DI Jack Frost 01 - Frost At Christmas

"You'd think I'd be used to dead bodies after forty-one years, wouldn't you?"
    "Did I ever tell you about my first body?" asked Frost. "He was a tramp, too. Dead for weeks during a heatwave. Council dug up the street twice thinking it was the drains. Then we found him - or what the rats had left . . ." He noticed the boat party were returned. "I'll tell you the rest later."
    The reporter offered his cigarettes around and murmured confidentially to Clive, "Try and avoid hearing the rest at all costs. It put me off my grub for a week when he told it to me."
    A rasping noise from outside as the boat was dragged ashore. Three frozen policemen stumbled in. Tracey wasn't in the lake.
    "Sorry we couldn't oblige you, Sandy," said Frost.
    "That's all right," replied the reporter. He zipped up his anorak. "What about lunch today at The Crown?"
    "Why not? "said Frost.
    The reporter waved and was lost in the snow.
    "If anyone wants us, we'll be at the vicarage," said Frost. "Give us five minutes, then nip over and discover old Sam." He studied the blizzard outside. "You can't beat a white Christmas can you?"

    The vicarage was a sprawling Victorian building, huge and cheerless enough for an army barracks, but the vicar, the Reverend James Bell, moonfaced and beaming, greeted them warmly.
    "Inspector Frost! Come in, come in."
    He ushered them into an uncarpeted hall with dark brown walls and a high ceiling. It was colder inside than out.
    "There's a fire in my study. This way." He led them to a small room with an enormous marble mantelpiece and a fireplace large enough to roast an ox in; in it two pieces of smoldering coal fought for survival.
    "It'll soon get warm," said the vicar optimistically, attacking the fire with a poker until all signs of life were extinct. "Oh dear." He knelt and began puffing and blowing into the grate in a forlorn attempt to raise the dead. At last he stood, admitting defeat. "Never mind. It's not as cold as it was."
    On the marble mantelpiece were several photographs of recent church functions. One showed a group of children. The Sunday school Christmas party. Tracey Uphill was in the center of the group. Frost picked up the photograph and studied it. "It's her we've come about, Padre," he said, pointing. "Young Tracey Uphill."
    The vicar sat behind his paper-strewn desk and shook his head, sadly. "Oh yes. Terrible business. Simply terrible." He blinked in surprise as a spent match dropped into his paperclip tray. Frost had lit a cigarette.
    "Sorry, Padre," boomed Frost, unabashed, "thought it was an ashtray." He retrieved the match and flicked it toward the grate. It missed by miles. "Hello, does old Martha write to you as well?" He pointed to a letter lying on the desk . . . spidery writing in green ink on stiff, deckle-edged notepaper.
    "This?" The vicar held it up. "From our local clairvoyant, you mean?" He gave a tolerant smile. "She wants to hold a public spiritualist meeting in our church hall. We can't pick and choose our lettings, I'm afraid. Our collections are not as generous as one might wish, and things are so expensive. The price of coal!" He swung round for another post-mortem examination of the fire, but stopped as he remembered the reason for their visit. "I'm sorry. You're here about that poor child. How can I help you?"
    "You knew her, didn't you, Vicar?"
    The vicar seemed to start. "Only through Sunday school."
    Frost's eyes narrowed. Why that reaction? "I meant through Sunday school, of course, sir. Pretty kid wasn't she?"
    "Was she? I hadn't noticed." An attempt to sound offhand that didn't come off.
    It suddenly occurred to Clive that both Frost and the Reverend James Bell were talking of Tracey in the past tense.
    "Good looks run in her family," continued Frost. "You should see her mother. She's on the game, but I expect you know."
    "Yes," replied the vicar, "I know. I've often seen the men going into her house."
    Frost nodded. "She gets thirty quid a time for her Sunday afternoon service. A lot more than you get dropped in your collection plate, I bet." Frost was the only one who laughed and, to make up for the lack of appreciation, laughed loud and long. Clive looked openly disgusted, the vicar, both pained and rueful. Then Frost stopped abruptly, took a last drag on his cigarette, and hurled it in the general direction of the fireplace.
    "We want to search the vicarage, Padre. The kid was supposed to have come here to play in the grounds, but she could well have sneaked