CONSTABLE NICK BOX SET 6-10 five feel-good village cozy mysteries

by Nicholas Rhea

  During his weekend visits, I learned his name was James Patrington; once or twice as I patrolled past his gate on my little Francis Barnett, I would stop for a chat, ostensibly to pass the time of day and to make him aware that I was keeping an eye on his premises. Frequently, I found him in the garden dressed in a pair of old grey trousers, a holey brown sweater and Wellingtons. Sometimes, his wife was there too and one day they invited me in for a coffee.

  They were a handsome, friendly couple; he was in his mid-forties and a shade less than six feet tall. Stockily built, he was balding and had once had a head of thick, black curly hair, evidence of which lingered about his neck and curled over his collar. Round-faced with dark, intelligent eyes, he smoked a heavy pipe, which never seemed to leave him, and told me he was a partner in a firm of city insurance brokers.

  His wife, Lucy, would be in her late thirties and was almost as tall as her husband; slim and elegant, she had dark hair too, and this was showing signs of premature greying, something she did not try to hide and which therefore made her most attractive. She had very slender hands, I noticed, the kind one would expect in a piano player and her peach-complexioned face always bore a pleasant smile.

  I was to learn that she ran a fashion shop in Chelsea and that its demands did not permit her to come to Coltsfoot Cottage every weekend. James, however, always seemed to be there from late on a Friday evening until late on a Sunday evening. I knew that he worshipped the cottage and he asked me to keep an eye upon it during his absence. This I was happy to do. I was supplied with both his business and home address, and his telephone number at both places in case of problems.

  “Come and see my cacti,” he invited one Saturday afternoon when I called. He was alone and led me into the conservatory at the rear where I saw hundreds of tiny plant pots. All were neatly labelled with obscure names and some plants bore incredibly beautiful flowers. “I grow these for fun, I suppose,” he said. “I sell some, but I reckon that I’ve every known variety here and at my other home . . .”

  And so I became on good terms with the Patringtons. I cannot claim friendship, however; the relationship was that of the village bobby and those who lived on his patch, a friendly albeit business-like acquaintanceship. But both of them always made me welcome and sometimes, I felt, when James was alone, he was glad of someone to talk to. Gradually, he did make his own friends in the area, people of the same professional class to which he belonged, and I would see him en route to the local inns or restaurants, or perhaps heading for a cocktail party or drinks gathering at one of the homes in the area.

  Lucy, when she came, did not often leave the cottage. Sometimes, she drove up from London with James and sometimes, if she had to return early, she would drive up alone in her red MGB. Clearly, her own commercial interests kept her very busy and when she did come to Coltsfoot Cottage, she wished for nothing more than a quiet weekend before the blazing log fire in its oak-beamed inglenook, and perhaps a pleasant dinner with James at one of our splendid local inns or restaurants.

  They came and they went, not interfering in the village activities, but simply enjoying the unhurried pace and solitude offered by Coltsfoot Cottage. Incomers though they were, they had rescued the old house from destruction and decay, for I’m sure that no local person could or would have raised the capital necessary to buy and renovate it.

  Once the Patringtons were established, I saw less of them; every so often, though, I would receive a telephone call from James advising me that he would not be at Coltsfoot that coming weekend and asking if I would keep an eye on the cottage during my patrols. It would be about two years after he had bought the cottage, that their pretty little home hit the headlines of the national newspapers. It happened like this.

  High on the hills behind Aidensfield lies the Yorkshire and North of England Sailplane Club, one of the busy gliding clubs of this area. Gliding is very popular from here because the lofty moors provide ideal conditions for launching these engineless aircraft. The thermals created by the ranging hills and dales give the light aircraft a tremendous uplift on rising currents of air, while the views from aloft are staggering in their range and beauty, and the peace they signify.

  Since the war, gliding in these elegant sailplanes has become more and more popular and the thriving club now has its own landing strip, runway and control tower, along with administrative and social buildings. There is also a caravan site for its members. By the time I arrived at Aidensfield, the prestige of this club had become such that it hosted events which were of considerable importance in the gliding world — these included both local and national championships, as well as club gliding events and social functions.

