Score!

‘Out?’ thundered Hermione, as if she’d sallied forth on some junket. ‘I shall never go out again. I must speak with them, for Rannaldini’s sake.’ She seized the telephone. ‘Mr Rusbridger? Alan?… No, my producer has brought me fresh fruit and Belgian chocolates to keep up my strength for the sake of my public.’

‘Do you know what Helen is wearing for the funeral?’ she asked Sexton, as she came off the telephone five minutes later. ‘Could you ask Lady Griselda to pop in this afternoon? I shall wear black, of course, and a veil.’

‘Thin enough to show the tragedy etched on your lovely features.’ Howie was laying it on with a JCB.

Karen got the giggles again, and had to take her notebook over to the window and gaze at the dried-up river as Gablecross tried to pin down Hermione on her movements on Sunday night. People had seen her returning around eight in Rannaldini’s helicopter.

‘I had been concertizing at an open-air gala in Milan. Because the proceeds were going towards a new hospital,’ added Hermione virtuously, ‘I only charged my charity fee of sixty thousand pounds.’

That’s more than I earn in four years, thought Karen in disgust.

‘Around the time Rannaldini died,’ Gablecross pressed on, ‘at about ten thirty, several witnesses heard you singing a number from Don Carlos in the wood. They said a voice had never sounded more exquisite.’

‘Then it must have been mine,’ twinkled Hermione.

‘Did you walk through the wood on Sunday night?’

‘Timothy, Timothy, if I sang pianissimo from the garden at River House, my voice would float across to Valhalla, but I didn’t go out. It must have been a tape or a CD. Rannaldini had plenty. He was clearly comparing them with the rushes.’

‘People have said your voice was unaccompanied.’

‘I often sang for him alone.’

‘So you didn’t leave home at all?’

‘Certainly not. I rushed back from Milan to spend quality time with my son Cosmo. I spent the rest of the evening recharging my spiritual batteries. I needed to be fresh for Monday, in case Rannaldini wanted to reshoot Act Five. Or, if he’d carried on with the schedule, I had an important ballroom scene in Act Two, Scene Two. I won’t pass for nineteen if I don’t get my eight hours,’ she added skittishly.

‘What else did you do?’

‘I was tucked up in bed with camomile tea, like the Flopsy Bunnies,’ Hermione put on a soppy face, ‘by nine o’clock, to watch Pride and Prejudice. It’s my favourite novel.’

‘Who’s your favourite character in it?’ asked Karen innocently.

‘Emma Woodhouse,’ replied Hermione, without missing a beat. ‘She’s beautiful and headstrong. Fans have often compared us.’

For a second, Karen’s eyes met Sexton’s. She wondered if she recognized pleading.

‘And my husband Bobby rang me from Australia for a chat around ten forty-five,’ said Hermione airily.

‘Does your husband mind Little Cosmo being Rannaldini’s son?’ asked Gablecross.

‘Not in the least. We have a very close and open marriage, Timothy. Bobby is devoted to Little Cosmo.’

Gablecross couldn’t dent her. Rannaldini’s playing the evil tape on Friday night, his flirtations with Pushy, Serena, Cheryl, Lara, even Tabitha, his threats to replace her with a younger singer had been all part of a game to goad her into singing more beautifully.

‘What he loved about me, Timothy, was my ability to rise to the challenge. Ours was a special relationship. Are you married?’

‘My wife’s your greatest fan,’ blushed Gablecross.

Surreptitiously scraping a sticker saying ‘American Bravo Library Copy, Do Not Remove’ from its case, Hermione brandished a CD called Only for Lovers.

‘What’s your wife’s given name? I’ve had two thousand five hundred and twenty-two letters and lost over a stone, you know. I simply can’t eat.’

‘I’ve roasted a little chicken for lunch,’ said Sexton, bustling in in a striped apron.

‘Well, perhaps I could manage a slice,’ admitted Hermione, as she wrote her name on the CD sleeve.

Shoulders shaking frantically, Karen was gazing intently at the river again.

‘We’re off, Karen,’ said Gablecross icily.

‘Leave the poor child,’ cried Hermione. ‘She is only weeping, like the whole world, for Maestro’s death.’ Then, catching sight of Rannaldini’s photograph on the CD case, handsome and smiling with his hands on her bare shoulders, Hermione broke into genuine tears of despair. ‘You will bring his killer to justice, won’t you, Timothy?’

On the way out, Sexton made a brief statement.

‘I ought to fill you in on my movements on Sunday night, Tim. Frankly it was Sunday, Bloody Sunday. I ’ad a hellish day trying to drum up money. Rannaldini had fucked us with his delaying tactics, refusing to release any dosh until Tristan gave in to his demands.

‘I left London after midnight, shattered. But I wanted to be there on Monday morning in case fings turned nasty after Rannaldini playing that evil tape on Friday night. Anyway, Wally and I was about to come off the motorway wiv only the hard shoulder to cry on, when Bernard rang and said Rannaldini’d copped it.’