‘Did you notice any keys anywhere?’ he asked.

‘Sure.’ Helen wrinkled her freckled forehead. ‘They were on my husband’s table.’

‘That’s very useful information,’ said Karen, returning with a brimming glass, which she placed on the table beside Helen’s chair. ‘Try to remember,’ she added soothingly, as Helen leapt to her feet and shoved a little flowered mat under the glass. ‘You were in such a state, Lady Rannaldini, one often blocks these things out. Did you strangle your husband?’

‘Oh, no, no,’ Helen licked her lips in terror, ‘he’d have been far too strong. And I’d never set fire to his watchtower. Bussage may have taken copies, but all the originals of his compositions and memoirs were there. I admired him so much as a composer. He used to write beautiful letters.’ Helen had moved to another table, straightening, lining up, picking up a little ivory fan. ‘I remember him quoting Donne: ‘“No spring or summer beauty has such grace As I have seen in one autumnal face.”’

‘“Young beauties force our love and there’s a rape,”’ Karen continued the poem, then raised an eyebrow at Gablecross who nodded.

‘Did you know Rannaldini is alleged to have raped Tabitha just before he was murdered?’ she asked softly.

There was a crack as the little fan broke.

‘She must have led him on,’ said Helen, quite unable to control her venom. ‘She was always flaunting herself. Omigod,’ she looked at them appalled, ‘she’s got a fiendish temper. You don’t think she killed him?’

When Helen had calmed down a little, Gablecross asked if she’d seen anyone else in the wood.

‘Promise you won’t say who told you.’ Helen’s eyes were rolling crazily again.

‘Of course not,’ said Gablecross cosily. ‘You’ve been a marvellous witness.’

‘I saw my ex-husband, Rupert,’ whispered Helen, ‘in the wood with a gun in his hand.’


56


‘Jesus, Sarge!’ Karen was jumping up and down in excitement as they emerged out of the dark panelled hall into the lavender, yellow roses and falling sunlight of the forecourt. ‘Hadn’t we better tip off Gerry and go and nail Rupert?’

‘Too early, he’s at Newmarket, and we’ll need far more evidence than a crazy ex-wife’s terrified impressions in a pitch-dark wood. She may well have wanted it to be Rupert.’

‘Do you think she hates him enough to shop him?’

‘Possibly. I think she’s pathological where he and Tab are concerned, particularly now she knows Rannaldini raped Tab. I certainly wouldn’t rule her out as the killer. Let’s go and talk to another side of the triangle, Isaac Lovell, who hates Rupert even more than she does.’

‘I’m expecting Isa within the hour,’ Janice, the head groom, told Karen and Gablecross when they walked into Rannaldini’s yard.

Slim, foxy, knowing, a goer in the sack, Janice was soon confiding that she would happily have murdered her late boss for the way he treated his horses.

‘That was his torture chamber,’ she added, pointing the yard brush at the indoor school. ‘He used to lock himself in with a green young horse, and do terrible things to make them go the way he wanted.’

She had stayed with Rannaldini, she said, because she was so sorry for the horses, and as Gablecross stretched out a hand towards the heads hanging out of the boxes, they all flinched away — except for The Prince of Darkness who, safely muzzled, scraped angrily at his half-door.

‘He’ll get you with his feet, or crush you against a wall, if he can’t use his teeth,’ said Janice.

For Sunday night, she had the perfect alibi: a skittle contest, between nine thirty and midnight at the Pearly Gates.

‘I was choked when Isa turned up at the yard at eight thirty — I wasn’t expecting him. He always slides in, well, like a cobra, never giving you any time to tart up. He’s gorgeous, the bastard,’ she added to Karen.

‘I was dying to get away, but he insisted on looking at every horse, in case they’d lost condition in the drought. We’re turning them out just at night because of the flies.’

‘How did Isa get on with Rannaldini?’

‘Worse and worse. No-one pushes horses harder than Isa. It’s an insult to his genius to expect him to flog them home, but Rannaldini wanted more winners. He went berserk when Peppy won the Derby. Last week.’ Janice glanced round the yard in terror. ‘I can’t believe he’s not here any more, he threatened to jock Isa off and drop Jake as trainer. That’s like an ad agency losing the Coca-Cola account. It would ruin Jake.’

‘Was Isa upset?’

‘Not outwardly — that’s what makes him so attractive, never shows what he’s thinking.’

‘Not a lot probably — except about horses,’ said Gablecross, noticing an empty box with stickers on the green half-doors, saying, ‘Champion’ and ‘World Beater’ and ‘The Engineer’ painted in blue letters above them. The damsel in distress, and now her charger, had fled.

