CONSTABLE AT THE DAM a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 19)

by NICHOLAS RHEA

  ‘I saw you at Ullswater,’ I told her. ‘With Ken.’

  ‘You did? How?’

  I explained about the driving course and the sheer coincidence of that brief encounter, then said, ‘But I didn’t tell Gordon about that either,’ I assured her. ‘So far as I was concerned, you were two friends going for a walk. On that occasion, I did not see you in a compromising position so there was nothing to tell him.’

  ‘So if you didn’t tell him about me and Ken, what did you tell him?’

  Before I answered that, I asked, ‘Does he know the other man is Ken? When he talked to me, he had no idea who you were seeing.’

  ‘Yes, he knows.’ She hung her head. ‘He was shocked, Nick, deeply shocked and terribly upset. Ken was so nice to him when he went to the site to paint.’

  I told her about my conversation with Gordon, explaining that I’d advised him to check the truth of his suspicions before taking any further action. I added that a police officer cannot get involved in domestic matters of this kind.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks? Why?’ I asked.

  ‘For doing your best to protect me.’

  ‘And Gordon,’ I added. ‘I was protecting Gordon. I felt he was vulnerable. And I did believe the affair was over, you know, I didn’t want to open old wounds.’

  ‘It’s all academic now anyway because he knows all about it, and knows it’s Ken. But, can you believe this, I do love Gordon and I don’t want him to come to any harm.’

  ‘You think he might? Come to some harm, I mean.’

  ‘That’s why I called you,’ she said quietly. ‘He has been very upset lately, extremely upset and unable to work properly or think straight or even to stay in the same house as me . . . when I’m here, he goes out. I’ve really hurt him, Nick. And I’m mortified by it all, really I am, I’m so ashamed of my behaviour . . .’

  And she burst into tears.

  She placed the glass on the hearth where the reflection of the flames danced in the spirit and then she eased a tiny handkerchief from her sleeve. She blew her nose noisily; I was tempted to go across and comfort her, but realized such an action might be misinterpreted. So I sat and waited for her to compose herself.

  Eventually I said, ‘Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t have worried if he’d been this late home?’

  She shook her head and sniffed back her tears.

  I continued, ‘I need to know the background in case I have to justify a search party,’ I told her. ‘Sergeant Blaketon would never sanction a large search simply because a grown man was late home. There have to be some extenuating circumstances.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ she sobbed. ‘I am so worried about him, Nick. He is prone to depression, you see. Sometimes, he suffers from deep, very black moods, especially when he’s under pressure.’

  ‘Right, then we’ll do something about it,’ I said, draining my glass. ‘Now, has he taken anything?’

  ‘Like what?’ she blinked at me.

  ‘Overnight things, razor, toothbrush, underwear, extra clothes . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Shall we have a look?’

  We checked the bathroom and bedroom and discovered he had not made provision for an overnight absence; he had not even taken his painting materials, his sole possessions being the clothes he stood up in.

  They comprised a warm sweater, waterproof cagoule and leggings, hiking boots, woolly cap and a knapsack. She added that some food had gone from the pantry mentioning slices of bread, cheese, some buns, apples and a bottle of blackcurrant juice.

  ‘Any idea where he might have gone?’ I asked, as we returned to the lounge.

  ‘It could be anywhere,’ she said. ‘He’s not taken the car, I was using that, and we’ve an old bike, a push bike, but that’s still in the shed. So he’s on foot.’

  ‘And his paintings? Has he been working on a particular picture, a scene he’d want to check in some way? Was he painting from a particular vantage point he wanted to revisit?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ she said, ‘although there is an unfinished one on his easel in the studio, a dark, brooding sort of scene with storm clouds. I’ve no idea where it is supposed to depict.’

  ‘So he could be anywhere?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said weakly. ‘That’s my worry. If I knew where he was, I’d have gone myself.’

  ‘And Ken? Have you told Ken?’

  ‘What about? Gordon knowing about us, or that Gordon’s gone missing?’

