Score!

‘How d’you explain this, then?’

Karen produced an Evening Standard photograph, obviously snapped by some fan, of Tristan in a bottle-green polo shirt and off-white chinos outside his car in Dover.

‘Maybe I was wearing that. I don’t notice clothes. I search for trouser for five minutes yesterday morning before I find I had them on.’ Tristan smiled helplessly — the lovable eccentric.

Gablecross wasn’t beguiled.

‘Betty says before you left for Paris on Saturday you were looking everywhere for that blue shirt, which Sally, knowing it was a favourite, had whipped to mend a rip in the shoulder and sew on more buttons. She left the shirt washed and ironed on your bed on Sunday morning. On Monday morning before you got back it had gone, and both Sally and Betty found your white chinos and green polo shirt in the dirty-clothes basket.’

Tristan raised his eyes to heaven. ‘They drag clothes off me — Rozzy too. They ’ave millions of clothes to wash, how can they remember the days?’

‘You didn’t drop into Paradise to change?’

‘Certainly not.’ He daren’t light a cigarette in case his hand shook.

But just as Betty and Sally had lovingly chronicled the progress of his clothes, so two village groupies with binoculars had seen his dark blue Aston parked in a secluded field down Rannaldini’s drive. Wheelmarks had been found here. Traces of similar plants, hemlock, water dropwort and lesser rosewort, had been found on Tristan’s wheels.

‘They probably flower in Dean Forest,’ said Tristan vaguely, as he started to sketch Karen. The damson bloom of her skin, even under the fluorescent light, was exquisite.

‘The lesser rosewort is only indigenous to Rutshire,’ snapped Gablecross.

Round and round went the wheels of the tape, taking down evidence to be used against him. Underneath the outward languor he’s shit-scared, thought Gablecross.

Tristan expressed no surprise that his prints were all over the murder weapon. ‘I was unhappy with the scene I’d shot. Earlier we use knife. While everyone sleep on Thursday afternoon, I took gun from Props, and try out hand movements in front of big mirror in my room. Having replaced it and the key, I type memo on Production writing paper saying I need.22 as well as Carlos’s important papers for reshoot on Friday night and leave it in Jessica’s in-tray.’

At first Tristan deflected every question coolly. He was enchanted by the recovery of his Lalique lily-patterned lighter which, he explained, had been a present from the crew after The Lily in the Valley, and which had vanished from his desk last week, and his signet ring, which he’d lost on the night of the auto da fe. ‘I lose weight. It must have slipped off.’

He’s lying, thought Gablecross. There was no way that shiny ring had been exposed to the elements for nearly three weeks.

‘Both lighter and ring were found near Rannaldini’s body in Hangman’s Wood,’ he said.

Careful, thought Tristan, for the hundredth time.

‘I must ’ave dropped them when I went to see Rannaldini previous.’

‘You often walk in the woods?’

‘Of course. I am man in love with the dark. I spent my childhood in cinemas or watching videos with curtains drawn.’

‘Your crème-de-menthe-flavoured chewing-gum was also found near the body.’

‘Anyone could have peenched that. I leave packs everywhere. My dear Detective Sergeant,’ Tristan yawned so hard he nearly put his jaw out, ‘I have been working on film about murder for nearly a year. I am not so stupid I litter possessions round Rannaldini’s body like Millais’ Sower and leave my prints all over murder weapon. Someone is framing me.’

‘Any idea who?’

‘Probably Rannaldini from the grave.’

At one moment, he nearly fell asleep. ‘I am bored talking about myself. Can’t we talk about you, Sergeant, or more excitingly you?’ He smiled at Karen, who blushed.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, she kept praying Tristan hadn’t done it. He was so glamorous — she admired the flawless bone structure beneath the smooth olive skin, the curls dark as winter dusk, the greyhound grace exaggerated by the ten-pound weight-loss. And he was so polite, opening doors when she went out, leaping to his feet when she came back. When he wasn’t pacing up and down, he was drawing or scribbling. ‘Why d’you keep making notes?’ she asked.

‘To stop me going crazy. I am in last stage of making film. It’s like a marathon winner being dragged away ten yards from the tape. Worst still, greatest scene in Don Carlos takes place in prison. Eef only I had had these experiences to draw on when I direct it. The claustrophobia, moths concussing themselves against overhead light, the tiny cell that makes Carlos’s dungeon look like Trafalgar Square. How much more realistic would I have made the Grand Inquisitor?’ He glared at Gablecross, who, refusing to rise, proceeded to take Tristan in minute detail through the early hours of Friday the thirteenth.

‘What did you do during the break?’