Death of a Prankster

by Beaton, M. C.

‘You are an idiot,’ exclaimed Hamish, horrified. ‘This is murder. You should have left everything untouched. Who is in this house? Miss Angela Trent made the telephone call.’

  ‘There is Mr Jeffrey Trent and his wife; Miss Angela and Miss Betty; the adopted son, Charles; his lady friend, Titchy Gold; and Mrs Jeffrey’s son, Paul Sinclair; and his lady friend, Miss Clarke.’

  Hamish walked to a phone extension in the corner of the room. He phoned police headquarters in Strathbane and reported the murder, telling an outraged Detective Chief Inspector Blair that the body had been moved and laid out in the games room by the servants.

  Then he grimly asked to be taken first to see Mr Jeffrey Trent.

  But the door opened and Jeffrey walked in. He gave a wincing look at the body.

  Hamish introduced himself and then said severely, ‘Surely you, sir, could have stopped this? Nothing should have been touched.’

  ‘They did it without asking me,’ said Jeffrey plaintively. He held up a plastic bag. ‘I’ve got the knife here that was taken out of his chest.’

  Hamish took it from him and studied it. The haft was of painted wood and belonged to one of those trick knives where the dummy blade slides up into the haft. But this one had had a thin sharp steel blade substituted. It was still smeared with blood.

  ‘You’d better show me where he was killed,’ said Hamish. ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘Titchy Gold.’

  Hamish turned to Enrico, ‘Get her and bring her along.’

  Jeffrey led the way upstairs to Titchy’s bedroom. Hamish stood in the doorway and looked into the room. The bed was made up, the wardrobe door closed, and the air smelled of some sort of cleaner.

  He turned in amazement to Enrico, who had returned quietly after summoning Titchy. ‘Don’t tell me, just don’t tell me, that you’ve cleaned this room.’

  ‘Maria did it,’ said Enrico. ‘There was blood on the carpet. She could not leave a mess like that.’

  ‘You,’ said Hamish, ‘are in bad trouble, and if the chief inspector does not charge you with interfering in a murder investigation, you can count yourself lucky.’

  Enrico looked unmoved. ‘Here’s Titchy,’ said Jeffrey.

  Titchy Gold and Hamish Macbeth surveyed each other. Titchy threw him a tremulous smile, thinking he was quite nice-looking with those hazel eyes and that fiery red hair.

  Hamish thought Titchy looked as if she had stepped down from one of the calendars usually hung in motor repair shops. She was wearing a brief tight scarlet leather skirt with a transparent white blouse, seamed stockings and very high-heeled red shoes. Her dyed blonde hair was piled on top of her head, apart from a few artistic wisps. Her face was beautifully made up with a small lascivious mouth painted pink and false eyelashes shading bright blue eyes.

  ‘Miss Gold, before I take your official statement, just tell me briefly what happened.’

  Titchy shuddered. ‘I found the body when I opened the wardrobe last night. It just fell out. He – Mr Trent – had played a joke on me before where a dummy with a knife in it fell out of that wardrobe. I was fed up. I was getting out of here somehow. So I just left the body lying where it was and went to bed. It was when I awoke in the morning that I thought there was something funny about it and … and … I took off the mask … and …’

  She dabbed at her eyes. Hamish looked at her narrowly. He sensed that Titchy was excited about something rather than shocked or frightened.

  ‘I’m going to lock this room,’ said Hamish to Jeffrey, ‘in the hope that there’s something left for forensic to examine. While we wait for the team to arrive from Strathbane, I may as well take preliminary statements. Is there a room I can use?’

  ‘The library,’ offered Jeffrey. ‘It’s got a desk.’

  ‘Very well. Lead the way.’

  As they were going down the stairs, a thin elegant woman darted up to Jeffrey and seized him by the arm. ‘It’s Paul,’ she cried, waving a letter. ‘He’s gone off with that girl. What are we …’ Her voice trailed away as she saw Hamish.

  ‘Your son Paul Sinclair and Miss Clarke have left,’ said Hamish. ‘What does he say in that letter? You are Mrs Jeffrey Trent, I gather.’

  Jan clutched the letter to her bosom.

  ‘It’s private,’ she gasped. ‘Private correspondence.’

