Score!

43

Spirals of white mist drifted across the valley, like ghost priests hurrying to welcome Rannaldini to the other side. On the steps outside the house, Gablecross was assuring Wolfie that his father’s body would soon be off to the morgue, when a convoy of Fleet Water Board lorries came splashing up the drive. Instantly, like a malignant crow in her black suit, Miss Bussage swooped out of the front door down the path flanked by lavender bushes.

‘Take it away,’ she hissed at the first driver. ‘You’re too bloody late. The Maestro wanted his ponds and lake filled up, but he’s dead, so we don’t need you any more.’

‘Yes, we do,’ shouted Wolfie, following her out through the omnia vincit amor arch. ‘Forecast says the heatwave’s coming back. I’m head of the house now,’ he added coolly, ‘and no ponds are drying up on me.’

Then, turning to Mr Brimscombe, who was rubbing his green fingers in glee that at last someone was taking on Bussage:

‘Please show the drivers where we need the water.’

‘You’re not the head of the house,’ Bussage exploded with rage. ‘I typed his last will. He left everything to Cecilia, and her family. She was the one he loved, who got the part of Delilah. Not a penny to you or your boring mother, or that gold-digging Helen or her slut of a daughter.’

In daylight, Wolfie could see the scurfy grey roots of Bussage’s oily dark hair, her malevolent little eyes, her open pores.

‘You’re fired, you disgusting bitch,’ he said furiously.

‘You can’t fire me!’

‘I bloody can!’

Dialling the car pool, he ordered a driver to take Miss Bussage to her sister’s house in an hour.

‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ lisped Clive.

‘That’ll give you time to pack,’ Wolfie told her. ‘We’ll send the rest of your stuff on later.’

Reaching inside his blazer pocket, resting his cheque book on his knee, he wrote her a cheque.

‘That’s six months’ salary. Consider yourself lucky.’

‘I’ll fight you through the courts.’

‘Feel free.’

Short of chaining herself to the balustrade, there was not much Bussage could do. Returning to her office, where she had reigned supreme and, for a while, experienced true love, she took the disks of Rannaldini memoirs and envelopes containing the most salacious photographs out of a filing cabinet and locked them into her briefcase, then went down to the cottage to pack.

‘Surely my father should go in an ambulance,’ protested Wolfie, as Rannaldini’s body was carried on a stretcher across yellowing lawns to a black mortuary van.

‘It’s considered unlucky to carry a body,’ said Gablecross gently. ‘Ambulances only take the living.’

As the mortuary van doors opened, Miss Bussage came out of Valhalla. Having loaded up her bags, Clive waited, smirking, by the limo. Saying goodbye to no-one, Bussage handed her card to Gablecross. ‘I’ll be at this address, I’d like to set the record straight.’

‘I’ll be in touch.’

On the steps outside the omnia vincit amor gates, Baby, Flora, Granny and an ashen Wolfie watched, with mixed emotions, the black van rumbling down the drive.

‘He was charismatic, glamorous, fearless,’ began Flora slowly, ‘a brilliant musician and the greatest conductor in the world.’ Her voice broke.

Wolfie’s face wobbled for a moment, then he put an arm round Flora’s shoulders. ‘Thank you,’ he mumbled.

And instinctively Baby launched into the heartbreakingly beautiful lament which he and Alpheus had sung over Posa’s body.

A few seconds later, Granny had joined in, singing Alpheus’s part, his clear voice ringing out less powerfully than Alpheus’s but with far more feeling. ‘“I have cast this man of pride and passion into the tomb,”’ he sang.

‘You should have played Philip,’ whispered Flora taking his hand.

Bernard had tried to persuade Rozzy to join him for a late lunch, but she wanted to pray for Rannaldini in the chapel. Gablecross found Bernard tucking into a large steak, pomme frites and half a bottle of rouge in the canteen, and started grumbling about Tristan’s lack of co-operation.

‘He’s only a boy,’ protested Bernard. ‘He’s had a bloody awful life, but the last six months have been the worst. Rannaldini was a monster. Tristan doesn’t mean to be rude, but the film comes first.’

‘How long have you known him?’

‘I’ve known the family for thirty years.’

Breaking up a French loaf with those big red hands, which would have no difficulty strangling anyone, Bernard told Gablecross about being in the army with Tristan’s brother Laurent.

