R. Wingfield - Night Frost

‘Her stepfather, Kenneth Duffy.’

‘Stepfather?’

‘Yes. Her father died two years ago. Her mother married again in March.’ Gilmore paused, then added significantly, ‘He’s a lot younger than the mother.’

‘Ah,’ said Frost. ‘I’m getting the scenario… teenage girl, randy young stepfather. But let’s get the doc out of the way first. I don’t want to shock him with our rude talk.’

‘I’ve got nothing more to tell you,’ said Maltby, dropping a thermometer in his bag and snapping it shut. ‘You’ll have my written report today. Any joy with our poison pen writer?’

‘No,’ Frost told him. ‘I’ll go and see Wardley in hospital when I get a chance.’ The doctor lurched towards the open door. A curse as he appeared to miss his footing on the stairs.

‘He’s drunk!’ hissed Gilmore.

‘He’s tired,’ said Frost. ‘The poor bastard is over worked. He never refuses a call day or night and people take advantage of him.’ He whispered something to Burton who chased after Maltby and called, ‘Give us your keys, doc. I’ll drive you home.’ Maltby handed them over without a murmur.

‘Follow on in the Panda and take Burton back to the station,’ Collier was told. Frost lit up another cigarette. ‘So what’s on your mind, son?’

‘The suicide note’s missing,’ said Gilmore.

‘What makes you think there was one?’

Gilmore steered the inspector across to the bedside cabinet. ‘One ballpoint pen.’ He pointed. On the floor, by the bed, was a pad of Basildon Bond writing paper. ‘One notepad.’

‘So she had the means to write a suicide note,’ said Frost. ‘But it doesn’t follow she wrote one. I don’t have to do a pee just because I pass a gents’ urinal.’

‘Look at the glass with the water in,’ continued Gilmore. ‘Right on the edge of the cabinet. If she was lying in bed when she took the pills, she’d have replaced the glass on the side nearest to her. If she took them before she lay on the bed, she’d have put the glass somewhere in the middle.’

‘I’m sure this is all significant stuff,’ Frost said, ‘but I’m such a dim sod I can’t see it.’ He wandered over to the window and opened it to let out the smell of tobacco smoke. In the darkened street below, the street lights were just coming on.

Gilmore sighed inwardly. He knew the man was thick, but surely he didn’t have to explain every detail. ‘I’m saying the glass was moved by someone else. I’m saying she left a suicide note and weighed it down with the glass. The stepfather found the body, saw the note and because it implicated him, he destroyed it. There’s two sets of prints on the glass. I’m laying odds they’re the girl’s and the stepfather’s.’

Frost squinted at the glass. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ said Gilmore. ‘I’ve got a feeling about the step father. He’s hiding something. I just know he is.’

Frost nodded. Feelings and hunches were things he knew all about. His eyes slowly traversed the room. Yes, there was something wrong. He could sense it too. ‘All right, son, let’s go and have a chat with the stepfather.’ He pitched his cigarette out of the window and closed it, then took one last look at the still figure on the bed before covering her with the sheet.

They were in the lounge, a large, comfortable room with heavy brown velvet curtains drawn across a bay window. From the other room the heart-breaking sound of sobbing went on and on. Frost stared gloomily at the blank screen of a 26-inch television set and wished they could get this next part over. He looked up as the stepfather, Kenneth Duffy, a dark-haired, boyish-looking man, in his late thirties, came in.

Duffy’s eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks glistening wet. He had been crying. Drying his face with his hands, he dropped heavily into an armchair opposite the two detectives. ‘My wife’s too upset to talk to you.’

‘I quite understand, sir,’ murmured Frost, sympathetically. ‘I know you’ve already explained everything to my colleague, but I wonder if you’d mind telling me. I understand you’re a van driver with Mallard Deliveries?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it was you who found Susan?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was so low they had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. ‘I found her.’

‘What time would this be?’

‘Time? This afternoon… just after four. She was on the bed. I touched her. She was cold.’ He broke down and couldn’t continue.

Frost lit a cigarette and waited until Duffy was ready to go on. ‘Tell me what happened this morning. Right from the beginning.’

‘Susan always got herself up… made her own breakfast. She had a half-term holiday job in the new Sainsbury’s supermarket… shelf-filling and sometimes helping out on the check-out. She had to clock in at eight and left the house at half-past seven. I’d wait until I heard the front door slam, then I’d get up.’

‘You wouldn’t come down until after she had gone?’

‘I don’t start work until 8.30. We’d only get in each other’s way.’

‘I see,’ said Frost, wondering if there was more to it than that, if Susan was deliberately avoiding being alone with her stepfather.

‘I heard her going up and down the stairs this morning, but now I think of it, I never heard the slam of the front door. She always slammed it when she went out. Today she must have gone back upstairs to her bedroom. I came down a little after 7.30, washed, dressed and went to work.’

‘And you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary?’

‘No. There was nothing to suggest she hadn’t gone to work.’

‘You didn’t look in her bedroom before you left?’ asked Frost, looking for somewhere to flick his ash.

‘I had no reason… but in any case, she hated people going into her room when she was out. So I went to work and my wife went to work and Susan was upstairs dying.’ Again he broke down.

‘So what made you go into her bedroom at four o’clock this afternoon?’ asked Frost.

‘I’d finished early and was home just before four. I phoned Susan at Sainsbury’s to remind her about the groceries we needed and they told me she hadn’t been in to work all that day. I suddenly remembered I hadn’t heard that front door slam. I went upstairs and looked in her bedroom.’ He knuckled the tears from his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He was apologizing for crying. Frost gave a sympathetic nod and made a mental note to check with Duffy’s firm about him finishing early.

‘Have you any idea why Susan should want to take her own life?’

‘There was no reason — no reason at all.’

‘Was she worried about anything?’

‘She seemed a bit edgy over the last couple of days. We thought something had gone wrong at school… a row with a friend or something… nothing serious.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘Stacks of them — no-one steady.’

‘She must have had some reason for killing herself,’ Frost insisted. ‘Family trouble, perhaps? Girls don’t always get on with their stepfathers.’

‘We got on fine,’ insisted Duffy. ‘She was happy at home… doing well at school… everything was right for her.’

‘If everything was right,’ said Frost, ‘she’d still be alive.’ He stared at Duffy until the man had to turn his head away. ‘We couldn’t find her suicide note.’

The knuckles of Duffy’s hands whitened as he gripped hard the arms of the chair to try to stop his body from shaking. ‘There wasn’t one.’

‘My colleague here is pretty certain there was.’

‘If there had been a note, I’d have found it.’

‘Of course,’ said Frost, treating Duffy to an enigmatic smile. ‘Of course you would.’ He studied the glowing end of his cigarette, then casually asked, ‘Was she pregnant?’