– giving his daughter a break from looking after him. As I walked back I saw Mrs Winters’ milk was still on the step. After that dreadful business with poor Mrs Haynes, I had to make sure she was all right.’
Gilmore’s head jerked up. ‘You knew Mrs Haynes?’
‘Yes, Sergeant. I was with her on Sunday. Her husband’s grave was vandalized. She was so upset.’
‘It wasn’t the poor cow’s day,’ said Frost. Then his eyes narrowed. ‘There was no milk on the step when we arrived.’
‘I brought it in with me. I put it in her fridge.’
Frost yelled down the stairs for the SOC man to check there was an unopened bottle of milk in the fridge and if so, to go over it for prints. Back to Purley. ‘How did you get in?’
‘There’s a string connected to the front door catch. I’ve used it before . . . Mrs Winters is a cripple – she’s under the hospital, chronic arthritis. She can’t always get to the door.’
‘Right,’ nodded Frost. ‘So what did you do next?’
‘The hall was in darkness. I couldn’t find the light switch, but I made my way upstairs. I tapped on her bedroom door. No answer. I went in and switched on the light and . . .’ He shuddered and covered his face with his hands, ‘and I saw her. And then I heard the door click downstairs. I thought it was the killer coming back. I switched off the light and hid in the bathroom. You know the rest.’
A brisk tap at the door. The SOC man came in holding a full pint bottle of red-top milk, shrouded in a polythene bag. ‘This was in the fridge, Inspector. Two different dabs on the neck – neither of them the dead woman’s.’
Frost squinted at the bottle. ‘One should be the milkman, the other ought to be the padre here. Take his dabs and see if they match.’ He ordered Gilmore to remove the cuffs.
Another tap at the door. ‘The pathologist has finished,’ yelled Forensic.
‘Coming,’ called Frost.
It was cold in the tiny ice-box of a bedroom with its unfriendly brown lino and the windows rattling where the wind found all the gaps. Drysdale buttoned his overcoat and rubbed his hands briskly. ‘I estimate the time of death as approximately eleven o’clock last night, give or take half an hour or so either way.’ He pointed to bruising on each side of the dead woman’s mouth. ‘He clamped his hand over her face so she couldn’t utter a sound, then he jerked back the bedclothes and stabbed her repeatedly – three times in the stomach and lastly in the heart. The wounds are quite deep. To inflict them he would have raised the knife above his head and brought it down with considerable force.’ Drysdale gave a demonstration with his clenched fist. ‘As he raised his hand, some of the blood on the knife splashed on to the wall.’ He indicated red splatters staining the pale cream wallpaper.
‘Would he have got any of that on himself?’
‘Without a doubt,’ said Drysdale, pulling on his gloves. ‘Considerable quantities of blood spurting from the wounds would have hit his right arm and blood from the blade would have spattered him as he raised his arm to deliver the next blow.’
‘No traces of blood in the bathroom waste-trap,’ offered the man from Forensic, who was measuring and marking blood splashes on the wall, ‘so he didn’t wash it off before he left.’
‘Dirty bastard!’ said Frost. ‘What can you tell us about the knife, doc?’
‘Extremely sharp, single-edged, rigid blade approximately six inches long and about an inch and a quarter wide, honed to a sharp point.’
‘The same knife that killed the other old girl – Mary Haynes?’
‘It’s possible,’ admitted Drysdale, grudgingly. ‘I’ll be more positive after the post-mortem – which will be at 10.30 tomorrow morning. You’ll be there?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ replied Frost.
Gilmore was waiting for him at the head of the stairs. The vicar of All Saints had been contacted and had confirmed that his curate, Frederick Purley, had gone out to visit a terminally ill parishioner, and the SOC officer had confirmed that one of the thumb prints on the milk bottle belonged to the man in the bathroom.
Frost groaned his disappointment. ‘The old lady died yesterday. So unless Purley killed her last night, then came back today just to put the milk in the fridge, we’ve lost our best hope for a suspect.’