Bobby on the Beat

by Pamela Rhodes

  ‘There’s Doris, who you met. She’s the clerk, and a right cracker of a lass. Then Sergeant Shaw, who you also met. He’s pretty amiable. Only works office hours. One to go to with your questions first, perhaps. Sergeant Cleese does the night shift. Then Sergeant Hardcastle, who you saw briefly. He’s a bit of a tough nut. Nothing gets past him. Then there’s the Inspector, who lives on site. You call him sir, and he comes round to check we’re all where we should be, making our points. The Super – who’s very much of the old school and works all the hours God sends – he’s the top dog, so you stand and salute the first time he comes in every day. Then there’s us PCs: myself, you, George and Bill, and a few more who you’ll meet. We also make contact with the village bobbies by telephone and Traffic Patrol drop by every now and then. And that’s Richmond.’

  By the time we got to my digs, a small terraced house, my head was so full of all these new names, I didn’t know how I’d remember them all, or who was in charge and what to say to who. I just hoped I would get it all right. Ben left me at the house and I rang the doorbell on my own.

  A young woman of about twenty-eight answered the door, and introduced herself as Janet Marshall. Her husband, Don, did something on the buses, though I could never work out quite what. Her children were Michael, a thoughtful seven-year-old, wise beyond his years, and his older sister, Fiona, aged nine, who was the bossier of the pair. When Janet answered the door that first time, Fiona was plonking away on a small out-of-tune piano and Michael was on the floor, grimacing in dismay at the piece of broken railway track impeding the journey of a stately green engine.

  ‘You must be Pamela. Come in. Come in. You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ she shouted over the sounds of the piano, picking her way through a complex network of railway lines. ‘These two think they own the place. Cup of tea? Come on through here and sit down.’

  I wasn’t sure how I’d fit into this tiny house, which only seemed to have two rooms downstairs. Janet pulled things from chairs and tables and cleared away a space for us to sit. Although she seemed to do nothing but housework, the place was always in a state of perpetual chaos.

  ‘So tell me about yourself. You’re to be a policewoman, are you?’ she said, rinsing out two cups. ‘Sorry about these. Michael broke the best ones. All of them. Poor lad. He didn’t mean to. He was being such a good boy and carrying them for me. Cried for hours, poor lamb. Can’t bear to see things broken. Anyway. I do hope you’ll feel at home here.’

  My room was to be a tiny box room at the back, which just about fitted a bed in it; I supposed the poor children had to bunk up together. It was a squeeze, but it was to be home for now at least. As well as squeezing an extra person in to their home, the other thing Janet and her household had to put up with after my arrival were occasional late-night calls from the station. An officer would come by and knock on the door if they needed me. If they had a woman in the station, no matter what time of day or night, a female officer had to be present.

  And that’s what happened in my first week, when the PC came knocking at three a.m. and I was called in to deal with Pearl, the ‘lady of the night’.

  Apart from the occasional late-night call-out, what I mostly had to get used to at first was the geography of the new town and the Richmond police beats. We would make ‘points’ at all the different phone boxes, that is, we’d stand and wait for a phone call, in case the station needed you to go anywhere in particular or deal with anything specific.

  PC Ben Carter took me round Richmond on my first day; after that I’d be on my own.

  ‘Every half hour you stop at a phone box and wait for a call from the station, in case they need to get in touch with an officer,’ he said, as we strolled towards the market place. ‘Watch out for the Super, though, he drives past sometimes to check up on us. So don’t be late for a point, whatever you do.’

  As we walked up the street, past rows of old stone cottages and stately Georgian redbricks, on the skyline I saw the imposing outline of Richmond Castle with its ragged Norman fortress. Ben made his first point outside the grand-looking King’s Head Hotel, but no one rang through, so we wandered on, up King Street, towards the cinema.

  A large part of the job seemed to be chatting to the locals, and I remembered what Sergeant Baines had said to us about getting to know the people on our beats, so I tried to take in all their names as we walked along.

  ‘Mrs Tibbs. How’s Eric? And the boys?’

