Frost at Christmas

TUESDAY-3

Martha Wendle's cottage was in the 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 in a tight crushing grip, her nails chewing into their flesh.

In the darkness the sound of wheezing, rasping breath, deep and rhythmic, and strange sobbing noises. The breathing shallowed and quickened. Outside, the wind clanged the corrugated iron and something blew over and clattered. And, suddenly, silence… no wind… no scuffling of cats… not even the sound of breathing. The voice didn't come from the woman whose nails were burning points of pain on their skin. It came from… from the air.

"It's cold… grave… snow… so cold… skull… bones… so… so… so cold."

All right, dear, thought Frost, we'll let you know-next please.

The breathing returned, deeper, more frenzied, like the climax of love-making.

"Buried… unmarked grave… snow… death… death The voice was so unearthly, Clive felt the hairs on the back of his neck stir and rise.

"Where are you buried?" This from Frost.

"Woods

Frost stiffened. "Where in the woods?"

More breathing, slower, shallower. He repeated the question. "Where in the woods?"

"Hollow… in front of tree… Hollow… Dead Man's Hollow."

"Were you murdered?" A moan of pain. Frost jerked his hand from the woman's grip and shook her shoulders. "Answer me, was it murder?"

"No, sir," protested Clive urgently. "If you bring her out of a trance too soon, it can kill her."

"Then I'll apologize," snapped Frost. "Light that lamp."

A match flared and the oil-lamp glowed. The room blinked and came to life. Cats yawned and scratched and licked. In her chair, the woman was bolt upright, her body rigid, her eyes staring but sightless.

Frost shook her roughly. "Miss Wendle!" She blinked, then looked at him in puzzlement. "Who are you? Oh-the policeman."

"Who killed Tracey?" barked Frost.

"Is she dead?" She got up and stabbed the fire in the heart with the poker. It roared instantly into life.

"You told us she was buried in Dead Man's Hollow."

She squeezed out a thin vinegary smile. "No, Inspector. The spirits told you, not me. I was in a trance. They simply used my mouth to utter their words, words of which I have no knowledge."

"I see," said Frost. "Well, you can tell your bloody spirits that if I find Tracey buried where your mouth said she was, then you'll be holding your next seance in the nick on a charge of murder. Come on, son."

He spun on his heel and stamped out. A cat clawed at him as he passed. The woman didn't move, but as Clive squeezed by to get to the door he was able to see beyond the acid hate that uglied her face. Martha Wendle was frightened, terribly frightened.

Outside they sucked down lungfuls of clean air, like submariners unexpectedly saved from a suffocating death. The wind had dropped for the return journey, but hit out with a cold blast from time to time to let them know it was still lurking.

"I hope I haven't caught anything from those lousy cats," said Frost, sniffing at his coat. "Do you have intuitions, son?"

"Sometimes, sir."

"I have them all the time. That woman's a killer!"

"Where's your proof, sir?"

"You're proof-mad son! All I want is a suspect. Forget this 'innocent until proved guilty' caper. Find your suspect and then prove he or she did it. Saves sodding about with lots of different people."

They reached the fork in the path and Frost used his torch to light the way over the slithering plunge to Dead Man's Hollow. "Well, this is it, son."

His torch beam crawled over virgin snow, through which the branches of stunted trees protruded like the hands of drowning men.

"Shall we go down there, sir?" asked Clive.

"Waste of bloody time, son. We haven't got shovels."

Clive took a deep breath. "Then why did we come, sir?"

"I wanted to get the feel of the place. Now shut up for a minute, there's a good boy."

The wind had a spasm and shook snow from branches, then went quiet. A match flared as Frost lit a cigarette.* "The kid's not here, son."

Clive looked at him, amazed. "How on earth do you know that, sir?"

"I don't know-I only feel it."

Clive gave a scornful snort. "More intuition?"

"Yes, son-more of my stupid intuition. We'll probably have to dig just to satisfy Mullett and Uncle Chief Constable, but she's not here."

Clive grabbed his arm. "Sir-on that bush-shine your torch to the left… do you see it?"

Something small and white and insignificant fluttered on the branch. The snow was thigh-deep at that point but Clive plunged over to the bush. He snatched the object and waded back to the inspector in triumph. Frost looked at the treasure, a small square of waxed paper-the wrapping from a boiled sweet.

"It could have been chucked there by the kid," said Clive eagerly, like a puppy that has brought the ball back for the first time.

Frost raised his eyes to heaven. "A sweet wrapper," he exclaimed. "The spirits are vindicated-a bloody sweet wrapper." He found a crumpled transparent envelope in his pocket and poked the wrapper inside. "If you weren't looking so pleased with yourself, son, I'd chuck it away, but I suppose I'm setting you enough bad examples as it is, so we'll let Forensic tell us what flavor the sweet was and how much a pound they are."

Back at the car the radio was going blue in the face pleading for Inspector Frost to answer. He sighed and slid into his seat. "They don't let you alone when you're lovable, do they, son?" He slowly lit a cigarette just to show the radio who was master, then announced his whereabouts into the microphone.

"Inspector Frost? We've been trying to contact you for ages sir. Can you get back to the station at once? The kidnapper has phoned Mrs. Uphill."