Constable Through the Meadow

by Nicholas Rhea

  And so I waited for Sergeant Charlie Bairstow to come on duty. I felt he would adopt a more reasoned approach. It meant a delay of just one day, but I felt it was justified. I caught him during a quiet moment over an early-morning cup of coffee in the office at Ashfordly, and presented him with the story. He listened carefully and I showed him the statement made by Simon Cornell.

  ‘A tale of villainy if ever there was one,’ he smiled. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘About the truth of it, you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, is Cornell having us on, or is that picture the genuine thing as he says.’

  ‘I believe him.’ I spoke as I felt and, of course, I had witnessed Cornell’s reaction as he had relayed his tale.

  Sergeant Bairstow thought for a while and I knew he was weighing up all the problems that might accrue, both emotional and legal, and then he said, ‘We’d better go and have a look at it. And we’d better warn Grayson of this.’

  ‘He bought it legally,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, and that gives him a claim to the painting,’ he said. ‘A claim of right made in good faith, as the Larceny Act so aptly puts it.’

  And so we drove out to Craydale and popped into the Moon and Compass. David was working in his cellar when we arrived, stacking crates and cleaning out his beer pumps. He was happy enough to break for a coffee.

  ‘Well, gentlemen.’ He took us into the bar which was closed to the public as it was not opening hours. ‘This looks business-like, two of you descending on me.’

  ‘It is a problem,’ Sergeant Bairstow said. ‘Nick, you’d better explain.’

  I told him of Cornell’s visit and allegations, and he listened carefully, a worried frown crossing his pleasant face as I outlined the theft of the picture from the cigar company. We closely examined the painting and it was clearly executed in oils and signed, and on the back was a certificate of authenticity. It was the genuine thing; of that, there was no doubt. David kept looking at the image of Sir Winston and was clearly upset at our unpleasant news.

  ‘So what do I do now?’ he asked us both, looking most anxious and apprehensive.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlie Bairstow. ‘Just sit tight; there’s no suggestion that you stole it, we want you to know that. Our next job is to contact the cigar firm and tell them the picture has been found. But you do have a claim to it, David, because you bought it in good faith, as part of the fittings of the pub.’

  ‘When did you say it was stolen?’ he asked.

  ‘1956, as near as we can tell,’ I said.

  ‘That was two landlords ago,’ he added. ‘I took it over from Jim Bentley, and he came here in 1959. I’m not sure who was here in 1956.’

  ‘Our liquor licensing records will tell us,’ said Bairstow. ‘We’ll chase up that angle.’

  ‘But I don’t want that bloody picture hanging here if it’s worth a fortune!’ he cried. ‘Somebody might pinch it!’

  ‘It’s been there years without that happening,’ Bairstow said. ‘Anyway, I’d say it’s yours now, David, but you might need a solicitor to do battle for you, from the ownership point of view, especially if the cigar people decide they want it back and make a claim upon it.’

  ‘I think I’ll hide it upstairs,’ he smiled grimly. ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Leave it with us,’ said Charlie Bairstow. ‘We will contact the cigar company and see what they say.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me all this first,’ David was clearly grateful for our action. ‘So I might be sitting on a fortune after all this?’

  ‘Cornell thought it was worth a lot of money,’ I said. ‘But he wouldn’t commit himself to an amount. Don’t forget that this is the original, David.’

  ‘How can I? It’s funny this has arisen,’ he added. ‘I’ve often said to Madge – my wife that is – that this looked like an oil painting and not a copy. I know some copies look so realistic now, even down to a rough surface, but well, this did have a genuine feel to it. I never thought of looking at the back for that certificate!’

  ‘Well,’ said Sergeant Bairstow. ‘You hang on to it, and we’ll see what happens next.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ and we left him to his thoughts.

