‘Oh, I’m so pleased for them both,’ sighed Rozzy, taking Alpheus’s suit from him. ‘I wonder if it needs a press.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Tristan. ‘Oh, Rozzy, I was such a bastard to Lucy earlier. Now I’m worried stiff. Someone tried to kill Tab, they slashed your dress yesterday, the murderer’s on the rampage, and Lucy’s not answering her mobile.’
‘Leave a message on her bleeper.’
‘I’ve been leaving them all day. I need her to make up Alpheus. We can cover his Shirley Temple curls with straw hat, but only Lucy can give those commonplace features an air of nobility. And to tell the truth,’ confessed Tristan wryly, ‘I shouted at her because I miss her so much.’
‘I’ll find her.’ Rozzy patted his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry.’
79
Rupert managed to catch the five fifty news on a hospital television. That pompous ass Gerald Portland was giving a press conference at Rutminster police station. He was flaunting a purple spotted tie with a purple striped shirt and kept smoothing his chestnut hair for the cameras.
‘We are treating this incident as attempted murder,’ he was telling the rugger scrum of reporters. ‘But happily I can confirm that Tabitha Lovell is no longer in a life-threatening condition.’
After that, Portland’s emergency meeting of the Inner Cabinet was most embarrassingly interrupted by an apoplectic telephone call from Rupert. ‘I merely said she was no longer in a life-threatening condition, Mr Campbell-Black.’
‘Don’t be fucking stupid. The person who’s just tried to kill her for a second time has already killed two people and tried to bump off half a dozen more, and is still on the loose. If that isn’t fucking threatening her life, I don’t know what is. All you overpaid cretins do is waste tax-payers’ money chasing the wrong people.’
‘We are about to make an arrest,’ said Portland huffily.
‘Well, until the killer’s behind bars, I want a dozen men guarding Tab at the hospital — and while you’re on, never, never, never wear spots with stripes.’
‘Bastard!’ Portland slammed down the telephone.
But nothing could dent his euphoria. The DNA testing had at last produced a match.
‘Who is it, Guv?’ begged DC Lightfoot in excitement.
Gerry Portland turned to Gablecross, not without a certain satisfaction. ‘I’m afraid it’s your girlfriend Lucy Latimer, Tim.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Karen indignantly.
‘She never had a cast-iron alibi,’ went on Portland. ‘She was allegedly walking that dog when both Rannaldini and Beattie copped it, and her DNA profile showed up in Rannaldini’s saliva and in the bite on Beattie’s shoulder. She was carrying Tabitha’s saddle when Tristan fired her — that probably pushed her over the top. And her fingerprints and fibres from Tab’s stirrup leather were found all over the penknife on her key-ring, which Kevin and Debbie’, Portland grinned at Fanshawe and Debbie, ‘unearthed from a bin-bag outside Wardrobe. Latimer must have been frantic to get rid of it.’
‘The murderer must have stolen her keys,’ snapped Gablecross, who had only recently come off the telephone to Wolfie. ‘Why should Lucy want to kill Tab when she’d just come back from France, where she’d specially gone to clear Tristan’s name so he could marry Tab?’
‘Very subtle,’ said Fanshawe nastily. ‘After such altruism, no-one would suspect her of murdering Tab. Then she could have Tristan for herself. Her total, total obsession is behind the whole thing. You and Karen were the first people to suss how crazy she was about him.’
‘Then why did she kill Rannaldini?’ demanded Karen.
‘Because he was going to tell the world Maxim was Tristan’s father,’ explained Gerald Portland. ‘She killed Beattie for the same reason. Rannaldini had humiliated her by making a pass at her — it’s in his memoirs. Psychopaths can’t stand being belittled, and Rannaldini was also threatening to tell Tristan she was crazy about him. She tried to kill Tab because she couldn’t bear her to have Tristan.’
‘Doesn’t add up,’ muttered Gablecross.
‘’Fraid it does,’ said Fanshawe patronizingly. ‘Everyone Tristan favoured got warned off. Granville’s patchwork quilt, Flora’s fox, poor Rozzy’s dress cut to ribbons, putting petrol in the water cans, all the work of a mad person.’
‘What about the adder in Lucy’s make-up box?’ pleaded Karen.
‘A plant — made her look like a victim, same as showing Tim the burn from the poisoned champagne on her tablecloth. She’s diabolically clever, like all psychos. She failed twice with Tab, but she’ll strike again.’
‘I swear she hasn’t done it.’
‘The DNA’s conclusive, Tim. It’s always the quiet ones,’ said Portland, not unkindly. ‘Latimer spent so much time making other people beautiful, but they got the clapping. For the first time in her life, she’s got a bigger audience than they ever will.’
Then he turned briskly to Fanshawe and Debbie. ‘Go and pull her in. Well done, both of you.’
‘Where is she?’ asked Gablecross dully.
‘Searching the Valhalla woods for her dog, but we’ve got tails on her and she keeps ringing to check if he has been handed in. Next time we’ll nail her. You and Karen better go and keep an eye on Tabitha at Rutminster General, Tim. We don’t want any slip-ups.’
The ultimate put-down, thought Gablecross savagely, the hound demoted to guard-dog.
Lucy had been searching for hours, shouting herself hoarse, running herself into a state of collapse. To add to her frustration, her mobile wouldn’t work in the wood so she had to keep returning to the house or the Paradise — Cheltenham road to ring the police and the local dog sanctuaries.
Purplish-black clouds were massing on the horizon and the wind had risen, tangling her hair. After yesterday’s downpour, the woodland floor was impossibly slippery, her legs were lacerated by bramble cables and nettles, her face and arms scratched, her knees bruised and bleeding where she had continually fallen over. But she felt no pain except desolation.
‘James, James.’ Her voice echoed mockingly back at her. The hot heavy air carried every sound except a joyful bark. To the clay shoots banging away in anticipation of 12 August was added a rumble of thunder. Untranquillized, James would bolt half-way to London. Returning to the road once more, she punched out the number of Rutminster police station.
‘It’s Lucy Latimer again, ringing about James, a big red shaggy lurcher. He slipped his collar so he hasn’t got a name tag.’
‘Who did you say?’
‘Lucy Latimer.’
She could hear a hand thudding over the receiver, then a man’s voice, calm but quivering with excitement. ‘Where are you, Lucy?’
‘To the north of Hangman’s Wood.’
‘Come back to the big house.’ Then, after a pause, ‘We’ve got good news for you.’
‘Oh, my God! He’s red and shaggy.’
‘That’s the one. Meet us at your caravan, Lucy.’
Crying with relief, her loafers squelching in sympathy, Lucy ran all the way. Oh, please, please, please, let it be James. An extraordinary garish light was gilding the wheatfields, turning the Valhalla lawns a Day-glo emerald. Silver streams were hurtling down the valley into an ever-rising lake. Outside her caravan beside the love-in-a-mist, a bowl of food she’d left to tempt James was so heaving with maggots she nearly threw up. She was about to chuck it out when, glancing into her caravan, she saw that her suitcase had been opened, her drawers up-ended and her bag emptied on the table.
Tristan’s papers, she thought in horror. Leaping up the steps, unzipping the bench-seat cushion, she sighed with relief. The parcel was still there. She must lock it safely in her make-up box, but where were her keys? Normally they hung on a hook beside her nieces’ photographs.