Death of a Prankster (9 page)

‘Strong woman, that,’ said Jimmy Anderson. ‘She could ha’ done it.’

‘I’ll just keep on until one o’ them breaks,’ said Blair. ‘Fetch Charles Trent in again. He’s the one who would have expected to inherit.’

It took some time before Charles could be found. Harry MacNab at last ran him to earth in the games room, where he was trying to play a game of table tennis with himself by hitting the ball and darting around to the other side of the table to try to return his own serve.

Blair looked up as Charles Trent was ushered into the room. The young man looked a trifle pale but carried himself easily.

‘Well now,’ began Blair, ‘that will must have come as a shock to you.’

‘Yes,’ said Charles Trent. ‘Of course it did. I mean, if he had left it to a home for retired parrots or something, it would have been less of a shock. But to leave something to everyone
except
me, well, that was a bit of a blow.’

‘So what will you do?’

Charles smiled ruefully. ‘Work, work, work, I suppose. Pity, I was looking forward to a life of ease.’

‘Is there any way you or anyone else could have known what was in that will?’ asked Blair.

‘Don’t think so,’ said Charles. ‘We were all strung up before the reading of the will. If you think I killed him because I thought I was getting something, you’re way off beam. You have to hate to commit a murder like that.
He
hated
me
.
I
didn’t like
him
. But that’s another thing entirely.’

Blair doggedly continued to question him for another hour.

Charles left feeling depressed but he brightened at the sight of Titchy. She was standing in the hall with her back to him, talking to Enrico.

‘I want you to move my stuff out of Mr Charles’s room,’ he heard Titchy say. Enrico inclined his head and moved quietly off.

‘What’s this?’ demanded Charles. ‘Ditching me, Titchy?’

She flushed when she saw him. ‘Well, it’s not quite the thing, Charles dear, us sharing a room when we’re not married. Angela and Betty are so stuffy.’

Charles looked down at her. ‘I repeat: Are you ditching me, Titchy?’

She looked at him defiantly. ‘Why not? You’re a waste of time.’

His eyes went quite blank and he stood very still. ‘I could make you very, very sorry,’ he said quietly.

The drawing room door opened. Betty Trent stood there. Behind her were the others: Paul, his mother, Jeffrey, Angela and Melissa, who had just joined them. They were sitting in various frozen attitudes looking out at the couple, revealed through the door held open by Betty.

‘Are you threatening me?’ screeched Titchy.

‘Think about it,’ said Charles coolly. ‘Just think what I could do to you.’

He walked out through the front door into the melting snow.

Titchy shrugged and laughed. Numbly Betty stood aside to let her into the drawing room. Everyone stared at her silently.

‘Don’t let me spoil your fun,’ said Titchy. ‘What were you all talking about?’

‘They were talking about you,’ said Melissa suddenly. ‘Angela was asking Jeffrey if he really meant to go off with you and Paul said if you did, he would murder you.’

‘Melissa!’ exclaimed Paul in a hurt voice.

Melissa rounded on him. ‘You asked for that,’ she said fiercely. ‘You brought me up here and landed me in the middle of a murder and yet all you’ve done since we were brought back from Inverness is run to your mother or flirt with that tart.’

‘My, my,’ said Titchy, who seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. ‘Jealousy will get you nowhere, pet, nor will pink hair, for that matter. So old-fashioned. Dead seventies, that.’

‘Jealous … of
you
?’ raged Melissa. ‘I don’t care who Paul runs after. He’s nothing to me. You’re all sick!’

Hamish Macbeth wondered what was going on as Melissa erupted from the drawing room, but he had decided he had better tell Blair about Jim Gaskell, the gamekeeper, and so he went on into the library.

Blair swore when he heard about the trick played on the gamekeeper. ‘There’s damn suspects comin’ oot o’ the woodwork,’ he groaned. ‘Anderson, fetch that gamekeeper in here. And Macbeth, arnae you neglecting the duties o’ your parish? There’s no need for you here fur the rest o’ the day.’

‘If it hadn’t been for me,’ said Hamish stiffly, ‘you’d never haff heard about the gamekeeper.’

‘Aye, aye, laddie. Jist piss off and take that mongrel wi’ ye. You should know better than to take your pet on a murder case.’

‘I told you before,’ said Hamish. ‘This is a trained police dog.’

‘If thon thing’s a trained police dog, then I’m Lassie,’ hooted Blair. ‘Off wi’ ye.’

