Death of a Prankster (11 page)

‘I am sorry,’ said Priscilla. ‘What did he die of?’

‘A broken heart,’ snapped Paul. ‘So go and report that to your policeman friend.’

‘There’s no need for you to get so worked up,’ said Melissa when Priscilla had left. ‘And what makes you think she is spying for Hamish?’

‘Because she goes off with friend Hamish and then comes back for the express purpose of trying to find out about my father. It was all Jeffrey’s fault. He took Mother away.’

‘Try not to get so upset.’ Melissa took his arm. ‘Maybe we should get some food after all.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.’

His eyes filled with tears and he took off his glasses and scrubbed at them with his handkerchief. ‘Thank God you’re here with me,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Oh, Melissa, will you marry me?’

She stared back at him. Somewhere at the back of her brain a tiny warning voice was crying that Paul wanted a substitute mother, that her remark, ‘I’ll take care of you,’ had sparked the proposal. But there were louder voices and bright images. He was a tolerably personable young man with a good job. He was a millionaire. She would have a diamond ring. Mum would be ever so pleased. White satin. Who would be her bridesmaid? Church. Bells ringing. Modern home. Shiny kitchen. Herself in apron. Had a good day, darling?

‘Yes,’ said Melissa.

They were drinking coffee when Priscilla entered the dining room. Betty accepted the wool with a cry of delight and begged Priscilla to join them. ‘Did you have a terrible time getting past the press?’ asked Charles.

‘Not really,’ replied Priscilla. ‘I kept the car windows closed and let the people guide me through.’

‘It shouldn’t be allowed,’ said Angela. ‘Ghouls and vultures.’

‘Understandable,’ put in Jeffrey. ‘I mean, Titchy Gold and people like her cultivate publicity. You can’t turn it off like a tap just because she’s dead.’

‘The press have descended on us in hordes,’ said Charles evenly, ‘not because of Titchy’s publicity hunting but because two murders have been committed in this house.’

‘Yes, yes, dear,’ said Betty hurriedly. ‘But let’s not talk about it.’

‘As you wish,’ said Charles, ‘but not talking about it isn’t going to make the problem go away.’

‘It’s because each one of us is a suspect that we’re all so frightened and nervous,’ said Jan, ‘and that’s ridiculous. Andrew Trent tormented the villagers and the outside staff as well. This house is never locked, neither are the bedrooms. Anyone could have come in from outside.’

Charles glanced out of the window. ‘You may have your wish,’ he said. ‘That gamekeeper, Jim Gaskell, is being marched in for interrogation. The police lunch-break is obviously over.’

Enrico, who had just brought in a fresh pot of coffee, said smoothly, ‘Perhaps the police now know that Jim Gaskell had more reason than most to want Mr Trent dead.’

‘How? Why?’ demanded several voices.

Enrico told them about the trick played on the gamekeeper.

‘There you are!’ said Jan triumphantly when he had finished.

Charles shrugged. ‘Let’s hope he keeps the police busy for the rest of the day. I’m tired of questions.’

‘Don’t you want to find out who did it?’ demanded Jeffrey.

‘Of course I do,’ said Charles. ‘My fiancée has been murdered. But I wish they would start looking in other directions. They keep going on at me. They should be looking for some homicidal maniac.’

The door opened and Paul and Melissa came in. Jan looked at her son sharply. ‘I’m glad someone’s happy,’ she declared. ‘Don’t tell me that idiot Blair has actually found the murderer.’

Paul took Melissa’s hand in his. ‘We’re to be married, Mother. Melissa and I are engaged.’

‘That’s all I needed,’ said Jan. Everyone else murmured their congratulations. Priscilla looked at Melissa and thought, she’s not in love with him. After all this is over, she might regret it.

While Jim Gaskell was being interrogated, the preliminary autopsy report on Titchy Gold came through. She had died from an overdose of sleeping pills. Furthermore, the forensic experts had already discovered traces of sleeping pills in the dregs of the chocolate.

The gamekeeper listened impassively and then said, ‘So what are you wasting time questioning me for? I didnae kill the lassie, nor had I any reason for doing so.’

Daviot sighed and dismissed him but told him to be available for more questioning.

‘Was that dummy found?’ Hamish asked suddenly. ‘I mean, the first joke that was played on Titchy was with a dummy.’

‘Yes, we found it,’ said MacNab. ‘It was down in a store room next to the games room along with a bunch o’ other tricks.’

