past ten. The door was open.’ Helen was rocking back and forth, clutching herself. ‘On his table I found this l-l-loathsome photograph of Gloria with nothing on. I tore it up. Then I heard a noise — I was so upset and so terrified it might be my husband, furious with me for destroying the photo, that I rushed into the wood, and threw up. Then I ran home. It was horrible.’ She raised streaming eyes to Gablecross, who grunted sympathetically.