Fatal Frost

by Henry James

  He continued softly, ‘Put it this way, Mr Hartley-Jones was not best pleased when the police marched in yesterday suspecting that a fifteen-year-old boy had been murdered in a ritualistic fashion in his front room.’ A wave of shock washed across the face of the girl. Frost added, ‘After being burgled on Saturday night, and having his cat garrotted, it’s not been his week at all.’

  ‘May I have one of those?’ Nicola Parke indicated the Rothmans lying on the table. Frost nodded his assent.

  ‘Miss Parke,’ Clarke said, ‘how much do you know about Tom Hardy’s death?’

  ‘Only that he died … was killed, I mean’ – the girl took a puff – ‘in what you just described as a “ritualistic” fashion, although I have no idea what that means.’

  ‘It means,’ Clarke began, ‘that the boy was laid out in the manner of a sacrifice, his body eviscerated. His heart has yet to be recovered.’

  Nicola Parke covered her mouth in anguish. If Frost didn’t know better, he’d have thought Sue Clarke relished telling the girl the gory details. Nicola Parke was very obviously distressed at this revelation.

  ‘So you see, Miss Parke,’ Frost said, ‘why we’re treating the School of the Five Bells as something more serious than a suffragette youth movement. And that you and your friends’ festive antics in Denton Woods could be viewed in a very different light. It’s how it appears to the rest of the world. Understand?’

  ‘Indeed.’ The girl nodded solemnly. ‘All is not as it seems. My goodness, I’d best be going.’ Parke looked at her watch. ‘They’ll be expecting me …’

  ‘Have you not told your parents you’re talking to the police?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘No,’ the girl said, and to Frost’s eyes she at last resembled the schoolgirl she really was, all the bravado displayed when they first met completely disappearing. ‘And I’d rather you didn’t mention it should you speak to my stepfather.’

  The girl was clearly frightened of Hartley-Jones. Samantha Ellis’s mother had mentioned that they didn’t get on, but judging by the way Nicola’s formidable confidence had begun to crumble as soon as her stepfather was evoked, there was a suggestion that the discord went deeper.

  ‘And your mother?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘My mother.’ The girl sighed. ‘My mother is very fragile. She doesn’t sleep well … I’d rather you didn’t trouble her.’

  ‘Of course,’ Frost said, placing a comforting hand on the girl’s. ‘You seem very upset by the manner of Tom Hardy’s death and, if I might add, unsettled by any mention of your stepfather. Is there anything more you can tell us that might help with our investigation?’

  The girl looked beseechingly into Frost’s eyes. She hesitated, fear tripping her up. ‘I … I … don’t get on terribly well with my stepfather.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘For … reasons I’d rather not go into, but …’ the girl stammered, eyes flitting nervously around the café, finally resting on the empty milkshake glass, before saying in a quiet, shaky voice, ‘my stepfather was not happy to discover my cousin Samantha was pregnant.’

  The change in her demeanour was not lost on Frost. ‘Not happy?’ he prompted.

  ‘That’s all I can say, Sergeant … think of it … how you will. Now I must go …’

  The girl had been intentionally ambiguous. Was it to protect herself? He needed time to think; he’d let her go for now. Although … ‘One final thing. Tom’s sister, Emily, has disappeared. Any idea where she might be?’

  ‘In hiding, I’d imagine.’ Nicola Parke slid out of the booth and hurriedly smoothed her pleated skirt. She was clearly extremely anxious to leave.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘She’s scared.’ The girl looked at Frost intensely. ‘Wouldn’t you be? Good day, I really must go.’

  ‘One sec!’ Frost called, reaching inside his mac pocket. ‘This was found in your bedroom.’ He slid the diary across the café table. Parke glanced at it but did not pick it up. ‘You recognize it?’

  The girl nodded. ‘Samantha’s diary.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s not much in it.’ He picked up the diary and flicked through it. ‘The pages have been ripped out.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t like what she wrote?’

  ‘Then why not throw out the whole diary?’ Frost raised his eyebrows. ‘There’s virtually nothing left.’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘Don’t—’ He stopped himself. ‘We’ll be in touch, Miss Parke.’

  And the girl was gone, the café door swinging in her wake.

