Death of a Prankster

∨ Death of a Prankster ∧

2

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

—George Eliot

What added to the tension in Arrat House in the next few days was not only that they were snowbound or the practical jokes, but the fact that the relatives had decided to pretend to be amused by them. Charles had started it by laughing every time Mr Trent laughed and that had set up a spirit of competition in the others.

And what an infinite capacity for practical jokes old Mr Trent seemed to have, from gorse bushes at the bottom of the bed to buckets of freezing water above the door. Cushions made rude noises, machines in corners emitted bursts of maniacal laughter. Melissa became used to holding down her plate of food firmly with her fork to make sure its contents didn’t fly up in her face. Melissa, like Paul, felt under no obligation to appear to be amused by Mr Trent’s merry japes and pranks but she did begin to feel as if she was incarcerated in a centrally heated loony-bin.

The snow had stopped, but Enrico remarked that all surrounding roads were blocked. “You will soon run out of food,” said Melissa, but Enrico shrugged and said he was always prepared for weather such as this and had plenty of stocks.

Melissa tried to sympathize with the servant, saying it must be a difficult job. Enrico merely froze her with a look and said he considered himself fortunate. He had a slight air of hauteur and carefully accented English. Melissa suspected that, like quite a number of Spaniards, Enrico considered himself a cut above the British and therefore tolerated the foibles of his employer as evidence of a more barbarous race. His small dark wife was even haughtier and more uncommunicative.

As far as Paul was concerned, Melissa wondered why he had invited her. He had not made a pass at her. He seemed to spend an awful lot of time in the library reading. Melissa put on her leather jacket and a pair of combat boots and ventured outside. Enrico had managed to clear some of the snow from the courtyard. The sky above was a bleak grey. The house, seen clearly from the outside, was a large square grey building with turrets on each corner in the French manner, rather like a miniature château. Arrat House lay at the foot of a mountain that reared its menacing bulk up to the sky. The house itself was on a rise, and below, on the right, she could make out the huddled houses of a village.

She peered up at the top of the house. There was no television aerial. Television would have whiled away some of the time, she thought dismally.

She shivered with cold and went back into the house, kicking the door open first with her boot and jumping back in case anything fell from the top of it.

Paul was in the library. She sat down on a chair opposite him and said, “Is there no way we can get out of here?”

He sighed impatiently and marked his place in the book with his finger. “I’m just settling down,” said Paul. “We can’t do anything else at the moment. Look, do you mind? This book’s very interesting.”

“Having brought me to this insane asylum, I think you might at least have some concern for my well-being,” said Melissa stiffly.

“What else can I do?” he asked edgily. “I mean, it’s hardly prison. The food’s good. As Mother said – ”

“I am not interested in anything your mother says,” snapped Melissa, suddenly furious. “I mean, you’re all poncing around as if you’re lords of the manor, and just look at this dump. It’s in the worst of taste. Ghastly tartan carpets and pink lamps. Yuk!”

“I would have thought,” said Paul in a thin voice, “that any female sporting pink hair and combat boots did not know the meaning of taste. Mother said…”

Melissa stood up. She told Paul and his mother to go and perform impossible anatomical acts on themselves and stormed out.

She went up to her room and sat on the end of the bed and stared bleakly about her. She had a longing for her mother, to put her head down on that aproned bosom which always seemed to smell of onions and cry her eyes out.

The door opened and Paul walked in. “What do you want?” demanded Melissa.

He sat down on the end of the bed next to her and blinked at her owlishly. “I just wanted to say I liked your hair,” he said, taking her hand. “You’ve washed all that gel out of it and now it looks like pink feathers.”

“Did your mother give you permission to say that?”

“Come off it, Melissa. I’m a bit on edge. This is all wrong, you know. I’d been working up courage to ask you out since I first saw you. It was your eyes, I think, so large and grey. We should have gone out for dinner and…and talked, but here we are. I don’t really want to talk about Mother. Except to point out that it’s easier to love than to be loved. She is very possessive. My father was a quiet, unambitious man. I think she divorced him to marry Jeffrey because she wanted nothing but the best for me – best school, best university. I…I’m glad I’m free in a way now and that I’ve got my own place and work I like. You wouldn’t know anything about that. I mean, about being shy and burying yourself in your work. You’ve probably got lots of friends.”

“Not really,” said Melissa. With a burst of rare candour, she added, “I’m a terrible snob, really. I’m so ashamed of my working-class background that I adopt poses. I’m shy, too. I wasn’t even a good left-winger. I’m not really interested in any politics. I just went along with it at university because it gave me a role to play. So when I joined the atomic research centre, I dropped all my old acquaintances. They were very excited at first about me having the job and saying I could give them inside information and I got frightened and didn’t see them again. So we’re very alike in a way.”

