Score!

Then she remembered James’s cries growing more and more piteous. Someone must have tortured him. She started to cry, but as her eyes and nose streamed she had nothing on which to wipe them. Her ankle ached where she’d twisted it, her legs throbbed with nettle stings and, in the mirror opposite, her dim reflection showed her face, arms and legs cut even more to pieces from stumbling down the stony secret passage. She looked like a victim of Third World brutality.

Glancing at the whips and knives, she knew the churning fear Carlos and Elisabetta must have felt, aware that torture awaited them. The light was too faint to read her watch. She tried to pray. Rozzy wouldn’t let her down. But as the hours crawled by, and she grew colder and more dehydrated, her legs racked by agonizing cramps, hope faded.

She must have nodded off. She was woken by terror beyond imagination. Instead of her own reflection, glaring evilly back from the mirror was Rannaldini. Maybe she had died, or her mind was slowly unravelling. Then he was gone, and her blanched, bloodstained, lacerated reflection gazed back at her again.

There was a creak. Jerking her head round as far as it would go she saw a steel panel on the upper level slide back and there was Rannaldini, a monstrous black vulture, poised to swoop down and tear her apart.

‘No, no, please not.’ Her screams echoed round the chamber, then died on her lips. As the steel door clanged shut, off came the cloak, the pewter wig, the mask. Lucy breathed in a heavenly waft of Femme and wept with relief.

‘Oh, you angel, thank God.’ Then the questions poured out in a hoarse gasping rush. ‘Are the police still looking for me? Have you found James? Did you give Tristan the parcel? What a brilliant disguise! You fooled everyone.’

As Rozzy flicked on a side light, and arranged her newly washed hair, Lucy saw she was wearing a beautiful dove-grey chiffon dress and long grey gloves.

‘Please unlock this horrible chair,’ she begged. ‘What time is it? Where am I?’

‘Nearly midnight. You’re in Rannaldini’s torture chamber.’ Rozzy’s voice was strangely high and hard. ‘Quite the Grand Inquisitor’s adventure playground, isn’t it? Soundproofed like a recording studio, so no-one can hear the screams.’

‘What d’you mean?’

Little by little, terror was taking over again.

‘Rannaldini brought the pretty ones down here,’ mocked Rozzy.

‘I don’t understand.’

Both of them jumped as the telephone rang. In an instant Rozzy had grabbed her mobile, whipped a gun out of her bag, and running down the steps, rammed the muzzle against Lucy’s temple.

‘Don’t make a sound,’ she hissed.

Rigid with horror, Lucy could hear Bernard’s bray so close she could have reached out and stroked his glossy black moustache.

‘I’ve been delayed again, Bernie darling.’ Rozzy’s voice was caressing. ‘Lucy? I haven’t seen her.’ As Lucy gasped, the gun was rammed harder into her head. ‘She must have pushed off home to Cumbria. One more pressie to wrap, then I’ll be over. No, no, dearest, you’ve been drinking — at least, I hope you have. I’ll make my own way. Keep the champagne on ice.’

Flicking off her mobile, Rozzy peered at the buttons for a second before pressing one. ‘I’ll turn it off altogether,’ she said chattily. ‘We don’t want to be disturbed.’

Retracing her steps up the stairs, she placed the gun and the mobile on the dressing-table. ‘That was Bernard. The silly old fart was looking for you.’

‘You’re the murderer,’ whispered Lucy.

‘I thought you’d never guess,’ said Rozzy acidly. ‘The whole world is searching but no-one has a clue.’

‘And I gave you Tristan’s papers.’

Lucy’s chattering teeth became a terrible shaking, jolting her body like an earthquake. ‘Please let me have your cloak for a second. I’m so cold.’

‘Poor child,’ said Rozzy sympathetically, then suddenly burst into maniacal laughter. ‘You’ll be burning hot where you’re going. Where were we? Oh, yes, in Rannaldini’s torture chamber. He strapped them just where you are, in the debtor’s chair.’

What had Gablecross told her? Lucy tried to marshal her crazed thoughts. With psychopaths you had to be passive, respectful, admiring.

‘I can’t believe you killed Rannaldini.’ Every word had to be forced out. ‘You’re far too slight and, anyway, you were in Mallowfield.’

‘Since I’m going to kill you in a minute I’ll tell you while I do my face. Now, are you sitting comfortably?’

Settling down on the bed, Rozzy calmly took a tube of moisturiser out of her make-up bag.

‘I killed Rannaldini,’ she said dreamily. ‘He put me down so much he deserved it. It was so easy to slip away from Glyn’s party, I pretended I had a migraine. The land slopes up steeply behind our house — such a small drop on to the lawn from the spare-room window. Everyone was too drunk to notice my car had gone. I drove to Valhalla and parked up a little pebbled track in Paradise woods. Then I climbed over the west gate into Hangman’s Wood.’

‘So James did see you. He wagged his tail and peered into the gloom. Oh, Rozzy, where is he?’