‘What did they all really think of Andrew Trent?’ said Hamish, half to himself.

‘Whit does that matter?’ demanded Blair.

‘Whoever killed him hated him, really hated him,’ said Hamish. ‘If we solve the first murder, we’ll know the answer to the second. Although they may not be connected.’

‘Never say that,’ groaned Daviot. ‘But you have a point. Let’s have ’em all back, one after the other.’

Jan Trent was the first to be asked to reply to the simple question, ‘What did you think of Andrew Trent?’

She looked at them, slightly goggle-eyed with amazement. ‘What did I …? Well, not much. Just a silly old man. Jeffrey didn’t like his brother much and did not see much of him, which meant I didn’t see much of him either.’

‘What did your first husband do?’ asked Hamish.

‘He was a bank manager.’

‘What did he die of?’

‘A heart attack,’ snapped Jan. ‘What has all this got to do with …?’

‘Quite,’ said Daviot, throwing a curious glance at Hamish. ‘Let us revert to the original question. What were your feelings towards Mr Andrew Trent?’

She sat silent for a few moments and then said, ‘Impatience, mild dislike, that’s all.’

When she had gone, Hamish asked, ‘Where did her husband die?’

‘John Sinclair died in a nursing home in Ealing,’ said Anderson, consulting a sheet of notes.

‘An ordinary nursing home?’

‘I think so. Why?’

‘I just wondered whether it might have specialized in mental patients – whether there’s any insanity that might have been passed on to the son.’

‘I’ll check,’ said Anderson and picked up the phone.

Charles Trent was next. Asked what he had thought of his adopted father, he said in a puzzled way, ‘Well, not much. Irritating old cove. I mean, I was sent away to boarding-school early on and left there as much as possible. It suited me. I didn’t like holidays at home. Then, after a bit, some of the boys used to invite me to their homes for the holidays and I liked that. I wished he’d been more like a real, ordinary father, you know. But I’ve always been pretty popular, lots of friends and all that, and he did pay up for a good education. I kept away from him as much as possible. It suited both of us.’

‘And you didn’t hate him?’ asked Daviot, thinking again what a singularly beautiful young man Charles Trent was.

‘Not enough to murder him, if that’s what you mean,’ said Charles.

He had no sooner left the library than Anderson said cheerfully, ‘You might hae something, Hamish. John Sinclair was as nutty as a fruit-cake. He did die of a heart attack. But the nursing home takes mental patients. He got out one night and was found running around the grounds in the middle of winter without a stitch on. They had to put him in a strait jacket, and while he was fighting and struggling, he had the heart attack that killed him.’

‘Right,’ said Daviot. ‘Let’s see what Paul Sinclair has to say to that.’

Hamish thought Paul Sinclair was thoroughly prepared for this line of questioning. Priscilla must already have asked questions about his father and that had alerted him.

He said quietly that his father had been perfectly sane until the divorce, which had turned his mind. ‘And do you blame your mother for your father’s death?’ asked Daviot.

Cold anger blazed momentarily in Paul’s eyes but he had himself well in check. ‘Of course not. I blame Jeffrey Trent. He took my mother away. He told her that if she married him I would have the best schools, the best of everything. It was all his fault.’

Daviot leaned forward. ‘And what did you think of Andrew Trent?’

‘I couldn’t stand him,’ said Paul. ‘Filthy old fool and his disgusting jokes.’

Daviot’s voice was cold and even. ‘Did you murder him?’

Paul snorted with contempt. ‘No. I was getting away. I had planned to leave in the morning with Melissa. We all hated him. I’m the only one who’s honest about it.’

Betty Trent was next. She looked shocked when asked to tell them her feelings towards her father. ‘Well, how odd of you. I mean, he was my father. I loved him. His jokes were very tiresome, I admit, and Angela and I would not have come to visit him had we not believed him to be dying. You are very insensitive, Superintendent. What a horrible question to ask a recently bereaved daughter! It is possible to love a parent without liking him, you know.’

They did not get much farther with Angela, although she was more forthright than Betty. She said she and Betty had dreaded coming to Arrat House because of the practical jokes. They had not lived with their father for over twenty years. When they were both in their early thirties, Andrew Trent had had a house in Perth but had moved north when Arrat House and the land came up for sale. Although not Scottish, he had always wanted to be the laird, said Angela. She and Betty had persuaded him to let them go to London and live there. Hamish Macbeth said quietly, ‘Neither you nor your sister ever married. Did your father have a hand in that?’

