by Jilly Cooper
He had prayed Claudine would leave Jean-Louis and move in with him or, better still, marry him. He didn’t give a toss about the twenty-four-year age gap. Sometimes, when life became unbearable, she had come near to it.
But just before Étienne’s death, one of Claudine’s friends had rung to say a newspaper was on to her and Tristan and about to blow her saintly Madame Vierge image sky high. Claudine had no desire to relinquish the moral high ground, so she had retreated into her arid marriage. Gradually, for Tristan, hope had died, but he couldn’t stop loving her.
Until suddenly he had been jolted by Tab, and believed, by some miracle, there might be life and love after Claudine. But Rannaldini had promptly stamped on that flower.
In his most despairing thoughts since then, Tristan had dreamt that Claudine, having four children of her own, might not mind that he couldn’t give her children. He had so longed to see her again at the screening of The Lily in the Valley: he knew Jean-Louis was in Tuscany and was devastated when she’d failed to show up, on the excuse that filming commitments in Wales were too heavy.
He had forced himself to go to Hortense’s party the next day, but the sight of numerous Montignys, a tribe to which he no longer belonged, milling around the lawn — Aunt Hortense in navy blue pinstripe, the Croix de Guerre in her lapel, his self-regarding brothers and their braying wives, and the smell of crayfish drifting over the white rose hedge — had sent him fleeing back to Valhalla.
Here he collected the address book with Claudine’s telephone number in Wales, showered, changed into the peacock-blue shirt and the jeans she had given him, and on which Lucy had put the patch of a greyhound’s head, and set out for the sleepy village of Llandrogan.
He had rung from Valhalla to say he was on his way, his mobile cutting out before Claudine could say no. He had driven like the devil and arrived while she was getting ready, her hair, which she hadn’t had time to wash, still in rollers, with only one eye made up and her tummy still blown out from an early supper.
As he bounded upstairs like Tigger, she had sent him down again to pour himself a huge drink, which, by the time she had joined him, had become two. She had looked so exquisite, he had swept her back up to bed, which had not been a success. He had come instantly. In the old days, he would then have made love to her with his tongue and his hands, until he was raring to come again. Now he sensed her relief.
‘It couldn’t matter less, chéri, we’re both exhausted. I have lines to learn and I’ve got to get up at six. I’m not as young as I was.’
It was a far cry from The Lily in the Valley when they had made love all night, and the violet shadows beneath eyes softened by happiness had only enhanced her haunting beauty.
Claudine herself, that Sunday evening in Llandrogan, had suddenly felt too old and set in her ways. Reason has reasons the heart knows nothing about. She didn’t want him to stay the night. She longed to take off her make-up and cover her face with skin food. Worry about the lurking paparazzi would keep her awake when she needed to look good on the set, and if she fell asleep she might snore.
When Tristan told her about the problems with Rannaldini, she had been unsympathetic. All directors became increasingly twitchy as the end of a shoot approached. Unable to bear it any longer, he had dropped the bombshell that Maxim was his father. To his amazement, she wasn’t very interested.
‘The aristocracy have always been irregularly conceived, chéri. My sister wasn’t my father’s daughter. I’m not sure I was either. Jean-Louis’s father was a naughty old boy too. Whenever we go shooting on the estate I notice how the beaters all look like Jean-Louis.’
‘For Christ’s sake, it’s not the same. My grandfather was a psychopath who raped my sixteen-year-old mother, so I’m three-quarters his mad, tainted blood.’ Tristan had wanted to hit her, but had shaken her instead.
‘Stop it, you’re hurting me,’ she had cried.
And what the fuck d’you imagine you’re doing to me? thought Tristan.
‘I cannot have children,’ he said bleakly.
Claudine had shrugged.
‘There are too many children in the world. They’re nothing but trouble. Marie-Claire is threatening to marry a pied-noir. Patrice is divorcing. Béatrice is pregnant by her Egyptian boyfriend. Jean-Louis is out of his mind with worry.’ Then, seeing Tristan’s blackening face, ‘Anyway, chéri, you have elder brothers, it is not as if there’s any need to carry on the Montigny line.’
When he tried to explain, he knew he was boring her. He would have liked to have left then, but he had drunk too much brandy, and was too tired so instead he had crashed out on her bed. She had shaken him awake at three thirty. It would soon be light.