  During the long, lazy summer which marked the Patringtons’ second anniversary in Coltsfoot Cottage, the club hosted the British Long Distance Sailplane Championships. This attracted a host of enthusiasts to the area who were accommodated at local hotels, inns, boarding-houses and cottages. They swamped the nearby caravan sites and their presence brought wealth to the area. These people had money and cheerfully spent it.

  Many of them were from the world of business and commerce and I wondered if James Patrington had joined the Club. As I patrolled my beat during the two weeks of the Championships, I could imagine him soaring aloft in a glider as he enjoyed the solitude and silence of the skies above the North York Moors. Perhaps he was involved, perhaps he wasn’t. I did not know.

  But, like all previous sailplane championships, there were problems. The more regular of these problems involved a glider coming to earth in an unexpected place. With so many competitors and so many engineless aircraft in the sky, I suppose it is inevitable that some of them fail to remain aloft or cannot make the return journey back to base. The result was that over the two weeks of this event, some six or seven gliders crash-landed around the Club premises. Fortunately, none of these resulted in serious injury to the pilot or anyone else.

  I witnessed one of these crash landings. I was patrolling my patch one Saturday afternoon and had parked my Francis Barnett in Crampton. I was performing a short foot patrol around that village and had just emerged from the village shop when my attention was drawn to a whistling sound overhead. And there, floating dangerously low over the village, was a gleaming white glider. It didn’t need an expert to realise that it had lost its necessary height, and that it was coming rapidly to earth. To be honest, it was the sort of thing the local people had come to expect and Ryedale does possess many suitable places upon which to safely land.

  With the wind hissing about its framework, it came frighteningly low over the chimneys and pantile roofs and it was banking as it circled in a desperate search for a safe landing site. Beyond the village there were flat fields and indeed, there is a disused wartime airfield — I felt sure the pilot was urging his downward floating craft towards that.

  As I hurried between the cottages to watch the pilot’s frantic efforts to both save the village from danger and to safely bring down his aircraft, I lost sight of the glider. It disappeared behind a row of cottages as I realised it could never regain the air. It was far too low; it had lost all its altitude.

  I hurried to my motorcycle, activated the radio and called my Control Room.

  “Delta Alpha Two-Nine,” I radioed. “Location Crampton. It appears that a glider has crash-landed in the vicinity of Crampton — am investigating. Over.”

  “Received Two-Nine. Please provide sit-rep as soon as possible. Control out.”

  With several villagers watching with interest, I motorcycled out of Crampton towards Brantsford, for that road led into a bewildering array of narrow lanes and tiny hamlets. The glider was last seen heading in that direction; I was sure it had come down somewhere in that maze of lanes and fields, or even on the disused airfield. It could not have flown far and there was no sign of it in the air.

  As I drove along the lane which ran through the old disused airfield, there was no sign of the glider, so I turned left and chugged along, sometimes standing on the fo
otrests so that I could peer over the hedges into the large fields on either side. I was now heading for Seavham.

  I drove through the hamlet and remained alert for any signs or news that the glider had landed nearby. But there was no one in the street and the Post Office was closed. At least ten minutes had elapsed since my sighting, so I continued through the village and turned left at the end, passing the oval pond which was overlooked by two pretty thatched cottages.

  This lane took me on a circular route back to Crampton and I felt that the aircraft couldn’t have travelled much further. It hadn’t.

  As I crested a gentle rise in the lane, I could see its tail sticking into the air like that of a diving whale and I could distinguish one crooked wing behind a copse of sycamore trees. I accelerated now, anxious to save life if that proved necessary, and within a minute was drawing up at the scene of the crash.

  I was horrified.

  The glider had come down squarely on the top of Coltsfoot Cottage. The nose had penetrated the newly-thatched roof and had thrust piles of straw on to the earth around the house.

