Constable by the Stream (A Constable Nick Mystery Book 12)

by Rhea, Nicholas

  Just as each of us has our own way of doing things, whether it is cleaning the house, performing our routine tasks like dressing ourselves or locking up at night, so villains all adopt a pattern in their crimes, often without realizing it. This enables the police to identify a criminal, even if, at times, it is not possible to prove his or her guilt.

  One example was a local burglar with a very curious MO. He rejoiced in the unlikely name of Octavius Horatio Calpin and came from a very good but very large family in Ashfordly. As his name suggests, Octavius was the eighth child; the seventh was Septimus Brutus while the sixth was Sixtus Cletus, but I never did learn the name of their earlier brothers and sisters. However, his younger sister, the tenth in the family, was called Decima Prudence.

  For some reason, Octavius turned out to be a wrong ’un. Even at school, when aged only six and three-quarters, he was caught stealing sweets and dinner money from his classmates, and when he persisted with his dishonesty in later years, his actions puzzled everyone. The family, local farmers, oozed iove and affection for all their children, they were well fed and decently clothed and were among the happiest of people.

  Octavius was the only one who went off the proverbial rails. What had persuaded him to turn to crime may never be known, but he did develop into a criminal of considerable skill. There was clearly some character defect, for outwardly he was a charming and likeable young man. As a criminal, he was fairly successful — by that I mean he was not often caught or prosecuted although we knew he was responsible for a high number of local housebreakings.

  We became aware of his crimes through his MO. Octavius was a housebreaker and burglar, those two crimes being quite distinct from each other until the legal changes of 1968. Burglary was the name then given to the crime of breaking into someone’s dwelling house only at night, i.e. between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. If the house was broken into at any other time, the crime was classified as housebreaking and carried a lesser penalty. Other similar crimes were variously known as shopbreaking, garage breaking, office breaking, warehouse breaking and so forth. Since 1968, however, all such offences of breaking into property have been reclassified as burglary, whether or not the attacked premises were houses or other buildings.

  In the main, Octavius tried to restrict his crimes to housebreaking, tending to enter good quality homes during the daylight hours while the occupants were away or at work. Very occasionally, he committed a burglary, but those crimes were rare — he knew the prevailing high penalties for burglary and rarely took that risk.

  But his MO was rather peculiar. He insisted on tidying up the houses which he entered. He did not merely tidy up his own mess, but tidied the entire premises, putting things straight. He would wipe the dust off shiny surfaces, place magazines and newspapers in a neat pile, pair off shoes, straighten pictures, replace jam jars and condiment sets in kitchen cupboards and perform a whole range of similar tidying-up routines.

  This was in direct contrast to many other housebreakers who would smash up a house, spray paint on the walls and generally vandalize the premises to leave a terrible, heart-rending mess. On occasions, some of Octavius’s victims reported things stolen when in fact they had been tidied away by their burglar — one lady reported the theft of a jar of marmalade, a packet of corn flakes and two china mugs because they’d vanished from her kitchen table. Later, she found them in a kitchen cupboard — Octavius had tidied them away.

  He achieved most of this without leaving any fingerprints, but from time to time he did make mistakes, and in the months before my arrival at Aidensfeld, he had been arrested and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for housebreaking and theft. Thus he had a criminal record and, as a consequence, his fingerprints were on file.

  For a time, Octavius went straight but eventually his old desires returned and we learned of this when a country house near York was raided and a large quantity of silver stolen.

  The crime had all the hallmarks of a professional housebreaker, but the local police found something odd — the kitchen had been tidied up and papers on the desk of the occupier had been neatly re-arranged. From this, we knew the culprit was Octavius, but when his home was searched, nothing incriminating was found. He had speedily disposed of the proceeds. Other than the MO, we had no way of proving his guilt, and he denied responsibility. We knew we were now having to deal with a rather clever and professional criminal. His time in prison had taught him the doubtful skills of raiding a better class of house, as well as providing some useful tips for avoiding conviction. Having served his apprenticeship, Octavius was now a professional.