  ‘Well, both; they do seem to be connected.’

  ‘No, Ken doesn’t know. I should tell him, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Under the circumstances, yes. He ought to know. Gordon wouldn’t harm Ken, would he?’ I asked after that thought had struck me.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m going to end it this time. Nick, I really am, once and for all. I can’t bear what I’ve done to Gordon. I’ve been so stupid, so selfish. It was just a fling, a bit of excitement, sexual excitement, I suppose . . .’

  ‘Let’s get him found before we start thinking beyond tonight,’ I said. ‘Now, we need a starting point. I can’t search the entire moorland alone, neither can you. You should stay here, near the telephone, in case he rings or returns. We need a point of contact. He could have fallen and broken a leg or something, or simply overlooked the passage of time.’

  ‘Will it get into the papers?’ she suddenly asked.

  ‘The hunt might, but the reason for his disappearance need not,’ I said. ‘No one apart from you, me, my sergeant and Gordon need know the background to this.’

  ‘Good. I deserve to be criticized, but I must think of Gordon. Yes, so I’ll stay here. What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll ring Sergeant Blaketon from here, if I may, to tell him what’s happened and to ask if he will authorize me to call out the Moors Search and Rescue team. It takes time for them to assemble, and then we’ll need some kind of plan based on where Gordon was last seen or known to have gone.’

  And so began the hunt for Gordon Precious.

  * * *

  Gordon was found at one o’clock the following morning lying in a gully on the moors above Gelderslack. He was alive but was found to be suffering from a badly bruised head, a broken right leg and hypothermia.

  It seemed that, in the misty rain-filled darkness, he had fallen into the gully to suffer the broken bone and other injuries, and he had been unable to crawl out to raise the alarm. He’d lain there for most of the day and night in cold, foggy and wet conditions, this producing hypothermia in spite of his clothing and good health. He was taken to Strensford Cottage Hospital for treatment and I had the pleasant task of telling Deirdre that he had been found.

  The hospital suggested no visitors until 2 p.m. the following day, to allow his leg to be placed in plaster and for him to relax and to recover as far as possible from the hypothermia. She readily agreed and said she would drive over to Strensford tomorrow — there’d be no trouble getting time off work — and she thanked me for my swift action. I suggested she write to thank the Moors Search and Rescue team. The story did reach the local papers and Gordon’s work as an artist was featured, the published story being that he had lost his footing while searching for suitable scenes to paint and had injured himself so severely in a fall that he could not climb from the gully. There was no reference to any domestic problems and none of the journalists highlighted the fact he’d had no painting materials with him when found.

  I did visit Gordon in hospital and he was allowed home after three weeks with his leg in plaster and his future uncertain. When I called at the house in late May, he was working on the lawn, painting a picture of the reservoir waters which flooded the dale before him. The dam was in the background and I could see he had incorporated the newly added packhorse bridge and the two anonymous girls on bikes.

  ‘She says it’s all over between her and Ken,’ he told me, as he roughly brushed some watery colouring to the sky section of his paper. ‘But I don
’t believe it! He’s been ringing, Nick, I know the signs. When I pick the phone up, he rings off.’

  ‘Deirdre told me she would end the affair,’ I tried to reason with him. ‘I’m sure she has.’

  ‘Has she? How can I be sure of that, Nick? The bloody man’s working just a few yards down the lane, all day, every day, she has to pass him on the way to work and back from work . . . how can she say it’s all over?’

  ‘She does love you,’ I tried.

  ‘And what a God-awful way of showing it!’ he spat. ‘Letting me down like that, my wife . . .’

  ‘Gordon, when you got lost on the moors, you didn’t try to end it all, did you?’ I felt I had to ask that question.

  ‘End what? My life? No bloody fear. Nick, I want to get my own back on that man. I walked around for hours that day in pouring rain and thick fog, thinking about what he’d done to me. About what she’d done to me. All right, so I was not thinking straight, but it was foggy, Nick, that’s how I came to fall. It was an accident, not an attempt at suicide. I’m not that sort of man.’

