by Jilly Cooper
‘I’m sure Peggy Parker won’t press charges.’ Karen hugged him. ‘She’s such a music lover.’
‘She might ask you to sing at one of her soirées,’ said Gablecross drily.
‘Prison would be the favourable option.’ Granny wafted English Fern, as he mopped his eyes with a pale blue silk handkerchief. ‘You children have been so sweet to me.’
‘Why should anyone want to kill Rannaldini?’ asked Karen.
‘For peace,’ sighed Granny.
‘What a darling old boy,’ said Karen, as they trailed back to the car.
‘I’ll have a word with George Hungerford, when he gets back from Germany.’ Gablecross made a note. ‘He and Peggy Parker are on the board of the Rutshire Symphony Orchestra.’
‘George’ll owe you a few favours if he really was in Paradise at ten twenty on Sunday,’ said Karen.
55
Having conveniently discarded Debbie Miller and arranged to meet Pushy in the Pearly Gates at lunchtime, Fanshawe found her giving her own press conference to a crowd of reporters. Only his knowledge of the back lanes of Rutshire enabled him to shake them off and find privacy in the Green Dragon at Eldercombe.
Pushy looked enticingly pretty. Her simple black dress clung to her tiny figure, her newly washed blonde ringlets were tied back with a velvet ribbon, but she wore too much eye make-up for real mourning.
‘Roberto Rannaldini was the most vital person Ay’ve ever met,’ she confided, as she sipped a Babycham. ‘He begged me to be the next Lady Rannaldini, and although he was much too old, Ay felt Ay could grow to love him. Off the record, Kevin, it made folk very jealous.’
Having slipped the photos of a nude lip-licking Pushy straddling Rannaldini’s sofa into his hip pocket, Fanshawe asked if Lady Rannaldini had known her husband was having an affaire with Pushy.
‘Course not. Ay never slept with him. That’s why he respected as well as loved me.’ Gloria’s eyes filled with just enough tears not to swamp her mascara. ‘Roberto was so caring. When Ay left a party frock at home, he sent the helly to get it, if Ay wanted to go shopping he lent me the limo, but Ay was careful not to upstage Lady Rannaldini.’
Fanshawe got out his notebook. ‘What did you do on the night of the murder?’
‘Ay was so choked not to be in the finals Ay went for a walk — it was such a lovely evening. Then Ay came into the house to phone Mum — as Ay told you Ay always do on a Sunday night — because Roberto had urged me to use the Valhalla phones at all taymes.
‘Anyway, Ay nipped into Lady Rannaldini’s cosy den next to the kitchen to borrow her Harpers. Some play about Puccini was on the radio but she wasn’t there. So Ay borrowed her handset, Ay know it was cheeky, and settled into the big sofa in the hall between the kitchen and Lady Rannaldini’s den.
‘It’s very spooky, that part of the house. When Ay became Lady Rannaldini Ay was going to whaytewash all that dark panelling. Anyway, Ay’d rung Mum and was still reading Harpers, Tabitha’s dad and stepmum were in it. Ay don’t know if Ay’m telling tales.’
‘You mustn’t hold back anything that might help us to find your fiancé’s killer,’ said Fanshawe gravely.
‘Well, Wolfie came past around quarter to eleven, Ay’m so little he didn’t see me, and he switched on the machine in the kitchen. Next moment he came out, whayte as a sheet. “This time I am going to kill my father!” he shouted. There was a crunch on the gravel and he was gone.
‘But even stranger, around eleven fifteen — the clock in the ’all had just struck — Ay nipped back to return Lady Rannaldini’s handset and her Harpers, and it was most embarrassing. Even though I hadn’t heard her come back and I was outside the only door to that room all the time, she was back in there. Perhaps she emerged from some secret passage. Anyway, she reeked of paraffin and had torn that lovely dress, and walked straight past me. Next moment I heard her running up the back stairs.’
‘That is extremely valuable information,’ said a jubilant Fanshawe. ‘Would you like to make a statement?’
‘If it helps Roberto, of course.’
‘I don’t think you’ve met my colleague, DC Miller,’ said Fanshawe, beckoning a hovering Debbie from the public bar.
Pushy looked quite hostile until Debbie told her Alpheus had raved about her beautiful voice.
