CONSTABLE NICK BOX SET 1–5 five feel-good village cozy mysteries

by Nicholas Rhea

  And so he was.

  Because of our respective regular use of that street, my contact with Aud George was frequent and invariably interesting. He was a fund of information, a veritable village knowledge-box. Such a person is of inestimable value to a policeman, even if much of his chatter is pure gossip. George would chatter away quite amiably, giving me titbits of information which were useful to me in my work and which he knew would be of value. He did not do so with any malice in his mind, nor did he bear a grudge against anyone. He provided me with snippets simply because I ought to know what was going on. He would tell me, for example, that young Stan Fowler had taken up the hobby of throwing stones through greenhouse windows, or that Andy Merryweather’s daughter was seeing rather a lot of a married man, or that Charlie Brett’s lad was riding a motorbike without a licence, or that young Ferrensby, aged seventeen, was supping ale in a local pub.

  These snippets were of value, as was any other gossip, but occasionally he did provide very useful information. He had once noticed a car pass through Aidensfield at a slow speed, noted the number on the back of his hand, and then told me. It transpired that it was a team of confidence tricksters from Leeds who preyed on the elderly by offering to repair roofs or windows. Having done the work, which was shoddy in the extreme, they demanded exorbitant prices for the job, against veiled threats of violence if the elderly person refused to pay. This information was valuable and in fact, a colleague of mine on another beat arrested that bunch due to George’s observations. They were awarded three years apiece for their crimes.

  With regard to George’s minor gems of news, I seldom took official action. For example, it was sufficient to stop Charlie Brett’s lad and tell him I’d be checking his driving licence in a day or two, or I would pop into the pub to inform the landlord that young Ferrensby was underage. I maintained that this form of prevention was often better than taking the offenders to court, although such actions could be construed as being over-generous in the exercise of my traditional discretion. The ability to use such discretion is under attack by left-wing political elements who see it as favouritism and something to be enjoyed by privileged classes. Nothing could be further from the truth, for those helped in this manner are usually the modern under-privileged who, without this assistance from the police, would soon acquire a criminal record. Keen socialists are attempting to remove that valuable exercise of discretion from the policeman’s armoury — it will be a sad day when it has gone. When it does go, the feared police state will have arrived when all rules will be obeyed, down to the last cruel letter of the law. Humane policemen will no longer exist.

  But back to George. My many talks with him revealed one charming habit which I don’t think he realised he possessed. It concerned the passing of information about local deaths.

  George would keep everyone, including me, informed about the latest deaths in Aidensfield and district. At first, the names he provided meant nothing to me, but after I had been in the area for a few months, they did begin to have relevance. I could associate names with houses, houses with faces and faces with the inevitable range of close relatives who lived hereabouts. Consequently, a death was important. It meant I could commiserate with the relatives of the deceased, should I chance to meet them in the street, and that sort of interest in other folks is useful public relations for any police officer.

  After a while, I realised that George was unwittingly using a code when he passed on this information. He employed different phrases which were based on the religion of the dear departed, consequently it was possible to identify the religion of the deceased from the words used by George.

  If a member of the Church of England died, for example, he would say, “He’s seen t’last of his days,” and for a Roman Catholic, he would gravely tell me, “He’s gitten his time owered.” For a Methodist, he would say, “He’s gone to better things,” and for members of the smaller churches, his phrase would be, “He’s drawn his last.”

  Inevitably, there were those who professed no specific faith, but who would be placed to rest within the boundaries of the local parish church, officially enlisted in the great army of deceased members of the Church of England. For these, George’s phrase was, “They’ve gone to their eternal rest, God bless ’em.”

  I enjoyed his chatter and we became great pals. He served the public of the district for many years and in all weathers. He was there when I left Aidensfield for pastures new, but I ought to add his own epitaph. I learned a few years ago that he had died. His own death was announced in his Anglican phrase, and I was sorry I was not there to learn of it first-hand.