‘Tell me about the tennis match.’

‘Stormy.’ Bernard smiled, showing his rocking-horse teeth. ‘Women at the end of a shoot, all probably having their periods at the same time, all crying. Chloe and Gloria furious a part had gone to Rannaldini’s second wife, Lucy missing Tristan, Flora missing George — they’d had some row. Mikhail upset about his wife, Griselda and Meredith upset Rannaldini had sacked them. Alpheus cross Wolfie had smashed his Jaguar and Rannaldini wouldn’t give him another. Granville Hastings upset his boyfriend was on some troop ship. Wolfie in love with Tabitha, Simone mad about Wolfie.’

‘No-one very happy,’ said Gablecross who, without realizing it, was steadily eating Bernard’s chips. ‘Rannaldini was wearing Alpheus’s dressing-gown. Could someone have meant to kill him?’

‘Possible.’ Bernard tugged his moustache. ‘Nice guy, Alpheus, but somehow more unpopular than Rannaldini.’

‘Think any of them could have killed Rannaldini?’

‘All of them. It was the worst shoot I’ve ever been on, something had to give. Rannaldini needled Tristan crazy. Tristan adores that little madam, Tabitha. Rannaldini put the boot in there.’

‘Tell me more,’ said Gablecross.

Having averaged a couple of hours’ sleep and half a bottle of gin a day over the past week, Baby looked frightful.

‘You could drive to Rutminster on my red veins,’ he told Lucy, as she got to work with her paintbrushes and pencils, smudging, moulding, embellishing, only half listening to the interminable news bulletins and the chat between Baby and Flora, who had sought refuge in her caravan.

‘Hermione, Helen and Gloria are all seeing bereavement counsellors,’ said Flora.

‘Then why can’t I?’ grumbled Baby.

‘You loathed Rannaldini,’ chided Lucy.

‘I know. But I adore talking about myself.’

Noticing Flora was trembling again, Baby put a hand on hers.

‘It’s OK, sweetheart. Rannaldini was murdered for revenge or to stop him doing something even more unspeakable. Now he’s out of the way there’s no need to murder anyone else.’

‘There is, if someone’s still got the memoirs and the photos,’ shivered Flora.

Next moment, they were distracted by John Dunne’s voice on the wireless. ‘The music world is in shock and mourning today for Sir Roberto Rannaldini,’ he was saying. ‘We have on the line someone who worked with Sir Roberto for many years, the great diva Dame Hermione Harefield.’

‘Turn it up,’ beseeched Baby.

‘Roberto Rannaldini was a great conductor, a father figure, and the closest possible personal friend.’ Hermione’s voice throbbed with emotion. ‘He had an amazing gift for recognizing genius in the young. Nearly twenty years ago he cast me as Elisabetta in Don Carlos, the part I am singing at the moment. After that first night I well remember Rannaldini saying, “You have the loveliest voice I have ever heard, Dame Hermione.” No, I tell a lie, I wasn’t a dame in those days.’

The inhabitants of Lucy’s caravan were clutching their sides, when Hermione was interrupted by an impatient clicking on the line, and a shrill voice saying, ‘Get off the fucking line, Mum. I gotta ring Ladbrokes.’

Little Cosmo, who had smashed his mobile in a fit of temper that morning, wished to use his mother’s telephone. To accompanying squawks, John Dunne could be heard saying firmly, ‘I’m afraid we’ve lost Dame Hermione.’

Miss Bussage enjoyed the journey to her sister’s house. If, as promised, she had become the fifth Lady Rannaldini, she would have travelled always in a limo, although she would have preferred that leering scoundrel Clive to have worn his chauffeur’s cap.

She had no regrets. Valhalla without Rannaldini would have been like lemon and black pepper without oysters. Anyway, whichever newspaper eventually bought the memoirs would give her enough to live on comfortably for the rest of her life.

When she arrived, she couldn’t resist getting out the floppy disks and the photographs so she and her sister could have a gloat together. Only when she tried to print out the disks did she find they’d been switched for blanks and the dirty pictures all replaced with a pile of Rannaldini’s fan photographs. Her howl of rage could have woken Rannaldini in his chill chamber in Rutminster Mortuary eighty miles away.