Score!

velvet, arm in arm with Sexton, posing for the huge pack of cameras and press photographers, determined even the Rutminster Echo should have the chance of a decent picture.

‘Hermione.’ ‘Hermione to me.’ ‘Big smile, Hermione.’ ‘Who’s your date, Hermione?’

‘Why, didn’t you know? It’s Sexton Kemp, our producer.’

‘Look this way, Sexton.’ ‘To me, Sexton.’ ‘Sexton.’

Sexton was in heaven. Tristan was going through the roof.

‘“Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my cock erect,”’ sang a voice in Tristan’s ear. ‘“And whistle a happy tune.” Can’t you give the old cow direction to move on?’

It was Baby, straight out of an Australian summer, his bronzed beauty enhanced by a dinner jacket with black satin facings, worn with a black silk shirt and a satin bow-tie.

The press were going nuts trying to identify him.

‘They won’t have to ask after tonight,’ said Tristan, as they finally fought their way in. ‘Everyone will know who you are.’

More than can be said for you, thought Baby. Tristan had lost so much weight he was almost unrecognizable.

Outside, the press was going into further frenzy, as a blond couple emerged from an orange Lamborghini.

‘Must be Chloe Catford,’ said the Mirror.

‘It’s Tabitha Campbell-Black,’ said the Sun. ‘Isn’t she fucking gorgeous?’

‘She’s Tabitha Lovell now,’ said the Mail, ‘about to be Rannaldini. She’s marrying Wolfie next month. He’s the hunk beside her, and here’s Rupert.’

A great cheer went up from the crowd.

‘Been saving any more lives, Rupe?’ ‘Put your arm round Taggie.’ ‘A bit happier.’ ‘To me, Rupe.’ ‘Can we have all four of you for a family group?’

‘That’s quite enough,’ snapped an extremely uptight Rupert, shoving them all inside.

After that people arrived in a great rush: Alpheus and Cheryl just on speaking terms, Chloe ravishing in Prussian blue taffeta, Flora and George flashing wedding rings and wall-to-wall smiles for the photographers, Mikhail and Lara in splendid form, until Mikhail caught sight of Alpheus, turned as green as a cooking apple and fled to the gents.

‘Russians don’t have the big-match temperament,’ said Alpheus dismissively.

‘Bollocks,’ murmured Baby, grabbing two glasses of champagne and handing one to Chloe. ‘Mikhail’s gone to whip off those priceless diamond cufflinks, which he’s just remembered he nicked from Alpheus during the recording. He’ll have pickpocketed another pair by the end of the screening. Doesn’t Tristan look appalling?’

‘Probably sick with nerves,’ said Chloe. ‘I know I am. The advance publicity’s been so overwhelming there’s bound to be a backlash. Oh, here’s Simone and Griselda who’s wearing a dinner jacket. Gosh, they look blissful, and so do Granny and Giuseppe, although Giuseppe’s just cannoned off that pillar.’

‘Pissed already,’ said Baby. ‘Who’s that stunning guy with Helen?’

‘Lysander’s father, David Hawkley,’ whispered Flora. ‘He’s a headmaster, a classical scholar and rather glam in a geriatric way.’

‘Perfect for Helen because he’s just got his K,’ boomed Griselda. ‘She loved being Lady Rannaldini, but Lady Hawkley sounds even more kosher. I must say, she looks great.’

‘Naturally, I’m in mourning for my late husband,’ Helen was telling the Times Diary. ‘The police are still refusing to let us bury him. Have you met Sir David Hawkley?’

Hermione’s great white breasts, meanwhile, were nearly popping out of her low-cut dress in indignation.

‘Helen’s only wearing black because she knows it suits her,’ she hissed to Sexton. ‘Purple is the colour of mourning. And have you seen how dreadful Tristan looks?’

Everyone was bemoaning the fact that Lucy had been spirited away by the police and would miss the fun yet again.

‘Regards, some colossal stars must have arrived!’ Little Simone was jumping to see over the crowds as a white-hot firework display of flashbulbs exploded up the other end of the room.

