Score! (63 page)

‘Gimme a quadruple whisky.’

‘Mr Sexton insist no drink.’

‘Don’t be so fucking silly, I’ve just seen Rannaldini.’

‘Mr Sexton say no drink,’ persisted Maria.

‘I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts,’ said a grinning Baby.

Having gone behind the bar and poured Rupert a large Bell’s, Wolfie went in search of the briefcase, but when he returned with it five minutes later, he said the set had been deserted.

‘Well, there’s no way I’m putting up with this sort of thing,’ said Rupert shirtily. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he told Tristan, who tried not to look relieved. At least, they’d get on quicker.

‘I want everyone back on the set by one thirty,’ he shouted, as he picked up his mobile and vanished into the darkness.

Beattie returned to Valhalla, kicking herself for wasting time on such a jerk. As she let herself into her suite, however, she found a note, typed on dove-grey production-office paper, shoved under her door. ‘Meet me in the Unicorn Glade at one fifteen and I will tell you who killed Rannaldini.’

Beattie wanted to bay like a bloodhound. Hell! It was ten past already. She hoped she wasn’t too late. This was going to be the greatest exclusive ever. The scoop
de grâce
.

Quickly checking that no-one had tampered with her machine, she pressed the save button and set out for the Unicorn Glade. Thank God, when she was having an
affaire
with Rannaldini, she had memorized the shortcut through the maze. It was so dark and claustrophobic you could easily lose your bearings. She ran so fast she kept cannoning off the sides, the rough, clipped yew twigs scraping her face and arms.

‘Right, left, right,’ she panted, ‘and right towards the Pole Star,’ she could hear the crew chatting as they returned to work, ‘and left, right, left towards the great constellation of Pegasus,’ and she was out on the other side, leaping in terror as an icy hand clawed her face. Then she laughed, realizing it was only a weeping willow, wet from an earlier shower. Jumping the Devil’s Stream, Rannaldini’s only spring still flowing, running under a rose arch, she was into the Unicorn Glade.

Based on a fifteenth-century tapestry, hanging in the Musée de Cluny in Paris, this small, exquisite private garden had only been open to outsiders since Rannaldini’s death. Filled with scented flowers and herbs, it was populated with little stone foxes, weasels, cats and greyhounds lying down with crossed paws beside rabbits to symbolize that even natural enemies can live in harmony.

Legend had it that the unicorn could only be tamed by a virgin, and in the original tapestry a chaste lady sat in the centre of the garden with the unicorn crouched beside her, his front hoofs on her knee as she stroked his neck.

But, as the joke went, there had never been any virgins in Valhalla, so this touching tableau had been replaced by a lone unicorn, gleaming silver in the starlight as he tossed his head and pawed the grass.

Beattie could almost hear the proud little fellow snorting, as she leant against him to regain her breath. Caressing his smooth back, she ran her fingers up his mane, and his grooved horn, which was raised like a sword on guard. As a child, she had always longed for a pony. Rupert’s horses and Olympic gold for show-jumping had been one of the reasons she’d fallen so much in love with him. If he hadn’t dumped her, she would never have been bringing the gorgeous bastard down.

Glancing round at opulent shrub roses, towering delphiniums and massed white foxgloves, any of which could conceal the writer of the letter, she was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of doom and froze with terror as one of the shadows separated and came towards her.

Then, as the moon emerged from a scurrying black cloud, she saw Rannaldini’s face, colder and whiter than any moon, but with eyes crueller and hotter than hell. The dark cloak slid over the dewy grass, as he swept towards her on his way to conduct a requiem.

The words ‘I never meant to slag you off’ withered on Beattie’s lips. She couldn’t scream, only retreat, as he came nearer and nearer. Then she tripped backwards over a little stone fox, and felt herself falling. The pain was unimaginable.

By three o’clock in the morning the wind had risen, all the crew had put on jackets, and Hermione had grumbled bitterly enough about the treacherous night air to have appropriated Rozzy’s dark red mohair cardigan and Bernard’s duffel coat.

Noticing Rozzy shivering uncontrollably and fighting a racking cough, Tristan took off his bomber jacket and put it round her shoulders. ‘You must take care of that throat.’

In fascinated horror, Lucy watched Rozzy turn her head and drop a kiss on his hand as it rested for a second on her shoulder. Her ecstasy was unmistakable. Earlier in the day, Rozzy had been into Rutminster for treatment for her cancer, but recently Lucy had noticed her poring over the score of
Der Rosenkavalier
, marking in the part of Marschallin with yellow Pentel. Had Rozzy convinced herself she could sing in the opera after all?

