Frost at Christmas djf-1 Read online

  "Bit of a snag, I'm afraid. Mr. Garwood doesn't seem to be in today. Brenda's phoned his home, but there's no reply. Most odd-and so unlike him." He made another note on his pad.

  The two detectives exchanged glances. "Let us have his address," said Frost, "and we'll call at his house on our way back. If we miss him, and he turns up here, you might ask him to give me a ring at the station. I've got a card somewhere."

  Eventually a grubby dog-eared card was located from the depths of a crumb-lined pocket and passed across. Hudson took it doubtfully and was about to tuck it in the corner of his clean blotter when he decided it would look less offensive under his paperclip tray, in which, he noticed with annoyance, the inspector had stubbed out his cigarette.

  No. 38 Priestly Court, where Garwood lived, was a pebble-dashed residence of 1938 vintage. They followed the milkman's footprints up the snow-covered path to the porch where the morning's pint of milk shivered on the step. All the curtains were drawn. Frost pressed the bell. They could hear it ringing inside. The ringing died. Silence. Frost rang again, then rattled the letter box causing the morning paper to drop down on the doormat.

  "Sounds ominously empty, son," said Frost. "The woman next door's peeking at us through her curtains. She looks a right nosey cow. Let's see if she can tell us anything."

  She was a homely body in curlers and a quilted mauve dressing gown, and she talked non-stop. If they wanted Mr. Garwood, he'd be at the bank. No, he wasn't married-lived on his own with Roy… Of course not! He wasn't that sort of a man. Roy was his golden retriever. I'm surprised you didn't hear it barking its head off when you rang the bell. It usually does.

  Nodding his thanks, Frost backed away, leaving her still talking, then he sped back to the car with Clive. "I don't like it son. Radio through to Control and get them to contact the bank. If Garwood still hasn't arrived, they'd better do a quick audit. He might have run off with the tea money." He watched Clive fumble among the litter on the ledge under the dashboard. "What's up, son?"

  "I can't find your personal radio," Clive explained.

  Christ! thought Frost. He remembered where he'd left it. On Shirley's studio couch the previous night.

  "On second thoughts, son, scrub it. Let's go round to the back of the house. There might be a door open."

  On the way they took a look at Garwood's garage. The doors were padlocked, but they forced them open enough to poke a torch inside and it lit up the radiator of a gray Hillman Avenger. Wherever Garwood had gone, he hadn't taken his car.

  But the back door was securely locked and bolted and the closed Venetian blinds stopped them from seeing into the kitchen. A small patio extended from the rear of the house for about ten feet or so before the lawn took over. Thick, crusty snow made it one unbroken blanketed expanse, except for an oddly shaped little mound, longish, slightly curved. Frost prodded it tentatively with his toe. A crackling sound of thin ice breaking. Curiosity aroused, he bent and scraped away the snow with a gloved hand, calling for Clive to help. A little way down the snow was tinted pink, and then there was thick, bright, ruby red ice, and something stiff, golden and spikey. Frozen animal fur. They'd found Roy, Garwood's golden retriever, the head darkened with dried blood running into frozen rivulets, soft brown eyes staring dully and reproachfully at the inspector's unpolished shoes.

  Frost turned his head away. Tracey's body would be like that, stiff, cold, and reproachful.

  They were crouched at the back door, Frost trying one of his skeleton keys, when the two men jumped on them. Frost's arm was seized and jerked brutally upward in an agonizing hammerlock, while Clive's head was slammed into the woodwork of the door. Frost kicked back, savagely, and there was a scream of pain. Then he turned his head and saw the police uniforms.

  "You silly sods!" The policeman holding him, gritting his teeth against the pain of the kick, abruptly froze, then slowly released his grip.

  "Inspector Frost!"

  "Who was you hoping for, you great tart-Jack-the-bloody-Ripper?" The constable rubbed his leg and Frost worked the shoulder muscles of his right arm to ease the pain. Clive was soaking up blood from his nose with a handkerchief. "Are you all right, son?" Clive nodded and dyed the handkerchief red.

