got the full details yet.’
The address was Kitchener Mansions, a block of old people’s flats. The lift, its wet floor smelling of pine disinfectant, juddered them up to the third floor. DC Burton, waiting for them outside flat number 311, looked shattered. ‘It’s a messy one, Inspector.’
‘Tell me something new,’ muttered Frost gloomily, following Burton into the flat.
They walked into a tiny passage, squeezing past a small table holding a telephone and a plastic piano-key index, then on to a small living-room which seemed to be full of people, all keeping well back from the object in the centre of the floor. ‘Let the dog see the rabbit,’ said Frost, barging through.
The old lady, fully dressed, sat in an armchair, her head back, empty eyes staring at the ceiling. Her neck grinned with the blood-gummed lips of a cut throat. Her stomach had been slashed open so that her intestines bulged out on to her lap. At her feet the grey-carpeted floor was sodden with the blood pumped out by her panic- stricken heart as the knife ripped and tore. The tiny room had the smell of an abattoir.
‘Flaming hell!’ muttered Frost. He backed away. He had seen enough.
Even Ted Roberts, the SOC officer, no stranger to violent death, was shaken and had difficulty in keeping his hands steady as he adjusted his camera lens for close-ups of the neck wound.
Gilmore pulled his eyes away from the corpse, and looked around the room. He recognized the uniformed constable, PC Simms, who had arrested Manson the night before. He also recognized the two men from Forensic who had been at Greenway’s house. The duty police surgeon, a thin solemn-looking man busily engaged in filling in his Police Expense Claim form, he hadn’t seen before.
A light oak sideboard stood against the far wall. On it a cut-glass fruit bowl held some apples and a black leather purse. Gilmore nudged Frost and pointed it out to him.
Carefully stepping wide to avoid the puddles of blood, Frost picked up the purse with his handkerchief. It bulged with the pension money the old lady had drawn from the main Denton post office the previous morning. He counted it quickly. Nearly one hundred pounds. Gloomily he pushed it back into the purse. ‘How come the killer didn’t take this?’
‘Perhaps he was disturbed?’ suggested Gilmore. ‘He heard someone coming and legged it away.’
‘Perhaps,’ muttered Frost, who wasn’t convinced. He nosed through the other compartments of the purse. An uncollected prescription for some sleeping tablets, a hospital appointment card, a membership card for the Reef Bingo Club, and some ancient raffle tickets. In the last compartment he found two Yale keys; one was for the front door, but the other was a maverick. He clicked the purse shut and returned it to the fruit bowl. “What has been nicked?’
‘Nothing, as far as we can tell,’ answered Burton. ‘Nothing seems to be disturbed.’ He moved away so Frost could look into the bedroom where everything was as neat and tidy as the murdered woman had left it. Frost opened a couple of drawers. The contents clearly had not been touched.
‘Like I said,’ offered Gilmore, ‘he heard someone coming and legged it before he could nick anything.’
‘Perhaps,’ muttered Frost, still doubtful. Back to Burton. ‘All right, son. Let’s have some details.’
Burton flipped open his notebook. ‘Her name is Doris Watson, seventy-six. She’s a widow and has a son living in Denton.’
‘Anyone contacted him?’ interrupted Frost.
Burton shook his head. ‘We’ve been waiting for you, sir.’
Frost sent Gilmore to look the son up in the telephone index in the hall. ‘Ring him. Ask if he can come over. Don’t tell him what it’s about.’ He nodded for Burton to continue.
‘Her neighbour, Mrs Proctor, in the next flat saw her at eight o’clock last night when she called here to borrow a Daily Mirror to read. A little before ten she knocked again to return it, but got no answer.’
‘By ten, she was dead,’ called the police surgeon, picking up his bag ready to leave.
‘You’re bloody precise all of a sudden,’ commented Frost. ‘You usually won’t even pin yourself down to the day of the week. Are you certain she was dead by ten?’