‘Rupert Campbell-Black’s groom, Dizzy, collected Engie this morning,’ explained Janice. ‘Good thing Rupert didn’t come. There’d have been bloodshed if he’d seen Isa.’

In the tack room, she handed out chipped mugs of orange squash, and settled down to clean a bridle.

‘Isa was paranoid about his private life staying private,’ she went on, ‘I’m sure Rannaldini hoped to share groupies and experience but Isa wouldn’t play ball. He’s a terrific stud, but he likes to poach under cover of dark, like a gypsy. He was well pissed off on Sunday night. His mobile rang — it must have been around nine thirty because the stable clock was striking — and he couldn’t walk out of earshot because he and I were both in The Prince’s box. So he pressed the receiver to his mouth, and muttered that he wasn’t going to be able to make it, then he switched off his mobile and said he was off to Magpie Cottage. “You’d better keep it switched off, Casanova,” I said to him, “in case any of your ladies ring when Tab’s there.” He threw me such a filthy look I went cold. He can put the evil eye on you. By the time I’d turned out The Prince, he was gone.’

‘What d’you reckon to his marriage?’ asked Karen, who was busy taking goosegrass out of the stable cat’s tail.

‘Pretends he doesn’t give a stuff. She’s a madam but you can’t help loving her and she doesn’t deserve a pig like Isa — any more than her stupid, neurotic mother deserved Rannaldini. I heard Rannaldini and Isa rowing again last week, just before he left for Australia. “I’m taking my horses away because you haven’t made my poor stepdaughter very happy,” Rannaldini was saying, in his oiliest voice, and Isa hissed back, “That’s because you want her yourself, you fucker. Well, stay away from her.”’

‘Perhaps he loves her,’ sighed Karen romantically.

‘It sounds really weird,’ Janice dug her sponge into the saddle soap, ‘but because of the blood feud between the Campbell-Blacks and the Lovells, I think Isa feels bitterly ashamed about wanting Tab so much, almost like a paedophile fighting to stop himself jumping on a little kid. So he rejects her. Does that make sense?’

‘Utterly.’ Karen nodded wisely as the stable cat settled, purring happily, between her luscious thighs. ‘A Puritan conscience coupled with an over-aberrant libido seldom leads to an easy love life.’

Gablecross gave her an old-fashioned look.

‘Did you see anything unusual on your way to the Pearly Gates?’ he asked Janice.

‘Only Tristan de Montigny screeching down the drive in that fuck-off car, nearly running me down. Here’s Isa! Please don’t tell him I’ve been gossiping — I might want a reference.’

Gablecross had long hero-worshipped Jake Lovell, as a show-jumper then a trainer, and no jockey had captured the public’s imagination more than his son. Other riders feared Isa, whispering of the risks he took, how he slithered through gaps of which no-one else was capable, how he hurtled past uttering gypsy curses, turning dark evil eyes on the opposition until it melted away.

But as he got out of a second-hand Merc, chewing gum and dressed in patched black jeans and a nettle-green shirt, dark glasses hiding the evil eyes, he looked harmless enough. About five foot eight, the same height as Rannaldini but half the width, he stood watching them, as narrow and dark as a cypress at noon.

Having taken in Karen’s beauty, he ignored her, addressing all his remarks to Gablecross, who immediately softened him up by congratulating him on winning the Grand Annual in Australia last week. Gablecross then displayed so much knowledge about The Prince’s form last winter that Isa took him over to be introduced.

Having ruffled The Prince’s mane and scratched him behind his ears, Isa removed his muzzle before giving him a Polo. But as Gablecross approached, his equine hero darted huge teeth at him with a furious squeal.

‘Shurrup.’ Isa cuffed The Prince affectionately on his black nose. In his soft Birmingham accent, he confirmed Janice’s statement that he’d dropped in on Sunday night to check the horses and his wife, who he hadn’t seen since his return from Australia in June.

‘Long time to leave such a beautiful young woman,’ chided Karen.

‘Times are hard for jump jockeys,’ snapped Isa. ‘You go where the work is.’

At first he flatly denied taking any calls at the yard.

‘We have evidence’, Gablecross flipped back through Karen’s notebook, ‘that your mobile rang around nine thirty, and you cancelled an arrangement to meet someone because the coast wasn’t clear.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Isa was feeling The Prince’s legs for swelling. He had a bad habit of galloping round on this hard ground. ‘People seem to know more about my life than I do.’