  "Sorry, sir," apologized the second policeman, "but we had this 999 call about two suspicious characters…"

  "Lucky for you we're not burglars, otherwise I'd sue you for police brutality-look at what you've done to his nose, it's all bent." Clive's eyes glared at the inspector over his sodden handkerchief.

  "We're trying to break into this house," said Frost.

  "What's the easiest way?"

  "Through the coal-chute," said the first constable and limped around the front to show them.

  During the summer, while the householders were away on holiday, there had been several break-ins in the locality, the thieves gaining admittance through the coal-chutes which were alongside the front doors. Most of the burgled houses had their doors fitted with strong, sophisticated thief-proof locks, but the coal-chute doors were secured by very simple locks-after all, who would want to steal a few pieces of coal? But with the coal-chute door forced open, all the intruder had to do was slither down into the coal cellar and out through the inner door, straight into the house.

  They got the door open without any trouble. An enormous pile of anthracite hid the inner door.

  The constable cleared his throat. "Be a mucky job clambering over that lot, sir."

  Frost flashed a benevolent beam at Clive. "Fortunately we have in our midst the Chief Constable's nephew. A new boy's perks, I'm afraid, son. Try not to drip blood on his nice clean coal."

  Impassively, Clive heaved himself up and slid down the gritty chute to land ankle deep in the anthracite, which kept shifting underfoot and sending up clouds of dry, penetrating coal dust to creep down the collar and into the eyes, and to stick to the blood from his nose. With pumping legs he tried to climb to the top of the heap, but the coal ran away from him and it was like trying to turn up the down escalator, but at last, sweat trickling channels of white into his grimed face, he was there. The inner cellar door had no inside handle and a push proclaimed it to be bolted from the other side. Garwood must have heard about those burglaries.

  "Give it a kick, son," called Frost.

  The first kick sent him sprawling on his face, but the second crashed back the door, and there was the hall with its off-white carpeting daring him to spoil it with dirty shoes.

  He tiptoed to the front door, which wasn't bolted, and opened it to Frost who tipped his hat and handed him the bottle of milk.

  Frost suggested the two constables wait outside- "This gentleman doesn't want you mucking up his nice clean floor with your beetle-crushers"-then he ventured inside. The first door he tried led to the lounge. He whistled softly. It was in some disarray, with drawers open and the contents trailing to the floor as if someone had been frantically searching for something. But they gave it just a cursory glance and moved on. The next door led to the kitchen, which was in darkness, with the Venetian blinds closed. Frost felt round the door frame and switched on the light. A compact kitchen in stainless steel and Formica. On the floor, spread across the blue and yellow checkered tiles, was a man.

  The man wore a blue paisley dressing gown over gray nylon pyjamas. He lay on his back, his mouth open as if surprised, his left eye staring in perplexity at the ceiling. Where the right eye should have been was a cavity overflowing with congealed blood. The blood had welled over down the side of the face and on to the blue and yellow tiles.

  The smashed eye held dive in a repulsive but hypnotic grip. He didn't want to look, but couldn't turn his head away. Then his stomach revolted and he staggered from the room. Frost heard his retching outside and hoped he'd managed to avoid the off-white carpet.

  Sensing trouble the two uniformed men bounded in, recoiling at the sight of the mess on the floor. Frost waved them out. The kitchen was too small with the corpse taking up so much room "You'd better radio
the station, lads," he said. "Get a full forensic team. Tell them someone has shot and killed Rupert Gar wood."

  WEDNESDAY-2

  And then it was organized chaos with experts stamping all over the house, measuring, examining, photographing, dusting for fingerprints. The pathologist and his secretary were closeted with the corpse in the kitchen after being assured by the inspector that it had a bit more meat on it than the last one.

  Frost didn't like experts. They spoke a language he didn't understand, a language where things were exact and precise and where hunches, intuition, and blind luck didn't enter into it. So he sat on the stairs, smoking, keeping out of everyone's way, flicking ash on the thick sheet of polythene that had been laid to protect the deceased's off-white Wilton.

  Clive staggered in from the garden, his face chalk white under the coal grime. He flopped down on the bottom stair, ready to charge outside again should the need arise.

  "Feeling better now, son?"

