The downstairs window was heavily curtained and held firmly closed by a security catch of some kind. Frost did his letter-box squinting routine, seeing only an empty passage with a pot plant drooping dejectedly on a side table. There was an open purse on the side table, a small bunch of keys alongside it. He straightened up wearily. It looked bad. The old dear certainly wouldn’t leave the house without her purse and her keys. ‘We’ll have to break in.’
Gilmore picked up the bottle of milk from the step and used it to smash one of the coloured glass door panels. He put his hand through and turned the lock. They stepped inside.
The first door they tried led to the kitchen. From a dark corner two green eyes flashed, then a plaintive mew. Frost took some milk from the fridge, slopped it into a saucer and watched the cat’s frantic lappings. He tried the back door, but it was firmly bolted on the inside. Gilmore looked in the other downstairs room, a musty-smelling, rarely used lounge.
The cat finished the milk and waited expectantly, its tail swishing. Frost topped up the saucer. ‘Hundred to one she’s upstairs, son. Dead in bed. Nip up and take a look.’ As Gilmore’s footsteps thudded overhead, Frost found a tin opener on the draining board and opened a tin of Felix which he emptied on a plate for the cat.
A sudden yell from Gilmore sent him running. ‘Inspector! Up here. Quick!’
She was on the bed. She had been knifed repeatedly in the stomach and her throat was a gaping, open wound. The body was cold. Ice cold.
‘I know you’ve got no-one to send,’ Frost told a complaining Sergeant Wells, ‘but I want four of them.’ He pressed the handset against his chest so he couldn’t hear the sergeant insisting this was impossible. ‘I can’t manage with less than four. I need people knocking on doors before everyone leaves for work. Over and out.’ He clicked the switch, cutting off Wells in mid-moan and returned to the house.
Gilmore was waiting for him in the bedroom, anxious to show him a mess of blood on the carpet, hidden behind the open door. A lot of blood. On the floor, a crumpled heap that was her best black coat. ‘He was hiding behind the door. He slashed her as she came in to hang up her coat, then dumped her on the bed.’
Frost nodded glumly. Gilmore was probably right, but knowing where he killed her wasn’t going to help them catch the bastard. ‘Sod that bloody milkman,’ he said. ‘We could have been in bed and asleep by now.’
Burton thudded up the stairs. He had been sent out to knock on doors. ‘Two things, Inspector. A woman across the road says the old lady visited Denton Cemetery every Sunday afternoon to put flowers on her husband’s grave. She saw her leave about three. The bloke next door – a Dean Reynold Hoskins – says the old lady knocked him up on Sunday afternoon just after five, all agitated. She reckoned someone had nicked her spare front door key which she kept hidden under the mat in the porch, but when Hoskins looked, there it was.’
‘Have you checked to see if it’s still there?’
Burton nodded and held up a bagged key. ‘Hoskins called her a silly cow and went back to his own house. She kept ranting on about it not being in the same place she’d left it.’
‘The poor bitch was right,’ said Frost. ‘There’s no sign of forcible entry, all doors and windows are internally secured. The killer must have let himself in through the front door. He was already in the house.’
Gilmore grunted begrudgingly. He couldn’t fault the inspector’s logic.
‘Right,’ continued Frost. ‘He got in after she went off to the graveyard at three. He wouldn’t have hung about after slicing her up, so we can assume he left fairly soon after five. Knock on more doors. People usually go deaf and blind when there’s been a crime but someone must have seen or heard something. And ask if it was general knowledge that she secretly kept a spare key under the mat.’
‘Right,’ said Burton, swaying slightly.
The poor sod’s dead on his feet, thought Frost. ‘I’ve got some more men coming soon, Burton. You can go home when they arrive.’
The detective constable shook his head. ‘I can hold on for a while, sir.’
Stifling a yawn, Frost wished there was someone to