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

by Nicholas Rhea

  It was estimated they would return to base around 7 p.m., and so I decided I must interview them. At 7 p.m. I drove to their office and waited. They were fairly prompt, because they pulled their pantechnicon into the yard at ten past seven. They garaged the huge lorry and went into the office to book off, and so I walked in behind them. They were a pair of men in their forties, each about five feet six inches tall and rather solidly built. They were like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, I thought, one sporting a bushy black moustache and the other having his untidy hair long, straggly and probably unwashed.

  ‘Now then,’ I said, ‘I’m D/PC Rhea from Eltering. Can I have a brief word?’

  ‘We’re supposed to finish at seven,’ said Tweedledum.

  ‘We’re working over now,’ said Tweedledee. ‘The boss doesn’t like paying overtime, ‘specially on Saturdays . . .’

  ‘It won’t take a minute.’ I stood before them as they both stared at me. ‘Now, did you shift the furniture from High Forest Terrace today? A Mr Clough’s house?’

  ‘We did. 14 High Forest Terrace to 27 Henson Green Lane, York. Full house contents. Here, this is the key to the Clough job. We leave it here,’ and Tweedledum plonked it in a tray on the desk, clearly proud of his firm’s system for such things.

  ‘Did you come across anything odd at Clough’s house?’

  They looked at each other, frowning, and then Tweedledee said, ‘No, nowt really. No winding staircase. No narrow passages. No trouble at all, no wardrobe that wouldn’t come downstairs, no iron-framed pianos, no fish-tanks full of guppies. No carpets nailed down. No, no problems. It was an ordinary job, really. Cheap stuff, most of it. Nowt very good, I’d say, no mirrors or marble washstands worth smashing . . .’

  I found this an odd interview, to say the least, for I was sure the body must have been there as they worked. I knew I must ask the direct question.

  ‘And Mr Clough? Was he there?’

  ‘There was a chap there, yes.’

  ‘Where was he? What was he doing?’ I asked.

  Tweedledum responded. ‘He was upstairs on t’bed. Dead, I reckon. We tried to rouse him, but he wouldn’t have any of it, so we thought he must have passed away.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ I asked.

  ‘Laid him on t’floor while we shifted his bed. Rolled him over to shift the mat we’d put him on, and left him there. He’d got the stuff ready, mind, pots and pans packed in boxes, ornaments in tea-chests and such like. He’d done a fair job of packing; that’s what I said at the time, didn’t I? Many younger folks would have done a lot worse . . . some can’t pack for toffee . . . anyroad, it wasn’t a long job, not as it would have been if we’d had to pack right from the start.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell anybody — about Mr Clough, I mean?’

  They looked at one another as if this was a stupid question. ‘Nay, lad, that was nowt to do with us.’ Tweedledee acted as spokesman now. ‘We were there to shift furniture, not to do t’undertaker’s job. T’only problem was finding somewhere to put him while we demolished his bed, but he was no trouble really. We got finished on time.’

  ‘But don’t you think you should have called the doctor or someone?’

  ‘He was dead. There was nowt a doctor could do,’ said Tweedledee. ‘Besides, our boss says we’ve not to get involved in things that don’t concern us. Our job is to shift furniture and to make sure it’s shifted on time, with no overtime. Very particular is our boss about suchlike.’

  Tweedledum then added his wisdom: ‘If we did all t’things folks ask us while we’re moving stuff, we’d never be finished. One woman wanted us to help paper t’ceiling, and a feller once asked if I’d help him fix his leaking toilet basin . . . so our boss says never do other folk’s jobs. See to your own, he says . . . so shifting bodies is not our job, Mr Rhea. That’s for t’undertaker, so we didn’t get involved. We had a timetable to keep, you see, and there’s no time to go chasing folks and ordering coffins and things when you’ve got to get loaded up and unpacked in t’same day.’

  I took a statement from them and was satisfied in my own mind that poor old Mr Clough had packed his belongings the previous night and afterwards had simply passed away on his bed. He had not locked up that night, and these characters had simply let themselves in that morning to go about their work. And so they had, without letting a dead body interrupt their tight timetable.

  I left them. I was amazed that they could ignore such a thing, and I wondered if they’d claim overtime from their boss for the time they spent with me.

