Score!

Wolfie nodded. ‘Here’s a note.’ He retrieved a grey crumpled piece of paper from some catmint.

‘Meet me in the Unicorn Glade at one fifteen,’ read Rupert.

‘I’ll have that, if you please, Mr Campbell-Black,’ said Gablecross firmly. ‘No-one is to touch the body. After we’ve searched Miss Johnson’s room, I’d like statements from all you gentlemen.’

65

As Gablecross and Karen panted up the stairs they were met by Helen in a coffee-coloured silk dressing-gown and a frightful state.

‘I haven’t had a wink of sleep. Every light in the place has been blazing all night. Liberty Productions are damn well going to pick up the bill. Eulalia’s phone’s been ringing all night too, and her room’s locked so I can’t get in to answer it. It’s too bad, after all the hospitality we’ve given her.’

She was even more hysterical after Beattie’s door had been broken down to find drink rings and cigarette burns all over the Jacobean furniture, black coffee spilt on the priceless Persian rugs and scrumpled tissues all over the floor.

Gablecross’s first impression was that Beattie had done a runner. Except for an ashtray brimming over with fag ends, her desk had been cleared. There was no hard copy, notebooks, floppy disks, tapes of interviews or telephone conversations. All the drawers were empty. In the bathroom, however, was a sponge-bag and a bottle of black hair dye.

As they discovered her computer smashed on the floor, her mobile rang. ‘Answer it,’ snapped Gablecross. ‘Pretend you’re Beattie.’

‘Hi, there,’ purred Karen.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ It was the graveyard tones of Gordon Dillon. ‘And where’s the fucking copy?’

‘What copy?’ asked Karen innocently.

‘Stop playing games. Six thousand fucking words. I’ve been trying to get you all night. I hope you locked up the fucking memoirs.’

‘What memoirs?’ Really, reflected Karen. As a journalist Mr Dillon should know not to use the same adjective more than once on the same page.

‘Rannaldini’s, for Christ’s sake. Are you pissed?’

‘There’s nothing here.’

‘Something must have been saved on the machine.’

‘Nothing. I’m afraid the computer’s been dropped and its entrails are spilling all over the floor. You could consult them like the Romans did. They might tell you who killed Rannaldini.’

Karen’s accent had slipped westward.

‘Who the fuck’s that?’

‘Detective Constable Karen Needham of Rutminster CID,’ and ignoring Gablecross’s horrified expression and furiously waving hands, ‘I’m afraid a body has been found, and Miss Beattie Johnson appears to have been spiked like her rotten copy.’

‘You’ll get fired,’ roared Gablecross.

‘No, I won’t,’ said Karen, who could hardly speak for laughing. ‘Gerry utterly loathed Beattie.’

Once again Gerald Portland was absolutely hopping.

‘I put twenty men on night duty at Valhalla,’ he shouted at the emergency meeting, three hours later, ‘and they spend all night drooling over Gloria Prescott, stuffing themselves with roast pork and don’t notice a socking great murder two hundred yards away.

‘We’ll be a laughing stock, and the Scorpion will lynch us. They are alleged to have paid a million for those memoirs. They’re going to bill that fucking bitch as the greatest journalist since Homer. They’re offering fifty thousand for information leading to the capture of her murderer, so no-one will call us any more. Jesus!’

Portland had indeed been no lover of Beattie. While the rest of the media had nicknamed him Pin-up Portland, she had called him Inspector Portly, just because he’d gained a few pounds on a Caribbean cruise, and described his upwardly mobilized accent as ‘so camp you could cut it with a Boy Scout’s penknife’.

‘How come none of you realized it was her?’ he shouted at his team.

‘Bloody good disguise, Guv’nor.’ DC Lightfoot scratched his head. ‘Could have sworn she was the spinster maiden-aunt type.’

‘I’d forget that line of reasoning if I were you,’ snapped Portland. ‘Pathologist says she’s got a vagina like the M1.’

‘I beg your pardon.’ DC Smithson pursed her lips as the men grinned.

‘So many people have been up and down, stupid, it’s very well worn. It’s early days, but the pathologist also reckons she was killed between one and two, and had intercourse perhaps half an hour before that. The plants stuffed up her vagina appear to contain some rare specimens.’

‘Mustard and cress,’ giggled Karen.

‘Someone’, Portland threw her a look of fond reproof, ‘appears to have bitten Beattie’s shoulder — we can DNA that. Her specs were broken so we’re looking for fragments on the murderer’s clothes.’

They had already found the murder weapon, a.22, chucked into the long grass by the Devil’s Stream. It had been taken from Props.

‘Who has a key?’ Fanshawe asked.