  ‘Jumped-up little tart,’ Clarke said, as they stood in the drizzle outside the café. Clarke was unimpressed with Nicola Parke’s patronizing lecture on contemporary feminism. She wouldn’t last a day in Eagle Lane, she thought scathingly.

  ‘She certainly has spirit,’ Frost said, sparking up in the fine rain. ‘But that spirit was soon dampened. And whether it’s likely to be evil enough to wreak the mayhem we’re dealing with, I’m not so sure.’

  ‘I agree,’ Clarke conceded. ‘I can’t see her lugging bodies through the undergrowth. She’s tiny.’ Clarke retrieved her own cigarettes. ‘And we still have no idea why the body was even left on the golf course … Too busy tying ourselves up in knots over how it got there without a thought as to why.’

  ‘That reminds me.’ Frost turned to face her. ‘Have you still got that Ordnance Survey map?’

  ‘In the car. Why?’

  ‘Father Lowe at St Jude’s put me in touch with this bloke Hollis who wrote a book I borrowed. He’s something of an expert on local folklore. He says it’s thought there used to be an ancient chapel sited on that new part of the golf course. The chapel was built on ley lines. Apparently there was an article about it in the press last year, when planning permission was granted for the work to the golf course.’

  ‘Ley lines?’

  ‘Yes, ancient, invisible “pathways”, for want of a better word. These pathways are imbued with supernatural properties – magic energy, and what have you. Think of Stonehenge and druids. It may be a load of old cobblers to you and me, but it’s possible that at the ninth hole of the new Denton Golf Club, two such lines cross.’ Frost looked at her, the bemusement she felt mirrored in his face. ‘Apparently, the point at which ley lines intersect has special significance – a convergence of energy, if you will. Many pagan sites or monuments are built at such points.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Clarke breathed.

  ‘I know, I’m having trouble with it myself. But we don’t have to believe there’s anything in it, we just have to accept that others may. I have the map coordinates written down somewhere …’

  ‘And so the burial ground in the woods itself is not so important, but this site, now a golf course, is?’

  ‘Seems so,’ Frost said, his hair now matted with rain. ‘If a sacrifice was carried out then it’s likely this would be the spot.’

  ‘But our girls were playing by the tumulus – the candle wax corroborates this.’

  ‘I know. Something doesn’t add up.’ Frost stared at the station as another trainload made their way out into the wet Denton streets, joining the Saturday-morning shopping crowd. A week ago today Samantha Ellis went to London never to return to Denton alive, Clarke thought.

  ‘Did you see how the girl lost her pluck at the mention of her stepfather?’ Frost said suddenly. ‘She looked almost petrified. I thought it odd. You’d expect a girl in her position to be scared – two dead friends, and one missing – but she held it together perfectly until her stepfather was mentioned. She was trying to help, I could sense it. But she was too frightened.’

  ‘I did think she seemed a bit jittery … and what was all that about Ellis’s pregnancy?’

  ‘I think I’ve worked it out,’ Frost said gravely. ‘Maybe Michael Hartley-Jones was sleeping with his niece.’

  Clarke turned to him in surprise. ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well, what else do you think she was trying to say?’


  Clarke cupped her hands over a cigarette, shielding it from the rain as Frost fumbled with his Zippo. He continued, ‘And I don’t think it stops there. Samantha Ellis was dating Tom Hardy. If she really was involved with Hartley-Jones, then maybe he killed the boy. Out of perverse jealousy, or something. And maybe he did it in a way that would throw suspicion on his stepdaughter and the rest of her friends in a “let that be a lesson to you all” type of way. Remember how little Nicola froze when she learned the manner of Hardy’s murder?’

  Clarke was wide-eyed.

  ‘Think about it, how the Five Bells would be seen by the outside world, the same way we saw them; as a cult dabbling with witchcraft who had carried out some ritual sacrifice. Perceptions can be dangerously misleading …’

  Clarke nodded. ‘But Jack, you’re forgetting that the Hartley-Joneses weren’t in Denton when Tom Hardy was killed. They were a 100 miles away on the South Coast.’

