CONSTABLE ABOUT THE PARISH a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 17)

by Nicholas Rhea

  ‘Who’s this?’ Mary smiled as she peered into the cot. We stood around in shocked silence and told Mary the sad story. Tears misted across her eyes as she tenderly lifted the tiny child out of the carrycot. Its eyes were open now, but it was not crying. ‘I don’t believe it, how could anyone do this . . . come along, you’ll soon want something to eat . . . I hope I have something that will do . . .’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. As Mary had disturbed the coverlets, it revealed at the foot of the cot, hidden beneath the blankets, an envelope, some extra nappies, spare clothes and a baby’s bottle full of milk.

  ‘It’ll need warming.’ Having borne four children of her own, Mary knew exactly what to do and carried the now crying child into the house, along with the bottle. ‘She’ll need feed every four hours. You found her at half-past six, Miss Bernadette?’

  ‘I did, sure as I am here.’

  ‘So if the tiny mite was fed at five o’clock or just afterwards, she’ll soon need another feed. I’ll see to that.’

  Soon, the child would have its nappy changed and it would be fed if and when Mary considered it necessary. With the baby gone, I opened the envelope. On pink paper there was scribbled a pencilled note which said, Whoever finds her, please look after her. And please baptize her.

  And that was all — except we now knew for certain it was a girl.

  ‘I have baptized her, Nick, it was an emergency baptism in light of the unusual circumstances. I called her Helen Aidensfield but if her parents do turn up, they might want something else on her birth certificate. You’ll know what to do next?’ Father Adrian put to me.

  ‘I’ve never dealt with an abandoned baby before,’ I had to admit. ‘But I am sure there are procedures. First, we need to find the mother, she’s obviously a Catholic who understands the need for baptism, but she’s clearly in need of help, either medical or psychological or both.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s a local girl,’ said the priest. ‘I am sure I would have known if any of my congregation or their relations had given birth or were about to.’

  ‘I can have words with the doctors, midwives and local hospitals,’ I said. ‘We might be able to trace the mother through them.’

  ‘She’s only a day or two old, but well cared for, Constable,’ said Miss Bernadette. ‘The clothing is clean and of a very good quality.’

  ‘If the mother is not from this area, it seems someone has deliberately chosen to leave the child on your church doorstep, Father; they must have travelled through the village by car. But why this particular church?’

  ‘I can only suggest it’s because it’s a Catholic church. It reminds me of bygone times. Not long ago, when a Catholic mother gave birth to an illegitimate child and wanted to conceal the birth, she gave the child to a convent to be brought up and schooled. The shame of illegitimacy made them — and their parents — very secretive and irrational. Maybe there’s a hint of that kind of thinking in this mother’s behaviour?’

  ‘She wants her child baptized a Catholic and brought up in a convent? You think that’s the reason for all this? If so, this mother is not setting a very holy example to her baby daughter!’ I commented.

  ‘We must not condemn the mother,’ said Father Adrian. ‘We do not know what her motives were nor do we know what problems she was facing herself, possibly alone and with no one to guide her and no one to turn to for help.’

  ‘She might be suffering from the effects of childbirth.’ I was thinking of the crime of infanticide, committed by women whose state of mind had been adversely affected by giving birth.

  ‘Very likely,’ he said. ‘But I wonder if she went to her own priest at any stage? Probably not but clearly she is in a very desperate state. But sadly, for the infant, there are better ways for starting one’s life,’ he added. ‘To grow up unwanted must be a terrible cross to bear.’

  I had to tackle this from a practical aspect. ‘The point is, what do we do now? Clearly, the baby is in need of professional care.’

  ‘Nazareth House in Middlesbrough cares for orphans,’ he said. ‘I will telephone them to see if they will admit this child.’

  ‘And we will establish enquiries to trace the mother,’ I said.

  ‘Should she be found, will she be prosecuted?’ asked Father Adrian.

