They trudged upwards. Staircase succeeded staircase, little sub-landings and corridors shooting off at each turn. The vicarage would be a swine to search properly. And then the stairs stopped and there were only brown cobwebby ceilings above and a gloomy passage lined with dark doors. They creaked the doors open and looked in on pokey attic cells with low sloping ceilings, flapping mildewed wallpaper, and tiny windows thick with years of grime.
"The servants would have slept up here in the old days," explained Frost, stepping back hurriedly as a floorboard disintegrated under his foot. "What a life the poor sods must have led when you think of it. Working like beavers from crack of dawn until nearly midnight, scrubbing, scouring, emptying the gentry's slop-buckets, then staggering up all those flaming stairs for a few hours' kip before it started all over again the next morning."
I don't know about the slop-buckets, thought Clive, but their hours sound better than mine.
The dust and cobwebs in the attic rooms had clearly not been disturbed for years, so they descended to the floor below where the rooms were larger and the sour smell of decay slightly less pungent. On this floor the rooms were apparently used for storage, graveyards for the abandoned junk of past incumbents. They looked in cupboards and battered trunks that smelt faintly of lavender and strongly of mouldering linen and that contained stained ancient clothing and scuttling insects.
But the end room was different. The door opened easily and the smell inside was of stale tobacco smoke, like the vicar's study. Drawn, heavy curtains made it dark. Frost clunked down the old-fashioned brass lightswitch and an unshaded 60-watt bulb glimmered mournfully. He crossed to the window, dragged back the curtains, and looked down on the back gardens of Vicarage Terrace, now unified in a single plain by the heavy covering of snow. He couldn't tell which was Mrs. Uphill's garden; they all looked the same.
The room was used by the vicar as a photographic studio. The thick cord of an antiquated electric bowl fire shared a power-point with the thinner cord of a photoflood lamp and reflector on a tall metal stand. Around the walls were enlargements of photos of churches and local landmarks. Inside a corner cupboard they found more photographic equipment, including a tripod and an early model Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera.
But it was the sheet-draped rectangular object in the center of the floor that claimed the men's interest.
"That's where the body is," said Frost.
Clive twitched the sheet away to reveal a battered metal coffin. A cabin trunk, well worn, its sides pasted with labels from long-defunct Edwardian shipping lines. The trunk was old, but the heavy brass padlock securing the lid was brand-new.
"Let's see if one of these will open it," murmured Frost, producing the bunch of Skeleton keys he always carried with him. The third key he tried did the trick. Clive flung back the lid and they peered inside, almost fearful of what they might see.
Books. The trunk was tight-packed with books of all shapes and sizes, none of which seemed to warrant the expense of a heavy brass padlock.
They took them out. Old hymnbooks with the covers hanging by a thread. A copy of Mr. Midshipman Easy presented to Master James Graham Bell, Cooperley Primary School, June 1946, for good work. There were some bound volumes of The Boys' Own Paper dating from the turn of the century that Frost flipped through with interest. "Could be worth a few bob, son. Wonder if he'd miss them."
The next layer brought forth more ancient treasures including volumes of The Strand Magazine containing the Sherlock Holmes stories with Sidney Paget drawings of spade-bearded men in hansom cabs.
But in the next layer… Here the unexpurgated Fanny Hill was the tamest of the collection. Filthy books, obscene books. The sort of books kept under the counter in grubby little back-street Soho bookshops. The general theme of the collection was young girls.
Frost became engrossed in a paperback whose cover depicted a large, leather-knickered, bare-chested Amazon thrashing the posterior of a buxom, bare-buttocked blonde. The blonde wore a schoolgirl's hat. "What Katy did at school," he muttered, reading with moving lips a choice passage at random.
They emptied out the trunk. More books of the same type. "All right, son. Bung them back. Who said vicars aren't human? They're as dirty-minded as you or I, or even old Mullett." He reluctantly tossed in the paperback.
If Clive hadn't noticed the slight bulge under the brown paper lining at the bottom of the trunk, they would have missed the envelope. It contained photographs. Black and white enlargements of Mrs. Uphill in full, unretouched nudity. It also contained photographs of an undressed, nubile twelve-year-old Audrey Harding sprawling provocatively on this self-same sheet-draped cabin trunk. This time the head wasn't torn off.
Frost was looking through the photographs for the fourth time when Clive asked, "What now, sir?"
Frost sighed. "Stick them back in the trunk and say nothing, son. Don't look surprised. He hasn't committed a crime, you know."
Clive squeaked with indignation, "The girl's under age!"
Frost shrugged. "Look at the photographs. Tell me what part of her is under age. We've got more important things to do, son, than drag this poor sod to court for corrupting the morals of a twelve-year-old slut who was more corrupt than him to start with. Blimey, she could probably corrupt me, and that takes some doing!"
They carefully replaced everything exactly as they had found it, but as Frost tried to relock the lid, his skeleton key snapped off inside the padlock. He faked it shut, covered the trunk with the sheet, and hoped the vicar wouldn't notice.
Down to the next floor, but by now the inspector was becoming bored with the search. He hustled Clive along, leaning against the wall and smoking sulkily whenever the younger man tried to be thorough.
A pair of doors opened on to a large hall with a stage, benches, and the components of trestle tables stacked along the walls. This was the vicarage hall, home of the Sunday school, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, amateur dramatic society, and similar local functions. Clive found a trapdoor on the stage and lay flat on his stomach, probing the space beneath with his torch. He was still putting the trapdoor back when Frost was impatiently pounding down the next flight, anxious to get this time-wasting job over so he could get to his over-heated little office, drink tea, and snarl at the paperwork.
At last they reached the ground floor. The smell of cooking drew them to the kitchen and the vicar's wife, a fluttering woman with a once pretty face and a nervous laugh. She constantly apologized. She apologized for the mess, for the snow, for the lack of heat. A saucepan boiled over and she apologized for that. She offered to show them around the living quarters and invited them to stay for lunch. Frost eyed what was in the saucepan and declined both offers hastily.
The Bell's living quarters were warm and comfortable, the walls adorned with more framed photographs-Scout groups, cuddly kittens with balls of wool, gnarled trees against a setting sun. "He should stick to nudes," said Frost dismissively.
All interest in the search now gone, Frost would barely let Clive poke his head round a door before bundling him off to the next room. "I'm a good starter, son, but a poor finisher. At least, that's what my lady friends keep telling me. But we're wasting our time. The kid's not here. I feel it…"
The only room to arouse his curiosity was the Bell's connubial bedroom. He sat on the bed, bouncing up and down on the mattress, wondering to Clive if it made the same creaking during the couple's nocturnal activities.
On the bedside table stood a silver-framed wedding photograph of a much younger version of the vicar, his beautiful girl-wife clutching his arm proudly. She looked incredibly young, almost a child. She didn't look much older than Audrey Harding.