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 ca strato 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 looked out on to the garden below. A tiny garden, a wooden fence on each side, a brick wall at the rear. Beyond the brick wall were the back gardens of the houses in the street running parallel to Beech Crescent. Mrs. Shadbolt’s lawn was infested with green and red plaster gnomes, some peeking through bushes, some sitting cross-legged on plaster toadstools, others fishing down a plastic magic wishing well.
“Very tasteful,” murmured Frost, thinking he had never seen anything so ghastly in his life.
“I looked out,” continued the woman, ‘and there he was climbing over the fence into my garden, right down at the end, near the gnome on the toadstool. I just screamed and screamed and he immediately leapt over the fence.”
“What, back the way he was coming?” asked Frost, pulling his head back in.
“Oh no,” Mrs. Shadbolt told him. “He carried on across my garden and over the fence into next door.” She indicated the wooden fence to the right.
Frost spun around, frowning. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am. It was dark, but I could still see him. And the fence shook as he clambered over it.”
Frost looked out of the window again. “Where’s the house of the bloke whose back door was forced?”
“To the right. The way the intruder was going. Next door but one, number 36.”
Frost sat down on the bed and wriggled because he was sitting on something uncomfortable. He pulled Diddums out from under him and dropped it on the floor. “This isn’t making sense.”
“It’s making sense to me,” said Webster, who couldn’t understand why the inspector was wasting time on this piddling little abortive break-in. “The man climbs over the fence into Mrs. Shadbolt’s garden. She screams, so he climbs over the next fence. Where’s the problem?”
“Probably nothing,” said Frost, seeming to lose interest. “What are the people like at number 36, Mrs. Shadbolt?”
“I can’t really say, Inspector. They only moved in recently but they seem a nice couple.”
“Right,” said Frost, standing up. “We’ll have a chat with them. Thank you so much for your help.”
Out in the street, as they turned toward number 36, Frost said, “Do you ever get the feeling that things are suddenly going to start going right, son?”
“I often get the feeling,” said Webster, ‘but never the follow-up.”
“Me too,” muttered Frost, ‘but I’m hoping today might prove the exception. Now, what’s this geezer’s name?”
“Price,” said Webster, “Charles Price.”
Charles Price was a shy-looking man in his late thirties with dark hair and an apologetic smile. He was painting the front door of his house and was so engrossed in his work, he didn’t hear the two policemen walking up his front path.
“Mr. Price?” asked Frost. “We’re police officers.”
He spun around, startled, the paintbrush shaking in his hand. “You did give me a turn,” he said. “I never heard you. Is it about last night?”
Frost nodded. “Just a few questions.”
“Nothing was stolen,” said Price. “He must have been scared off. Your police constable was on the scene in minutes.”
“All part of the service,” said Frost with a smile. “Do you think we might come in?”
Methodically, Price replaced the lid on his tin of yellow paint, wiped the brush with a rag, and immersed it in a jam jar half filled with white spirit. “Trying to get it all finished before the wife comes back,” he explained, wiping his hands on another piece of rag. “We only moved in three weeks ago and there’s so much to do to get the place shipshape.”
Warning them to be careful of the wet paint, he guided them through the passage and into a small lounge, which was spotlessly clean and had double sheets of newspaper laid over the floor to protect the carpet. “If I spill so much as a single drop of paint, my wife will never let me hear the end of it.” Noticing the inspector’s dirty mac, he spread another sheet of newspaper across the settee before inviting them to sit down. “She’s very fussy about the furniture.” He brought a kitchen chair over and perched himself on the edge.
“Just a couple of questions, then we’ll let you get back to your decorating,” said Frost, the newspaper crackling beneath him as he tried to get comfortable. “You’ve been here only three weeks, you say?”
“That’s right. We used to live in Appian Way, over by Meads Park, but we had to move. My wife couldn’t get on with the neighbours.”
“And where is your good lady, sir?” Frost was wondering if it would be possible to light a cigarette without causing a towering inferno with the sheets of newspaper.
“She went to Darlington on Tuesday to look after her sick mother. The poor old dear is eighty-seven and can’t do a thing for herself can’t even get to the toilet. My sister-in-law usually looks after her, but she had to go into hospital with her varicose veins.”
Frost cut in quickly before they got the entire family medical history.
“I see, sir. Thank you.”
“She’s not due back until tomorrow,” said Price, ‘but she was away when the man broke in, so she wouldn’t be able to help you. Is it all right if I patch up the back door where he broke in? She’ll be furious when she sees the damage.”
“Perhaps my hairy colleague and I could take a look at it first, sir.”
They tramped over more newspaper, past skirting boards glistening with newly applied white paint, as he took them into a small utility room. The room housed a large chest freezer and the gas and electricity meters. On the far wall was the back door, which opened on to the garden. This was the door the intruder had forced. As the lock was now useless, the door was bolted top and bottom to keep it shut. Price unbolted and opened up. The back garden was similar to Mrs. Shadbolt’s, but overgrown and minus the gnomes.