Score!

81

News either travels faster round a film crew than the fleetest greyhound or it never leaves the starting gates. No-one, even two hours into the wrap party, was aware that Lucy was now prime suspect and still evading a massive murder hunt. But they knew Tab’s fall had not been accidental, and the presence of policemen everywhere, frisking still arriving guests, taking their cars apart, murmuring into radio mikes, added to the general edginess. Guests had spilled out into the walled garden, where the scarlet and orange rambler roses clashed less gaudily by night. Beyond lay shadowy shrubberies, but there was no incentive to escape into the bushes with someone who might be the killer. The revellers clung close to the house in the light cast by George’s big golden windows, discussed in lowered voices who might have tried to bump off Tab, and leapt if someone touched them accidentally.

Maria had excelled herself with a huge cold turkey and salads, laid on a side table in George’s big drawing room. But everyone was too hot and jumpy to eat — as to fear of the murder was added fear of tomorrow, when they would no longer be a close-knit community. How would they cope without Lucy to listen to their problems or Sylvestre to mend their hair-dryers or Hermione to bitch about? So they all kept busy filling their Filofaxes with names and addresses they probably wouldn’t be able to put faces to in a week or two.

‘Do drop in at Cherrylands, if you’re ever in Surrey,’ Pushy kept telling everyone.

Revellers even fell on the suntanned neck of Granny’s ex-boyfriend, Giuseppe, when he had the temerity to roll up with Serena Westwood, who was flashing a large ruby engagement ring.

‘What is the French for arsenic and strychnine?’ murmured Granny, who pointedly ignored them both.

‘Arsenic and strychnine,’ said Oscar, waking up to slot another Gauloise into his jade cigarette holder. ‘Malevolence is universal.’

‘The point of a wrap party’, announced Ogborne, who was motoring down his second bottle of Moët, ‘is to make your number with the director and producer so they’ll employ you again, then get rat-arsed and pull as many women as possible.’

‘I’ve pulled them all anyway,’ said Sylvestre.

‘You never pulled Simone,’ taunted Valentin.

‘Unsimple Simone.’ Sylvestre glanced across the room. ‘She looks pretty in that flowered dress. Maybe tonight is the night.’

‘I’m saving myself for my beautiful wife,’ said Valentin. ‘The only woman approaching her is Tabitha, and Rupert and lucky Wolfgang will put the biggest guard round her tonight.’

Oscar had fallen asleep again on the sofa, his head in Jessica’s lap. Tristan’s boys were very happy. They had worked hard and been well paid. Tomorrow they would go home to even better food, August in the country, then start work on Hercule in a few weeks.

Only Bernard was sad. After tonight he wouldn’t see Rozzy. He had had an original La Scala poster of Don Carlos, with Callas singing Elisabetta, framed for her as a wrap present. She was blow-drying her hair when he dropped it off. The hot blast swept the tendrils off her face, emphasizing the good bones but also the wrinkles on which one could play noughts and crosses. I would love her when she grew old, he thought despairingly.

Knowing singers love singing, George had booked a trio from the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra. Installed at the end of the big drawing room with a crate of red, they were now accompanying Alpheus. ‘“Some enchanted evening,”’ he sang, crinkling his eyes at Serena. He’d missed out on her during the recording but had always thought her very lovely.

‘It isn’t enchanted at all,’ said Pushy fretfully. ‘No Wolfie, no Mikhail, no Rupert or any of his tasty polo friends, and George, although perfectly gracious, would clearly far rather be alone with Flora. And none of those hunky PCs are allowed to dance with us, and where on earth are Sexton and Tristan?’

‘They’ve got an awful lot of loose finishes to tie up,’ explained Simone.

‘It’s called “supervising the winding-up of production”,’ said Flora who, as the thunder grew more ominous, was trying to get a tranquillizer down a panting, shuddering Trevor, ‘which, in Sexton’s case, is probably a euphemism for pleasuring Dame Hermione.’

‘And it’s no party without Lucy,’ said Jessica indignantly, looking at the mountain of presents piling up for her on the table. ‘I got her a little silver lurcher brooch from Past Times. I did want to see her open it.’

‘I got her a little eighteenth-century drawing of a greyhound,’ pouted Meredith. ‘I wanted to see her open it too.’

‘Why the hell did Tristan fire her? Here he is at last,’ said Jessica, wriggling out from under Oscar’s head. ‘I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.’