  Clive nodded. "Sorry about that, sir-it was seeing his eye-"

  "Don't apologize, son. It's to your credit that you've still got some decent revulsion left in you. I bet, in a couple of weeks, you'll be flicking your butts in it like the rest of us."

  Clive sat quietly, willing his stomach to settle down. Frost kept the conversation going to cheer the lad up.

  "The pathologist and his girlfriend are in there now, admiring the spilled brains. I remember a choice corpse we had once when I was on the beat. It seemed this bus had gone right over his head-"

  Clive was thankful that two ambulance men bearing a stretcher caused a diversion as Frost directed them, with a jerk of his cigarette, to the kitchen, but they were immediately rejected. The pathologist was not yet ready to yield up the body.

  A fingerprint man emerged with his case of equipment, humming happily to himself.

  "If you've done the kitchen, do the lounge," called Frost. "Someone's turned it over."

  "Right," beamed the fingerprint man. "Let's hope he had the manners to take off his gloves. He kept them on in the kitchen."

  "How I hate cheerful little sods," said Frost, and then the kitchen door opened again and the photographer squeezed out with his equipment. Frost asked for three enlargements of the eye, in color, to send as Christmas cards, then went in with Clive to see the pathologist.

  He was dictating notes to his secretary as Frost's head poked round the door. The corpse, respectably draped with a sheet, was now just something to be stepped over. Frost stepped over it.

  "His dog's outside, Doc, as dead as he is. Do you think you could take a look when you've finished in here?" He nudged the sheeted body with his foot. "What's the verdict on one-eyed Riley?"

  The pathologist winced, delicately. "Well, he was shot from a distance of a few feet. The bullet has ripped through the eye and is now lodged in the skull somewhere. I'll fish it out for you when I do the autopsy. He would have fallen back with the impact and cracked his head on the tiles, but he wouldn't have felt it. He was dead before he hit the floor."

  "Some people have all the luck. What time did he cop it?"

  The pathologist scratched his chin. "We're now going into the realms of speculation. Pinpointing the time of death is very much a hit-and-miss affair, but from my preliminary calculations I'd say that death occurred between ten o'clock and midnight last night. I'll be more precise after the post mortem."

  The ambulance men were allowed to remove the body and Frost led the pathologist out to the stiffened little mound on the patio. Squatting on his haunches the medical man gently explored the sodden fur on the animal's head. "Beautiful creatures, aren't they?" he murmured impassively, then straightened up and rubbed his hands briskly together. "A blow from our old friend, the blunt instrument. A nasty knock, but I don't think the intention was to kill. The dog was stunned and this crippling weather did the rest. It just froze to death."

  Frost evened up the ends of his scarf. "Thank God we're not dealing with the sort of swine who'd kill a dog in cold blood. Parliament would bring back hanging for that. What time did Fido expire?"

  The pathologist gave a hollow laugh. "You do ask the most impossible questions, Inspector. The dog's frozen solid. It's like giving me a piece of meat from the deepfreeze and wanting to know when it was slaughtered. My guess is that it died some time last night."

  "That's bloody obvious, Doc," snorted Frost. "Gar-wood was a fastidious man. He would never have left a dead dog out on his patio all day. He'd have shoved it in the dustbin. They both must have been killed around the same time, but who went for walkies in the sky first-the bow-wow or his master?"

  "If it's all that important," sniffed the pathologist, "I'll do a quick P.M. on the dog as well." He called out to one of the ambulance men to ask if there was a polythene bag to put the dog in.

  The ambulance man looked at the golden retriever, his eyes clouding with compassion. "Poor old thing. What bastard would do that to a dog?"

  "If I ever get myself murdered," announced Frost, "I'll make certain my dog is scabby, mangy, and smelly, so if any sympathy's going, I get the lot."

  The black Daimler carrying the pathologist purred away, followed, after a frenzy of door-slamming, by the ambulance bearing the mortal remains of Garwood and Roy. And then the house was peaceful again.

  Frost closed the front door, lit his thirtieth cigarette of the day, and ambled back to the kitchen with its traces of fingerprint powder on polished surfaces and the distorted chalked outline, like a child's drawing, on the floor. He wandered over to the Ideal Standard boiler in the corner, opened the fire door, and peered inside. It was full of light gray fluffy ash and lumps of cold unburned coal.

