CONSTABLE VERSUS GREENGRASS a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 16)

by Nicholas Rhea

  Arnold then explained that Claude had discovered that the Beatles were in concert at the Futurist Theatre in Scarborough. There was a huge interest in this new pop group from Liverpool and youngsters would queue all night in the hope of obtaining a ticket. According to Claude, he had learned from a confidential but highly reliable source that the famous four would be rehearsing at the theatre during the afternoon before their sell-out performance. He felt that his passengers might like to savour the atmosphere and even catch sight of the famous Beatles. His proposal was that he convey his mystified passengers to Scarborough and drop them outside the theatre, telling them to wait and watch because they would see the arrival of the Beatles at 2.30 p.m.

  There were plenty of cafés and loos in the town and as the idea sounded fine, Arnold agreed to it and said he would advertise in Ashfordly rather than Aidensfield because of the likelihood of greater numbers of applicants for seats on the bus. The trip was arranged for a Thursday, leaving Ashfordly at 11 a.m., making a tour of the moors with a halt at Strensford for a fish-and-chip lunch, then on to Scarborough where Claude would park his bus outside the Futurist Theatre. His passengers would be told, at the last minute, that if they disembarked and stood near the stage door, they would see the Beatles. They should be back in Ashfordly by 4 p.m. or thereabouts.

  And Claude guaranteed that they would see the Beatles — such was the reliability of his informant. Even without this inside knowledge, the trip was fully subscribed in advance, as these mystery tours always were and so, at the appointed time, Claude went to collect his passengers. They were all strangers to him, being Ashfordly folk. I chanced to be on duty that morning in Ashfordly marketplace as Claude arrived at the wheel of Arnold’s bus. I watched him park the gleaming two-tone blue coach and saw him beaming with pride and amusement as his passengers, mainly pensioners, clambered on board. Among them was a lady I knew slightly — she was Mrs Alice Brown, the widowed mother of a policeman with whom I had served at Strensford some years earlier. She waved at me from the window and I acknowledged her as Claude checked the tickets. When everyone was seated, he prepared to set off and so I wandered across for a friendly chat.

  “Now, Claude,” I peered into the loaded coach. “Where are you off to?”

  “It’s a mystery tour, Mr Rhea, I can’t reveal trade secrets.”

  “The other mystery tour operators allus told us where we were going!” shouted an old lady from inside. “I don’t like not knowing where I’m off to.”

  “Aye, well, this is a proper mystery tour,” retorted Claude. “Nobody knows where we’re going, that way we can’t get lost, eh? But I’ll tell you what, you’re going somewhere to see somebody that’ll give you summat to talk about for years.”

  I could see from the mutterings in the body of the coach that the passengers weren’t over thrilled with this unhelpful information from a driver they’d never experienced until now, but they sat tight as Claude started the engine, closed the door and drove away. For most of them, anything was better than sitting at home alone, even a mystery tour with Claude Jeremiah Greengrass in charge. Mrs Brown waved farewell to me as I watched the departure with interest, knowing from Arnold about Claude’s plans.

  When Claude returned to Ashfordly, I was still on duty and found myself sorting out a major problem with his busload of passengers.

  But to put the story in its sequence and before I was presented with Claude’s dilemma, I will recount the story as revealed by Mrs Brown; it was she who later told me what had gone wrong at Scarborough. A day or two after the memorable event, she spotted me patrolling in Ashfordly and came across for a chat, still chuckling about that day out. In her opinion, the day had gone really well; she had thoroughly enjoyed herself. Everything had been fine during the earlier part of the tour; the fish-and-chip lunch in Strensford had been good, but then Claude had driven to the Futurist Theatre on the seafront at Scarborough, arriving about 2.15 p.m. The road outside the theatre was packed with people, all sightseers who were hoping for a glimpse of the arriving stars and the police were having a struggle to control the exuberant crowd.

  Claude had parked outside to disgorge his passengers, calling to them as they left the bus, “Mind you wait outside the stage door to see who you should be seeing . . . half an hour you’ve got, then it’s back on board. I’ll be here, waiting . . .”

