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

by Nicholas Rhea

In the force control room, there was a pre-arranged list of experts who had to be called to the scene of a suspected murder, and they would now be summoned. An incident room would be established and the whole drama surrounding a murder would now be set in motion.

  Dr Stamford, who served as police doctor for Eltering, arrived and was shown the body. He was prepared to certify death but not the cause; that would be determined later that day by a post-mortem examination.

  ‘Right,’ said Connolly when Dr Stamford had gone. ‘We’ll talk to that man Flint now, Nick. Let’s get him seen and on his way before the cavalry arrive.’

  This meant an interview about the circumstances of his discovery of the body, followed by a written statement from him in which all the essential points were incorporated. That would be filed in a statement file, and all the relevant facts extracted for inclusion in a file index system. No detail was too insignificant in such an enquiry, and the interrogation of any witness would inevitably be dramatic for them, sometimes giving them the feeling that they were under suspicion. If they could not appreciate the lengths to which the police had to go to catch a murderer, then it was unfortunate.

  Sitting in the front passenger seat of the CID car, with me in the rear, Connolly interviewed Nigel Flint. He was twenty-two years old and lived alone in a flat at No. 14A Market House, Market Place, Eltering. He was a clerk with a large-scale haulage contractor who operated from spacious premises on the outskirts of Eltering. He told us that the dead lady was Miss Edith Holt, who was in her seventies, and said he would be prepared to make the formal identification.

  ‘I know, er, knew, her as Aunty Edie,’ he told us. ‘She was a close friend of my mother’s. My mother lives on that new estate off Strensford Road, St Hilda’s Way, Number 3. Anyway, she isn’t a real aunt, she’s not related to us, Mr Connolly, but ever since I was tiny, I’ve called her Aunt Edie.’

  ‘That establishes your links with her,’ said Connolly. ‘So tell us about finding her this morning.’

  I could see that this was going to be a traumatic time for Flint, but he took a deep breath and said, ‘I always pop in to see her on my way to work. Every morning. Mum asked me to do it, to see if Aunt Edie wanted anything. Groceries, rent paid, bits and pieces for the house. Last week, she was on about getting a new toaster, that sort of thing.’

  ‘So you called this morning. What time?’

  ‘Just before quarter to nine. Twenty to, or thereabouts.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘Well, the first thing was the paper. It was still in the letter-box, so I thought she must still be in bed. She did lie in late sometimes.’

  ‘Was the door shut?’

  ‘Yes, closed, but not locked. I tried it. I don’t have a key, but she leaves one on a string behind the letter-box, so I can let myself in if I have to. Anyway, it was open, Mr Connolly, which I thought was funny, seeing the paper was still there. When I got inside, I shouted upstairs but there was no reply, so I went through to the kitchen . . . she always had her breakfast in the kitchen . . . and, well, there she was.’

  ‘You didn’t see her before you got to the kitchen?’ Flint was puzzled at this, so Connolly elaborated.

  ‘Was the kitchen door closed or open as you approached it?’

  ‘Oh, closed — well, not latched, if you know what I mean. Closed almost completely. I hadn’t to turn the handle to open it, I just pushed it open and . . . saw her.’

  ‘Look, Nigel, I know this is painful, but what exactly did you do next?’

  ‘I could see she was dead, all that blood . . . I just ran out and called you from the kiosk.’

  ‘Which kiosk?’

  ‘At the end of this street, on the corner.’

  ‘Did you touch her? Speak to her? Look upstairs to see if there was an intruder about? Anything like that?’

  ‘No, nothing. I just panicked and ran.’

  Having recorded Nigel Flint’s account, Gerry let him go; he had the awesome task of informing his own mother of this because, until now, he had not spoken to anyone save ourselves. But already a crowd of interested onlookers was gathering outside Edith Holt’s little home, and by this time the cavalry — the mass of police and scientific investigators — was beginning to assemble.

  ‘Right, Nick, you go back to the office and join the staff of the incident room. A typist will be allocated, so get her to type up this statement and distribute copies to all key personnel. Make sure the D/C/I gets one. We’ll need to interview Flint again, I’m sure, about Aunt Edie’s life-style, whether she encouraged visitors or whether she was rumoured to have money around the house, that sort of thing.’

