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

by Nicholas Rhea

  In the seclusion of my office, I settled down with my books to refresh my memory on the laws about public service vehicles, or P.S.V.s as we knew them. I knew they fell into three groups — a stage carriage was one which carried passengers at separate fares while not fulfilling the definition of an express carriage. The ordinary town service bus or a rural bus were typical examples. An express carriage was a P.S.V. carrying passengers at separate fares none of which was less than one shilling or some other prescribed greater sum. Long-distance express coaches fitted this definition, like the overnight runs to London or Liverpool. The third was a contract carriage which did not carry passengers at separate fares — like a bus hired to take a party to the theatre or a football match.

  The other rules and case law on buses were highly complicated with many exceptions and provisos. I concluded that if Claude Jeremiah was charging his passengers separate fares for their trips he was operating a public service vehicle. The appearance of his vehicle was immaterial. This meant he was breaking umpteen rules of the road, including motor insurance offences, public service vehicle licence offences and a host of others.

  The first job was to prove that Claude Jeremiah’s old banger was a bus, and that meant catching him with a full load of paying passengers. After having words with Arnold about the most beneficial time to halt Claude’s motor, I arranged to position myself one morning on a wide stretch of road at the far boundary of my beat. This was the route taken by Claude Jeremiah, and it was an ideal place to halt a moving vehicle. Furthermore, he would have a full load by the time he reached this place.

  Sure enough, soon after quarter past nine, the distant rumble of the ancient car reached my ears as it laboured towards the lofty boundary of Aidensfield beat. I was in full uniform and stepped impressively into the centre of the road as the rattling machinery approached. With a screech of brakes and a multitudinous banging and clattering, the old car groaned to a halt and Claude Jeremiah wound down his window.

  “Morning, Mr Rhea.” His tiny brown face creased into an uneasy grin as he regarded me from his driving-seat. “Want a lift?”

  “Morning, Claude Jeremiah. Full load, eh?” I stooped to peer inside. The car was packed with people and I counted nine heads including the driver. They were chiefly grey-haired ladies, as tight as baby wrens in their nest.

  “Aye, just giving some friends a lift into York,” he said.

  “Do you mind if I have a word with them?” I asked.

  “Summat important, is it?” shrilled a woman’s voice from inside. “We’ve a busy day, Mr Policeman. We go like this because it’s quicker than yon bus, trundling down farm tracks and the like, delivering eggs and pigs. Mr Greengrass gets us there on time . . .”

  “Are you a taxi then?” I asked him.

  “No, just a friendly cove giving pals a lift — being community-spirited, in a manner of speaking, Mr Rhea.”

  “What is the cost of your trip?” I asked the passengers.

  “Half a crown apiece,” said a woman. “Two bob if you get on at Elsinby.”

  “Look, Mr Rhea.” Claude climbed from his car and stood on the road, facing me. “I’m doing a public service. I can do a return trip cheaper than Merryweather and I get them there quicker. Tell me what’s wrong with that.”

  “By doing what you are doing—” I tried to sound professionally knowledgeable and adopted an official tone— “you are fulfilling the role of a bus. That means you need licensing as a bus. You are therefore operating without the necessary licences. And you are not insured.”

  “He’s doing us a favour, Mr Rhea, giving us a lift. If we decide to tip him a half dollar or pay for the petrol, that’s up to us . . .”

  “It’s not as easy as that, Mrs Prescott,” I said. “There are rules to obey and careful safety regulations to follow . . .”

  “If an accident happened to any of you in this car,” I said, “your families would not get compensation. Claude is not insured for paying passengers — he’s running a hell of a risk because he can’t afford to pay for your injuries or loss.”

  “He’s a taxi . . .,” bellowed a deep-voiced woman from within.

  “He’s not a taxi, not when he charges separate fares and picks you up at stages, and he’s not licensed as a hackney-carriage either. If he wants to do this sort of thing, he could get licensed as a hackney-carriage . . .”

  “Look Mr Rhea . . .”