  I also wondered what they would have done if Mr Clough had been lying there in his coffin with the lid shut. I reckon they’d have moved him to his new house in York.

  If the behaviour of those removal men seems bizarre, I can support it with a similar tale from a village on the moors.

  I was working one Thursday morning at Eltering Police Station when a call came from a hiker. He was ringing from a telephone kiosk at Briggsby and sounded panic-stricken. I happened to be near the phone in the police station when it rang, and as PC Rogers was dealing with a motorist at the counter, I answered.

  ‘Eltering Police,’ I said.

  ‘Hello?’ the voice sounded full of anxiety. ‘Hello? Oh, is that the police?’

  ‘Detective PC Rhea speaking,’ I said slowly.

  ‘Oh, thank God for that! Look, I’m ringing from a kiosk at Briggsby. You know it?’

  ‘I do,’ I said, for it was on my own rural beat.

  ‘There’s a body in the church,’ he gasped. ‘Dead . . .’

  ‘Maybe there’s going to be a funeral,’ I tried to soothe him. ‘Bodies are taken into church before the funeral . . .’

  ‘In coffins, yes, but this one is lying on one of the pews. Near the front. He’s got a notice on him saying, “Pray for the soul of Mr Aiden Bradley”.’

  ‘Is it a joke of some kind?’ I asked. ‘Is someone playing a joke on you?’

  ‘Look, Officer, I know a dead body when I see one. I’m a tutor in first aid, and I am a responsible person. If you want to check, my name is Welham, George Welham, and I live at Moorways, Albion Road, Middlesbrough.’

  ‘Point taken, Mr Welham. I’ll come straight away. Will you wait? I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

  I told John Rogers where I was going and what the call had alleged, and he chuckled. He thought it was some kind of village prank, a joke against the verger or the vicar, but logged it in our occurrence book.

  I drove out to Briggsby, a pretty community high on the moors. It comprises a handful of cottages, one or two farms and a tiny parish church which perches on a small patch of rising ground. I eased to a halt outside and saw a man, in full hiking gear, waiting for me. His rucksack stood on the wall of the graveyard. I could see the relief in his face as I stepped from the car. I introduced myself.

  ‘This is a most unlikely story,’ I said. ‘Sorry if I sounded full of disbelief . . .’

  ‘I think I’d have done the same!’ he smiled. ‘I’ve been back inside once or twice, just to convince myself, but he’s still there. He is dead, Officer; he is not pretending; he is not asleep, and I don’t think the notice is a joke of any sort.’

  George Welham was a tall, slim man in his thirties; he wore heavy hiking boots, thick tweed trousers and a warm red sweater.

  ‘Show me,’ I invited.

  He led me into the dim interior and we walked in silence towards the altar. At the front of the pews, he halted and pointed to the first pew on the left.

  And there, as he had stated, was the body of an elderly man. He was fully clothed in a dark suit and was lying on the pew with his feet towards the aisle. His hands were crossed upon his chest. The solid backrest of the pew shielded him from view, and even when one was sitting in the second pew, he was almost out of sight; I wondered how long he had been here. A congregation could assemble without realising he was lying here, unless anyone wanted to sit beside him. He could have been here for ages . . . but I felt not. Decomposi
tion had not yet set in, although he was exuding a bit of a pong. As Welham had mentioned on the telephone, there was a handwritten notice on his chest, held secure beneath his hands, and it read, ‘Pray for the soul of Mr Aiden Bradley.’

  I felt his hands and face; he was cold, and rigor mortis had set in. He was as dead as the proverbial dodo. I asked Mr Welham a few pertinent questions, such as the time he had found him, whether he had moved him or called a doctor. He had done neither, and I then allowed him to leave. The problem of Mr Aiden Bradley was now mine. I searched his pockets for something by which to confirm his likely identity but, apart from a few coins, a comb and a handkerchief, there was nothing.

  There were the usual formalities to arrange, such as certification of death, but how had the man come to be here and who had placed the notice on his chest? I did not know Mr Bradley and felt he was not a local man.

  I decided to visit the adjoining farm to begin my enquiries, and to use their telephone to call a doctor and to arrange for the shell to be brought from Eltering.