He carefully removed his glasses and put them in his pocket. He took her by the shoulders and deposited a clumsy kiss on her lips. Melissa wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.

“Wow,” he said shakily. He turned brick-red and fumbled in his pocket for his glasses and put them on. He walked to the window and looked out, and then he gave an exclamation. “Come here! Look at this!”

Melissa joined him. Down below, Enrico was making his way out of the courtyard on skis.

“Can you ski?” asked Paul. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I can.”

“Ever done any cross-country skiing?”

“Yes, I went on holiday once to a ski resort in the French Alps, one of these cheap student trips.”

Paul’s eyes blazed with excitement. “We could ask Enrico if he’s got another pair and if we can borrow them. Then we’ll pack up what we need. There’s a couple of old rucksacks in a cupboard in the games room. We’ll just take off. I’ll get a map. We could even go across country to Inverness if we start very early in the morning and the weather stays clear. What do you say?”

“You mean, get out of here? I’d love it.”

“We won’t tell anyone. We’ll just send the skis back when we get to Inverness with the British Rail door-to-door delivery service. Everyone will think we’re going off for a day’s skiing. Let them all stay here and suck up to the old man if they want!”

♦

“As soon as the roads clear, we must get out of here,” said Angela Trent to her sister.

“Is that wise?” asked Betty. “I mean, Dad can be very quirky. He pays us an annual allowance, but he could stop that any time he felt like it – and worse. He could leave us nothing in his will. We’ve never worked at anything. We’re too old to start now.”

There was a light ping from the phone extension. Angela picked it up. “It’s working again,” she said. “That’s something anyway. I don’t think I can stand much more of this, Betty.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” snapped Betty, “but there is no way I am leaving the field clear for the others. Have you noticed how Charles and that Titchy girl are playing up to Dad?”

“Yes,” said Angela with a frown. “Something’s got to be done about that pair. Dad’s stopped playing tricks on Titchy and she’s making goo-goo eyes at him and he’s loving it.”

“I’ll think of something,” said Betty. “You’re all talk and no do, Angela.”

“And you’re all bitch, bitch, bitch.”

The sisters fell to squabbling, although Angela was half-hearted about it. She was thinking about Titchy.

When Betty pointed out that Angela was badly in need of a shave, Angela used that as an excuse to storm out. She went quietly along the corridor and opened the door to Titchy’s room, in the same way as everyone else at Arrat House had quickly learned to open doors – standing well back for a few moments after she did so. The room was empty.

She walked in and shut the door behind her. She opened the wardrobe and stood looking at Titchy’s array of gorgeous dresses, dresses which Titchy had paid a fortune for, knowing that her fortune lay more in how she looked than in any acting ability.

They all looked like tart’s clothes to Angela, so she studied the labels and finally selected five that bore the name of a famous couture house. She extracted a razor blade from her pocket that she had taken from her toilet-bag while rowing with Betty and got to work.

Titchy went up to dress for dinner. She liked making an appearance. She took out a low-cut scarlet silk chiffon dinner gown and laid it on the bed. After a bath and change of underwear, she wriggled into the gown. All her couture models were taken to a dressmaker and then fitted tightly on to her body. With a faint sigh, the dress fell from her and lay on the floor.

With trembling hands she picked it up. The seams had been neatly sliced. Only a few threads had been left to hold it together.

Hate for old Mr Trent boiled up in her. She had played up to him to please Charles. She had made eyes at the old fright and had only giggled when he had felt her bottom.

She searched frantically through her other dresses. Four had been similarly treated.

They were all gathered in the drawing room before dinner when Titchy marched in, an armful of dresses over her arm. She flung them down in front of Mr Trent and screamed, “You miserable old fart. That’s hundreds of pounds of my best clothes you’ve ruined, you senile old fruit.”

In all her amazement, Melissa nonetheless noted that Titchy had dropped her breathy Marilyn Monroe act and looked as hard as steel. Mr Trent’s startled cry of ‘I had nothing to do with it’ went ignored by the angry actress.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here, but I’m going to manage it somehow,” raged Titchy. “I’ll send you the bill when I get to London. Who the hell do you all think you are anyway? Parasites, that’s what you are. But I work for my money. “Be nice to the old man,” says Charles, so I have to put up with insane jokes and your dirty old man’s hands fumbling at me. You can keep your money-bags. Stuff the lot of you!”

There was a deathly silence when she left. Then Paul began to laugh. “Don’t you see how right she is?” he cried.

“Paul!” said Jan furiously. “Remember where you are.”

She looked uneasily at Mr Trent. He had sat impassive during Titchy’s tirade. Now he looked slowly around the room, his old eyes glittering in a reptilian way. Melissa shuddered. Tomorrow she and Paul would be far away. Hang on to that thought.

