by Jilly Cooper
‘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 nigh
t. 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.’
‘Look after her,’ Gablecross was amazed to hear himself saying.
‘The fat cow’s lying through her teeth,’ fumed Karen, as they walked back to the car. ‘Imagine thinking Emma Woodhouse was the heroine of Pride and Prejudice. The only thing the silly bitch reads is rave reviews and the directions on the Prozac bottle.’
‘And Sexton had a lot to lose if the film went belly-up,’ mused Gablecross.
‘And Rupert Campbell-Black had only just come in at one fifteen,’ said Karen. ‘What was he doing in the meanwhile?’ She wished Gablecross would loosen up. As a cop you often had to laugh to stop yourself crying. She wasn’t looking forward to him wincing over her driving all the way to Abingdon to see Miss Bussage.
50
Rupert arrived at his first night’s filming in a murderous mood. If he hadn’t spurned Tab and let her fall among thieves, she would never have married so disastrously. And Rannaldini would never have been reduced to kidnapping Gertrude. He felt directly responsible both for the rape and Gertrude’s death, and his brain filled with blood whenever he thought of it.
He had agreed to save Don Carlos because he wanted to make a not-so-quick buck and amends to Tab. But talking to her the following day, he learnt of Tristan’s treachery and only hung in because of her pleading.
‘But the fucker blew you out.’
‘I know,’ sobbed Tab. ‘But I still love him and maybe with Rannaldini out of the way…’
She was so near the edge, raging one moment, sobbing wildly the next, or just gazing into space, he didn’t want to push her into the abyss.
Over at Valhalla, excitement at his impending arrival had reached fever pitch. Chloe, already buoyed up by fifty thousand from the Daily Mail, calls from La Scala and the Opéra Bastille, and the press yelling, ‘Chloe, Chloe, Chloe,’ whenever she passed, was now squirming lasciviously in front of the mirror in Make Up.
‘I want an ace face for Rupert, Lucy Lockett.’
‘That would be an Everest for you,’ said Baby irritably, as he pored over accounts of the murder in all the papers.
‘The prospect of having Tab as a stepdaughter would deter even me,’ sighed Chloe, ‘but one could always dally.’
‘Rupert’s mad about his wife,’ said Lucy crossly, as she clipped Chloe’s fringe to one side.
‘That’s a nice picture of moi.’ Chloe glanced sideways. ‘What paper’s that?’
‘The Scorpion. They list you as a prime suspect, alongside most of the cast, plus Helen, Wolfie and Tristan.’
‘Ouch, careful,’ squeaked Chloe, as Lucy knocked over a bottle of base, narrowly missing three thousand pounds’ worth of crimson taffeta. ‘Don’t mention that name in our make-up artist’s presence.’
One flare-up was averted by Lucy’s mobile ringing, which triggered off another. ‘No, I cannot do your roots, Meredith,’ shouted Lucy. ‘I don’t care if Rupert is due later, the cast has priority.’
From an upstairs window, Helen watched the press go berserk at the bottom of the drive as her ex-husband’s dark blue helicopter landed.
It was absolutely typical. Not only had Rupert won Tab back, he was now swanning in like a prince, stalking towards the maze, with fat Sexton running to keep up, passing Jessica and Simone, who swung round in wonder. When would Rupert bloody well lose his looks?
‘You wouldn’t have a moment to pop in and see Dime Hermione?’ panted Sexton.
‘Not unless you provide guards and a chastity-belt,’ replied Rupert.
‘Here comes Beauty-with-Cruelty,’ sighed Meredith, adjusting the baseball cap now hiding his roots.
The setting sun had lent a warmth to Rupert’s sleek blond hair and added a touch of colour to his unusually pale face, but his mouth was set in an ugly line, and the glare he gave Tristan could have halted global warming for several decades.
‘It’s very good of you to help us out.’ Nervously, Tristan extended a hand, which Rupert ignored. This was the bastard who’d broken Tab’s heart.
Having nodded curtly at Wolfie, and Lucy, who he knew slightly as a friend of Tab’s, and kissed Griselda, who he remembered from deb dances in the early seventies, he said:
‘OK, let’s get on with it.’
Rupert had never taken on anything he couldn’t do. Brilliant at show-jumping, he had been a highly successful, if unorthodox, MP and Minister for Sport, a hot-shot financial director of Venturer Television and now, because he’d learnt patience at last and refused to push horses that needed more time, he was one of the leading owner-trainers in the world. But the snail’s pace of filming defeated him. How could you spend a hundred and fifty thousand a day on something quite so ridiculous? The caterwauling from the speakers gave him a headache. The only time that number of people had stood around at Penscombe in the last twenty years had been at Gertrude’s funeral.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked Tristan.