  I am told, however, that Aud George died slowly and very peacefully, and that his own last words were “Ah’s gahin to meet my Maker.”

  * * *

  As I progressed around my beat in those early days, meeting people like Aud George, Miss Harborough and Farmer Bradshaw, I realised that those country folk were thoroughly decent people. They were good and they were harmless; there wasn’t an ounce of evil in them. If they broke the laws of this land, then it was in a small way. They forget to renew their driving licences, got drunk on Saturday night, drove unroadworthy vehicles or let cattle stray on the highway. These are not evil transgressions like vandalism, violence and theft. Crime, in the real sense of the word was a rare part of my routine police duties. If I had to ‘book’ any of these people, that act of police duty was never held against me. They stoically accepted a court appearance or a fine and our friendship was never tainted. They considered errors on their part to be their fault and knew that a constable’s duty must be done. Once in a while, therefore, I was duty-bound to take one of my ‘parishioners’ to court.

  Such an occasion involved a local character called Dick the Sick. A dour Scotsman, he loved a practical joke and could be talked into all manner of japes after a pint or two of strong Yorkshire ale. Once a joke misfired because it involved the police in an official way.

  I was on my weekly rest-day at the time, and the incident involved a famous greyhound which had been stolen. The Press was full of the story but it transpired that George, landlord of the Hopbind Inn at Elsinby, bred greyhounds. He used them in the popular sport of coursing and it was unfortunate that he had recently banned Dick from his bars, due to previous pranks. Dick had acquired his nickname of “Dick the Sick” because he never worked, always managing to exist on sickness benefits and other Government handouts. In spite of his multiple ailments, Dick and his wife had produced eight lovely children and a cottage garden as tidy as any for miles around.

  On the occasion of the theft of the greyhound, someone anonymously rang the nearest Divisional Police Headquarters to say the dog in question had been hidden at the Hopbind Inn, Elsinby.

  As a result of information received, as we say in police jargon, a police car proceeded from that Headquarters with an inspector, a sergeant and two constables on board. In the jargon of newspapers, they swooped upon the unsuspecting Hopbind and its customers and mounted a very thorough search. They found many greyhounds, of course, but the stolen dog was not among them. From the ensuing conversation with the landlord, it became quite clear that the call had been a hoax. It also became clear from the distinctive Scots accent of the caller, that it had been perpetrated by Dick the Sick. George knew that, and Dick’s motive wasn’t difficult to imagine. Dick was interviewed by that army of officers, but he stoutly denied making the call.

  Next morning, being totally unaware of this little drama on my patch, I booked on duty to find Sergeant Blaketon waiting on my doorstep. He provided me with a lurid account of the hoax call and of the alleged whereabouts of the famous missing dog. He went on to say the inspector had not been very pleased about it, and suggested we have another talk with Dick, in an attempt to secure an admission from him. We found him in his garden and when he saw the impressive bulk of Sergeant Blaketon, he wilted visibly. During the interview, however, he persistently denied responsibility for the call. I knew by his facial expressions and t
he way he ran his hand through his thick red hair, that he was guilty. But that sort of evidence is useless in a court of law. The more old Blaketon pressured him, the more firmly he denied our allegations. As we turned to leave, beaten by his Scots stubbornness, Dick tugged at my sleeve and said, “I’d like a word with you, Mr Rhea, please.”

  “Alone, Dick?”

  “Aye, alone.”

  Blaketon gave me the nod and I went into Dick’s tidy home. In the lounge, he looked at me, licked his lips and said, “It was me, Mr Rhea.”

  “I know it was, Dick, but why? Why make a bloody stupid call like that?”

  “Aye, it was stupid. They got me tipsy, you see. They dared me to do it.”

  “Who did?”

  “Them in the Brewer’s Arms.” That was a pub in Aidensfield.

  “I’ll have to book you, Dick,” I told him and explained all about the fuss and the visits by other police officers.

  “It’ll get it off my chest,” he sighed, and I thought I detected relief in his voice.

