'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.'
WEDNESDAY-2
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.
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.'