  Hamish held out his hand. ‘Nothing is private in a murder investigation, Mrs Trent. Hand it over.’

  Jan looked wildly at her husband, who shrugged. Reluctantly she gave the letter to Hamish. It said:

  Dear Mum,

  We can’t stand the old man’s jokes any longer so we’re getting out. If I had stayed a day longer, I would have killed the silly old fool. I’ll call on you in London when I get back. Tell Enrico we’re sending the skis back from Inverness.

  Love, Paul

  Hamish put the letter in his pocket. ‘Now for the library,’ he said. ‘First I’ve got to make a phone call. Mr Trent, give me a description of Mr Sinclair and Miss Clarke.’

  ‘No,’ wailed Jan.

  ‘He’ll need to be brought back,’ said Jeffrey quietly. ‘Don’t make things worse.’ He turned to Hamish. ‘Paul is about six feet tall, fair hair, horn-rimmed glasses, twenty-five. I don’t know what he’s wearing, but probably something suitable for skiing. Melissa Clarke is about a couple of years younger, five feet six inches, pink hair, protest student-demo clothes.’

  ‘Right!’ Hamish picked up the phone and got through to the Inverness police and gave them a description of Paul and Melissa, saying that they might be found at the railway station waiting for a train south.

  ‘Now,’ said Hamish, sitting behind the desk which was placed at the window, ‘I’ll start with you, Mr Trent. Mrs Trent, I will see you later.’ Jan looked as if she would have liked to protest, but Jeffrey pointedly held the door open for her.

  ‘It’s a bad business,’ sighed Jeffrey. ‘It can’t be any of us. Probably some maniac got in from outside.’

  Hamish studied Jeffrey for a long moment. Jeffrey was a grey man – grey hair, grey suit, greyish complexion. He showed no signs of grief.

  ‘First of all,’ said Hamish, ‘why are you all gathered here at this time of year? I mean, it’s not Christmas or Easter or the summer holidays.’

  ‘Andrew wrote to us all and said he was dying,’ said Jeffrey in a dry precise voice. ‘We should have known it was a lie. But we all came. Of course he wasn’t even ill.’

  ‘Did he upset anyone particularly during this visit?’

  ‘He played his nasty jokes on all of us. I think perhaps that actress, Titchy Gold, was the worst affected.’ He told Hamish in detail of the original body-in-the-wardrobe trick, of Titchy’s reaction to the headless knight. ‘Then she decided to flirt with him and the silly old goat fell for it. That was until, for some crazy reason, he decided to open up the seams in her best dresses. She went for him. He swore he didn’t do it and he didn’t find it funny, so perhaps he didn’t.’

  ‘Do you know the terms of your brother’s will?’

  ‘No, I do not. I know the name of the firm of solicitors in Inverness that he used – Bright, Norton and Jiggs.’

  ‘Is it correct to assume that the bulk of his fortune would go to Charles, his adopted son? In Scotland, the man is always favoured in wills, even over real daughters.’

  ‘No, he detested Charles. He may have left it all to the cats’ home as one last and great joke on the lot of us.’

  ‘Until the body is examined by the pathologist, we do not know the time of death. But if the body fell out on Titchy before she went to bed, and that was around midnight, and he had last been seen in the drawing room at eleven o’clock, then it seems safe to assume he was killed between eleven and midnight. Where were you during that hour, Mr Trent?’

  ‘I? You surely don’t think I would kill my own brother?’

  Hamish waited patiently.

  ‘Well, let me see. I had drinks with the others in the drawing room. People kept coming and goi
ng. I myself went out to the library for a bit. I think it was just after Andrew went up to bed that Jan and I decided to retire.’

  ‘Was anyone missing from the drawing room for a long time?’

  ‘Titchy and Charles. They went outside, I mean outside the house, for a private talk.’

  ‘A full statement will be taken from you shortly. I’m just getting a few facts sorted out,’ said Hamish. ‘Would you send in the servants?’

  After a few minutes Enrico and Maria appeared. Maria’s eyes were red with weeping. ‘Name?’ Hamish asked Enrico.

  ‘Santos. Enrico Santos, and this is my wife, Maria.’

  ‘How long have you worked for Mr Trent?’

  ‘Fifteen years. Both of us.’

