‘Was this before the pines were planted?’
‘Aye,’ he said briefly. ‘Well, I was the roadman; that length was my responsibility. I used to see that little stone every time I came this way. But when the tanks started to train here, they drove straight over it. It got pressed into the earth, Mr Rhea, and in time it got lost, overgrown mebbe.’
‘I see.’ I could guess what he was going to tell me.
‘Well, I kept thinking I would rescue it, but you know how it was, tanks and soldiers everywhere. I never did get it rescued, so this morning, because I woke early, I thought I’d have a look for it and erect it somewhere proper. After the war, when the tanks had gone, somebody planted those trees where the grave was, so I dug in there. But I never found it. Mebbe it is still there, or mebbe somebody else has got it.’
‘Our lads dug it over pretty well this morning,’ I assured him. ‘We dug much more than you, but we never found even a fragment.’
‘It’ll be somewhere about.’ He sounded confident. ‘Mebbe it’s in a farm shed somewhere, or being used as a paving stone in a footpath or in somebody’s rockery . . .’
‘Is there a special reason for wanting to recover it?’ I asked.
‘It was my dad helped the police catch Appleton,’ he said. ‘He came past one day and saw Appleton digging there. When the lass and kiddie disappeared, he told the police what he’d seen — and they found the bodies. Dad would have wanted me to find that stone, you see.’
‘And why did you make the effort today?’ I asked him. ‘You know it’s seventy years today since the murder?’
‘Is it? No, I hadn’t realized that. I just decided to go all of a sudden. I’d been thinking about it for a week or two. Fancy me picking today of all days!’
‘Thanks, it is a strange coincidence, but you have solved one mystery,’ I said. ‘Now, the little cross of hazel twigs. Did you put that there?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t me.’
‘Was it there when you were digging?’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It was. I moved it while I dug, but I never put it there.’
‘Any idea who might have?’ I pressed him. ‘I’m curious, that’s all. There’s no official police inquiry about all this, not after all this time!’
‘No idea,’ he smiled. ‘But you might find Mrs Gowland who lives beside the butcher’s can help.’
And so I continued my enquiries by calling on Mrs Gladys Gowland, a lady of almost eighty. The uniform helped me to gain her confidence, for she was shy and cautious, but when I explained my interest, she smiled and invited me to sit down. She produced a cup of tea and a scone, then a large wooden box full of newspaper cuttings and faded photographs.
‘I don’t want any of this published or copied,’ she said guardedly. ‘I have built my collection of news cuttings about Ashfordly for many, many years, and it is my personal collection, you see.’
I had to convince her that I had no intention of removing any of her documents or of copying anything. She showed me yellowed cuttings about the murder, the trial and the funeral of the victims, a fascinating piece of local history. But apart from a lot of local colour and somewhat exaggerated drama, the cuttings did not tell me much more than Horace Baines had revealed. They shed no light at all on the mysterious little wooden cross, although a later cutting did say that the local people had planted the trees after the Second World War because the grave had been obliterated by the actions of the tanks in training.
I asked her outright: ‘Mrs Gowland, when we arrived today, there was a little wooden cross near the grave. Did you put it there?’
‘No,’ she said, and I believed her, for how could she have trekked in secret to that location?
And so the mystery remained, and it remains to this day. I have no idea who placed that cross on the grave to two murder victims who died during the last century, without relations but with some enduring friends.
However, I did later learn that a cross was traditionally placed at the scene of a murder to prevent the ghost of the victim returning to haunt the area. That cross had to be renewed upon each anniversary of the death. In days gone by, some policemen would scratch a cross in the dust or earth near a murder victim, or sometimes it would be marked on a post or door. So was this the reason for that little wooden cross? Had it been placed there every year since the crime in order to keep at bay the ghosts of the victims? It is a fascinating thought. It became even more fascinating when the cross reappeared on 8 June 1989!
As a last act in this piece of unofficial research, I decided to seek the graves in Ashfordly churchyard. I ignored the modern stones as I sought an old tombstone, possibly bearing two names. It took me a long time, but I did find it.