  Both the nose and fuselage were hidden deep inside the walls, while one wing had cracked off completely and was lying in the garden. The other was sticking out of the cottage, its fuselage-end deep inside the walls and the slender tip rising awkwardly to the sky like a huge broken feather. And the tail stuck up too, like a sentinel.

  For one fleeting moment, I thought it looked like a giant white seagull sitting on a nest, but this was serious.

  I parked my motorcycle on the road outside and ran into the grounds. My first contact was with a woman.

  She was comforting James Patrington as he sat on the lawn. She saw me approaching.

  “Thank God,” she said.

  “Anyone badly hurt?” was my first question.

  “This gentleman’s wife,” she said. “We were driving past at the time . . . we saw it all . . . my husband’s rushed her in his car to the hospital. Brantsford Cottage Hospital . . . she had a knock on the head . . .”

  “And the pilot?”

  “Him as well, he was bleeding from his face and leg . . . my husband’s taken him as well, this gentleman isn’t badly hurt. Just shocked, I think. No one’s badly hurt.”

  The first aid training I’d received told me that shock alone could be a severe medical problem, so I radioed Control Room and provided a brief outline of the incident, then asked for an ambulance to take James to hospital as well, for a check-up. The good news was that no one was seriously hurt.

  From this point, there would be all kinds of official bodies to inform; all that action would be undertaken by the Force Control Room who would operate from a prearranged set of instructions for dealing with crashed aircraft.

  My priority now was to ensure that James received immediate medical attention, and that there was no immediate danger from the aircraft or the house. Happily, there was no aircraft fuel to worry about and there were no fires burning in the house. That reduced the fire risk enormously but it couldn’t be ruled out. I decided to keep everyone away from the house and to preserve the scene against the sightseers who would inevitably arrive.

  As I marshalled my thoughts I made sure that all the relevant services were notified and that attention was given to the people and the premises. But I could have wept at the sight of the cottage. Perhaps, because it was a thatched roof, it could be repaired fairly easily and likewise because it was a soft landing, there had been no serious injury. It looked a real mess.

  Later from home, I rang Brantsford Cottage Hospital to learn that James had suffered severe shock and had been detained. The pilot, a man called Alastair Campbell from Edinburgh, had a broken leg and severe bruising. He had also been detained. I then asked about Mrs Patrington, but the hospital had no record of her. When I added that she was a victim of the glider crash, I was told she had been removed to Scarborough General Hospital for treatment.

  As I looked up the telephone number of Scarborough Hospital, my own telephone rang. When I picked up the receiver, a woman’s voice asked, “Hello, is that PC Rhea?”

  “Speaking,” I acknowledged. “Who’s that?”

  “Lucy Patrington,” she responded. “I’ve just heard the news on the radio, is it true? That a glider’s crashed into our cottage?”

  I must admit that I was thrown completely off my stride by this call and for a moment, I did not reply. Was she really ringing me to ask this, or was she in hospital, dazed perhaps? I wondered if the shock of the event had caused her to lose all memories of the crash. Maybe she’d been unsettled by the trauma of the event?

  “Hello,” she said anew.

  “Oh sorry, Mrs Patrington,” I apologised, “I was completing something . . . er . . . yes, I’m afraid it is true . . . James is in the Cottage Hospital at Brantsford now, but he’s not hurt. Just a check visit. I was about to call and ask after you,” I rabbited on. “Now, are you fit to be released . . . I mean, should you be out of bed . . . ?”

  “Released, Mr Rhea?” she cried. “What on earth are you talking about? I’m in my shop in London, and James has gone to Scotland for a weekend seminar . . .”

  Then her voice trailed away and I knew I had let some sort of cat out of some sort of bag.

  “James has not gone to Scotland, has he?” She put to me in no uncertain terms.

  “All I know,” I told her, “is that he was at the house when the glider came down. Maybe he stopped off en route to Scotland? I can confirm that a glider has landed on your roof, and no one is seriously hurt, although there is a good deal of damage . . .”

  “The news said a woman had been taken to hospital, Mr Rhea,” she pressed me.

