Score!

‘At eleven at night?’ chided Gablecross. ‘And five hours later you’re seen coming out — long time to read the meter. Anyway, the French police have blown your safe and found Madame Lauzerte’s letters, which are not those you’d write to a son.’

Even the news he was free to go didn’t cheer Tristan.

‘Her name must be kept out of the papers,’ he pleaded.

‘Might have been if you’d levelled with us in the first place. Migraine on Thursday night indeed! When you were nearly three-quarters of an hour on the phone to her.’

‘Trying to reassure her the story wouldn’t come out,’ said Tristan despairingly.

‘Terrific for her street cred she’s been pulling such a gorgeous young guy,’ sighed Karen.

Over at Valhalla, a devastated Baby had, like Tristan, paced his room most of the night. How could Isa have stood him up for someone as two-faced and trivial as Chloe? Monday’s dawn and his heart were breaking simultaneously as he went out into the park. Torrential rain washed away his tears and the remnants of Rozzy’s make-up, which hadn’t been nearly as flattering as Lucy’s. Having caught and loaded his three horses into one of Rannaldini’s lorries, he set off very slowly, stopping every few minutes in case rage and shock made him drive into a wall.

Rupert’s house was ash blond in the early-morning sunshine. His dark woods lay as still as possible, like shaggy dogs knowing their coats will be too hot later in the day. As Baby rumbled into the yard, Rupert had just flown in from France. He was talking to a ravishing youth and to Dizzy, his comely head groom, who were both about to ride out. One beautiful horse after another, like a conjuror’s silk handkerchiefs, was emerging from the boxes.

Still in his polo gear, his face grey against his crimson shirt, Baby jumped down from the lorry.

‘D’you want to train my horses?’

‘I’d be delighted,’ said Rupert. Then, as he gave the ravishing youth a leg up, ‘I don’t think you’ve met my assistant, Lysander Hawkley.’

‘Hi,’ said Baby, looking Lysander up and down. ‘Paradise was in Rutshire, but it appears to have moved.’

‘Let’s unload your horses,’ said Rupert, ‘and then come and have breakfast.’

This latest development enraged Isa. How dare Baby team up with Rupert! Had he neatly forgotten he owed Isa for the last quarter?

‘I owe you nothing, you little toad. If you breathe a word of complaint, I’ll tell your father-in-law you were shagging Chloe the night of Rannaldini’s murder. Then I’ll tell the world how white you bled me.’

73

Gerald Portland’s gameplan was in tatters. A mob of reporters had fought their way through the deluge into the Rutminster courtroom, or failing that had ringed the building, spilling down adjacent lanes like the water hurtling down gutter and pavement. They had already written their intros about the Fall of the House of Montigny and the most deadly snake of them all. When news leaked out that Tristan had been freed, they immediately charged off to write bitchy pieces about utterly incompetent West Country police wasting public money and being no nearer to finding the killer. The Scorpion, who’d already set the headline ‘Beattie’s Butcher’ over a snarling photograph of Tristan, changed it to ‘Thickos’ in even larger type and decided to launch their poll asking readers, ‘Who Killed Beattie and Rannaldini?’

Only the Daily Mail rubbed their hands over Tristan’s secret tryst with Claudine and pored over copy and headlines for tomorrow’s paper in a security block. The rest of the media took off like starlings to Rutminster Hall to harass the polo shoot, where they were furious to find that George’s security guards kept them outside the front gates and that Rupert, still a chief suspect, had gone racing.

‘We’ve become a laughing stock,’ shouted Gerald Portland, who’d specially put on a new lilac-striped shirt to wow the press and felt it was utterly wasted on his Inner Cabinet. They would have to re-examine all the suspects.

A terrible weariness came over his utterly weary team.

Even people who’d covered for each other, like Tab and George Hungerford, or Rupert and Lysander, or Griselda, Granny and Bernard, who’d all claimed to be searching for balls together in Hangman’s Wood, could be lying. Chloe claimed to have seen both Alpheus and Isa, but neither of them had seen her. Hermione was still sticking to the story that she’d been in bed with Sexton. Meredith, Simone and Pushy had no-one to vouch for them at all, neither did Wolfie and Lucy, who’d pushed off abroad and, so far, neatly evaded Interpol. Even those with cast-iron alibis away from Valhalla, like Rozzy, Oscar and Valentin, would have to be checked out again.

There was a lot of money on Lady Rannaldini, who none of the investigating team liked very much. Bearing in mind that she claimed to have seen Rupert around ten twenty-five, but Lysander had sworn that he and Rupert didn’t discover Rannaldini’s dead body until they first approached the watch-tower as late as ten forty, meant someone was lying.