  ‘Oh, you wouldn’t believe. Poor James has got the measles, and Timothy is at that age. You know, no help to anyone and eats like a horse. And with this rationing set to carry on for ever. And Eric losing his job at the mine. I don’t know what we’ll do, I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, chin up. I’m sure it’ll all come good,’ Ben said, before continuing up the road.

  A bit further on, we saw a very elderly lady with a shock of grey curled hair, a sharp nose and thick blue eye shadow cracking round her eyes. She had the look of someone who used to be very beautiful, but whose formerly thickly lashed eyes have now taken on a look of heavy sadness. She was standing almost at the very edge of the road and gently swaying back and forth, staring into the distance.

  ‘Mrs Colbert,’ said Ben to me, in a low whisper. ‘Since her husband died she’s become a little, how shall I say, unstable. She lives with her daughter now. But there’s only so much she can do – she’s on her own, and she works full time and has a family too.’

  Mrs Colbert stepped out into the road as a motor car came whizzing round the corner, swerved to avoid her and tooted its horn. She continued on, oblivious, as a few more cars and a bus narrowly missed hitting her, their angry yells fading into the distance.

  ‘Mrs Colbert. You must be more careful. These roads are a lot busier these days,’ said Ben, running over to prevent any further motoring chaos.

  We took an arm each and guided her safely to the other side of the road, but she didn’t say a word as we crossed. When we reached the pavement she looked up with a sad smile of thanks, and I saw she was wearing a pair of light pink slippers, while underneath her coat, just visible, was the edge of a patchwork dressing gown.

  As we walked her back to her house, Mrs Colbert lightly sang a little hymn to herself and seemed quite happy shuffling along the street. When we arrived, a plump woman of about forty-five, red in the face and holding a tea towel, answered the door.

  ‘We found someone for you,’ Ben said to her.

  ‘Oh, Mam! How did you get out? I thought you were listening to your music. I’m so sorry, constable. I don’t know how she got out. She loves Mozart so I put it on the gramophone for her while I baked, but I thought I’d locked the door. I’m making a cake for little Patrick’s birthday. He’s eight now, would you believe?’

  ‘Let’s bring her in and sit her down. This is PC Rhodes, a new addition to the station.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said, and we took Mrs Colbert into her daughter’s tiny living room and sat her down on a wingback chair in front of the fireplace. As she sank back, she looked small and frail and sad that her little adventure was over.

  ‘We’d better be off. Take care now.’

  And off we were up the road again, on to the next telephone box. This time the phone rang and Ben answered.

  ‘Yes, yes, righto, Sergeant.’ He turned to me. ‘It’s Hardcastle. He’s got a job for you. You’d better get going.’

  I just about remembered my way back to the station, and as I went in through the door, breathless from fast walking, I almost bumped into Sergeant Hardcastle, the other duty sergeant at the station. He was putting on his hat.

  ‘Ah, Rhodes. Good, you’re here. Get your things. I’ll explain on the way.’

  It was all I could do to keep up with Sergeant Hardcastle, who always walked as though he was pursuing someone just around the next corner.

  ‘We’ve to visit a young woman, a teacher, Miss Binns. She’s not from round here, down south, a new lass at the primary school. Now, I have good
sources who say the young lady in question has carried out, or attempted to carry out …’ He hesitated, perhaps trying not to shock me. ‘an offence against an unborn child.’

  Abortion in those days was illegal, and a big taboo socially. In the early 1800s it had even been punishable by death in Britain. Although they had long got rid of that by the time I was in the police, you could still get a hefty prison sentence.

  In ‘Dirty Week’ at Bruche, with Baines, we’d learnt that abortions took place either through ‘back-street’ abortionists or via a variety of self-administered herbs, drugs or poisons which could flush out the foetus. Some women carried out dramatic and vigorous exercises, or pulled risky stunts, occasionally even launching themselves down flights of stairs in order to try to get rid of an unborn baby. These unregulated attempts often resulted in injury or even death for the women.