‘I’m so terrified of the English press — they’re everywhere.’
It wouldn’t do to forfeit being the Most Admired Woman in France, thought Tristan savagely.
As he had driven away from Llandrogan into the desolation of dawn, and pulled into a field to sleep, he had been reminded of the time he had broken the news of Maxim being his father to Lucy and how she’d given him black coffee, laced with Drambuie, wrapped him in her duvet, held him shuddering in her arms and listened and listened, and how her hair was the same soft brown as rain-soaked winter trees.
Coming back to earth, still pacing his cell, he remembered how on the day after the murder, for the first time in months, Claudine had actually slipped into a telephone box in Llandrogan to ring him, pleading with him not to use her as an alibi. She must know he’d been arrested, but she was clearly not coming forward to save him. There was no light in the little frosted window. And no dawn for him.
As Karen walked into the Pearly Gates with Ogborne after the cinema, Jessica dragged her outside into the drizzle.
‘I found this in my bag. I wrote Oscar’s mobile number on the back of it on Thursday. It’s a memo from Tristan to Bernard and the props department, saying he was planning to reshoot part of Posa and Carlos’s pistol scene in the Unicorn Glade on Friday night, and he would need the.22 out of the props cupboard. Is it important?’
Karen didn’t even notice the drizzle become a downpour.
‘Yes, it is,’ she said joyfully.
‘And, by the way, Mikhail’s looking for you,’ said a relieved Jessica. ‘He’s in the production office.’
Karen found Mikhail utterly despondent about his crocus-yellow Range Rover.
‘I telephone ten garage today and ask how much they charge for bottle-green blow-job. They all shout ’orrible things and hang up.’
‘I think you mean respray.’ Karen had only just contained her laughter, when Mikhail said he wished to make a statement.
‘I took the Montigny from the votch-tower and I borrow lighter with lilies from Tristan two or three days earlier. I must have dropped it in the wood. I went there to kill Rannaldini about ten forty-five, but he was already dead, strangled and shot. I also must confess I actually make friends again with my wife, Lara, on night before murder. When Rannaldini took her to votch-tower for bonk, he boast Montigny painting on wall was vorth three million. Finding Rannaldini dead, I took painting instead.’
‘What did you do with it?’ Karen’s pen would hardly write for excitement.
‘Hid it under Tristan’s mattress for safe-kipping.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Tristan wasn’t bonker like Sylvestre or Alpheus and wouldn’t squash painting. But when I go to remove it on Friday morning it had vanish…’
Mikhail was amazed but greatly cheered when Karen gave him an ecstatic hug. Gablecross was never going to speak to her again, but she was more and more convinced Tristan was innocent.
The Llandrogan Badger Action Group held their monthly meetings at the Leek and Grasshopper hotel on Sunday nights. The badger setts along Chantry Wood were the pride of the area, and at least forty badgers were known to travel nightly through the wood, over Jackson’s Meadow, skirting Catmint Cottage, down to the stream which divided the valley.
In summe
r months, the Action Group (or BAG, as they liked to be known), anxious to observe the badgers’ habits and protect them from baiters, fierce dogs and even fiercer farmers concerned about bovine tuberculosis, set up a camera to record these nocturnal perambulations and their time and date.
On Sunday, 15 July, Gareth Stacey, BAG’s bearded secretary, who spent a lot of time in the field and who stank worse than any badger sett after a rhubarb raid, was about to give a slide show of this month’s findings.
‘Come on, buck up,’ grumbled Major Holmes, the village bully, who didn’t care much for badgers but longed to get stuck into the wine and light refreshments that followed.
‘It’s like magic,’ said pretty Tracey Birkett, who taught at the local primary, ‘that the brocks don’t know we can see them all lit up.’
Out went the lights. Click, click, went Stinker Stacey. On the screen a stout female badger appeared, looping the loop.
‘Upside-down,’ barked Major Holmes.
Click, click, the right-way-up badger was followed by a barn owl, Lady Wade-Williams’s Burmese cat, a couple of cubs, then a huge bull badger, who produced roars of applause.
This woke up Keith, the junior reporter on the Llandrogan Echo, furious at having to cover the event when he could be in the pub, and who in the dark couldn’t keep himself awake gazing at pretty Tracey Birkett.
