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

  Beyond all doubt, the most common crime inside a church was larceny of cash from offertory boxes. Many offertory boxes were nothing more than wooden containers with a slot in the lid to admit the money, and these were placed near the entrance in the hope that casual visitors or regular worshippers would contribute some of their cash towards the upkeep of the building. Thieves would often steal the entire thing to break it open at their leisure; some offertory boxes were later fixed to the walls or the back of a bench and the thieves upgraded their efforts by prising them off with large screwdrivers or jemmies. Later, metal offertory boxes were built into the walls, and so the thieves used even more powerful tools to remove them and break them open for their contents.

  One problem for the police was that no one knew precisely how much cash was in an offertory box when it was stolen, or whether the haul comprised notes or coins. Guesswork, or to be official, estimating the loss, was therefore part of the routine in such cases, the vicar and the police between them estimating the contents of a box by taking an average income over a number of days. The average cash theft was around £2, but we did find that if the offertory box at All Saints, Aidensfield was broken into, you could guarantee that St Aidan’s was raided the same day, and that other nearby churches were also attacked.

  Travelling offertory box raiders were usually responsible, their daily takings amounting to a considerable sum following their visits to a sequence of rural churches. Such raids would happen only once a year or so but I have never known the theft of the contents of an offertory box be classified as sacrilege. According to police records, the doors were always open to admit the thieves.

  The other things that were regularly stolen were brass candlesticks from the altar but from time to time, more valuable items were removed, such as antique chairs, silver chalices and other treasures or collectables. Some churches kept a safe in the vestry, inside which there might be communion wine, the chalice, the silver plate used during the service and other church valuables. Thieves would smash their way into the church at night and remove the safe, or blow it open if they thought it contained a lot of treasures. In such cases, the crime was recorded as sacrilege.

  Bearing in mind the complexities of recording the crime of sacrilege, one problem arose at Thackerston’s ancient church. The vicar, The Reverend Norman Dunn, lived at Crampton Vicarage, and Thackerston was within his parish; both places were on my beat. Dunn was a fairly new arrival at Crampton, having come from Doncaster.

  ‘Someone’s taking the flowers from the altar,’ he told me one morning.

  ‘It’ll be the flower ladies, surely?’ I said. ‘Removing those which are jaded.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I’ve asked them: they’re as baffled as me,’ admitted The Reverend Dunn. ‘We make sure the altar flowers for the Sunday service are fresh, and they remain on the altar until they need replacing. Some last longer than others, as you’ll appreciate. But sometimes when I walk into the church on a morning, perhaps on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, the vases have been emptied. It’s been happening for a few weeks now, Mr Rhea, I’ve been keeping observations. Five bunches of narcissi disappeared after last Sunday. I noticed their absence on Tuesday. These are good flowers, not dead ones.’

  ‘How can someone walk off with flowers and not be seen? When are they being taken?’

  ‘Overnight, I’m sure. I close the church door at ten each evening, and open it at seven, give or take a few minutes. We never lock the door, by the way, the church is always open for visitors, night and day, even when the door is closed.’

  I groaned inwardly. This was another case of sacrilege. To break into a church, i.e., by merely opening the door, and then steal anything inside, fulfilled the legal definition, even if it was just a few flowers.

  ‘Rhea,’ said Sergeant Blaketon when I told him, ‘there is no way I am going to crime the theft of a few penn’orth of flowers as sacrilege! It’s like taking the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut.’

  ‘But that’s what the law says, Sergeant. We don’t make the law; we merely uphold it. The fact is that someone is going into that church at night and stealing flowers which have been paid for out of church funds. Legally, that is sacrilege.’

  ‘There are times the law is an ass. You’d better make more enquiries, Rhea, before we bring the full majesty of English law on to this night-time narcissus nicker. Anyway, how can we prove the door was not standing open to admit the thief?’