  ‘How did you find your way up here to the north of Scotland?’

  ‘We were working in a restaurant in London,’ said Enrico in his careful and precise English. ‘It was owned by my father-in-law. We did not get on. Maria cannot have children and yet he blamed me. I saw an advertisement for a couple in The Lady magazine and we answered it. So we came to live with Mr Trent.’

  ‘Do you both have British nationality now?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How long had you been in this country before you came up here?’

  ‘Two years,’ said Enrico.

  ‘Where are you from originally?’

  ‘Barcelona. But,’ added Enrico proudly, ‘we now own two villas in Alicante which we rent out to holiday-makers.’

  ‘Mr Trent must have paid good wages.’

  ‘He did.’ Enrico looked vaguely bored by all this questioning. ‘Our food and lodgings were paid for. We do not smoke or drink. There is nothing to do up here. And so we invested our wages, made a profit, and bought property.’

  Hamish looked from Enrico to the downcast Maria. ‘But if you own property, why continue to work as servants for a difficult boss? What of all his practical jokes?’

  ‘We were used to them,’ said Enrico with a shrug. ‘We wanted to leave but Mr Trent said he had not long to live and he would leave us a lot of money in his will.’

  ‘Now to the murder,’ said Hamish. ‘Where were you both last night between eleven and midnight?’

  ‘Mostly in the kitchen. We went up to the drawing room about ten-thirty to make sure everyone had drinks and no one needed anything else and then we retired. I think by eleven-thirty we were in bed.’

  ‘Can you confirm this?’ Hamish asked Maria.

  She gave him a wide-eyed, frightened stare and then looked pleadingly at her husband, who said, ‘She confirms it.’

  ‘Tell me about when the body was found.’

  Enrico said that there had been a lot of loud screaming and shouting. He and Maria had been setting the breakfast table. They had run upstairs. Everyone was clustered round the body. Angela Trent said the police should be called immediately and went to do so. It had been assumed at first that the old man had fallen on the dagger during one of his practical jokes. No one but Miss Angela appeared to think it was murder at first.

  ‘Now the main question. Why on earth was the body taken down and laid out? Surely you must know that nothing should have been touched.’

  Maria burst into a noisy flood of Spanish. Hamish caught the name Senora Trent.

  ‘Which Trent was that?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Mrs Jeffrey,’ said Enrico. ‘She was most upset. She ran to look for her son and then came back and said it was horrible to leave Mr Trent lying there. My wife is very religious. She wanted to lay out the body. I called in one of the gamekeepers, Jim Gaskell – he lives over the stables – and together we took Mr Trent’s body downstairs.’

  ‘Where is his shirt? The blood-stained one you took from the body?’

  ‘Maria washed it. She did not know any better.’

  ‘But you must have known better!’

  ‘I was in shock,’ said Enrico calmly.

  ‘How busy you both were.’ Hamish leaned back in his chair and surveyed them. ‘You have aided and abetted the murderer by moving the body and cleaning Miss Gold’s bedroom.’

  ‘It was Mrs Jeffrey’s suggestion,’ said Enrico. ‘She said there was no need to be slack about our duties and that the rooms needed cleaning as usual. With our master dead, we naturally took our orders from Mr Jeffrey and his wife.’

  ‘Well, don’t touch anything else. Send Mrs Jeffrey in.’

  Anorexic? wondered Hamish, looking at Jan. She was wearing a black dress, short-sleeved, showing arms like sticks. Her face was gaunt and her rather protuberant eyes showed no traces of weeping.

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ she began, sitting sideways on the very edge of a chair and crossing long thin legs. ‘Your superiors will soon be here and I see no reason to go through this ordeal twice.’

  Hamish ignored that.

  ‘Why did you tell the servants to remove Mr Trent’s body?’

  ‘I did not tell them precisely to do that. I simply said that it was dreadful to leave Andrew lying there. I mean, it may not be murder. Have you considered that? He may have been hiding in that wardrobe to scare Titchy and stabbed himself by accident.’

  ‘And the cleaning of the bedroom?’

  ‘Again, I did not specifically tell them to clean that room. I merely said that they should get on with their duties. Servants must be kept up to the mark, you know,’ remarked Jan.

