Inside, it was difficult to distinguish the massive police and press presence from George’s heavies and the fleet of extras who’d been bussed in to act as policemen, paparazzi and Philip’s bodyguards.
Behind the house, which crouched ox-blood red and elephantine on a hill, a stretch of park had been levelled into a polo field surrounded by huge bell-shaped trees now dark and swollen with rain. Overhead, like a flotilla of battleships, hung charcoal-grey clouds.
On the edge of the field, outside a yellow and white striped tent, whose roof was buckling under the downpour, a small band in red uniforms was dispiritedly wringing out their instruments. Seeing his arrival, the commentator stopped telling the shivering extras in their flowery dresses and pale suits that the gallant Marquis of Posa had just scored a goal, and welcomed back ‘our director’, Tristan de Montigny.
Tristan was in no mood for pleasantries. Ignoring the ripple of applause and the large ‘Bienvenu, Tristan’ banner, he drove over to the unit, where the place was under water and in uproar, because neither Lucy nor Wolfie had turned up. Tristan was appalled. It was like coming home on a bleak winter night to find the pipes frozen and the central heating kaput. No-one had seen them since Saturday morning.
‘I know they’ll be found face down in a field,’ sobbed Simone.
‘Don’t be fatuous,’ snapped Tristan, who’d gone cold at the same thought.
All around him singers, who’d been soothed and flattered by Lucy for the past three months, were having tantrums and making fearful fusses about catching cold. A fleet of make-up artists had been bussed in anyway to handle all the extras. The most experienced, hijacked to look after the stars, must have graduated from the set of the Hammer House of Horror.
Granny looked about as menacing as a Brylcreemed Barbara Cartland. Tab, Pushy and Chloe had vermilion lips and black-ringed eyes like Brides of Dracula. Mikhail’s drink-reddened face clashed horribly with his crimson polo shirt.
‘Why isn’t Lucy here to sort out my bags and my double chin?’ grumbled Baby, who, having played polo until the stars came out with Rupert’s cronies then pigged out on Taggie’s sea trout, three helpings of loganberry torte and copious glasses of wine, was now trying to alleviate his hangover with a massive gin and tonic.
Alpheus was so furious that Griselda had hidden his noble brow and chestnut locks under a straw hat with a Blues and Royals ribbon that he’d surreptitiously fed the offending headgear to Sharon and Trevor, who’d rushed on to the field noisily tearing it to shreds.
Nemesis had struck swiftly. The new make-up artist didn’t have Lucy’s blow-drying and colouring skills, and Alpheus ended up with corkscrew curls the colour of mango chutney and looked like Paddy Ashdown in a Shirley Temple wig.
Simone was in hysterics that any continuity had been shot to pieces. ‘How could Lucy do this to us?’ she stormed.
‘Manage without her,’ snapped Tristan.
Nor had Tristan dreamt, as the day progressed, how much he would miss Wolfie to field telephone calls, to keep track of his belongings, and control the extras. Rupert had high-handedly sent over a couple of his grooms with all his dogs, and all his polo-playing friends’ dogs because they all wanted their dogs in the film and because one always sees lots of dogs at polo. The dogs proceeded to fight and bark and mount each other. Rupert, meanwhile, had buggered off to a race meeting at Ayr.
‘I vish his bloody daughter had gone too,’ grumbled Mikhail.
One of the first sounds Tristan heard and ignored was Tab, yelling her head off in true Campbell-Black fashion. She was desperately nervous about making her polo film début playing against world-class players, even if she had known them since she was a child. She had wanted to look ravishing for Tristan’s return, and been turned into the Town Tart by this ghastly make-up. It was all Lucy’s fault. And where was utterly bloody Wolfie to hold her hand, find her whip and absorb abuse like a punch bag?
Even worse, as Mistress of the Horse, she felt it her duty to see the singers played properly. Baby was good, but Mikhail had an unnerving habit of dropping his reins and swinging his stick round with both hands like a Tartar warlord as he thundered down the field.
‘For Gawd’s sake, watch him,’ Sexton pleaded with Tab. Having insurance claims already on a murdered producer and a recently absentee director, he didn’t want Mikhail taking out Ricky France-Lynch the England captain, or his forwards Seb and Dommie Carlisle.
Mikhail was sulking because George’s open house had suddenly become closed when one of Georgie’s heavies had caught him sidling out with a little Watteau and a Sickert under his polo shirt.
‘I know the murderer’s still at large,’ giggled Flora, ‘but Mikhail seems to be taking bulletproof vests to extremes.’
She still looked haunted and desperately tired as she and George hardly left each other’s side. As soon as the wrap party was over, they were off to Cornwall with Trevor.
Everyone was relieved to have moved away from Valhalla’s dark mazes and haunted cloisters. Rannaldini’s doomladen overture, pouring out of the speakers, however, was a constant reminder that his killer had not been caught.
The violence of the polo was equally unnerving, ponies thundering over grass as slippery as buttered spinach, sticks clashing, balls hurtling like cannon shot, often into the crowd, players deliberately colliding. The ponies kept jumping out of their thin thoroughbred skins and taking off, because the cast, upstaging each other, continually broke into snatches of their next opera or song cycle to prove there was work after Carlos.
‘Telephone, Tristan,’ shouted Bernard.
It was Claudine in hysterics. It was all Tristan’s fault, for barging into the cottage in Wales, the police had already been round, her maid was threatening to dump to the Express, and Jean-Louis to divorce her.
And she would have let me swing, thought Tristan savagely. He remembered Gablecross telling him that in big murder cases several marriages always broke up.
Couldn’t he get his friend Rupert Campbell-Black to pull strings and stop the Mail? wailed Claudine. Tristan said he’d try and hung up.
‘I don’t want to be bothered with any calls,’ he ordered Jessica, who was nervously standing in for Wolfie.
While they were waiting for the cameras to reload and reposition, he finally got through to the château. Hortense was obviously a little better, as she was in a meeting, unable to be disturbed. Tristan might not have been so sanguine if he’d known with whom. He left a message with Florence that he’d be down on Wednesday after the wrap party.
When they broke for a late lunch, Jessica said a French lady had rung five times on the unit mobile.
‘Non, non, non,’ howled Tristan, as it rang again. ‘I can’t talk to anyone.’
Next moment he had been buttonholed by Alpheus, complaining about both Tabitha and the make-up artist, and Chloe complaining that Baby was being gratuitously offensive, and had nearly ridden his pony over her.
They were soon joined by Pushy.
‘Could we have another make-up artist? I know I can look prettier than this, Tristan.’
God, he missed Wolfie to send them packing. Leaving them, in mid-bellyache, on his way to his caravan, he passed Jessica telling Bernard that Lucy expected to be back by mid-morning tomorrow.
Tristan swung round in fury. ‘Lucy rang? Why didn’t you put her on?’
‘You didn’t want any calls.’
‘I didn’t mean Lucy, you stupid bitch. Get her back at once.’
‘I didn’t take her number,’ stammered Jessica, appalled by such unaccustomed rudeness.