Click, click, click, click.
‘Look you, Gareth,’ said Merv the milkman, ‘we have an intruder.’
‘By Jove, we do,’ said Major Holmes.
As Stinker Stacey repeated the slide, everyone could see a tall dark man in a peacock-blue shirt, jeans and loafers coming out of the wood.
‘He’s yummy,’ sighed Tracey.
‘Wouldn’t mind having a teddy bears’ picnic with him,’ said Mrs Jones, the local baker, with a cackle.
‘Looks familiar,’ said the Vicar, cleaning his glasses.
‘It’s Lady Wade-Williams’s handyman — he’s always on the poach,’ said Merv the Milk.
The handsome intruder was followed by several rabbits, a fox, more badgers — two of them humping to loud cheers — and Mrs Owen’s Jack Russell on a late-night spree.
‘There he is again,’ said Jones the baker, in excitement.
‘Got one of them greyhounds on his back pocket,’ said Merv the Milk.
‘Lovely bum,’ sighed Tracey Birkett, earning a look of reproach from the Vicar.
‘He’s some actor chappie,’ said Major Holmes. ‘Seen him before.’
‘No, he isn’t.’ Keith the reporter snatched up the evening paper and thrust it into the beam of the projector. ‘It’s that Froggy they’ve arrested for murdering Rannaldini.’
‘The time was three forty a.m., ninth of the seventh, ninety-six,’ read out Tracey Birkett.
‘The murder’s supposed to have taken place between ten and eleven,’ said Keith, who was now leaping up and down in excitement. ‘Turn back to the first slide of him.’
Click, click, click, click, went Stinker Stacey.
Everyone peered forward in excitement.
‘Ten fifty p.m. on the eighth of July. Bingo!’ yelled Keith in jubilation. ‘He couldn’t have done it. It’s a good hundred and fifty miles from here to Paradise. Bloody hell! What a scoop.’
Even the Vicar forgave such language.
‘Golly,’ said Tracey Birkett. ‘He must have been going into the back gate of Catmint Cottage to see Claudine Lauzerte. Didn’t they make a film together?’
‘It’s him, all right,’ said Stinker Stacey. ‘We’d better go to the police.’
‘It’s him all right,’ said DC Beddoes of North Wales CID. ‘Must have nipped into Catmint Cottage, given Madame Lauzerte un, deux et trois, and nipped out again. Puts him in the clear. Couldn’t have strangled Rannaldini. You told anyone else?’
‘Only the Daily Mail, but it’s too late for tomorrow’s paper. Story’ll break with a bang on Tuesday.’
‘Madame Lauzerte’s not going to like it,’ said DC Beddoes, disapprovingly. ‘Terrible thing. She’d have let him do life.’
‘Must love her not to squeal,’ sighed Keith. ‘What a story. Froggy would a-wooing go.’
Even when Gablecross and Karen confronted him with the evidence of the Badger Action Group, Tristan still defended Claudine.
‘There was no affaire. I worry about film. She and her husband were friends of my father. She was like mother to me, we just talked last Sunday.’
‘At eleven at night?’ chided Gablecross. ‘And five hours later you’re seen coming out — long time to read the meter. Anyway, the French police have blown your safe and found Madame Lauzerte’s letters, which are not those you’d write to a son.’
Even the news he was free to go didn’t cheer Tristan.
‘Her name must be kept out of the papers,’ he pleaded.
‘Might have been if you’d levelled with us in the first place. Migraine on Thursday night indeed! When you were nearly three-quarters of an hour on the phone to her.’
‘Trying to reassure her the story wouldn’t come out,’ said Tristan despairingly.
‘Terrific for her street cred she’s been pulling such a gorgeous young guy,’ sighed Karen.
Over at Valhalla, a devastated Baby had, like Tristan, paced his room most of the night. How could Isa have stood him up for someone as two-faced and trivial as Chloe? Monday’s dawn and his heart were breaking simultaneously as he went out into the park. Torrential rain washed away his tears and the remnants of Rozzy’s make-up, which hadn’t been nearly as flattering as Lucy’s. Having caught and loaded his three horses into one of Rannaldini’s lorries, he set off very slowly, stopping every few minutes in case rage and shock made him drive into a wall.
