Tim was proud of his wife’s achievement, but he wished the name of the headmaster, Brian Chambers, a smiling leftie with a brown beard who drove a P-reg Volvo Estate, fell off her tongue a little less often. Chambers and Margaret shared a love of opera and swapped CDs. Tim knew he was getting a taste of his own medicine for spending so much time over the years with comely women witnesses. He knew Margaret longed to hear about the goings-on at Valhalla, how she would have given anything to meet Hermione, Chloe, Alpheus and Granville Hastings, but he was still resentful of Brian.

Gablecross thought the pack at Valhalla were crackers and he needed to mull over them with his wife. He hadn’t sussed Tristan de Montigny or Mikhail at all. Finding her awake last night, he had asked her if she’d ever heard of Baby Spinosissimo, but at the first ‘Brian thinks he’s remarkable’, he felt himself shutting up like a clam, and the signed CD from Hermione had stayed in the glove compartment.

Difficult crimes always pushed away the rest of Gablecross’s life. Over the years, Margaret had learnt to cope with the defensive walls, the pensive silences and the dawn homecomings. Her first pay packet had been spent on a microwave.

Expecting earache, Gablecross was amazed to be greeted by an empty house. Going into the kitchen, he found a tomato salad, a French stick, a quarter of Dutch cheese still in its Cellophane wrapping, and a Tesco’s lasagne awaiting him. Against the lasagne was propped a note: ‘Five minutes in the microwave, gone to a staff meeting.’

No doubt tucked up in some bar, or worse, with Brian Chambers, thought Gablecross savagely. He ignored the lasagne, making do with a pickled onion, a slice of ancient pork pie and the Rutminster Echo, whose first four pages were given over to the murder and, infuriatingly, included excellent photographs of Gerald Portland and fucking Fanshawe, grinning beside Gloria Prescott.

Tomorrow, he must go and see Tabitha, and try to pin down Tristan. He put aside the paper, and tried seriously to work out who might have killed Rannaldini, but he couldn’t concentrate with Margaret still out. It was only when he went into the lounge half an hour later for a large Scotch to calm his rage that he found his wife fast asleep on the sofa, the Independent open at the murder.

Fetching the duvet from their bed, he laid it over her. He mustn’t forget their wedding anniversary on Sunday.


58


The great excitements of Thursday’s Inner Cabinet meeting were, first, that Bob Harefield had been in the air flying to Adelaide on Sunday night when both Hermione and Meredith claimed to have been telephoning him and, second, Mikhail’s two-litre Smirnoff bottle contained traces of H20 but absolutely no alcohol.

‘So the bugger was pretending to be drunk the whole time,’ chuntered Gerald Portland.

Mikhail had also pretended to pass out under the weeping ash for four hours until an Evening Standard reporter tripped over him but, in the meanwhile, could have been quite sober enough to nip into the wood and strangle Rannaldini and, although his English wasn’t good enough to understand the memoirs, he could have burnt down the watch-tower after making off with the Montigny and the Picasso.

Mikhail, who also flatly refused to admit he had nicked Gablecross’s initialled Parker pen, even when he was caught signing autographs with it in Paradise on Thursday morning, was without contrition.

‘I ’ate Rannaldini,’ he said, dragging Karen and Gablecross into the Heavenly Host for a late breakfast. ‘Whoever kill heem is an ’ero. Eef people think me drunk they leave me alone. After Rannaldini take my Lara, I do not sleep for twice nights. Of course I drop off under whipping ash.’

‘Why was your vodka bottle lying near Rannaldini?’ said Gablecross sternly. ‘I suppose it sleepwalked.’

Karen, who was deboning Mikhail’s kipper, got the giggles.

‘You realize you have no alibi.’

‘I have no vife either. Vot is life without her? She says I am piss artist, next day I go on vagon.’

‘So why was your bottle…?’ began Gablecross.

‘I go to votch-tower to kill Rannaldini for making me cockhold, but forest fire stop me getting hands on heem. I hope fire does my vork. And now, perhaps, someone will believe I only spend five minutes with screeching beetch Chloe on Sunday night and that I saw Tristan in Valhalla around nine thirty.’

Suspicion, in fact, was hardening on Tristan, who was flatly refusing to have a DNA test.

To stop Rupert throwing his weight around and demoralizing Tristan even further, Sexton had arranged for him to see a rough cut of the film so far, which Rupert had reluctantly adored. He loved Sharon eating Alpheus’s slippers, he loved the hunting and all Tab’s horses. He cried buckets when Posa died and, after a long silence at the end, said in a disappointed voice, ‘Isn’t there any more? Montigny’s a shit,’ he added, as an afterthought, ‘but an extremely clever one. I even forgot they were singing and he’s made Valhalla look almost as good as Penscombe.’