  I nodded my understanding as he went on, ‘And make a statement yourself, get it typed up and entered into the system. Detail the facts you noticed in the house — the Daily Mail, the state of the kitchen, the window and so on.’

  When I returned to Eltering Police Station, it was almost eleven o’clock and a detective inspector, detective sergeant and detective constable had already arrived in a large van from Headquarters to begin the setting-up of the incident room. Two GPO engineers were installing outside lines for the public to use, and Barbara, a strikingly beautiful typist, had been drafted in. The CID had brought a massive box of stationery, statement forms, pens and pencils and all the requirements of an office. They had produced a blackboard, two typewriters, a photocopying machine, a duplicating machine and even a couple of desks. I introduced myself and they gave me a statement form so that I could begin to compile my own statement. Barbara was already installed at a desk and had boiled a kettle, also brought by the CID, along with coffee, tea and two bottles of milk. Teams of detectives from all over the county had been drafted in, and they had been instructed to report at Eltering for the first conference at 2 p.m.

  As this was happening, the body was being photographed, as was the house and especially the kitchen and its broken window; fingerprint experts were examining the house too, and a forensic scientist was studying the corpse in its position before moving it to a mortuary for a post-mortem. The coroner had been informed, and the press had now heard of the death and were clamouring for news.

  The next two or three hours were a whirlwind of activity, and I found myself heavily involved in helping to set up the incident room. Having been to the house and seen the body, I wrote the facts on the blackboard so that all the incoming CID officers could see it. It said: 8.45 a.m., Monday, 18 April. Body of Miss Edith Holt, seventy-two years, spinster, found at No. 16 Driffield Terrace. 5’4” tall, slim build, grey hair with hairnet, blue eyes. Dressed in white nightdress and pink slippers, and found lying in kitchen. Death believed from a head wound. Intruder had entered via kitchen window by breaking in; not known if anything stolen. Scene visited by doctor, forensic pathologist, SOCO, photographers, detective superintendent and assistant chief constable. (In fact, the ACC had travelled all the way from Northallerton to pay his visit.) The notes on the blackboard also included Nigel Flint’s name and address, and a brief physical description of him. As he was the finder of the body, we needed to know if other residents had seen him entering or leaving the house, or whether someone of a different description had been observed.

  ‘Nick,’ said Connolly a few minutes before two o’clock, ‘pop round to the murder house in the car, see if any of our lads are still there; if so, tell ’em to get themselves round here to the CID conference. It starts at 2 p.m.’

  I drove round to Miss Holt’s house, now the scene of immense public interest, and the constable on duty recognised me and allowed me inside. The front door was closed to prevent peeping in by ghouls; ghouls always gather at the scene of a dramatic death, a fire, traffic accident, air crash and similar event. I went to the kitchen where the scenes-of-crime officers were still working and told them of the conference; one would attend while the other two worked. The volunteer said he would come back with me in the car. The body had now been removed, and there was no one else in the house.

  On
the way out, I halted, for I had noticed a trilby hat hanging behind the front door. It looked fairly new. With the door standing open, it had not been noticed, and I could not recall seeing it that morning when I had noticed the Daily Mail. But I could not say for sure whether or not it had been there, for the door had been standing open all the time I had been in the house on that first occasion.

  ‘That hat,’ I said to my SOCO companion. ‘It’s odd, eh? In a spinster’s home . . .’

  ‘We’ll need to have it identified,’ he said with no more ado. ‘Find out whom it belongs to, how it came to be here. We can trace its sale through the manufacturer, and you might even trace the buyer through its retail outlet.’ He lifted the grey felt trilby from the hook at the back of the door, popped it into a large plastic bag and labelled it as an exhibit. We took it back to the incident room.

