Death of a Prankster (13 page)

‘As long as I’m paying,’ said Hamish. Her remark about him being a moocher still rankled, though why this latest remark should rankle when previous ones had not he had not worked out – or did not want to work out.

‘What about a burger then?’ he asked.

‘Don’t insult me. I meant a proper lunch. Mr Johnson said there was a good wine bar in the centre.’

The wine bar turned out to be very good indeed, and to Priscilla’s relief the prices were modest. Hamish began to enjoy himself. Perth, he thought, was a little gem of a town – good shops, good restaurants and the beauty of the River Tay sliding through its centre.

They were sitting over cups of excellent coffee when Priscilla called the waitress over and asked her if there were any hospitals on the outskirts of Perth, or maternity homes. ‘There’s a wee cottage hospital on the road out to the west,’ said the waitress. ‘It’s called the Jamieson Hospital. Blaimore Road.’

‘There you are,’ said Priscilla triumphantly. ‘We can try there.’

‘Before we do,’ said Hamish, ‘let’s go to where Andrew Trent used to live and see if any of the neighbours can remember him.’

Andrew Trent’s former home was on the outskirts of the town, a large brown sandstone double-fronted house, with a bleak gravelled stretch in front of it ornamented with dreary laurels in wooden tubs. A legend above the door proclaimed it to be the Dunromin Hotel. As they approached the main doors, they could see various geriatric guests peering at them from a front lounge window, like so many inquisitive tortoises.

The air inside had an institutional smell of Brown Windsor Soup, disinfectant and wax polish.

The girl at reception fetched the owner, who turned out to be an old lady of grim appearance. ‘Well, out with it!’ she demanded. She jerked a gnarled thumb in the direction of the lounge. ‘Whit’s that lot been complaining about now?’

‘We are not here because of a complaint,’ began Priscilla.

‘Just as well,’ said the owner. ‘They’re never satisfied. Always phoning up their nieces or nephews or sons or daughters to say they’re being cheated or getting poisoned or some such rubbish.’ Priscilla gathered Dunromin was one of those sad hotels which catered for permanent elderly residents cast off by their families, who did not want the indignities of the nursing home and so settled for the indignities of the cheap hotel instead.

‘What we wanted to ask you, Mrs …?’ said Hamish.

‘
Miss
Trotter.’

‘What we wanted to ask you, Miss Trotter, was whether you bought this house from Andrew Trent, who used to live here in the early sixties.’

‘Aye, I did. And what’s it to you, may I ask? I paid a fair price for it.’

‘Look,’ said Priscilla patiently, ‘Mr Macbeth here is a policeman investigating the murder of Andrew Trent. Did you not read about the murder in the newspapers?’

Miss Trotter’s eyes gleamed. ‘Oh, it was him, then. I thought it was someone else. That’s a bit of luck. Mrs Arthur at Ben Nevis next door is always bragging about how the chap that mugged old Mrs Flint once stayed there. I’ll have a murdered man. She’ll be green with envy. Yes, that will put madam in her place. In fact, I’ll just get my coat and run over there.’

‘Before you go,’ said Hamish, ‘did Mr Trent have a baby in the house when you came to buy it?’

‘Not that I can recall.’

‘What about the other neighbours?’

‘You could try Mrs Cumrie, two doors away on the right. She was here when I moved in.’

Mrs Cumrie was very old, wrinkled and frail, but with bright sharp eyes. Yes, she said, she remembered Andrew Trent and had not liked him one bit. No, he hadn’t played any tricks on her. She had thought him a bully. He always seemed to be shouting and complaining about something or another. Yes, she remembered the baby. She did not know he had adopted it. She had assumed it belonged to some relative who was staying in the house. The baby had had a nanny, but she couldn’t remember the woman’s name or whether she had been a local.

‘So that’s that,’ said Hamish.

‘Not yet,’ pointed out Priscilla. ‘We’ve still got the Jamieson Hospital.’

Her spirits sank, however, when they arrived outside the hospital. It was small but new, certainly newer than thirty years.

They asked for the matron and put their request to her. She shook her head. ‘I would help you if I could,’ she said. ‘But the hospital was burnt down ten years ago and all the records were lost in the fire.’

They gloomily thanked her and rose to go. They were just getting into the car when the matron appeared at the entrance and called them back.

‘I’ve just had a thought,’ she said. ‘My mother was a midwife in Perth for years. She might be the one to help you. Even if she can’t, she’d be right glad of some company. Wait a minute, and I’ll write the address down for you.’

