Score!

52

Gerry Portland was outraged when Gablecross emptied the contents of the safe on to his desk.

‘Tim-out-on-a-limb again. How dare you go off intimidating suspects and blowing safes? Nothing has been printed.’

‘There were two of them, and Bobby Clintock’s much bigger than me.’

‘You could have torched the evidence. What’s the defence going to say to this?’ Having bollocked him, however, Portland was soon immersed in the material. ‘Jesus! Jesus. How the hell did Rannaldini pull birds like that?’

As a result, the morning’s briefing was lively, excited and often ribald.

‘If you see steam coming out of my ears,’ announced Portland, ‘it’s because Tim’s got hold of a copy of the memoirs. We also have the missing tape from the answering-machine at Valhalla.’ He pressed the play button. ‘Oh, Wolfie, help me! Rannaldini’s just raped me, and he’s killed Gertrude. Oh, please get Sharon from the cottage!’

Tab’s clipped, breathless voice faltered as tears took over.

Despite the sun streaming through the window, a shiver went through the room.

‘It was after hearing this tape’, went on Portland, ‘that young Wolfgang announced he was going to kill his father. If he’d gone to the watch-tower and read the draft will, he’d have had the added incentive that he’d been disinherited. Rupert also received a phone call from Tabitha a few minutes later.’

‘Rupert looked capable of murder last night,’ admitted Gablecross.

Fanshawe, who was livid about Gablecross’s latest coup, and Debbie Miller had been to Magpie Cottage yesterday. The only unusual thing on Monday morning, Betty had told them, was that Tab’s and Isa’s double bed had been neatly made. On the other hand, the bathroom had been a shambles. Fanshawe had pocketed a pale coral lipstick, Lancôme’s Brilliant Beige, Clinique blusher, base and powder, and a hairbrush full of blonde hairs. Kicked under the bath, perhaps so Isa shouldn’t see it, had been the packaging from a newly opened bottle of scent called Quercus.

‘Perhaps she didn’t want her husband to know she was on the pull,’ said Debbie.

Gablecross reported on his and Karen’s visit to Miss Bussage. ‘The lady was very bitter about her sacking and unashamedly confessed she had meant to steal a copy of the memoirs and photographs. Said she was protecting Rannaldini’s reputation.’

‘I reckon she was going to flog them,’ piped up Karen.

‘Certainly enjoyed being flogged,’ said Portland, grinning down at the photo of Bussage roped to the kitchen table.

‘Disgusting,’ chuntered DC Smithson.

‘Anyway,’ went on Gablecross, ‘she reckons everything, including the draft will, was switched in the files before she put it in her briefcase, which she did immediately after Wolfie sacked her on Monday afternoon. He allowed her only an hour to pack because she’d slagged off Tab, and she had the key to the briefcase on her. Bussage suspects Wolfie and Lady Rannaldini, because they were both disinherited — and, of course, Clive. But no-one featured in those memoirs would be too happy to have them floating about.’

‘The riveting thing she told us’, said Karen in excitement, ‘was that Rannaldini visited James Benson on Friday to discuss having his vasectomy reversed.’

This made everyone sit up.

‘Not the most pleasant or successful of operations,’ observed Portland. ‘Rannaldini must have been thinking of having more children. Any idea who with?’

‘Hardly Lady Rannaldini,’ said Fanshawe, who was desperate to regain the ascendancy. ‘That marriage was into injury time. Gloria Prescott claims he proposed marriage to her.’

‘He was clearly closer to Harriet Bussage than her unprepossessing appearance would suggest,’ said Gablecross, ‘and he was cuckoo about Tabitha.’

‘He was shooting blanks on Sunday night,’ mused Fanshawe. ‘But one way to torture Lady Rannaldini, Wolfgang, Dame Hermione and Rupert Campbell-Black in one stroke would have been to have got Tabitha pregnant.’

As he talked Sergeant Fanshawe was edging backwards so he could look at the photographs over Portland’s shoulder. His jaw dropped at the sight of a naked Tab.

‘Christ, she’s beautiful. Any man would kill for her. Although,’ he edged closer, ‘judging from that pickie, she and Rannaldini must have been familiar for a long time — the leaves are off the trees. Perhaps she’s lying about the rape.’