The tombstone bore the name of Anne Appleton and her daughter Marie, who had died tragically on 8 June 1895.
The grave also bore a vase of freshly cut flowers.
9. The Goldfish and the Goat
Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.
CHARLES DICKENS, 1812–70
Traffic accidents have always occupied a lot of police time and effort. As the volume and diversity of traffic have increased, so the range and number of accidents have multiplied. In the good old days before the Second World War, a serious traffic accident was unusual. Today it is commonplace and can involve anything from a road roller to a bicycle, by way of articulated lorry, mobile crane, tank, car or caravan. I have included some tales of accidents in previous Constable volumes.
Because traffic accidents are so frequent, police officers tend to regard them as routine, but for the unfortunate victims they are anything but routine. They are hurtful, traumatic, expensive, time-wasting, annoying, upsetting and horrible. In many cases, I’m sure that a driver suffers only one serious accident in his or her lifetime, or maybe none at all. Not every minor bump is recorded, but an accident at which the police officiate is something of a rarity for most drivers.
One such driver was 70-year-old Alf Partridge. I had known him for years, for he had been a friend of my family for as long as I could remember, and he was a wonderful character. Rather short in height, he was plump and balding, with a ready smile and an easy manner which charmed everyone. No one had a bad word to say about Alf: he was everyone’s friend. He ran a small garage-cum-filling-station in a moorland village called Milthorpe, which was not within my own area of patrol, although from time to time he did cross the moors into my patch. In those cases, he was generally performing a taxi run, his taxi being one part of his village business.
He was also a peat-cutter, for he owned rights to one of the moorland peat bogs from which he supplied a small range of customers. For this, he would drive onto the moors in the spring with his special peat-cutting tools to cut a portion from the bog. After a ‘dess’ was cut and the face was ‘sliped’ to deter the rain, the peat sods were stacked or ‘rickled’ on the ‘ligging’ or lying ground. Here it was left to dry in the moorland breezes before delivery or use. Special hicking (hand) barrows were used for transporting the peat at the site. The entire operation was fascinating to observe. I don’t think Alf undertook his peat-cutting for any real commercial reason — he found it a relaxing change from his garage and taxi business, although he did burn peat in his delightful cottage.
But the things I most vividly remember were the scrupulously tidy and completely efficient cars which he used. They were immaculate inside and out, their engines ticked over like silken watches, and every part was meticulously maintained and cared for.
From time to time when we were children, we would be taxied to various places because our parents did not own a car, and indeed, when I joined the police service at the age of sixteen, I was driven to my interview at force headquarters by Alf in one of his magnificent taxis. Although the car was not pretentious in any way, I can still recall its sheer magic, its smooth drive, its aura of total reliability and efficiency.
Everything about Alf was clean and pleasant; even his garage premises were tidy and neat
, for he had trained his men to respect his own high standards. It was like walking into an exhibition rather than a working country garage. Every tool not in use was returned to its allocated space; every piece of scrap metal or other waste was collected and removed, every mess was cleared up and the floor kept clean. Even the window, which overlooked the street, was a joy. It displayed spares, such as tyres, plugs and wash leathers, and he took the trouble to decorate them seasonally with Christmas crackers, Easter eggs or whatever was topical. And no one ever saw Alf lose his temper or become flustered — his whole existence was so well planned that his passage through life was calm, smooth and trouble-free.
It was a matter of pride for Alf that he had never been involved in a traffic accident. In all his years of motoring, he had never once had a scrape with another vehicle, nor even a scratch from nature’s defences. The bodies of his cars were immaculate, not even the thorns of the hedgerows or the horns of moorland sheep daring to mark his polished paintwork and glistening chrome.
But one sunny morning in April, on one of the moorland’s most remote highways, Alf felt that his reputation had been shattered. His legendary calm was decidedly ruffled, because he was involved in an accident, or perhaps it was a near-miss?