  ‘It is a crime to abandon or expose any child under two years of age whereby its life is endangered or its health is, or is likely to be permanently injured,’ I quoted from the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 still in force. ‘An action of this kind is also regarded as cruelty to children, so the mother, or whoever placed the child on your doorstep, could be prosecuted under two statutes, but in practice, the courts take a lenient view of such behaviour. Bearing in mind the problems faced by some new mothers, they do believe that treatment is more important than punishment.’

  ‘You said “whoever placed the child there”,’ observed Father Adrian. ‘You are not limiting that action to the mother?’

  ‘Some stern fathers in these moorland areas have been known to take illegitimate babies away from their daughters,’ I said. ‘I was brought up around here, remember, and in Catholic eyes, I know it is still considered shameful to produce an illegitimate baby. Quite often in the past, the poor mothers of bairns born out of wedlock had no choice — their child was taken away and put in a home, a convent as a rule, with no questions asked. They thought it helped to preserve family dignity.’

  ‘Sadly, I remember that kind of thing,’ admitted Father Adrian. ‘A cruel solution. And you think this might have happened here?’

  ‘It’s not impossible, Father,’ I put to him. ‘Think of the time the baby was left — the very early hours of the morning — and a car must have been used. How many young mums would have a car? And the condition of the clothing, the state of the carry-cot — it’s all good quality material. This is no down-and-out youngster, Father, this is no young mum on the dole. The baby is very young too, a day old, two days at the most. It’s been disposed of as soon as possible, so that no one has seen it with its new mother. A rapid disposal also means the mother has had no time to get attached to the child. This was a deliberate plan of action carried out with some forethought. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Victorian type of parent had done this.’

  ‘There are several people around here whose daughters are away from home, either working or at university,’ he spoke gently and with a lot of thought.

  ‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘So perhaps we are seeking a stern father as the person who abandoned the child? But whatever has happened, there will be a very unhappy young mother somewhere in the background.’

  ‘And what will she be doing now?’ he put to me.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d been sent away from home, to get over it, to an aunt or friend or someone similar. She’ll be in hiding, at the behest of her family — that’s my guess,’ I said.

  ‘There are times it’s hard to love all the human race,’ mused Father Adrian. ‘So will the newspapers find out?’

  ‘If we start asking questions around hospitals and surgeries, they might find out,’ I said. ‘But sometimes a feature in the newspaper is the only way to trace the mother. We might have to approach them to ask for news coverage. Readers may realize that a woman they saw with a baby two or three days ago, no longer has the child . . . so they’ll ask themselves where’s it gone? And where did this lovely blue carrycot come from? It looks new, the shop might remember selling it or friends of the family might recall it. So in all sorts of ways, the newspapers can help us trace the mother — and don’t forget she might want to be found,’ I reminded them. ‘She must be suffering terribly right now; we must not ignore her torment, Father, and we shall not. She might be depending upon the papers, radio or television to tell her what’s happened to her child. But if the mother’s parents have done this, the girl might have given birth at a hospital a long way from here. Questions asked locally might not produce any information whereas items in the national papers might
produce a result for us.’

  ‘Yes, well, you know your job,’ he said. ‘Look, I must be going. I will ring the nuns at Nazareth House in Middlesbrough straight away to see if they will take the child, at least on a temporary basis, and I will call you.’

  ‘Shall I stay with you to help care for the child?’ asked Miss Bernadette, clearly wishing to have some responsibility for her discovery.

  ‘I’ll let you speak to my wife about that,’ I told her. ‘You and Mary can decide what to do in the immediate future while I set the official wheels in motion. Now, would you like to have a baptismal breakfast with us and your new god-daughter, Miss Bernadette?’