  Soon, other houses of quality were raided; antiques, silverware, glassware and pottery, all of a high quality, were stolen. In each case, the place was tidied up; in each case, Octavius was questioned, and in each case, we were unable to prove his guilt. He left no fingerprints, and no incriminating evidence was ever found upon him or in his possession. Octavius’s time in prison had been very well spent — it had been his University of Crooked Skills.

  The local CID, crime prevention officers, crime squads and detectives from neighbouring forces held a meeting to pool their ideas to ‘target’ Octavius Horatio Calpin. One outcome was that all rural beat officers, like myself, were issued with information about the scale of Octavius’s crimes.

  We had instructions to alert all the occupiers of large country houses and stately homes on our beats. I had several on my patch, some occupied and owned by national figures and some containing very valuable sculptures, paintings and antiques. I decided to visit each in turn and advise their owners to be more security conscious. I issued leaflets and drew attention to the vulnerable points of their homes, calling in specialist crime prevention officers where appropriate.

  One of the householders was Sir James Schofield, who lived at Briggsby Manor on the north-west corner of my patch. With interests in brewing, horse-racing and property development, he and Lady Schofield owned a beautiful home set among trees on the outskirts of Briggsby. It overlooked Briggsby Beck, a delightful moorland stream which rippled across a rocky bed as it flowed into the Rye. I made an appointment to visit Sir James and upon my arrival was shown into his richly furnished study. A maid brought coffee and biscuits on a silver tray, inviting me to help myself as I awaited the master of the house. He arrived in a good mood, his cheerful grey eyes smiling at me as he poured himself a coffee. He sat behind his large desk, his small figure almost concealed by its bulk, but his personality was large and happy.

  ‘So,’ he boomed in a voice far louder than anyone would have expected. ‘What brings the constabulary to Briggsby Manor?’

  I explained my purpose, alarming him with stories of burglaries and housebreakings in houses similar to his own, and voicing our belief that one man was responsible. I told him a little about Octavius. I advised him on security, on the need for window locks and for care by his staff whenever they retired for the night or vacated the house. He listened and thanked me, then said, ‘But I have a good alarm, Mr Rhea, for my cash and my wife’s jewellery. Here, I’ll show you. But first, let me de-activate it.’

  He took me into the hall where he pressed the switch to cut off the alarm, then I followed him into the massive drawing room with its polished wooden floors. I admired the huge open fireplace, the oak panelling and the sumptuous furnishings as he led me to an oil painting on the south wall. He lifted it up and beneath was a wall safe.

  ‘Total security,’ he said proudly. ‘Not even a thermal lance would get into that — and if anyone does try, the alarm will go off. It’s a silent alarm; it’s linked to your headquarters so that if a burglar does come here, your officers will be alerted without the criminal being aware of it. And so, God willing, you’ll catch him.’

  I realized that a lot of luck was needed — a patrolling officer would have to be in the vicinity if he was to catch a villain quickly, but it was not impossible. Sometimes luck could be on our side. I explained to Sir James that he had many other valuables that could not be ac
commodated in that safe. These included his many pictures, his antiques, his everyday items like TV set, binoculars, radio and so forth; they were all valuable and so he promised he’d review his overall security arrangements. Having shown me the wall safe behind the coaching scene, which was some three feet long by two feet deep, he replaced the picture.

  ‘Sir James,’ I asked, ‘how is that alarm activated? The one that protects the wall safe?’

  ‘By the slightest movement of this picture,’ he said. ‘That’s why the alarm must be switched off when the maid dusts it.’

  ‘So if someone tried to straighten the picture when the alarm was set, it would react and issue a warning?’

  He was quick to see my plan.

  He smiled. ‘So if I leave this picture slightly skew-whiff, you think your tidy-minded housebreaker might attempt to straighten it? And set off the alarm? And so get himself arrested?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If he comes here … I’ve no information that he will attempt to break into your property, Sir James, but you are vulnerable and well, it would be nice to catch him red-handed.’