‘I suppose he did in a way,’ said Angela, ‘but if you think either of us killed him because of that, you’re mistaken. Oh, I know people say, “The poor Trent sisters, they were quite good-looking in their youth and could have got married had it not been for their father.” Sometimes I would like to believe that myself. He did play his awful tricks on any fellow we brought home. But the fact is,’ she said, her voice becoming harsh, ‘no one ever loved either of us enough.’

There was a long silence in the room while Angela fought for composure. By God, Hamish Macbeth thought, if the auld scunner were alive this day, I would be tempted to kill him myself!

After Angela, Jeffrey Trent came as something of a relief. He was dry and brisk. No, he had not liked his brother much, but as he had had little to do with him, he had not entertained any strong feelings against him. At present, he felt quite fond of his late brother because of the inheritance. It had given him the freedom he craved.

‘Both Paul and Mrs Trent say you took her away from her first husband, John Sinclair, thereby causing the man to have a mental breakdown,’ said Hamish.

‘Pah,’ snorted Jeffrey. ‘She threw herself at me. And men like John Sinclair don’t turn raving mad because a stick insect like Jan has left them. They’ve been raving mad all along.’

Were they all as dreadful as they sounded, thought Hamish, or was the brooding presence of the two murders making them seem worse than they were?

He almost regretted having been called back from Lochdubh. He felt he could get a clearer perspective if he could get away from Arrat House and think. He glanced out of the windows of the library. The rain had stopped and a thin pale sunlight was filtering through the glass. Charles Trent and Priscilla were walking up and down outside, talking. He wondered what they were talking about.

‘I wish I could get away from here,’ Charles was saying. He had accompanied Priscilla outside after she had said her goodbyes. Sunlight was sparkling on the slushy snow and the air held a hint of warmth. ‘It’s so far from everything. I never felt at home here and it wasn’t entirely because of Father and his dislike of me or his hellish jokes. Sutherland is a foreign country, a different race of people, a different way of thinking. Outside that overheated house, I was always aware of the vastness of moorland and mountain. I love the city, the lights, the theatres, the bars, the noise and bustle. Sometimes when you walk out into the country here at night, the silence is so complete it hurts your ears. The land is so old, so very old, thin earth on top of antique rock.’ He shivered. ‘Why am I telling you all this?’

‘Because I’m a stranger,’ said Priscilla gently. ‘Because I’m not a murder suspect. Did you really love Titchy?’

He gave a rueful laugh. ‘If you had asked me that twenty-four hours ago, I would have said yes and meant it. That’s what’s so awful. She’s dead, murdered, gone for ever. I didn’t really know her at all. That detective, the foxy one, Anderson, he told me that she had been sentenced for killing her own father. Maybe I’m a shallow person. I take everyone at face value. She was blonde and beautiful and everyone envied me, or I thought they did. We were always in the newspapers and I liked that. I don’t think about anything very deeply when I’m in the city, but up here … well, there’s nothing to hide behind, no trappings of civilization. Then who would murder Titchy? Not one of us, surely. They keep hinting that I hated my father. They can’t seem to understand that I didn’t have any strong feelings about him whatsoever. If I’d been unhappy at school, it might have been different. Can you understand that?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Priscilla cautiously. ‘When are the police going to let you go?’

‘Soon, or we’ll have a team of lawyers up here making sure they do. Doing anything tonight?’

Priscilla looked at him in surprise. ‘Are you asking me out?’

‘Yes, why not? Drive off somewhere for a bit of dinner.’

‘Well …’

‘Priscilla, might I hae a word with you?’ The quiet voice of Hamish Macbeth sounded behind them.

Priscilla found to her annoyance that she was blushing like a schoolgirl caught out in some misdemeanour. ‘Yes, certainly,’ she said. ‘Charles, would you excuse us?’

‘Let me know about dinner,’ he said and loped off.

‘What is it, Hamish?’ asked Priscilla.

‘I haff to go back to Lochdubh tonight and I was hoping for a chance to discuss the case wi’ ye. Of course, if you prefer to go jauntering off with a murder suspect …’

‘Don’t be silly, Hamish. I haven’t even had time to think. All right, then, I’ll pick up some food for us on the road home and I’ll be waiting for you at the police station about seven, say.’