To their surprise, Titchy appeared at the dinner table, icily calm. It was a silent meal. Mr Trent sat brooding at the head of the table, his eyes occasionally travelling from one face to the other.

They filed back to the drawing room afterwards. Everyone longed to escape from the heavy atmosphere but it was as if the power of the old man’s personality was keeping them prisoner.

Then Charles whispered to Titchy, “Come outside. We need to talk.”

“Very well,” said Titchy. “But it won’t do you any good.”

Wrapped up warmly, she and Charles went outside into the courtyard. It was a bright night with a hard frost.

“Titchy,” pleaded Charles, “don’t go. There’s no way you can leave yet.”

“I don’t care,” said Titchy. “I don’t care if I only get as far as the village. I’ll find a room there. I’m not staying with that madman.”

“Titchy, I do love you. We’re going to be married.”

“And live on what?” demanded Titchy. “Look, Charles, that old fruitcake could live for ever. I’m not a fool. I can’t act for peanuts, and after my looks go, I’ll get a few television quiz shows and then that’ll be that. I don’t want to end up married to a man I have to keep supporting.”

“But I have a job!”

“Selling vitamin pills? When did you last sell any? You’re just about to drop that job like you dropped the others. It’s no good, Charles. I’ve had it.”

Charles’s usual sunny optimism deserted him. “I hate that old bastard,” he muttered. “Why doesn’t he die? God, I’d like to stick a knife in his guts.”

“Come off it,” said Titchy wearily. “Start thinking seriously about making some money yourself. Thank God, I haven’t any rich relatives. You’ve no idea how sick you all seem, hovering around that dreadful man waiting for him to pop off.”

Upstairs, Melissa began to pack as many of her belongings as she could into the rucksack Paul had given her. At one point she looked out of the window. The two figures were still there below, Titchy and Charles, pacing up and down, arguing.

The door opened and Jan walked in. Melissa swung round and stared at her defiantly.

“Just a little chat, dear,” cooed Jan. “As one woman to another, I must appeal to you to do something about Paul.”

“I don’t think anything needs to be done,” said Melissa.

“But surely you must see he is jeopardizing his future. Charles is a hopeless case. Andrew Trent must see that Paul is the finer person. Although Andrew has appointed a managing director to run his factories, someone has to take over when he dies.”

Melissa was horrified. “Paul is a very good scientist. You would not like to see him waste his education by selling baby food.”

“Running a multi-million operation is not selling baby food,” said Jan acidly.

“It’s no use coming to me,” retorted Melissa firmly. “My advice to Paul would be to have nothing to do with the Trent fortune.”

Jan’s face hardened. “I should have known better than to try to talk sense to a common little slut like you.”

“You’d better leave before I slap you,” said Melissa in a voice which to her fury she realized was trembling.

Jan got up. “What a nightmare this is,” she said half to herself. “The old fool shows no signs of dying. I could kill him myself and not suffer one qualm of conscience. Oh, why am I wasting time with a Communist prig?”

She went out and slammed the door behind her.

Melissa sat down abruptly, feeling sick and shaken.

♦

“Did you cut up Titchy’s dresses?” Betty was asking.

“I didn’t cut them up,” said Angela gruffly. “Just opened up the seams. She can stitch them up easily enough with a needle and thread.”

“W-e-l-l-l,” breathed Betty in reluctant admiration. “I wouldn’t have guessed you’d have had the backbone. All that mannish talk of yours is usually empty bluster, sister dear.”

“You nasty ferret,” said Angela. “I’m going down for a nightcap. All you can do in life is back-seat drive, Betty. It’s all you’ve ever done. Point out everyone else’s faults but never look at your own. If anyone in this house had any guts, they’d put dear Dad out of our misery for once and for all.”

“Words, words, words,” jeered Betty.

♦

Titchy joined the others over the drinks tray in the drawing room to warm up a bit after her talk with Charles. Everyone kept saying good night and then coming back in. Jan approached Mr Trent and whispered to him. Then her place was taken by Jeffrey, who had a low-voiced conversation with his brother. Then Angela. Then Betty. Charles watched them all. Mr Trent rose to his feet and hobbled to the door. Charles made a half-move towards him, then shrugged and helped himself to another drink. Angela and Betty said good night and went out together. Jan and Jeffrey followed them. Then, ten minutes later, Angela returned, saying moodily she would like to wring Betty’s neck, and sat down by the fire. Melissa had finished her packing and joined Paul, who was drinking whisky. He said something to her and shot out of the room, to return some fifteen minutes later. It’s like a French farce, thought Melissa, people coming and going.

At last she decided she had better get some sleep. She went up to her room and carefully felt the end of the bed. There was a lump. She put her hand under the covers and drew out a stuffed hedgehog, and with an exclamation of disgust she opened the window and threw it out into the snow. She set her alarm for six o’clock – she had agreed to meet Paul downstairs at six-thirty – and then got ready for bed.