  “She had gone before I arrived . . . I don’t know who she was. I am, at this moment, trying to find out who she is and the extent of her injuries. Perhaps it was someone from the village, visiting the cottage . . .” Rather irrationally and without any real reason, I found myself defending James Patrington.

  “Perhaps it was that bitch of a secretary of his,” she snapped. “It serves them right!” and she slammed down the telephone.

  So because something fell out of the sky, James Patrington’s little secret had been revealed to the whole world and a few weeks later, the now deserted cottage, still in its damaged condition, was once again put on the market. I never saw James and Lucy again.

  I often wonder if he had his cottage insured.

  I was more directly involved in another story of love which came about because of a broken romance. This one was almost as unlikely as the Patrington saga.

  At three o’clock one morning, my telephone rang. It was downstairs in the office attached to my house, and its continuous shrilling gradually penetrated my sleep. As I staggered downstairs, I rubbed my eyes and tried to shake myself into clarity of action before I lifted the noisy instrument. It was a call from a kiosk.

  “PC Rhea, Aidensfield,” I announced, shivering as my bare feet grew cold upon the bare composition floor.

  At the other end of the line, coins were inserted and the pipping ceased, then all I could hear was sobbing. I waited for a brief moment, hoping that the person would say something, but the sobbing continued.

  “Hello?” I called into the phone. “Hello, this is the police.”

  It continued and I realised Mary had joined me; she stood at my side, wrapping her dressing-gown tightly around her slim body. She’d had the sense to put on her slippers.

  “What is it?” she asked. With late calls of this nature, it was natural to think it was a personal family crisis of some kind.

  “Somebody sobbing. Listen,” and I passed the handset to her. She listened and passed it back.

  “Hello,” I tried again and increased the volume of my voice this time, “Hello, this is PC Rhea speaking.”

  “I want to come and see you,” said a faint voice, a female voice, through the sobbing.

  “Who is it?” I asked, holding the handset so that Mary could hear both sides of the conversati
on.

  “I must come,” continued the voice. “Now, or I’ll jump under the train . . .”

  “What train? Look, who are you? I want to help you.” I had detected a note of real desperation in that voice and did not think it was a joke of any kind. “Where are you?” I added.

  “Newcastle Railway Station,” she sobbed, “and if you don’t say yes, I’m going to jump off the platform . . .”

  Mary was hissing in my ear.

  “For heaven’s sake say yes,” she snapped. “Don’t string her along, don’t make it appear you’re not going to help . . .”

  “But . . .” I began as my suspicious police mind began thinking all manner of thoughts.

  “Do it,” said Mary.

  “Look,” I said to the caller, “I’ll welcome you, we’ll welcome you, my wife and I. You can come and see me. But how . . .”

  “I can get the next train to York.” Even now, the sobbing sounded less dramatic.

  “Yes, all right,” I said, “I’ll meet you there, at York Station.”

  “Thank you, oh, thank you,” breathed the voice, sniffing as the sobs subsided. “Oh thank you . . .”

  The pips sounded and the call was abruptly ended.

  I stared at my handset and asked Mary, “Well, what do you make of that?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “One of your ex-girlfriends getting worked up about something? A blast from the past? Or have you been misbehaving when you’ve been away on your various courses? Maybe you’ve broken someone’s little heart?” There was a trusting twinkle in Mary’s eye, but I knew that this call could have been misconstrued in all kinds of ways.

  “I don’t know who she is or what she wants!” I began a weak protest . . .

  “Then you’ll have to go to York and find out. Bring her here,” said Mary. “She sounds as if she needs help and friendship, whoever she is and whatever she’s done.”

  There are times when one is thankful for a marvellous, understanding wife who possesses oceans of common sense, and this was such a time. Policemen especially require wives who have all the qualities of angels coupled with a high measure of earthly common sense. So, in response to Mary’s advice I nodded in agreement and said, “OK, I’ll have a cup of tea and get dressed. I’ll drive to York to meet our mystery lady.”