  “What are we going to look at?” one old gentleman had asked.

  “It says on that notice board the Beatles are here.” One lady had pointed to the huge posters outside the theatre.

  “What do I want to come and look at beetles for?” grunted one old fellow as he had struggled down the steps of the coach. “I’ve a garden full of the damned things and them pellets won’t shift ’em.”

  “My daughter says they all want haircuts,” another had said.

  “Hairy beetles? I’ve never seen a hairy beetle.”

  It was evident that few had realised the historic importance of what they were about to witness, but as the last person left the bus, a policeman had arrived.

  “You can’t park here, sir,” he had said to Claude. “No parking here today, there’s a coach-park further along, in Valley Road,” and he had pointed in the intended direction.

  “But I’ve a load of pensioners out there!” Claude had insisted. “I’ve got to pick ’em up when they’ve seen the Beatles.”

  “And so have lots of other coaches, sir.” The policeman had been firm. “Several coachloads of people have arrived to see the Beatles come to their rehearsal, you’re not the only one. Now, if you park where I suggest and come back in half an hour, you’ll enable other coaches to drop their passengers and we won’t finish up with a traffic jam.”

  And so Claude had obeyed, shouting to his departing load, “I’ll be back in half an hour . . .”

  Half an hour later, Claude had joined the queue of buses awaiting their passengers and eventually, his party had returned. Chattering noisily about their experience, and the lack of toilets or somewhere for a cup of tea, the excited passengers had eventually settled down as Claude had motored away. I was in Ashfordly marketplace, about to end my period of patrol duty there, when I noticed the return of Claude’s bus. He eased to a smooth halt and opened the door; I stood by, eager to know if everyone had enjoyed their mystery tour. As the first lady came to the steps, she turned to Claude and said, “Where are we now, driver?”

  “Home,” Claude replied. “We’re back home now.”

  “But this isn’t Driffield?” she retorted.

  “Driffield? Who said we were going to Driffield? This is Ashfordly.”

  “But I don’t live in Ashfordly, I live in Driffield. We all live in Driffield. Is this part of the tour, then? A visit to Ashfordly Castle?”

  “No, it’s not part of the tour,” Claude snapped. “The tour’s over. The mystery has been solved, the answer was the Beatles. You went to see the Beatles. We’re back home now.”

  “You might be back home, but we’re not,” shouted a man from inside the coach. “Besides, you’re not our driver! I can see that now you’re facing us . . . he wasn’t a bit like you from the front. Mind, he needed a haircut an’ all.”

  Claude noticed my presence just outside the bus and, blinking with some embarrassment, asked, “Can you sort this lot out, Mr Rhea? I’m not in Driffield, am I? Can you explain that to ’em?”

  “No, Claude, this is Ashfordly. You’ve got that bit right.” I climbed into the bus to address the passengers. “So,” I asked them, “where are you all from?”

  “Driffield,” responded several. “We’re on a mystery tour; we’ve been to Scarborough to see the Beatles. See ’em, not listen to ’em, that is.”

  “Then you’ve got on to the wrong bus at Scarborough,” I said. Turning to Claude, I repeated that statement. “Claude, you’ve brought the wrong busload home.”

  “But I am in the right bus!” he snapped. This is Arnold’s bus, isn’t it?”

  Then I realised what had gone w
rong.

  “It is Arnold’s bus,” I agreed. “His new bus! But it’s still in the blue colours of the chap he bought it from; Arnold hasn’t had time to change the livery,” I said, walking to the rear. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it still has the previous owner’s name on the back!”

  And it had. The legend on the back of the bus said “Brougham’s Char-a-banc Company” with a Driffield address. I returned to the door of the bus and asked the lady who stood on the top of the steps.

  “Was your bus trip arranged with Brougham’s?”

  “Aye,” she said. “It allus is. We allus uses Ted Brougham’s buses; he fixed this mystery tour.”

  “Well, the mystery tour’s not over I said,” and explained what had happened. “Claude, keep them here for a few minutes, get them to go into the café for a cup of tea and a bit of cake or something. I’ll ring Brougham’s from the police station and explain what’s happened. I reckon you’re in for a nice trip to Driffield.”