Being tone-deaf, however, and unable to appreciate Alpheus’s heavenly deep voice, Rupert thought he was the weak link:

‘More like the chairman of the local Rotary Club than a king.’

In fact, poor Alpheus had just arrived back from a masterly Boris in Vienna, where he had taken twelve curtain calls. Why wasn’t he treated with more reverence at Valhalla? He’d only popped back, anyway, for a tiny scene praying in the chapel before his coronation, and intended to push off and sing in New York on Friday and Saturday, returning in time for the polo shoot on Monday. But Sexton, on Rupert’s orders, refused to let him go.

‘You’ve been overpaid for these extra days, Alphie, so stay ’ere in case we need you.’

Alpheus was hopping, particularly as he’d just read Hermione’s interview in the Daily Telegraph: ‘Now Rannaldini has passed away, it is my duty to shine more brightly as the only star in Don Carlos.’

Alpheus was also brooding over the loss of his Jaguar, which a newly steely Sexton was refusing to replace.

At ten thirty on Thursday morning, therefore, Alpheus drew Fanshawe and Debbie into his caravan and confessed he had been withholding information because he wanted to protect his colleagues. After wrestling with his conscience since Monday, he felt he must reveal that, on his jog through the dusk to Jasmine Cottage on Sunday night around ten thirty, he had seen Sexton’s maroon Roller parked under Dame Hermione’s Judas tree.

Having taken a statement, trying not to betray their glee that they were about to rush in where Gablecrosspatch had failed to dent, Fanshawe and Debbie also, at long last, found a chink in Simone’s frantic schedule.

As she stuck Polaroids of Mikhail, Baby and Chloe into a huge scrapbook, she said how furious she was with Chloe.

‘How dare she tell flics I had said my uncle Tristan never went to Aunt Hortense’s birthday party. She eaves-drip my private conversation with Lucy. No-one appreciate pressure in making this movie. Tristan’s head was too much in it to go to a party. Can you imagine Beethoven stopping composing Ninth symphony to go to aunt’s bunfight?’

Furiously Simone drew a black Pentel moustache on Chloe’s Polaroid.

She was very young, Fanshawe told Simone, to have such a responsible job.

‘I am Tristan’s niece. Everyone theenk favori du roi so I must be better than everyone.’

‘You notice things?’

‘It is my job.’

‘Bet you didn’t notice ten things out of the ordinary on Sunday night,’ said Debbie Miller.

‘Bet I did.’ Simone covered Chloe’s dimpled chin with a black beard. ‘Mikhail change his shoes and put on loafers before he finally come into house. And I notice lots about Chloe. For first time she come in without lipstick — always she wears bright crimson colour and she look much better without it. She had also changed her clothes. She still wore tennis skirt… but… folds?’

‘Pleats?’ suggested Debbie.

‘Oui, oui, but the pleats were bigger, and on her T-shirt the blue stripes were paler and wider, but look same.’

‘Why?’

‘She must have change for a man,’ said Simone darkly, ‘but didn’t want to show it.’

‘Well done. Who d’you think it was?’

‘Probably Alpheus — they leave at same time.’

‘That’s six things,’ said a counting Fanshawe.

‘And Sexton,’ Simone giggled, ‘he had reine de pré in his hair and steeking out of the back of his trousers, and gaillet in the buckle of his Guccis and in his medallion.’

Debbie Miller was writing frantically. ‘What’s reine de pré and gaillet?’

‘Wild flowers.’

‘Should have been London Pride,’ giggled Debbie. ‘He claimed he was in town.’

‘Perhaps it was Sexton rolled in the grass with Mees Chloe Super-bitch, that’s eight things. And Bernard ’ave ash in his hair, and Helen come in wearing false eyelashes and black pencilled eyebrows as eef she cover up singeing.’

‘Very good,’ said Fanshawe delightedly.

‘So Bernard and Helen could have been in the wood,’ squeaked Debbie.

‘And Sexton up to no good,’ shrugged Simone. ‘Chloe could also have been with Mikhail or Alpheus, although I think now they both hate her.’

‘Who around here wears signet rings or rings on their left hand little finger?’ asked Fanshawe.

‘Rupert Campbell-Black.’ Simone glanced up at the telephone list. ‘Granny. Tristan, although he hasn’t worn it recently. Now, Sexton is interesting. He used to wear a signet ring on wedding-ring finger, but since ’Ermione thinks he go to Eton, he move it to leetle finger, and it is too loose, so he ’old it on like Prince Charles.