‘And I gather you knew Elisabetta’s part very well.’
‘Backwards. Maestro used my top notes instead of Hermione’s in the recording. Her intonation was very suspect.’
‘You and Rannaldini had an argument on Saturday morning,’ went on Debbie.
‘Only a lover’s tiff. I was upset his ex-wife got a role I wanted. But Cecilia is a name.’
‘People heard Elisabetta’s last aria in the wood. They said it sounded miraculous.’
‘That must have been my tape.’
‘Did you know Rannaldini was planning to reverse his vasectomy?’ asked Fanshawe.
‘What did I tell you? That was the only condition I’d have made before I gave him my body, I dote on kiddies. Rannaldini and Ay had agreed to be celibate for one another.’
Those were exactly the words she’d told Eulalia Harrison in their in-depth interview yesterday so they must be true.
Having got his statement firmly in the can, Sergeant Fanshawe kept his in-depth question to the end. Was it because Gloria had insisted on celibacy that Rannaldini had been reduced to raping Tabitha Campbell-Black?
In a flash, the innocent virgin became a fishwife.
‘The absolute fucker,’ screamed Pushy, not minding who heard her. ‘We agreed to keep ourselves chaste. I’ll have him for breach of promise.’
‘These photographs that have come into our possession do suggest your relationship was a little closer.’
‘The bastard swore no-one would ever see them. I want my solicitor,’ screeched Pushy.
Helen had been ashamed how relieved she was that Rannaldini was dead. No longer did she tremble to hear the front door creaking, and the cat’s feet padding stealthily along the corridor. She had been comforted by the flood of letters, many written by authors or television producers seeking her opinion, by the telephone calls fielded by the police and the obituary in The Times, which described her as the last and most beautiful of Rannaldini’s wives.
On the other hand, she couldn’t quite believe the lawyers’ assurances that the last will was unsigned and Tab’s naked photos danced slyly before her eyes. Then Gerald Portland had telephoned yesterday, asking her to appeal for information in a press conference. Helen had panicked. Faced with a barrage of questions, she’d break down and the truth would come out.
Yesterday, Tuesday the tenth, had also been a terrible day for Wolfie. The cast and most of the crew had taken refuge in their beds, but he, Bernard and the production office had had to work flat out all day in preparation for Rupert’s first night on the set.
In the middle of the afternoon, Wolfie had just realized the dustman he’d tipped twenty pounds to take away the empties had been none other than Nigel Dempster in disguise. He was also thinking that if Mr Brimscombe didn’t stop moaning about his missing petrol can there would certainly be a second murder, when he was summoned to the house to find his stepmother in hysterics. Perhaps shock had worn off and the loss of his father had kicked in. Despite the heat, he drew her into her study, shutting the door and all the windows.
‘Oh, Wolfie, I’ve done such a wicked thing.’
‘It can’t be that bad.’ Even if she’d killed his father, she’d had enough provocation.
‘I burnt down the watchtower,’ then, at Wolfie’s look of thunderstruck amazement, ‘with paraffin from Teddy Brimscombe’s petrol can. The memoirs were so hideous and in the new will he hadn’t left me a cent.’
‘I’m sure it isn’t valid.’ Wolfie was amazed Helen had had the nerve. ‘The lawyers will sort it out. Papa wasn’t ungenerous.’
‘Don’t you stick up for him! He cut you out too.’
Wolfie winced. ‘Did anyone s
ee you?’
‘I don’t know, I heard Hermione singing, and I ran away. The memoirs were so dreadful.’ She was shaking so violently, Wolfie was forced out of pity to take her in his arms.
‘He said such humiliating things about me, he’d taken nude photographs of me, I looked like a skeleton. I had to stop them being published. Everyone was in them, Chloe, Hermione, Gloria, Serena, who I thought was my friend, that slut Flora!’ Her voice rose shrilly.
‘I’m sure he loved you best.’ Wolfie patted her jagged shoulder.
Like a cat reacting to human warmth, Helen pressed against him. Wolfie longed to pull away; he could feel her rubbery breasts and bony pelvis against him. Her freckles on her deathly white disintegrating face were like flecks of blood on the snow.
‘Even Tab,’ she hissed, ‘naked, whole rolls of film, and she was tarted up in a black G-string in some of them.’