  ‘One of the other teachers at the school, a Mrs …’ he looked at his notebook, ‘Verity, has passed on some information, saying that she suspects a colleague, a Miss Binns, has been administering something in order to destroy an unwanted baby, got with the caretaker of the school. A married man, no less.’

  ‘How will you know?’ I asked. ‘What the truth is, I mean?’

  ‘Well, that is the question. We’ll just have to see what the young lady says, shan’t we? And anyway, I have a knack of … knowing … when it comes to such matters.’

  Miss Binns lived in a flat above a small newsagent’s shop, on the way out of town. We walked up a rickety wooden staircase to get there, and a pretty young woman of about twenty-five, wearing a floral print dress and with a neat straight blonde bob, opened the door to us.

  ‘Miss Binns?’

  ‘Yes. What … I mean, can I help with anything, officer?’

  ‘May we come in? It’s a matter of some …’

  ‘Of course. Is it the school? Has something happened to one of the children? Would you like something? Water? Some tea?’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary. Though I wouldn’t mind using your lavatory, if you don’t mind.’

  Hardcastle disappeared, and I stood awkwardly with Miss Binns, who stared up at the ceiling, picking at her fingernails. She looked a little nervous, but not anxious or guilty that I could sense.

  The flat was quite bare, with wooden floorboards full of gaps and draughty cracks. In one corner was a simple metal bedstead, with a red crocheted blanket, and next to it was a small kitchen table and a cupboard. In another corner was a gas stove and a little sink. The wallpaper was a damp yellow colour and a small blue curtain fluttered in the wind next to a cracked window.

  I wondered why a teacher would live in such poverty, but didn’t like to ask.

  A slender glass vase on the table, with some freshly picked flowers in it, and a row of books on a little shelf were the only signs I could see of Miss Binns’s own possessions.

  ‘Jane Austen. Do you know her?’ she said quietly, breaking the silence as I looked at the books.

  ‘Can’t say I do much reading,’ I answered. ‘Sergeant said you were a teacher. English?’

  ‘I was. But I’m teaching the young ones now. Five to tens, up at St Martin’s. I’m from Rugby originally. I do want to teach English. Well, actually I wanted to be a writer. But I had to get a job here because of …’ She stopped abruptly as Sergeant Hardcastle came back into the room, wiping his hands on his trousers.

  ‘So, Miss, er, Binns. We’d like to talk to you about some rumours. Shall we sit down?’

  There were only two chairs, so they sat down and I stood up nearby.

  ‘Ugly rumours.’ Hardcastle shook his head as he spoke and flicked through his notebook, but watched out of the corners of his eyes, to observe her reaction. ‘Rumours that you’ve been engaged in … Well, we might as well get to the matter in hand. Illegal abortion.’

  As the words hung in the air, Miss Binns looked down at the table and then back up at Hardcastle. She looked at me and I tried to look neutral.

  ‘Now, you don’t have to say anything at this stage. We’ll just listen at this stage to what you have to say and take it from there. OK?’

  ‘Yes, but … how? I mean … I didn’t …’

  ‘So I’ll ask you, Miss Binns, have you or have you not been involved with an illegal abortion or other attempt to abort an unborn child?’

  ‘No!’ she said, just a little too quickly, perhaps.

  ‘Because if you try to cover things up, it will only get worse for you and the other … person involved.’

  ‘Other person? I swear. I hardly know anyone here. How could I … ?’

  She was starting to panic a little, breathing quickly; even to me the room suddenly felt very hot and stifling.

  ‘All right, all right. Take your time. A moment to consider the question. I’m giving you a chance to tell it your own way. Did you perhaps purchase something … something to hurt the unborn child? To kill it?’

  ‘NO! I didn’t kill anything. I didn’t …’ she stopped, and wiped away some tears that were now flowing quite freely down her cheeks.

  ‘Because before you deny anything, I have to tell you I found this – quite by accident, of course – in your bathroom.’

  Sergeant Hardcastle produced from his pocket a small blue glass bottle, with a handwritten label saying simply ‘Penny Royal’.

  ‘Are you familiar with this bottle, Miss Binns? This herbal concoction, most commonly used for that very purpose.’