  The situation was getting out of hand. By now, all the irate ladies had disembarked and were standing around glaring at me and their voices began to rise with irritation and anger as I pathetically tried to explain the rules and to point out the risks to themselves. But it was futile. No one wanted to know the intricacies of public service vehicle licensing laws — all they wanted was to get into the shops as quickly as possible.

  “Right!” I shouted. “Listen to me,” and I banged on the roof of the car to emphasise my words.

  Silence fell.

  “Claude Jeremiah is breaking the law in several ways, and I intend to take action against him,” I said sternly. “And if you agree to go along with him in this you are also aiding and abetting him. That means you could all go to court, every one of you.”

  Their gabbling stopped and now they listened carefully as I explained their liability, but as I talked I heard the approaching music of Arnold’s bus. It was heading this way, as I knew it would, and it was making hard work of climbing the hill towards our present position. I kept the women there, talking in graphic detail about the fearsome penalties that could be inflicted upon those who aided and abetted the functioning of illegal buses.

  As the bus appeared in view, I told them it would take me an hour to interview Claude Jeremiah about the miscellaneous offences that had been disclosed, and at this juncture the strident voice of Mrs Prescott shouted:

  “Claude Jeremiah — give us our money back. We’re catching that bus . . .”

  “But . . .” He stared at me and then at them.

  “It could prevent you going to court,” I added slyly.

  He began to fumble in his pockets and by this time the bus was upon us. I raised my hand and halted Arnold’s onward progress.

  “Morning, Arnold. Going to York?”

  “Aye, Mr Rhea. Got some passengers for me, have you?”

  “There’s a few ladies in need of urgent transport to York,” I said.

  “There’s room enough in here,” he told me and I climbed in for a look.

  “Your aisles are not blocked, I see,” I smiled. “No crates of eggs or manacled pigs blocking the exits?”

  “No, Mr Rhea, I run a properly conducted public service vehicle.”

  And I happened to see that all twenty-two passengers had on their knees four or five egg-boxes, all full. A hundred dozen eggs . . .

  “All these ladies and gentlemen are taking eggs into York market,” he said, smiling at me.

  “I don’t want to know about their private arrangements.” I left the bus and watched Claude’s passengers clamber aboard. They paid their fares and with a double hoot of the horn the old bus rumbled on its way.

  “That was nasty of you, Mr Rhea,” Claude grumbled.

  “I’ve saved you from a fate worse than death!” I countered. “If the Traffic Commissioners had got hold of you, my lad, your feet would never touch the ground. I’m not taking you to court on this occasion, Claude Jeremiah, although I should do so. Regard this as a warning — no more pinching bus passengers. If you want to make money with your car, get yourself licensed as a taxi.”

  “Yes, Mr Rhea.”

  He looked dejected, but I think it was for the best. If I’d taken him to court, there would have been a long, involved and highly controversial case about what constitutes a bus, and I was happy to let him go with an unofficial warning.

  “Do I need a licence to carry other things then?” he asked me with a crafty gleam in his eyes.

  “Other things?” I asked.

  “Well, folks keep asking me to deliv
er things in York, you see . . . carry stuff for them . . .”

  I stared at him and said, “Open your boot, Claude Jeremiah.”

  He gingerly opened it and it was full of cartons of fresh eggs.

  “If you convey goods for hire or reward, you need a goods vehicle licence,” I informed him. “And you need a special excise licence . . .”

  “I’ll have to take those back then,” he said.

  “I haven’t seen those, Claude, not today. I might stop and inspect your boot another day . . .”

  “Thank you, Mr Rhea, thank you.”

  He locked the boot, jumped inside his old car and roared away in a cloud of oily fumes.

  Perhaps it seemed a little unfair to let Arnold’s bus continue to carry eggs, pigs and the like, but Claude was too much of a risk to allow loose upon the public with his car. In his case, people could suffer awful consequences — in Arnold’s case, only Arnold could suffer.

