‘I’ve so often found things hidden under Glyn’s mattress,’ Rozzy became the tragedy queen for a second, ‘that out of habit I often checked Tristan’s room. The only thing I discovered was the Montigny, and I knew Mikhail had stolen that so I hid it in my priest-hole. Isn’t this a nice lipstick? Revlon’s Fire and Ice. It exactly matches this feather boa Tristan bought me. He chose the dress too.
‘Oh, I have had fun.’ Rozzy’s voice dropped to cosy intimacy. ‘I devastated that silly old poof, Granny, by slashing his patchwork quilt. I got so many Brownie points for sewing up Foxie after I’d cut him to pieces. And I had so many goes at you, Lucy. Who put the adder in your make-up box? Who poisoned your champagne? I knew Rannaldini didn’t drink before concerts, although he lapsed on that occasion. If Hermione hadn’t shattered that glass with her top E, he’d have died that evening instead. And I put slug pellets in James’s bowl.’
‘I thought you loved James.’ Lucy made heroic efforts to keep the hysteria out of her voice. ‘Oh, please, where is he?’
‘I’ve no idea. I had two goes at that arrogant tart Tabitha. I substituted the can of petrol, I put on gloves to cut her stirrup leather today with the little penknife on your key-ring. Then I dumped the key-ring in Wardrobe’s dustbin, which even those dolts from Rutminster CID couldn’t miss.’
‘You tried to kill Tab today,’ cried Lucy in horror. ‘That must be her attempted murder they were arresting me for. Oh, God, is she all right?’
‘Tragically,’ Rozzy paused dramatically, ‘she is — the little whore.’
‘I still don’t understand why the police suspect me.’
‘Oh, my child,’ said Rozzy gently, as she drew lipstick outside the lines of her mouth, ‘because your DNA profile’s on Rannaldini’s dressing-gown and in his saliva where I kissed him and on the bite on Beattie’s shoulder. I just loved plunging my teeth into her, knowing it would incriminate you, and it’s in the blood on Hermione’s cloak, and your fingerprints are all over Tab’s saddle and the penknife.’
‘But I never had a DNA test.’
‘No, but you lost your passport, remember.’ Rubbing cream into her hands, Rozzy clasped them in ecstasy. ‘I borrowed it and stuck my passport photograph on top of yours, and when the two flat-footed cretins rolled up at Make Up, I said I was Lucy Latimer, showed them your passport and took a saliva test in your name. I wasn’t on the list of suspects due for a DNA test, because the police knew I was in Mallowfield.’
Lucy could take no more. ‘That’s the most horrible part,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought we were friends.’
Radiant, smiling, the great diva making her entrance, Rozzy glided down the steps and stroked Lucy’s hair. ‘You poor darling,’ she said, in such a sweet, sad voice that Lucy knew the whole thing had been a bad dream. Then Rozzy grabbed her hair, yanking it back until she screamed.
‘You stupid bitch! I did love you until you started meddling. Why did you go to France to free Tristan? He’d have been so much better off in prison, safe from all those drooling, ravening bitches. I’d have visited him every week.
‘Why didn’t you and Wolfie take me with you? You deceitful cow, sucking up to his family.’ Rozzy’s eyes were glittering, foam frothing along her mouth, mad laughter echoing horribly off the walls. ‘I know you’re crazy about Tristan,’ Rozzy was hissing in her ear, spraying it with saliva, ‘but having spent his life surrounded by beautiful people, how could he settle for someone as plain and common as you?’ Seizing Lucy’s face, Rozzy wrenched it towards the mirror. ‘Look at yourself, you ugly bitch!’ As Rozzy slapped her face back and forth, Lucy felt blood trickling from her nose to join her tears, choking her.
‘I suppose he was kind to you,’ said Rozzy reflectively. ‘Kindness is such an aphrodisiac to ugly women. What would the Montignys think of you?’ she added mockingly.
‘I got on with Aunt Hortense,’ gasped Lucy.
‘She must have been appalled. A hairdresser with a broad Cumbrian accent! I’ll teach you to have ideas above your station, Miss.’