The doctor shrugged. Nothing was certain in determining the time of death. ‘Give or take an hour each way,’ he hedged.
‘Thanks for sod all,’ sniffed Frost as the doctor took his leave. He raised his eyebrows at Gilmore who had finished phoning.
‘All I get is his answering machine,’ Gilmore told him. ‘I left a message for him to phone the station.’
Frost’s eyes travelled round the room. No sign of forcible entry. The killer must have come in through the front door.
They moved through the hall to take a look at the door which had additional bolts fitted and also a security chain, but not a very strong one. There was a peephole lens so any caller could be verified before the door was opened. She was nervous of callers, but when someone knocked some time after eight o’clock at night she had drawn the bolts, Unhooked the security chain and let them in. It had to be someone she knew. Someone she trusted.
‘Her son?’ offered Gilmore.
‘He’ll do for starters,’ grunted Frost. “Who found her?’
‘The old dear in the next flat — Mrs Proctor,’ Burton told him.
‘OK. Burton and Jordan — knock on doors. Find out if anyone saw or heard anything. Gilmore, come with me. We’ll chat up Old Mother Proctor.’
Mrs Proctor, her untidy grey hair in need of combing, squinted and blinked watery eyes at the warrant card held out for her inspection. ‘I’ll have to take you on trust,’ she finally decided. ‘My eyes aren’t too good this time of the morning.’ And to prove it, she bumped into the hall table as she unsteadily led them through to her untidy lounge. ‘The old dear’s pissed!’ hissed Frost to Gilmore.
‘Sit down,’ she mumbled, breathing gin fumes all over them. Frost sat on something hard. An empty gin bottle. He carefully stood it on the floor. She flopped down in the chair opposite and tried unsuccessfully to stop her body swaying from side to side.
A messy room with dirty underwear draped over chairs and unwashed glasses in abundance. The gas-fire was going full blast and the room was hot and close.
She hiccuped gin fumes and fanned them away. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ Thinking she meant tea, Frost nodded, but she slopped gin into two dirty cups and handed one each to the detectives. ‘Get that down you!’ Frost eyed the tea-coloured gin swilling about in the cup with tea-leaves floating on its surface. It was a bit early in the morning, but what the hell. He downed it in one gulp.
Mrs Proctor nodded her approval and topped up her own cup from the bottle. ‘I don’t usually indulge this time of the morning, but after seeing her, in that chair and all that blood…’ The recollection required a quick swallow and a second helping.
Frost nodded sympathetically. He noticed a line of birthday cards on the mantelpiece. ‘Someone’s birthday?’
She suddenly burst into tears. ‘Mine — and not a very happy one. A bloody fine present, finding your next- door neighbour butchered.’ She dabbed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’ Tottering over to the mantelpiece she took down one of the cards with a picture of a basketful of kittens. ‘This is her card. The very last card she ever sent me.’
‘Very nice,’ said Frost, unenthusiastically.
She sniffed derisively. ‘I hate cats — they stink the bloody place out. Still, I expect she only bought it because it was cheap.’ She leant forward confidentially. ‘I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but she really was a tight- fisted old cow.’
‘You don’t say!’ said Frost.
‘I do say. Her purse always looked as if it was pregnant it was packed with notes, but you never saw her put her hand in her pocket to buy you a drink.’
Frost gave a disapproving shake of the head. Mrs Proctor started to say something else then burst into tears. ‘Here am I running the poor woman down and she’s lying dead in her chair.’ She raised a tear-streaked face. ‘It was awful when I went in there and saw all that blood…’
‘I know it’s upsetting,’ soothed Frost, ‘so I’ll get this over as soon as I can. You borrowed the Daily Mirror from her?’
‘I borrowed it at eight o’clock. I went to return it at ten, but she wouldn’t answer the door.’
‘Was that unusual?’ asked Gilmore, distastefully eyeing the gin slurping about in his sugar-encrusted
