‘Chloe Catford claims Wolfie swore he was going to kill his dad after hearing that tape,’ said Gablecross. ‘Unfortunately it’s gone missing. Wolfie probably whipped it.’
The memoirs and Rannaldini’s safe had also gone walkabout. Miss Bussage was the chief suspect in the case of the former, but she certainly hadn’t smuggled the safe into the limo when she left.
‘Go and see her, Tim,’ grinned Gerald Portland. ‘You’re good with maiden ladies. Ask her if she knows why Rannaldini went to the doctor on Friday, and if sheknows the whereabouts of a Picasso and the Étienne de Montigny hanging in Rannaldini’s watch-tower. Both may have been torched in the fire, but if stolen, could be a motive for murder.’
Other tasks included checking who had helicopters in the area, other than Rupert Campbell-Black and George Hungerford, and which one had landed beside Hangman’s Wood on Sunday night.
Out of the window, through the trees, Gablecross could see the Herbert Parker Hall, home of the Rutshire Symphony Orchestra. He wondered what their boss, George Hungerford, had thought of Flora’s and Baby’s photographs.
‘Hungerford was seen driving towards Valhalla like a bat out of hell around ten twenty-five on Sunday night,’ said one of the house-to-house team. ‘And Montigny went the other way, only earlier.’
‘Tristan was seen at Valhalla by Jessica. God, she’s gorgeous,’ sighed DC Lightfoot, ‘and by that Russian, Mikhail Pezcherov, but he was too smashed to be trusted.’
‘Pezcherov claims he spent five minutes on Sunday night in the maze with Chloe Catford. She says it was three hours,’ volunteered Gablecross.
‘Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself,’ giggled Debbie Miller.
Checks would have to be carried out on whether Chloe’s mother, Alpheus’s agent and Rozzy Pringle had made phone calls when they were said to have done. Lady Griselda, Bernard Guérin, Granville Hastings, none of them fans of Rannaldini, had all been crashing around looking for balls near the watch-tower at the time of the murder.
‘Flora Seymour and Meredith Whalen have very thin alibis, but Sexton Kemp looks in the clear,’ said Gablecross.
‘I spent most of last night trying to pin down Baby Spinosissy-something,’ said Fanshawe crossly. ‘Dame Hermione was also too upset to speak to anyone, but I’m certain they’re talking to the press if not to us.’
‘Hermione was heard singing in the wood around ten thirty,’ said Gablecross.
‘Could have been another singer,’ piped up Karen Needham. ‘Flora Seymour or Chloe Catford.’
‘She’s a cracker.’ Fanshawe raised his eyes to heaven.
‘Or Gloria Prescott,’ said DC Lightfoot, ‘another cracker.’
‘Which one’s she?’ Portland peered at the blow-up.
‘That one. She’s blinking but her boobs aren’t,’ said DC Lightfoot excitedly, and got punched in the ribs by DC Smithson.
‘Go and see Dame Hermione, Tim,’ said Portland. ‘You’re good with middle-aged nymphos too, but remember, her alarm’s wired by umbilical cord to the Chief Constable’s navel, so watch it.’
Gablecross ground his teeth. The rest of the team laughed.
The French crew had evidently been hopeless to interview. Their English, which had improved so dramatically during filming, had deteriorated equally dramatically when confronted by DC Smithson’s truculence.
‘“I was weeth heem, and he was weeth me and other heems, and heem was with heem,”’ snapped DC Smithson. ‘They’re more obstructive than that appalling Campbell-Black.’
‘But not quite as gorgeous,’ sighed Debbie.
‘We have a host of suspects.’ Portland rubbed his hands together. ‘Priority is to find the memoirs and Rannaldini’s safe.’
‘Clive may have got them,’ said Gablecross. ‘He was whispering to that ugly cow from the
Sentinel
yesterday.’
‘Well, nobble him today.’
While Portland gave the others lines to follow, Gablecross’s mind drifted back to something old Miss Cricklade, who took in washing, had told him when he’d given her a lift into Rutminster that morning. What with Dame Hermione, Miss Bussage in Abingdon, Clive, if he could catch him, Rupert Campbell-Black on the set this evening, it was going to be a long day.
He was brought back to earth by DC Smithson whining that everyone at Valhalla was a publicity-obsessed nutter.
‘Well, as one not unacquainted with the media,’ Portland examined his fingernails, ‘you have to know how to use them. I suggest we ask the help of Lady Rannaldini to appeal to the nation for info.’
‘She was in bad shape yesterday,’ said Gablecross quickly.