He was driving his black, shining and immaculate Humber Snipe towards his peat bog; he towed a trailer he had built, and it contained his specially angled peat spade, a gripe, his hicking barrow and assorted tools. It was a fine, dry morning and the roads were empty. Indeed, the rough roads across these heights were nearly always empty, their only traffic being the local moorland farmers and peat-cutters who came this way from time to time. Not many outsiders found their way over these heights then, although that situation has now changed. Today that narrow moorland road is surfaced and, because it is shown on tourist maps, it now suffers regular passage of traffic. Alf, had he been alive today, would have been horrified.
But on that spring morning in the mid-1960s Alf had no thoughts of meeting other vehicles. He had traversed these moors for years without seeing another motor along his route. The regular passage of horse-drawn vehicles and coaches had ended, and major, well-surfaced roads had been built through the dales. They coped with visitors, buses and routine traffic.
And so year after year Alf had driven to his peat bog at dawn to cut the required number of sods, and year after year he had driven home contented and happy with his unpressurized life. There were no cars, no traffic lights, no roundabouts, no signposts, no bollards and no houses — there was nothing but a rough track for use by the likes of Alf Partridge.
But one morning another car dared to use the primitive road. At one point the track dips down a gentle slope where it crosses a moorland beck before rising at the other side. Midway down the first slope, in the direction in which Alf was driving that morning, a minor track enters the highway from the right. It was originally a drovers’ road and, as cars were becoming more numerous, some daring drivers occasionally made use of it to cross the moors from the northernmost parts of Eskdale. It was proving to be a useful short-cut. At its junction with Alf’s road, however, it was not readily visible. It emerged from between high banks of heather; indeed, a stranger would not even realize there was a junction until arriving, for there was no road sign to announce the fact.
As Alf had chugged along his regular route, so a young man in a bright yellow Austin Healey Sprite sports car was hurtling along the drovers’ road. In his low-slung car, he was concealed by the high banks of heather and did not see Alf, and Alf did not see him. As Alf approached the junction, so the yellow flash bolted across his route, apparently from nowhere. From his right, it passed directly into Alf’s path.
Alf reacted with remarkable speed. He swung his steering wheel savagely to the left, as a result of which he found himself bouncing across the open moorland with his trailer of tools clanking behind. The incident so unnerved him that, for the briefest of moments, he forgot to brake, and so his lovely car cruised for some distance across the smooth grassy patch between the heather patches, then came to an ignominious halt in a bog of sphagnum moss. The engine stalled.
It pitched Alf forward, and within a very few moments the car began to sink. Alf was still inside, but not injured. He was able to observe the yellow sports car disappearing up the slope opposite but had not the time to take its registration number. He was alone to his fate as his car sank slowly into the mire, and so he decided to abandon his precious vehicle. Happily, the bog was not too deep, so when Alf stepped out, he found himself on a firm base, albeit up to the thighs in peat-coloured water and thick yellow mud as his precious Humber sank at his side. It halted when the mire was half-way up its doors.
The problem was what to do next.
Unknown to Alf, the young man in the yellow sports car had halted in Rannockdale to ring the police. Without giving his name, he said he’d seen a car run off the road at Bluestone Beck. The call was received at Eltering police station, and a map revealed that the location was literally yards inside our patch.
I was in Sergeant Blaketon’s car at the time. With him acting as driver, we were undertaking an early morning inspection of quarries which had explosives stores and were using the occasion to check the accuracy of our Explosives Register. Then we were diverted to Bluestone Beck.
As we drove down the slope towards Alf’s bogged-down car, I recognized him. I said, ‘Good Lord, it’s Alf!’
‘Do you know the driver, Rhea?’ asked Sergeant Blaketon.
‘Yes, he’s been a family friend for years,’ I said, and then explained my childhood knowledge of Alf, reinforcing the fact that he had never had an accident or suffered damage to his precious cars.
‘In that case, Rhea,’ Sergeant Blaketon said formally, ‘I had better deal with this accident. If there is a question of prosecuting him for careless driving or something more serious, we can’t have a family friend involved in the legal processes.’
