A tranquillized, cross-eyed Trevor was now lying in Flora’s arms like a baby.

‘Why are you looking so cheerful?’ she asked Meredith.

‘Tomorrow I’m flying to Oz.’

‘To meet up with Hermione’s husband, Bobby?’

‘But not for much longer.’ Meredith nodded at a bopping Hermione. ‘It looks as though Madam is at last going to give Bobby a divorce.’

‘I’m so pleased.’ Flora kissed him on the cheek.

‘Come on, Meredith, on your feet,’ boomed Griselda.

‘New trousers.’ Halting in mid-bop, Hermione looked beadily at Grisel’s Day-glo pink harem pants. ‘I’m sure you’ll find them very useful.’

‘Useful for getting the entire harem in there as well,’ murmured Flora to Simone, who, in her pretty flowery dress, was leaning against the wall, sipping iced water.

‘I think Griselda’s days of promiscuity are over,’ said Simone gravely. ‘I want you to be the first to know, Flora, that Grisel and I are an item.’

Flora nearly dropped Trevor.

‘Was that why you got over Wolfie so fast?’ she squeaked.

Simone nodded. ‘I have never been so in love in my life. We are flying down to the Tarn to meet Mama and Papa tomorrow.’

‘Will they approve?’

‘They will probably feel Grisel is a little old for me. She’s six months older than Mama, but once they meet her…’

‘Have you told Uncle Tristan?’

‘No, he doesn’t take much on board at the moment.’

Having immediately crossed the drawing room to admire George’s Picasso when he arrived, Tristan had hardly moved.

Normally at wrap parties he felt elated and disembodied: if someone rolled back the stone, he wouldn’t be there. But tonight there was no elation. His mind kept slipping into reverse gear as he bitterly castigated himself for being so brutal to Lucy. He wanted to drive over to Valhalla and find her, but having just arrived, he couldn’t abandon his cast and crew, who had endured so much.

Normally also at wrap parties he felt like a prince on a walkabout with everyone shaking his hand and thanking him for a wonderful shoot. But tonight, although no-one was openly hostile, he could feel their reproach, as palpable as the ever-increasing mountain of presents for Lucy on the polished table beside him.

‘What’s the matter with you all?’ he snarled at Valentin.

‘People may not want to work on Hercule unless you hire Lucy again,’ snapped back Valentin. ‘She was so good at calming down singers, and Oscar reckons she’s the best he’s ever worked with.’

‘That’s because the lazy sod gets more sleep if he doesn’t have to spend hours adjusting lights to compensate for the inadequacies of some make-up artist,’ said Tristan sourly.

‘Why d’you have to fire Lucy?’ demanded Ogborne, his mouth full of Danish blue.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Tristan turned away and, for the thousandth time, punched out Lucy’s number.

‘Don’t bug the guy,’ Sylvestre chided the rest of the crew. ‘You all seem to forget that while he was losing three crucial days’ filming he was in prison on a murder charge, being put through the mangle by the flics. He’s entitled to the odd tantrum.’

‘The Vodaphone you have called is not responding,’ the operator was now telling Tristan, ‘please try later, please try later,’ until he wanted to wring her neck and hurl his mobile through George’s huge window-pane. If only Wolfie were here, he’d have found Lucy.

‘You’ll never guess,’ hissed Flora to Baby, ‘Grisel and Simone are an item.’

‘Good God, d’you think she takes her turban off in bed?’

‘“You’re lovely to look at, delightful to know and heaven to kiss,”’ sang Alpheus, as he foxtrotted past with Serena.

‘“He said that he loved ’er, but, oh, ’ow he lie, oh, ’ow he lie, oh, ’ow he lie,”’ sang Giuseppe in Granny’s ear. ‘Serena is so boring. I want to come back, I miss you.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ said Granny, with decreasing conviction.

‘Howie get me Don Giovanni at La Scala,’ murmured Giuseppe, ‘so I can take you on long holiday and pay for all things. Please, Granville.’

‘Oh, my dear boy.’

‘Excuse me, Granville.’ Hermione was scrabbling like a terrier in Lucy’s pile of presents. ‘I’ve forgotten Maria. D’you think Lucy’ll mind awfully if she didn’t get one of my calendars?’

‘I expect she’ll live,’ said Granny.

Tristan shivered. ‘I’m not sure she will. I am bloody worried, Granny.’

‘Monsieur de Montigny,’ said the editor of Classical Music, who’d disguised himself as a waiter, ‘about Claudine Lauzerte?’

‘Who?’ said Tristan, as though he was dredging up some long-abandoned wreckage from the bottom of the sea.

‘Could we have a word?’

‘The word is “Non”,’ snapped Tristan, shoving dancers aside, until he reached Bernard. ‘For Christ’s sake, try Rozzy again. Ask her if she’s seen Lucy.’

‘Where’s Mikhail?’ grumbled Baby. ‘I want to sing the Friendship Duet with him.’

‘Perhaps he’s eloped with Rozzy,’ giggled Simone.

It was Mikhail’s last night in the capitalist sweet shop. As a going-home present for Lara, he had decided to remove the Murillo Madonna from the chapel. But finding Valhalla awash with police when he returned home after the final wrap, he decided to sleep until things quietened down.

Waking just after eleven, he took a considerable swig from his hip flask and set out. The house was sculptured grey in the moonlight, a sudden chill wind sent the cypresses hissing like snakes. Sliding through the shadows, Mikhail passed two nervously patrolling uniformed policemen and wished he had had slightly more to drink.

He froze at the sound of more footsteps. Slow, lonely, then quickening, coming relentlessly towards him, from the swirling mists emerged a black-cloaked figure gliding down the cloisters, then disappearing through the chapel door. Frantic for company, Mikhail fled in terror back to the production office, but found it totally deserted — everyone must have left for the party. Deciding this was very unPosa-like behaviour and ghosts couldn’t produce footsteps, he crept back again.

The chapel was unlocked, no-one appeared to be inside. Feeling his way along the smooth edges of the pews and then the choir stalls, guided by the light of the rising moon now spilling like milk, then like royal blue ink, now like red wine through the stained-glass windows, he reached the Madonna. How beautiful she was, more radiant than any moon. How she would enjoy an exciting jaunt to Moscow.

Mikhail got out his screwdriver and pliers. Somehow she must come off the wall. But as he started to tap and feel round her gilded frame, he nearly jumped through the vaulted roof.

The panel to which she was attached had swung open, revealing utter darkness, a horrible smell of Maestro and footsteps echoing far in the distance. Climbing inside, running a shaking hand round to the left, Mikhail found a key. Someone had been stupid or careless enough to leave it in a lock. Turning it, he felt a door open; groping inside, he found a light switch, and nearly fainted.

He was in a tiny cubby-hole. All round the walls were grotesquely graffiti’d photographs of Tabitha, Flora, Claudine Lauzerte, Granny, Beattie, Hermione and Rannaldini. Ears had been lopped off, squints and beards added, and everything smeared with blood and excrement. But interspersed with these horrors, beautiful and immaculate, were pictures of Tristan at all ages.

Also hanging from hooks were wigs, pewter grey, blond, dark and light brown, and Hermione’s apple-green cloak with the pink rose-lined hood, except bloodstains were now rose-patterning the green as well. The table was piled high with body-paints, knives, ammunition, huge, cruel scissors, a half-full bottle of Maestro, videos, tapes, tape-recorders, Rannaldini’s cigars, bottles marked ‘poison’ and cans of petrol. On top lay a ripped-open brown- paper parcel marked ‘Tristan de Montigny, Private and Confidential’. And against the table, a going-home present

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