  ‘How did you … ? You can’t do that! Go searching! That wasn’t for that.’

  ‘Then what was it for?’ said Hardcastle, placing the half-empty bottle firmly on the table.

  Penny Royal was among the herbs often used by women who wanted to get rid of a baby in those days, and could be bought in the form of an oil quite easily for the purpose from a herbalist or anyone who knew about plants. It rarely actually worked, and often made the woman ill.

  ‘Now you can talk to us. We’re not after anything but the truth.’ I smiled and tried to put her at ease. Then she started to talk.

  ‘I was worried because I hadn’t had my … time of the month for a while. I thought it might be because I wasn’t eating right. I wasn’t feeling right. And this woman, this herbal woman, my friend recommended her. She said this would encourage … it back. The menstruation. So I tried it. And it worked. But I wasn’t …’

  ‘So you weren’t with child? Can you be sure of that?’

  ‘Yes! Well … I think. I’m sure. I think. Oh God … I don’t know!’

  ‘Right. Good. We’re getting somewhere. So you might then have aborted a child?’

  As I sat there I couldn’t help thinking how intrusive it all felt. I tried to be professional and dispassionate, to think about the law, how that was the backbone of society. Hardcastle was doing his job, and abortion was illegal. He needed proof, and he thought he had it with the bottle of Penny Royal. I tried to think of it like any other crime, a simple shoplifting or traffic offence. But seeing that woman there, struggling to tell the Sergeant about her most private moments, I suddenly felt very uncomfortable and sorry for her.

  ‘There was no child. We were … oh God!’ Miss Binns put her head in her hands on the table and started to cry. Sergeant Hardcastle shifted in his seat slightly uncomfortably.

  ‘Look, we are duty bound to investigate a suspected crime. You do understand that?’

  She looked up with red eyes. ‘You can’t prove anything. I bet it was that spiteful Mrs Verity who’s reported me. She’s been out to get me from day one. She can’t bear that I … we might be happy. But you can’t prove anything.’

  ‘You might be right. On the other hand we may well have enough evidence. We’ll just have to see.’

  By the end of my first week, I had already encountered prostitution, a suspected abortion and nearly been killed by an escaped bullock. But it wasn’t always that dramatic at Richmond police station.

  If I was on an early shift, I had to be in at five forty-five a.m. and when I
arrived at the station I’d first have to dust the Superintendent’s office. Not a very glamorous job, but it was a bit of thinking time. The office wasn’t large but it was certainly the grandest room in the station. I tried not to knock anything over as I dusted his large wooden desk, with the photo of his wife along with some very posh-looking writing paper and a large inkwell. There was a big black telephone on his desk, and a large painting of a horse on the wall, which stared back at me with its long nose wherever I was in the room.

  After dusting duties, I’d have to type up reports and statements that might have come in through the night. I was slow, a two-finger typist, but I got through it steadily enough. After that, I wrote reports of a jewellery theft and a runaway girl in the occurrence book.

  At about nine a.m. the Superintendent arrived. Walter William never had much to say for himself, but he had a very commanding presence. The Super, as we called him, though not to his face, seemed to be on duty all the time, staying until about ten o’clock at night, going home only for dinner and tea. The only evening he would ever take off was once in a blue moon, to go to meetings with the Freemasons. He had a wife, but we never met her; I don’t think she can have seen much of him, so dedicated was he to the job.

  I was nervous of meeting the Super for the first time, and stood up straight when he came in. We always had to stand up the first time he came in in the morning.

  ‘Morning,’ he nodded to Sergeant Hardcastle, myself and another PC called Bill. ‘I hear we have our new female officer,’ he said, looking me up and down and inhaling. ‘Good. Just remember, we run a tight ship here.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. And that was my introduction to the Super.

  When he left, we all relaxed again but, before long, Sergeant Hardcastle had a job for me.

  ‘Ah, Rhodes. You’ll do,’ he said, waving a list of typed names and addresses on a sheet of paper.

  ‘Visit these addresses, and check these aliens are where they should be,’ he said, thrusting it into my hand.