DI Jack Frost 01 - Frost At Christmas

black heart of the woods and could only be reached by a footpath. If this meant she received few callers, then she shed no tears. There was a private road riddled with potholes that gave direct access, but it was barred to the public by barbed-wire-lined gates secured by padlocks and strong chains and was only used when Martha ventured out in her battered old Morris Minor.
    So Frost and Clive parked on the outskirts and trudged, heads down, along the winding footpath barely discernible through the thick snow. Wind roared in their ears and when they strayed from the path, they found themselves knee deep in cold clamminess. A long, miserable, stumbling journey, which was broken at intervals by Frost yelling "Sod the Chief Constable" into the wind.
    The path forked and Frost waited for Clive, who was lagging, to catch up. "We go left," he yelled. "The other way leads to Dead Man's Hollow."
    "Dead Man's what?" Clive shouted back.
    "Dead Man's Hollow." He jerked his thumb in the direction of a gloomy depression overhung with diseased-looking trees crouching under the weight of the snow on their maimed branches. "I don't know what its official name is, but it's been called that ever since I was a kid. None of us would go near it. It's all puffy with fungus in the summer and the adders are supposed to be enormous."
    They turned their backs on the depression and breasted the wind until the path plunged sharply and veered right and Old Wood Cottage sprang into view. Clive had expected to see something out of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with latticed windows and a thatched roof, but the main building material used for Martha Wendle's home was rusty corrugated iron.
    Frost hammered his fist on the front door. Creakings and pattering from within. The door was opened a suspicious chink and two black eyes surveyed them. Then a talon pulled the door open farther.
    "I've been expecting you. Come on in."
    She had raven black hair, jet beads for eyes, a hooked nose, and a jutting chin that gave her a crescent-like profile. A couple of centuries before and she would have screamed and crackled on top of a roaring fire, together with her cat and her broomstick.
    The smell hit them as soon as they stepped inside the door.
    Frost sniffed delicately. "Do you keep cats, Miss Wendle?"
    There were dozens of them, dirty mangy strays.
    "Any cat is welcome here," she said, taking them into her living room where hostile green eyes glimmered in dark recesses.
    "Please sit down."
    A fat, dribbling cat was snuffling in its sleep on Frost's chair, but he knocked it to the floor with a swift cuff and was seated before the animal realized it had been deposed. Clive's chair was cat-less, but the cushion bore evidence of recent occupation. He sat very gingerly on the extreme edge.
    "I expect the spirits have told you what it's about, Miss Wendle - the missing girl."
    The fat cat staged a counterattack. It leaped up to Frost's lap and, under the pretext of settling down, sunk the length of its claws into his thigh. With a barely perceptible short-arm jab, he sent it flying to the floor where it spat at him.
    "Your men have already been here and I've told them I haven't seen her, Inspector."
    "You may not have seen her, Miss Wendle, but with the special powers you keep telling us about in your lovely and frequent letters, we thought you could find out where we should look."
    Her eyes glittered. "You've mocked me in the past, why should I help you now?"
    Frost stood up and rearranged his scarf. "Fair enough. My fault for sticking up for you, I suppose. Our Chief Constable reckons you're a fake and I had to fight him like mad to put you to the test, but if you can't do it . . ."
    "Sit down." The dribbling cat had returned and he sat down on top of it. It squealed and flew off unaided. Martha Wendle split a coal on the fire with a crack of the poker. "What you ask is dangerous. If the spirits want to tell me, they will. To seek what they wish to withhold could be . . . unpleasant. It will be on your head, but I will try."
    She lifted a heavy oak table and carried it without effort to a spot between the two men. She turned down the wick of the old-fashioned brass oil-lamp which was the room's only illumination. A coal shifted on the fire and seemed to smother the flames and the room went dark and very cold. Hard green emeralds stared and tongues rasped on fur.
    Miss Wendle sat between the two men at the table and took one each of their hands