But Portland wasn’t listening. He loved press conferences and publicity. He couldn’t wait to wrap up the meeting so he could gloat over the smashing photographs of himself in the morning’s papers.
‘Doubt if you’d learn much,’ Gablecross was saying. ‘Certain it’s an inside job.’
‘I’m the best judge of that,’ said Portland coolly. ‘Lady R’s a lovely lady, she’s chairman of Enid’s NSPCC committee.’
‘She could start by paying more attention to her own child,’ snapped Gablecross.
49
Few people had seen inside Hermione’s pretty Georgian Mill — which stood, hidden by trees, two hundred yards from the river Fleet — because she was far too lazy and tight with money to entertain.
Gablecross was surprised therefore to find the dark green front door open and his wife’s favourite singer standing radiant and smiling in the hall. Only when he’d waved his ID card at her did he realize that he was about to shake the outstretched hand of a replica of Hermione’s waxwork in Madame Tussaud’s.
‘Pack it in,’ he hissed, as Karen burst out laughing. ‘Show some fucking respect.’
Dame Hermione, veiled and clad entirely in black, lay on a dark red
chaise-longue
, with Sexton and Howie dancing attendance. Hermione had not forgiven Howie for being in the know about Pushy’s top notes and espousing her cause as Delilah, and was determined he shouldn’t get any cut out of her newspaper deals, offers of which were pouring in from all over the world and being handled by Sexton. Howie, who loathed the country, was equally determined to hang in.
Spurred on by Gerry Portland’s mockery and having often been impeded in car chases by Dame Hermione’s limo, parked slap across Paradise High Street, Gablecross was determined to stand no nonsense. This excited the hell out of Hermione, who loved her men masterful. Whipping back her veil, she patted the sofa beside her. ‘I know we’re going to be friends, let’s call each other by our given names. Mine’s Hermione, and yours is…?’
‘Officer,’ said Karen tartly.
‘Shut up,’ snarled Gablecross. ‘It’s Timothy.’
‘Does she have to be in here?’ Hermione glared at Karen.
‘Yes,’ said Gablecross regretfully.
‘I’ve just been talking to my very good friend Chief Constable Swallow,’ announced Hermione.
Which, translated, thought Karen, means, ‘Mess with me and you’re a dead duck.’ Looking round the room, she decided, you could fall asleep counting the photographs, paintings and sculptures of Hermione. Magazines with her face on the cover lay on a nearby table. Among the trophies on the shelf was the Artist of the Year award she’d won in October.
‘I urged the Chief Constable to call a press conference,’ Hermione was now telling Gablecross, ‘so I can beseech people to come forward and shed light on this dreadful crime. My son, Little Cosmo, has lost a father, I a cherished friend.’
‘Lady Rannaldini might want to do it,’ said Sexton, as he whisked out of the room to get to the telephone before Howie.
‘Lady Rannaldini has no experience of the media,’ said Hermione dismissively.
‘Nor is she as universally beloved as you, Dame Hermione,’ lied Howie.
‘Indeed.’ Hermione bowed, then turned to Gablecross. ‘I have had a thousand and twenty-three letters already, Timothy, and lost ten pounds in weight.’
Sexton, thank goodness, was as adept at twiddling the knobs on her weighing scales as Rannaldini had been on her recordings.
‘I feel I owe it to my public, and to Rannaldini, to appeal to the nation on television,’ went on Hermione.
‘I wouldn’t, Hermsie.’ Sexton trotted back into the room and squeezed her hand. ‘They always turn out to be the one wot’s done it.’
‘Sexton, Sexton.’ Hermione gave a low laugh. ‘How wise you are.’
‘It’s the
Guardian
on the phone,’ whispered Sexton.
‘I’ll tell them you’re out.’ Howie leapt to his little feet.
‘Out?’ thundered Hermione, as if she’d sallied forth on some junket. ‘I shall never go out again. I must speak with them, for Rannaldini’s sake.’ She seized the telephone. ‘Mr Rusbridger? Alan?… No, my producer has brought me fresh fruit and Belgian chocolates to keep up my strength for the sake of my public.’
‘Do you know what Helen is wearing for the funeral?’ she asked Sexton, as she came off the telephone five minutes later. ‘Could you ask Lady Griselda to pop in this afternoon? I shall wear black, of course, and a veil.’
‘Thin enough to show the tragedy etched on your lovely features.’ Howie was laying it on with a JCB.
Karen got the giggles again, and had to take her notebook over to the window and gaze at the dried-up river as Gablecross tried to pin down Hermione on her movements on Sunday night. People had seen her returning around eight in Rannaldini’s helicopter.
