layabout, popular, loads of girlfriends, usually of the upper-crust sort, until he met Titchy. One job after another. He always leaves, though. Bored. Doesn’t get fired.
“Jeffrey Trent. Running into financial trouble. Wife of his eats money. Best address, best gowns, best jewels, latest in Jaguar cars, his is up here, hers down in London. So Jeffrey needed money badly.
“Angela and Betty Trent. Old maids. In their fifties, both. Angela the older. Live together. Had fairly generous allowance from Pops. Nothing there, except women at the menopause can go weird. Didn’t like their dad and made no secret of it.
“Paul Sinclair.” He looked at Melissa. “Are you ready for this?”
“Go on,” said Melissa quietly. “I don’t care any more.”
“OK. Bright boy. First in physics at Cambridge. Good worker. Clean habits. One nasty scene at his Cambridge college, Pembroke. Got drunk at college dinner and punched someone who called him a swot. Engaged to a girl student, Anita Blume. She dumped him. Broke down the door of her college room and wrecked the place, tossing the furniture around and screaming. In danger of being sent down but survived the scandal because brilliant student. Nothing else.”
“Paul
“Well, maybe mild-mannered Paul Sinclair jumped intae a phone booth and emerged as…Supermurderer. Ta- ra!” cried Anderson, waving his whisky glass.
“Paul? Oh, no. No, he couldn’t have,” said Melissa, looking sick again.
“Run along, lassie,” said Hamish. “I think you could do with a lie-down. Or get a book and go somewhere quiet by yourself.”
Anderson grinned at Hamish after Melissa had left. “Are we getting a bit soft about Miss Punk Head?”
“No, but I think she’s a decent girl.”
“Aren’t they all,” said Anderson gloomily.
“What’s the pathologist’s report?” asked Hamish.
“Stabbed through the heart with great force. Some time after dinner. Since he was seen alive at eleven o’clock and there was a body on the floor o’ Htchy’s room at midnight, then it stands to reason he was killed sometime during that hour.”
“But is he sure of that?” asked Hamish. “We’d best have a look for that dummy, the one that was used before to frighten Titchy. Someone could have used it first and then dragged the dead body along later.”
“That someone would need to be crazy. What if Titchy had screamed the place down when she saw the dummy, just like before?”
“Yes,” said Hamish thoughtfully. “But I think we are looking for someone crazy.”
Melissa came back into the kitchen. She looked at Hamish. “Titchy wants to see you,” she said.
Now what? thought Hamish. He asked Melissa to look after Towser. “Where is Titchy?”
“In the bedroom, Charles’s bedroom.”
? Death of a Prankster ?
5
—Sir Walter A. Raleigh
“I feel I can talk to you,” said Titchy Gold to Hamish Macbeth.
“What about?” asked Hamish cautiously. Titchy was sitting in a chair by the window of the bedroom she shared with Charles. Hamish had learned from the police report on Titchy that she was actually thirty-five. She certainly did not look it. Her skin was smooth and unlined and fresh. Her eyes, however, when her guard was down, held an odd mixture of cynicism and coldness. Again he found himself disliking her but could not figure out why. It was not that she had killed her father. Only Titchy knew what dreadful cruelty she had had to put up with until driven to that desperate resort.
With a sudden flash of intuition, he realized that it was because Titchy did not like anyone: one of those rare creatures who have a bottomless loathing for their fellow man or woman. He was surprised she had thrown such a fit of hysterics over the first trick played on her and over the headless knight, particularly the headless knight. Being an actress, she must be used to stage effects. Perhaps it was because she threw scenes as easy as breathing, or perhaps she was unbalanced.
“I just want to make sure I can walk out of here tomorrow without that fat detective trying to stop me,” said Titchy.
“You’ve made a statement,” said Hamish. “If the police want you, they can visit you in London. But why tell me?”
“Because I am not telling anyone else,” said Titchy. “I want to get away from here and forget I ever knew any of them. Charles will fuss and fret and say I’m dumping him because he’s not coming into any money.”
“And would that be true?” asked Hamish.
“Of course. I’ve got my future to think of. If I married Charles, I’d end up working for the rest of my life to support him and I’m not the maternal type. Mind you, there’s always dear Jeffrey.”
“He’s married.”
“For the moment,” said Titchy cynically. “Haven’t you noticed the way he looks at that wife of his? He’ll get rid of her now, I bet. Yes, Jeffrey might be an idea.”
“You’d better go easy,” said Hamish. “It is my belief that the murderer is in this house.”
“And it could be Brother Jeffrey? Don’t you believe it, copper. That sort only dreams of violence.”
There was a noise from the corridor outside. Hamish ran to the door and whipped it open. No one was there.
“I think someone was listening at the door,” he said slowly.
“Probably that Spaniard,” said Titchy. “He gives me the creeps. He’s always scuttling around, watching everybody. But do me a favour, and don’t tell your superiors I’m leaving.”
“Well…” Hamish looked at her. “I’ll chust pretend you havnae spoken to me. But the results of the fingerprints should be through any time now. Don’t you want to find who cut up your dresses?”
“Phone me in London and tell me. Whoever did it will get a bill from me. Send the clothes on to me.” She scribbled down an address in Hammersmith and handed it to him. “Blair’s got that, but I’d rather hear from you. You can’t get fingerprints off clothes anyway, can you?”
“It’s amazing what they can get fingerprints off these days,” said Hamish. “How are you leaving?”
“I’ll phone a taxi company in Inverness to come up and get me in the morning and take me to the airport.”
“All that business about you and Charles Trent having a lovers’ conversation in the snow on the night of the murder. It iss my belief, Miss Gold, that you told him you were leaving him. Then after the murder, when it seemed he might become rich after all, you decided between you not to tell anyone about breaking off the engagement, for that might lead them to think Charles had killed the old man to keep you.”
“Think what you like,” said Titchy indifferently.
Hamish rose to go but hesitated in the doorway. “If I wass you, Miss Gold,” he said, “I would chust leave quietly. Don’t try to stir up any trouble.”
She grinned but did not answer.
Hamish went back downstairs to the kitchen and collected Towser. “Where are you going?” asked Melissa.
“Down to the village again,” said Hamish.
“Can I…can I come with you?”