Wolfie, constantly taunted by nightmarish visions of Tab being photographed in the nude by his father, glanced up at Valhalla, where chandeliers blazed in nearly every window to create an illusion of a ball in progress. A light was still on in Helen’s bedroom. ‘She shouldn’t be going to Penscombe,’ he muttered furiously to Lucy. ‘She’ll only upset Tab. Christ, I miss her.’

‘Poor Wolfie.’ Lucy hugged him. ‘She’ll be back for the polo shoot.’

‘When you’ve finished snogging, Lucy and Wolfgang…’ called out Tristan, but so acidly no-one laughed.

‘Quiet, please,’ brayed Bernard.

At three forty-five, Pushy, deciding no-one on the set was paying her enough attention, suggested that as she was
so
much younger than Chloe and Hermione, she and Flora should have a carefree little bop together for the sake of continuity, while the
older
women discussed the ball. ‘We did have a love scene earlier,’ she pouted.

‘No,’ cried Flora in revulsion. It was the scene with Pushy that had wrecked her and George.

Seeing Flora about to bolt, and knowing he wouldn’t get another night’s filming out of her, Tristan told Pushy to pack it in. ‘We’ve got to get this ball scene in the can before sunrise and before Rupert come back and knock our heads together!’

‘No way he’ll return till Rannaldini’s safely back in his coffin,’ said Ogborne, in a sepulchral voice.

Three-quarters of an hour later Oscar, pretending to look into his view-finder, had fallen asleep. Flicking his fingers for Ogborne’s help, Valentin laid his father-in-law across two chairs. A faint pink flush in a very pale sky heralded the approach of sunrise, pigeons were cooing, blackbirds pecking the lawn for worms.

‘Cut and print. Well done, everyone, particularly Chloe,’ shouted Tristan. Thank God there were pros like her, who could dispatch a scene in one take. Thank God the deepest anxiety could be dispelled temporarily by a good night’s work.

Beyond the set, emerging from the uniform greyness of night, he could see urns overflowing with pink geraniums, white and yellow roses swarming up dark yews and cypresses. Beyond, the tall chimneys of River House soared like pale lupins.

Why aren’t I filming dawn? Tristan sighed.

As the crew dismantled the camera tracks, took down lights and prepared the film cans for the courier to take for processing, Lucy wearily removed make-up and wigs, and thought longingly of her bed. Everyone was cheered up by a particularly sumptuous breakfast of fluffy buttery scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and bagels, followed by strawberries and cream. DC Lightfoot, Gablecross and Karen, who didn’t want to miss the fun, and half Rutshire Constabulary, who’d been flatfooting round like the chorus of
The Pirates of Penzance
, were soon tucking in as well. Even the French contingent managed to crack a smile when Rupert rolled up with several crates of white and red.

‘You can drink yourselves insensible now.’

Having nervously glanced around for Rannaldini’s ghost, he dragged a newly arrived Sexton into the production office. Expecting another bollocking about overpaying Lord Waterlane, Sexton was amazed when Rupert announced that George Hungerford was a seriously good guy.

‘I fort you loathed him, said he was more of a yobbo than me.’

‘Only because he was threatening to ram a motorway up my estate. He’s given Tab an alibi and he’s offered us his polo field for nothing. And he says we can have the wrap party there too, get us away from Valhalla.’

‘What about Lord Waterlane?’ asked a wistful Sexton, who’d been invited to lunch at the House of Lords.

‘It’ll really piss him off, the greedy sod,’ said Rupert happily. ‘And his vulgar wife too, who was expecting to nail the cast to open her fêtes for the next forty years. Good bloke, George.’

‘You are so bleedin’ irrational,’ sighed Sexton.

‘I know how to save money, and I’m also dazzling at playing Cupid.’

Flora, who had changed out of her dinner jacket into a pair of grey linen shorts and a red and yellow striped blazer, looked as young and desolate as a small boy going back to prep school for the second term. Everyone was hugging her, taking her telephone number and saying they’d see her at the wrap party.

‘Yes, lovely, I’ll be there,’ lied Flora, through numbed lips.

She’d send them a crate of champagne — or rather plonk in her new impoverished state — and be at the bottom of the River Fleet by then.

