‘Same reason he stole The Snake Charmer.’

‘Course he didn’t.’

‘Betty and Sally found it under his mattress on Thursday. By the time they’d alerted a police officer, he’d whipped it. Rannaldini was going to publish a copy of the painting in his memoirs. Tristan couldn’t cope with a pornographic photograph of his mum being on display so he killed Rannaldini and Beattie.’

‘No, no.’ Lucy burst into tears, head on the table, clenching and unclenching her hands.

‘Cooee, cooee,’ said a voice.

It was Chloe, avid with excitement, eyes swivelling, reeking of the same beautiful scent.

‘I hope you’re not bullying darling Lucy, Tim. She’s got a long night ahead, and I don’t want my lip-liner looking like an is-he-alive, is-he-dead heartrate in Intensive Care.’

Leaving Lucy’s caravan on the way back to the car park, both feeling sick, Gablecross and Karen saw a lone figure slumped at a table outside the canteen, and realized it was Wolfie.

‘Can we join you?’ asked Karen, slipping into the chair beside him.

‘You can arrest me if you like,’ mumbled Wolfie. ‘Why shouldn’t I have killed my father? He left me nothing and stole the only two girls I’ve ever loved.’ His teeth were chattering frantically.

‘It’s all right, lad.’ Gablecross patted the boy’s shoulder. ‘Your dad had cameras and bugs installed in every room, even at Magpie Cottage. Tabitha never posed for him, I could swear it.’

‘And’, went on Karen, taking Wolfie’s hand, ‘I’m sure he left you nothing because he was jealous of you.’

Wolfie raised incredulous, swollen, bloodshot eyes.

‘Because Tab liked you so much,’ added Gablecross. ‘I read it in the memoirs.’

‘Papa was jealous of me?’ Suddenly Wolfie was grinning from pink ear to pink ear. ‘Because of Tab?’

‘Certainly was,’ said Karen. ‘It was you she turned to after he raped her.’

But Wolfie wasn’t listening. ‘I don’t give a stuff about the money, I can earn my own. Tab’s the only thing I care about.’ Then, getting to his feet and going, somewhat unsteadily, towards the bar, ‘Let’s have a drink. The only problem’, he added wryly, ‘is that she’s madly in love with Tristan. Still, it’s a start.’

Over in his caravan, Tristan had neither been to bed nor had a moment to rejoice over the ecstatic reviews flooding in for The Lily in the Valley.

There had been so much to do. Someone had nicked Alpheus’s white suit from Wardrobe. The.22 stolen to kill Beattie had had to be replaced. Helen had gone ballistic about the electricity bill and been ringing all day from Penscombe. Mr Brimscombe had gone equally ballistic because the police had trampled over all his flowers. Rupert and George, who were all buddy-buddy now, kept wanting to have meetings about polo shoots.

He tried to work out tonight’s reshoot of the attempted murder of Eboli, an action sequence that required multiple angles and shots so it could be edited to look fast. It would have been complicated even in the Unicorn Glade. This, however, was now gift-wrapped in red and white ribbon and crawling with scenes-of-crime officers, so they’d have to go back to filming in the centre of the maze.

Then there would be several hours spent lighting Alpheus’s nose before he prayed in the chapel, but at least that was an interior, which wouldn’t be sabotaged by any sunrise.

Tristan was reeling from tiredness. Then another hammer-blow struck: Dupont had rung to say that Aunt Hortense had been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas, which could finish her off at any moment. She was heavily drugged and hardly conscious, down at the château in the Tarn.

Tristan was devastated. Hortense might not be his real aunt any more, but she was all he had. He had been saddened and amazed to hear how upset she’d been that he’d cut her party. Perhaps she was a little fond of him, but he had been too traumatized by events to call her to apologize. The moment they finished shooting tomorrow he’d fly out to Toulouse. He felt his world crumbling. If she died before he got there, he’d never discover if Rannaldini had been telling the truth.

‘She keeps asking for you,’ chided Dupont.

Tristan also felt bitterly ashamed that he wished Hortense had waited until he’d finished shooting to decide to die. Visions of Beattie’s stinking, impaled body swam before his eyes. He felt himself retching.


66


‘Just like rush-hour on the Piccadilly line,’ grumbled Chloe, as most of the unit, including several plain-clothes policemen, squeezed into the centre of the maze. ‘Ouch, someone goosed me.’

‘Only my brolly, bad luck,’ boomed Griselda.

Everyone giggled nervously.

‘Quiet, please,’ roared Bernard.