  ‘A technicality.’ He shrugged. ‘Come on.’ He tapped her on the behind. ‘I have a plan, but let’s get out of the rain first.’ They made for the car.

  Saturday (2)

  FROST DIDN’T HAVE to wait long. He flicked his cigarette end out on to the pavement, wound the Cortina window up rapidly, and slid down into the seat. They were parked within sight of number 7 Forest View. He had banked on Michael Hartley-Jones leaving the house at some point – he wasn’t the stay-at-home type.

  Now he watched the man shut the door behind him and stride towards the dark-green Land-Rover on the drive. Wonder where you’re off to, chum, thought Frost. To calm your nerves by blasting a few pheasants out of the sky? Hartley-Jones was in a Barbour, flat cap and wellies, and he had what Frost took to be a shotgun in a case under his arm. Clarke could confirm that later. She was stationed around the corner on the main road, Union Street, ready to follow in the unmarked Escort. Frost wanted to keep tabs on Hartley-Jones; he thought he might do a bunk if things got too much. He had to play it carefully, until he had a case against the man bang to rights; the last thing he wanted was him blabbing to Mullett, and the super going off on one again.

  The energy boost he’d derived from the morning’s freshen-up at Clarke’s and the subsequent lead from interviewing the Parke girl had started to fade. Even so, sitting behind the wheel of the car, he still felt perky. Perky and together enough to allow his domestic situation a moment’s thought. He’d not been in touch with his mother-in-law or wife since Wednesday night. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten, or hadn’t been concerned, it was just that he was never near a phone when he had a moment. There again, this morning at Clarke’s, had he given it a moment’s thought? The shameful answer, he realized, was no. A sharp twinge of guilt pushed that thought aside. Once he was done here, there was a call box on the Bath Road.

  He looked at his watch. 12.15. He’d give it another few minutes, just to be sure Hartley-Jones had gone, and so as not to arouse suspicion. He now felt convinced that Hartley-Jones was the killer, and that he must have come back from the spot where the couple were allegedly staying over the bank holiday and murdered the boy. He’d find out through the wife. Frost didn’t think her complicit, but thought she might unwittingly give her husband away. Forensics had discovered a wealth of prescriptions for sleeping pills and valium made out for Vera Hartley-Jones, corroborating her daughter’s story that the woman had trouble sleeping, but would Hartley-Jones really have had time to perpetrate such a complex murder? How long did it take to rip a boy open? Ten minutes? But what about the body? Did he drop off the remains in a dustbin and hammer it back down to the South Coast? If the boy was killed on Friday, how come the body wasn’t discovered until Wednesday? Frost got out of the Cortina. The course hadn’t been open and the boy wasn’t discovered until the groundsman did his final sweep.

  ‘Afternoon, Mrs Hartley-Jones.’ Frost smiled from the doorstep.

  ‘My husband is not in,’ was the nervous reply. Frost couldn’t quite equate this timid creature to one of the rebellious original Five Bells.

  ‘Not to worry,’ he replied gently. ‘It was you I really wanted to see. I just wanted to put your mind at rest. May I?’ He moved to cross the threshold.

  ‘Oh, I suppose so.’ She stepped aside to let him through. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Lovely. Nicola about?’

  ‘No, she’s out too, I’m afraid.’ Frost pulled out a stool from the breakfast bar while Vera Hartley-Jones flicked the kettle on. ‘She’d barely got back before she rushed out again. Gone to catch up with friends. All this business is terrible for the youngsters.’ The woman was visibly uncomfortable and unsure of what to do with herself.

  ‘Yes, it must have been a trying time for you all,’ Frost said, as though picking up the thread of a proper conversation. ‘There you were, looking forward to a nice weekend away, and no sooner have you gone than all this happens.’ He raised his hands as if a minor inconvenience had occurred, such as the weather breaking, and not two dead teenagers.

  ‘Yes.’ She sighed, pouring the tea. ‘It seems an age ago, but it was only just over a week ago that Michael was picking the car up from the garage ready for our trip, and I felt so happy at the prospect of going away.’

  ‘What was wrong with the car?’ said Frost casually, biting into a chocolate digestive.

