R. Wingfield - Frost at Christmas

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 hate 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.