‘May not have known the photograph was being taken,’ said Gablecross, and he explained about Rannaldini having every room fitted with bugs, hidden cameras and two-way mirrors. ‘Every night he watched his guests in bed on television monitors.’

‘Did they know and perform?’ mused Portland.

‘Can I have a seat in the stalls?’ pleaded DC Lightfoot, and was kicked by DC Smithson.

‘So the murderer’s not only got the keys to every bedroom but the code to every safe, secret cache and priest-hole in Valhalla,’ said Gablecross.

‘What we’ve got to establish is, was Rannaldini the murderer’s only target? Did he or she kill to stop the memoirs? Christ.’ Portland shuddered at a hideously humiliating photograph of an emaciated Helen Campbell-Black. ‘Or to steal them from the watch-tower and flog them to the press for some vast sum? Also, with a second set on the loose, stolen from Bussage’s briefcase, the murderer may kill again to get hold of them.’

There had been another sighting on Sunday night of Tristan de Montigny, said DC Lightfoot.

‘Janice, Rannaldini’s groom, saw him sneaking into the south wing in a dark green polo shirt and white chinos around nine ten. But he rolled up at Valhalla the next day in jeans and a peacock-blue shirt, so he changed his clothes for some reason.’

‘Who’s close to him?’ asked Portland.

‘Lucy Latimer,’ said Gablecross.

‘You and Karen go and see her.’

Janice had also volunteered that Tabitha’s husband, the Black Cobra, had also, most unusually, rolled up at the yard to look at Rannaldini’s horses at around eight thirty, and had received a call on his mobile, DC Smithson consulted her notebook, around nine twenty-five. ‘He said, “It’s no good, I can’t manage it, the coast isn’t clear,” and rang off. He left the yard around nine thirty.’

‘He presumably wouldn’t have been very pleased that Rannaldini had raped his wife.’

‘Doubt if he’d show it. Cool customer, quite cool enough to murder.’

‘You’re a racing buff, Tim,’ said Portland. ‘Go and chat him up.’

‘And how did you get on with Rupert Campbell-Black, Tim?’ asked Fanshawe, who knew that he hadn’t and who was livid Gablecross seemed to be Portland’s pet today.

‘We couldn’t get near him,’ said Gablecross tersely. ‘Baby Spinosissimo interests me. He’s as elusive as Campbell-Black, but all that drinking and extravagant camping it up means something’s eating him.’

‘Probably Flora Seymour,’ quipped Fanshawe, pointing to one of the photographs of Flora and Baby entangled on the lawn at Angels’ Reach. ‘He’s clearly not all gay.’

‘Try and pin him down today, Tim,’ said Portland. ‘And what about Dame Hermione?’

‘We couldn’t dent her either,’ sighed Gablecross. ‘Swears she never left home on Sunday night. Claims to have been talking to her husband in Australia while the murder was taking place.’

‘Melbourne CID can check that,’ said Portland.

‘She wasn’t watching Pride and Prejudice,’ protested Karen proudly, ‘and I had a word with her maid Ortrud, who detests her, who said Hermione had wild flowers and grass all around the hem of her négligée next morning.’

‘Well done,’ Portland beamed at her. ‘You go and see her, Kevin,’ he added, as a sop to Fanshawe. ‘She likes charmers.’

‘She asked DS Gablecross to call her Hermione,’ giggled Karen. ‘It was hilarious when he shook hands with her waxwork when we arrived.’

Fanshawe’s guffaw was easily the loudest.

I hate that man, thought Gablecross.

Portland was flipping through the photographs, wincing as he came to the ones of Granny. ‘Anything on Granville Hastings?’

‘He’s due back tomorrow,’ said Karen.

‘And that sexy Gloria Prescott?’

Fanshawe blew a kiss to heaven. ‘We had a brief word as she was leaving on Monday, said she was calling her mum at the time of the murder, which checks out. Debbie and I’ve arranged to see her tomorrow.’

‘Lucky sod. And what did Lady Griselda have to say?’ Portland asked DC Lightfoot and DC Smithson.

‘She’s made a statement,’ DC Lightfoot went rather pink, ‘that she was looking for “bloody balls” while Rannaldini was murdered or she’d have done the “bloody job” herself, because she was so furious with Rannaldini for ripping up the beautiful dress she’d made for Dame Hermione.’

