Score!

Reading on she realized that, throughout their courtship, Rannaldini had not only despised her but had been making love to other women, recording conquests even on their honeymoon, and interspersed with all this was his craving for Tabitha.

‘She smiled at me today. She was wearing a sawn-off shirt and when she raised her arm I saw the underside of her breast like a gull’s egg.’

With a howl of anguish, Helen went on the rampage. Tugging a drawer until it fell out, she found a draft will, dated 8 July. Bussage must have typed it that afternoon. Rannaldini was leaving everything to Cecilia, his second wife, to all his children by her and to that monster, Little Cosmo. Not a cent to Helen or Wolfie.

A flash of lightning lit up the wood as though it were day. A deafening clap of thunder ripped open the valley. Running outside, Helen threw up and up and up. Rannaldini must be stopped from publishing his memoirs, particularly if that fiendish Beattie Johnson had any say in it. Suddenly she heard singing: ‘These tears are from my soul.’

Hermione must be on her way to the watchtower. Jumping behind a huge sycamore, Helen didn’t notice at first the dancing fireflies of a helicopter landing in a nearby field, and men jumping out like an SAS raid and running across the grass.

Rannaldini had found no sign of Tabitha, but the voltage of the vodka he’d drunk and the bump on his head, which was still seeping blood into his hair, were making him dizzy. Wandering back in the direction of the watchtower, surprised to hear sheep bleating, he was suddenly distracted by someone singing Elisabetta’s part in the final duet: ‘These tears are from my soul,’ soared the voice.

‘You can see how pure are the tears women weep for heroes.

But we shall meet again in a better world.’

He was still a hero in Hermione’s eyes. She was showing him that no-one could sing the part better, and that she had forgiven him. Her top notes sounded as pure and lovely as they had in Paris, eighteen years ago. Hermione, who had given him more pleasure than any other woman. Why was he squandering his energy on silly young girls? Smiling, he walked down the ride and held out his arms.

‘My little darling,’ he called out.

38

Despite noisy encouragement from the spectators, Granny and Griselda lost 6–3, 6–4 to Wolfie and Simone. Leaving the others down at the court with plenty of drink, Wolfie loped back to the house to organize supper. In the larder he found a big plate of chicken à l’estragon, a ham, an asparagus and avocado salad, a chocolate roulade, a large blue bowl of raspberries, and was just thanking God for Mrs Brimscombe when she hobbled, white-faced and gibbering, into the kitchen. She refused a stiff drink and it was several minutes before she made any sense. She had seen a pale mauve light, she said. ‘It came bobbing out of Hangman’s Wood, across the big lawn, past the chapel and disappeared into the graveyard.’

‘Must have been someone with a torch.’

‘There was no footsteps, it went straight through the big yew hedge and a wall. Bobbing and pale mauve it was, Wolfie.’ Mrs Brimscombe put gnarled hands, shaking like windswept twigs, to her face. ‘Lights like that have been seen in Paradise before, come to guide the dead soul to his grave,’ she whispered.

Despite the stifling heat, Wolfie felt icy fingers on his heart.

‘It means there’s been a death, Wolfie.’

Refusing a lift home, she stumbled into the dark.

Wolfie was terrified. His father never allowed servants to sleep in the house although, to Helen’s distress, Clive and Bussage drifted in at all hours. For once, he was relieved to hear old bag Bussage tapping away on the keyboard in her office, and singing, probably on the radio, coming from Helen’s little study down the passage.

He must pull himself together and open some bottles. Grabbing a corkscrew from a kitchen drawer, he idly flipped on the answering-machine, and received the full horror of Tab’s message, that she’d been raped and Gertrude murdered.

‘This time I am going to kill my father!’ he yelled.

Oh, God, where was Tab? He must find her before Rannaldini caught up with her. The bastard! Wolfie dialled 1471 to discover where she’d rung from, then found out from directory inquiries that it was the call-box on the edge of Hangman’s Wood. No-one answered when he rang. It was so dark now, between flashes of lightning. He decided it would be quicker to drive, and found himself trying to open the BMW’s door with the corkscrew. But when he screeched to a halt beside the call-box, Tab had gone. There was blood all over the floor and the telephone. A terrible fear gripped him. Had that pale mauve light been guiding Tab?