‘You won’t have much left, then,’ snapped Chloe, who was feeling utterly miserable. She was thirty-six. There was no man in her life. And she had not merely lonely hotel bedrooms but also a solitary Fulham flat to look forward to. How could Isa have dumped her?

The only bright spot, she told Flora, was four performances of Salome in Vienna.

‘Brilliant casting,’ said Flora enthusiastically, ‘it’s so rare to have a Salome whose veils people really want to come off.’

‘Chloe’s an old hand at taking off clothes,’ drawled Baby, who was missing Isa, jolted by Tab’s fall and extremely drunk. ‘Is there a goat in Salome? Has anyone seen Chloe’s video? It’s called No Kidding.’

‘Shut up, Baby,’ muttered Flora.

‘Look out!’ yelled Valentin.

For Chloe had grabbed a carving knife off the table and jumped on Baby, screaming, ‘Take that back, you little fag-fucker.’

The band stopped and a gasp of horror went round the room.

‘Was that why you killed Rannaldini and Beattie? To shut them up?’ taunted Baby and, showing surprising strength for someone so languid, yanked the hand holding the knife down to thigh level.

‘No, I did not,’ shrieked Chloe.

For a few seconds, they struggled in a deadly embrace, eyes filled with loathing six inches apart.

‘You fucked up me and Isa,’ hissed Chloe.

‘Correc-shon. You fucked up me and Isa.’

‘You and Isa?’ whispered Chloe in horror. ‘I don’t believe it, you bloody liar. I’ll kill you.’

Tangled in the folds of her mesh dress, the knife quivered like a trapped fish.

‘George!’ screamed Flora.

But as he raced in through the French windows, Hermione made her entrance from the hall with her head held high.

‘Good evening, everyone.’ Then, catching sight of Baby and Chloe locked in their dance of death, ‘Good gracious, I had no idea you two were an item.’

For a second, Baby’s face twitched, then Chloe corpsed too, and they had collapsed in helpless laughter.

‘I’ll have that,’ said George, as the carving knife thudded on to the autumn-leaf-patterned carpet.

‘We’d better have another bottle and compare Black Cobra bites,’ said Baby, ruffling Chloe’s hair.

‘I’ll never understand singers,’ sighed Ogborne, piling on a second helping of strawberry Pavlova.

‘Gifts for all, gifts for all,’ cried Hermione, beckoning in Sexton, who was buckling under a log basket of presents.

‘How exciting,’ squeaked Jessica, tearing off the paper. ‘Thank you, Dame Hermione.’

‘What have you given us?’ asked Grisel.

‘Calendars,’ smiled Hermione.

‘How clever of you to get next year’s so early,’ said Pushy. After all, she might want to work with the old boot again.

‘They’re this year’s,’ said Grisel in outrage. ‘And it’s half-way through July.’

‘No-one’s interested in dates,’ said Hermione airily. ‘Particularly if one’s bookings extend beyond the millennium, as mine do. What matters is the lovely photographs.’

‘What are they of?’ asked Ogborne.

‘Why, me, of course. Next year, I’m hoping to show some of Cosmo’s oeuvre.’

‘“There is nothing like a dime,”’ sang Sexton, as he bopped happily with Hermione. ‘I love you, Hermsie.’

‘D’you feel you can truly care for Little Cosmo?’

‘I love ’im already,’ said Sexton truthfully. ‘He’s so sharp, I’ll be able to veg out in his pram while he goes to the office for me.’

A tranquillized, cross-eyed Trevor was now lying in Flora’s arms like a baby.

‘Why are you looking so cheerful?’ she asked Meredith.

‘Tomorrow I’m flying to Oz.’

‘To meet up with Hermione’s husband, Bobby?’

‘But not for much longer.’ Meredith nodded at a bopping Hermione. ‘It looks as though Madam is at last going to give Bobby a divorce.’

‘I’m so pleased.’ Flora kissed him on the cheek.

‘Come on, Meredith, on your feet,’ boomed Griselda.

‘New trousers.’ Halting in mid-bop, Hermione looked beadily at Grisel’s Day-glo pink harem pants. ‘I’m sure you’ll find them very useful.’

‘Useful for getting the entire harem in there as well,’ murmured Flora to Simone, who, in her pretty flowery dress, was leaning against the wall, sipping iced water.

‘I think Griselda’s days of promiscuity are over,’ said Simone gravely. ‘I want you to be the first to know, Flora, that Grisel and I are an item.’

Flora nearly dropped Trevor.

‘Was that why you got over Wolfie so fast?’ she squeaked.

