team lines to follow.
And then go and sleep on the sunbed, thought Gablecross.
On the wall, beside group photographs of Portland’s various courses, was a map of Paradise and Valhalla with Rannaldini’s watch-tower, the tennis court and Hangman’s Wood ringed in red. A day chart, listing the pairs of the inquiry team and the leads they were following, was flanked by a blow-up of Hype-along Cassidy’s photograph of the entire unit.
The meeting began with a debriefing. Some officers had been unravelling the tangled skeins of Rannaldini’s last hours, when he seemed to have upset everyone, some talking to the family, others touring the houses of Paradise.
‘Problem with this lot, guv’nor,’ said Fanshawe, ‘is they’re used to dodging awkward questions and evading the press. They’re lying, but they’re all shit scared. They can’t believe the reign of terror’s over.’
‘Won’t be when Rupert Campbell-Black moves in,’ snapped Portland. He was livid that Fanshawe and Miller had been chucked out. There was no way Rupert was going to walk all over his team.
‘You sort him out, Tim,’ he added, as a sop to the crack about the ID photograph. ‘Nail him when he rolls up to kick ass on the set this evening. Don’t let Karen’s legs distract him.’ As he smiled at her, the politically correct DC Smithson looked boot-faced: only by persistent lobbying had she got the girlie calenders taken down from the male officers’ walls.
On their return from Penscombe, Fanshawe and Miller had interviewed Mr Brimscombe. Dead-heading the rose walk, he had seen Tabitha racing towards Rannaldini’s watch-tower in a pretty grey dress ‘wafting perfume, and all dolled up’ for the first time in months. Empty-handed, she had waved and run on.
Several people, according to the house-to-house team, had seen, after ten fifteen, the ghost of Caroline Beddoes, clutching a little dog, with her ripped grey dress soaked in blood. After one sighting, the captain of the Paradise Cricket Club had rushed into the Pearly Gates begging for a quadruple whisky.
Wolfgang Rannaldini had claimed Tabitha went home because her stepmum’s dog went missing, said Gablecross.
‘Dead now,’ said Debbie Miller. ‘Kevin and I stumbled on this weird funeral yesterday. Tabitha looked like a battered ghost.’
‘Leave her a couple of days till we get the post-mortem, but her alibi looks very thin. Have a look at her cottage,’ Portland told Fanshawe. ‘Talk to the servants at Penscombe and Valhalla, have a word with Tab’s husband. We know Wolfgang switched on the machine at Valhalla around ten forty-five,’ he went on, ‘and claims she asked him to take her own dog back to Penscombe.’
‘Chloe Catford claims Wolfie swore he was going to kill his dad after hearing that tape,’ said Gablecross. ‘Unfortunately it’s gone missing. Wolfie probably whipped it.’
The memoirs and Rannaldini’s safe had also gone walkabout. Miss Bussage was the chief suspect in the case of the former, but she certainly hadn’t smuggled the safe into the limo when she left.
‘Go and see her, Tim,’ grinned Gerald Portland. ‘You’re good with maiden ladies. Ask her if she knows why Rannaldini went to the doctor on Friday, and if sheknows the whereabouts of a Picasso and the Etienne de Montigny hanging in Rannaldini’s watch-tower. Both may have been torched in the fire, but if stolen, could be a motive for murder.’
Other tasks included checking who had helicopters in the area, other than Rupert Campbell-Black and George Hungerford, and which one had landed beside Hangman’s Wood on Sunday night.
Out of the window, through the trees, Gablecross could see the Herbert Parker Hall, home of the Rutshire Symphony Orchestra. He wondered what their boss, George Hungerford, had thought of Flora’s and Baby’s photographs.
‘Hungerford was seen driving towards Valhalla like a bat out of hell around ten twenty-five on Sunday night,’ said one of the house-to-house team. ‘And Montigny went the other way, only earlier.’
‘Tristan was seen at Valhalla by Jessica. God, she’s gorgeous,’ sighed DC Lightfoot, ‘and by that Russian, Mikhail Pezcherov, but he was too smashed to be trusted.’
‘Pezcherov claims he spent five minutes on Sunday night in the maze with Chloe Catford. She says it was three hours,’ volunteered Gablecross.
‘Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself,’ giggled Debbie Miller.
Checks would have to be carried out on whether Chloe’s mother, Alpheus’s agent and Rozzy Pringle had made phone calls when they were said to have done. Lady Griselda, Bernard Guerin, Granville Hastings, none of them fans of Rannaldini, had all been crashing around looking for balls near the watch-tower at the time of the murder.
‘Flora Seymour and Meredith Whalen have very thin alibis, but Sexton Kemp looks in the clear,’ said Gablecross.
‘I spent most of last night trying to pin down Baby Spinosissy-something,’ said Fanshawe crossly. ‘Dame Hermione was also too upset to speak to anyone, but I’m certain they’re talking to the press if not to us.’
‘Hermione was heard singing in the wood around ten thirty,’ said Gablecross.
‘Could have been another singer,’ piped up Karen Needham. ‘Flora Seymour or Chloe Catford.’
‘She’s a cracker.’ Fanshawe raised his eyes to heaven.
‘Or Gloria Prescott,’ said DC Lightfoot, ‘another cracker.’
‘Which one’s she?’ Portland peered at the blow-up.
‘That one. She’s blinking but her boobs aren’t,’ said DC Lightfoot excitedly, and got punched in the ribs by DC Smithson.
‘Go and see Dame Hermione, Tim,’ said Portland. ‘You’re good with middle-aged nymphos too, but remember, her alarm’s wired by umbilical cord to the Chief Constable’s navel, so watch it.’
Gablecross ground his teeth. The rest of the team laughed.
The French crew had evidently been hopeless to interview. Their English, which had improved so dramatically during filming, had deteriorated equally dramatically when confronted by DC Smithson’s truculence.
‘“I was weeth heem, and he was weeth me and other heems, and heem was with heem,”’ snapped DC Smithson. ‘They’re more obstructive than that appalling Campbell-Black.’
‘But not quite as gorgeous,’ sighed Debbie.
‘We have a host of suspects.’ Portland rubbed his hands together. ‘Priority is to find the memoirs and Rannaldini’s safe.’
‘Clive may have got them,’ said Gablecross. ‘He was whispering to that ugly cow from the
‘Well, nobble him today.’
While Portland gave the others lines to follow, Gablecross’s mind drifted back to something old Miss Cricklade, who took in washing, had told him when he’d given her a lift into Rutminster that morning. What with Dame Hermione, Miss Bussage in Abingdon, Clive, if he could catch him, Rupert Campbell-Black on the set this evening, it was going to be a long day.
He was brought back to earth by DC Smithson whining that everyone at Valhalla was a publicity-obsessed nutter.
‘Well, as one not unacquainted with the media,’ Portland examined his fingernails, ‘you have to know how to use them. I suggest we ask the help of Lady Rannaldini to appeal to the nation for info.’
‘She was in bad shape yesterday,’ said Gablecross quickly.
But Portland wasn’t listening. He loved press conferences and publicity. He couldn’t wait to wrap up the meeting so he could gloat over the smashing photographs of himself in the morning’s papers.
‘Doubt if you’d learn much,’ Gablecross was saying. ‘Certain it’s an inside job.’
‘I’m the best judge of that,’ said Portland coolly. ‘Lady R’s a lovely lady, she’s chairman of Enid’s NSPCC committee.’
‘She could start by paying more attention to her own child,’ snapped Gablecross.
49
