Hamish MacBeth 07 (1998) - Death of a Prankster

by M C Beaton

  Melissa and Paul had arrived. Paul was white-faced. Melissa looked tired and scared. Hamish watched as they were ushered inside. He felt sorry for them. Blair would give them both a hard time of it.

  He drove slowly homeward, the great bright stars of Sutherland burning fiercely overhead. The roads had been gritted and salted but were beginning to freeze in a hard frost.

  The police station would be freezing cold, he thought gloomily. Maybe if he could solve this murder, he would offer Blair the credit in return for a suggestion to police headquarters that central heating was installed. Instead of going straight home, he turned into the drive leading to Tommel Castle Hotel. Landowner Colonel Halburton-Smythe had turned his home into an hotel after he had lost a great deal of money. The suggestion had come from Hamish. The hotel had quickly become a great success, but the colonel never gave Hamish Macbeth any credit for the idea, perhaps because he frowned on the village bobby’s friendship with his daughter Priscilla.

  The guests had finished dining and were having their coffee in the hotel lounge, formerly the castle drawing room. Jenkins, once butler, now mattre de, frowned at the sight of Hamish, for Jenkins was a snob, but reluctantly said that Priscilla could be found in the bar. The bar was in a room off the entrance hall. What had it been before? wondered Hamish, trying to remember. Priscilla was behind the bar checking some accounts.

  “Still working?” said Hamish. “I thought now that Mr Johnson had taken over as hotel manager you would be able to lead a life of ease.”

  “There’s still a lot to do,” said Priscilla, shutting a ledger with a firm bang. “Besides, the barman’s off with flu—not that the bar gives me much work. This party of guests like their drinks in the lounge and the waiters cope with that. Mr Johnson and I have finally talked Daddy into getting a computer for the accounts. Have a whisky on the house, and tell me your news.”

  Hamish watched her as she poured him a shot of whisky. She was as cool, blonde and competent as ever in a severe black dress and black high heels.

  “I refuse to stand behind the bar any longer,” said Priscilla with a sigh. “It’s been a long day. Let’s take our drinks over to the table at the window. If anyone comes in, I’ll get Jenkins to find one of the waiters to take over.”

  “The morning room,” exclaimed Hamish. “I couldnae remember what room this used to be.”

  “Changed times,” said Priscilla. “We’re making money hand over fist and we’re booked up all year round, but if I suggest to Daddy that he might now go back to being lord of the manor, he turns green at the gills with fright. Losing that money scared the hell out of him. What brings you here?”

  “I wanted to see you,” said Hamish, remembering briefly the time when he had been so much in love with her that he would have been unable to say anything as honest as that. “Besides, I’ve got a murder. Arrat House. I’ve been there all day. It was the thought o’ going back to that freezing police station, apart from wanting to see you, that brought me here.”

  “Where’s Towser?” asked Priscilla. Towser was Hamish’s dog.

  “At the station, but Priscilla, that animal doesn’t feel the cold.”

  “Hamish, you are so lazy! A fire takes no time to get going. Drink up and we’ll both go to the station and warm that poor dog and feed it.”

  “Towser can look after himself,” pleaded Hamish, but Priscilla replied that she was going to fetch her coat.

  Proof that the mongrel could indeed take care of itself was discovered when they found Towser snuggled down under the blankets on Hamish’s bed. Hamish wanted to tell her about the case but had to wait until she had lit the kitchen stove and prepared food for Towser.

  “Now,” she said, “that’s better,” and Hamish wondered again how it was that someone so elegant and with such a pampered upbringing should have turned out to be such an efficient housekeeper.

  He told her all about the murder and she listened intently. “You see,” finished Hamish, “there’s one thing I’m sure of. Not one of them knew what was in that will. If just one of them looked or sounded as if they knew and if that someone turned out to be the beneficiary, then I think I would find the murderer.”

  “You mean, his millions are the reason for the murder?”

  “What else?”

  “Well, his jokes, Hamish. You’ve forgotten something. He played jokes on people in the village as well. They hated him like poison. Everyone knows that.”