  ‘I’ll leave that picture out-of-true,’ he laughed. ‘I’ll tell my staff not to touch it. It’ll be a good story at the club if we do nail him, eh?’

  And so the trap was set.

  There were two further raids on country houses within the next five months, and then one evening when I was on patrol in my official mini-van at Stovingsby, I received a call over my radio. The alarm at Briggsby Manor had been activated — intruders were on the premises. I knew Sir James and Lady Schofield were away at Cheltenham races for the Gold Cup and so the house would be unoccupied because the staff lived out in their own homes. The intruder had known this. The call instructed all mobiles to attend Briggsby Manor but not to arrive like a cavalry charge with flashing blue lights and a lot of noise. If there was an intruder, we must catch and detain him through stealth and cunning. I reckoned I was nearest but I was alone, and it is difficult for one police constable to surround a mansion as large as Briggsby Manor and to supervise all its exits.

  I was more than relieved, therefore, to hear the call-sign of a CID car which was just leaving Ashfordly Police Station with two detectives on board. They had heard the call and were on their way. I suggested a rendezvous point out of sight of the manor, and said that as I was familiar with the grounds and the layout of the house, we could probably arrest our raider red-handed. Without going into a lot of detail, we did just that. In the darkness, we found the break-in point and chummy’s parked van; we waited and jumped on him while he was in possession of a suitcase full of silverware. And, as expected, it was our friend Octavius Horatio Calpin.

  He had been unable to resist straightening the crooked picture and had consequently trapped himself. We never told him how we had trapped him — we knew we could set the same trap again, at some future date when he got out of prison because, as sure as God made little thieves, Octavius would go a-burgling and a-housebreaking in the future. And, because his long-suffering mum, with all her children, had insisted that each of them tidied his own room, so Octavius would tidy up some future house in which he found himself, lawfully or not. I wondered what sort of job they would give him in prison — whatever it was, he’d certainly leave the place tidier than when he arrived.

  For the crime at Briggsby Manor, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment which meant he had a long time to get the prison as tidy as he wished.

  *

  Surely the strangest thief was a scruffy individual in his mid-forties who lived alone in a prefab in Crampton. He had no regular work and described himself as a general dealer; we called him a scrappie for he dealt in all kinds of scrap junk and waste metal which he collected in an old van.

  Over a wide area he was known as Tin Lid Talbot. His real name was James Edward Talbot, but very few knew that, for he had earned his nickname through hoarding a bewildering range of old tin lids. They fitted everything from oil drums and dustbins to tea-pots, kettles and jam jars.

  As police officers, we knew he was not against the occasional bout of petty thieving; if he called at a house or farm and there was no one about, he would steal things from the premises.

  Usually, it was stuff that the owner was glad to get rid of but from time to time he would overstretch their generosity to make off with cash or something of real value. And then we would call on him. As a consequence, he was one of the regulars at the local magistrates’ court, somehow avoiding any custodial sentence, but invariably being put on probation or being fined small sums, which never deterred him. I think the Bench felt sorry for him; he wasn’t really a criminal, not in the nasty sense of the word, for his thieving was mainly restricted to things he found lying about and which were considered almost useless. Furthermore, he would never, for example, break into a house or outbuilding nor would he dream of using violence against anyone or anything.

  He would, however, sneak into a house if the door was standing open and take whatever he found inside — and in the country districts, people did leave their doors open with money placed ready for collection by people like the insurance man, the milkman and catalogue collectors. Sometimes, the available cash was a temptation for Tin Lid and he would take it.

  As a result, he had a huge list of petty convictions and a friendly relationship with the magistrates, the clerk of the court and the prosecuting officer. I think they all felt vaguely sorry for Tin Lid Talbot.