Rupert’s house was ash blond in the early-morning sunshine. His dark woods lay as still as possible, like shaggy dogs knowing their coats will be too hot later in the day. As Baby rumbled into the yard, Rupert had just flown in from France. He was talking to a ravishing youth and to Dizzy, his comely head groom, who were both about to ride out. One beautiful horse after another, like a conjuror’s silk handkerchiefs, was emerging from the boxes.
Still in his polo gear, his face grey against his crimson shirt, Baby jumped down from the lorry.
‘D’you want to train my horses?’
‘I’d be delighted,’ said Rupert. Then, as he gave the ravishing youth a leg up, ‘I don’t think you’ve met my assistant, Lysander Hawkley.’
‘Hi,’ said Baby, looking Lysander up and down. ‘Paradise was in Rutshire, but it appears to have moved.’
‘Let’s unload your horses,’ said Rupert, ‘and then come and have breakfast.’
This latest development enraged Isa. How dare Baby team up with Rupert! Had he neatly forgotten he owed Isa for the last quarter?
‘I owe you nothing, you little toad. If you breathe a word of complaint, I’ll tell your father-in-law you were shagging Chloe the night of Rannaldini’s murder. Then I’ll tell the world how white you bled me.’
73
Gerald Portland’s gameplan was in tatters. A mob of reporters had fought their way through the deluge into the Rutminster courtroom, or failing that had ringed the building, spilling down adjacent lanes like the water hurtling down gutter and pavement. They had already written their intros about the Fall of the House of Montigny and the most deadly snake of them all. When news leaked out that Tristan had been freed, they immediately charged off to write bitchy pieces about utterly incompetent West Country police wasting public money and being no nearer to finding the killer. The Scorpion, who’d already set the headline ‘Beattie’s Butcher’ over a snarling photograph of Tristan, changed it to ‘Thickos’ in even larger type and decided to launch their poll asking readers, ‘Who Killed Beattie and Rannaldini?’
Only the Daily Mail rubbed their hands over Tristan’s secret tryst with Claudine and pored over copy and headlines for tomorrow’s paper in a security block. The rest of the media took off like starlings to Rutmin
ster Hall to harass the polo shoot, where they were furious to find that George’s security guards kept them outside the front gates and that Rupert, still a chief suspect, had gone racing.
‘We’ve become a laughing stock,’ shouted Gerald Portland, who’d specially put on a new lilac-striped shirt to wow the press and felt it was utterly wasted on his Inner Cabinet. They would have to re-examine all the suspects.
A terrible weariness came over his utterly weary team.
Even people who’d covered for each other, like Tab and George Hungerford, or Rupert and Lysander, or Griselda, Granny and Bernard, who’d all claimed to be searching for balls together in Hangman’s Wood, could be lying. Chloe claimed to have seen both Alpheus and Isa, but neither of them had seen her. Hermione was still sticking to the story that she’d been in bed with Sexton. Meredith, Simone and Pushy had no-one to vouch for them at all, neither did Wolfie and Lucy, who’d pushed off abroad and, so far, neatly evaded Interpol. Even those with cast-iron alibis away from Valhalla, like Rozzy, Oscar and Valentin, would have to be checked out again.
There was a lot of money on Lady Rannaldini, who none of the investigating team liked very much. Bearing in mind that she claimed to have seen Rupert around ten twenty-five, but Lysander had sworn that he and Rupert didn’t discover Rannaldini’s dead body until they first approached the watch-tower as late as ten forty, meant someone was lying.
‘If Rannaldini was happy and excited at the moment of death, as the PM revealed,’ mused Karen, ‘the murderer must be someone he was thrilled to see.’
‘Which certainly wasn’t Rupert, Wolfie or Alpheus,’ chipped in Debbie, ‘but most likely Hermione, Bussage or Tab.’
‘We’ll wait for the DNA results before we tackle Tab again,’ said Portland, who didn’t want any more earache from Rupert.
DC Lightfoot, who’d fallen asleep with his head on the edge of Portland’s desk, was gently shaken awake and dispatched with DC Smithson to Rutminster Hall to try to find out if Alpheus and Mikhail had been telling porkies. Fanshawe and Debbie were given the task of re-interviewing Hermione and then Lysander on the timing of his and Rupert’s raid on Hangman’s Wood.