  ‘Bradley?’ responded Joe Crawford, the farmer who lived next door to the church. ‘Nivver ’eard of ’im. He’s not a local, I’ll tell thoo that for nowt.’

  ‘You’ve no vicar here, have you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nay, lad, he comes in fre’ Crampton. Covers Crampton, Briggsby and Gelderslack parishes. ’E lives in Crampton.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll have a word with him. Does anybody in the village have a key for the church?’

  ‘Aye, awd Mrs Dodson at Forge Cottage. She’s t’cleaner.’

  I explained the problem, but it didn’t seem to worry Joe Crawford; as he said, ‘Yon choch ’as a few bodies in it iwery year, Mr Rhea, so another ’un isn’t owt to shout about.’

  I called Dr McGee, who had to travel from Elsinby, and in the meantime I went to see awd Mrs Dodson. She was a lady in her eighties who had been church cleaner for more than sixty years.

  ‘I’d like to borrow your key for the church.’ I spoke loudly, noticing the hearing-aid unit strapped to her belt. ‘I might have to lock it until we’ve investigated a matter.’

  ‘Summat wrang, is there?’ she shouted at me.

  ‘There’s a dead man in church.’ I knew I would have trouble explaining the matter in detail. ‘We might have to seal the church until we’ve investigated his death.’

  ‘I hope he hasn’t made a mess,’ she bellowed. ‘I swept out last week. I should ’ave been in this morning, but my brush head fell off.’

  ‘It’s a Mr Bradley, I think,’ I told her.

  ‘He rents that cottage at the end of Green Lane.’ The words rang in my ears. ‘He comes for weekends and holidays.’

  That explained why I did not know him.

  ‘Where from?’ I asked. ‘Do you know? Has he any family?’

  ‘Bradford,’ she said. ‘He’s a retired wool merchant. I clean for him, an’ all. After I do the church, I do his cottage, but my brush head’s fallen off . . .’

  ‘I’ll fix it,’ I said.

  She brought it to me, together with a hammer and a box of nails, and I set about securing the brush head to the shaft. As I hammered in the nail, she said, ‘Ah’ve had yon brush for thirty-five years, and all Ah’ve had for it is three new heads and two new shafts.’

  ‘Really?’ I wondered if this was a kind of joke, but she sounded serious and proud of her brush.

  ‘Brushes were made to last in them days,’ she beamed.

  ‘Did you go to the church this morning?’ I asked her as I finished hammering the nail through the hole in the head.

  ‘No,’ she hollered. ‘Thursdays is my day, but because that head fell off . . .’

  ‘So who would go in this morning?’

  ‘The vicar,’ she boomed. ‘He has his own key. He has a service on Thursday mornings, ten o’clock. Not many folks go, mind, not like they used to. Mr Bradley allus went if he was staying here . . .’

  ‘I’ll wait at the church for the doctor,’ I told her. ‘And then I’ll take Mr Bradley away to the mortuary. If anybody comes asking about him, relations mebbe, tell them to get in touch with me at Eltering Police Station. Rhea is the name. Then I’ll lock the church and bring you the key; don’t unlock it until I tell you. I’ll probably ring later today, when we know whether this is a suspicious death.’

  ‘222,’ she barked. ‘My number.’

  ‘Thanks,’ and I left with the key in my hand.

  ‘Bye, Mr Rhea,’ she thundered as I made my way back to the church.

  Dr Archie McGee, smelling of whisky in spite of the hour, arrived and I showed him the corpse.

  ‘Dead,’ he said. ‘Very dead, Nick, old son. I’ll certify that but I cannot certify the cause. He was not my patient; never seen the follow before.’

  So that meant a post-mortem. However, I thanked him and off he went. The van containing the shell arrived shortly afterwards, and we loaded Mr Bradley, complete with his request to God, and sent him on his way to the mortuary. Later I would ask Bradford police to trace his relatives and hoped his cottage would reveal an address at which we could begin; that had to be searched next. I did find an address in his bedroom at the cottage and would relay that to Bradford for enquiries to be made.

  My immediate job now was to find the vicar. I drove to his small, modern vicarage at Crampton and found him in the garden tending a border. He was hoeing out some weeds and smiled as I approached.

