‘That evil creature!’ she hissed. ‘She tried to destroy my marriage, now my husband’s gone she’s trying to destroy me. She humiliated me in every way, using my phone and my bathroom, pinching the cars and the helicopter when I needed them. How could she think I’d burn down the watchtower’ — her voice rose to a shriek — ‘destroying all my husband’s precious compositions?’
‘Of course not.’ Karen jumped to her feet and putting an arm round Helen’s shoulders, settled her back in her chair. ‘Let me get you a glass of water.’
‘They’re both lying,’ moaned Helen, ‘Brimscombe because she’s old and confused, Gloria because she’s a vindictive bitch.’
‘Mrs Brimscombe’, Gablecross flipped back a few pages, ‘confirms she made you a sweetcorn and smoked- salmon omelette for your tea, the vomit of which was found ten yards from your husband’s watchtower.’
‘I never!’ gasped Helen. ‘I told you, I chucked my omelette down the john. She must have made a second for someone else. Film people are always demanding things.’
But when Gablecross pointed out that they would be able to check Helen’s DNA profile, which had been taken that morning, with the saliva in the vomit, Helen caved in and burst into tears.
‘I did go into the woods. I so prayed my husband’s passion for Gloria was dying out and I wanted to check if they were together. I found myself drawn to the watchtower around half past ten. The door was open.’ Helen was rocking back and forth, clutching herself. ‘On his table I found this l-l-loathsome photograph of Gloria with nothing on. I tore it up. Then I heard a noise — I was so upset and so terrified it might be my husband, furious with me for destroying the photo, that I rushed into the wood, and threw up. Then I ran home. It was horrible.’ She raised streaming eyes to Gablecross, who grunted sympathetically.
‘Did you notice any keys anywhere?’ he asked.
‘Sure.’ Helen wrinkled her freckled forehead. ‘They were on my husband’s table.’
‘That’s very useful information,’ said Karen, returning with a brimming glass, which she placed on the table beside Helen’s chair. ‘Try to remember,’ she added soothingly, as Helen leapt to her feet and shoved a little flowered mat under the glass. ‘You were in such a state, Lady Rannaldini, one often blocks these things out. Did you strangle your husband?’
‘Oh, no, no,’ Helen licked her lips in terror, ‘he’d have been far too strong. And I’d never set fire to his watchtower. Bussage may have taken copies, but all the originals of his compositions and memoirs were there. I admired him so much as a composer. He used to write beautiful letters.’ Helen had moved to another table, straightening, lining up, picking up a little ivory fan. ‘I remember him quoting Donne: ‘“No spring or summer beauty has such grace As I have seen in one autumnal face.”’
‘“Young beauties force our love and there’s a rape,”’ Karen continued the poem, then raised an eyebrow at Gablecross who nodded.
‘Did you know Rannaldini is alleged to have raped Tabitha just before he was murdered?’ she asked softly.
There was a crack as the little fan broke.
‘She must have led him on,’ said Helen, quite unable to control her venom. ‘She was always flaunting herself. Omigod,’ she looked at them appalled, ‘she’s got a fiendish temper. You don’t think she killed him?’
When Helen had calmed down a little, Gablecross asked if she’d seen anyone else in the wood.
‘Promise you won’t say who told you.’ Helen’s eyes were rolling crazily again.
‘Of course not,’ said Gablecross cosily. ‘You’ve been a marvellous witness.’
‘I saw my ex-husband, Rupert,’ whispered Helen, ‘in the wood with a gun in his hand.’
56
‘Jesus, Sarge!’ Karen was jumping up and down in excitement as they emerged out of the dark panelled hall into the lavender, yellow roses and falling sunlight of the forecourt. ‘Hadn’t we better tip off Gerry and go and nail Rupert?’
‘Too early, he’s at Newmarket, and we’ll need far more evidence than a crazy ex-wife’s terrified impressions in a pitch-dark wood. She may well have wanted it to be Rupert.’