‘I suppose we’d better try everything since we’re here,’ said Hamish as they drove off. ‘I’d clean forgotten about midwives. Charles Trent’s mother could have had the baby at home.’

The matron’s mother was a Mrs Macdonald. She lived in a small neat council house, new on the outside, but belonging to an older age on the inside where it was furnished with horsehair-stuffed chairs and bedecked with photographs in silver frames. Although very old, Mrs Macdonald was a tiny, agile woman. She insisted they had tea and as soon as it was served began to hand them one photograph after another, telling them about deliveries long past and their difficulties. ‘I was a great amateur photographer in my day,’ said Mrs Macdonald. ‘These were all taken with a box Brownie. Now that little laddie there is now Ballie Ferguson. He sometimes comes to see me, yes. You’ll be having children of your own one day, Miss Halburton-Smythe, but I suppose you’ll be going into the hospital. It’s become fashionable again to have babies at home, though. Funny how the old ways come back.’

‘Mrs Macdonald,’ said Hamish desperately. ‘I am a policeman, investigating the murder of a Mr Andrew Trent. You may have read about it in the newspapers.’

‘And this one here,’ said Mrs Macdonald, apparently deaf to his question, handing a photograph to Priscilla, ‘is Mary McCrumb. She calls herself Josie Duval now and runs a wee French restaurant in Glasgow. She never did like the name McCrumb. Pretty baby and an easy delivery.’

‘Andrew Trent,’ said Priscilla firmly. ‘A baby was born in Perth and he adopted it.’

‘And this is Jessie Beeton. Lovely wee dress, that. Nun’s veiling. Cost a fortune.’

Hamish signalled with his eyes that it was all hopeless.

They rose to go. ‘You must excuse us,’ said Priscilla. ‘Thank you for the splendid tea.’

Mrs Macdonald’s childlike eyes showed disappointment. ‘I’ll just see you out then,’ she said. ‘I talk too much, I know that, but I get lonely, although my daughter’s a good girl and comes as much as she can. Watch the step there. What was you saying? Trent. Ah, yes, poor little Miss Trent.’

Priscilla and Hamish, now both outside the front door, turned slowly, as though being pulled by wires. ‘What about poor little Miss Trent?’ asked Hamish.

‘I swore on the Bible not to say a word,’ said Mrs Macdonald, ‘but that’s when Mr Trent was alive and you say he’s dead now?’

‘Yes, murdered, and you really must tell me what you know,’ said Hamish. ‘Promises, even ones made on the Bible, must be broken if you know something which will help the police in a murder investigation.’

‘Yes, yes, I suppose … Come back in.’

‘Let her tell the story in her own good time,’ Hamish muttered to Priscilla. ‘We’ll get more out of her that way.’

Priscilla marvelled at his patience, for they had to wait while another pot of tea was made and more scones produced.

‘Well, let me see,’ she began. ‘The two Trent ladies lived in Perth. Miss Betty got into trouble. Miss Angela had taken up an interest in archaeology at that time and was off in foreign parts. Perth was a smaller town then but I never found out who the man was. Miss Betty would not say. Mr Trent came to see me. A fine-looking man. He said that it was a dreadful scandal, and of course, it would have been if news of it had leaked out. Now what I tell you may make Mr Trent sound a hard man, but forget what you’ve heard about the Swinging Sixties. For a woman of Miss Betty’s standing, it was a scandal to have an illegitimate child. Mr Trent said that Miss Betty would be kept indoors from the time she started to “show”. He said he would move out of Perth after the birth, take the baby with him, and bring it up as his own son or daughter, whatever sex the child should prove to be. Miss Betty was a bit dumpy in shape, so she didn’t have to hide away the way a slimmer woman would have had to. Mr Trent was in a fair rage. He felt the fact that Miss Betty had disgraced herself was a reflection on him.

‘Well now, I attended the birth and I was glad it was an easy one, for I felt poor Miss Betty had enough to worry her. It was a lovely baby. She doted on it. She loved that little boy with her whole heart and soul. But Mr Trent told her he had bought a house up in Sutherland and a flat for Miss Betty and Miss Angela in London. She was to go to London right away and forget about the child. She was to forget it was her own. He had already engaged a nanny. He made her swear to keep quiet about it. He said if she ever told anyone, he would hand the boy back to her and then make sure she never had a penny to support him.

‘Miss Betty was weak in spirit after the childbirth, the way mothers are, and she agreed, but she cried something dreadful until I was glad to see her go. I thought she would upset the baby by clutching him and crying over him the way she did. More tea?’