Titchy, too, went to her room. She was feeling much better. She had discovered her dresses only needed restitching. It was a pity about Charles. He was the nicest, handsomest man she knew, but there was no future in marrying him.

She went to the large Victorian wardrobe to get out her clothes and pack them ready for her escape in the morning. As she swung open the door, a body wearing a monster mask and with a large knife stuck in its chest fell towards her. Trembling, she leaped back and then she stared down at the horror in disgust. Frightful Mr Trent had played his last trick on her. After tomorrow, she would never see Charles or any of his dreadful relatives again. She stepped over the figure and took her clothes down from their hangers and then carried them to the bed and packed them all neatly in one large suitcase. She had a leisurely bath and then climbed into bed.

Half an hour later, Charles opened the door of her room. A pink-shaded lamp was burning beside the bed. Titchy was lying asleep, her fluffy blonde curls shining in the lamplight. Intent on his purpose, he did not appear to notice the dark figure on the floor beside the wardrobe, for it was lying outside the pool of light cast by the little lamp.

He took off his dressing-gown and crept into bed beside Titchy and took her in his arms. She murmured a sleepy protest. He began to make love to her feverishly until she responded, finally feeling he had excelled himself. He tried to get her to promise she would now stay, but Titchy said evasively, “We’ll see.”

He went off to his own room feeling happier.

♦

Melissa awoke with her alarm and quickly got ready and then went downstairs. Paul was already waiting for her with the skis and boots. Giggling with excitement, they strapped on their boots and carried the skis outside where they put them on.

It was still dark but a clear moon was shining down on the glittering landscape. They pushed their way forward until they were on top of the rise leading down into the village.

“Race you!” shouted Paul, and off they both went, the skis hissing over the snow, the clear air streaming past them, and the shadow of Arrat House falling away behind them.

Melissa had never known such exhilaration, such freedom. Paul was waiting for her when she came to a stop in the middle of the village.

“You know,” panted Melissa, “I’ve just realized it. Mr Trent frightened me.”

Paul looked at her solemnly. “Yes,” he said slowly. “There was an awful atmosphere in that house. Well, we’re away now and we’re not going back. Not ever!”

♦

When Titchy awoke, the sun was blazing into the room. She stretched languorously. Then she sat up in bed and yawned and rubbed her eyes. She glanced distastefully at the crumpled figure on the floor and then went very still. There was something very…well…human about that body. And…and…the blood which had seeped and was staining the dummy’s white shirt-front looked very real and not at all like stage blood, or Kensington Gore, as it was called.

“Nothing but a trick. Nothing but a trick,” she said as she edged out of bed. She stooped down over the dummy and reached behind and untied the strings that held the ridiculous monster mask in place.

The dead face of old Andrew Trent looked up at her.

♦

Although Police Constable Hamish Macbeth had Sergeant MacGregor’s area around Cnothan as well as his own to cover, the sergeant being away on holiday, he had been undisturbed by crime of any kind. The village of Lochdubh seemed asleep under its blanket of thick snow.

January had been an unusually mild month but February had turned out miserably cold. Hamish lit the stove in the kitchen and wondered, not for the first time, whether he could persuade headquarters at Strathbane to put in central heating.

And then the phone through in the office began to ring. He expected it was a friend. He hoped it was Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, a particular friend. He had not seen her for some weeks and had begun to wonder why she was keeping away from him.

“Lochdubh police,” said Hamish in his gentle Highland accent.

“Murder!” screamed the voice.

“Now then,” said Hamish quickly. “Easy now. What murder? Who’s been murdered?”

“Andrew Trent at Arrat House.”

“Indeed!” said Hamish coldly. Once Mr Trent himself had phoned and said there was a dead body in his library. Sergeant MacGregor had been away then as well, so Hamish had gone himself, the village of Arrat being part of MacGregor’s beat. There was indeed a body in the library, covered in blood. He was just bending over it when the body had jumped up and had given him the shock of his life. It was the manservant, Enrico, covered in fake blood.

“Are you sure it iss not a practical joke?” asked Hamish, whose voice always became more sibilant when he was upset or excited.

“No, you fool! This is Mr Trent’s daughter Angela. I’m telling you, someone has stuck a knife in him.”

“I’ll be over there as quick as I can. What are the roads like?”

“Good God, man,” squawked Angela’s voice. “How the hell should I know? Still blocked, I suppose. Use a helicopter or something.”

Hamish rang off. He picked up the phone again to call the headquarters in Strathbane, but then he slowly replaced the receiver. He had done that after the call about the body in the library and had been made to look a fool when the heavyweights from Strathbane and a whole forensic team had arrived. He put on his uniform and placed his skis and boots in the back of the police Land Rover.

This time he would make sure it really was a murder.