‘Do you think she hates him enough to shop him?’
‘Possibly. I think she’s pathological where he and Tab are concerned, particularly now she knows Rannaldini raped Tab. I certainly wouldn’t rule her out as the killer. Let’s go and talk to another side of the triangle, Isaac Lovell, who hates Rupert even more than she does.’
‘I’m expecting Isa within the hour,’ Janice, the head groom, told Karen and Gablecross when they walked into Rannaldini’s yard.
Slim, foxy, knowing, a goer in the sack, Janice was soon confiding that she would happily have murdered her late boss for the way he treated his horses.
‘That was his torture chamber,’ she added, pointing the yard brush at the indoor school. ‘He used to lock himself in with a green young horse, and do terrible things to make them go the way he wanted.’
She had stayed with Rannaldini, she said, because she was so sorry for the horses, and as Gablecross stretched out a hand towards the heads hanging out of the boxes, they all flinched away — except for The Prince of Darkness who, safely muzzled, scraped angrily at his half-door.
‘He’ll get you with his feet, or crush you against a wall, if he can’t use his teeth,’ said Janice.
For Sunday night, she had the perfect alibi: a skittle contest, between nine thirty and midnight at the Pearly Gates.
‘I was choked when Isa turned up at the yard at eight thirty — I wasn’t expecting him. He always slides in, well, like a cobra, never giving you any time to tart up. He’s gorgeous, the bastard,’ she added to Karen.
‘I was dying to get away, but he insisted on looking at every horse, in case they’d lost condition in the drought. We’re turning them out just at night because of the flies.’
‘How did Isa get on with Rannaldini?’
‘Worse and worse. No-one pushes horses harder than Isa. It’s an insult to his genius to expect him to flog them home, but Rannaldini wanted more winners. He went berserk when Peppy won the Derby. Last week.’ Janice glanced round the yard in terror. ‘I can’t believe he’s not here any more, he threatened to jock Isa off and drop Jake as trainer. That’s like an ad agency losing the Coca-Cola account. It would ruin Jake.’
‘Was Isa upset?’
‘Not outwardly — that’s what makes him so attractive, never shows what he’s thinking.’
‘Not a lot probably — except about horses,’ said Gablecross, noticing an empty box with stickers on the green half-doors, saying, ‘Champion’ and ‘World Beater’ and ‘The Engineer’ painted in blue letters above them. The damsel in distress, and now her charger, had fled.
‘Rupert Campbell-Black’s groom, Dizzy, collected Engie this morning,’ explained Janice. ‘Good thing Rupert didn’t come. There’d have been bloodshed if he’d seen Isa.’
In the tack room, she handed out chipped mugs of orange squash, and settled down to clean a bridle.
‘Isa was paranoid about his private life staying private,’ she went on, ‘I’m sure Rannaldini hoped to share groupies and experience but Isa wouldn’t play ball. He’s a terrific stud, but he likes to poach under cover of dark, like a gypsy. He was well pissed off on Sunday night. His mobile rang — it must have been around nine thirty because the stable clock was striking — and he couldn’t walk out of earshot because he and I were both in The Prince’s box. So he pressed the receiver to his mouth, and muttered that he wasn’t going to be able to make it, then he switched off his mobile and said he was off to Magpie Cottage. “You’d better keep it switched off, Casanova,” I said to him, “in case any of your ladies ring when Tab’s there.” He threw me such a filthy look I went cold. He can put the evil eye on you. By the time I’d turned out The Prince, he was gone.’
‘What d’you reckon to his marriage?’ asked Karen, who was busy taking goosegrass out of the stable cat’s tail.
‘Pretends he doesn’t give a stuff. She’s a madam but you can’t help loving her and she doesn’t deserve a pig like Isa — any more than her stupid, neurotic mother deserved Rannaldini. I heard Rannaldini and Isa rowing again