  ‘Ah, Mr Rhea. Such a nice surprise. We seldom get a visit by the police.’

  The Reverend Jason Chandler was a curious man, in my view. He had done several jobs before entering the ministry of the Church of England, including being a coastguard and a salesman of women’s lingerie, and he lived a life remote from the parishioners. He seldom entered the social life of the area and, as a bachelor, found it difficult to mix with the families whom his church served. In his late forties, he was always pleasant when I met him.

  ‘Mr Chandler,’ I began, ‘I’ve an odd event to enquire about,’ and I related the story of Mr Bradley’s remains being found by the hiker.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said without hesitation. ‘He was in my congregation this morning, Mr Rhea. A congregation of one, I might add. And then he collapsed and died. He was sitting in the first pew, so I laid him out and put a sign up asking for prayers. I do hope he goes to Heaven, Mr Rhea. He was a truly generous man, a keen supporter of our little church at Briggsby.’

  ‘Did you call the doctor?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, no. I, well, had reached the most solemn part of the service, preparing for communion, you know, when it happened, I had reached the consecration of bread and wine and could not interrupt that . . . so when I got to him, it was clear he was dead. I was a coastguard, you know, very highly trained in first aid, and, well, there was no doubt about it. He was too late to receive communion, you know. He passed away just a few minutes too soon, and I know that would not have pleased him. He did like to receive communion, Mr Rhea. Anyway, calling a doctor would have been a total waste of time, far too late to revive him. Far too late. God works in mysterious ways, Mr Rhea.’

  ‘You can say that again!’ I could not help myself uttering that remark. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘After I’d laid him out, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, nothing. I felt I ought to put the sign on him to tell visitors he was dead, rather than asleep. People do fall asleep in church, as I’m sure you know, but I felt I ought to make it quite clear that this was a dead man.’

  ‘Which you did. Then what?’

  ‘Well, I had another service immediately afterwards, at Crampton, and had to leave straight away, otherwise I would have kept that congregation waiting — Lord and Lady Crampton always attend on Thursdays, you see.’

  ‘It’s a few minutes’ drive to Crampton, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ he oozed. ‘There is not a moment to spare on that trip, and I had to be on time . . . I knew Mrs Dodson would see to Mr Bradley. She does his cottage, y
ou know. She’s the church cleaner, as well, so I knew he was in good hands. It’s her day in, you see, and I knew she would find him. She was due to do the brasses today and, well, I felt she could not help noticing him.’

  ‘She didn’t go in this morning.’ I sighed, wondering how on earth people could behave like this, and added for good measure, ‘The head fell off her brush.’

  ‘Oh, dear, I do hope she gets it fixed. That church floor does get very dusty, from the road, you know, passing traffic . . .’

  I had found the last person to see poor old Mr Bradley when he was alive, and I had an account of his final moments, such as they were. After taking a formal statement from the Reverend Mr Chandler, I left him to his gardening and wondered how he would have coped as a coastguard if a ship was about to be grounded. Maybe he would have left it for a fisherman to sort out — which might explain why he was no longer a coastguard.

  The post-mortem examination showed that Mr Bradley had died from natural causes, from a heart attack, in fact. There would be no inquest.

  We did find his relatives, and they took the body home for burial. I did not tell them of the odd circumstances of the discovery of his body, merely saying he had died in church while attending a service.

  That knowledge seemed to offer them some consolation, so I did not say that he had missed Holy Communion.

  Sad though sudden death is, there are times when coping with corpses is akin to a black comedy.

  Three large policemen, one of whom was myself, once had the tricky job of manoeuvring the corpse of an eighteen-stone man down a narrow, winding staircase while the grieving family sat in a room at the foot of the stairs. The problem was that the corpse had only one leg, so there was precious little to grip as we took it away for a post-mortem. The truth was the fellow got away from us on those stairs and bumped his way down the flight until he ended in a heap on the front door mat. Fortunately the door into the room was closed, and so the relatives never saw what happened; it was also fortunate that the front door was closed, otherwise the one-legged body would have rolled into the street and directly into a bus queue standing outside. The result might have been something like a game of giant skittles.