  “Driffield? But that’ll take all my profit from this trip? And who’s paying for those cups of tea?” he asked, as the pensioners made for the café in the marketplace.

  “I’m sure you can sort something out, Claude,” I grinned. “And make sure they all go to the toilet before they set off, otherwise you’ll be stopping behind every convenient hedge between here and the Yorkshire Wolds.”

  Ted Brougham was very relieved to hear from me. His driver had delivered to Driffield a busload of passengers who said they’d come from Ashfordly and they were now in a café having a cup of tea and a cake. He had no idea where his own passengers had gone, although, from enquiries he’d since made, he guessed they had been delivered to Ashfordly. But he had no point of contact there. We agreed that each coach should set off for the exchange journey in half-an-hours’ time along a predetermined route. This meant they would meet halfway between Driffield and Ashfordly and swap passengers. Malton was almost exactly halfway and so it was decided that the exchange would occur in the marketplace at Malton.

  “Be careful, Claude, make sure your lot get back on the right bus, we don’t want the Driffield folks coming back here again!”

  “This is going to cost me a fortune in extra fuel, Mr Rhea, Arnold won’t be at all pleased . . .”

  But the respective busloads were delighted. When they arrived at Malton, there was an old-time tea-dance in the Milton Rooms and so they all disappeared inside for a waltz or two, with more cups of tea and cakes, before finally returning home. As Mrs Brown said to me afterwards, “By, that was a real good mystery tour, Mr Rhea, like a party it was. We went to places I never knew existed. I mean, I’ve never been to Driffield in my life and I did enjoy that tea-dance at Malton. I danced with some lovely chaps from Driffield, but I waltzed my heart out with Mr Penniston. He’s a real good dancer, you know, and he wants to take me to the next dance, but I’ve no idea why we went to that theatre at Scarborough. That was a real waste of time, we didn’t do anything, we only saw a crowd of people making a lot of noise, shouting and screaming and blocking the road. I never saw any of the Beatles. Unless it was so we would all be made to get on the wrong bus as a surprise, eh? That’s the way to run mystery tours, Mr Rhea. Make folks think they’ve got on the wrong buses!”

  “I’ll have a word with Arnold Merryweather about it,” I assured her.

  * * *

  In the early 1960s, the roads of England underwent a massive change which included the introduction of motorways. Modelled on the Italian autostrada and the German autobahn, construction of our motorways was authorised by section 11 of the Highways Act of 1959, which called them “special roads”. In 1959, 80 miles of motorway were constructed and the Motorways Traffic Regulations of that year laid down the rules for driving on motorways.

  One item of interest is that there was no general speed limit on motorways in their early days, although vehicles drawing some types of trailer were restricted to 40 mph. In 1960, a further 45.5 miles of motorway were built with 22 miles in 1961, 52.5 in 1962, 93.5 in 1963, a mere 15.5 miles in 1964 followed by a steady increase in the number of completed motorway miles for the remainder of the 1960s. In spite of protests that they would harm the environment, more motorway miles were completed in the 1970s — and the work continues.

  This and other dramatic changes to our system of roads scarcely affected the people of the North York Moors where roundabouts, traffic lights, filter systems and advisory road markings were almost unknown. Even now, as I write these notes in 1995, I am many miles from a set of traffic lights. Way back in the genial 1960s, however, the people of the moors pottered along their lovely lanes blissfully unaware of the dramatic changes being wrought upon the highways in other parts of England. One example of this occurred when a farmer, driving a tractor along the road near Aidensfield, suddenly turned right without any form of signal and entered a farmyard. This caused a motorist behind him to brake suddenly and swerve into a ditch, whereupon the motorist bounded out of his car to vent his feelings upon the tractor driver. The farmer said, in all honesty, “But I always turn in here, I live here.” Clearly, that was something the visiting driver should have known!

