‘Numerous independent witnesses heard you singing in the wood on Sunday night, Dame Hermione. I suggest Rannaldini had humiliated you and Mr Kemp intolerably on Friday night. He was about to pull the plug on the sham of your marriage and replace you as Elisabetta with Gloria Prescott. Your career was on the slide, and Rannaldini had plans to marry again and make a total fool of you in his memoirs.’
‘Nonsense,’ squawked Hermione. ‘I insist on talking only to Timothy.’
Fanshawe, however, had the bit between his teeth. ‘I think you went into the wood, distracted Rannaldini with your lovely voice, and Mr Kemp did the business, getting his clothes and shoes covered with wild flowers in the struggle.’
‘Nonsense, nonsense! You have no proof. It was
‘Where was Little Cosmo while this was going on?’
‘Tucked up in bed, of course, where all good boys should be.’
Unfortunately for Sexton, a complaint had just been logged by the incident room from a couple driving towards the M4 around one a.m. last Monday morning.
They had been pushed into the hogweed on the verge by a lunatic overtaking in a maroon Roller, number plate SK 1. To their apoplexy, twenty minutes later, the road-hog had hurtled past in the same Roller but in the other direction going towards Rutminster, and shoving them into the hogweed again.
Outraged to learn that Sergeant Fanshawe had made a breakthrough on his patch — bonking on lady’s bedstraw indeed! — Gablecross set off for Penscombe, determined to succeed where Fanshawe had failed by nailing Tabitha. Not wanting anyone censoring his questions, however, he and Karen lurked over excellent fish pie in the Dog and Trumpet until the dark blue helicopter had carried Rupert, Lysander and Xavier off to Newmarket.
All round the pub walls were photographs of generations of Campbell-Blacks triumphing at horsy events. Noticing the ferocious intensity on Tabitha’s face as she rode a much older and larger boy off the ball in some Pony Club polo finals, Gablecross thought she would have had little difficulty in strangling Rannaldini. One of the specialities chalked on the blackboard was ‘Campbell-Black Chowder’.
‘What’s that made from? Shark and piranha?’ asked Gablecross, as he paid the bill.
‘No way,’ laughed the landlady. ‘That’s Taggie’s recipe. She’s the best thing that ever happened to that family. Got her hands full at the moment. Tab’s still in shock and won’t eat. Floods one moment, shouting the next. Rupert’s a continually erupting volcano. Just seen Taggie, dark glasses hiding her poor red eyes, driving off to Cotchester with Bianca.’
Better and better, thought Gablecross. With Taggie out, they must lose no time.
‘Shit,’ muttered Karen, as she drove up to the gates. ‘There’s even more paparazzi here than at Valhalla.’
Rupert’s beautiful house, pale gold as a drowsy lioness in the burning afternoon sunshine, made Gablecross’s Hungerford home seem even pokier. Fucking nobs.
As Ann-Marie, the au pair, knocked nervously on the study door, a shrill voice shouted, ‘I don’t care what Daddy or Tag say, I’m not having any lunch.’
Having admired Tab’s amazing beauty in the silver frames in Helen’s sitting room, and without clothes between the pages of Rannaldini’s memoirs, Gablecross was appalled by the reality.
Her normally flawless skin was grey and blotchy, the bruise on her cheekbone parsnip yellow, her eyes reddened and staring. The drastic weight loss had given her the prematurely aged look of a terminal anorexic. Her very loose signet and wedding rings clashed as she ran a hand covered with more yellow bruises through her lank hair.
Despite the heatwave, she wore grey cords and an inside-out dark green cashmere cardigan. On a nearby table were a billowing ashtray and a three-quarters-drunk vodka and tonic. All over the floor, open at the murder hunt, were today’s papers, which Tab had pinched from the kitchen, despite Taggie trying to hide them. Newmarket was on Channel Four with the sound turned down.
Slumped on a blue and white striped sofa, Tab was flipping through a photograph album. When Gablecross and Karen flashed their ID cards, she said would they please go away. To make up for her mistress’s rudeness, Sharon jumped off the sofa, grabbed a lemon-yellow silk cushion and carried it over to Gablecross singing with delight.
‘Lovely dog.’ Gablecross patted her.
‘Lovely flowers,’ said Karen enviously. ‘You are popular.’
‘It’s like a funeral parlour. Can you get me another vodka and tonic,’ Tab shouted, in a slurred voice, to Ann-Marie.
Mixing tranks and booze, thought Karen, as she clocked a Stubbs of two chestnut mares and a Turner of Cotchester Cathedral against a rain-dark sky on the walls.
‘D’you want a cup of tea before you go?’ asked Tab.
