R. Wingfield - Frost at Christmas

"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."

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.