‘Carlos receive letter summoning him to a rendezvous. He think it is from his stepmother, who he adores. But it is from his father’s mistress, who adores him. So if you imagine your mistress…’
‘I don’t have a mistress,’ said Rupert icily.
‘Dommage,’ chorused Chloe and Simone.
The crew grinned.
‘Well, imagine your son being madly in love with your wife.’
‘Impossible,’ said Rupert, even more icily. ‘Marcus is a homosexual.’
‘Well,’ Tristan struggled on, ‘Carlos is so carried away with excitement, he declares passionate love to wrong woman.’
‘Is he pissed? Then how could he possibly mistake Clare—?’
‘Chloe!’ interrupted Chloe in outrage.
‘Sorry, Chloe for Hermione. Hermione’s three times her size.’
Chloe blew Rupert a kiss.
‘Why didn’t you choose singers the same size?’ persisted Rupert.
‘They were chosen for their voices.’ Tristan was just managing to keep his temper. ‘In the dark it is easy to mistake people.’
‘It isn’t dark.’ Rupert glared round at Oscar’s lights. ‘We could be in Blackpool at the height of the season.’
Later they’d moved on to the trio.
‘“Tomorrow the earth will open up to swallow you,”’ sang Chloe, scowling at Baby.
‘“May the earth open up to swallow you,”’ sang Mikhail, scowling at Chloe.
‘“If only the earth would open up to swallow me,”’ sang Baby.
‘Cut,’ shouted Rupert.
The music ground discordantly to a halt.
‘Tristan is directing this film, Monsieur Campbell-Black,’ bellowed an apoplectic Bernard.
‘Why do these singers keep repeating themselves?’ demanded Rupert sarcastically. ‘I thought we were trying to make this film shorter, this film shorter, this film shorter.’
The crew corpsed again.
‘The Chief Constable of Rutminster’s called Swallow,’ said Meredith chattily.
‘Shut up, Meredith,’ howled Tristan and Bernard.
‘And why isn’t that camera motorized?’ Rupert pointed at a buckling Ogborne, pushing Valentin along the tracks. ‘We gave up ploughing with horses forty years ago at Penscombe.’
‘Why’s that man with a beard sticking a knife into that pretty girl?’ demanded Rupert ten minutes later.
‘He’s a freedom fighter,’ hissed Griselda.
‘Typical leftie behaviour,’ said Rupert scornfully. ‘Why haven’t you g
iven him sandals and an Adam’s apple?’
After Mikhail had offered Rupert a slug of vodka, he decided he was quite nice for a leftie.
There was a sticky moment during the break when a hopelessly goaded Tristan made the mistake of assuming Rupert spoke as little French as his daughter.
‘How can that imbecile Sexton have brought in such an ignorant, pig-headed, obstructionist ape?’ he stormed to Valentin.
‘Because you’d have folded, if he hadn’t,’ said Rupert coldly.
Like children who behave worse when their mother wants them on their best behaviour, Tristan’s cast started acting up.
‘“I have stained the name of my mother,”’ sang Baby piously, in the middle of a perfect take.
‘Vot colour ’ave you stained her?’ sang back Mikhail.
‘I have stained her Prussian blue-hoo-hoo.’
‘Cut!’ howled Tristan. ‘Cut, cut, cut, you fuckers!’ then stopped in mid-blast as a mobile rang.
‘Telephones are not allowed on the set,’ roared Bernard.
‘It’s mine,’ mumbled Tristan, disappearing into the dark labyrinths of the maze.
The trees on the horizon were still black silhouettes, but colour was creeping into the foreground. Pigeons were cooing sleepily, thrushes repeating phrases like singers, when at four thirty Tristan called a wrap. Despite Rupert’s constant interference, a miraculous minute or two was in the can. Mikhail’s flick-knife had gone safely back to the props van. Everyone was glad to gather round Maria’s barbecue on which tandoori chicken, sausages, and tomatoes stuffed with herbs sizzled enticingly. As an extra treat after a long night, Maria had made a huge bread and butter pudding. Bottles of red and white were on the tables.
Rupert was very hungry, and could have done with a drink, but he was loath to fraternize. Back at Penscombe, his stable lads would be out on the gallops in an hour, he hated to miss anything.
Gablecross, who’d been waiting patiently all night, edged towards him. ‘Can I have a word, Mr Campbell-Black?’
‘No, you can’t,’ said Rupert curtly. ‘I’m off.’