  Hamish’s stomach rumbled and he coughed to conceal the noise. He was hungry, but if Priscilla knew that, she would start clattering pots and pans to make him a meal and he wanted to discuss the case.

  “Aye, that’s right,” he said slowly. “Mind you, someone would need to be a lunatic to kill him over a joke.”

  “There are jokes and jokes,” said Priscilla. “He might have humiliated someone quite dreadfully and you Highlanders are a terribly touchy lot.”

  “I’ll go over to the village in the morning,” said Hamish.

  “Is Blair allowing you in on this case?”

  “For the moment. I’m covering MacGregor’s patch, so I have every right to be there.”

  Priscilla leaned forward. “Is it any use pointing out to you that promotion would mean more comfort? If you like it so much here, why didn’t you rush back to feed your dog instead of coming to the hotel?”

  “I told you,” said Hamish stiffly, “I wanted tae see you. Iss there anything wrong in that, Miss Halburton-Smythe?”

  She studied him thoughtfully and then gave a rueful smile. “I should be flattered, Hamish Mac-beth, but I happen to know you are a moocher.”

  “Well, if you want to think I wass after the free drink and the free heat, that iss your damned business.”

  Priscilla stared at him in amazement. He coloured but turned his head away and sat with his arms folded.

  “I’m off,” she said suddenly. “It’s a good thing I brought my own car. Call on me again when you’re over your sulks.”

  Hamish felt like a fool when she had gone. What on earth had possessed him to snap at her like that? His stomach gave another rumble. That was it. He was hungry. It was not as if he were still in love with Priscilla and sensitive to her every remark. But he shouldn’t have left Towser behind in the freezing cold. He would take the dog with him in the morning.

  Titchy Gold and Charles Trent were snuggled up in bed, his bedroom, Titchy’s being still sealed off. “So you didn’t mean that about leaving me,” said Charles.

  “Silly,” she giggled. “I was out of my mind with all those hellish jokes.”

  Charles clasped his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “I just hope you aren’t pinning your hopes on that will. I’m not.”

  “Oh, yes, you are,” said Titchy. “You’ve been strung up all day.”

  Charles gave a reluctant laugh. “Terrible, isn’t it? But I am his son and so he’s got to leave me the bulk of it.”

  And at that remark, Titchy ended the conversation by becoming very amorous indeed.

  Along the corridor in their room, Betty and Angela Trent lay awake. Betty kept snivelling dismally and the tip of her nose was pink.

  “I don’t know why you’re so upset,” complained Angela. “I mean, we were both shocked at first, but it’s good in a way to be rid of him and it’s no use pretending otherwise.”

  Betty shivered. “That’s a sinful thought. Do you believe there is a hell, Angela?”

  “No, but then I don’t believe in heaven either.”

  Betty shifted restlessly. “I suppose Charles will get the bulk of the money and then he’ll marry that little tart and she’ll get her claws into it.”

  “Just hope he’s left me something,” said Angela, “or we’ll be in real trouble.”

  Jeffrey was striding up and down his bedroom, berating his wife, an odd state of affairs, for in their marriage it was usually the other way around. “What on earth possessed you to get the servants to take the body away and clean up?” he kep
t asking. “You dote on that boy of yours and yet you’ve landed him in terrible trouble and all because you were frightened he had done it. You must be mad. That wimp couldn’t kill anyone.”

  Jan found her voice. “Don’t you dare criticize my son,” she said in a thin voice. “At least he earns decent money, which is more than I can say for you.”

  “I was earning very good money when you married me,” pointed out Jeffrey acidly. “I am not responsible for the recession in this country.”

  “You’re responsible for a lot of hare-brained deals. Pinky told me.” Pinky was a colleague’s wife.

  “So that’s your idea of loyalty? Gossiping about me behind my back? Poking into my affairs? I could wring your scrawny neck.”

  “Try it,” she jeered. “Just try it.”

  “Oh, shut up, you bitch,” he muttered, suddenly weary. He climbed into the double bed beside her and both lay as stiff as boards, not touching, each plotting ways on how best to hurt the other. I’ve still got my looks, thought Jan, to whom extreme thinness was beauty. If he doesn’t get any money in that will, then I’ll find someone else.