  On his own admission, I reported him for summons and eventually he appeared at Eltering Magistrates’ Court, charged with making an annoying telephone call. He was fined £5.

  A few days later, I dropped into the bar of the Brewer’s Arms where the place was alive with local men, still chuckling over Dick’s dilemma. Dick was there, suffering them in a broody silence. As I walked in, the expected hush descended upon the assembly, as it always did when a uniformed bobby entered. Looking around the bunch of rosy, rural faces, I adopted a serious expression and said, “Well, gentlemen, Dick’s been fined. Five pounds. It’s not a lot, but it’s a big amount for a chap with eight kids and no job. You’ve had your fun, all of you. I know you put him up to that joke,” and I then adopted an even more serious tone. “It is an offence to aid, abet, counsel or procure the commission of an offence by any person. You’re all guilty of that, each and every one of you.”

  They did not utter a word, but all looked at me steadily, wondering what their fate would be.

  “But,” I continued, “I will not summon you if you do one small thing for me. I reckon you ought to contribute to Dick’s fine, all of you,” I had a quick count of heads and there were fifteen in the bar. “I reckon ten bob apiece would be about right, eh?”

  No one moved. No one said a thing. “It could be a fiver each,” I reminded them, “and your names in police files.” I removed my notebook from the pocket of my tunic and opened it, as if to take names.

  “We’ve had our fun, lads,” said one farmer, as he dug into his pocket and produced some cash. “Ten bob’s nowt.”

  He passed a ten shilling note to me and his action prompted the others into passing me a similar amount. I soon had £7 10s, 0d. (£7.50) in my hand. I passed this to Dick.

  “There you are, Dick. You’re in pocket and your fine’s been paid.”

  “You’ll have a drink on me, Mr Rhea?” he asked, smiling.

  “Aye, I will,” I said, for it’s not often a Scotsman buys a Yorkshireman a drink.

  But that’s how the Dicks of this world exist without the need to work. Somehow, they always win.

  * * *

  Another character I shall never forget is a nameless youth in a distant village. Soon after my arrival in Aidensfield, I found myself performing what we called ‘routes’. In the early days of policing, these were undertaken either on foot or by pedal-cycle, and they were allocated to each rural policeman by a superior officer. Some routes were late at night and others very early in the morning, even starting at 4 am. Each route lasted about three or four hours and we had to follow a predetermined route around our area of responsibility. In the days before personal radios for policemen, we had to arrive at specified telephone kiosks at certain times, so that the office could contact us if our presence was required at an incident. The ‘points’, as we called them, enabled our superiors to find us and to check upon our whereabouts. Those points were used both as a method of communication and for supervisory purposes. The sergeant, the inspector or even the superintendent would get out of bed at the crack of dawn to drive out to one of our lonely points, hoping to find the duty policeman. A short conference would be held, and the superior would sign the constable’s notebook to record the fact of that meeting. We nicknamed this curious little procedure as a ‘chalk’, probably from the days when the supervisory rank carried a little slate and chalked up the time of the meeting. If the visit was before 6 am or after midnight, the entry would be in red. It was considered quite an achievement to acquire two or three red chalks during a month.

  The arrival of radio-equipped police motorcycles suggested that this ancient and mainly useless activity could be dispensed with. But it wasn’t. Old habits die hard and we had to drive around those routes on our motorcycles, continuing to make points at telephone kiosks. This was insisted upon, even though we had radio sets. Although modern equipment was coming to the police, modern ideas were a long way behind. I am reminded of a sergeant at a local station who, upon receiving the first consignment of personal radio sets worth around £100 each, refused to let the men use them. “They’re too valuable for you lads to mess about with,” he said, locking them in a cupboard.

