M.C. Beaton: Death of a Prankster

She grabbed some clothes and went into the bathroom. She stripped off her transparent pink nightie – Paul hadn’t even noticed it – and pulled on her underwear and an old pair of jeans and a ‘Ban the Bomb’ sweater.

“I wouldn’t wear that,” said Paul firmly. “Not the sweater. We’re working on nuclear power, remember?”

“But not bombs. Wait! I’ll put on a blouse instead. This place is too hot for a sweater anyway.” She stripped off the sweater. Would Paul notice the fetching lacy bra? No, Paul was staring in an unseeing way out of the window. She put on a man’s white shirt and tied the ends at her waist.

The dining room was in an uproar when they entered. Betty was sitting with yellow egg yolk streaming down her face. Charles and Titchy were laughing in a forced way. Andrew Trent was laughing so hard he looked as if he might have a seizure, and Jeffrey, Jan and Angela were in states of suppressed rage. It transpired that the old practical joker had put a device under the tablecloth and under Betty’s breakfast. He had then pressed a connecting lever and some wire spring had hurled the contents of Betty’s plate straight into her face.

“You old fool,” growled Angela. “One day someone will throttle the life out of you and it might be me.”

“Did you cut the phones off?” demanded Jeffrey.

“Not I,” said his brother, wiping his streaming eyes with his napkin. “Snow’s brought the lines down.”

Enrico’s wife, who, it transpired, was called Maria, quietly came in with a basin of water and a face towel, which she presented to Betty before taking her ruined breakfast away. Enrico then came in with another plate of bacon and eggs. The Spanish servants glided noiselessly to and fro as if nothing out of the way had happened. What brought them to the far north of Scotland, to bleak Sutherland? wondered Melissa. Possibly the pay was good.

Jan made an effort to be polite to Melissa, as did everyone else. But then, they were drawing together against the menace that was Andrew Trent. Melissa wondered how they were all going to pass the time, but there was an extensive library, a conservatory, and a games room in the basement, with billiards and table tennis. She joined Paul in the library, where they read until lunch. Lunch was a quiet affair. Andrew Trent seemed abstracted. In the afternoon the old man went up to bed. Melissa and Paul and Titchy and Charles played a noisy game of table tennis. Melissa began to think she might enjoy her stay after all.

After dinner, instead of retiring to the drawing room, they were invited to assemble in the hall. The fire was burning low and the hall was lit by candle-light. Extra chairs had been brought in and they all sat in a circle round the fire.

“How old is this house?” asked Melissa. “I mean, it’s all been modernized with central heating and that, but the walls look old.”

“Oh, it’s very old,” said Mr Trent. He leaned forward in his chair, his hands folded on the handle of his stick and his chin resting on them. “About the fourteenth century. As a matter of fact, it’s haunted.”

“Rubbish, Andrew,” said Jeffrey.

“I believe in ghosts,” said Titchy suddenly.

“There’s one here, all right,” said Mr Trent. “It’s the ghost of an English knight.”

“Tell us,” squealed Titchy, clapping her hands.

“Yes, do tell us what an English knight was doing in Scotland in the fourteenth century,” sneered Jeffrey.

“His name was Sir Guy Montfour,” said Mr Trent dreamily. “He had returned from a crusade. On his way back through France he met Mary Mackay, the daughter of the chieftain of the Clan Mackay. He fell in love with her. But the Mackays left during the night. He decided to pursue them to Scotland – ” his voice sank eerily – “to this very house.”

“I don’t believe a word of this,” muttered Paul, but Melissa felt the spell the old man was casting on the group. The candles flickered in a slight draught and a log shifted in the hearth.

“The chieftain pretended to welcome Sir Guy. Mary was obviously in love with the knight. The very next day, Mary was seized by the clan servants and taken to the coast. She was put on a boat to Norway, where she spent the rest of her life in exile. But Sir Guy…ah…what a tragedy!”

The wind suddenly moaned around the house. Titchy searched for Charles’s hand and gripped it tightly.

“They took Sir Guy out on a stag hunt. He did not know that his Mary had gone. He shot a fine stag up on the mountain. When he was bending over the dead beast, the chieftain took his claymore and sliced the poor knight’s head from his body. They buried him on the mountain in an unmarked grave. But he comes back to this house. You can hear the sound of mailed feet in the passage above and then he descends the stairs.”

There was another great moaning of the wind…and then they all heard it, a heavy tread and the clink of armour.

“Behold!” cried Mr Trent suddenly. “Oh, God, he comes!”

The staircase was bathed in a greenish light. And down the stairs clanked a knight in black armour carrying his head under his arm.

Titchy screamed and screamed.

There was a sudden explosion and a great cloud of red smoke billowed about the room. Jeffrey was shouting, “It’s a trick!” Titchy was still screaming and screaming. She had leaped up and was drumming her feet on the floor in a sort of ecstasy of panic.

Paul rushed and opened the door and a great gale of wind blew into the hall, clearing the smoke. The knight had disappeared.

Everyone was shouting and exclaiming. Titchy had relapsed into sobs. Old Mr Trent was clapping his hands and laughing like mad. “You should see your faces,” he shouted when he could.

White-faced, Titchy stumbled from the room. She felt terribly ill. She just made it to her bathroom, bent over the toilet and was dreadfully sick.

But the toilet had been sealed with transparent plastic.

Titchy collapsed in a sobbing heap on the bathroom floor, gasping between sobs, “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him!”

∨ 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.