  I had no intention of sitting in Thackerston Church all night with a view to arresting the flower thief, even if his activities did constitute one of the more serious crimes against English law, so I began to make discreet enquiries in Thackerston. I concentrated upon members of the congregation, trying to learn something about their activities and personalities, and it wasn’t long before I discovered a story concerning an elderly lady called Elsie Parry. A stalwart of the church, flower lady, hymn-book dispenser and bellringer on occasions, she had been taken ill with a heart complaint and was in Eltering Hospital.

  She and her husband, Stanley, lived in a tiny cottage at Thackerston, a cottage with no garden, I learned, and it didn’t take me long to learn that her bedside at the hospital was always rich with flowers. I went to see Stanley whom I had encountered many times during my visits to the village — prior to his retirement, he used to be the lengthman, keeping the roads clean, tidy and in state of good repair. We often had a chat over a cup of tea at his neat cottage and he was not surprised when I popped in for a word with him.

  ‘Stanley,’ I said. ‘How’s Elsie?’

  ‘Coping well, Mr Rhea, but not likely to come home. She’s very frail, but she’s had a good life.’

  ‘You get to see her, do you?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘On t’bus. I get in most days.’

  ‘I heard she likes flowers,’ I said gently.

  ‘Loves ’em,’ he spoke quietly. ‘But without a garden, I can’t grow any. I take her them from t’church, after Sundays. They’re no use to anybody then, nobody goes in to see ’em. It’s a waste, eh?’

  ‘What’s a waste, Stanley?’

  ‘Spending good money on flowers for t’altar and then letting ’em die with nobody else seeing ’em. Tourists never notice ’em. Elsie allus loved her flowers; she brought ’em home after t’services, t’old vicar said she could . . . she loves flowers, you see, Mr Rhea, allus has done.’

  ‘Give her my regards.’ I departed after we’d had a cup of tea together and went to see The Reverend Dunn. I told him about Stanley and discovered that the outgoing vicar had never thought to mention the destination of the Sunday flowers, but when I explained things, Dunn grimaced.

  ‘You know, Mr Rhea, I have been to the hospital to visit Elsie and did admire the flowers . . . she never said where they had come from! But I will ensure she is never without any, and I will visit Stanley too.’

  ‘Don’t tell him I almost arrested him for committing sacrilege, will you?’ I pleaded.

  ‘Of course not,’ he laughed. ‘But how can we correct things with the law?’

  ‘Correct things?’ I puzzled.

  ‘Didn’t I report a case of sacrilege to you?’

  ‘All I need from you is an assurance that you have given Stanley permission to remove the flowers, and I’ll ensure he is not sentenced to life imprisonment.’

  ‘Done,’ he said.

  I explained to Sergeant Blaketon that the outgoing vicar had not acquainted his successor with all the minutiae of parish life, and that there had been no case of sacrilege at Thackerston.

  ‘“We have legalized confiscation, consecrated sacrilege and condoned high treason”,’ smiled Sergeant Blaketon.

  ‘Pardon?’ I wondered if I had heard him correctly.

  ‘Benjamin Disraeli,’ he said. ‘In one of his speeches to the House of Commons.’

  ‘Fancy that,’ I said, taking my leave.

  * * *

  Another interesting case of sacrilege occurred in a tiny, but fascin
ating church on my patch at Briggsby. It occupies a hilltop site but in former times, stood in a field about two miles away, it was then the private chapel of the ancient Briggsby Hall. In 1797, Briggsby Hall was destroyed by fire and in later years, some of its outbuildings were used by a local farmer to house his cattle, pigs and poultry, as well as the storage of agricultural machinery. Having become redundant as a chapel, this particular building was used as a barn, but in the nineteenth century it was demolished and the stones were used to build the present church.

  Some of the internal woodwork dates from its days as a chapel, but this lovely somewhat modern church is very small. With only twelve benches, one dedicated to each apostle, it can only accommodate sixty people, i.e., five to a bench.