  The first conference was conducted by Connolly, who outlined the facts. He read out Flint’s statement, and then mine, and said that the preliminary opinion of the pathologist was that Miss Holt had died from several blows to the head with a blunt instrument of some kind. That afternoon’s post-mortem would confirm or refute that, but no murder weapon had been found. The assembled detectives, thirty in all, were divided into teams of two, and each team was given a specific action. Many were already involved in house-to-house enquiries in the area; one ‘action’ was to find out Miss Holt’s financial position, another was to interview night people, such as bakers, other policemen, early-morning travellers in lorries that passed through, to see if anyone had been seen in suspicious circumstances. Another team had to make discreet enquiries into the background and character of Nigel Flint.

  I then mentioned the trilby hat.

  ‘Right, Nick. Action for you. Trace the owner. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  And so the murder investigation got underway.

  I began my action by noting the manufacturer’s name and address from the label inside the hatband; the hat was size six and a half, and it was in almost new condition. The scenes-of-crime people took a photograph of it, but the felt texture would not reveal any fingerprints. I found it had been made in Bradford, and so I rang the CID of Bradford City Police and asked them to visit the factory to determine its history since manufacture. This could be done by a code number I discovered inside the leather headband.

  ‘I’m going to ask Flint if he saw it this morning,’ I told Gerry Connolly. ‘It might belong to somebody who called regularly on the old lady.’

  ‘Good idea,’ he said. I went to his home address, but there was no reply, so I went to the office where he worked. He was at his desk, pale and quiet, and the manager had no objection to my speaking with him. I showed him the trilby, still in its plastic bag.

  ‘It was hanging behind the front door,’ I explained. ‘Do you know if it belongs to any of your aunt’s visitors?’

  ‘Are you saying the killer left it behind?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find out more about it — who put it there, for example, whether it was there when you went in this morning.’

  He thought hard and then said, ‘Yes, it was there. It doesn’t belong to her and I’ve never seen a friend wearing it. When I walked in, I pushed the door open, but the draught blowing from the kitchen blew it shut. When I ran out to phone, I had to open that door — and I saw the hat . . . it didn’t mean anything then, Mr Rhea, but, well, is it the killer’s?’

  ‘Let’s say it might lead us to a suspect,’ I said. I got him to make a written statement confirming the presence of that hat and he signed it, asking, ‘But can you honestly find out who it belongs to?’

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, it might be impossible, but we’ll do our best.’

  ‘They say every murderer leaves a clue behind,’ he said.

  ‘It’s often the case,’ I agreed, leaving him to his work.

  When I returned to the incident room, Connolly hailed me.

  ‘Ah, Nick, old son. Just the chap. That bloody trilby of yours. We’ve found the owner — or rather he’s found us.’

  ‘Oh?’ This sounded interesting.

  ‘It belongs to the assistant chief,’ he laughed. ‘He came to visit the scene of the crime at lunchtime and, being the gentleman he is, he took his hat off and hung it behind the door. Then he forgot it! It’s his, Nick, so cancel that action. If that had been any of us doing such a daft thing, we’d have been bollocked up hill and down dale!’

  I looked at the hat in my hand, and I remembered the words of Nigel Flint.

  ‘Sergeant,’ I said, ‘I think Nigel Flint is our killer. He’s just stated to me that he saw this hat behind the door this morning, when he found Edith dead. He can’t have, because it wasn’t there then. He’s lying. Is he trying to throw suspicion onto the owner of the hat?’

  ‘I think we’d better have another word with Nigel Flint,’ he said.

  I did not go to that interview, for it required the skills of a very experienced detective, and so Gerry Connolly went to see Nigel once more.

  Nigel admitted killing her. Desperately short of cash, he knew Aunt Edith had cash hidden all over the house and had broken in to steal some of it, intending to make it look like a burglary. He’d broken in during the night hours, around two o’clock in the morning, but she had caught him — in his panic to avoid discovery, he’d picked up the electric iron which had been on the draining-board and had repeatedly struck her with it. She never knew it was him, he was sure, and that gave him some relief, but he had run off, taking the iron with him. He’d thrown it in the river to get rid of it. He wept as he gave his statement to Gerry Connolly, saying over and over again that he’d had no intention of killing Aunt Edie . . .