  ‘How many servants do you have, Mrs Trent?’

  ‘I don’t have any, but these are Spaniards and inherently lazy.’

  Hamish often wondered how the myth of the lazy Spaniard had arisen. In fact, he had been taught at school that the farther south you went, the lazier people got, and yet he had never seen any evidence to support that dubious fact.

  In the Highlands and islands, it was another matter. He remembered when there had been another of those drives to bring work to the north and a factory had been opened on one of the Hebridean islands. It had not lasted very long. The workers had downed tools one day and walked out en masse, never to return. Their complaint was that a whistle had been blown to announce their tea-break and another whistle to signal time up. They did not like the sound of that whistle, they had said. The factory owner had damned them as lazy. Of course it could, on the other hand, be the quirky bloody-mindedness which was often the curse of the north.

  ‘Tell me about your son, Paul,’ he said suddenly.

  Jan went quite rigid.

  ‘What about Paul?’

  ‘Why did he leave?’

  Jan shifted uncomfortably. ‘You saw his letter. It was these terrible practical jokes. No one in their right mind could stand them for very long.’

  ‘But you are still here.’

  Jan assumed an air of frankness. ‘You must know we all came here because Andrew said he was dying. A lie, as it turned out. But he is worth millions and quite capable of leaving it to that young fool, Charles. Paul is honest and upright and hard-working. I felt sure Andrew would be impressed by him.’

  ‘And was he?’

  Jan laughed bitterly. ‘He was the same callous old fool he’s always been.’

  ‘Tell me about Melissa Clarke.’

  ‘Some weird creature who works with Paul at the atomic research station. I think she ought to be investigated. Her clothes look lefty. She has pink hair. Pink hair, I ask you. As far as I could gather, this was the first time he had asked her anywhere. I think she is a corrupting influence.’

  ‘Your son being easily corrupted?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant, Paul is naïve and unworldly, thoroughly honest and straight. He thinks everyone else is the same.’

  ‘Where were you between eleven and midnight last night?’

  ‘I was in the drawing room.’

  ‘Did you leave it at any time?’

  ‘I went up at one point to … er … use the bathroom.’

  ‘Before Mr Trent retired to bed or after?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘That will do
for now. Send in Miss Gold.’

  Titchy Gold had changed into a low-cut black blouse and long dark skirt. She seemed nervously excited.

  ‘Miss Gold,’ said Hamish. ‘I will need to take you through this again. I want you to tell me all about your visit from the beginning.’

  Titchy gave him a competent and brief summary of everything that had happened, right to the finding of the body.

  ‘There is just one thing,’ said Hamish, ‘you said you were talking outside to Charles Trent for a long time. What about?’

  Titchy fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Come now, Constable, what do lovers usually talk about?’

  ‘Yet you say he joined you in your bed later. Would that not have been a more comfortable place to discuss things?’

  ‘Hardly, copper. We were otherwise occupied.’

  ‘Is Titchy Gold your real name?’

  ‘Yes. Quaint, isn’t it? Mummy and Daddy were Shakespearian actors.’

  ‘I cannae call to mind a Titchy Gold anywhere in Shakespeare.’

  Titchy gave a musical laugh. ‘Silly. I mean they were bohemian, extravagant people. It was just like them to think up an odd name for me.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Both dead.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘They died in the Paris air crash of ’82.’

  Titchy whipped out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.

  I don’t like this woman one bit, thought Hamish suddenly.

  ‘When is the will being read?’ demanded Titchy suddenly.

  ‘That I do not know. Strathbane police will no doubt call the solicitors in Inverness and ask them to send someone here. Why? Surely you do not hope to inherit?’ asked Hamish, being deliberately stupid.

  ‘No, but Charles will. He must. He’s the son.’

  ‘Adopted. Besides, Mr Jeffrey says that Mr Andrew Trent may have planned his last joke by leaving the lot to a cats’ home.’

  Something unlovely flashed in Titchy’s eyes and was gone. ‘Any more questions?’

  ‘Not for now. Send in Miss Angela Trent.’

  Despite her mannish appearance, Angela Trent was the first one of them, apart from Maria, that Hamish had met who seemed distressed.

  ‘I will not keep you long,’ he said gently. ‘Where were you last night between eleven and midnight?’