  As a result of this rigid thinking, therefore, I regularly found myself motorcycling about my beat either at the crack of dawn or during the depths of night. The sound of the little Francis Barnett two-stroke must have woken the populace, caused dogs to bark, cattle to low and hens to cackle. Little else was achieved by these patrols, simply because any self-respecting burglar or poacher would hear the distinctive sound of the bike long before the constabulary hove to. But authority said we had to perform them, and so we did. I often thought they were designed for supervisory officers to acquire lots of red chalks, like a gunman of the Wild West notching up kills on his rifle butt. I wondered if some of our supervisors ran competitions to see who could acquire the most red chalks within a given time, with a prize at the end of the year. Like a length of red chalk, maybe?

  One evening, I performed a late route, working from 7 pm until 11 pm, and then the following morning, I was allocated another one beginning at 6 am. This was before the days when we could demand eight hours off duty between shifts, and so, at six o’clock that morning, I leapt aboard my little Francis Barnett, kicked it into life and began a long, cold and dark tour of lonely moorland and twisting lanes. This particular route took me away from Aidensfield because a neighbouring bobby was on leave. I had to cover his beat.

  I was rather concerned because my petrol was low. Because I had to obtain my official petrol from a specified local garage, I could not purchase any elsewhere; besides, garages weren’t open at that early hour. I knew I would have to be careful, at least until eight-thirty when my local garage was able to supply me.

  At my seven o’clock point, I received a phone call asking me to deliver a ‘request message’. It meant a long detour to a lonely farm — it was to inform a farmer that Uncle Frank had died in Middlesbrough General Hospital and would he contact the sister on Ward 9. Having delivered this message (a task we often had to undertake before the increasing popularity of telephones in these remote places), I returned to my route, noting that my eight o’clock point was the hamlet of Whemmelby, at the telephone kiosk.

  Whemmelby lies deep in the North Yorkshire moors at the top of a long glacial valley etched deep into the hills. In the spring-time, it is glorious with daffodils and bluebells which coat its nine miles of riverside, and in the autumn, the moors above glow with a rich, deep purple. It is a robust area, with long and low farmhouses built snug into the hillsides. Its centre of population is a cluster of houses at the foot of a hill with a gradient of 1-in-3. There are several hills of this gradient in the North Yorkshire moors, and while they hold no terrors for the locals who use them daily, they do terrify town drivers and others from the flat regions of Britain who regard 1-in-12 as precipitous.

  It was down one of these hills that I guided my Francis Barnett to
make that eight o’clock point. Halfway down, the engine stopped. I knew immediately what had happened, so I coasted into the hamlet and pulled up outside the kiosk. I inspected my petrol tank and, sure enough, it was bone dry. My fears had been confirmed and I was seventeen miles from my usual garage.

  My radio would not function because of my location deep in the valley, so I went into the kiosk to ring Divisional Headquarters. I hoped they might arrange a car to fetch some petrol, but the phone was out of order. There was a small notice stuck to a windowpane, but I tried the instrument just in case it had been repaired at the exchange end. It hadn’t. It was stone dead.

  What now? I knew Whemmelby from the past, and there was nothing here, not even a shop. There was a village hall with a small parking area in front, Methodist chapel, three farms and one or two cottages, all surrounded by steep hills and forbidding moorland. I looked at each building in the hope of seeing a tell-tale telephone cable running to it, but not one of them possessed a telephone. I could not push the bike up that incline and the nearest garage would be about eight miles away. I couldn’t obtain my official petrol there, but I might be able to buy some at my own expense, hopefully just enough to get me home.

  Another problem was the performance of my duty. Suppose that phone accepted incoming calls? Suppose Sergeant Blaketon rang me and instructed me to visit some house which had been burgled, or to attend a traffic accident or other calamity? I dreaded to think what his reaction might be when I said I’d run out of petrol, and I concluded that the only solution was to walk up the hill in the hope that a friendly motorist picked me up and transported me to a petrol filling station.

  That course of action meant parking the machine in a safe place, not that anyone here would harm it but because Sergeant Blaketon might accuse me of carelessness with county property. I returned to the bike, sat astride it and began to propel it with my feet towards a parking place in front of the village hall.