by Jilly Cooper
But Tristan found his eyes drawn to the ponies, glossy black, dark brown, silver-grey, gleaming bay and chestnut, so polished and rippling with fitness. They were so helpful, so responsive, so neat and athletic, so gallant and outwardly unfazed, despite being sworn at and clouted round their delicate heads and legs by sticks and balls. They reminded him of Lucy.
When rain stopped play again, he locked himself in Bernard’s caravan and watched a rough cut. Gradually his confidence came back. Tomorrow they had only to film Baby careering down the field, shoving his pony against Tab’s, pushing her off the line of the ball to score the winning goal. This would be followed by Alpheus in his splendid white suit summoning Carlos inside for an already-filmed pep talk: a light day’s shooting, which should be over by two, giving them time to tie up any loose ends before the wrap party in the evening.
Tristan felt an almost Christ-like elation that here were the makings of a great film, which even Rannaldini would have been proud of. The old monster looked divine on the rostrum, thanks to Lucy’s make-up. She really did deserve an Oscar. And darling Rozzy had been wonderful in her crying scene with Hermione. Christ, he’d been a shit to her after all she’d been through. He’d better go and apologize.
The film had been so dark, particularly in the last terrible scene, that he was amazed to come out to a watery orange sunset, dancing midges and house-martins swooping on insects. People were gossiping outside their tents and caravans. But as he paddled across the drenched field towards Wardrobe, he heard a bloodcurdling scream, followed by a dreadful howling.
Racing through the puddles, his heart thumping, he leapt the four steps up to the Wardrobe caravan. Steeling himself for more unimaginable horrors, he found James shuddering in the far corner, and Rozzy crouched on the floor keening. In the first crazed second, he thought that she had knocked over Lucy’s blue bowl of pot-pourri. Then, drawing nearer, he saw the petals were tiny pieces of silk, as though someone had shredded the rainbow.
‘Oh, my God,’ groaned Griselda, behind him. ‘It’s her wrap-party dress. She’s spent months making it from fragments of silk.’
It had literally been cut to ribbons.
‘Why should anyone hate me so much?’ wept Rozzy.
‘They don’t. They love you.’ Pulling her to her feet Tristan took her in his arms, stroking her hair, feeling her tears drenching the jersey she had given him.
A hovering, desperately concerned Bernard produced a brandy, which triggered off a terrible fit of coughing, reminding Tristan once again how ill she was.
‘Don’t cry, chérie, I’ll buy you another dress.’
Within seconds, relieved that something at last had happened, twenty police, led by Fanshawe and Debbie, had surrounded the caravan. They were disappointed the crime was going to be hard to date.
‘I hung the dress in the back of the cupboard, when I came back after Glyn’s birthday party exactly a week ago,’ gasped Rozzy, between sobs.
Debbie took her hand. ‘Who knew it was there?’
‘Lucy, Grisel, Simone, I don’t know.’
As the shredded fragments were shoved into a plastic bag for Forensic, Debbie gathered up a handful. ‘Silk isn’t torn or severed, looks as if it’s been chopped up by big pinking shears.’
And Tristan shivered, as he remembered the speed with which Lucy often cut up James’s liver with a big pair of scissors, claiming he hated it in lumps. Oh, God, it couldn’t have been Lucy.
Two policemen were left to guard Wardrobe. Everyone else drifted away, leaving Rozzy with Tristan whose hand she still clutched. To make a break, he crossed the caravan to comfort James, who only betrayed his upset by a frantically shuddering body.
‘You still haven’t eaten,’ gulped Rozzy. ‘Let me make you supper.’
Feeling an absolute rat, but unable to cope with her dark anguish, Tristan pleaded exhaustion.
‘I’ll collapse if I don’t crash out. I’ve got to hold the centre tomorrow. Your dress being cut to bits is bound to freak everyone out, then there’s the wrap party. Forgive me,’ he said, as her tears started to flow again. ‘I’ll buy you dinner next week, and please go and get yourself a new dress tomorrow.’
Reaching in his back pocket, he gave her three hundred pounds, then a hug. Outside he found his hovering, desperately worried first assistant director.
‘Try and comfort her,’ he begged, then his mind careered off. ‘In case Lucy doesn’t get back in time to make up Granny, can you ask Berman’s to put a monk’s black robes with a pointed hood in a taxi first thing?’