  As our road system began to change, roundabouts were constructed on some main roads which bordered the moors, the roads were subjected to new designs and markings, traffic lights began to appear at crossroads, junctions and upon pedestrian crossings in towns and complicated new requirements for driving emerged.

  Nonetheless, very little changed at Aidensfield, other than the occasional repair to a pothole or the clearing of a blocked drain. As a consequence, when the drivers of Aidensfield ventured beyond their normal limits, they found a driver’s life fraught with some difficulty. Double roundabouts, filter traffic lights, multi-lane approaches to towns, overhead signals, lane discipline and traffic signs with pictures on them instead of words were all very baffling. Equally baffling were the road signs which appeared when work was being undertaken on the major roads — diversions, contraflow systems, tiers of traffic lights, white lines, yellow lines and yellow crisscross stripes in the middle of the road. Everything seemed designed to cause confusion.

  In the early days of Claude Jeremiah Greengrass’s work in Arnold Merryweather’s bus, there was a lot of change to the major roads which were not far beyond the boundaries of the moors. Road-widening schemes were added with dual carriageways being commonplace; some market towns were bypassed, roundabouts and filter roads were added where crossroads had previously existed; roads were straightened out and corners removed while hills and hollows were levelled, all in the name of greater road safety. But the older people, and those with limited driving experience found such conditions very harrowing and the police were constantly having to rescue motorists who found themselves driving in the wrong direction on dual carriageways or abruptly terminating their journey in the middle of a roundabout which had suddenly appeared where crossroads used to be. Some found themselves in places they never intended and one old gentleman even drove to Edinburgh having intended to reach London. He had entered the wrong carriageway on the A1.

  It was in the midst of all this modernisation that an enterprising tycoon decided to open a vast indoor shopping complex at Middlesbrough. It was known as the Ironmasters’ and General Shopping Centre because it was built near the railway station on the site of the former Ironmasters’ and General Exchange, the latter demolished after construction almost a century earlier in 1868. Inevitably, the name of the old centre was abbreviated to IGC, and so the new shopping complex became widely known as the IGSC — the Ironmasters’ and General Shopping Centre. It comprised a huge range of shops under one roof, along with a community centre, restaurants, a library and other services. In many ways, it was ahead of its time.

  The opening ceremony was a splendid affair with a prize draw allowing members of the public to attend as guests. Organisations within a forty-mile radius were invited to submit their names for the draw some time ahead of the grand opening, each being allowed to bring up
to fifty guests if they won.

  The names would be entered in the draw and the ten winning organisations would be announced before the event. They, along with their guests, would be given VIP treatment; they would be invited to the opening ceremony at noon and given mementos of the day; lunch with wine would be provided free at 1 p.m., and, most important, they would be allowed the whole afternoon to shop until 5.30 p.m. at half price at any of the stores within the new centre. The centre’s beautiful new shops were closed to the general public that afternoon.

  And among the names of the ten winning organisations was Aidensfield Women’s Institute. This prompted massive excitement in the village, some of the ladies never having visited such a vast shopping complex and certainly not as a VIP. The secretary had no trouble recruiting fifty ladies for the outing. She had a word with Arnold Merryweather who said he would provide his newest coach for the day. It was now tastefully decorated in his own tan livery but, as one of Arnold’s standby drivers was on holiday, he would have to recruit another. He asked Claude Jeremiah Greengrass to drive the ladies to Middlesbrough and he readily agreed — for a price.

  At ten o’clock on the morning of the grand opening ceremony, I was patrolling Aidensfield and noticed the bus parked outside the post office. Although it was in August, it was a cold, miserable day with drizzle and low clouds, but the conditions had not deterred lots of extremely smart ladies with big hats. Equipped with umbrellas and suitably large handbags bulging with plenty of cash, they were climbing on board as Claude fussed over them like a broody hen worrying about its chickens.

  “Where to today, Claude?” I asked out of interest, the event having slipped my mind.

  “That new shopping centre at Middlesbrough, the IGSC,” he beamed. “Our WI’s won VIP seats. Even bus drivers get looked after — free lunch and cut-price shopping. That’s me. I’m enjoying these driving jobs, Constable, believe me.”