Score!

It was nearly dark. Walking towards the Valhalla car park he nearly had a fit as he saw a young boy sobbing in Rupert’s arms. Then he realized it was Flora, back for a brief appearance as Elisabetta’s bodyguard, who’d just been subjected to another short back and sides for the sake of continuity.

‘George is a ghastly bore and a pleb, darling,’ Rupert was saying, ‘and far too old for you.’

‘You’re older than Taggie, and you’re happy,’ wept Flora.

‘We’re not talking about me and I’m certainly not a pleb. George is so insanely jealous, no-one as gorgeous as you stands a chance. If he’s kneecapped old biddies in the past, he’s quite capable of doing you a mischief and putting a contract on Rannaldini.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ sobbed Flora. ‘I love him so much.’

Passing Wardrobe, Gablecross saw Rozzy Pringle getting dress shirts ready for the extras in the ball scene. Looking at the big hot iron in her hand, the scissors and pinking shears hanging from the walls and the safety-pins and needles spilling out of boxes, he thought there were plenty of murder weapons here.

‘Sergeant Gablecross,’ called Rozzy, blushing slightly, ‘you’ve been working so hard, I thought you might have forgotten your wedding anniversary on Sunday so I got a card and wrapped up some presents.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ Gablecross spoke roughly to hide the lump in his throat. ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘It’s a present — or presents.’ She laughed. ‘You’ve been so sweet to us.’

‘Not what Rupert Campbell-Black thinks.’

‘He’s a brute.’

‘You’ve saved my bacon. I had forgotten,’ said Gablecross gratefully, as he scribbled, ‘All my love, Tim,’ in a Happy Anniversary card. ‘Thanks so much. Every man should have a woman like you.’

‘I wish my husband thought so,’ sighed Rozzy.

It was a highwayman’s night, with racing black clouds and the stars making only cameo appearances, except for blazing Jupiter, still pursuing a glittering yellow half-grapefruit of a moon.

Gablecross couldn’t wait to get home to Margaret. He needed to run his latest suspicions past her and have a moan about Karen getting on his nerves. Approaching the Greenview estate, passing the waiters wearily closing up the Chinese restaurant, he reached in the glove compartment for Hermione’s CD, saw Brian Chambers’s blue Volvo coming the other way, and nearly drove into a wall. Passing his house he saw Margaret in the kitchen in her dressing-gown. She didn’t look glammed up. Maybe they’d just had sex, or she knew Brian well enough not to bother too much. Swinging the car round, Gablecross drove over to Rutminster Hall.

He knew, having got away with a solo raid on Clive, and having received a warning from Portland this afternoon, he was putting his career on the line. But, like a junkie needing a fix, he had to follow his hunch. If George Hungerford had experienced a quarter of the murderous rage he himself had just felt towards Brian Chambers… And he was not taking Karen. A tough, uncommunicative businessman would never open up in front of a woman.

Rutminster Hall lay on the other side of town, as far as possible from the Greenview estate. George wouldn’t spoil his own rolling hillside with eczema rashes of little houses, thought Gablecross savagely. No lights were on, but music was pouring so loudly out of the speakers that George didn’t hear the car coming up the drive. Only people who lived in magnificent parks could get away with playing music that loudly. Only when Gablecross banged the car door did George come racing round the side of the house.

‘Flora!’ For a second he seemed to disintegrate with disappointment, then seeing Gablecross’s ID card, he brusquely invited him in.

‘I haven’t got long.’ It was a lie; he had all eternity to long for Flora.

Gablecross knew George was a mate of the Chief Constable, so he’d better tread carefully. He was also aware that George was a major player in the world property market who had often sailed too close to the wind, but who had shown a softer side as managing director of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, where he had fallen in love with its youngest player, Flora Seymour.

This was the man who had ruined Gablecross’s view and made the value of his house plummet, but he couldn’t hate him because George looked so desolate. Thin, unshaven, black beneath the eyes, he hadn’t slept since his row with Flora, and was now, like Citizen Kane, dying of loneliness inside his vast ugly castle.

They sat on the terrace, George with an untouched whisky, Gablecross with a Perrier. Below them lay new-mown hay like a choppy pale grey sea. Through a gap in the trees, as if mocking them, stood a moonlit temple of Flora.

‘Nice place.’

‘Morgue without Flora.’

When asked what he had been up to on Sunday, George claimed he had stayed in to watch a video of the orchestra’s recent tour of Switzerland. They had played Britten’s piano concerto and Glazunov Three. His staff had Sunday night off, so there were no witnesses.

‘A helicopter landed in Valhalla.’