‘What d’you think to that?’ asked Fanshawe.
‘Ugly,’ said Debbie. ‘Such a nice lady. Who’d deprive her of a lovely dress when she’s got so little?’
‘Might be someone with an ancient grievance because she had such a beautiful voice. We should recheck those ladies who might have been singing in the wood. Chloe, Gloria, Hermione, even Flora, and all the soprano extras.’
Debbie sighed, then said, ‘She was evidently in Tristan’s caravan for twenty minutes this morning. He was so sweet to her tonight. Could it be the murderer not being able to bear him being nice to anyone?’
Back in his caravan, soaked to the skin, Tristan realized he was out of whisky, which would not have happened if that little traitor Wolfie had been here. Nor would a pile of post, rising almost to the ceiling, have been left unopened. Without Wolfie and Lucy, he felt totally defenceless, particularly when there was a knock on the door, and a reporter from the Scorpion barged in, brandishing a bottle of champagne to celebrate his release. Having seen the first edition of the Mail, she wondered if they could have a word about Claudine Lauzerte.
‘Madame Lauzerte’s been having her gâteau and eating it, according to her maid, who’s dumped in the Express, and who is very much on your side, Tristan.’
‘Fuck off,’ howled Tristan, as she held out her tape-recorder.
After that the reporters descended like a pack of wolves. Tristan thought they would rip him to pieces. Fortunately George’s heavies were even better at manhandling the press than bribing planning officers or kneecapping little old sitting tenants, and had soon escorted Tristan to the safety of George’s drawing room.
‘Stay the night,’ said Flora, handing him a quadruple Bell’s. ‘Most of the unit seem to be. They’re too scared to go back to Valhalla.’
Tristan didn’t need any persuading. He went straight to bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.
Alpheus was sweating. His American agent had been unable to produce any record of calling him on the night of Rannaldini’s murder, and both Chloe and Isa had seen and heard him singing outside Magpie Cottage. On Monday morning, therefore, he had had the humiliation of giving a disapproving DC Smithson and a smirking DC Lightfoot a revised version of his movements on the night of Sunday the eighth. He had indeed jogged home from the tennis but, on seeing a light in Magpie Cottage, had decided to call on Tabitha.
Having showered and changed into the first white suit, he had nipped into River House to pick Tab a posy from Hermione’s ‘well-stocked garden’.
What he did not reveal was that as he was breaking off Hermione’s lilies, he had been transfixed by the sight of his co-star, re-enacting their great shove-and-grunt scene in the summerhouse with another, and stayed and watched them for a minute or two. Burning with lust, he had set out for Magpie Cottage, and told Smithson and Lightfoot, who should have stopped grinning like a jackass, that he had indeed sung a favourite aria under Tab’s window, and received a bottle of red wine over his white suit. ‘I couldn’t see who had thrown it.’ Alpheus was damned if he was going to give Isa and Chloe an alibi.
He also admitted that next morning he had bagged up the wine-soaked suit and given it to the dustmen. Unfortunately, charred fragments of the second, gulls’ egg and grass stained, white suit, together with white rock rose and chimpanzee orchids, identical to the ones used by Beattie to plug herself, were found in the garden at Jasmine Cottage. Suspicion was therefore
heavily on Alpheus.
Alpheus’s day had not improved. He was furious about his Shirley Temple curls and Rupert not allowing him to play polo.
If the third white suit didn’t arrive in time, he would be forced to wear some tacky blazer, and Tab had been so rude. He was furious with himself for still fancying the brat rotten. Even worse, the DNA tests were due back tomorrow, which would certainly identify his semen, and Lord knows what else, inside Beattie.
Returning to Jasmine Cottage after filming, he poured himself a rare whisky, and jumped nervously as the doorbell rang. He hoped to God it wasn’t any more grizzled lady botanists rolling up to revere the chimpanzee orchid. It was very dark outside and at first he thought no-one was there. Then, looking down, he saw Little Cosmo.
One of Cosmo’s best buys, acquired for 20p at the Paradise Conservative fête, had been a second-hand Scout uniform, in which he always dressed when he was collecting house to house for himself.
For 50p, Alpheus allowed Cosmo into Jasmine Cottage to clean his shoes. Once inside Little Cosmo produced his favourite photographs of Alpheus outside the summerhouse watching Hermione and Sexton, with twelve lilies in one hand and an enormous hard-on in the other.
