When Charlie Bairstow arrived, he stood and looked for a long time at that odd sight, occasionally scratching his head while walking in a circle around the trees.
‘What do you make of it, Nick?’ he asked.
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘Could it be a horse, a pony perhaps? A pet cow or calf? Goat? It looks as though something’s been buried and commemorated, doesn’t it?’
‘But would anybody commemorate an animal with a cross?’ he asked.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ I said, recalling that some Americans arranged weddings for dogs and birthday parties for cats. ‘But who’d bury a person here and then mark the grave like that?’
‘There’s only one way to find out. We’ll have to call in the cavalry.’
By that, he meant he’d call in the CID and their experts, for they would surely examine the grave by digging it up.
From his car radio, he summoned divisional headquarters, whereupon Detective Sergeant Gerry Connolly said he would come immediately; we had to wait yet again and not touch anything. He arrived within three-quarters of an hour and examined the lonely site.
‘We’ll have to dig it up,’ he pronounced. ‘I’ll get my lads to do it – I’ll need a photographer standing by. I’ll radio them now while we tape off the area.’
‘Anything I can do?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Nick, get the yellow tape from my car boot. Circle those trees with it and watch where you put your feet. If you find anything there – anything at all, leave it where it is, then tell me.’
Thus the formalities began. One or two cars passed as we worked, but at this stage we did not ask any questions, nor did we interview the few householders whose cottages occupied these remote moors. The nearest was almost half a mile away. Detective Constables Ian Shackleton and Paul Wharton arrived with spades, picks and wheelbarrow, and Detective Sergeant Marks, the photographer, arrived to record progress. The scene was now one of activity and interest, with no fewer than five police cars, lots of police officers and yellow tape, all laced with a high degree of anticipated drama.
Ian Shackleton lost no time in commencing his dig. As the earth was soft, he found it a comparatively easy task, and very soon he had a broad and deep hole. But apart from the soil and a few surprised worms, there was nothing buried there. Joined by Paul Wharton and his pick-axe, they expanded the area of digging until they covered an area of about twelve feet by six in rough terms. Having stretched beyond the boundaries of the original grave without finding anything, they dug several shallow trenches without encountering anything remotely suspicious, and then concentrated upon digging deeper into the original grave and also below the cross. Soon they came to the sub-soil, which was undisturbed. It wasn’t long before we had a hole large enough to contain a small swimming-pool, and nothing to show for it but a huge pile of earth. The forlorn little wooden cross lay on one side.
‘Nothing,’ said Connolly eventually. ‘Sod all, in fact. Nowt. Nil.’
‘Does it suggest the ground’s been prepared for a grave?’ suggested Ian Shackleton.
‘Well, we’re not going to fill it in! If somebody else cares to bury summat here, let ’em!’ laughed Connolly. ‘Leave the earth as it is, but replace the cross. Charlie,’ he addressed Sergeant Bairstow, ‘get your lads to visit this place regularly, will you? Summat’s being going on, but I’ve no idea what. See what you can turn up.’
‘It’s a good task for young Rhea,’ beamed Sergeant Bairstow. ‘How about it, Nick? See if you can find out just what’s been happening here.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I promised.
And so we dispersed, leaving the earth around the edge of the massive hole, and the cross in its original position, albeit now in bare, upturned earth. I decided to do my best to find answers to the puzzles. Who had place the cross there and why? And who had turned over this earth, and why?
When the others had gone, I drove to the nearest cottage. It was occupied by a farm labourer and his wife who were having their afternoon tea break when I arrived. I was invited in, offered a seat at their kitchen table and given a mug of tea with a piece of fruitcake. I learned that the couple, in their fifties, were Mr and Mrs Byworth, George and Ada. I explained our actions, and George smiled. ‘Aye, Mr Rhea, Ah spotted yon police cars and reckoned they’d be digging.’
‘You know what’s been happening there?’
‘A murder, Mr Rhea. Yon trees are called Grave Wood, there’s a circle of ’em. They were planted around a grave.’
‘When was this?’ I interrupted him.
‘1895,’ he said. ‘My dad told me all about it. He lived here before me. It was a farmhand called John Appleton. He killed his wife and little lass and buried ’em right where you were digging. Nasty case, it was. He had no other woman, nowt like that, but he was a bit daft, only in his twenties, and he led his wife and bairn out to look at that grave. He’d dug it ready, and as they stood looking into it, wondering what it was, he killed ’em both, shot ’em. They fell into that grave and he buried ’em. He was found out, mind, and they hanged him.’
‘What happened to the bodies? Do you know?’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘The woman and her bairn were reburied in Ashfordly churchyard. It was a funny do. They had a funny vicar then: ’e wouldn’t allow the bodies to come in through t’lychgate for some reason. They had to pass t’coffins over t’church wall. T’graves are still there.’
‘And somebody planted those pines in memory of them?’
‘They ’ad no relations hereabouts; they came from away when Appleton got work here as a farmhand. I know because he worked on t’same farm as my dad. But they found no relations for the lass and her bairn. Nobody. So the local folks planted them trees, Mr Rhea. In memory.’
Then another aspect occurred to me.
‘When was the murder in 1895?’ I asked.
‘8 June,’ he said. ‘8 June 1895.’
‘That’s seventy years ago today,’ I whispered. ‘Today is 8 June.’
‘Aye,’ he said.
‘So the digging out there? The digging before we came, and that cross? What do you know about that, Mr Byworth?’
‘Nowt,’ he said. ‘But awd Horace Baines might know.’
‘Horace Baines?’ I didn’t know the man.
‘Used to be our roadman, retired a few years back. He lives in Ashfordly, not far from t’front gate of t’castle.’
‘So why should he know?’
‘He was up here at six this morning,’ smiled George.
‘Out for a long walk, was he?’
‘No, he was digging, in Grave Wood,’ he smiled almost wickedly.
I realized that if we’d asked a few questions before commencing our own digging operation, we might have saved ourselves a lot of work. But I decided the exercise had been good for those CID lads!
‘So why would he be digging there?’ I asked.
‘You’d better ask him, Mr Rhea, cos I don’t know.’
‘And you don’t know who put that little cross there?’
‘No idea,’ he said, and his wife concurred.
I thanked them for their wonderful co-operation and drove back into Ashfordly, where I had no trouble locating Horace Baines. He was in his pretty stone cottage, a truly picturesque place with honeysuckle over the front door and roses climbing over an outhouse. He led me into his garden, where I admired his flowers and vegetables.
‘I’m not in trouble, am I?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I assured him. ‘It’s curiosity, that’s all,’ and I explained my purpose.
‘You’ll know about the murder then?’ he put to me.
‘I do now,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t know until today.’
‘Well, after that lass and her bairn were killed, somebody erected a memorial stone. It stood for years, until the Second World War. Then these moors were used as tank training grounds.’
‘Was this before the pines were planted?’
‘Aye,’ he said briefly. ‘Well, I was t
he 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 common-place 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.
Constable among the Heather Page 15