‘And did he legally adopt the boy?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Miss Betty said, what about the birth certificate? He’d find out when he saw his birth certificate. Mr Trent said there was no need for him ever to see it. He would arrange things like the boy’s school and his first passport and things like that. So I don’t think he really adopted him.

‘I called round to see the baby after Miss Betty had gone and just before Mr Trent was moving up north. It was a lovely baby and the nanny was very efficient. English, she was, but I can’t recall her name. But Miss Betty stuck in my mind. She was crazy about that baby of hers. Crazy, she was.’

They finally managed to escape after having made sure she had nothing left to tell them.

‘Drive on and park somewhere quiet,’ ordered Hamish. ‘We need to think.’

Priscilla obediently drove out of Perth and eventually pulled into a parking place on the A9.

‘We’ve got it at last,’ said Hamish. ‘We’ve got the Why. We need the How. Betty Trent is not a big strapping woman like her sister. How could she get the old man into the wardrobe? Where are my notes? Let me think.’

He flicked through them impatiently. ‘Here we are. The night of the murder, she was seen speaking to him. What could she have said? Let me think. I am Betty Trent. I worship my son from afar. I may just have been told that day that he is to inherit nothing. I am mad with rage. My brain is working double time with rage. I get the knife and substitute the blade of the boning knife in the shaft.’ Hamish fell silent.

Priscilla sat and watched him. He suddenly struck his brow. ‘Of course!’ cried Hamish. ‘Listen to this, Priscilla. It’s easy. Old Trent must have been mad at Titchy Gold for having accused him of ruining her dresses. Say Betty goes up to him. Say she praises him for that joke with the dummy in the wardrobe. Say she says she has an even better idea. What if Dad were to hide himself in the wardrobe with a monster mask on? That would frighten her out of her wits. Trent steps into the wardrobe. Instead of handing him the knife, Betty lets him have it.’

‘Wait a bit,’ said Priscilla. ‘Betty’s a small woman. It was a direct blow.’

‘Damn!’ He rubbed his red hair in agitation. ‘She could have stood on a chair.’

‘Why?’

‘I know. To help him on with the mask … something like that. He turns round in the wardrobe, she ties the strings. He turns to face her. She stabs him and slams the door shut and the door must have kept him propped upright. It’s a huge wardrobe but a shallow one and the door is heavy with that great mirror on it.’

‘And Titchy? Why Titchy?’

‘Because I think Betty’s mind was already turned by the first murder. Titchy had turned her beloved son down flat. So she takes a cup of chocolate laced with sleeping pills in to Titchy. “Drink it up like a good girl. It’ll make you sleep”.’

‘And would Titchy just meekly have done that?’

‘I think for all her faults, Titchy would have been disarmed by a show of kindness from one of the ladies of the house. Yes, I think that’s the way it was.’

‘An awfully long shot, Hamish. How are you going to prove it?’

‘She’s off balance. I’ll just tell her how she did it and see if she cracks.’

‘She may not.’

‘I’ll have the others there.’

Priscilla laughed. ‘Great detective gathers suspects in the library?’

He grinned. ‘It’s just that it might be amazing what some of the others might remember about Betty if they hear her accused of murder.’ His grin faded. ‘I hate Andrew Trent. I think he was damned lucky to have lived so long and then to die from a nice clean knife stab. He deserved worse. He’s the real murderer in that, by his actions, he created a murderess out of his daughter.’

‘It’s getting late,’ said Priscilla. ‘We won’t be back till midnight.’

‘I’ll go up in the morning,’ said Hamish. ‘Betty’s killing days are over. There’s nothing that can happen before tomorrow.’

‘I could kill you,’ said Jan, glaring at Melissa.

They were all sitting round the dinner table.

‘Why do you want to kill her?’ asked Charles.

‘Because she has talked my gullible son out of giving me any money.’

‘That’s not true, Mother,’ protested Paul. ‘We have agreed to give you some money, but not all. You’ll find yourself very comfortably off.’

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Jan, ‘if the girl were really in love with you. But it’s your money she wants.’

‘Is that true?’ Betty asked Melissa.

‘No, of course not,’ said Melissa, blushing and angry. ‘I would marry Paul if he didn’t have a penny.’

‘There you are, Mother,’ said Paul. ‘That’s the sort of woman you could never understand. Melissa loves me. Damn it. I’ll prove it. You can have all the money. All I want is Melissa.’