  We had not yet had our breakfasts, and I knew that Miss Bernadette would not have eaten before Holy Communion, and so we all settled down for a celebratory meal of boiled eggs with soldiers, marmalade and toast and a pot of coffee. Baby Helen slept through what was probably her first and last family meal, and then Father Adrian rang to say that Nazareth House would accept the child, at least on a temporary basis. There was an enormous relief, even though Mary was already talking emotionally about adoption of the foundling; our children thought the baby was beautiful, which she was, and they wanted to keep her. But it wasn’t quite so simple as that — for one thing, the distraught mother could arrive at any moment. Having fortified myself with a good breakfast, it was with very mixed feelings that I rang Sergeant Blaketon to decide the next course of action and set all kinds of official wheels in motion.

  ‘Trace the mother and have her prosecuted for abandoning the child,’ was his first reaction.

  ‘Easier said than done, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘But I will commence enquiries straight away. It’s the baby that concerns me . . .’

  ‘The child will go to a place of safety, Rhea. Hospital surgery, remand home, police station or other suitable place, the occupier of which is willingly temporarily to receive an infant.’ He was quoting direct from the Children and Young Persons Act of 1933. ‘Those are the places listed, or of course, it includes any home provided by the local authority.’

  I suggested Nazareth House and gave my reasons; he agreed and I said Mary was prepared to drive the child to Middlesbrough, along with the baby’s godmother.

  ‘Godmother?’ he echoed down the telephone. ‘I thought the child had no known parents?’

  ‘She was baptized this morning, Sergeant,’ and I attempted to explain the Catholic procedure in such an emergency.

  ‘Well, you’ll know more than me about such things,’ he said. ‘All right, have the child taken to Nazareth House and set about tracing the mother. Circulate all police stations locally, and ask for enquiries to be made at hospitals, surgeries and the like. Get our photographic unit to take a picture of the baby and the carrycot, and the bottle and other stuff that was placed inside. Then we’ll get the newspapers and radio stations to do a story. It might help if we can get the child shown on television. That could persuade the mother to come forward.’

  It was a frantic day. A local freelance photographer came to take the newspaper photographs and a reporter interviewed me and my family, Miss Bernadette and Father Adrian. Later, a TV news crew turned up and spent hours filming in and around the village, along with interviews of local churchgoers and early-morning workers. Then, as Mary, Miss Bernadette and my children set out upon their tearful journey to Nazareth House, I began to ask questions of doctors, midwives, surgeries, cottage hospitals and other likely places within a ten-mile radius of Aidensfield. I started with telephone enquiries but knew that in many cases, a personal visit would be necessary. And so the attempt to find the mother or even the grandparents of Baby Helen began in earnest.

  All the local newspapers and regional TV programmes published the story with appealing pictures of Baby Helen and details of her meagre belongings. Radio stations carried the story too, and every hospital and other place likely to treat a pregnant, or recently pregnant woman, was visited either by me or by other police officers. But we never discovered anything that would lead us to the family or mother of Baby Helen.

  Meanwhile, Baby Helen was thriving at Nazareth House; once word got around Aidensfield Miss Bernadette and other people from the village would regularly travel to Middlesbrough to visit the baby, as did Mary and I, along with our family. In some ways, Baby Helen was adopted by the villagers of Aidensfield, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

  The weeks rolled by; summer turned into autumn and some of the newspapers produced a follow-up story about Baby Helen’s progress, but nothing that anyone did produced a name for the mother nor any clues about Helen’s unknown ancestors. From time to time, Sergeant Blaketon nudged me and my colleagues at Ashfordly police station into renewing our unproductive enquiries but we discovered absolutely nothing. I was sure that Helen had been born a long way from Aidensfield, hence our lack of success, but I was equally sure that her mother — and grandparents — had some links with the village.

  I did discover the names of several young women whose parents lived in the village, and who were working or living away from home, but in spite of some very discreet enquiries, could not prove that any of them had either been pregnant or had given birth. It was a most frustrating time and it became increasingly clear that whoever had engineered this cover-up of a birth had done so with considerable skill and cunning. Every trail we discovered ended in nothing. Baby Helen seemed destined to grow into a young woman who would never know her mother, father or family origins.