  ‘Then you’ll recover well, and I’m sure Deirdre loves you still.’

  ‘That remains to be seen, Nick. She’s all over me now, fussing and feeding me and caring for my injuries but I’m not sure it’s finished. Not sure at all.’

  ‘I think Deirdre will bring it to an end.’ I defended her this time.

  ‘Maybe she will, but what about him? Her fancy man on the dam. I hate it, Nick. I bloody well hate it . . .’

  ‘Hate what?’ I asked.

  ‘That!’ And with his brush, he indicated the reservoir and the dam. ‘I hate it all, that dam, that reservoir. It’s destroyed my life.’ And he spat on the painting, his spittle landing on his image of the old packhorse bridge.

  Chapter Ten

  These are much deeper waters than I had thought.

  SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, 1859–1930

  Gordon’s broken leg in its coat of thick white plaster considerably restricted his movements. Without the car, which he insisted Deirdre used for work instead of relying on lifts, his excursions to the moors were very limited. Deirdre was not at work all the time, however, and even though she offered on occasions to drive him and his equipment to his favourite workstations, he declined. He said he had no desire to paint. He did allow her to drive him to his lecturing commitments, however, and for this, she sometimes took time off work. He appeared to enjoy those outings because they got him away from the house and the reservoir, and he could meet with and talk to differing groups of people. After a time, however, and with his leg still in plaster, he announced he would resume work at home. He needed the money, for one thing, and so he launched into a hectic programme of painting the reservoir again and again as gradually its waters rose and expanded before him. Suddenly, he seemed obsessed with the reservoir and its changing appearance.

  I spoke to Deirdre several times over those weeks, and once again, she assured me her affair with Ken Rigby was over. They had parted friends, however, there was no blazing row and although Ken had declared his love, Deirdre was firm in her resolve. She had come to fully realize the harm she was doing to Gordon and that had made her determined to end the matter.

  She spent her time trying to prove to Gordon that she really loved him, trying to win back his confidence and his trust, nursing him and doing her best to encourage him to continue and expand his range of work. They slept in separate rooms because Gordon declared he could not touch her, saying that her body was tainted by her adulterous activities. In telling me all this, I was pleased she could confide in me and she was wise enough to appreciate that Gordon’s forgiveness would take a long, long time. But she was prepared to wait.

  On one occasion, I encountered Deirdre in Aidensfield. She had taken her car to the garage to have a new tyre fitted and was whiling away her time on the village seat which overlooked the war memorial. I stopped for a chat and we decided to take a walk together to keep our conversation away from flapping ears. During our stroll towards the moors, during which I was clad in my full uniform, Deirdre did confide further in me, this time telling me about Gordon’s very deep black moods. They were sometimes triggered by small matters and sometimes the result of greater stresses; sometimes they persisted for weeks and sometimes for a matter of hours. She did say this was one area of concern when Gordon had decided to give up his full-time job — she’d wondered how he would cope if things did not work out. She’d felt that any real pressure upon him, either financial or professional, would cause him to enter one of his periods of black depression but she had avoided that by giving him her total support. He’d avoided those deep moods until now and she said it was her foolishness that had triggered the current crisis. Although he was working again, she had no idea when he would completely return to normal.

  As she’d watched him at work in recent days, repeatedly painting the same stormy picture of the reservoir, she could not say whether or not he had snapped out of it. The fact he was painting once more did suggest he had partially overcome that problem; the fact he was repeatedly painting the same scene and the reservoir in particular with its array of dark storm clouds, however, was perhaps an indication that all was not well with his state of mind. And he steadfastly refused to touch her body.

  She did express an opinion that he’d been undergoing one of those moods, or perhaps it was the beginning of the current one, at the time he’d felt compelled to walk the moors on the day he was injured. He’d be brooding over what he regarded as a catastrophic period of his life, trying to work out a means of ending his agony or getting his revenge — and the fall had probably brought his broodings to an unexpected and painful end. As she took me into her confidence in this way, I asked, ‘Deirdre, would Gordon do anything silly while he’s in one of his dark moods?’

