R. Wingfield - A Touch of Frost

Price turned in appeal to Webster. “I didn’t leave the house all night. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Can you prove that?” Webster asked.

“How can I prove it?” Price said hopelessly. “I was here on my own.

It’s like a nightmare.”

“It was a nightmare for those poor girls, sir,” said Frost. “Anyway, back to our poor old rapist, who you say isn’t you. It’s not his night. His dick’s been disappointed, he’s lost a perfectly good mac, and he hasn’t got his front-door key. So how is he going to get back inside his house? Too noisy to smash windows, and the front door is too exposed and too solid. Which leaves the back door. This means climbing over garden fences. Unluckily for him, old Mother Shadbolt’s yapping dog wakes her up and she screams blue murder and rings for the law.” “Whoever Mrs. Shadbolt saw,” insisted Price, ‘it wasn’t me. It was the burglar.”

“A bloody weird burglar, sir. He’s spotted by a screaming woman. Instead of doing what any self-respecting house breaker would do get the hell out of there as fast as he could he calmly hops over another couple of fences and starts to jemmy open your back door with a pair of rusty shears he finds in the pitch dark in your back garden. He enters your house, hides the shears behind your freezer, then nips off unseen without taking anything. That was no burglar, Mr. Price. That was you, breaking back into your own house because you’d lost your key in Denton Woods.”

Price stared first at Frost, then at Webster. He put a sheet of newspaper over a dining chair and sat on it. “What can I say?” he mumbled, almost on the verge of tears. “I’m innocent. It wasn’t me. What can I say?”

Frost shook his head in unstinted admiration. “You’re a bloody good actor, sir, I’ll give you that. But let’s put it to the test, shall we?” He tossed the tagged key over to Webster. “Go and see if this fits the gentleman’s front door, would you, son?”

Webster left the room. Frost sat on his sheet of newspaper, watching Price through narrowed eyes. Price, on his sheet of newspaper, fidgeted uncomfortably.

They could hear Webster’s footsteps as he walked toward the open front door. Then came the click of the key being inserted into the lock. A pause. Webster came back into the room and handed the key to the inspector.

An uneasy, cold, prickly sensation crept up Frost’s spine. “Well, son?”

“It doesn’t fit,” said Webster. “It’s not the right key.”

Frost seemed to crumble visibly. Webster almost felt sorry for him. The big buildup, all the pieces apparently fitting until the last, vital ingredient. It was the wrong key.

“Are you sure?” asked Frost flatly.

“Positive,” said Webster. “The key doesn’t fit the lock.”

“Well, Mr. Price,” said Frost. “It looks as if I’ve made a bit of a balls-up. I can only say I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” said Price generously. “You were only doing your job. I must feel thankful that I’ve been eliminated. Now, if you’d excuse me, I’ve so much to do before my wife returns. I presume it’s now all right for me to repair the back door?”

Frost nodded. Webster stood up, ready to go, but Frost remained seated, his mind racing, re-examining the facts. He was so bloody sure he was right. He felt it. He knew it. So where had he gone wrong? But at last he was forced to admit defeat. Slowly he heaved himself up. “Thank you for your co-operation and for your understanding, Mr. Price.”

The door bell rang, loudly and insistently.

Price jumped to his feet. “I’ll get it. You wait here.” He sped from the lounge, closing the door firmly behind him. Frost darted for the door and opened it a crack so he could see right down the passage.

Price opened the front door. A hard-faced woman, a key in her hand, stood in the porch alongside a suitcase. She wore sensible tweed clothes, flat shoes, and her greying hair was pulled back into a bun. She must have been some twenty years older than Price.

“Maud!” exclaimed her husband. “I didn’t expect you back until tomorrow.”

“Mother’s dead,” said the woman, lifting the suitcase into the hall. “Now what on earth has been going on? Why doesn’t my key open the front door? Have you changed the lock or something?”

From the lounge, Frost charged down the passage. In his haste he sent a tin of yellow paint flying all over the floor.

While Mrs. Price was insisting on knowing what on earth was going on, Frost snatched the key from her hand and compared it with the one from the plastic mac. There could be no mistake this time. The two keys were identical.

The colour drained from the man’s face as he edged toward the door and escape. But Frost darted forward to block his way.

“Who is this man?” demanded the woman of her husband. But he could only open and shut his mouth and shake his head.

“I’m a police officer,” Frost told her. “Terribly sorry to hear about the death of your mother, Mrs. Price. But I’m afraid I’ve got even more bad news for you.”

“She wasn’t like a wife,” said Price tonelessly while they waited in the interview room for Webster to come back with the typed statement for signature. “She was always strict with me, always laying down the law about what I should and what I shouldn’t do. She treated me like a child, even when we had sex. It was horrible like making love to my own mother. It made me feel unclean. I wanted someone young and innocent. I was driven to those young girls, I couldn’t help myself.”

“You could have left her,” said Frost, ‘gone off with someone younger.”

He shook his head, horrified at the enormity of the suggestion. “She wouldn’t have let me do that. She’d have got so angry.”

Frost felt irritated. Here was the swine who had smashed and kicked and violated those poor girls. He should be elated that he had caught the bastard. He should be revelling in the thought of what other prisoners, who loved to wreak vengeance on sexual offenders, would do to Price once he was put away. But the man was so ineffectual, so pathetic, that Frost had to fight hard to stop feeling sorry for him.

Webster came in with the typed statement. He slid it across the table to Frost, who checked through it, then passed it over to Price.

“This is a typed copy of the statement you have just given us, Mr. Price. Please read it through carefully. Unless there’s anything you wish to change, I’d like you to initial every page, then sign it at the end.” But Price, anxious to get the unpleasantness over, initialled the pages automatically with barely a glance at the contents, endorsing the final page with a signature in almost childlike handwriting. Frost and Webster witnessed it.

“No chance of bail, I suppose?” Price asked hopefully.

“No chance,” confirmed Frost.

“I’ve got some books hidden under the bed,” Price confessed shamefaced. “Dirty books. It would be awful if my wife found them. Any chance you could get to them before she does?”

“Happy to oblige, Mr. Price,” smiled Frost. “We don’t want you to get into any trouble.”

He took a copy of the signed statement and marched with it, in triumph, to Mullett’s office, pausing first to chat up Miss Smith. “You can take your rusty chastity belt off, Ida,” he smirked. “We’ve caught the rapist.” She stared right through him and continued sealing the flaps of envelopes marked Confidential. Not in the least put out, Frost asked, “Is Dracula in his coffin?”

“The Superintendent is off,” she snapped, encouraging a flap to stick with a thump of her fist and wishing it was Frost’s nose. “He won’t be back until tomorrow.”

Damn, thought Frost. He’s never here for my rare moments of triumph and never absent when I foul things up.