‘I don’t believe it.’ Wolfie leapt away with clenched fists. It was as though she was branding the words on his heart with a red-hot poker.
He wanted to shout that his father had never left Tab alone, but ringing in his ears were Tab’s anguished pleas not to tell Helen about the rape.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he groaned, slumping on the sofa, his head in his hands.
‘She led him on,’ said Helen spitefully, ‘even at our wedding. Look!’ She thrust a photograph, which Wolfie had so often admired of late, of a sixteen-year-old Tab smiling into Rannaldini’s admiring eyes.
‘He’d just bought her a fucking horse,’ snarled Wolfie.
‘And soon she got a socking great allowance, a cottage and a Sèvres vase, which she smashed. You’ve no idea how they both tormented me.’ Then, when Wolfie didn’t answer, ‘Please, don’t tell anyone I set fire to the watchtower.’
‘I’ll sort it out,’ said Wolfie wearily.
Knowing that Gablecross and Karen were due to see Lady Rannaldini, Fanshawe, having relayed the dramatic findings of his interview with Pushy to Gerald Portland, then magnanimously and patronizingly passed those relevant to Helen on to his rivals.
Thus armed, on Wednesday afternoon Gablecross and Karen found Helen in her little study, painting a not very good picture of the valley. Was it Freudian, Karen wondered, that she’d left out Magpie Cottage? Gablecross noticed her skeletal thinness, the staring eyes, the deathly pallor, the spread of grey in the fox-red hair, and thought how much she must have suffered. As before, she didn’t offer them even a cup of tea.
Two other officers, DC Smithson and DC Lightfoot, he began, had spoken to Mrs Brimscombe.
‘She told them’, Karen continued gently, ‘that you had two dresses made up from the mauve silk, patterned with lilac and honeysuckle. The second one was the one handed in to the police. The first must have been the one you wore earlier.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ stammered Helen.
Mrs Brimscombe says she came down to the utility room after putting you to bed on Sunday night and found the first dress in the washing-machine with all the colours run. “Lady Rannaldini’s so particular,” she told DC Smithson. “She always insists silks are hand-washed.”’
‘She must have put the machine on herself.’ Helen was frantically straightening paperweights. ‘She was off-the-wall that night. She told Wolfie she’d seen a purple will-o’-the-wisp bobbing through hedges towards the cemetery. It’s supposed to mean death at Valhalla.
‘The truth is, Detective Sergeant, when I put on my first mauve silk dress on Sunday afternoon I noticed a rip in the other one.’ Helen was talking carefully now, as though she was reciting a poem she hadn’t quite memorized. ‘So I left it in the utility room for Mrs B to mend. She’s so on the blink she obviously thought it needed washing, then panicked because she’d put it on the wrong wash. She was probably terrified,’ her voice hardened fractionally, ‘thinking I wouldn’t keep her and Teddy, now Rannaldini’s gone.’
She seemed calmer, but when Gablecross told her Pushy claimed to have smelt paraffin on her ripped dress as she rushed upstairs at eleven fifteen, she lost her temper.
‘That evil creature!’ she hissed. ‘She tried to destroy my marriage, now my husband’s gone she’s trying to destroy me. She humiliated me in every way, using my phone and my bathroom, pinching the cars and the helicopter when I needed them. How could she think I’d burn down the watchtower’ — her voice rose to a shriek — ‘destroying all my husband’s precious compositions?’
‘Of course not.’ Karen jumped to her feet and putting an arm round Helen’s shoulders, settled her back in her chair. ‘Let me get you a glass of water.’
‘They’re both lying,’ moaned Helen, ‘Brimscombe because she’s old and confused, Gloria because she’s a vindictive bitch.’
‘Mrs Brimscombe’, Gablecross flipped back a few pages, ‘confirms she made you a sweetcorn and smoked-salmon omelette for your tea, the vomit of which was found ten yards from your husband’s watchtower.’
‘I never!’ gasped Helen. ‘I told you, I chucked my omelette down the john. She must have made a second for someone else. Film people are always demanding things.’
But when Gablecross pointed out that they would be able to check Helen’s DNA profile, which had been taken that morning, with the saliva in the vomit, Helen caved in and burst into tears.