‘They certainly have.’ Griselda lifted her up to have a look. ‘It’s DS Gablecross and DC Needham.’

‘She looks stunning,’ raved Simone, ‘and the pretty woman with them must be Madame Gablecross.’

‘And there’s Abby and Viking,’ giggled Flora. ‘They keep waking their baby up with a torch in the middle of the night to see if it’s OK. Must be rather like the Nuremberg trials. Oh, look at my George blushing because Alexei Nemerovsky’s remembered him from the gala two years ago. Nemerovsky’s Marcus Campbell-Black’s boyfriend,’ she added to Griselda and Simone. ‘And there’s Marcus.’ Belting across the room, Flora fell into her old friend’s arms.

‘Goodness, you look well,’ they cried in unison.

‘I’m so pleased we were asked and not Gerry Portland and the Chief Constable,’ muttered Karen. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Timothy Gablecross, Mrs Margaret Gablecross and Detective Constable Karen Needham,’ she happily told the photographer, who had produced a notebook. ‘Nice to see someone, rather than us, scribbling things down. Who’s it for?’

‘Tatler,’ said the photographer.

Karen glanced at the Gablecrosses and went off into peals of laughter. ‘Portland and the Chief really will fire us now.’

‘Any information on Rozzy Pringle’s trial, Sarge?’ asked the Sun.

‘Only that it’s coming up at the end of April,’ said Gablecross firmly.

It was such a jolly party, most people didn’t feel nervous until they spilled into the dimly lit cinema.

‘How’s Rozzy?’ Simone whispered to Karen.

‘Very, very mad now.’

Tristan, Rupert and Taggie, who’d taken refuge in a side room, slid into their seats at the last moment.

‘I’m so nervous for Uncle Tristan,’ muttered Simone, catching sight of his grey, frozen face as the lights dimmed.

But she needn’t have worried. From the moment the royal family appeared in the royal box, there was cheering and clapping, followed by screams of delighted recognition, at the shot of Granny, as Gordon Dillon, glowering across at them from the opposite box, then a shiver of excitement as Rannaldini swept in.

God, he was attractive, thought Flora, with a shudder, as he tossed aside his highwayman’s cloak, brought down his stick and the orchestra exploded.

Then there was the beautiful shot of the armies meeting on the skyline, merging into the hunt streaming down the valley, which in turn merged into the hard colours of heatwave and the violence of the polo, then back to Baby singing in Cathedral Copse.

‘Listen to the clapping,’ murmured an amazed Rupert to Taggie, as applause broke out again and again, at Valhalla in the snow and sunset, at Meredith’s red drawing room, at the wonderful horses, at Griselda’s inspired costumes, and at the end of every aria, but not for too long, in case something was missed.

And the music sounded glorious. ‘Who composed this stuff?’ demanded a bigwig from Disney at the end of ‘Morte de Posa’. ‘Can’t we sign him?’

Things were also pepped up by the sub-plot of the murders.

‘That was just after Tab’s leather was cut,’ whispered Griselda to Anne Robinson, as Tab and Baby collided in front of the goal. ‘And that was when Tristan was arrested,’ she added, as Baby, Chloe and Mikhail squabbled over pistols in the maze.

There was an added frisson as Rozzy made her solo appearance, which Tristan had refused to cut.

‘“Do not cry, my dearest friend, do not cry,”’ sang Hermione, as she stroked a sobbing Rozzy’s face.

‘Boo,’ hissed Baby from the back stalls. ‘I’d watch out, Hermsie, Rozzy’s probably got a flick-knife hidden in the folds of that skirt.’

There was a long, horrified silence, followed by howls of laughter. There was laughter, too, when Sharon chewed up Alpheus’s slippers.

Tristan had been apprehensive about the nude scenes. But they were so magically filmed and lit, so genuinely erotic, and so wonderfully woven into the fantasies of the characters, that everyone loved and clapped them.

Roars of applause and end-of-game whistling, however, greeted Hermione’s bonk with Alpheus, and at one