  Its main attraction is a remarkable collection of hassocks. In the North Riding of Yorkshire, hassock was the word for a footstool without any feet or legs, and these cushion-like objects were variously known as hussocks or hossacks depending upon which part of the county one happened to be. More widely, hassock is the name applied to small cushions upon which to kneel in church, these are often known simply as kneelers, but the Briggsby collection of hassocks was renowned. There was a total of sixty, one for each seat in the church, and they were unusual because they had been made by sixty ladies of the parish in 1918 to mark the end of the First World War. Each was exactly the same size — fifteen inches long by eight inches broad and four inches deep, and every one had been embroidered with a different design and colours, albeit with every one of them incorporating the word ‘Peace’ and the date ‘1918’.

  Some bore depictions of saints or flowers or animals, others had the names of local soldiers lost in that awful war, one had an embroidered picture of Briggsby church, another showed the Crucifixion and yet another the Last Supper, but each was quite distinct in its character and each adornment had been chosen by the lady who had made it. In some cases, they had included their initials, discreetly hidden among the embroidery work. As a collection, therefore, they were probably unique — certainly, I had never come across such a beautiful set of kneelers.

  And then one of them disappeared. It was the church warden, Jeremy Newton, who told me. I was patrolling Briggsby on foot one fresh Saturday morning in April and saw him emerging from the little church.

  ‘Morning, Mr Newton,’ I called. He was retired and looked like a former brigadier, a tall slim gentleman who was invariably smartly dressed in rustic tweeds and who sported a clipped moustache and a trim hairstyle.

  ‘Ah, good morning, Constable,’ he smiled as he came towards me. ‘Just the fellow!’

  ‘Something wrong?’ I could see the look of concern on his face.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He rubbed his chin, then said, ‘Come inside, I’ll show you something.’

  He led me into the small, rather dark interior of the little church and indicated the hassocks which were positioned upon each seat, ready for use. He asked if I knew their history. I said I did.

  ‘There’s one missing,’ he said, pointing to one of the pews. ‘There should be five on each pew, but this pew — dedicated to the apostle Peter — has only four.’

  I glanced at the others and did a quick count; he was right. There were fifty-nine hassocks instead of the required sixty.

  ‘You’ve searched the church?’ I put to him. ‘Vestry. Storeroom? Tower? Under the pews? All likely hiding places?’

  ‘Everywhere, several times,’ he said. ‘They are quite large, as you can see, so they’re not easily overlooked. And, I might add, no one has any authority to remove any of the hassocks without the consent of the vicar.’

  ‘And he has not given any such permission?’

  ‘No, I rang him this morning, to tell him, and he has not given his permission to anyone but he can’t say when they were last counted or checked.’

  ‘So when did it vanish?’ was my next question.

  ‘That’s the problem. It’s hard to say, Mr Rhea. We rarely, if ever, count them, you see. On a day-to-day basis, we’d never notice that just one was missing. It was only that we had all the pews revarnished on Monday and Tuesday which meant removing all the hassocks beforehand, then I volunteered to replace them this morning. I was counting them out, five per pew, when I discovered the deficiency.’

  ‘Was it there when the hassocks were removed prior to the revarnishing?’ I asked him.

  ‘I didn’t undertake that chore,’ he said. ‘Mrs Grieves — she’s the organist — picked them all up and stored them in the vestry after the services last Sunday.’

  ‘You mentioned it to her?’

  ‘Yes, I did. As well as the vicar. Sadly, she can’t say whether one was missing then or not when she collected them.’

  ‘So it could have been taken at any time, even during the last year or even longer ago?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mr Rhea.’

  ‘And that makes tracing it a very difficult task, Mr Newton. But it seems odd that only one has gone — if a determined or knowledgeable thief was responsible, you’d think he would have taken the lot, the entire collection.’

  ‘Those were my thoughts,’ he acknowledged. ‘Except that you’d need a van or large car to carry them all away at one go. You can pop one of them in a carrier bag, that way you could remove them all day by day, over a period of time.’

