Jilly Cooper - Score!

‘Don’t cry, chérie , I’ll buy you another dress.’

Within seconds, relieved that something at last had happened, twenty police, led by Fanshawe and Debbie, had surrounded the caravan. They were disappointed the crime was going to be hard to date.

‘I hung the dress in the back of the cupboard, when I came back after Glyn’s birthday party exactly a week ago,’ gasped Rozzy, between sobs.

Debbie took her hand. ‘Who knew it was there?’

‘Lucy, Grisel, Simone, I don’t know.’

As the shredded fragments were shoved into a plastic bag for Forensic, Debbie gathered up a handful. ‘Silk isn’t torn or severed, looks as if it’s been chopped up by big pinking shears.’

And Tristan shivered, as he remembered the speed with which Lucy often cut up James’s liver with a big pair of scissors, claiming he hated it in lumps. Oh, God, it couldn’t have been Lucy.

Two policemen were left to guard Wardrobe. Everyone else drifted away, leaving Rozzy with Tristan whose hand she still clutched. To make a break, he crossed the caravan to comfort James, who only betrayed his upset by a frantically shuddering body.

‘You still haven’t eaten,’ gulped Rozzy. ‘Let me make you supper.’

Feeling an absolute rat, but unable to cope with her dark anguish, Tristan pleaded exhaustion.

‘I’ll collapse if I don’t crash out. I’ve got to hold the centre tomorrow. Your dress being cut to bits is bound to freak everyone out, then there’s the wrap party. Forgive me,’ he said, as her tears started to flow again. ‘I’ll buy you dinner next week, and please go and get yourself a new dress tomorrow.’

Reaching in his back pocket, he gave her three hundred pounds, then a hug. Outside he found his hovering, desperately worried first assistant director.

‘Try and comfort her,’ he begged, then his mind careered off. ‘In case Lucy doesn’t get back in time to make up Granny, can you ask Berman’s to put a monk’s black robes with a pointed hood in a taxi first thing?’

‘What d’you think to that?’ asked Fanshawe.

‘Ugly,’ said Debbie. ‘Such a nice lady. Who’d deprive her of a lovely dress when she’s got so little?’

‘Might be someone with an ancient grievance because she had such a beautiful voice. We should recheck those ladies who might have been singing in the wood. Chloe, Gloria, Hermione, even Flora, and all the soprano extras.’

Debbie sighed, then said, ‘She was evidently in Tristan’s caravan for twenty minutes this morning. He was so sweet to her tonight. Could it be the murderer not being able to bear him being nice to anyone?’

Back in his caravan, soaked to the skin, Tristan realized he was out of whisky, which would not have happened if that little traitor Wolfie had been here. Nor would a pile of post, rising almost to the ceiling, have been left unopened. Without Wolfie and Lucy, he felt totally defenceless, particularly when there was a knock on the door, and a reporter from the Scorpion barged in, brandishing a bottle of champagne to celebrate his release. Having seen the first edition of the Mail , she wondered if they could have a word about Claudine Lauzerte.

‘Madame Lauzerte’s been having her gâteau and eating it, according to her maid, who’s dumped in the Express , and who is very much on your side, Tristan.’

‘Fuck off,’ howled Tristan, as she held out her tape-recorder.

After that the reporters descended like a pack of wolves. Tristan thought they would rip him to pieces. Fortunately George’s heavies were even better at manhandling the press than bribing planning officers or kneecapping little old sitting tenants, and had soon escorted Tristan to the safety of George’s drawing room.

‘Stay the night,’ said Flora, handing him a quadruple Bell’s. ‘Most of the unit seem to be. They’re too scared to go back to Valhalla.’

Tristan didn’t need any persuading. He went straight to bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.

Alpheus was sweating. His American agent had been unable to produce any record of calling him on the night of Rannaldini’s murder, and both Chloe and Isa had seen and heard him singing outside Magpie Cottage. On Monday morning, therefore, he had had the humiliation of giving a disapproving DC Smithson and a smirking DC Lightfoot a revised version of his movements on the night of Sunday the eighth. He had indeed jogged home from the tennis but, on seeing a light in Magpie Cottage, had decided to call on Tabitha.

Having showered and changed into the first white suit, he had nipped into River House to pick Tab a posy from Hermione’s ‘well-stocked garden’.

What he did not reveal was that as he was breaking off Hermione’s lilies, he had been transfixed by the sight of his co-star, re-enacting their great shove-and-grunt scene in the summerhouse with another, and stayed and watched them for a minute or two. Burning with lust, he had set out for Magpie Cottage, and told Smithson and Lightfoot, who should have stopped grinning like a jackass, that he had indeed sung a favourite aria under Tab’s window, and received a bottle of red wine over his white suit. ‘I couldn’t see who had thrown it.’ Alpheus was damned if he was going to give Isa and Chloe an alibi.

He also admitted that next morning he had bagged up the wine-soaked suit and given it to the dustmen. Unfortunately, charred fragments of the second, gulls’ egg and grass stained, white suit, together with white rock rose and chimpanzee orchids, identical to the ones used by Beattie to plug herself, were found in the garden at Jasmine Cottage. Suspicion was therefore heavily on Alpheus.

Alpheus’s day had not improved. He was furious about his Shirley Temple curls and Rupert not allowing him to play polo.

If the third white suit didn’t arrive in time, he would be forced to wear some tacky blazer, and Tab had been so rude. He was furious with himself for still fancying the brat rotten. Even worse, the DNA tests were due back tomorrow, which would certainly identify his semen, and Lord knows what else, inside Beattie.

Returning to Jasmine Cottage after filming, he poured himself a rare whisky, and jumped nervously as the doorbell rang. He hoped to God it wasn’t any more grizzled lady botanists rolling up to revere the chimpanzee orchid. It was very dark outside and at first he thought no-one was there. Then, looking down, he saw Little Cosmo.

One of Cosmo’s best buys, acquired for 20p at the Paradise Conservative fête, had been a second-hand Scout uniform, in which he always dressed when he was collecting house to house for himself.

For 50p, Alpheus allowed Cosmo into Jasmine Cottage to clean his shoes. Once inside Little Cosmo produced his favourite photographs of Alpheus outside the summerhouse watching Hermione and Sexton, with twelve lilies in one hand and an enormous hard-on in the other.

When Alpheus tore up the photograph, Cosmo, echoing his late father, replied that he had the negs.

‘Let us do a deal,’ suggested Cosmo. ‘I’d like cash before I hand over the negs. Otherwise I thought I’d offer copies as going-away presents at the wrap party tomorrow night.’

Considerably richer, Little Cosmo left Jasmine Cottage. Closing the gate behind him, he broke into Elisabetta’s last aria in a flawless treble, then pedalled off on his bike into the gloom with a maniacal cackle. Alpheus gave a shiver. Could Little Cosmo have murdered his father and Beattie to gain control of the memoirs?

Having been too tired to draw the curtains, Tristan was woken at four by Pegasus, Aries and Taurus, a veritable zoo of brilliant stars, blazing in through the big square window, and a silver glow in the east. Switching on the wireless he learnt of storms causing havoc to flights and cross-Channel ferries. He hoped a returning Wolfie and Lucy would be struck by lightning or horrendously seasick. Then he remembered despairingly that he was still Maxim’s bastard son without any money, and that in a few hours the world would be picking over his affaire with Claudine. Perhaps her husband would call him out and he would die impaled on a sword, like Beattie on Rannaldini’s unicorn.