Free Death of a Prankster by MC Beaton

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