Simone nodded. ‘I have never been so in love in my life. We are flying down to the Tarn to meet Mama and Papa tomorrow.’

‘Will they approve?’

‘They will probably feel Grisel is a little old for me. She’s six months older than Mama, but once they meet her…’

‘Have you told Uncle Tristan?’

‘No, he doesn’t take much on board at the moment.’

Having immediately crossed the drawing room to admire George’s Picasso when he arrived, Tristan had hardly moved.

Normally at wrap parties he felt elated and disembodied: if someone rolled back the stone, he wouldn’t be there. But tonight there was no elation. His mind kept slipping into reverse gear as he bitterly castigated himself for being so brutal to Lucy. He wanted to drive over to Valhalla and find her, but having just arrived, he couldn’t abandon his cast and crew, who had endured so much.

Normally also at wrap parties he felt like a prince on a walkabout with everyone shaking his hand and thanking him for a wonderful shoot. But tonight, although no-one was openly hostile, he could feel their reproach, as palpable as the ever-increasing mountain of presents for Lucy on the polished table beside him.

‘What’s the matter with you all?’ he snarled at Valentin.

‘People may not want to work on Hercule unless you hire Lucy again,’ snapped back Valentin. ‘She was so good at calming down singers, and Oscar reckons she’s the best he’s ever worked with.’

‘That’s because the lazy sod gets more sleep if he doesn’t have to spend hours adjusting lights to compensate for the inadequacies of some make-up artist,’ said Tristan sourly.

‘Why d’you have to fire Lucy?’ demanded Ogborne, his mouth full of Danish blue.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Tristan turned away and, for the thousandth time, punched out Lucy’s number.

‘Don’t bug the guy,’ Sylvestre chided the rest of the crew. ‘You all seem to forget that while he was losing three crucial days’ filming he was in prison on a murder charge, being put through the mangle by the flics. He’s entitled to the odd tantrum.’

‘The Vodaphone you have called is not responding,’ the operator was now telling Tristan, ‘please try later, please try later,’ until he wanted to wring her neck and hurl his mobile through George’s huge window-pane. If only Wolfie were here, he’d have found Lucy.

‘You’ll never guess,’ hissed Flora to Baby, ‘Grisel and Simone are an item.’

‘Good God, d’you think she takes her turban off in bed?’

‘“You’re lovely to look at, delightful to know and heaven to kiss,”’ sang Alpheus, as he foxtrotted past with Serena.

‘“He said that he loved ’er, but, oh, ’ow he lie, oh, ’ow he lie, oh, ’ow he lie,”’ sang Giuseppe in Granny’s ear. ‘Serena is so boring. I want to come back, I miss you.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ said Granny, with decreasing conviction.

‘Howie get me Don Giovanni at La Scala,’ murmured Giuseppe, ‘so I can take you on long holiday and pay for all things. Please, Granville.’

‘Oh, my dear boy.’

‘Excuse me, Granville.’ Hermione was scrabbling like a terrier in Lucy’s pile of presents. ‘I’ve forgotten Maria. D’you think Lucy’ll mind awfully if she didn’t get one of my calendars?’

‘I expect she’ll live,’ said Granny.

Tristan shivered. ‘I’m not sure she will. I am bloody worried, Granny.’

‘Monsieur de Montigny,’ said the editor of Classical Music, who’d disguised himself as a waiter, ‘about Claudine Lauzerte?’

‘Who?’ said Tristan, as though he was dredging up some long-abandoned wreckage from the bottom of the sea.

‘Could we have a word?’

‘The word is “Non”,’ snapped Tristan, shoving dancers aside, until he reached Bernard. ‘For Christ’s sake, try Rozzy again. Ask her if she’s seen Lucy.’

‘Where’s Mikhail?’ grumbled Baby. ‘I want to sing the Friendship Duet with him.’

‘Perhaps he’s eloped with Rozzy,’ giggled Simone.

It was Mikhail’s last night in the capitalist sweet shop. As a going-home present for Lara, he had decided to remove the Murillo Madonna from the chapel. But finding Valhalla awash with police when he returned home after the final wrap, he decided to sleep until things quietened down.

Waking just after eleven, he took a considerable swig from his hip flask and set out. The house was sculptured grey in the moonlight, a sudden chill wind sent the cypresses hissing like snakes. Sliding through the shadows, Mikhail passed two nervously patrolling uniformed policemen and wished he had had slightly more to drink.