  Jeffrey thought, if I don’t get any money, I’ll take everything we’ve got left and disappear to Spain. That’d serve the bitch right. She might even have to find out what it’s like to work for a living. In the last few years, failure and frustration had taught him to hate. He now hated his wife every bit as much as he had hated his brother. He forced himself to relax. In his mind’s eye, he lay on a Spanish beach in the blazing sunshine while a buxom Spanish girl with bobbing breasts and not one anorexic bone showing brought him a long cool drink.

  Melissa was sick for the second time that evening. Sweating and shivering, she climbed into bed. She would never, even in her left-wing days, have believed the police could be such pigs. She could still see Blair’s face, bloated with rage as he hurled questions at her and Paul. And a fat lot of good Paul had been. He had cringed before Blair, apologized for his very existence on this planet, thought Melissa savagely.

  Blair had turned over her whole life, her family, her career, and he had obviously regarded her pink hair as a sure sign she took drugs. Good God! He had even got that thin policewoman from Inverness to examine her arms for needle marks. And she had been so happy just that morning, so free, planning a life with Paul. A fat tear rolled down her nose and plopped on the sheet.

  Down in his living room, Enrico sat with his pocket calculator and his bank books and counted his savings. “We’ve done very well,” he said in Spanish to his wife, not the lisping Spanish of the south but a hard Catalan accent. “We’ll wait to see what’s in that will and then we’ll leave. Hey, Maria, back to Spain after all these years in exile. We can live like grandees.”

  Maria gave him a placid smile. Whatever Enrico did or said was right.

  Paul Sinclair crept along to his mother’s room and slowly pushed open the door. Jeffrey Trent was asleep but he could see the glitter of his mother’s eyes in the darkness. “Paul,” she whispered. She got out of bed, wrapped herself in a dressing-gown and ran to him. He went into her arms and she held him tightly.

  “Let’s find somewhere where we can talk,” she said urgently. “We’ve got to talk.”

  Next morning, Hamish Macbeth ambled up the village street of Arrat with his dog at his heels.

  He remembered a Mrs King who lived in the main street. She had once lived in Lochdubh and was an excellent source of gossip. He knocked at the door of her cottage and waited patiently. Mrs King, he knew, was crippled with arthritis. At last the door creaked open and Mrs King peered up at him. She had a face like an elderly toad. “Why, Hamish,” she said. “It iss yourself. Come ben.”

  He followed her into her small cramped living room. Towser stretched out in front of the fire and went to sleep.

  “It iss the murder that has brought ye,” said Mrs King. “My, my, the auld scunner deserved tae be kilt, and the good Lord forgive me for saying so. The pressmen haff arrived and they are looking for places to stay. That Mrs Angus, her doon the road, hass let her ain bedroom to two fellows from the Sun, but I wouldnae stoop tae such a thing.”

  Mrs King looked wistful, all the same.

  “Tell me,” said Hamish, “is there anyone in Arrat itself who hated the auld man? Is there anyone who had such a nasty joke played on him that he might kill?”

  She folded her deformed hands on top of the handle of her stick and rested her chins on them. “Aye,” she said at last. “But it wass twa year gone.”

  “We have the long memories in the Highlands when it comes to insults,” said Hamish. “Who was it? What happened?”

  She half-closed her reptilian eyes. “It wass the gamekeeper up at the big hoose, Jim Gaskell, what lives in the flat above the stables wi’ his family.”

  Hamish listened in horror as the story unfolded. Jim’s wife had had a baby two years ago in a hospital in Inverness. Jim had not been allowed to go to the hospital because Mr Trent was complaining about poachers on his land and did not want an absent gamekeeper but said he would send Enrico with the car to bring home wife and baby. Jim came in from the hill one day to be told that his wife and new baby were home and waiting for him. His wife, Mary, proudly led him into the little spare bedroom they had turned into a nursery. They approached the cradle and Mary gently pulled back the covers. They found themselves staring down at a small chimpanzee wearing a baby’s bonnet. Mary had fainted with shock and had, struck her head on a chest of drawers as she went down and suffered a severe concussion. Jim found old Andrew Trent hiding in the next room, holding the shrieking baby, and laughing fit to burst. Jim had threatened to kill Andrew, but then it was rumoured that Andrew had paid over money for the baby’s upkeep and so it had all died down.

