R. Wingfield - A Touch of Frost

“You should see her bank book,” said Frost. “She’s got at least twenty thousand quid in the building society, fifteen thousand in the bank, and God knows how much more in her other accounts.”

“You’re joking!” exclaimed Webster.

“I’m not, son. I had a little nose around while you and she were up to no good in her bedroom. Years ago she used to carry out back-street abortions fifty bob a time, including a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit afterward. She was known as the “Fifty Shilling Tailor.” If it weren’t for Lil and her crochet hook we’d be suffering from a population explosion. But as soon as the government made abortions legal she went over to money lending… short-period loans at exorbitant rates of interest to people desperate for ready cash housewives who’ve spent the housekeeping on Bingo and don’t want their old man to know, loan club organizers with sticky fingers. She also makes loans to young people behind on their HP payments, usually taking their family-allowance books as security. There was a wad of them in her piano. You needn’t get your beard wet with tears over her, my little hairy son.”

Time was hurtling on. The visit to Mrs. Cornish would have to wait until after they had attended the post-mortem on her son. Webster broke all speed records driving to the mortuary, pulling up with a screech behind a Rolls-Royce hearse, all agleam with black and silver like Mullett’s new uniform.

Out of the Cortina, up a slope and through double doors into a small lobby where the notice on the wall read All undertakers to report to porter before removing bodies. At the inquiry counter two undertaker’s assistants in funereal black were arguing with a little bald-headed mortuary attendant who was firmly shaking his head as he thumbed through the papers they had presented to him.

“But I keep telling you,” the exasperated undertaker was saying, ‘the bloody funeral is in an hour. We’re burying him at twelve.”

“Don’t you swear at me,” said the attendant, drawing himself up to his full height. “Without the death certificate you’re burying bugger all!”

“Excuse me,” said Frost, elbowing his way through like a referee parting two boxers. He showed his warrant card. “I’m here for the Cornish post-mortem.”

The attendant craned his neck up at the clock. “You’re a bit late, Inspector.”

“Don’t tell me it’s started?” asked Frost.

“Nearly finished, I think. You know how punctual Dr. Bond is. He don’t sod about.”

They pushed through another set of double doors into the white chill of the green-tiled autopsy room where a sharp antiseptic smell held a cloying aftertaste of something nasty.

A sheeted trolley stood against the wall to the left of the entrance doors. Frost twitched back the sheet and looked down on the blue, shrivelled, waxen face of an old lady. “Sorry, love,” he murmured gently, covering her. “I thought you were someone I knew.”

At the far end of the room a rubber-aproned mortuary attendant in abattoir-style Wellington boots was hosing down the guttered and perforated top of a post-mortem operating table. Water suddenly overflowed as something blocked one of the drains, but the assistant cleared the blockage with his finger and carried on with his work. Webster shuddered to think what the blockage was caused by. Frost tapped the attendant on the shoulder. “The Ben Cornish post-mortem?”

“All over,” said the attendant, too engrossed in his work to stop. “The pathologist has gone, but Dr. Slomon’s in the office waiting to see you.”

In the office Slomon was pacing up and down, very agitated and worried.

As soon as Frost entered, he dashed over and grabbed him by the arm. “Thank goodness you are here, Inspector.” His worry increased when he saw Webster. “Who is this?”

Frost introduced his assistant. Slomon hesitated. “It’s a bit delicate,” he said, making it clear he wanted Webster to leave.

“If it’s police business,” answered Frost, ‘then he’s in on it.”

Slomon compressed his lips, checked the hall to make sure no eavesdroppers were hovering, then closed the door firmly. He lowered his voice. “We’re in trouble, Inspector.”

“I’m always in trouble,” said Frost, finding himself a chair. He didn’t like the way the doctor had said “We’re in trouble.” His tone seemed to imply that Slomon was in trouble but wanted Frost to share a large part of the blame. He listened warily to what the man had to say.

“No-one could examine a body properly in the conditions we had to cope with last night, Inspector. They were intolerable and if we missed anything it was through no fault of our own. It’s important that we each stress that fact in our reports. People are always too ready to point the accusing finger.”

Now Frost was really worried. What the hell had they missed last night? “What did the post-mortem show, Doc?”

“Come with me.” Slomon took Frost’s arm and steered him into the adjoining storage area with its neatly tagged refrigerated units set into the wall like filing-cabinet drawers. “Where are the frozen peas?” asked Frost. Slomon was in no mood for jokes. He tugged at one of the drawers, and a body, smoking with curling wisps of frozen carbon dioxide, slid silently forward on rollers.

The haggard, strangely clean face of Ben Cornish stared up, horrified as if in protest at the indignities the postmortem had subjected him to. “Look at this!” Slomon indicated a nasty-looking green-tinged bruise in the area below the corpse’s left eye.

Puzzled, Frost crouched over the body. “How come we didn’t spot this last night, Doc? It looks so bloody obvious now.”

“Last night,” explained Slomon. ‘he was covered with filth and vomit.

This only came to light when the body was stripped and washed clean.

There was no way I could have spotted it.”

He pulled the sheet down to expose the torso and upper legs. The dead man’s right arm was one angry mass of suppurating sores where he had been injecting himself. The chest and abdomen were vividly slashed with extensive autopsy wounds, which had been crudely restitched after flaps of flesh had been torn back to facilitate the removal of internal organs from the stomach cavity. The flesh of the stomach was one massive, sprawling, yellowy-green bruise.

Slomon traced the bruised area with his finger. “As you can see he was beaten up pretty badly just before he died.”

Frost’s heart dropped down to his own stomach cavity. He was beginning to realize what was coming. Did a fist do this?”

“Not a fist,” replied Slomon. “A boot. He was punched, knocked down, then, when he was helpless on the floor, his assailant brought up his foot and stamped with all his weight on the abdomen.”

Frost gritted his teeth and winced. He could feel the pain shooting across his own stomach. But Slomon hadn’t finished. From a stainless-steel cabinet in the corner he brought over two sealed specimen jars containing a mass of mangled human offal half immersed in a bloodied liquid. The sight of it made Webster flinch, and his stomach gave one or two protesting churns, but Slomon lectured dispassionately as if to students. “As you can see, his liver has virtually exploded. In the whole of my professional career I have never seen such terrible internal injuries. Further, the blows actually split the pancreas, and the main blood vessel to the heart is torn. Really shocking injuries.”

“And that’s what killed him, Doc?” Frost asked, fearful that the sheet might be pulled down to reveal further horrors.

“They would have killed him,” answered Slomon. “In fact there is no way he could have recovered from such injuries. However, the initial blows to the abdomen caused the expulsion of the stomach contents. He choked on his own vomit, so, to my credit, in spite of the appalling conditions, my diagnosis was perfectly correct.”