He froze at the sound of more footsteps. Slow, lonely, then quickening, coming relentlessly towards him, from the swirling mists emerged a black-cloaked figure gliding down the cloisters, then disappearing through the chapel door. Frantic for company, Mikhail fled in terror back to the production office, but found it totally deserted — everyone must have left for the party. Deciding this was very unPosa-like behaviour and ghosts couldn’t produce footsteps, he crept back again.

The chapel was unlocked, no-one appeared to be inside. Feeling his way along the smooth edges of the pews and then the choir stalls, guided by the light of the rising moon now spilling like milk, then like royal blue ink, now like red wine through the stained-glass windows, he reached the Madonna. How beautiful she was, more radiant than any moon. How she would enjoy an exciting jaunt to Moscow.

Mikhail got out his screwdriver and pliers. Somehow she must come off the wall. But as he started to tap and feel round her gilded frame, he nearly jumped through the vaulted roof.

The panel to which she was attached had swung open, revealing utter darkness, a horrible smell of Maestro and footsteps echoing far in the distance. Climbing inside, running a shaking hand round to the left, Mikhail found a key. Someone had been stupid or careless enough to leave it in a lock. Turning it, he felt a door open; groping inside, he found a light switch, and nearly fainted.

He was in a tiny cubby-hole. All round the walls were grotesquely graffiti’d photographs of Tabitha, Flora, Claudine Lauzerte, Granny, Beattie, Hermione and Rannaldini. Ears had been lopped off, squints and beards added, and everything smeared with blood and excrement. But interspersed with these horrors, beautiful and immaculate, were pictures of Tristan at all ages.

Also hanging from hooks were wigs, pewter grey, blond, dark and light brown, and Hermione’s apple-green cloak with the pink rose-lined hood, except bloodstains were now rose-patterning the green as well. The table was piled high with body-paints, knives, ammunition, huge, cruel scissors, a half-full bottle of Maestro, videos, tapes, tape-recorders, Rannaldini’s cigars, bottles marked ‘poison’ and cans of petrol. On top lay a ripped-open brown-paper parcel marked ‘Tristan de Montigny, Private and Confidential’. And against the table, a going-home present for Lara for the taking, was the Montigny Snake Charmer. Beside it, the floor was littered with fragments of cut-up photograph.

Mikhail was nearly gagging on the stench. Who could do these sick things? Grabbing the painting, he nearly dropped it, as a voice snapped, ‘What in hell are you doing here? I wouldn’t do anything silly, sir,’ as Mikhail lunged forward to grab a knife.

Mikhail had never dreamt he’d be pleased to see a policeman. Karen, who was following Gablecross, thought Mikhail looked like a bear raiding a larder. Then she saw the walls behind him and had to clap her hands over her mouth.

‘I find vicar’s hole full of interest,’ announced Mikhail.

‘How the fuck did you get in here?’ Shoving him out of the way, Gablecross took in the contents of the table. ‘Jesus!’

‘I enter chapel to pray my vife will return,’ said Mikhail piously, ‘I just examine vork of art when wall open.’

Lying bastard, thought Gablecross.

‘Look, Sarge, here’s a parcel addressed to Tristan — in Lucy’s handwriting,’ said Karen, in excitement. ‘And there’s a wig exactly like Rozzy’s hair and one like Hermione’s. Why should anyone want to pass themselves off as Rozzy?’

They had been unable to track her down in Make Up, and she wasn’t answering her mobile.

‘She must be on the way to the party, unless the murderer’s got her too… Oh, God.’

Crouching down on the floor, Karen gathered up fragments of photographs, horribly reminiscent of Rozzy’s cut-up dress.

‘Let’s go,’ said Gablecross. ‘Put that painting down, Mr Pezcherov.’

Outside, having alerted two of the uniformed officers to keep an eye on the cache, Gablecross took the wheel and they set out for the wrap party.

No wonder he complains about my slow driving, thought Karen, as they hurtled through overgrown tree tunnels, down narrow lanes where great banks of elder and wild rose obscured any views of things coming the other way. Black trees and telegraph poles flew past the window.

Karen was being thrown from one side of the back seat to the other, as with the light on and a road map on her knees as a table, she tried to piece together the shreds of photograph.

‘It still points to Lucy,’ she said sadly, as they shot past a sign saying four miles to Rutminster.

‘Why?’ snapped Gablecross.

‘These cut-up photographs are all of Rozzy. Perhaps Lucy couldn’t stand Tristan giving Rozzy all that money for a new wrap-party dress.’