CONSTABLE NICK BOX SET 6-10 five feel-good village cozy mysteries

by Nicholas Rhea

  As time passed, and as each minor breach of the criminal law was dealt with, I did begin to wonder if a major crime or series of crimes would ever occur on my patch. I began to feel that this period of peace was too good to be true, and then, in the spring of one year, I was faced with an outbreak of arson.

  Arson was, and still is, one of the most serious of crimes and the legal definition then said that arson involved the unlawful and malicious setting fire to buildings, including churches, warehouses, railway stations, shops and sheds, as well as crops, vegetable produce, coal-mines and ships. It was then categorised as a felony both at common law and by statute. The common law crime was confined to houses and their outhouses, while the statutory crime, featured in the Malicious Damage Act of 1861, involved a detailed list of the objects of the kind listed in the above definition. I remember that in those days, it was not legally possible to charge anyone with arson to a motor vehicle or television set because new-fangled contraptions of that sort were not mentioned in that 1861 Act — other possible charges such as malicious damage to personal property had to be considered.

  In the weeks following that first act of arson there developed a series of troublesome fires, all of which involved either haystacks or hay in barns. I could discern no pattern, except that the attacked barns or stacks were usually in isolated locations. Some, however, were in the centre of our market towns and as time went by, I began to despair of ever catching the fire-raiser. Some of the fires were on my beat, and although all the local officers were involved in the investigation, I felt it was my duty to arrest the culprit. The battle both to halt and deal with the villain became a personal challenge.

  News of the first fire came in the early hours of a Saturday morning in April. Just after 1 a.m. a passing motorist noticed flames licking the asbestos roof of a Dutch barn. He roused the farmer and his wife, who called the Fire Brigade by dialling 999. As a matter of routine, I was informed by our Control Room and clambered from my warm bed around quarter past one.

  Rather than waste time climbing into my motorcycling outfit, I used my own car to rush to the fire. It was at Low Dale Farm, Briggsby, less than ten minutes’ drive from Aidensfield. The farm, a small concern with livestock, poultry and arable land, was owned by Arthur Stead and his wife, Helen. When I arrived, the Fire Brigade was already there. Hoses were spraying hissing water into the fierce centre of the fire which had a very secure hold. Men were working in the heat of the flames as the bales of hay glowed in the night. The flames cast frightening shadows upon the house and nearby buildings and showered dangerous sparks across the dark countryside. Most of the flames licked the exterior surface of the hay, while a stiff night breeze carried sparks and more flames into the interior of the barn. Small new fires were breaking out all over the place; it looked like a lost battle.

  With old raincoats over their nightclothes and Wellingtons on their feet, Arthur and Helen, both in their late fifties, were using hayforks in an attempt to pull untouched bales clear of the inferno.

  Helpers had arrived from neighbouring farms and cottages. Men and women were working around the barn, removing bales by hand. After announcing my arrival to the Fire Brigade, I used the Steads’ telephone to relay a situation report to Control Room, and then joined the rescue effort. I began to haul bales from the barn and throw them clear of the spreading blaze.

  One problem lay in a stiff easterly breeze which made the hay glow deep within the stack as the intense heat consumed the dry material. We tried to hoist some burning bits well away from the barn, but the speed of the fire’s consumption beat us. Gallons and gallons of water were sprayed into the depths and we did manage to remove a considerable amount of uncharred hay.

  During a lull, I spoke to Arthur.

  “We’ve got a fair amount out, Arthur,” I commented, wiping my dirty hands across my face. We were all black from the smoke and sweating profusely in spite of the chill night air.

  “T’ cows won’t eat it, Mr Rhea, even if it ’as been saved. It’ll smell o’ smoke, you see . . . might mak bedding or summat . . .”

  “You’ll be insured, are you?” I asked.

  “Aye, but cows can’t eat insurance money; they need fodder. It’s a while yet before we can turn ’em out to fresh grass.”

  I knew that the local farmers would rally to help poor Arthur with his forthcoming feeding problems; they always did when anyone suffered a loss of this kind. But we had fought a losing battle. As fast as we removed bales, others burst into flames; it seemed as if the blaze had crept deep inside the stacked hay and I wondered if our removal of the bales loosened the packed hay and permitted the air to enter. This would fan the flames. As things were, it wasn’t long before the entire contents of the barn were a mixture of searing heat, smoke and untidy charred hay.

  We kept an eye on the drifting sparks but they disappeared across the fields and missed the buildings. As dawn came to Low Dale Farm we could see the full extent of the devastation. The barn was burnt to a shell, some roof portions having collapsed when the supports gave way in the fire. It contained a jumbled mass of charred and useless hay which was still smouldering. It would continue to smoulder and smoke for days. All around were piles of hay which had been saved by the volunteers, hay which the cattle would not now touch because it was tainted by smoke. The entire area was saturated with dirty water and we stood in a sea of mud and straggly strands of hay.

  Arthur and Helen gave us all a breakfast of ham and eggs with copious quantities of hot tea. As we stood outside and I gathered the information necessary for my Fire Report, one of the senior fire officers took me to one side.

