Frost grinned. Something else to delay their return to the cold, dreary station. ‘I promised the doc I’d have a word with him. Come on, son.’
Gilmore almost lost Frost in the labyrinth of corridors. Denton General Hospital was originally an old Victorian workhouse, but had been added to and rebuilt over the years. Frost darted up dark little passages, across storage areas and up clanking iron staircases to get to the ward where Wardley was lying. The staff nurse in her little cubicle with the shaded lamp greeted Frost as an old friend. She wasn’t too keen on the idea of waking Wardley up, but Frost assured her it was essential.
Wardley, a little man of around seventy-five, his thinning hair snow white, was sleeping uneasily, turning and twitching and muttering. Frost shook his shoulder gently. Wardley woke with a start, mouth agape. He looked concerned as Frost introduced himself.
‘Have you come to arrest me?’ he croaked in a quavering voice.
‘Attempted suicide isn’t a crime any more,’ said Frost, dragging chair over to the bed. ‘Besides, for all we know, it was an accident.’
Wardley frowned. ‘You know it was suicide. I left a note.’
‘Did you? We couldn’t find it.’
The old man pulled himself up. ‘It was on the bedside cabinet. My note… and that letter. How could you miss them?’
Frost scratched his head. ‘They might have fallen under the bed. We’ll look again later. Suppose you tell me what the letter said?’
The old man shook his head and his hands gripped and released the bedclothes. ‘Terrible things. I’m too ashamed.’
‘Blimey,’ said Frost, ‘I hope I can do things I’m ashamed of at your age.’
‘It happened a long time ago, Inspector.’
‘Then it doesn’t bloody matter,’ said Frost. ‘Tell me what it said.’
A long pause. Someone further down the ward moaned in his sleep. A trolley rumbled by outside.
‘All right,’ said Wardley at last. ‘It goes back thirty years — before I came to Denton. I lived in a little village. It was miles away from here, but I’m not telling you its name. I ran one of the classes in the Sunday school.’ He paused.
‘Not much sex and violence, so far,’ murmured Frost. ‘I hope it warms up.’
Wardley pushed out a polite, insincere smile and immediately switched it off. ‘There were these two boys in my class. One was twelve, the other thirteen. After the class they would come back with me to my house. We would chat, watch television. All innocent stuff.’ His voice rose. ‘As God is my witness, Inspector, that’s all it was.’
‘What else would it be?’ soothed Frost, thinking to him self, You dirty old bastard!
‘One of the boys told lies about me. Filthy lies. I was called up before the Sunday school superintendent. I swore my innocence on the Bible, but he didn’t believe me. I was forced to resign.’ He stopped and studied the inspector’s face, trying to read signs that he was being believed now.
‘Go on,’ murmured Frost.
‘I couldn’t stay in the village. People whispered and pointed. I had to move. So I came to Denton. After thirty years I thought it was all over and done with. And then I received that awful letter.’
'What did it say, Mr Wardley?’
‘Something like “What will the church say when I tell them what you did to those boys?” I’m a churchwarden, Inspector. It’s my life. I couldn’t face it happening all over again. If it gets out, I won’t fail next time.’
Gilmore asked, ‘Is there anyone in Denton, or locally, who could have known about your past?’ Wardley shook his head.
‘These two boys you messed about with,’ Frost began, stopping abruptly as Wardley, quivering with rage, thrust his face forward and almost shouted.
‘I never touched them. It was all lies. I swore on the Bible.’ So loud did he protest that the staff nurse hurried anxiously towards the bed, only turning back when Frost gave her a reassuring wave.
He rephrased his question. ‘The boys who lied, Mr Wardley. I want their names. And the name of the Sunday school superintendent, and all the people from your old village who would have known about this. We’ve got to check and see if any of them have moved to Denton.’
He left Gilmore to take down the details and went down to the car where he could smoke and think. Why on earth was he wasting time on this poison pen thing when he was way out of his depth with more important cases?
The car lurched to one side as Gilmore climbed in. ‘Where to?’ he asked, trying to get comfortable in the sagging driving seat.
His reply should have been ‘Back to the station,’ but he couldn’t face going back to that cold Incident Room and wading through those endless, monotonous robbery files. ‘Wardley’s cottage. Let’s have another look for that letter.’
‘We shouldn’t be wasting time on this,’ moaned Gilmore. ‘And how are we going to get in?’
‘Dr Maltby will have a key,’ said Frost, hoping this was true.
Frost was in luck. Maltby did have the key. He sat them in his surgery while he went upstairs to fetch it. ‘Watch the door,’ hissed Frost, darting for the doctor’s desk.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Gilmore, horrified, watching the inspector methodically opening and closing drawers.
‘Looking for something,’ grunted Frost, busily opening a locked drawer with one of his own keys.
A creak of a floorboard above, then footsteps on the stairs.
‘He’s coming,’ croaked Gilmore, wishing he could run and leave Frost to face the music.
‘Got it,’ crowed Frost, waving a blue envelope. He glanced at it and stuffed it back, quickly locked the drawer, then slid back into his seat just as the door opened and Maltby came in with the key to Wardley’s cottage.
‘What the hell was that about?’ asked Gilmore when they were outside.
‘The poison pen letter the doc gave us yesterday. He wouldn’t tell us who it was sent to, so I sneaked a look at the envelope. Sorry to involve you, son, but you’ve got to grab your chances when they come.’
‘So who was it addressed to… anyone we know?’ Frost grinned. ‘Mark Compton. Mr Rigid Nipples.’ Gilmore’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What?’
‘Doesn’t it make you hate the swine even more… married to that cracking wife and having it off every Wednesday with a female contortionist in Denton?’ He halted outside the door of a small, dark cottage, pushed the key in the lock and they went in.
They started in the bedroom, with its iron-framed single bed, and worked downwards. Everything inside the bedside cabinet was taken out. Frost showed mild interest in some loose tablets he found in the drawer, then seemed to lose interest. The cabinet was pulled away from the wall in case the note and the letter had fallen behind it. The bed likewise was moved, exposing a rectangular patch of fluffy dust. Even the bedclothes were stripped and shaken.
Gilmore, watched by Frost from the doorway, crawled all over the room on his hands and knees, looking in corners, behind curtains. He even stood on a chair and looked on top of the wardrobe. ‘Nothing here,’ he said, brushing dust from his jacket.
A quick poke around in the bathroom and then downstairs. Again Frost didn’t seem inclined to join in the search, but let Gilmore do it while he sat on the arm of a chair, smoking and flipping through some bird-watching magazines he’d found in the magazine rack then looking all the way across the room at some nail holes in the wallpaper through a pair of high-powered binoculars he’d taken from a shelf.
‘It would be quicker with two,’ said Gilmore.
'When you get fed up, we’ll go,’ said Frost. ‘The letters aren’t here. I’m only staying because you seem so keen.’
Gilmore glowered. ‘All right,’ he admitted. ‘I’m fed up.’
‘We’ll have a word with Ada next door,’ said Frost.
You’re messing me about, thought Gilmore as he followed the inspector to the adjoining cottage with its black-painted door and shining, well-polished brasswork. A quick rat-tat- tat at the brass knocker and the door was opened by Ada Perkins, her sharp pointed chin thrust forward belligerently. ‘Oh, it’s you, Jack Frost. I thought I could hear heavy feet plonking about next door.’