  I was beginning to think we would never trace the mother but as Christmas approached, my hopes were increased. One of my parish duties was to help decorate St Aidan’s for Christmas and, one afternoon in early December when I was off duty, I decided to pop into the church to measure the distances between various points to which I could attach any decorations. But when I went into the church, I saw that someone was kneeling in prayer before the crib at the side of the altar.

  The crib contained statues of the baby Jesus lying in a manger with his parents alongside with the three wise men and animals looking on. I said nothing as I went about my own mission, making as little noise as I could, and then, in the silence of the church, I realized it was a young woman and that she was crying. I felt as if I was intruding upon her grief and made to leave, but she heard me. Rather hurriedly and looking somewhat embarrassed, she rose to her feet and dabbed at her eyes, then managed a weak smile.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sniffing back her tears in the hallowed silence of the church. ‘I had no idea you were there . . .’

  ‘Please, I was intruding . . .’ I was not in uniform so she probably had no idea I was the local bobby. ‘I came to measure up for the Christmas decorations.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you,’ she said. ‘I was going anyway.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Do you need help?’

  ‘You’re not the priest, are you?’ her eyes were moist as she fought to control her emotions.

  ‘No, I’m not, but if you need one, you can contact them at the abbey.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll be fine. I must go now. Dad will be wondering where I’ve got to.’

  And she left. I watched her go down the path but there was no car in the park; she turned right and strode away. It was some time before I realized she was the daughter of Jack and Maisie Haynes of Toft Farm, Elsinby.

  Shortly after my arrival in Aidensfield, I’d seen them dropping her off at the bus stop in the village when she was at school; she’d caught the school bus from there. She’d be sixteen or seventeen then; now, she’d be in her early twenties. Although she had matured I could still recognize her. Afterwards, I made some very discreet enquiries about the girl — Cecilia — and learned she was at college in Manchester. Currently, she was at home for Christmas and, I was later to discover, her mother had been a nurse prior to her own marriage . . . so could the girl have given birth at home?

  Without direct questioning, it would be impossible to find out — and Manchester City Police would no
t have the manpower to visit every likely hospital or surgery to see if a student had been attending for treatment, but the sight of her weeping over the child Jesus did make me ponder.

  Years later, Helen Aidensfield called to see us. She was in her twenties and was about to go off to Newcastle University to study French; we had kept in touch over the years but when she walked into our lounge, she was the double of that girl crying at the crib in church. They were so alike it was unbelievable.

  Today, many years later as I record this story, Helen is approaching her thirtieth birthday. She kept in touch with us and with Miss Bernadette who faithfully supported her over the years. Miss Bernadette is now approaching ninety years of age and still attends mass every day, she adores her only godchild who is now married with two children of her own, a boy and a girl. So Helen has a family of her own at last.

  But sometimes I wonder if the secret of her birth lies in that old farmhouse at Elsinby where Jack Haynes ruled with Victorian fervour. But I can’t ask Jack or his wife. Both died a few years ago — oddly enough, both on St Helen’s Day although three years apart. Maisie went first, and Jack died a very lonely man.

  I often wondered why his daughter never came to visit him.

  5

  Thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.

  Num. 20.8

  ‘Nick, do you think the chief constable would give permission for a police dog to come to Aidensfield church?’

  The Reverend Christian Lord hailed me in the street at Aidensfield and after our normal greetings, he posed that question.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ I asked. ‘Have you got intruders?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing like that,’ he smiled. ‘But each year, as you know, we have a service where I bless the animals. People bring their pets — cats, dogs, budgies, hamsters and so forth. Well, this year I would like to extend the idea. It would be very apt if I could persuade those who use animals in their work to bring those animals to a special service. After all, the animals are being used as servants of the people and I think we should thank God for providing them.’