DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

night’s debacle. And it served the stupid fool right.
    Frost was down on his knees after a couple of burglary reports that had found their way under his desk just out of reach. He poked at them with a ruler and managed to fish one out. “By the way, son. As of today I’m off the rape case.”
    Webster grunted noncommittally.
    “How’s your girlfriend this morning?” said Frost, reading through the form.
    “She’s come to work,” the constable told him, ‘wearing dark glasses to hide the black eye, but otherwise OK.” And no thanks to you, he added under his breath.
    Frost flung himself into his chair and read the burglary report again. “Do you know anything about this attempted break-in at Beech Crescent?”
    “Just the bare details,” said Webster. “PC Kenny was called to it last night as he was dropping Sue and me off at her flat.”
    According to the report, a Mrs. Shadbolt at number 32 saw a man climbing over the fence into her back garden, so she dialled 999. Kenny did a search of the area and found that the back door of a house a couple of gardens away had been forced open. Kenny woke up the householder and they went over the premises from top to bottom, but nothing had been taken.
    “Hmm,” muttered Frost, scratching his chin thoughtfully. He swivelled around to the wall map to locate Beech Crescent. Most of the streets adjoining the woods were named after trees, and he found Beech Crescent not too far from the spot where Sue was attacked. He had a feeling that this might be worth following up. “Get the car, son. We’re going out.”
    They had just started out when Control radioed. Sammy Glickman, the pawnbroker, had phoned. The man with the sovereigns for sale was back in his shop with another batch.
    “We can be there in five minutes,” said Webster, looking out for a turnoff.
    “No,” said Frost firmly. “We’re following up the burglary.” He told Control to send an area car to the pawnbroker’s immediately to pick the man up. He would interview him on their return. Webster couldn’t see why this attempted break-in was so important all of a sudden, but Frost was the boss.

    Mrs. Shadbolt, her grey hair dyed lavender, wore bright orange beads over a fluffy mauve cardigan. Under her arm she carried a tiny overweight Pekinese, which she called “Mummy’s darling.” It was a sour-faced animal with a protruding tongue, continually snuffling and panting as if its oxygen supply was running out. The woman had another dog, a French poodle, its hysterical bark hitting the eardrums at a frequency bordering on the threshold of pain. To its Gallic fury, it hadn’t been allowed to bite the two detectives, but had been dragged by the collar to the kitchen and shut in. Its incessant high-pitched yap threatened to shatter all the glasses in Mrs. Shadbolt’s display cabinet.
    “The poor dear gets so excited when we have company,” explained Mrs. Shadbolt.
    “Tell us about last night,” shouted Frost over the noise.
    “Well, I was upstairs in bed . . .”
    Frost heaved himself out of the chintz-covered sofa. “Let’s re-enact the crime,” he suggested. Anything to get away from that bloody castrato barking.
    Up the stairs, past pictures of kittens romping with balls of wool on the walls, and into the little bedroom overlooking the garden. A nightdress holder in the shape of a fox terrier sprawled across the twin pillows of the double bed.
    “My bed,” Mrs. Shadbolt explained.
    “Make a note of that, Constable,” Frost muttered to Webster.
    “I retire every night at ten on the dot, Inspector. I’m a creature of habit, regular as clockwork. Bed at ten, up at six forty-five.”
    “Is there a Mr. Shadbolt?” asked Frost, eying the twin pillows.
    She dabbed an eye with a tiny handkerchief. The Pekinese snuffled in sympathy. “He passed over six years ago.”
    “Sorry to hear that, madam. So you were in bed . . . ?”
    “Fast asleep. I go off the instant my head touches the pillow. Then Fifi started to bark. I woke up instantly.”
    “Yes, I imagine you would,” said Frost. “Where was Fifi?”
    “Up here with me. Fifi sleeps on the floor; Mummy’s darling sleeps on the bed with Diddums.”
    “Diddums?” queried Frost.
    She simpered and patted the fox terrier nightdress case. “We call him Diddums. Fifi was leaping up at the window, barking incessantly. I got out of bed and opened the window.”
    They all moved over to the window in question. Frost opened it and