Score!

Flora appeared frozen to the oak tree; only her knees were quivering as much as George’s flowers. Next minute Trevor had erupted jauntily from the maze, nose caked in mud from burying a pork bone, and giving a joyous bark he hurtled across the grass, squashing the flowers as he landed in his master’s arms. Once again George nearly ground to a halt, but having dried his eyes on a wriggling Trevor, he managed to falter to the end.

There was a long silence, followed by a burst of cheering and clapping. Swinging round, blinking incredulously, Flora catapulted across the grass, crashing into George’s chest. The arm that wasn’t holding Trevor and the flowers clamped around her.

‘Don’t say anything. It’s my fault, I’m such a stupid tosser,’ mumbled George, as he led her off down the rose walk into the sunrise.

‘Oh, how sweet,’ sobbed Lucy, running off into the park. Tristan wanted to race after her and apologize for being so sarcastic earlier, but he still had so much to do.

‘Why can’t Don Carlos have a happy ending?’ said Griselda, wiping her eyes on a tablecloth.

Even Rupert and Gablecross blew their noses noisily.

‘I’ve always thought Flora a drama queen,’ said Hermione sourly.

‘Now, now, Hermsie,’ said Sexton reprovingly, as he topped up her glass, ‘Flora’s a sweetheart, and didn’t Rupert make a terrific Cupid bringing them togevver?’

Baby, however, who’d been in low spirits all evening, drained his glass of red, turned to Rupert with an expressionless face and said, ‘Thank you, Mr Cupid-Black, for ruining the only chance of happiness I’ve ever had,’ and wandered off unsteadily towards the house.

‘Another drama queen,’ said Chloe scornfully.

‘What’s the stupid queer going on about?’ asked Rupert, in bewilderment.

‘Irrespective of his sexual orientation,’ said Tristan sharply, ‘Baby really loves Flora.’

‘At least George and Flora’s is one relationship Beattie Johnson hasn’t screwed up,’ said Sexton. ‘What’s up for this evening?’

‘We’ll really have to motor,’ Tristan reeled off a punishing list of cover shots, ‘and we’ve got to shoot Alpheus praying before his coronation and Hermione walking up the aisle to join him, and I must reshoot Carlos removing Posa’s knife. I’ve decided it would work better with a gun, and the scene in the centre of the maze didn’t work either, too small and claustrophobic. The Unicorn Glade is ringed with yew hedge. We could fake it as the centre of the maze.’

‘Let’s go and look,’ said Oscar, helping himself to a second plate of scrambled eggs for the journey. A yawning Valentin brought a bottle and glasses as well.

‘See you in ’alf an ’our, Princess,’ whispered Sexton to Hermione, before belting after the others.

A thrush was singing joyfully, ‘Night is over, night is over.’

Had Rannaldini deliberately grown roses up his nymphs to see thorns plunging cruelly into their naked flesh? wondered Rupert. A faun, leering wickedly out of ferns snaking above a water trough, seemed to wink at him.

‘What are we going to do about that Beattie Johnson?’ muttered Sexton in an undertone. If Hermsie found out he hadn’t been to Eton, she’d drop him like an ’ot coal.

‘Take her out,’ said Rupert. ‘George has some ideas, we’ll thrash it out after this.’

Noticing crows circling like vultures above the Unicorn Glade, he quickened his step, admiring the stone rabbits and hounds frolicking peacefully with cats and foxes amid the flowers. But although the sun no longer cast a rosy glow, the little white unicorn snorting and pawing in the centre had become a strawberry roan, and Eulalia in her flowing black robes, resting against his raised head, had become an hermaphrodite.

As the men moved closer, they noticed an expression of terror grotesquely contorting her features. Then they realized it was her blood streaming over the unicorn’s noble head and running in rivulets down his shaggy mane. His grooved horn had pierced through her back and was now rising from her belly like a bloodstained phallus.

‘Jesus.’ Rupert was the first to speak. ‘It’s Beattie. She’s finally stabbed herself in the back.’

‘Are you sure?’ drawled Oscar, hastily refilling his glass, draining it, then filling it for Valentin.

‘Quite,’ said Rupert, lifting her skirt as he had so often in the past. ‘Look, there’s a cat tattooed on the inside of her left thigh. To get into the part she’s even dyed her bush black.’

‘And green,’ said Oscar, pointing to the handful of wild flowers Beattie had earlier stuffed between her legs.

A little tape-recorder had been attached to her thigh, but the tape had been removed.

‘Her spectacles are broken.’ Tristan picked up the buckled, paneless granny glasses.

The resourceful Ogborne, never without a camera, was taking pictures even of the ashen Wolfgang throwing up into some mauve campanula.

‘She’s also been shot,’ said Sexton, walking round the body. ‘There’s an exit wound big as a grapefruit on this side. You all right?’ he asked a returning Wolfie, who, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, looked terrified and absurdly young.