When Alpheus tore up the photograph, Cosmo, echoing his late father, replied that he had the negs.
‘Let us do a deal,’ suggested Cosmo. ‘I’d like cash before I hand over the negs. Otherwise I thought I’d offer copies as going-away presents at the wrap party tomorrow night.’
Considerably richer, Little Cosmo left Jasmine Cottage. Closing the gate behind him, he broke into Elisabetta’s last aria in a flawless treble, then pedalled off on his bike into the gloom with a maniacal cackle. Alpheus gave a shiver. Could Little Cosmo have murdered his father and Beattie to gain control of the memoirs?
Having been too tired to draw the curtains, Tristan was woken at four by Pegasus, Aries and Taurus, a veritable zoo of brilliant stars, blazing in through the big square window, and a silver glow in the east. Switching on the wireless he learnt of storms causing havoc to flights and cross-Channel ferries. He hoped a returning Wolfie and Lucy would be struck by lightning or horrendously seasick. Then he remembered despairingly that he was still Maxim’s bastard son without any money, and that in a few hours the world would be picking over his affaire with Claudine. Perhaps her husband would call him out and he would die impaled on a sword, like Beattie on Rannaldini’s unicorn.
His musings on the ruins of his life were interrupted by a forecast of a beautiful day with temperatures in the nineties. Opening the window, he breathed in the smell of meadowsweet and wet earth, and felt a warm breeze caressing his skin. Then he noticed the cathedral spire, black on the horizon as the Grand Inquisitor’s pointed hood, and remembered he had only one day left to make a great film.
Oscar was aghast to be woken so early. Anticipating a light half-day’s shooting, he and Valentin had been out on the toot. On the bedside table was a half-eaten Parma ham and artichoke baguette, an empty Moët bottle and a glass of red wine in which several moths had drowned. By hastily pulling up the duvet over Jessica’s russet curls, Oscar revealed her bright mauve toenails.
‘It’s going to be a scorcher,’ announced Tristan. ‘And we are going to reshoot all yesterday’s scenes.’ Then, cutting short Oscar’s stream of expletives, ‘We can do it if we really motor. I want polo under a burning sun as a contrast to the hunt in winter. Jessica has booked everyone’s plane tickets and tomorrow they will disperse, not necessarily to the right place,’ Tristan waggled Jessica’s left foot, ‘but to different parts of the world. This is our last chance. Tell Bernard to round everyone up, I want to start shooting by nine.’
‘This is the last time I work for you,’ said Oscar, draining the glass of red, moths and all.
By a miracle, René, the finest make-up artist in France, who had made Claudine look so delectable in The Lily in the Valley, had yesterday been discovered to be available. For a fat fee and a favour to Tristan, and an even fatter fee from Paris-Match for an interview on his day’s work, by eight o’clock he was busy transforming hung-over geese into swans.
By nine o’clock, by even more of a miracle, all Tristan’s troops – in various states of disarray – including Rupert’s polo friends, had assembled on George’s field for a pep talk. Giving them no time to gossip over the Daily Mail or let the Alka-Seltzers melt in their glasses, Tristan quietly told them exactly how much they had to get through, and how long they could allow for each set-up.
‘This is the clock,’ he pointed to the big, tickless clock that timed the polo chukkas at the end of the field, ‘this is the schedule. There will be no tantrums. We are going to concentrate and get it right on the first take.’
Surreptitiously reading the Mail, folded to the size of a CD case, Oscar’s eyebrows were getting nearer and nearer to his widow’s peak.
‘No wonder Tristan was uptight yesterday,’ he murmured to Valentin. ‘And where does this put Tabitha?’
‘Oooh!’ squawked Jessica, looking over Oscar’s shoulder. ‘You’re in the paper, Tristan, “Froggy would a-wooing go”. What a gorgeous picture of you, and oh, my goodness—’
‘Put that away and just shut up.’ Tristan’s voice wiped any incipient grins off people’s faces.
‘I would, dearie,’ whispered Meredith, stemming Jessica’s protest with half a buttered croissant. ‘He’s not as sunny as usual. Have a read in the break.’
‘There will be no breaks,’ said Tristan icily.