As she walked wearily down to Make Up to collect Trevor, an early bumble bee was burying its face in a dark blue delphinium, the clouds overhead were turning from yellow to pale pink, a black crow swayed on top of one of the Lawson cypresses. In the fields below, black plastic bags of hay lay on the gold stubble like slugs. Any minute Rozzy would rush out and scatter little blue pellets. One magpie for sorrow rose out of the Unicorn Glade.

Even the sight of Trevor, standing on top of James to see out of the caravan window and wagging his tail so hard he nearly fell off, didn’t bring a smile to her lips.

As she opened the door, both dogs hurtled down the steps. Having had pees that went on for ever, crapped extensively and examined all the croquet hoops on the lawn to see what foxes and badgers had been about, they belted off, Trevor to woo Maria in the canteen, James to find Lucy.

It was now light enough for Flora to define the stones in the regard ring George had given her on the eve of filming. R for Ruby, E for Emerald, G for Garnet, A for Amethyst, R for Ruby, D for Diamond, spelling the word Regard. At the thought that her darling George would never have regard for her again, Flora collapsed against a huge oak tree sobbing piteously. Everyone swung round, a hush fell at the utter desolation of the sound.

Baby was about to race over and comfort her, when Rupert put a restraining hand on his arm and nodded towards the rose walk where, from arches of acid-green hop fantastically garlanded with a pink rose appropriately called The New Dawn, emerged George Hungerford. He was wearing a dark red polo shirt, dirty white chinos, which looked about to fall down because he’d lost so much weight, and odd shoes. His dark hair was all over the place, and in his hands, in gaudy contrast to Rannaldini’s exquisite pastels, was a hastily snatched-up bunch of marigolds, salmon-pink gladioli, scarlet roses and mauve dahlias, which quivered increasingly, like some exotic butterfly.

No-one uttered a word as he approached. Then, in front of four of the finest singers in the world, in a croaky strangulated bass, he started to sing ‘Zärliche Libre’, Beethoven’s little rondo about tender love, which Flora had sung to him so often. He started too high, couldn’t reach the top notes and had to begin again. Blood was trickling from hands clutching the roses too tightly. At one moment his voice was so choked by tears he couldn’t go on, and the cooing pigeons had to fill in the gap.

Flora appeared frozen to the oak tree; only her knees were quivering as much as George’s flowers. Next minute Trevor had erupted jauntily from the maze, nose caked in mud from burying a pork bone, and giving a joyous bark he hurtled across the grass, squashing the flowers as he landed in his master’s arms. Once again George nearly ground to a halt, but having dried his eyes on a wriggling Trevor, he managed to falter to the end.

There was a long silence, followed by a burst of cheering and clapping. Swinging round, blinking incredulously, Flora catapulted across the grass, crashing into George’s chest. The arm that wasn’t holding Trevor and the flowers clamped around her.

‘Don’t say anything. It’s my fault, I’m such a stupid tosser,’ mumbled George, as he led her off down the rose walk into the sunrise.

‘Oh, how sweet,’ sobbed Lucy, running off into the park. Tristan wanted to race after her and apologize for being so sarcastic earlier, but he still had so much to do.

‘Why can’t
Don Carlos
have a happy ending?’ said Griselda, wiping her eyes on a tablecloth.

Even Rupert and Gablecross blew their noses noisily.

‘I’ve always thought Flora a drama queen,’ said Hermione sourly.

‘Now, now, Hermsie,’ said Sexton reprovingly, as he topped up her glass, ‘Flora’s a sweetheart, and didn’t Rupert make a terrific Cupid bringing them togevver?’

Baby, however, who’d been in low spirits all evening, drained his glass of red, turned to Rupert with an expressionless face and said, ‘Thank you, Mr Cupid-Black, for ruining the only chance of happiness I’ve ever had,’ and wandered off unsteadily towards the house.

‘Another drama queen,’ said Chloe scornfully.

‘What’s the stupid queer going on about?’ asked Rupert, in bewilderment.

‘Irrespective of his sexual orientation,’ said Tristan sharply, ‘Baby really loves Flora.’

‘At least George and Flora’s is one relationship Beattie Johnson hasn’t screwed up,’ said Sexton. ‘What’s up for this evening?’

‘We’ll really have to motor,’ Tristan reeled off a punishing list of cover shots, ‘and we’ve got to shoot Alpheus praying before his coronation and Hermione walking up the aisle to join him, and I must reshoot Carlos removing Posa’s knife. I’ve decided it would work better with a gun, and the scene in the centre of the maze didn’t work either, too small and claustrophobic. The Unicorn Glade is ringed with yew hedge. We could fake it as the centre of the maze.’