  If the soft-glove treatment worked on this occasion, I would be pleased, but I wondered how long it would be before we had the Greengrass Taxi Line. A shudder ran down my spine.

  * * *

  For the next few months I had little contact with Merryweather Coaches and, so far as I know, Arnold never experienced a visitation by the Traffic Commissioners. I felt it unwise to check too closely upon his goods-carrying activities because he did provide a service to isolated rural communities. For Arnold, therefore, business began to boom. Contrary to the national trend, his bus service gathered more and more passengers and he felt obliged to employ a conductress to ease his burden.

  He had found that his precious time was being consumed at every stop; he spent many useful minutes issuing tickets or delivering change and reckoned that if he paid for the services of a conductress much time and effort would be saved. Furthermore, his passengers would receive a swifter service. He placed an advert in every post-office window of the district and some eight or nine ladies made rapid application for the post. This was long before the days of the Sex Discrimination Act and it is possible that Arnold envisaged a delightful creature of exceptional beauty parading the length of his coach, but in this sense the sun did not shine on Arnold.

  None of the seven hopefuls could even be described as remotely attractive, although five could count money and one knew how to change a wheel. After interviewing each woman, Arnold settled for Miss Hannah Pybus, whose name led to many nicknames aboard the coach. Some of the children called her Fly-Bus or Hannah Wide-Bus, the latter being due to the somewhat extensive measurement of her hips.

  Hannah was a spinster of the parish of Thackerston and was in her fifties. She had lived with her retired father for years, never working at a normal job but spending her time looking after the old man. He had died several months ago and she now needed an outlet. The opportunity of a job which took her free of charge into conurbations like Ashfordly and Elsinby, and into that far-off place of York, was a godsend. A whole new world opened for Hannah Pybus.

  It was sad that Hannah was not in the least attractive in her appearance. From a distance, there could be considerable doubt as to whether she was male or female, for she was almost six feet tall, with a frame like a battleship and hips like the proverbial rear-end of an African bull elephant. Stout, trunk-like legs supported her massive frame and she walked with a strange, sailor-like motion, as if throwing her body forward in an attempt to keep it mobile. Her shapeless, outdated clothes concealed any semblance of breasts or waistline while her face was heavy about the jowls with sandy-coloured tufts of hair sprouting from all manner of odd places. She had a freckled face with pale brown eyes and a mop of sandy-coloured hair on top, the strands held in place with tortoiseshell slides with a thick red ribbon at the back.

  Being a lady of leisure, therefore, she embarked on her new job with characteristic gusto, cycling daily from her cottage at Thackerston to Arnold’s depot at Ashfordly, some six or seven miles. Her cycle had a basket on the front and a wire skirt-guard at each side of the rear wheel. Somehow she forced the pedals of her gallant machine to carry her up the long incline to Aidensfield Bank Top before gathering speed for the remaining four-mile run into Ashfordly.

  After Arnold had explained the intricacies of his ticket machine and accounting system, he took off for York with Hannah aboard. She was clad in a shapeless gown coloured purple and cream to match his coaching colours and looked like a statue awaiting its unveiling ceremony. In her enthusiasm as the first passenger entered, she pounced on him and demanded his destination. He paid all the way to York, even though he only wanted to go to Elsinby.

  Within a week, she was totally in charge. Arnold told me he’d never seen anything like it. Hardly had the last passenger boarded at any given stop, than Hannah rang the bell to send him along his route. There were no delays now. She proceeded to allocate seats to the passengers, leaving them no choice in the matter, and demanded their fares while making sure they behaved. Children quaked when she appeared, old men didn’t dare smoke their foul pipes and the village gossips watched their language as Hannah hovered around, eagle-eyed and always anxious to please her boss.