  He was a pathetic fellow really, with his unkempt, lank and dark greasy hair, his mouth full of bad teeth, his dirty finger nails, clothes which were always too large for his small figure, plus his eternal Wellington boots which he wore even in summer. But his long list of convictions was due largely to his strange response when questioned by the police — he would always deny his guilt while simultaneously but unwittingly admitting it. If that seems odd, I can give the first example I encountered.

  A company director called Owen Robertson rang me to complain that his garden roller had been stolen. It was a large roller in good condition and it had been taken from his front lawn. A vehicle was obviously required to carry it off. When I interviewed him, he said the house had been visited by Talbot’s General Dealers that very afternoon — he knew this, because Tin Lid had left a printed note to that effect.

  The note said that if the housebuilders had any surplus metal, Mr Talbot would be glad to call and take it away. I drove straight to Tin Lid’s old shack; his van was there and I saw a plank still in position, leading from the rear to the ground. It was just the thing for the removal of a garden roller. I found him in his shed and, knowing how to deal with him, said, ‘Now, Tin Lid. What have you done with Mr Robertson’s garden roller?’

  ‘Not me, Mr Rhea,’ he shook his dirty head.

  ‘You called this afternoon and stole it,’ I said.

  ‘Look, do you think I’ve taken it to roll my mother’s lawn or something?’

  His equally scruffy mother, in her dotage, lived in similar conditions next door and so I went through the gate. And there was the roller on her lawn. He hadn’t even had the time to use it.

  ‘Come along, Tin Lid, back into your van with it, and take it straight back to where it belongs. Now! This very minute.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Mr Rhea, but I just wanted to borrow it …’

  ‘Then you should have asked,’ I said. I helped him to roll it up the plank and we secured it in the back of his old van, then I followed him to Mr Robertson’s house. Robertson declined to prosecute. He felt sorry for the pathetic little figure standing before him and was just happy to have his roller back. Tin Lid was lucky on that occasion.

  Over the years, I assembled a catalogue of his curious denials. Once, he stole some cash from an unlocked house — it was £5 left out for the insurance man by a lady in Aidensfield. She’d left her door standing open when Tin Lid happened to be visiting the village, and he’d been tempted. When I interviewed him, he said, ‘Not me, Mr Rhea. Do you think I’d ste
al her fiver and spend it in the pub or something?’

  When I saw George Ward, the landlord of the Hopbind Inn at Elsinby, he recalled Tin Lid entering to buy drinks and using a £5 note for the purpose.

  Tin Lid was fined £3 and ordered to pay restitution for that episode.

  On another occasion, a fine brass coach lamp disappeared from a builder’s yard in Maddleskirk. The builder, John Grant, had bought it to embellish his own front door and had left it unattended for twenty minutes while he took a phone call. In that time, Tin Lid had entered the yard, seen the lamp and taken it. As it was known he was collecting scrap in the village at that time, I found myself driving to his yard once again.

  ‘It’s about a lovely brass coach lamp, Tin Lid,’ I announced. ‘Taken from Grant’s yard in Maddleskirk this morning. What have you done with it?’

  ‘Not me, Mr Rhea,’ he said. ‘You don’t think I’d take a thing like that and sell it to an antique dealer, do you?’

  I recovered it from an antique shop in Ashfordly, and on this occasion Tin Lid was fined £5.

  I do know that other officers had occasion to interview him and they all knew of his strange form of denial, but, from my own view point, I found this quirk of character to be most fascinating. He never did learn any other way of denying his guilt and over the years he told me a succession of stories like: ‘You don’t think I’d steal a thing like that and hide it up my chimney, do you, Mr Rhea?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d nick a pile of tiles like that and bury them in the garden, do you, Mr Rhea?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d steal milk money from a doorstep and put the cash on a horse or something, do you, Mr Rhea?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d steal a spare wheel and put it on my own van, do you, Mr Rhea?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d steal a coil of rope from that cow shed and use it as a tow rope or something, do you, Mr Rhea?’