‘I did go into the woods. I so prayed my husband’s passion for Gloria was dying out and I wanted to check if they were together. I found myself drawn to the watchtower around half past ten. The door was open.’ Helen was rocking back and forth, clutching herself. ‘On his table I found this l-l-loathsome photograph of Gloria with nothing on. I tore it up. Then I heard a noise — I was so upset and so terrified it might be my husband, furious with me for destroying the photo, that I rushed into the wood, and threw up. Then I ran home. It was horrible.’ She raised streaming eyes to Gablecross, who grunted sympathetically.
‘Did you notice any keys anywhere?’ he asked.
‘Sure.’ Helen wrinkled her freckled forehead. ‘They were on my husband’s table.’
‘That’s very useful information,’ said Karen, returning with a brimming glass, which she placed on the table beside Helen’s chair. ‘Try to remember,’ she added soothingly, as Helen leapt to her feet and shoved a little flowered mat under the glass. ‘You were in such a state, Lady Rannaldini, one often blocks these things out. Did you strangle your husband?’
‘Oh, no, no,’ Helen licked her lips in terror, ‘he’d have been far too strong. And I’d never set fire to his watchtower. Bussage may have taken copies, but all the originals of his compositions and memoirs were there. I admired him so much as a composer. He used to write beautiful letters.’ Helen had moved to another table, straightening, lining up, picking up a little ivory fan. ‘I remember him quoting Donne: ‘“No spring or summer beauty has such grace As I have seen in one autumnal face.”’
‘“Young beauties force our love and there’s a rape,”’ Karen continued the poem, then raised an eyebrow at Gablecross who nodded.
‘Did you know Rannaldini is alleged to have raped Tabitha just before he was murdered?’ she asked softly.
There was a crack as the little fan broke.
‘She must have led him on,’ said Helen, quite unable to control her venom. ‘She was always flaunting herself. Omigod,’ she looked at them appalled, ‘she’s got a fiendish temper. You don’t think she killed him?’
When Helen had calmed down a little, Gablecross asked if she’d seen anyone else in the wood.
‘Promise you won’t say who told you.’ Helen’s eyes were rolling crazily again.
‘Of course not,’ said Gablecross cosily. ‘You’ve been a marvellous witness.’
‘I saw my ex-husband, Rupert,’ whispered Helen, ‘in the wood with a gun in his hand.’
56
‘Jesus, Sarge!’ Karen was jumping up and down in excitement as they emerged out of the dark panelled hall into the lavender, yellow roses and falling sunlight of the forecourt. ‘Hadn’t we better tip of
f Gerry and go and nail Rupert?’
‘Too early, he’s at Newmarket, and we’ll need far more evidence than a crazy ex-wife’s terrified impressions in a pitch-dark wood. She may well have wanted it to be Rupert.’
‘Do you think she hates him enough to shop him?’
‘Possibly. I think she’s pathological where he and Tab are concerned, particularly now she knows Rannaldini raped Tab. I certainly wouldn’t rule her out as the killer. Let’s go and talk to another side of the triangle, Isaac Lovell, who hates Rupert even more than she does.’
‘I’m expecting Isa within the hour,’ Janice, the head groom, told Karen and Gablecross when they walked into Rannaldini’s yard.
Slim, foxy, knowing, a goer in the sack, Janice was soon confiding that she would happily have murdered her late boss for the way he treated his horses.
‘That was his torture chamber,’ she added, pointing the yard brush at the indoor school. ‘He used to lock himself in with a green young horse, and do terrible things to make them go the way he wanted.’
She had stayed with Rannaldini, she said, because she was so sorry for the horses, and as Gablecross stretched out a hand towards the heads hanging out of the boxes, they all flinched away — except for The Prince of Darkness who, safely muzzled, scraped angrily at his half-door.
‘He’ll get you with his feet, or crush you against a wall, if he can’t use his teeth,’ said Janice.
For Sunday night, she had the perfect alibi: a skittle contest, between nine thirty and midnight at the Pearly Gates.
‘I was choked when Isa turned up at the yard at eight thirty — I wasn’t expecting him. He always slides in, well, like a cobra, never giving you any time to tart up. He’s gorgeous, the bastard,’ she added to Karen.
‘I was dying to get away, but he insisted on looking at every horse, in case they’d lost condition in the drought. We’re turning them out just at night because of the flies.’