My station, thought Lucy, in crazed anguish, is Carlisle. Above the town soar the mountains, olive green, filled with lakes, criss-crossed with stone walls. She’d never see them again. And she’d never see her darling mum and dad, or her sister, or her little nieces — and they’d be told she was a murderer.
Rozzy was back at the table, spraying Femme between her breasts and legs.
‘What did you do with Tristan’s papers?’ whispered Lucy.
‘I’ll burn them when I get a moment.’
‘I promised Hortense he’d get them,’ said Lucy despairingly. ‘At least give him Etienne’s self-portrait and Laurent and Delphine’s letters. Then he’ll understand why his mother copped out and why Etienne rejected him.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ snapped Rozzy. ‘Tristan needs love and understanding.’
‘He needs roots,’ sobbed Lucy. ‘Hortense’ll tell him the truth.’
‘I think not.’ Rozzy rose to her feet, Lady Macbeth’s presence dominating the room. ‘I took your passport to the chemist and bought rat poison.’
‘Please, no,’ shrieked Lucy. ‘Hortense is dying anyway. She’s such an old duck.’
‘Old dyke, you mean. I’m off,’ said Rozzy coolly.
‘Don’t leave me.’
‘You know it all now, sweetie. You’ve got to die. It’s so easy. There are two buttons to flood the torture chamber. As I’m leaving I’ll just press the one outside the door,’ Rozzy murmured lasciviously, ‘and Madame Guillotine over there will slide up and the lake will come pouring in. How convenient of Wolfie to fill it up — and we’ve had so much rain. It takes five minutes to flood the pit.’
‘Please, not,’ gabbled Lucy.
Rozzy posed before the mirror, the flame-red boa warming her face, the grey chiffon giving wondrous curves to her slight body.
‘You look beautiful, Rozzy. Your eyes are like stars.’
‘They’re the last stars you’ll see.’
‘What time is it?’ gasped Lucy, trying to cling on to some reality.
‘Nearly twenty past twelve. Cinderella shall go to the ball.’
Rozzy dropped her wig and mask, followed by the gun and her mobile, into her bag.
‘Shame you haven’t time to read in the memoirs about Rannaldini’s favourite games, Lucy. Either he’d fuck them in the pit as the water came over their noses so their cunt muscles, in their imagined death-throes, clamped round his cock. President Kennedy pushed whores under the bath-water for the same buzz.’ Rozzy smiled, as if she were telling a bedtime story.
‘Or he’d sit up here watching them drown, then press a button to release them from the debtor’s chair, so they floated choking upwards. But in your case, Miss Goody Two Shoes, I won’t press that release button till tomorrow.’ Rozzy’s face contorted with hatred. ‘And you’ll float out into the lake, not pretty like Ophelia, but bloated and smelly with wrinkled fingers.’
‘The police’ll know I’ve been strapped in.’
‘No, they won’t, those manacles are very soft. Rannaldini knew about hurting people without marking them. And they’ll find your sweet little suicide note. I tore up your last letter to Tristan — “your loving Lucy”, you presumptuous bitch — and retyped it: “Dear Twistan…”’ it was Rozzy’s obscene baby voice again, ‘“I’m sowwy I killed all those people and did all those wicked things, but I had to be
Lucy flipped. ‘How dare you write a suicide note on my behalf?’ she yelled. ‘I’d never do that, because of James.’
‘James is dead,’ said Rozzy indifferently. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you snivelling while I did my make-up. He whined so much I let him out on the motorway.’
Lucy rolled her head in agony as she remembered James pirouetting with joy or leaning against her or darting off with a biscuit, or sitting quietly enjoying the rain after a heatwave.
Pressing the button so the steel door slid back, Rozzy flung on Rannaldini’s cloak and escaped quickly, in case Lucy’s howl of desolation reached the outside world.
‘I’m doing you a good turn,’ she called back softly. ‘According to Schiller, “the peace of death” is the only escape from the pangs of unrequited love.’
As one steel door clanged shut, the metal guillotine keeping out the lake slid upwards and water started to
