Score!

Realizing that Hermione had resorted to some last-minute blusher, a cursing Lucy rushed forward to tone down her cheeks.

‘Leave her alone,’ exploded Rupert. ‘She’s masked for most of this scene.’

At last everyone was in position.

‘Quiet behind the camera,’ shouted Wolfie.

‘Cut,’ shouted Tristan, a minute later. ‘What is the matter, Hermione?’

‘Flora is masking me.’

‘I’m guarding you,’ protested Flora.

‘And why’s she wearing dark glasses? So affected and attention-seeking.’

Flora burst into tears.

Rupert turned on Hermione. ‘Shut up, you fat cow.’

Hermione burst into tears. Down streaked her mascara from every individual lower lash. Lucy flipped.

‘You stupid man, I’ll need at least twenty minutes to patch her up.’

Rupert had just fired Lucy for insubordination, when Baby strolled out of the darkness. Unbuttoning his dinner jacket, he flashed a white T-shirt, saying, ‘Come back, Rannaldini, all is forgiven.’

There was a horrified silence.

Rozzy, who’d just arrived with beautifully ironed dress shirts for him and Mikhail, gave a gasp of disapproval. ‘How could you, Baby? Show some respect for the dead and consideration for poor Wolfie and Lady Rannaldini — and even Dame Hermione,’ she added, as an afterthought.

Rupert looked at Baby for a second then, to everyone’s amazement, he began to laugh.

62

Beattie Johnson had successfully passed herself off as Eulalia Harrison for nearly a week. Her most pressing problem was what to pack into Sunday’s six-thousand-word spectacular for the Scorpion and what to hold back for the book she intended to rush out, to be entitled With a Thong in My Parts.

The material, based on Rannaldini’s memoirs and the dirt she had picked up in the last few days, was God — or, rather, devil — given. She would have loved more time on the piece, but Valhalla gave her the creeps, she wanted to go back to dressing like a human being, and she was terrified that when Clive discovered that out of the promised million he would only get the already paid two hundred thousand, he would come after her with a bicycle chain.

The police also had a copy of the memoirs and were such frightful gossips they might leak some of the juicier material before Beattie got it into the paper. Finally her boss, Gordon Dillon, was clamouring for copy by early tomorrow and she had to break off tonight to dine with Alpheus who, she hoped, would put icing on the more outrageous cakes.

Sighing with pleasure, Beattie scrolled down potential headlines: ‘How Fun-loving Flora Swapped Her Dreary Developer For A Tasty Tenor.’ ‘How Champion Jockey Isa Lovell Swings Both Ways.’ ‘How Dame Hermione and Alpheus Were Caught In Flagrante.’ ‘How Granny Took a Trip to Parker’s Department Store.’ ‘The Dark Secret of Rosalind Pringle’s Lost Voice.’ ‘How Lust For My Stepdaughter, Tabitha, Consumed Me.’ ‘The Woman Tristan de Montigny Loves and Why He Must Never Have Children.’ (That was a chaud pomme de terre and needed to be checked out on a trip to Paris.) ‘Why Lady Griselda Never Married.’ ‘Why Hermione’s Hubby Encouraged Me To Keep Her Happy In Bed.’ ‘Helen Campbell-Black on Tabitha the Tramp and Taggie the Thicko.’

That would put Rupert into orbit, but not half so much as Rannaldini’s favourite canard: ‘How Rupert, Posing As the Perfect Dad To Adopt Two Kids, Flew to Buenos Aires to Seduce Abigail Rosen.’

Poor saintly Taggie would be very upset.

There were darker secrets: the sado-masochistic lengths to which Rannaldini had gone to titillate his jaded palate, the attempt to murder his stepson, Marcus, during the Appleton piano competition.

‘You were rotten to your rancid core, Roberto,’ crooned Beattie, as she flipped through his photographs of anorexic Helen, Rubenesque Hermione, ravishing Tabitha, and Rannaldini himself with Tristan’s mother, Delphine, more voluptuous than any page-three girl. That was a copy of Étienne de Montigny’s painting The Snake Charmer. Who the hell had stolen the original? The Scorpion had reporters looking for it everywhere.

Beattie’s favourite was Chloe and the goat. Such a shame that her proposed caption, ‘How Public-school Girls Love Their Nannies’, was too hot even for the Scorpion, and would have to wait for the book.

Outside, in the dark, haunted garden, she could see Tristan talking to Oscar. Her one regret was that, despite sleeping down the landing from him all week, she had neither pulled nor interviewed the gorgeous director.

Her mobile rang. It was Gordon Dillon. Had she any idea who killed Rannaldini?

‘None at all, the police are being singularly inept. They think it’s some psychopath who’ll kill again.’

‘Sooner you get that copy filed the better. If you pinpoint the chief suspects, we can run a competition next week asking readers to guess the murderer.’

‘We might market a board game like Cluedo, or, “Haven’t Got a Cluedo”, in Portland’s case.’

‘You sure no-one’s rumbled you?’