  Back in the office, I compiled a report on the matter for despatch to the Chief Constable of Surrey Constabulary in whose area the cigar factory was based. In the terminology of the time, I asked him if he would allow an officer to search his records in an attempt to locate the report of the original theft, and then allow an officer to visit a senior official of the cigar company to inform him of the painting’s present whereabouts. Sergeant Bairstow also asked me to include a paragraph to ask whether, in view of the passage of time, Surrey Constabulary required any further action by us in this matter.

  The reply came ten days later. A detective sergeant in Guildford had established that the crime had been reported on 28th April 1956, the picture then being worth £850.

  The original’s disappearance had not been noticed for some time because one of the copies, in an identical frame, had been substituted. It had never been recovered, nor had the thief been arrested. Enquiries at the time had revealed that one of the suspects had been a salesman who had subsequently resigned from the company, but nothing had ever been proved against him. That man’s name was not supplied, but Surrey Police did say the file had never been closed; they went on to add that it would be appreciated if steps could be taken to ascertain the name of the person who had sold the painting to the landlord of the Moon and Compass.

  We did trace the long-retired landlord, an old character called Ralph Whalton who now lived with his married daughter in a bungalow at Eltering. He did not remember anything of the painting, but his daughter did. A plain girl approaching her thirties, she remembered its arrival.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘You must remember, Dad!’

  The old man shook his head. ‘I’m too old now, Jill. They gave me all sorts of publicity stuff, I stuffed most of it in the cellar. I couldn’t put it all up in the bar.’

  ‘Well, I remember it well. I was about eighteen or nineteen at the time, and helping behind the bar. A salesman came in, not the regular one, with a box of those cigars you always bought. And he had that picture of Churchill. He said every pub was being given one and he hoped we would display it in a public area.’

  ‘Was I there?’ he asked, clearly puzzled.

  ‘You might not have been,’ she now realised. ‘Maybe not, maybe that’s why I was helping out. Mebbe you’d gone away somewhere. Anyway, we took a picture down, it was one of those pen-and-ink drawings of a Scottish mountain scene, and hung Sir Winston instead. He’s been there ever since.’

  She was unable to provide a description of the salesman and did not know his name. We passed this information to Guildford Police and it was about three weeks later when I received a telephone call to say that Guildford Police were closing this file because (a) the picture had been located and (b) their suspect salesman was now known to have died in 1962. Apparently, their records showed he was working in the North Riding for a short period during the spring of 1956. He was a very positive suspect.

  So who did the picture now belong to? I knew that if someone was convicted of stealing it, the court could make an order for its restitution to the cigar company, but this was impossible in this case because several innocent buyers had since been involved and, apart from that, no one had been convicted of its theft. This latter fact alone ruled out this form of restitution through the criminal courts; now, of course, no one would ever be convicted for stealing it.

  David Grayson, landlord of the Moon and Compass, now had a strong legal right to that picture, and I do know that he changed his mind about hiding it upstairs.

  He was very proud of it, particularly as it had spawned so many copies throughout the country, and he told me that the cigar company had eventually offered him one of the many surplus copies in an identical frame, but he had refused. They desperately wanted the original to b
e returned for display in the company head office, but they did not offer him any money or compensation for it. After all, he had paid good money to acquire it quite legally and perhaps the company should have made some form of financial gesture.

  Instead, following David’s refusal, the company had made a half-hearted threat of attempting to recover the painting through the civil courts, but that was never proceeded with. I don’t think it would have succeeded. So even now, if you go into the bar of the Moon and Compass at Craydale, you will see Sir Winston Churchill’s image beaming over the customers. And no one knows how or why it came to be in this remote North Yorkshire pub.

  One theory is that the salesman managed to steal it from his head office and that he mistakenly gave it away while delivering the advertisement copies. Or, of course, he might have become terrified at the thought of being captured with it in his possession, and decided to get rid of it in this way, hoping that no one in remote North Yorkshire would realise it was something special. But David Grayson did tell me that, when he decided to leave the pub, he would return the picture to the company for display in their boardroom above a little notice saying “Donated by Mr David Grayson.”