  There is little doubt that Arnold and his finances benefited from her presence. He was able to concentrate upon his driving and maintenance, while Hannah cared for the interiors of the two buses. She polished and washed, swept and tidied, and she seldom made an error with the cash. The general behaviour of passengers, especially children and drunks, improved tremendously and the net result was that more people used Merryweather Coaches. They seemed happy to obey Hannah when on board. Arnold was in his sixth heaven and, whenever I saw him in the Brewers Arms, he talked incessantly of bus-conductresses, buses and bus routes. For him, Hannah provided a new dimension in his life, but for the regulars in the pub they grew just as sick of Hannah as they did with every other facet of bus-lore. Even so, they all agreed that it was nice to see Arnold so happy.

  There was even talk of a romance between the unlikely pair, although it was universally agreed that the man who took Hannah in all her prime showed gallantry of the highest order or foolishness of the most awful kind. Nothing developed along those lines while I was at Aidensfield, although I did note Arnold’s starry eyes as he talked about Hannah’s role in his coaching enterprise. Maybe there was something there? Maybe he did drive her home after the last trip, with her cycle in the rear and his hands on the wheel?

  It is quite true to say that the entire community was delighted at the success of Arnold’s venture. The little bus company with its huge conductress did a roaring trade and Hannah did allow some parcels to be carried. She had studied the Conduct of Drivers, Conductors and Passengers Regulations 1936 and 1946, consequently she knew which goods were permitted and which had never to be brought aboard. She knew that she must never talk to the driver when driving, unless for safety reasons, and she appreciated that it was her duty to enforce the regulations relating to the conduct of passengers, and to see that the route, fare and destination notices were properly displayed.

  Hannah enforced the rules most carefully. She enforced those which said passengers had not to be disorderly, that they had to enter and alight in the correct manner and not through skylights or windows, that they had not to distract the driver’s attention, nor distribute notices or advertising matter aboard the bus. She had learned that they must not play noisy instruments or throw bottles, coins and litter about the place, nor allow any banners, flags or streamers to overhang the road outside. She made sure they did not soil the vehicle or be offensive, either in behaviour or clothing. Loaded firearms had not to be taken on board, nor had any other offensive article and no one could bring an animal aboard without the consent of an authorised person. Hannah reckoned she was authorised to refuse the pigs, lambs, hens and goats although she did tolerate such creatures if the accompanying adult would clean up the mess and keep the creature under control.

  Hannah knew that she had wide powers to enforce the observance of these rules, and that a constable was also
given like powers. If any passenger contravened the regulations, he had to give his name and address on demand to the driver or conductor, or to a constable, and such a person could be removed from the bus by either the driver or the conductor, or by a constable if requested by those officials.

  It was difficult to envisage an occasion when I would be called to act officially, for I knew Hannah would quell any riot by the merest glance of those pale eyes, but one Wednesday afternoon I found myself involved in what appeared to be an infringement of the Conduct of Drivers, Conductors and Passengers Regulations.

  I was in my office at home, writing reports, when Arnold’s bus halted outside and a very distraught Hannah hurried down the path. I opened the door to admit her, for she was clearly distressed. I gathered from her first words that a passenger had infringed the rules in a rather peculiar way.

  “Calm down, Hannah!” I said. “Take a deep breath and then tell me about it.”

  She took a huge breath, enough to drain a hot-air balloon, and her colossal bosom swelled behind my counter and threatened to dislodge the typewriter. But the trick worked, for her face lost its initial look of horror and disgust, and she sighed.

  “By Jove, Mr Rhea, it was a nasty shock, I can tell you.”

  “Come in and sit down.” I lifted the flap on the office counter and invited her in for a seat. She settled down and refused a cup of tea; Arnold was waiting outside in the bus and would take her home. She’d give him a cup in her house and would have hers then. He wouldn’t come in, she said, as he found it all too embarrassing.

  “So what happened on that bus?” I asked.

  She swallowed hard and I could see she was acutely embarrassed.

  “It was a man,” she said. “He . . . er . . . well, he broke the rules about the conduct of passengers . . . he was offensive,” she added quickly.

  “Dirty clothing? Been cleaning out his pigs, had he?”

  “No,” she said, gritting her teeth. “It was worse than that, Mr Rhea, much, much worse.”

  “Go on, I must know what he did if I am to take action.”