Score!

‘Come, come. Those two were friends for thirty years, Etienne’s paintings are all over the house. You can do better than that. “Obscene incestuous union… I can never bring myself to love him.” Etienne clearly wasn’t Tristan’s dad. Was that why Tristan killed Rannaldini?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Lucy glanced up at Gablecross’s square, bullying, ruthless face.

‘Why did he lie that he wasn’t back in Valhalla on Sunday night? Why’s he refusing a DNA test? He was clearly in shock when he finally rolled up on Monday.’

‘That was something else.’

‘We believe he killed Rannaldini and then Beattie because he was terrified of the truth coming out. His fingerprints are all over the gun that killed Beattie.’

‘They can’t be,’ whimpered Lucy in terror. ‘Oh, please, he was in shock not because he killed Rannaldini but because, when he reeled home rapturous, goofy from making love for the first time to Tab,’ her voice broke, ‘Rannaldini sent for him and told him this horrific thing, that he wasn’t a Montigny at all, and far, far worse, that his mad brute of a grandfather on the other side, had raped Delphine, his mother, because he was so wildly jealous that she’d married Etienne. The result was Tristan.’

There, it was out.

Karen winced. Gablecross whistled.

‘Wow, so that was it. Thank you, Miss Latimer.’

‘Please don’t tell anyone. You forced it out of me,’ gabbled Lucy, in desperate agitation. Oh, God, what had she done?

‘You know how proud Tristan is of being a Montigny, how naturally aristocratic. He had no mother to bring him up, Etienne was so cold and dismissive, his great arrogant family of brothers all got preferential treatment. Unlike them, Tristan got nothing personal in the will. Being a Montigny was all he had to cling on to.’

She picked up the signet ring.

‘Maxim, Delphine’s father, was sectioned and a violent psychopath, according to Rannaldini. Tristan’s so honourable he felt that as a result he shouldn’t have children.’

The hailstorm had turned to rain weeping down the windows. There was such a long pause that Lucy stumbled into more revelations. ‘I’m sure Rannaldini made the whole thing up, probably forged this letter. He was crawlingly obsessed with Tab. He couldn’t bear Tristan near her — he’d have made up anything to stop him.’

‘Probably why Tristan killed him. Why did he lie about bottling out of his favourite auntie’s eighty-sixth birthday party?’

‘Can’t you understand?’ pleaded Lucy. ‘She wasn’t his auntie if he was no longer a Montigny, any more than Simone was his niece, or his brothers his brothers. He’d have felt a fraud at that party.’

‘And he claimed to have spent all night in his car.’

‘I’ve told you about that.’ Lucy’s voice was rising. ‘He was exhausted, everyone drains him. This film has been so awful. The next one, now his roots have been severed, was all he had.’

An embarrassed, upset James had curled up almost as small as Tristan’s signet ring, which Gablecross was holding up to the light.

‘He dropped this beside Rannaldini’s body.’

‘I don’t believe it. He hadn’t worn that ring for ages. It was so loose it kept falling off.’

‘Beside Rannaldini’s dead body,’ intoned Gablecross. ‘The Montigny snake went looking for Rannaldini and coiled itself round his neck until it squeezed the life out of him.’

‘No, no!’ Lucy clapped her hands over her ears.

‘Same reason he stole The Snake Charmer.’

‘Course he didn’t.’

‘Betty and Sally found it under his mattress on Thursday. By the time they’d alerted a police officer, he’d whipped it. Rannaldini was going to publish a copy of the painting in his memoirs. Tristan couldn’t cope with a pornographic photograph of his mum being on display so he killed Rannaldini and Beattie.’

‘No, no.’ Lucy burst into tears, head on the table, clenching and unclenching her hands.

‘Cooee, cooee,’ said a voice.

It was Chloe, avid with excitement, eyes swivelling, reeking of the same beautiful scent.

‘I hope you’re not bullying darling Lucy, Tim. She’s got a long night ahead, and I don’t want my lip-liner looking like an is-he-alive, is-he-dead heartrate in Intensive Care.’

Leaving Lucy’s caravan on the way back to the car park, both feeling sick, Gablecross and Karen saw a lone figure slumped at a table outside the canteen, and realized it was Wolfie.

‘Can we join you?’ asked Karen, slipping into the chair beside him.

‘You can arrest me if you like,’ mumbled Wolfie. ‘Why shouldn’t I have killed my father? He left me nothing and stole the only two girls I’ve ever loved.’ His teeth were chattering frantically.

‘It’s all right, lad.’ Gablecross patted the boy’s shoulder. ‘Your dad had cameras and bugs installed in every room, even at Magpie Cottage. Tabitha never posed for him, I could swear it.’

‘And’, went on Karen, taking Wolfie’s hand, ‘I’m sure he left you nothing because he was jealous of you.’

Wolfie raised incredulous, swollen, bloodshot eyes.

‘Because Tab liked you so much,’ added Gablecross. ‘I read it in the memoirs.’

‘Papa was jealous of me?’ Suddenly Wolfie was grinning from pink ear to pink ear. ‘Because of Tab?’

‘Certainly was,’ said Karen. ‘It was you she turned to after he raped her.’

But Wolfie wasn’t listening. ‘I don’t give a stuff about the money, I can earn my own. Tab’s the only thing I care about.’ Then, getting to his feet and going, somewhat unsteadily, towards the bar, ‘Let’s have a drink. The only problem’, he added wryly, ‘is that she’s madly in love with Tristan. Still, it’s a start.’

Over in his caravan, Tristan had neither been to bed nor had a moment to rejoice over the ecstatic reviews flooding in for The Lily in the Valley.

There had been so much to do. Someone had nicked Alpheus’s white suit from Wardrobe. The.22 stolen to kill Beattie had had to be replaced. Helen had gone ballistic about the electricity bill and been ringing all day from Penscombe. Mr Brimscombe had gone equally ballistic because the police had trampled over all his flowers. Rupert and George, who were all buddy-buddy now, kept wanting to have meetings about polo shoots.

He tried to work out tonight’s reshoot of the attempted murder of Eboli, an action sequence that required multiple angles and shots so it could be edited to look fast. It would have been complicated even in the Unicorn Glade. This, however, was now gift-wrapped in red and white ribbon and crawling with scenes-of-crime officers, so they’d have to go back to filming in the centre of the maze.

Then there would be several hours spent lighting Alpheus’s nose before he prayed in the chapel, but at least that was an interior, which wouldn’t be sabotaged by any sunrise.

Tristan was reeling from tiredness. Then another hammer-blow struck: Dupont had rung to say that Aunt Hortense had been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas, which could finish her off at any moment. She was heavily drugged and hardly conscious, down at the chateau in the Tarn.

Tristan was devastated. Hortense might not be his real aunt any more, but she was all he had. He had been saddened and amazed to hear how upset she’d been that he’d cut her party. Perhaps she was a little fond of him, but he had been too traumatized by events to call her to apologize. The moment they finished shooting tomorrow he’d fly out to Toulouse. He felt his world crumbling. If she died before he got there, he’d never discover if Rannaldini had been telling the truth.

‘She keeps asking for you,’ chided Dupont.

Tristan also felt bitterly ashamed that he wished Hortense had waited until he’d finished shooting to decide to die. Visions of Beattie’s stinking, impaled body swam before his eyes. He felt himself retching.

66

‘Just like rush-hour on the Piccadilly line,’ grumbled Chloe, as most of the unit, including several plain-clothes policemen, squeezed into the centre of the maze. ‘Ouch, someone goosed me.’