  I thought it was a nice gesture, a moral compromise and a means of ensuring the picture never again went astray.

  While that episode caused more than a flicker of professional interest, there were countless mundane crimes and one of them, or to be more accurate, a series of them, involved the village store at Crampton. It was a typical village store, the kind of emporium found in every self-respecting small community. It dispensed almost everything from lawnmowers to tins of beans by way of socks, bread loaves, paperback novels, eggs and some of the finest cooked ham in the area. The high walls were filled with shelves of wines, exotic foods and sweets, tins of fruit, boxes of screws, nails and washers, dishcloths and kitchen utensils.

  The owner was a small sprightly bachelor of indeterminate age. He was called Mr Wilson and had run his well stocked shop for as long as anyone could remember. No one seemed to know his Christian name because everyone called him Mr Wilson and no one knew much about his private life. A secretive but marvellously tidy little fellow, he seemed to be involved in no social or community activities, for his entire life was spent running his shop. It was his pride and joy, and if he could not supply any requested item from stock, he would always obtain it from somewhere. On one occasion, I asked if he knew where I could find a belt for our twin-tub spin-dryer, for the existing one had become worn and stretched until it would not properly turn the pulleys. Mr Wilson had one in stock.

  His range of cheeses was remarkable, as were his liqueurs, chocolates, fresh fruit and beautiful vegetables, and I know one man who even bought a wheelbarrow wheel from Mr Wilson’s stock – and it was the right size.

  During the course of my duties, I learned that people respected Mr Wilson highly and relied upon him to cater for all their daily requirements. ‘You’ll get it at Mr Wilson’s,’ was the slogan, and so I was a frequent visitor, both on duty and off. He never complained, never seemed flustered or worried and was always in complete control of his stock and in touch with his customers’ changing needs.

  And then, one breezy day in May, he rang me and asked if I would pay him a visit, preferably between 1pm and 1.45pm when he would be closed for lunch. I was asked to go around the back, to his cottage door, because he wished to discuss a matter without interruption by his customers.

  Intrigued by this, I drove across to Crampton and knocked on his cottage door. When he met me, he had a deep frown on his small, pink face and for the first time, to my knowledge, his immaculate head of pure white hair looked untidy. I detected worry in his eyes and there was no doubt he was more than a little agitated.

  ‘Come in, Mr Rhea,’ he invited. ‘You’ll have a coffee with me? Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, I had lunch before I came out, but a coffee would be very welcome.’

  He led me into his neat living-room; it was very plain and lacked the touch of a woman. There were no flowers, for example, and everything was in its place, untouched by children, visitors and family. There was not a speck of dust anywhere and his collection of brasses sparkled in the light of the bright spring weather. He indicated a plain leather easy chair and I settled in it as he busied himself with the coffee.

  ‘You’ll be wondering why I’ve called you in,’ he said, sitting opposite me and crossing his legs. I was surprised at the tiny size of his shoes, so highly polished and well kept. I’d never seen his feet before, because he was always behind his counters. Now, without those protective barriers, he was like a little elf as his bright blue eyes scrutinised me.

  ‘It must be important,’ was my response to that remark.

  ‘Yes, and confidential,’ he said. ‘Er, am I permitted to discuss something with you unofficially, off the record in a manner of speaking?’

  ‘Of course, we are allowed discretion, you know. We do not enforce every rule by the letter – that would make it a police state!’ I wondered what was coming next.

  ‘I have a shop-lifter among my customers’. He drew in a deep breath and then spat out those words. ‘A clever and persistent shop-lifter, Mr Rhea. I do not know what to do about her.’

  This problem was the scourge of many city shops, and it was also affecting some rural ones which encouraged self-service by their customers. Mr Wilson’s was such a shop, for the three counters which formed an open square as the customers entered each bore a selection of goods upon their tops. Sweets, cakes, delicacies, preserves, novels in paperback, spoons, fruit and so forth occupied space upon them.

