Score!

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?’

‘Don’t interrupt,’ hissed Rozzy. Then, giving a mirthless laugh, even more sinister than her mad cackle, she went on, ‘I saw that tramp Tabitha staggering out of Rannaldini’s watch-tower. Got her comeuppance at last. No- one heard her screams. They were too busy cheering on the finalists. I wore Hermione’s green cloak. Pretending it was Granny’s cut-up quilt, I’d smuggled it out of Wardrobe on Saturday.’ With an adoring smile, Rozzy was smoothing base into her face and neck. ‘Wandering up one of those rides like the rays of the sun, I saw Rannaldini wearing Alpheus’s smart dressing-gown. He was out looking for Tab. So I launched into Elisabetta’s last duet.’

The next minute Lucy thought her eardrums would rupture as Rozzy’s voice exploded like an atom bomb in the tiny room.

‘You can sing,’ she gasped.

‘I always could, as soon as I recovered from the laryngitis I had at the recording.’ Rozzy rocked with obscene laughter once more. ‘Pretending to have cancer was such an easy way of milking you. Unfortunately Rannaldini bugged your caravan. The Saturday morning before he died he told me he’d seen James Benson and was going to expose me as not having cancer at all.’

‘But I gave you so much money,’ said a shattered Lucy. Then forgetting for a second not to be judgemental, ‘This ought to be called the creditor’s chair.’

‘Don’t you cheek me,’ screamed Rozzy.

Grabbing one of the knives, she ran down the steps, eyes rolling, teeth clenched, and drew the blade along Lucy’s cheek. ‘It was you who told Tristan I had cancer, you meddling bitch, because you didn’t want him to give me any work. Shut up!’ she yelled, as Lucy tried to protest.

Then sauntering back up the stairs, Rozzy used the knife to sharpen an eye pencil as she continued her story. ‘Catching sight of Hermione’s cloak, enchanted by how much his mistress’s voice had improved, Rannaldini strode down the ride, took me in his arms and kissed me. As he broke away, my hands closed round his neck.’ Rozzy’s voice trembled with excitement. ‘His last words were Carlos’s “Dear God, it’s not the Queen.” I saw the terror in his eyes, and felt his windpipe give. God, I enjoyed that. Hell!’ She had snapped her eye pencil, and began to pare away the wood again.

‘How could you, Rozzy?’ whispered Lucy, then, hastily forcing herself to sound admiring, ‘Rannaldini was as strong as an ox.’

‘I hated him so much and I was wearing Tristan’s signet ring for luck. Tristan had given it to me as a keepsake. My hands are smaller than his — it must have fallen off.’

Lining the knife up carefully beside her mobile and the gun, Rozzy drew a dark line along the top of her lashes with an utterly steady hand.

‘It was like Piccadilly Circus in Hangman’s Wood that night. Having killed Rannaldini, I was about to whip the memoirs from the watch-tower, but I only had time to snatch his keys, when a helicopter landed and Rupert Campbell-Bastard came running into the wood, shortly followed by Mikhail, who stole the Montigny. Then I ran back to the west gate, shoved the bloodstained cloak in the boot and called you.’

‘But you were at Glyn’s party,’ protested Lucy. ‘I heard everyone singing “Happy Birthday” and “Glyn’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.’

‘I taped it when Glyn cut his cake much earlier,’ said Rozzy. ‘I only had to slot the cassette into the car stereo. I rang you twice — the second time to remind you about the cloak — and established the perfect alibi. I drove home singing my head off. I didn’t even have to climb back in through the window. I’d put a pillow in my bed, and a melon inside the wig you so caringly made for when my hair fell out from the chemo — “You’ll look just as beautiful, Rozzy”, you patronizing cow.’ The sickening little-girl voice soared to a scream and exploded into gales of terrible laughter.

‘I walked upstairs to the spare room.’ Rozzy clutched her shaking sides. ‘Glyn and Sylvia were having a fuck in the “master bedroom”, as the common little slut insists on calling it. Naturally they didn’t notice my return. There are pluses in having an un-uxorious husband. Ten minutes later, Glyn came out on to the landing to check I was asleep and tripped over the carpet.’

Gradually the laughter ebbed away. More terrifying were the uncharacteristically foul language and the mood-swings. Beth in Little Women one moment, Lady Macbeth the next.

‘Clever to murder Beattie,’ mumbled Lucy. ‘She was such a bitch.’

‘And so short-sighted. Never once asked me for an interview, when I’ve got the most beautiful voice in the world and wonderful stories of all the greats I’ve sung with. And Beattie was gagging for Tristan. Shit.’ Rozzy’s mascara wand had slipped, leaving a blob on her cheekbone. ‘She bought the memoirs from Clive, you know, who stole them from Bussage. Beattie was going to expose Tristan as being Maxim’s incestuous bastard. Why didn’t you tell me about that, Lucy? That wasn’t friendly to have secrets.’ The voice was hard and cruel again. Lucy steeled herself as Rozzy picked up the knife, but for the moment her venom was concentrated on Beattie.

‘I didn’t want Tristan exposed. I didn’t give a stuff that Maxim had fucked his own daughter because Tristan and I never want children. But I do fancy being Madame de Montigny.’ Rozzy removed the blob of mascara with a cotton-bud. ‘It has such a charming nineteenth-century ring, like a novel by George Sand. Perhaps I should have asked you to do my eyes.’ Meditatively Rozzy admired her reflection.

‘You look stunning,’ stammered Lucy. Praise her, keep her talking, she told herself. She was racked by cramp in her leg, her eyes watering with pain. ‘How did you kill Beattie, with so many people around?’

‘Best thing about my job on Carlos was that no-one knew where I was supposed to be at any one time. Earlier in the week I’d let myself into Beattie’s room and read the filth she intended to publish. The night she was killed and you were so busy brown-nosing Hermione I said I’d walk James and Trevor, but I never did.’

That was why James had made a puddle on the caravan floor — and I shouted at him, thought Lucy, in anguish.

‘Instead,’ went on Rozzy, ‘I shoved a note I’d typed on the production unit word processor under Beattie’s door. Then I dressed up as Rannaldini. I felt so safe disguised as him — even that arrogant shit Rupert bolted like a frightened hare. Beattie was so terrified she backed on to the unicorn. Its horn came up through her belly like a corkscrew,’ Rozzy’s voice quivered with delight again, ‘and her blood spurted out like a fountain. But I couldn’t risk her screaming, so I finished her off with the.22 from Props. I had a key cut back in June. I was wearing gloves. See — I can even make up in them now. I’d no idea Tristan had left his prints on the same gun when he’d tried it out that afternoon.

‘Still dressed as Rannaldini, I raced back through the night to Beattie’s room. There I stole memoirs, photographs, videos and tapes, printed out Beattie’s piece to give me all the gen and smashed the computer on the floor.’ Rozzy couldn’t speak for wild laughter. ‘Then I went into the chapel to pray for Beattie’s departed soul, and hid everything in my little priest-hole behind the Murillo Madonna.’

‘You did all that in the break? You are clever.’

‘I ought to get the Nobel Prize for ridding the world of those monsters.’

‘You ought.’ Lucy was casting round frantically for things to ask. ‘What about The Snake Charmer?’