‘We’ve got our director back,’ muttered Ogborne to Bernard. ‘At least on a polo field there won’t be any pretty ornaments for Meredith and Simone to fight over.’
‘Except the players,’ giggled Meredith, gazing in wonder at Rupert’s friends, Ricky France-Lynch and the Carlisle twins.
Oscar glanced round at rain-fluffed, already turning trees, at the emerald-green pitch, the wonderful view, dotted with russet villages, fields striped where the hay had been cut, and pale gold where the wheat ripened, the blue curve of the river Fleet emerging from the mist, and sighed with pleasure.
‘Tristan was right to reshoot. But what the hell is Rupert going to say?’
‘Of all the fucking two-timing shits,’ roared Rupert, brandishing the Mail.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ said Taggie, aghast.
‘Montigny’s been screwing Madame Lauzerte for the past three years. They only released him from gaol because he was caught bonking her in Wales the night Rannaldini was murdered.’
‘Oh, the beast,’ wailed Taggie.
‘And all the time he’s been two-timing darling little Tab. I never liked him, poncy intellectual, you can’t trust the Frogs. And he had the gall to summon her onto the set by nine o’clock. She mustn’t see the Mail, it’ll break her heart.’
Tristan was very white when he came off the telephone to Rupert.
‘He’s one to talk,’ said Meredith indignantly. ‘There was a frightful scandal some years ago when it came out that he’d been rogering Amanda Hamilton, who was not only aeons older than him and the wife of the finance minister but also liked being spanked. Rupert’s conveniently forgotten all that. Don’t let it faze you.’
‘I won’t,’ said Tristan.
He knew exactly what he wanted, rattling out orders like a Kalashnikov, driving everyone. Seldom had there been such tension on a film. But despite police everywhere and a murderer in their midst, by one thirty they had beaten the clock by one minute twenty seconds. They had shot mêlées, cavalry charges, throw-ins, and polo groupies slavering over Baby chucking down his stick. The temperature was rising steadily, the grass drying off fast. Mist swirled upwards all over the park. At any moment the puddles would boil over. The extras, even if they did all look like Claudine Lauzerte, had cooperated all the way; the discipline of the crew, despite thumping headaches, had been superb. There was just Alpheus’s little scene and Tab’s big one when she rode Baby off, and they could wrap.
‘Claudine’s pompous
husband is close friend of Papa,’ Simone whispered to Griselda. ‘Should I accept huge sum for interview with the Daily Express?’
‘Of course, sweetie. Imagine Tristan and Claudine being an item. Jolly humiliating for little Tab to lose out to a woman nearly three times her age.’
Tab, the only person not co-operating, was in a worse mood than yesterday: sending Alpheus and Bernard flying with her pony, and yelling at Wardrobe because her polo shirt had suddenly become too loose, her toggle too shiny, her hat too big and her boots too revoltingly new.
She had also refused to let René make her up – ‘I don’t want to look like bloody Claudine Lauzerte’ – even though René was raving over her beauty.
‘Look at the length of her nose and the eyes, and the moulding of her face. She must steal the show.’
‘That’s another reason for wanting to murder her,’ said Chloe sourly. ‘I think we can take it she’s read the Mail.’
Now Tab was bawling out the props department.
‘You’ve put out the wrong fucking saddle for my pony. Mine’s got a blue and black check saddlecloth. None of this would have happened if flaming Wolfie had been here.’
Wolfie and Lucy learnt in St Malo that Tristan had been released, and duly celebrated. The following morning, they caught the early boat. While Lucy was buying a large bottle of Femme for Rozzy for looking after James, Wolfie picked up the Mail, turned green and hastily hid it. The bastard, he thought furiously. How could Tristan have done that to poor, darling Tab? He must get home and comfort her.
Having dumped the hired car at St Malo, they took a taxi back to Valhalla. To steady her nerves, Lucy took increasing nips from a bottle of brandy she’d bought for Tristan. Last night she had written him a long letter, explaining everything she had learnt at Montvert and then sealed it into a huge brown envelope, which contained all the other relevant material. Then she wrote ‘Tristan de Montigny, Private and Confidential’ on the outside. She had also washed her hair, shaved her legs, bronzed them with Piz Buin. Then, in a St Malo boutique, she had spent too much money on a lovely short-skirted sleeveless dress in wild rose pink and on a sexy sophisticated scent called Fracas to wear at the wrap party.