‘I had been concertizing at an open-air gala in Milan. Because the proceeds were going towards a new hospital,’ added Hermione virtuously, ‘I only charged my charity fee of sixty thousand pounds.’
That’s more than I earn in four years, thought Karen in disgust.
‘Around the time Rannaldini died,’ Gablecross pressed on, ‘at about ten thirty, several witnesses heard you singing a number from
Don Carlos
in the wood. They said a voice had never sounded more exquisite.’
‘Then it must have been mine,’ twinkled Hermione.
‘Did you walk through the wood on Sunday night?’
‘Timothy, Timothy, if I sang
pianissimo
from the garden at River House, my voice would float across to Valhalla, but I didn’t go out. It must have been a tape or a CD. Rannaldini had plenty. He was clearly comparing them with the rushes.’
‘People have said your voice was unaccompanied.’
‘I often sang for him alone.’
‘So you didn’t leave home at all?’
‘Certainly not. I rushed back from Milan to spend quality time with my son Cosmo. I spent the rest of the evening recharging my spiritual batteries. I needed to be fresh for Monday, in case Rannaldini wanted to reshoot Act Five. Or, if he’d carried on with the schedule, I had an important ballroom scene in Act Two, Scene Two. I won’t pass for nineteen if I don’t get my eight hours,’ she added skittishly.
‘What else did you do?’
‘I was tucked up in bed with camomile tea, like the Flopsy Bunnies,’ Hermione put on a soppy face, ‘by nine o’clock, to watch
Pride and Prejudice
. It’s my favourite novel.’
‘Who’s your favourite character in it?’ asked Karen innocently.
‘Emma Woodhouse,’ replied Hermione, without missing a beat. ‘She’s beautiful and headstrong. Fans have often compared us.’
For a second, Karen’s eyes met Sexton’s. She wondered if she recognized pleading.
‘And my husband Bobby rang me from Australia for a chat around ten forty-five,’ said Hermione airily.
‘Does your husband mind Little Cosmo being Rannaldini’s son?’ asked Gablecross.
‘Not in the least. We have a very close and open marriage, Timothy. Bobby is devoted to Little Cosmo.’
Gablecross couldn’t dent her. Rannaldini’s playing the evil tape on Friday night, his flirtations with Pushy, Serena, Cheryl, Lara, even Tabitha, his threats to replace her with a younger singer had been all part of a game to goad her into singing more beautifully.
‘What he loved about me, Timothy, was my ability to rise to the challenge. Ours was a special relationship. Are you married?’
‘My wife’s your greatest fan,’ blushed Gablecross.
Surreptitiously scraping a sticker saying ‘American Bravo Library Copy, Do Not Remove’ from its case, Hermione brandished a CD called
Only for Lovers
.
‘What’s your wife’s given name? I’ve had two thousand five hundred and twenty-two letters and lost over a stone, you know. I simply can’t eat.’
‘I’ve roasted a little chicken for lunch,’ said Sexton, bustling in in a striped apron.
‘Well, perhaps I could manage a slice,’ admitted Hermione, as she wrote her name on the CD sleeve.
Shoulders shaking frantically, Karen was gazing intently at the river again.
‘We’re off, Karen,’ said Gablecross icily.
‘Leave the poor child,’ cried Hermione. ‘She is only weeping, like the whole world, for Maestro’s death.’ Then, catching sight of Rannaldini’s photograph on the CD case, handsome and smiling with his hands on her bare shoulders, Hermione broke into genuine tears of despair. ‘You will bring his killer to justice, won’t you, Timothy?’
On the way out, Sexton made a brief statement.
‘I ought to fill you in on my movements on Sunday night, Tim. Frankly it was Sunday, Bloody Sunday. I ’ad a hellish day trying to drum up money. Rannaldini had fucked us with his delaying tactics, refusing to release any dosh until Tristan gave in to his demands.
‘I left London after midnight, shattered. But I wanted to be there on Monday morning in case fings turned nasty after Rannaldini playing that evil tape on Friday night. Anyway, Wally and I was about to come off the motorway wiv only the hard shoulder to cry on, when Bernard rang and said Rannaldini’d copped it.’
‘What time was that, sir?’
‘One fifteen. I called Rupert Campbell-Black. Luckily he’d just got back, and agreed to come in and save the movie.’
‘Just like that?’ asked Karen.
‘He’s that sort of bloke. Then we belted down to Valhalla, as Bernard and I agreed’, there was pride in Sexton’s voice now, ‘I should be the one to break the sad news to Dame Hermione.’