  We recovered the iron from the river, and the forensic experts found strands of her hair and blood upon it. I did not arrest or charge Nigel with his crime — that was done by Sergeant Connolly, but I did feel I had done my bit towards arresting a killer. He pleaded guilty to burglary but not guilty to the charge of murder. The court accepted a plea of guilty to manslaughter, however, and he was given five years imprisonment for the manslaughter, and two for the burglary, the sentences to run concurrently. He’d stolen £23 from her house.

  He is now out of prison and living in Lancashire.

  Another case remains a puzzle, at least in my mind if not in the official records.

  One December morning, when drizzle and fog made the countryside damp and miserable, a farmer’s wife called Irene Sheldon came into the police station. She reported that her husband, William, was missing from home. He was seventy-two years old and rather frail, and she was worried about him.

  Ian Shackleton interviewed her. She was a very attractive woman, well dressed in green clothes which highlighted her long auburn hair and her pale skin. There was an aura of power about her, the sort of woman who was dominant and capable, the kind who could run any successful business, ranging from a farm to a restaurant. She was also capable of undertaking manual tasks about the farm, shearing the sheep or loading bales of hay, although she usually got others to perform such labouring tasks.

  ‘So why would he go missing?’ Ian asked her.

  She hung her handsome head. ‘He found out I was having an affaire,’ she readily admitted. ‘I’ve been seeing another man — but that’s not a criminal offence, is it?’ She stuck out her chin defiantly.

  ‘You are much younger than him?’ commented Ian.

  ‘Yes, I’m forty-five. I’m his second wife. His first died eight years ago, and I used to be his housekeeper. He married me five years ago. He’s too old. There’s too much of an age-gap between us. I should have known better, really, but he is a charming old man, really charming . . .’

  ‘So what precisely prompted him to run off?’

  ‘We had a row. He found out I was seeing Bernard — my feller — at weekends and evenings. We’d been away, you see, me and Bernard, to the Royal Show and to other events. I mean,
I do need a younger man . . .’

  ‘This row,’ Ian quizzed her, ‘was it violent?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, he’s not a violent man, not at all. He sometimes sulks a lot, gets very depressed and moody, and when I said I could not stop seeing Bernard, well, he just went absolutely quiet. That was last night. He went to bed early, soon after nine, and was very quiet. When I took him his tea up this morning, his bed was empty. We slept in separate rooms, by the way, His outdoor clothes have gone, the ones he works in, but he’s taken no money or anything. His car’s still there.’

  ‘Shotguns? Has he taken any guns? Gone shooting maybe?’

  ‘No, I looked. The gun’s still there, the one he uses for rabbiting.’

  ‘Was he suicidal at all, during the time you’ve known him?’

  ‘Yes, often,’ she said. ‘He can be very jealous; if he took me to the hunt ball and I was asked by someone else to dance, he would go into a huff and sulk all night. Several times, he’s threatened to end it all because he thought I’d stopped loving him. He’s odd, like that, very dark at times, very moody and deep.’

  ‘Normally, when an adult goes missing, we are not too interested,’ said Ian. ‘Adults are free to leave home whenever they wish. So unless there is a suggestion of a crime either by them, or against them, we take little action. But I think in this case there is real concern for his safety. We’ll circulate details and a description of him.’

  ‘What about a search? Don’t you make a search?’ she asked.

  ‘Not unless we have good cause, and at this stage there is no cause for a search — besides, where do we start? No, we will circulate the surrounding police officers in the hope they might find him wandering or that he is seen somewhere so that we have an indication of his whereabouts. Old folks do wander, you know. They get on buses, go for long walks, ride bikes, spend time in pubs and cafés . . .’

  Ian talked to her for a long time, eliciting from her what amounted to a most frank confession of her affaires with other men, the current one being Bernard Balcombe, who was a salesman for cattle feeds. Some she had managed to conceal from poor old William, but this one had come to a head in this terrible manner. Ian asked if there was a likelihood that William had known of the previous ones, even if he had not said so. She thought it was possible, but unlikely. He also learned that, by his first wife, William had two sons, and so Ian said he would ask them if they had seen their father. She gave us their addresses, thanked us for our interest and left.