  ‘You know who it is?’ I put to him.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, it’s been going on for some time now, months perhaps, but I’ve been keeping a careful eye on things recently. I have made myself certain of the identity of the culprit, Mr Rhea.’

  ‘You’ve confronted her about it?’ I asked.

  He shook his head this time. ‘No, that is the problem, that is why I need your advice.’

  ‘So what’s she been doing?’

  ‘General thieving, I think you’d call it,’ he smiled a little ruefully. ‘She is a good customer, Mr Rhea, a very good one. But I noticed that she began to linger in the shop when other customers were present, allowing me to serve them while she examined my stock. Then she would make her purchases, but I began to realise things had disappeared from my counter surfaces after each of her visits. She was picking things up while I was busy, you see, and hiding them in her shopping-bag.’

  ‘Valuable things?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really, more like silly things. Apples, plastic teaspoons, tins of sticking-plasters, tubes of toothpaste, indigestion tablets, bars of chocolate or tubes of sweets, a bottle of wine on one occasion, biscuits, cakes …’

  ‘If I am to prosecute her, I’ll need to catch her in possession of the stolen goods,’ I said. ‘I cannot take a person to court without real evidence.’

  ‘No, I don’t want that,’ he was quick to say. ‘I dont’t want to prosecute her, that’s the problem. I just want to stop her.’

  ‘Confrontation would be advisable in the first instance,’ I advised him. ‘You’d have to catch her in possession of something that you could positively identify has having been stolen from your shop. Then threaten her with court action. That might stop her.’

  He hesitated and then said, ‘I did halt her on one occasion,’ he said quietly. ‘I had placed a bottle of French perfume on the front counter, where I knew she had been taking things from, and it disappeared when she was in my shop. As she was leaving, I said. “Miss Carr, the perfume, that will be £3 17s 6d please”.’

  Unwittingly, he had revealed the name of the shop-lifter but I did not comment on this just yet.

  ‘And what did she do?’ I asked.

  ‘She looked at me full in the face and said, “Mr Wilson, I have no perfume, I never use that horrid French stuff”.’

  ‘And did you search her bags
?’

  ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘That would drive her away.’

  ‘You want her driven away, surely?’ I put to him.

  ‘On the contrary, Mr Rhea, I do not. That is my dilemma. You see, she is a very good customer. She spends heavily in here, buying all sorts and she always pays cash, except for the silly things she steals. She is not like some customers, Mr Rhea, who run up bills and need pressing to pay them. She pays cash for every honest purchase, so she’s a very valuable customer in that sense.’

  ‘You couldn’t afford to lose her then?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, but there’s more, you see. She is aunt to lots of people around here. She’s one of a very large family, the Carrs, most of whom live around Crampton. Farmers, villagers, professional people – you’ll know them as well as me. They’re related to the Bennisons, the Tindales, the Haddons, the Newalls, the Lofthouses and others too. Many have accounts with me, Mr Rhea, they’re all good spenders. She buys for them, as well; she’s very generous you see, always buying things for her army of nephews and nieces, always giving them presents from here. Bottles of wine, expensive cheeses, perfume, tins of exotic fruit and so on. They’re things she pays for, by the way.’

  ‘Are you saying that if you banned her, they’d all stop coming as well?’

  ‘It’s a fear at the back of my mind,’ he admitted. ‘They are a very close family, Mr Rhea, and I know they’d never believe that their generous Aunt Mabel was a cunning thief.’

  In some ways, it was the classic case of a nasty thief taking advantage of a kindly village storekeeper, and in real terms this was a case which well justified prosecution. I explained to Mr Wilson that we could secrete a camera inside the premises to catch her actually stealing an item, and then take her to court by using that film as evidence. Or we could mark certain objects with a fluorescent powder which would adhere to her hands and clothes, and which would glow under certain lights. By using technology, we could catch her in the act – all this presented no problems.