  ‘Oh, nothing. Michael always insists on getting the car serviced before any long drive. I haven’t driven in years.’ She smiled wanly. ‘Michael charges about in the Land-Rover most of the time, for shoots and so forth. The Audi only comes out for special occasions.’

  ‘Oh, really? So you’ve not used it much since the trip to the coast, then?’ Frost slurped on his tea.

  ‘We haven’t used it at all.’

  ‘Really? That reminds me, I need to get my old rust-bucket serviced. Where does Michael go?’

  ‘Why, the Eagle Lane Garage, next door to your police station.’

  Frost had him; the odometer on the car would provide the answer. The garage would have a record of the mileage from the recent service; if the miles clocked up since then were significantly more than Denton to Poole and back, then Hartley-Jones would have some serious explaining to do. Frost would have to move quickly and impound the Audi; who knows what else they might find in the vehicle.

  ‘So, let me just run through your trip once more. You left on Friday afternoon for the South Coast. Where was it exactly?’

  ‘We didn’t go directly to Poole, we stopped at the Trust House Forte hotel, just outside Reading, to visit my brother, Norris. He’s been ever so poorly.’

  Frost pulled out his notebook and pen. ‘Reading? Nice this time of year. And not too far away.’ Everything was slotting into place. Reading was certainly feasible as far as a furtive trip home was concerned. One thing remained a mystery, though.

  ‘One final question if I may, Mrs Hartley-Jones. My colleague DS Waters was convinced you had a number of large candles on the premises. They seem to have vanished. I was curious about what you used them for.’

  ‘They’re altar candles,’ she said, sipping her tea. ‘I’m on the church committee and the vicar lets me have a few every year when we go away.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow. When you go away?’

  ‘The caravan site in Poole has very unpredictable electricity. The big church ones last for ages. Michael puts them in the boot of the car, and if we don’t use them I bring them back and return them to the church.’

  Bingo, thought Frost. That explained the wax on Hardy’s face. He didn’t get it from a bizarre satanic ritual in the woods; Hartley-Jones had the body in the boot of the car, where it must have come into contact with the candles. It also explained why the SOCOs couldn’t find them on their subsequent visit. She’d taken them back to the church.

  Superintendent Mullett thoughtfully sipped his coffee on the patio. What a week, he mused. Although it was just after midday he still had the residue of a hangover from the previous evening’s gala dinner. Eyeing his wife through the kitchen window
a sense of normality returned to him; he smiled weakly at her before noticing she was mouthing the word ‘phone’.

  Closing the door to his study he picked up the telephone receiver lying on the mahogany desk. ‘Mullett here.’

  ‘Sir, I have him.’ It was Frost.

  ‘You have who?’

  ‘Michael Hartley-Jones for the murder of Tom Hardy.’

  Mullett stared intensely at the aquarium before him, the words not registering. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘Hartley-Jones is the killer—’

  ‘Are you mad? Michael was on the South Coast. What about the girls? Witchcraft and so forth?’

  ‘No, that’s what we were meant to think, that it was all the kids. But it was Hartley-Jones. I can prove it with the mileage on the car.’

  Mullett’s head was reeling. Deep down he had had an uneasy feeling all along, but nothing he could quite put his finger on. If this was serious, he needed to distance himself from his erstwhile friend as soon as possible.

  ‘I’m on my way in. Don’t do a thing until I get there.’

  * * *

  ‘What did he say?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘Mr Mullett is on his way in.’ Frost frowned and scratched the back of his head.

  That wasn’t good, she thought. ‘On a Saturday? Sounds like you’ve filled him with confidence, then …’

  ‘Sod this,’ Frost said, exasperated, chucking down his pen. ‘Why do we have to wait? Let’s nick Hartley-Jones now. I’ll ring the Echo and tell Sandy …’

  ‘The Echo? Can’t you wait five minutes, Jack? The super will be here in five minutes. What exactly did he say?’ She knew Frost was banking on Emily Hardy reappearing as soon as an arrest for her brother’s killer was announced, but she sensed panic creeping in, which meant he wasn’t so sure the girl was in hiding; rather, he was afraid she was in danger.

  ‘He didn’t say much.’ Frost flicked through the Rolodex. ‘Every minute counts for the Hardys. Every second that little girl goes unaccounted for …’