Hamish muttered under his breath as he and Towser scrambled into the police Land Rover. It was already dark, the north of Scotland seeing very little daylight during the winter. As he approached Lochdubh, he thought of calling on Priscilla and then changed his mind. She had called him a moocher. She would think he had only called at the hotel to cadge a free drink. He drove on towards the police station. At the end of the waterfront, the Lochdubh Hotel stood dark and empty. It was usually closed for the winter, but rumour had it that it was being put up for sale because the competition from Tommel Castle was killing off trade.

He parked the car and let himself into his kitchen, noticing as he switched on the light that frost was forming on the inside of the window and that last night’s dirty dishes were still in the sink.

He lit the kitchen stove and cooked some kidneys for Towser and then walked up and down rubbing his hands, waiting for the room to heat up.

There was a tentative knock at the kitchen door. He thought it was probably the minis-ter’s wife, Mrs Wellington, who expected payment in fresh eggs from Hamish’s hens for walking Towser.

But it was Priscilla who stood there, and she was holding a foil-covered dish.

‘Truce,’ she said. ‘I brought you dinner. Venison casserole. It only needs to be heated up.’

‘Come in,’ said Hamish eagerly. ‘I’m sorry I snapped at you, Priscilla, but Blair drives me mad and I wass hungry and … and it’s grand to see you.’

‘That’s more like it.’ Priscilla put the casserole into the oven and sat down at the kitchen table. She slipped off her wool coat, which crackled with electricity from the frosty air. ‘Turned cold again,’ she said. ‘Damn winter. I’m sick of it. I would like to go and lie in the sun on a beach somewhere.’

‘Like Jeffrey Trent,’ said Hamish. He sat down as well and told her what had happened that day, ending up with, ‘I don’t like the way Titchy Gold is going on. But then I don’t like Titchy.’

‘Why?’ asked Priscilla.

‘I don’t know. She’s such a mixture. One minute she’s as hard as nails, the next she’s playing the vamp … and neither of those characters ties in with the one which was sick with fright over the appearance of that headless knight.’

‘I think I know why. A lot of theatrical people are very superstitious, Hamish. Do you think she did the murder and then calmly went to bed with her lover?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘But when I see her, I see death.’

‘But to get the body in the wardrobe in the first place, you would need someone very strong … or two people,’ pointed out Priscilla.

‘Aye. They could all have done it, to my mind. Of course, the whole setting is unnatural, Priscilla. There’s that overheated house, the ghastly noisy carpets and furnishings, all in the shadow of the mountain … so I’m looking at all these people through a distorting glass.’

‘What about Jan Trent? Instead of getting the servants to clean up to protect her son, she could have been protecting herself. She loves money, you said.’

‘Aye,’ agreed Hamish. ‘Then there’s the daughters, Angela and Betty. Odd couple. One of them couldn’t have done it, but two … although Angela Trent’s a hefty woman. Mind you, both had a generous allowance from the old man while he was living. If they did not know what was in the will, why kill him and kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs?’

‘When there are millions to be inherited,’ said Priscilla, ‘even a generous allowance can begin to seem like a pittance.’ She went to the oven and took out the casserole and served the contents deftly on to a plate. We’re like an old married couple after all the passion has long died away, thought Hamish, at first privately amused, and then, for some reason he could not fathom, angry. He had a sudden childish desire to push the food away and say it was not very good. He then wondered uneasily if he was coming down with some sort of virus. He always got tetchy just before a bout of the flu.

‘Anyway, I’m out of the case,’ said Hamish. ‘Blair has ordered me back. I don’t see much hope of solving it long-range.’

‘I know Angela Trent very slightly,’ said Priscilla. ‘Daddy took me to Arrat House on a visit when I was a child. I could always go over there to offer my sympathies and tell you what’s going on.’

Hamish brightened. ‘I wouldn’t mind a fresh eye on the case,’ he said eagerly. ‘Also, you could keep an eye on Melissa. She’s a nice little thing and I worry about her.’

‘Oh, really? The one with the pink hair?’

‘Yes. It’s an odd thing, but the pink hair suits her. She’s got nice eyes.’

‘And Miss Pink Punk wouldn’t hurt a fly?’ demanded Priscilla sarcastically.

‘In my opinion, no,’ said Hamish, his mind too deep in the case to notice the sarcasm.

Priscilla got up and put on her coat with brisk nervous movements. ‘I’m off, Hamish. I’ll think about going over to Arrat House, but there’s a lot to do at the hotel.’

