‘Detective Constable Karen Needham of Rutminster CID,’ and ignoring Gablecross’s horrified expression and furiously waving hands, ‘I’m afraid a body has been found, and Miss Beattie Johnson appears to have been spiked like her rotten copy.’
‘You’ll get fired,’ roared Gablecross.
‘No, I won’t,’ said Karen, who could hardly speak for laughing. ‘Gerry utterly loathed Beattie.’
Once again Gerald Portland was absolutely hopping.
‘I put twenty men on night duty at Valhalla,’ he shouted at the emergency meeting, three hours later, ‘and they spend all night drooling over Gloria Prescott, stuffing themselves with roast pork and don’t notice a socking great murder two hundred yards away.
‘We’ll be a laughing stock, and the Scorpion will lynch us. They are alleged to have paid a million for those memoirs. They’re going to bill that fucking bitch as the greatest journalist since Homer. They’re offering fifty thousand for information leading to the capture of her murderer, so no-one will call us any more. Jesus!’
Portland had indeed been no lover of Beattie. While the rest of the media had nicknamed him Pin-up Portland, she had called him Inspector Portly, just because he’d gained a few pounds on a Caribbean cruise, and described his upwardly mobilized accent as ‘so camp you could cut it with a Boy Scout’s penknife’.
‘How come none of you realized it was her?’ he shouted at his team.
‘Bloody good disguise, Guv’nor.’ DC Lightfoot scratched his head. ‘Could have sworn she was the spinster maiden-aunt type.’
‘I’d forget that line of reasoning if I were you,’ snapped Portland. ‘Pathologist says she’s got a vagina like the M1.’
‘I beg your pardon.’ DC Smithson pursed her lips as the men grinned.
‘So many people have been up and down, stupid, it’s very well worn. It’s early days, but the pathologist also reckons she was killed between one and two, and had intercourse perhaps half an hour before that. The plants stuffed up her vagina appear to contain some rare specimens.’
‘Mustard and cress,’ giggled Karen.
‘Someone’, Portland threw her a look of fond reproof, ‘appears to have bitten Beattie’s shoulder — we can DNA that. Her specs were broken so we’re looking for fragments on the murderer’s clothes.’
They had already found the murder weapon, a.22, chucked into the long grass by the Devil’s Stream. It had been taken from Props.
‘Who has a key?’ Fanshawe asked.
‘Everyone in that department, but the prop master said the doors are often open all day, it would be easy for the murderer to get a key cut. It’s a single-shot gun,’ he continued, ‘so the killer would not be expecting to miss. It’d been handled in filming during the auto da fe by Baby and Mikhail, and covered in their prints which Forensic are isolating.’
It had been a pretty lively evening, according to DC Lightfoot, what with the sightings of Rannaldini and the filling in of Bernard’s crossword, which had gone off to the graphologist. As a final act of defiance, one of Rannaldini’s cigars had been found stubbed out in Beattie’s ashtray.
‘Wow,’ sighed Karen. ‘D’you think our murderer’s really dressing up as Rannaldini, and that’s what terrified Beattie? She probably wrote worse things about him in her pieces for Sunday than anyone else.’
‘Possible,’ mused Portland, examining the note again.
‘“Meet me in the Unicorn Glade at one fifteen.” This was written by someone familiar with a keyboard — it’s not a two-finger job.’
‘Who would have wanted to murder Beattie?’
‘Everyone,’ said Portland, with feeling. ‘If she had the memoirs, and if she hadn’t, they’d all blabbed or been stitched up by her.’
Paddy, Rupert’s racing crony on the Sun, had quickly been on to Portland, saying he’d tipped off Rupert and all the big names that Eulalia was Beattie just after twelve thirty.
‘Sounded like a turkey farm in mid-December,’ Paddy had added gleefully. ‘Most of them were only too happy to give their side of the story for a consideration. News travels so fast on a film set, everyone must have known Beattie was Eulalia by the middle of the break.’
‘Still didn’t give them much time to send her a note and murder her before they had to start work again,’ said Gablecross.
‘If the murderer had a master key,’ said Karen excitedly, ‘they could have let themselves into Eulalia’s room much earlier, discovered she was Beattie and waited till Friday, just before she filed copy, to kill her and whip the piece so they could get hold of as much sleaze as possible.’
‘Good girl,’ said Portland approvingly.
‘Mrs Brimscombe says Beattie went out about ten thirty,’ said DC Lightfoot. ‘Murderer could have nipped in then, nicked all the stuff, printed out the piece and left a note under the door.’
‘Risky,’ said Karen. ‘If Beattie returned, found the memoirs and disks missing and the piece run off, she might have smelt a rat or two and not gone to the Unicorn Glade.’
‘More likely’, said Fanshawe dismissively — anyone would have thought DC Needham was running this meeting, ‘the murderer killed her, then returned to her room, fucked the computer, having printed off and nicked Beattie’s stuff, then hidden that and returned to the set by one thirty as though nothing had happened.’
‘Unlikely it was as early as that,’ said Gablecross, who was pissed off with Karen but wasn’t having anyone bullying her. ‘Sylvestre, the sound man, who can hear mobiles three streets away, heard a scream around one twenty and assumed it was some singer acting up but swears he heard a crash as late as one thirty-five.’
‘By which time most of them would have been back on the set.’
‘Not Mr Campbell-Black,’ said Gablecross darkly. ‘He hates Beattie most of all. He pretended to see a ghost and buggered off to visit George Hungerford, or so he says. They came back together, both quite capable of putting out a contract on Beattie. Tristan de Montigny disappeared into the darkness with his mobile.
‘Alpheus Shaw’, Gablecross pointed up at the unit photograph, ‘says he made a few phone calls in the production office, where he was seen by Mikhail, then he returned to Jasmine Cottage for an early night. Baby says he was with Flora.
‘Immediately Chloe, Gloria, Hermione, et cetera, learned it was Beattie,’ he continued, ‘they were trying to get on to her, begging her not to shop them. I imagine those were the phone calls Lady Rannaldini heard through the night. She swears she had no idea that Eulalia was Beattie. I think she’s lying. She’s now shoved off to Penscombe to stay with Rupert and Taggie. Sexton Kemp rolled up on the set at four thirty.’
‘Funny time to be wandering around,’ said Fanshawe, who was still hoping to nail Hermione and Sexton for the murder. ‘Lucy Latimer spent most of the evening giving Dame Hermione resprays, Rozzy Pringle ferrying clean shirts.’
‘Very easy to come and go on a film set.’ Gablecross shook his head. ‘Never use everyone at the same time.’
‘Better search their rooms,’ said Portland.
‘Can’t at the moment.’ DC Lightfoot looked at his watch. ‘They’ll be sleeping. They get wake-up calls around five.’
‘Funny old time for Beattie to cop it,’ mused Portland, ‘missing the nationals.’ Then, answering his telephone, ‘Great, thanks, I’ll be along.’ Rubbing his hands, he told his team, ‘They’ve identified the fingerprints on the.22 and the wheel marks in the field off Rannaldini’s drive.’
But as Portland left the room, Gablecross followed him into the corridor, looking extremely sheepish.
‘Could I have a word, Guv’nor?’ Then, pulling a letter and a bit of paper out of his inside pocket, ‘I’m afraid in the excitement of blowing Clive’s safe, I forgot I’d left this in my other jacket. It was in French. Karen’s translated it.’