  Hamish sat turning this over in his mind. No Highlander would ever forgive a thing like that. But knifing in such a way? A bullet through Andrew Trent’s brain as the old man was walking through his estates would have been more the way Jim would have killed him.

  “Anyone else?” Hamish asked and then listened to a catalogue of the old man’s jokes, from putting a cat in the school piano before the annual concert to nailing up the doors of Jean Macleod’s cottage on her wedding day and making the frantic girl and her family late for church. What a power money was, thought Hamish in amazement. Had Andrew Trent been poor, his family would probably have had him certified as dangerously mad long ago.

  He thanked the old woman and went up towards Arrat House with Towser. A group of shivering men and women, like refugees, were huddled outside the gates. The press had arrived.

  He politely told them all to put any questions to Blair and walked up the drive. As he was approaching the house, he saw a girl in front of him, a girl with pink hair. “Miss Clarke,” he called.

  Melissa swung round, saw Hamish’s uniform, and turned pale.

  “It’s all right,” he said easily. “I am not going to question you at the moment.” She had beautiful eyes, he noticed, well spaced and dark grey. He thought her pink hair suited her. “Did Blair give you a hard time?” he asked.

  Melissa looked up at him warily but the policeman’s hazel eyes were kind and his ridiculous-looking dog was slowly wagging its plume of a tail.

  “Yes, very,” she said in a low voice.

  “It was because you went away,” said Hamish. “He wasn’t really after you but Paul Sinclair. You see, Paul’s mother, Mrs Trent, paid the servants to take away the body and clean the room. So Blair figured that the mother knew the son had done it and was covering up the evidence.”

  “It was awful,” said Melissa. “I didn’t know the police could be like that. You know, at university, I was in some left-wing groups and they called the police fascist pigs, but I never quite believed it until now. I was brought up in a family which always went to the police when in trouble.”

  “Blair’s in a class of his own,” said Hamish. “Wait until the will is read and he’ll be after the beneficiaries. He cannot keep you here mu
ch longer, you know. Give it another day and then you can leave your address and go back home.”

  They had reached the house. Melissa drew back. “I don’t want to go in,” she said in a shaky voice.

  Hamish looked up at the sky. The sun was shining and there was a hint of warmth in the air. The mountain above the house was sharp-edged against the sky, like a cut-out. A pair of buzzards sailed lazily in the clear air.

  He turned away from the house and she fell into step beside him. “I want to ask you a question,” said Hamish, his accent suddenly stronger, more Highland, more sibilant, as it always became when he was nervous.

  “Must you?” said Melissa. “I’ve had enough of questions.”

  “It iss not about the case. Do you see this dog, Towser?”

  Melissa looked down in surprise at the great yellowish mongrel, who gave her a doggy grin. “Yes, of course, I see him.”

  “I wass here all the day long yesterday because of the murder; I left this animal locked up in the police station all day. The police station iss cold, mind you. He had been fed in the morning and had plenty of water. But on the way home, I couldnae bear the idea of going straight back to a cold house and so I dropped in on a friend whose family hass the big hotel. This friend, she said I wass cruel to leave the dog so long.”

  Melissa looked up at him in sudden amusement. “Are you asking me whether I think you were cruel?”

  “Yes,” said Hamish.

  “Well,” said Melissa cautiously, “what about walks? Was Towser there all day without a walk?”

  “No, Mrs Wellington, the minister’s wife, has the key, and she walked him in the morning and the afternoon.”

  “No, I don’t think you are cruel. Your dog has a pampered look. You are not really like a policeman, you know.”

  “I am verra like a policeman,” said Hamish huffily. “Mair like one than that great bullying fathead inside.” A car swept by them. “The lawyer,” exclaimed Hamish. “I must hear this.”

  Melissa found herself trotting after him as he headed back to the house with long strides. He emanated a sort of sane kindness, she thought. “Could you look after Towser for me?” asked Hamish. “See if Enrico can give him a bone or something.”