  “Constable,” he said, “we feel this is a suspicious fire. We can almost certainly rule out spontaneous combustion which, I’m sure you know, causes a good many stacks and barn fires. That usually occurs within three months of a stack being built — this one is eight months old. Fire from spontaneous combustion works from the inside and moves to the exterior. This started on the outside walls of hay, so it looks deliberate. The seat of the blaze was on the outside of the hay, at the east end of the barn, low down upon the stacked hay but just off ground level. There was a platform of hay left where some upper bales had been removed, and the blaze was creeping up the outside walls of hay when our men got here. I am confident that spontaneous combustion is not the cause and that an outside agent is responsible. It could be an accident, but I’m calling in our experts for their opinions.”

  This meant I must now inform the CID who would liaise with the Fire Brigade and a formal investigation would commence. It would be backed by statements from witnesses plus any scientific evidence salvaged from the scene. Inevitably, poor old Arthur and his wife would be under suspicion of having deliberately set fire to their hay for insurance purposes, and I knew the investigation had to be thorough, if only to exonerate them. I was sure they would never resort to this kind of evil. My witnesses were Arthur and Helen themselves, several fire officers and the motorist who had noticed the blaze, but none could provide any real evidence to show how the blaze had started. It remained a matter of opinion and speculation but continued to be ‘suspicious’.

  A week later, there was a second blaze. Although this one did not occur on my beat, it was only four miles away at Seavham and the circumstances were very similar. Around two o’clock in the morning, Ronald Thornton and his wife Alice, who farmed at Home Farm, were roused by barking dogs. Wary of intruders, they had peered out of their bedroom window to see one of their haystacks ablaze. It was in the corner of a field, away from the buildings, but was valuable for livestock feeding.

  I noted the date and time, and although I did not attend this one I did later contact the Fire Brigade to ascertain whether it could be linked to the blaze at Low Dale Farm. Other than to say the cause was not spontaneous combustion, the Fire Brigade would not commit themselves. Nonetheless, the similarities included an isolated haystack, an outbreak in the early hours of a Saturday morning, and the suspicious nature of the b
laze. The Thorntons were not insured, I learned, which somewhat added to the mystery.

  If they had not done it deliberately which seemed most unlikely, and if it was not an accident (there were no chimneys or exposed flames nearby), and if it was not spontaneous combustion, then who had done it and why? These were the questions we had to answer.

  I tried to find links or more similarities with the Stead fire but failed. My avenues of investigation included bad business deals; possible fraud; family feuds; jealousy, petty spitefulness or malice; the work of a pyromaniac and a host of other domestic and business likelihoods. To my knowledge, no known arsonist lived in the area.

  The next blaze was three weeks later, on a Wednesday night at Crampton. It was discovered earlier than the others, around eleven o’clock. A neighbour had smelled smoke and had investigated the cause only to discover bales of hay well ablaze in the barn of Throstle Nest Farm. This barn was close to the centre of the village and, happily, there was no strong breeze to fan the flames or to disperse the dangerous sparks among the houses.

  Mr and Mrs Bill Owens farmed Throstle Nest; their splendid farmhouse occupied an elevated site surrounded by its spacious land, and a pair of Dutch barns stood at the bottom of a lane. This lane formed a junction with the road which led into the village, and their neighbour, Jack Winfield, lived in a cottage near that junction.

  Jack’s swift action and the rapid response by the Fire Brigade kept damage to a minimum, but the familiar story emerged. It was another suspicious fire, so like the earlier ones. As the Brigade fought the fire and helpful villagers removed bales of unburnt hay, the drifting smoke penetrated many nearby homes. The smell would linger for days afterwards. During a lull, I spoke to Jack Winfield, a retired farm worker.

  “Now, Jack, did you hear or see anything? We’ve had a few of these fires now.”

  “There was a motorbike about the village tonight,” he said without hesitation. “I grumbled, ’cos it made my television picture go funny. Motorbikes do that, you know, sometimes.”

  “What time?” I asked.

  “Nine o’clockish,” he said. “First time, that was. Then again later, before t’ fire broke out. Not long before, but I couldn’t be sure of t’ time really. Same bike, I could tell by t’ noise.”

  “Has it been before?”

  “Can’t say I’ve noticed it. Mind, if I hadn’t had my set on, mebbe I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “Did you see it then? Do you know who it was?”

  “Sorry, lad, no.”

  After quizzing him at length, I took a written witness statement from him. For the first time, we had a hint of a suspect, slender though it was, and before the Fire Brigade left, one of their officers came to me.

  “We found this,” he said, opening the palm of his hand to reveal a spent match.

  “Where, precisely?” I asked, accepting this new piece of evidence.

  “About five feet from where we believe the blaze started,” he said, pointing to a piece of muddy land. “We think it started low down this side, where some bales have been removed . . .”

  “Like the Low Dale fire?” I interrupted.

  “Yes, in a similar position. The flames crept up the outside wall of hay before gaining a strong hold. This match, which is clean and new as you can see, was lying on the ground.”

  “Thrown away, you think?”

  “Its position suggests that.”