‘Meredith Whalen was even more forthright.’ DC Smithson pursed unpainted lips. ‘He said why didn’t we buck up and bury Rannaldini so he could organize a grand ball for three hundred people to dance on his grave?’

Portland laughed — so everyone else did.

‘Has Meredith got an alibi?’ he asked.

DC Lightfoot puffed out his cheeks and went even pinker. ‘Well, he claims to have sloped off and had a half-hour loveydovey chat with his boyfriend, Hermione’s husband Bobby, in Australia after he’d finished umpiring the finals — oh my God!’

‘You’re right, lad,’ chipped in Gablecross. ‘That was when Dame Hermione claims she was having a loveydovey chat with Bobby in Australia.’

‘Perhaps they were on a conference call,’ giggled Karen.

‘Melbourne can sort that out too,’ grinned Portland. ‘Rozzy Pringle, poor lady, checks out,’ he went on. ‘But why did Rannaldini make a note to ring Glyn, her husband? You and Karen go and see him, Tim.’

‘I could have cheered when Rozzy told that MCP Campbell-Black to eff off,’ said DC Smithson.

Every surface of Portland’s immaculate office was now covered with paper cups and overflowing ashtrays. As other pairs were given their orders, Gablecross fought sleep. Buoyed up by the findings of the safe, the team were now exhausted at having to assimilate so much information and in need of another fix.

It came from the gallant fingertip team who, having crawled through brushwood, brambles and nettles, had finally concluded their search. Their findings had been passed on to the lab to be printed and analysed, but included, said Portland, as he opened an orange file, an opaque glass lighter patterned with lilies.

‘Tristan de Montigny was looking for his on Monday morning and he made a film called The Lily in the Valley,’ said Karen excitedly.

‘Good girl. An empty two-litre bottle of vodka. That’ll be Mikhail Pezcherov’s,’ said Fanshawe.

‘Green chewing-gum, probably chucked out by some young lady sweetening her breath for a lover’s tryst,’ went on Portland. ‘Vomit containing sweetcorn, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, a tumbler engraved with Rannaldini’s initials and marked with coral-pink lipstick, a handsome gold signet ring, a dark crimson lipstick.’

Chloe, thought Karen, with satisfaction.

Among other discoveries were a blue petrol can reeking of paraffin, several used condoms, a dog lead, a number of green and pink tennis balls and a bullet lodged deep in the ground. Also noted had been a crushed clump of deadly nightshade, hemlock and agrimony.

‘We’ll provide you with the list.’ Portland glanced at his watch. ‘That should give you plenty to be going on with.’ Then, turning to DC Lightfoot with a sceptical grin, ‘Any more on Rannaldini’s ghost in the highwayman’s cloak signing Lady Griselda’s receipt?’

Lightfoot shook his head. ‘Nothing, except we searched Wardrobe and Rannaldini’s house. Not a trace of the cloak anywhere.’

‘Oooh, how creepy,’ shivered Debbie.

‘People on the unit think so too,’ said DC Lightfoot. ‘They’re very jumpy.’

‘Clive is certain Rannaldini’s still around,’ volunteered Gablecross.

‘They’re a bunch of hysterics,’ said Portland slowly, ‘but we mustn’t rule out the fact that the murderer could be impersonating Rannaldini to give himself anonymity and putting the shits up everyone. Now, bugger off, all of you.’ He waved the video tapes, ‘I’m going to spend the morning at the pictures.’

Then, as everyone shuffled out of the room with their paper cups and ashtrays, he said, ‘Mind staying on a second, Tim?’

Fanshawe looked delighted: Gablecross was clearly in for a bollocking. Gablecross thought so too, until Portland smiled engagingly.

‘Count yourself publicly reprimanded,’ he said, slamming the door. ‘But well done, we’ve made a big step forward. Let’s chew the cud and have a decent coffee,’ he added, switching on the percolator, ‘then go and see what the pathologist has to tell us. Her report’s going to be longer than Rannaldini’s memoirs. I called off the press conference. You were right. Lady Rannaldini’s off the wall, and Dame Hermione wanted to charge twenty thousand for the use of her services.’