‘I’d do a fair job on the report, Sergeant.’
‘I will deal with it, Rhea,’ he said with an air of finality.
As we halted near the scene, I could see Alf furiously digging with his peat-cutting spade. He was throwing masses of muck around as he tried to find some solid ground for his rear wheels — in this mess, they only spun uselessly as he tried to force his car out of the bog. And he was in a terrible state. He was smothered in grime; his clothes, hair and face were dripping with wet sphagnum moss.
It was evident that he did not recognize me when our police car halted a few yards away. In his present highly charged condition, he might not have recognized his own mother, but he had not seen me for years and had no idea I was concealed within that uniform. Sergeant Blaketon strode across the sound piece of moorland to speak to him, as I waited with the car. And I must admit I was amazed at Alf’s angry and belligerent response.
‘There’s no need for you buggers to come here snooping,’ were his first words. ‘I can get myself out of this . . . I don’t need you lot laughing at me . . .’
‘We received a report of an accident . . .’ began Oscar Blaketon.
‘Accident? What accident? There’s been no accident. I haven’t hit anybody. There’s been no crash. No injuries. I was forced off the road, that’s what. If I hadn’t run down here, I’d have hit him . . . I avoided an accident . . . the silly bugger . . . look at this . . . what a bloody mess . . . I want none of this in the bloody papers and you can keep me out of court if that’s what’s in your mind . . . so how am I going to get out of here, eh? Just you answer me that!’
‘There has been an accident,’ chanted Blaketon, adopting a rather formal attitude. ‘If, owing to the presence of a motor vehicle on a road, an accident occurs whereby damage is caused to a motor vehicle other than that vehicle, then so far as the law is concerned, it is an accident.
‘It conforms to the definition in the Road Traffic Act,’ Blaketon went on. ‘If another car’s driver forced you off the road, then he caused the accident — and the fact that you
are sitting up to your eyebrows in plother means there has been an accident, an untoward incident, an unwanted event.’
‘Then get after that yellow car and book him for not stopping, Sergeant,’ bellowed Alf. ‘And what about towing me out of here?’
‘You’ll need a breakdown truck for that.’
‘Well, I can’t do much about getting one from here, can I? Can’t you blokes radio somebody? Get my mate, Eddie Brookes, Milthorpe 253. He’ll come for me. And what about that other idiot, eh? Why aren’t you chasing him and his yellow peril? Running folks off the road like this . . .’
‘Is there any damage?’ shouted Blaketon.
‘How should I know?’ snapped Alf. ‘Look at it! How can I say what harm’s done under all this muck? God knows what my underside’s hit under this moss . . . I could have knocked the sump off, broken an axle, but I’m stuck solid, I am . . .’
As Alf chuntered and cursed, Blaketon came across to me and sat in the car. He was in a surprisingly gentle mood, and I must admit I was not accustomed to seeing him like this.
‘Rhea,’ he said, ‘you know this character. He sounds a bit irate to me. Now, the way I see it is that there might be a dangerous driving case against the chap in the sports car, if we can find him.’
‘And if we can prove it,’ I chipped in. ‘It’s Alf’s word against his; Alf might have been half asleep. I know he’s an old friend of my parents, but, well, he is getting on a bit.’
‘True, very true. But if this Alf’s car is not damaged, it is doubtful if there is a reportable accident, eh? In other words, we are not wanted here. We are not duty-bound to deal with this, unless he complains about the other driver.’
‘I’d like to get him out of his mess,’ I said.
‘Then radio them at Eltering and ask them to call his friend, Rhea.’
As Blaketon sat at my side, oddly reluctant to exercise his awesome authority over poor old Alf, I did this small favour. Our Eltering office contacted Eddie Brookes with the story, and he said he’d come immediately with his breakdown truck to tow Alf from the bog.
CONSTABLE NICK BOX SET 6-10 five feel-good village cozy mysteries Page 89