parked. Alongside the drive ran a lawn, once immaculate, but now a muddy, churned-up, tyre-grooved mess a-slosh with dirty water. Their job done, firemen were clambering into a fire engine ready to drive off. In the middle of the lawn the Fire Investigations Officer, rain bouncing off his yellow sou’wester, was gloomily poking through a jumble of sodden ashes and burnt, paint-blistered wood, all that was left of the summer house. Frost paddled over to him, cursing as water found the holes in his shoes and ruefully remembering his wellington boots snug and dry in the back of the car. Gilmore stayed put on the path. He wasn’t ruining his shoes for a lousy burnt-out summer house.
Frost flicked his eye over the smouldering remains. ‘I could have made a better job of putting it out by peeing on it.’
The fire officer straightened up and grinned. ‘We didn’t stand a chance, Jack. The wood was soaked with petrol. We got here twelve minutes after the call, but it had almost burnt itself out by then.’
‘Petrol?’ Frost picked up a chunk of wet burnt wood and sniffed it. It smelled just like wet burnt wood. He tossed it back on the pile and watched the fire engine drive away.
‘No doubt about it. I’m still checking, but it was probably set off by some crude form of fuse – a candle or something. I’ll be able to tell you more when I find it.’
‘You know me,’ said Frost. ‘If it’s crude, I’m interested.’ He squelched back to the drive.
Gilmore hammered at the front door while Frost scuffed moodily at the gravel path and tried out the rusty bell on an old-fashioned, woman’s bicycle which leant against the wall. The door creaked open on heavy, black, wrought iron hinges and a scrawny, leathery-skinned woman in her late sixties, carrying a mop and bucket, scowled out at them. She wore a man’s cap, pulled right down over her hair, and a drab brown shapeless dress, tied at the waist with string.
Frost nodded towards the bucket. ‘No thanks, Ada – I went before I came out.’ He introduced her to Gilmore. ‘This is Ada Perkins, the Swedish au pair.’
The woman grunted. ‘You’re not half as funny as you think you are, Jack Frost.’ She jerked a bony thumb towards a door at the end of the passage. ‘There’s a policeman in the kitchen drinking tea.’
‘Then let’s start in the kitchen,’ said Frost.
It was a spacious, no-expense-spared. kitchen, fitted out in solid oak with marble worktops, burnished copper cookware on the walls and miniature hand-operated water pumps instead of taps over the sink. A black Aga disguised to look like an old coal-fired cooking range breathed the warm crunchy smell of baking bread. Black-moustached PC Jordan, twenty-six, his tunic unbuttoned, was seated at a scrubbed pine designer table drinking tea from a thick designer mug. He jumped up to attention as the detectives entered, but Frost waved him to sit and dragged up a chair alongside him. Gilmore did the same.
‘I suppose you want some tea?’ said Ada and, without waiting for their reply, poured two teas from a brown teapot, pushed the sugar bowl across, then shuffled out, muttering something about having work to do.
Frost found a tea towel and dried his wet hair. ‘This is Frank Gilmore.’
‘Hi, Frank,’ said Jordan, offering his hand.
The hand was ignored. ‘Detective Sergeant Gilmore,’ came the icy correction. ‘And button up that jacket.’ Start as you mean to go on. Don’t let the lower ranks get too familiar or they’ll walk all over you.
Frost passed round his cigarettes, then asked for a report. Jordan, stifling his resentment at Gilmore’s snub, flipped open his notebook. ‘I got the call from Control at 9.23. I arrived at 9.34. The fire brigade was already here so I left them to it and went straight in to Mrs Compton.’
‘Mrs Compton?’ interrupted Frost. ‘Not the husband?’
‘He’s away on business,’ said Jordan.
A smile traversed Frost’s face. ‘Good. Then I won’t have to watch him fondling her bloody body . . . What’s she wearing this morning?’
‘That pink shortie nightie,’ said Jordan. ‘The one she wore the first time.’
Frost whooped with delight. ‘The shortie – wow! That’s the one that barely covers her bum. I must try and drop something on the floor for her to pick up.’ Then he remembered the serious business of the day and nodded for Jordan to continue.
‘She got up just after nine, picked the post up from the mat, made herself