  ‘So what’s it look like, the missing hassock?’ I continued.

  He blushed. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘We’ve never kept a record of them; I have no idea which one is missing. All I can say is that it is the same size as the others which are left, with colourful embroidered markings upon it along with the date 1918 and the word “Peace”.’

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘we have a missing hassock, description unknown, which disappeared on an unknown date? No one knows when it was last seen . . .’

  ‘True,’ he said, rather sheepishly.

  ‘If I am to treat this as a crime, I need to be certain that it has been stolen, Mr Newton. It could be lost or mislaid, for example. The passage of time and lack of certainty about its last known presence would suggest that. You see, if we do decide it has been stolen by a thief who opened the door to get into your church, then the crime would be sacrilege — which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment!’

  ‘Good grief!’ his eyes opened wide. ‘That serious, is it?’

  ‘Stealing from churches is serious,’ I said. ‘And good old English law continues to regard sacrilege as a most serious offence. Perhaps a further search of the church? Have you asked any of the other parishioners? After all, there is a very small congregation.’

  ‘That is a somewhat delicate matter, Mr Rhea. As you know, the hassocks were made by the ladies of this parish, as a kind of war memorial, and many of their descendants continue to live here and to worship at this church. If they thought that someone was stealing the hassocks, they’d come and remove all those which remain — then we’d have none.’

  ‘You’d have none if a thief came and stole the lot!’ I remarked.

  ‘I did wonder if the thief would return — you know, to take one at a time.’

  ‘I am still not sure that the missing one has been stolen,’ I said. ‘I think that if a thief was at work, you’d have lost more than a single hassock. After all, we have no idea when it was taken, so, clearly, no one has missed it until today. Now, have you mentioned it to anyone else?’

  ‘Apart from the vicar and Mrs Grieves, no.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Sergeant Blaketon would allow me to treat this as the crime of sacrilege. Although it is missing, there’s no proof it has been stolen and we have no idea when it was taken, or when it was last in its place. It’s all too vague, Mr Newton.’

  ‘So you can’t help?’ There was almost a plea in his voice.

  ‘Not officially,’ I offered. ‘But if you like, I can ask discreet questions around the village, to see if anyone might have removed it for any reason?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure if you
should do that. I don’t want to start a panic in Briggsby and have worried relatives coming to remove the lot.’

  ‘Who comes to work in the church, apart from yourself and Mrs Grieves?’ I asked.

  ‘Mrs Bingley, she’s the cleaner, and Miss Dale, she sees to the flowers.’

  ‘Right, what I propose to do is to pop into the church for a quiet word with one or other of those two ladies. I’ll do it when I’m passing, ostensibly a casual visit, and I’ll pretend I am interested in the hassocks. That way, I can quiz them to see if they know anything. And I’ll keep you informed — but I don’t think I should crime this one just yet, Mr Newton. I should hate one of your parishioners to be made liable to life imprisonment!’

  ‘As you say, Mr Rhea.’

  ‘And can you do one thing to help us in the future?’

  ‘Yes, of course!’

  ‘Make an inventory of all the items in the church, especially those hassocks, with a detailed description of each one. You might even consider drawings or photographs, just in case any more go missing.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. An excellent idea, Mr Rhea.’

  My offer to help was probably highly unofficial but I knew that Sergeant Blaketon and the CID would never accept the disappearance of the Briggsby hassock as a genuine crime, nor could we circulate a description in an attempt to trace it. We had no idea what it looked like, other than an indication of its size and shape. And to have the crime categorized as sacrilege would cause the CID admin, office at Headquarters to regard us as a joke.

  Nonetheless, I did feel some responsibility towards the parishioners of Briggsby, hence my action. My opportunity to help came about three weeks later when I noticed Mrs Bingley sweeping the steps which led into the church. The door was wide open as I parked my minivan and went across. She was a plump, jolly lady in her late sixties and wore an overall pinny as she went about her voluntary chores.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Bingley,’ I greeted her.