Hamish looked at her in hurt surprise. ‘But I thought ye said ye were going!’

‘Well, we’ll see.’ Priscilla went out and banged the kitchen door behind her with unnecessary force.

A sort of torpor seemed to have descended over Arrat House the next day. The hard frost of the night before had given way to a thin weeping drizzle driven in on an Atlantic gale. Blair was restless and tired. He had been commuting between Strathbane and Arrat, leaving late at night and arriving early the next morning. Soon he would need to take final statements and let them all go. He could charge Jan Trent and Enrico with interfering with the evidence, but he was perfectly sure the hellish Spaniard would promptly send that tape to his superior.

He settled down in the library and rustled through his notes. Surely he should be concentrating on the one likely suspect and that was Titchy Gold. She was a murderess and therefore the one person who was likely to kill again. He looked up at Anderson. ‘Get that actress in here again,’ he said gruffly, ‘and let’s see if we can get mair oot o’ her.’

Anderson walked out. Titchy was not with the others, who were sitting morosely in the drawing room. He asked if anyone had seen her.

‘She’s probably still asleep,’ said Betty, knitting ferociously, the light from a lamp above her head shining on the busy needles.

Anderson went down to the kitchen and asked Enrico to take him up to Titchy’s room.

‘I put her in another of the guest bedrooms,’ said Enrico as he led the way up the stairs. ‘She no longer wanted to share a room with Mr Charles.’

He pushed open a door. Both men looked inside. Titchy was lying in bed on her side, her blonde hair tumbled over the pillow.

‘You’d better wake her up,’ said Anderson.

Enrico called, ‘Miss Gold!’

The figure in the bed did not move.

The manservant approached the bed. He took a tissue from a box beside the bed and then shook Titchy’s bare shoulder with one tissue-covered hand.

Anderson was amused. ‘I’d heard butlers and folk like that werenae supposed to touch the mistress’s bare flesh when waking her in the morning, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone do it.’

Enrico straightened up and turned to face the detective. ‘I think Miss Gold is dead,’ he remarked.

‘Whit? She cannae be, man.’ Anderson strode to the bed and jerked down the covers. He felt Titchy’s body and then uttered an exclamation. The actress was cold and rigid.

‘Get Blair,’ snapped Anderson. ‘Man, man, this is terrible.’

While he waited for Blair, he bent over the body again. He saw no signs of violence. There was a cup and saucer beside the bed. He bent over the cup and sniffed it. It smelt of chocolate.

Blair came crashing in, his eyes bulging out of his head.

‘Tell me she’s had a heart attack,’ he roared, ‘but jist don’t tell me there’s been another murder.’

An hour later, Superintendent Peter Daviot gazed bleakly around the assembled police and detectives in the library. He looked like a younger version of Jeffrey Trent.

‘So,’ he said, ‘a murder was committed under your noses. Were any police on duty last night?’

‘Two patrolling outside last night and two mair this morning,’ said Blair. ‘There’s nae accommodation here, sir, and –’

Daviot held up his hand for silence. ‘Now the preliminary opinion of the pathologist is that she died from a possible overdose of sleeping pills. Who in this house takes sleeping pills? I just hope it turns out she did it herself.’

Anderson opened his notebook. ‘Angela and Betty Trent,’ he said, ‘and Mr Jeffrey Trent. A bottle of some stuff called Dormadon is missing from Jeffrey’s bathroom cabinet, but the servants say the Trents never locked their bedroom door and so anyone could have got in.’

‘Have you interviewed any of them yet?’ demanded Daviot.

‘No,’ oiled Blair. ‘The minute we heard you were coming, we decided tae wait.’

‘Right,’ said Daviot. ‘We’d better see Charles Trent first. I gather he was heard threatening Miss Gold, or so Mr Jeffrey Trent obligingly told me as I arrived.’ He paused. ‘Where’s Hamish Macbeth?’ he asked.

‘He’s back at Lochdubh,’ muttered Blair.

‘Whatever for? He’s covering this area for Sergeant MacGregor. He knows the locals. It may not be an inside murder. Get him back over here immediately.’

Anderson raised a hand to hide a grin as Blair reluctantly picked up the phone and dialled Lochdubh police station and then in strained, polite tones asked Hamish Macbeth to return to Arrat House and briefed him on the death of Titchy Gold.

A man from the forensic team popped his head round the door. ‘No fingerprints on that cup,’ he said cheerfully.