Jilly Cooper - Score!

Karen found Mikhail utterly despondent about his crocus-yellow Range Rover.

‘I telephone ten garage today and ask how much they charge for bottle-green blow-job. They all shout ’orrible things and hang up.’

‘I think you mean respray.’ Karen had only just contained her laughter, when Mikhail said he wished to make a statement.

‘I took the Montigny from the votch-tower and I borrow lighter with lilies from Tristan two or three days earlier. I must have dropped it in the wood. I went there to kill Rannaldini about ten forty-five, but he was already dead, strangled and shot. I also must confess I actually make friends again with my wife, Lara, on night before murder. When Rannaldini took her to votch-tower for bonk, he boast Montigny painting on wall was vorth three million. Finding Rannaldini dead, I took painting instead.’

‘What did you do with it?’ Karen’s pen would hardly write for excitement.

‘Hid it under Tristan’s mattress for safe-kipping.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Tristan wasn’t bonker like Sylvestre or Alpheus and wouldn’t squash painting. But when I go to remove it on Friday morning it had vanish…’

Mikhail was amazed but greatly cheered when Karen gave him an ecstatic hug. Gablecross was never going to speak to her again, but she was more and more convinced Tristan was innocent.

The Llandrogan Badger Action Group held their monthly meetings at the Leek and Grasshopper hotel on Sunday nights. The badger setts along Chantry Wood were the pride of the area, and at least forty badgers were known to travel nightly through the wood, over Jackson’s Meadow, skirting Catmint Cottage, down to the stream which divided the valley.

In summer months, the Action Group (or BAG, as they liked to be known), anxious to observe the badgers’ habits and protect them from baiters, fierce dogs and even fiercer farmers concerned about bovine tuberculosis, set up a camera to record these nocturnal perambulations and their time and date.

On Sunday, 15 July, Gareth Stacey, BAG’s bearded secretary, who spent a lot of time in the field and who stank worse than any badger sett after a rhubarb raid, was about to give a slide show of this month’s findings.

‘Come on, buck up,’ grumbled Major Holmes, the village bully, who didn’t care much for badgers but longed to get stuck into the wine and light refreshments that followed.

‘It’s like magic,’ said pretty Tracey Birkett, who taught at the local primary, ‘that the brocks don’t know we can see them all lit up.’

Out went the lights. Click, click, went Stinker Stacey. On the screen a stout female badger appeared, looping the loop.

‘Upside-down,’ barked Major Holmes.

Click, click, the right-way-up badger was followed by a barn owl, Lady Wade-Williams’s Burmese cat, a couple of cubs, then a huge bull badger, who produced roars of applause.

This woke up Keith, the junior reporter on the Llandrogan Echo , furious at having to cover the event when he could be in the pub, and who in the dark couldn’t keep himself awake gazing at pretty Tracey Birkett.

Click, click, click, click.

‘Look you, Gareth,’ said Merv the milkman, ‘we have an intruder.’

‘By Jove, we do,’ said Major Holmes.

As Stinker Stacey repeated the slide, everyone could see a tall dark man in a peacock-blue shirt, jeans and loafers coming out of the wood.

‘He’s yummy,’ sighed Tracey.

‘Wouldn’t mind having a teddy bears’ picnic with him,’ said Mrs Jones, the local baker, with a cackle.

‘Looks familiar,’ said the Vicar, cleaning his glasses.

‘It’s Lady Wade-Williams’s handyman — he’s always on the poach,’ said Merv the Milk.

The handsome intruder was followed by several rabbits, a fox, more badgers — two of them humping to loud cheers — and Mrs Owen’s Jack Russell on a late-night spree.

‘There he is again,’ said Jones the baker, in excitement.

‘Got one of them greyhounds on his back pocket,’ said Merv the Milk.

‘Lovely bum,’ sighed Tracey Birkett, earning a look of reproach from the Vicar.

‘He’s some actor chappie,’ said Major Holmes. ‘Seen him before.’

‘No, he isn’t.’ Keith the reporter snatched up the evening paper and thrust it into the beam of the projector. ‘It’s that Froggy they’ve arrested for murdering Rannaldini.’

‘The time was three forty a.m., ninth of the seventh, ninety-six,’ read out Tracey Birkett.

‘The murder’s supposed to have taken place between ten and eleven,’ said Keith, who was now leaping up and down in excitement. ‘Turn back to the first slide of him.’

Click, click, click, click, went Stinker Stacey.

Everyone peered forward in excitement.

‘Ten fifty p.m. on the eighth of July. Bingo!’ yelled Keith in jubilation. ‘He couldn’t have done it. It’s a good hundred and fifty miles from here to Paradise. Bloody hell! What a scoop.’

Even the Vicar forgave such language.

‘Golly,’ said Tracey Birkett. ‘He must have been going into the back gate of Catmint Cottage to see Claudine Lauzerte. Didn’t they make a film together?’

‘It’s him, all right,’ said Stinker Stacey. ‘We’d better go to the police.’

‘It’s him all right,’ said DC Beddoes of North Wales CID. ‘Must have nipped into Catmint Cottage, given Madame Lauzerte un, deux et trois , and nipped out again. Puts him in the clear. Couldn’t have strangled Rannaldini. You told anyone else?’

‘Only the Daily Mail , but it’s too late for tomorrow’s paper. Story’ll break with a bang on Tuesday.’

‘Madame Lauzerte’s not going to like it,’ said DC Beddoes, disapprovingly. ‘Terrible thing. She’d have let him do life.’

‘Must love her not to squeal,’ sighed Keith. ‘What a story. Froggy would a-wooing go.’

Even when Gablecross and Karen confronted him with the evidence of the Badger Action Group, Tristan still defended Claudine.

‘There was no affaire . I worry about film. She and her husband were friends of my father. She was like mother to me, we just talked last Sunday.’

‘At eleven at night?’ chided Gablecross. ‘And five hours later you’re seen coming out — long time to read the meter. Anyway, the French police have blown your safe and found Madame Lauzerte’s letters, which are not those you’d write to a son.’

Even the news he was free to go didn’t cheer Tristan.

‘Her name must be kept out of the papers,’ he pleaded.

‘Might have been if you’d levelled with us in the first place. Migraine on Thursday night indeed! When you were nearly three-quarters of an hour on the phone to her.’

‘Trying to reassure her the story wouldn’t come out,’ said Tristan despairingly.

‘Terrific for her street cred she’s been pulling such a gorgeous young guy,’ sighed Karen.

Over at Valhalla, a devastated Baby had, like Tristan, paced his room most of the night. How could Isa have stood him up for someone as two-faced and trivial as Chloe? Monday’s dawn and his heart were breaking simultaneously as he went out into the park. Torrential rain washed away his tears and the remnants of Rozzy’s make-up, which hadn’t been nearly as flattering as Lucy’s. Having caught and loaded his three horses into one of Rannaldini’s lorries, he set off very slowly, stopping every few minutes in case rage and shock made him drive into a wall.

Rupert’s house was ash blond in the early-morning sunshine. His dark woods lay as still as possible, like shaggy dogs knowing their coats will be too hot later in the day. As Baby rumbled into the yard, Rupert had just flown in from France. He was talking to a ravishing youth and to Dizzy, his comely head groom, who were both about to ride out. One beautiful horse after another, like a conjuror’s silk handkerchiefs, was emerging from the boxes.