Jilly Cooper - Score!

‘Tucked up in bed, of course, where all good boys should be.’

Unfortunately for Sexton, a complaint had just been logged by the incident room from a couple driving towards the M4 around one a.m. last Monday morning.

They had been pushed into the hogweed on the verge by a lunatic overtaking in a maroon Roller, number plate SK 1. To their apoplexy, twenty minutes later, the road-hog had hurtled past in the same Roller but in the other direction going towards Rutminster, and shoving them into the hogweed again.

Outraged to learn that Sergeant Fanshawe had made a breakthrough on his patch — bonking on lady’s bedstraw indeed! — Gablecross set off for Penscombe, determined to succeed where Fanshawe had failed by nailing Tabitha. Not wanting anyone censoring his questions, however, he and Karen lurked over excellent fish pie in the Dog and Trumpet until the dark blue helicopter had carried Rupert, Lysander and Xavier off to Newmarket.

All round the pub walls were photographs of generations of Campbell-Blacks triumphing at horsy events. Noticing the ferocious intensity on Tabitha’s face as she rode a much older and larger boy off the ball in some Pony Club polo finals, Gablecross thought she would have had little difficulty in strangling Rannaldini. One of the specialities chalked on the blackboard was ‘Campbell-Black Chowder’.

‘What’s that made from? Shark and piranha?’ asked Gablecross, as he paid the bill.

‘No way,’ laughed the landlady. ‘That’s Taggie’s recipe. She’s the best thing that ever happened to that family. Got her hands full at the moment. Tab’s still in shock and won’t eat. Floods one moment, shouting the next. Rupert’s a continually erupting volcano. Just seen Taggie, dark glasses hiding her poor red eyes, driving off to Cotchester with Bianca.’

Better and better, thought Gablecross. With Taggie out, they must lose no time.

‘Shit,’ muttered Karen, as she drove up to the gates. ‘There’s even more paparazzi here than at Valhalla.’

Rupert’s beautiful house, pale gold as a drowsy lioness in the burning afternoon sunshine, made Gablecross’s Hungerford home seem even pokier. Fucking nobs.

As Ann-Marie, the au pair, knocked nervously on the study door, a shrill voice shouted, ‘I don’t care what Daddy or Tag say, I’m not having any lunch.’

Having admired Tab’s amazing beauty in the silver frames in Helen’s sitting room, and without clothes between the pages of Rannaldini’s memoirs, Gablecross was appalled by the reality.

Her normally flawless skin was grey and blotchy, the bruise on her cheekbone parsnip yellow, her eyes reddened and staring. The drastic weight loss had given her the prematurely aged look of a terminal anorexic. Her very loose signet and wedding rings clashed as she ran a hand covered with more yellow bruises through her lank hair.

Despite the heatwave, she wore grey cords and an inside-out dark green cashmere cardigan. On a nearby table were a billowing ashtray and a three-quarters-drunk vodka and tonic. All over the floor, open at the murder hunt, were today’s papers, which Tab had pinched from the kitchen, despite Taggie trying to hide them. Newmarket was on Channel Four with the sound turned down.

Slumped on a blue and white striped sofa, Tab was flipping through a photograph album. When Gablecross and Karen flashed their ID cards, she said would they please go away. To make up for her mistress’s rudeness, Sharon jumped off the sofa, grabbed a lemon-yellow silk cushion and carried it over to Gablecross singing with delight.

‘Lovely dog.’ Gablecross patted her.

‘Lovely flowers,’ said Karen enviously. ‘You are popular.’

‘It’s like a funeral parlour. Can you get me another vodka and tonic,’ Tab shouted, in a slurred voice, to Ann-Marie.

Mixing tranks and booze, thought Karen, as she clocked a Stubbs of two chestnut mares and a Turner of Cotchester Cathedral against a rain-dark sky on the walls.

‘D’you want a cup of tea before you go?’ asked Tab.

‘We’ve just had lunch, thanks.’ Gablecross nearly shattered his coccyx as he sat down heavily on an ancient beef bone. Removing it from the bowels of the armchair, he placed it on the floor.

Tab went back to her album, patting the sofa for Sharon to sit beside her, exhorting her to admire the pictures of Gertrude. ‘There she is at Daddy and Taggie’s wedding, and there she is disapproving of Daddy’s helicopter. God, she was sweet,’ then, in case Sharon was hurt, ‘but so are you.’

Having glanced at Gablecross, who tapped his head and mouthed ‘plastered’, Karen took out her notebook.

At first Tab denied everything, discounting the people who’d seen her racing towards the watch-tower and later weeping bloodstained on the edge of Hangman’s Wood. Her fingerprints were all over the telephone box, and on a glass found in the wood, persisted Karen. Her lipstick was on the glass, and her powder and traces of Quercus were all over Rannaldini’s dressing-gown.

‘Really,’ drawled Tab disdainfully, but her hand trembled as she pointed to a picture of Gertrude wearing a green paper crown at Christmas.

‘Why did you doll up and put on a new dress on Sunday night?’

‘It was an old dress, a present. I hadn’t worn it before, because I didn’t like it. I’d been riding all afternoon. It was baking, I was expecting Isa, I hadn’t seen him for ages, so I tried to look nice. We’ve only been married six months. Then I heard Gertrude was missing and forgot everything.’

‘So you rang Rannaldini?’

‘No, Wolfie,’ snapped Tab, ‘but I dialled the house instead of his mobile by mistake, and it was switched through to Rannaldini, who said he had Gertrude.’

‘What a coincidence,’ said Gablecross sarcastically. ‘So you dolled yourself up to go and see him.’

‘No.’ For a second Tab closed her eyes, clenching her fists against the memory of a hurtling weight knocking her to the floor. ‘But I wanted to get to Gertrude.’ She paused for a second, feeling her way. ‘She’d cut her paw. Rannaldini didn’t want me to take her. He’s bats about Taggie and probably wanted to return her personally. So I grabbed her and ran off, but I tripped over a bramble cable. Gertrude hit her head on a stump as I fell — that’s why she bled so much. Then I realized she was dead.’ There was a rattle of ice as Tab grabbed her vodka and tonic. ‘Her grave’s behind the tennis court.’

‘Why did you leave that message on Wolfie’s machine that you’d been raped?’

Tab’s eyes flickered in terror, her tongue ran over her gnawed, reddened lips. ‘No-one raped me,’ she whispered.

‘You’re lying. Rannaldini had a nasty dog bite, dog hairs and dog’s blood on his dressing-gown. I’m afraid’, Gablecross gave a sigh, ‘the only way to find out the truth is to dig up Gertrude and do a post-mortem.’

Tab caved in completely.

‘No, no, please not,’ she gasped. ‘It’d destroy Taggie. All right, Rannaldini did rape me.’

She was shaking so violently, Karen put down her notebook.

‘You’re being too rough on her,’ she hissed. ‘Let me talk to her.’

Pushing Sharon off the sofa, she sat down and put her arm round Tab’s shoulders.

‘I can’t take away the pain,’ she said gently, ‘but it’ll go, I promise. I’m sure you have secrets you never told your mum about, going too far with boys, smoking dope at school. Rannaldini was stunningly attractive.’ Karen picked up the Telegraph arts page, which had a big picture of him conducting. ‘Look at his beautiful hands. Your husband’s been away a long time, probably neglecting you.’

Tab’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Yes, he has.’