  I pinpointed the precise location of this match and drew a little sketch in my notebook so that it would be committed to paper for future records. It was an ordinary match, not from a book of paper matches or a short-stemmed Swan Vestas. Its unweathered appearance said a lot; there was a distinct possibility that it was associated with the blaze.

  I reported these new facts to Sergeant Blaketon at Ashfordly, and he decided to institute a series of nightly police patrols. Their purpose was to trace the motorcyclist and/or the fire-raiser. At this stage, we felt there was little point stopping all motorcyclists but did decide to record the registration number of every bike seen during our patrols. I was aware, too, that the fuel tank of a motorcycle contains petrol and what better method is there for a fire-raiser to carry this incendiary aid?

  If and when another fire broke out, we could consult our records and check the movements of all recorded bikes. It would be possible to see if they tallied with the date, time and place of the fire. Even so, with such a massive rural area to patrol, the chances of a police vehicle crossing the path of the fire-raiser were remote to say the least. But we had to try.

  For the next couple of weeks there were no reported stack fires. We began to feel that our presence on the roads and the fact that our purpose was enhanced by local gossip, had deterred the arsonist. But we were wrong.

  The next fire broke out in the centre of Ashfordly. Tucked into one of the side streets was a farmhouse and behind it was a square stackyard and a motley collection of implement sheds. The fields belonging to this farm were some distance away on the outskirts of the town, but this curious town centre farm, known as Town Farm, was a thriving enterprise.

  I was on night duty one Friday and was patrolling the surrounding moors and hills when I spotted a bright blaze in the centre of Ashfordly. It was 1 a.m. For a moment, I thought it was a bonfire in a garden, one which had been lit earlier and whose flames had been revived by a sudden night breeze; but in seconds, I knew it was too large for that and I feared the worst.

  From my vantage point on the hills, it was impossible to say precisely where it was. All I could determine was a bright, flickering flame somewhere among a dark collection of houses and other buildings. I accelerated the little motorbike down towards the town and it was then that I recalled the tumble of farm buildings and sheds just off Field Lane. As I entered the town, I knew the worst. I roared towards the blaze. It was now showing as a bright orange and red glow against the sky above the houses, and I could see a pall of thick, black smoke. This was no garden bonfire and I feared another arson attack.

  The moment I turned the corner and identified the precise location, I halted and radioed my Control Room. Through its radio network, the Fire Brigade was summoned and I asked Control Room sergeant to awake Sergeant Blaketon. Then I began to rouse the sleeping occupants of the farmhouse and several nearby homes. The horrified farmer said there were horses in some of the buildings and so I helped him to evacuate his animals.

  Two tractors were in the Dutch barn; they were already covered with blazing hay which had tumbled from the stacked bales and so began another battle to save his equipment and machinery. The farmer’s wife was in tears; neighbours were terrified for their homes and the horses were snorting and frisky in their fright.

  We did not save the barn, the hay or the tractors but no human or animal life was lost. With Sergeant Blaketon at my side, I began a meticulous search of the scene. We were seeking that spent match which could be some distance from the barn. He found it. Lying five or six feet away from where the wall of the hay had been, he located a clean spent match, miraculously having avoided the trampling feet and gallons of rushing water. He preserved it for evidence. It was another important indication that the same person was responsible for all the fires.

  The Fire Officer in charge said he believed the blaze had not been due to an electrical fault or to spontaneous combustion; he expressed an opinion that the tractors might, in some way, have been responsible. The possibility of a short circuit from a battery couldn’t be ignored.

  A more detailed investigation would follow and the charred remains would be examined. When we told the firemen about the match, he said, “That figures. We think it might have started on that outer wall of hay, not far from there . . . that’s the second match you’ve found, eh?”

  We began to ask about the motorcycle noises in the night and one of the neighbours, a retired bank manager, did tell us he had heard a motorbike. It was not mine because the timing was different. I hadn’t been near the place until just after 1 a.m. He had he
ard one about midnight, he said, but could not say whether it was coming towards Town Farm or leaving it.

  But it was enough for us, after that, we intensified our nightly patrols for the motorcycling fire-raiser. At the same time, we renewed our enquiries from earlier victims. We asked them whether they had antagonised anyone who owned a motorbike and we continued our efforts to establish a link, any link, between all the scenes of the fires.

  But we did not find any connection.

  Then I had a stroke of luck. It was one of those moments of good fortune that all detectives require and with which some are blessed throughout their careers. In my case, it happened while I was off duty. I recognised the clue for what it was and became excited when I realised I might have found the arsonist.

  It was a Friday, which was market day in Ashfordly. I went to market with Mary to help with the shopping and to look after the children. For me, it was a trying but enjoyable chore. I was wandering among the stalls in my off duty casual clothes, pleased that it was a fine spring day and that there were books and antiques to examine. I ran into friends and acquaintances to chat with and the entire experience generated a pleasing air of rustic contentment. It was a welcome break from my routine.

  Then, as I poked among some junk on a stall, seeking old inkwells (which I collect as a hobby) I noticed the motorcyclist. He was sitting astride a green BSA Bantam in front of one of the pubs which overlooked the market-place. He was laughing and chatting to a pretty girl. I watched and, because motorcycles were very much on my official mind, began to observe them.