  "Why did he let the fire go out, son? You'd expect it to be going full blast, day and night, in the winter."

  "I imagine he was killed before he could make it up for the night," answered Clive, trying not to sound too patronizing.

  "I'm glad you said that, son. It gives me one of my rare chances to shine. He was in his pyjamas and dressing gown, all clean from his weekly wash. A methodical bloke like Garwood would have made the dirty fire up first."

  Clive thought again. "Then perhaps the boiler was due for a clean-out. You have to let the fire go out every few weeks to rake out the ashes, otherwise it gets clogged up."

  Frost smiled thankfully. "I'll buy that, son. We can eliminate the boiler from our list of things to worry about, then. Thank God for that, there's enough bloody mysteries as it is. Are you going to the Christmas Dinner and Dance?"

  "Dance, sir?" frowned Clive, unable to keep up with these abrupt changes of subject.

  "The Denton Division Annual Dinner. It's next Saturday. Entirely voluntary, of course, but you don't get promotion if you don't go. You can have my ticket." He opened a drawer and closed it aimlessly. "You can smell death in the house, can't you, son? A sort of empty, final feeling. You know what I mean?"

  Clive didn't know what the old fool meant so gave a non-committal shrug. It was clear the inspector was completely out of his depth, without the faintest idea of what to do next. Surely the superintendent wouldn't leave him in charge of a murder investigation?

  "What's our next move, sir?"

  Frost consulted his wrist. "Too early for lunch, even if his eye hadn't taken the edge off my appetite. You know, son, after my wife died, my house was like this-still, silent, achingly empty. It was frightening. And she'd been in hospital for nine weeks, hadn't even been at home, so why should her death have made the house different?"

  "Perhaps the difference was in you, sir, not the house."

  "More than likely, son." His mood brightened. "Do you realize I'm averaging a body a day-more if you count dogs. What you might call an embarrassment of riches. What's your theory about the murder? I think the dog shot Garwood and then committed suicide, but I'm open to alternative suggestions."

  "Garwood surprised a burglar, sir, and the burglar shot him."

  Frost thought for a moment, then shook his head reluctantly. "I h
ate to pour wee-wee on your suggestion, but have you taken a look in his bedroom? His bed hasn't been slept in, so presumably he was up, with the lights on, when he copped it. Even a burglar as stupid as me would wait for the householder to go to bed."

  For once, he's right, brooded Clive, then, "Sir. I've got it!" and he pounded up and down the small kitchen expounding his theory while Frost smoked and listened.

  "Garwood would be holding the keys to the vaults at the bank, sir. That's what the intruder was after. Garwood must have made a false move, so the man shot him."

  Frost pressed his cheek and popped out a smoke-ring. "A bank job, eh? So what does the intruder do after he's shot Garwood?"

  "He looks for the keys himself, sir-that's why the lounge was turned over."

  "The rest of the house hasn't been touched," mused Frost, dribbling smoke, "so he must have found the keys-unless he was disturbed. And if he found them, why didn't he rob the bank?"

  "The beat bobby was watching the door, sir-remember?"

  "It seems to fit," said Frost grudgingly. "It doesn't have the right feel, but I can't think of anything better… Arseholes!"

  The expletive because someone was ringing the doorbell.

  "See who it is, son. If it's the baker, no bread today; if it's the cat's-meat man, tell him he's lost a customer."

  It was Mullett, immaculate in his tailored topcoat. "Trouble seems to be following you around, Inspector," he said, studying the chalked oat line on the floor.

  "You're only doing your job, Super," said Frost, genuinely misunderstanding him, and then all his forebodings came to the boil when Mullett asked Clive if he would mind leaving him alone with the inspector for a moment.

  He's found out I smashed his bloody car, thought Frost, his mind racing through, and rejecting, other possible alternatives.

  A heart-thudding pause while the superintendent seemed to be rehearsing what he was going to say, then he produced a packet of untipped Senior Service from his pocket. "Cigarette… er… Jack?"