DI Jack Frost 01 - Frost At Christmas

into the vicarage without anyone knowing."
    "No!" It was the shocked reaction to an improper suggestion.
    Frost stared hard at the vicar. "Why not, sir?"
    "It's not convenient, I'm afraid. We've got people coming. Later perhaps . . . ?" He refused to meet the inspector's questioning eye.
    Frost smiled. "We won't pinch anything, I promise you. I've got more hymnbooks than I can read back at home. We'll let you know when we've finished." He looked over the vicar's shoulder. "Hello, there's a trace of smoke coming from your fire. I'd encourage it, if I were you." A jerk of his head to Clive and they were out of the study before Bell could think of a reason to stop them.
    Frost wound the scarf tighter round his neck. "Like a flaming igloo in there."
    "He didn't seem too keen on our looking around," remarked Clive.
    "Doesn't trust you, son. It's your suit. Not much better than yesterday's effort, I'm afraid. We'll start at the top and work down."
    They trudged upwards. Staircase succeeded staircase, little sub-landings and corridors shooting off at each turn. The vicarage would be a swine to search properly. And then the stairs stopped and there were only brown cobwebby ceilings above and a gloomy passage lined with dark doors. They creaked the doors open and looked in on pokey attic cells with low sloping ceilings, flapping mildewed wallpaper, and tiny windows thick with years of grime.
    "The servants would have slept up here in the old days," explained Frost, stepping back hurriedly as a floorboard disintegrated under his foot. "What a life the poor sods must have led when you think of it. Working like beavers from crack of dawn until nearly midnight, scrubbing, scouring, emptying the gentry's slop-buckets, then staggering up all those flaming stairs for a few hours' kip before it started all over again the next morning."
    I don't know about the slop-buckets, thought Clive, but their hours sound better than mine.
    The dust and cobwebs in the attic rooms had clearly not been disturbed for years, so they descended to the floor below where the rooms were larger and the sour smell of decay slightly less pungent. On this floor the rooms were apparently used for storage, graveyards for the abandoned junk of past incumbents. They looked in cupboards and battered trunks that smelt faintly of lavender and strongly of mouldering linen and that contained stained ancient clothing and scuttling insects.
    But the end room was different. The door opened easily and the smell inside was of stale tobacco smoke, like the vicar's study. Drawn, heavy curtains made it dark. Frost clunked down the old-fashioned brass lightswitch and an unshaded 60-watt bulb glimmered mournfully. He crossed to the window, dragged back the curtains, and looked down on the back gardens of Vicarage Terrace, now unified in a single plain by the heavy covering of snow. He couldn't tell which was Mrs. Uphill's garden; they all looked the same.
    The room was used by the vicar as a photographic studio. The thick cord of an antiquated electric bowl fire shared a power-point with the thinner cord of a photoflood lamp and reflector on a tall metal stand. Around the walls were enlargements of photos of churches and local landmarks. Inside a corner cupboard they found more photographic equipment, including a tripod and an early model Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera.
    But it was the sheet-draped rectangular object in the center of the floor that claimed the men's interest.
    "That's where the body is," said Frost.
    Clive twitched the sheet away to reveal a battered metal coffin. A cabin trunk, well worn, its sides pasted with labels from long-defunct Edwardian shipping lines. The trunk was old, but the heavy brass padlock securing the lid was brand-new.
    "Let's see if one of these will open it," murmured Frost, producing the bunch of Skeleton keys he always carried with him. The third key he tried did the trick. Clive flung back the lid and they peered inside, almost fearful of what they might see.
    Books. The trunk was tight-packed with books of all shapes and sizes, none of which seemed to warrant the expense of a heavy brass padlock.
    They took them out. Old hymnbooks with the covers hanging by a thread. A copy of Mr. Midshipman Easy presented to Master James Graham Bell, Cooperley Primary School, June 1946, for good work. There were some bound volumes of The Boys' Own Paper dating from the turn of the century that Frost flipped through with interest. "Could be worth a