Who knew if they were standing next to the murderer? Shirts already soaked in sweat were additionally drenched by the towering rain-soaked yew walls. Even Tristan was wearing his director’s cap back to front to stop the drips running down his neck.

‘Now I know how labs feel when they’re rammed into their kennel after a wet day’s shooting,’ grumbled Griselda.

‘The shooting ees to come,’ said Mikhail, admiring his.22.

Everyone else shivered and tried to read Rozzy’s copy of the Evening Scorpion.

‘Killed in Action,’ said a huge headline, above an incredibly glamorous photograph of Beattie.

There were endless delays. The moon sailing through an archipelago of angry indigo clouds was making lighting a nightmare.

‘Are we going to have problems with those police helicopters?’ Tristan asked Sylvestre.

‘Music should blot them out but we’ll have to watch the long pauses.’

They’d just finished rehearsing when the crush was intensified by Rupert’s arrival. As one who believed one should get back on to a horse immediately after a fall, he had dragged along a reluctant, scowling Tab. Wolfie promptly dropped Tristan’s shooting script in the mud, which went unnoticed by Tristan, who also felt his heart fail. Tab looked so thin, so pale, so impossibly, ferociously adorable. Griselda hugged her, which made Tab scowl more than ever.

‘How ridiculous! We’re overcrowded enough as it is,’ hissed Rozzy, as she turned over a page of the Scorpion to find a large picture, taken years ago, of Rupert arm in arm with Beattie.

‘Friend of the Famous,’ said the caption.

Having left Tab in the care of an utterly tongue-tied Wolfie, Rupert pushed off to talk to Sexton. The only thing that had driven her out of the house, Tab hissed to Lucy, was the arrival of Helen.

‘She insisted Mrs Bodkin unpack for her, then grumbled she couldn’t find anything, then pushed Taggie’s divine food round her plate all lunch going on and on about Beattie and nurturing a viper in her bosom. Daddy said, “Any self-respecting viper would die of malnutrition trying to survive on all that silicone.” He’s such a bitch but he does make me laugh. Oh, God, Luce, isn’t Tristan divine? I’m not cured at all.’

Glancing surreptitiously across at Tab, Tristan found her gazing at him with such longing it burnt him. He mustn’t weaken. If only he could bring himself to explain about Maxim.

‘Stand by to shoot,’ shouted Bernard.

‘We’ll have to wait thirty seconds for this cloud, Tristan,’ called Oscar, lowering his view-finder from his eye.

‘Oh, here’s Timothy. I wonder if his wife liked her present,’ said Rozzy, as Gablecross, Karen and two uniformed men with their hats on forced their way in.

‘The Grand Inquisitor,’ sang Baby. Then, as the music died in the speakers, he launched into ‘“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, happy one”.’

‘Hello, Tim,’ cooed Chloe, kissing him on both cheeks.

‘Tristan de Montigny…’ began Gablecross, furiously wiping off lipstick.

‘Oh, go away,’ said Tristan irritably, ‘we’re about to shoot.’

‘Tristan de Montigny,’ repeated Gablecross sternly, ‘you are being arrested on suspicion of the murders of Roberto Rannaldini and Beatrice Johnson. You don’t have to say anything but you may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something you rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence.’

There was a scream from Rozzy, and a rumble of horror that rose to a roar. No, thought Lucy, in dread, I shopped him. Only the people hemming her in kept her from fainting. As chests were thrust out in outrage and the moon went in again, the maze seemed even more terrifyingly claustrophobic.

‘You cannot arrest me,’ said Tristan haughtily, ‘I am making a film, and I have to fly out first thing tomorrow to Toulouse where my aunt is seriously ill.’

And that’s the last we’d see of you, matey, thought Gablecross.

‘Unfortunately that’s irrelevant,’ he said. ‘You’ve been arrested on suspicion of murder.’

‘At least we finish the scene’ said Bernard firmly.

There was a murmur of assent. Gablecross looked round at the solid phalanx of crew, muscular arms folded like a rugger team, blocking any escape, and felt there was no way an English lorry could get through a French blockade.

‘Stand by to shoot. Nice and quiet behind the camera,’ called Bernard.

Up started the strings, out sailed the moon. Gablecross had to admire the professionalism, particularly Tristan’s.

‘Roll sound, turn camera,’ he said quietly, standing there, as if without a care in the world, never taking his eyes off his singers.

Eboli, with heavy sarcasm, was now attacking Elisabetta’s hypocrisy for posing as a virtuous wife when she was all the time having an affaire with Carlos, until Mikhail whipped out his.22, spinning it over and over like a hired killer.