  ‘It’s always been at the back of my mind that he might,’ she admitted.

  ‘Like what?’ I pressed her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know how far he’d go or what he’d do.’

  ‘Suicide?’ I asked. ‘When you called me out the other week to look for him, did you think he might have decided to end his life?’

  ‘It was something I’d considered, yes, but I daren’t say so at the time,’ she said. ‘Somehow, I think he’s either too timid or too sensible to end his own life, but, well, when a person’s mind is disturbed, you’ve no idea what they might do. Gordon is fine until things go wrong, and then he seems to go deep into himself.’

  ‘Sulking?’ I smiled.

  ‘No, it’s worse than that. He broods inwardly. He becomes totally absorbed in his own world, preoccupied with things he never talks about, and has fits of black depression . . .’

  ‘Does he receive any help with this? Treatment of any kind?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, he refuses to recognize that he has an illness and let’s face it, Nick, it always blows over and afterwards he’s fine again. I’ve seen him have one of these moods for only an hour or so, and then it’s all forgotten, but sometimes it can last longer.’

  ‘How much longer?’

  ‘Days, weeks.’

  ‘Months?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose, although I’ve never known one last more than two or three weeks.’

  ‘But if a really serious problem arose, might it precipitate a long-term black mood in him?’

  ‘Like my behaviour, you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose it could — that might be happening now, mightn’t it? Is that what you are thinking?’

  ‘I did have that in mind,’ I admitted, following with, ‘Has he ever harmed you?’

  ‘No, never; he’s not a violent person, Nick. He just goes very quiet and withdrawn. Usually, I leave him alone and he comes out of it full of apologies then goes off to paint a moody sort of picture full of black clouds and storms. By painting storms, he somehow gets it out of his system. But this time, it’s different.’

/>   ‘How’s it different?’ I put to her.

  ‘I caused his anguish by deceiving him in the worst possible way,’ she spoke quietly. ‘It’s the most dreadful thing I could have done to him, but it’s over, Nick, honest. Now I have to convince Gordon and that’s the difficult part. I’d say in his present mood, it’s impossible — he won’t believe I’ve stopped seeing Ken. It might take me a long, long time, and a lot of patience, but I’ll do it; I must, for his sake and mine.’

  ‘He spat at his painting when I saw him recently; he said he hated the dam and the reservoir,’ I told her. ‘He didn’t say he hated you.’

  ‘He does blame the dam and the reservoir for making things go wrong,’ she said. ‘They brought Ken here, he once told me, and he hates them for that. Without the dam and the reservoir, there’d be no Ken, no affair with me . . . that’s how he sees it.’

  ‘And he hates Ken?’

  ‘He’s never said that, Nick, but I’m sure he does. He thinks Ken deceived him too, you know, encouraging him to visit the site to paint those official pictures while seeing me behind Gordon’s back.’

  ‘So how do you read the present state of his mind?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea, he is very unsettled and uncommunicative; he will emerge from this mood, I know, and the fact he’s painting again is encouraging. But it’s my problem, Nick, I must sort it out.’

  ‘I’ll visit him when I’m in Ramsdale again,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Thanks. He’s always looked forward to your visits and chats; he hasn’t many close friends.’

  ‘And you’ll keep in touch?’ I invited. ‘If you need any help, don’t be frightened to call.’

  ‘Thanks, Nick. You’re very kind.’

  We had walked in a large circle and I continued my stroll with her, returning with her to the garage. Her car was ready, she thanked me, and drove away towards Ramsdale where Gordon would be waiting. I had a feeling he’d be checking on her movements, perhaps ringing the garage or the post office or some of his contacts in the village to find out where she was. I reflected on what she had told me and thought it might be advisable if Gordon sought psychiatric help but that had to come from his own desire to do so. No one could compel him to take that action. He was not certifiable, I felt; he was not the sort of person who should be locked up in an institution and yet, with modern medical advances, there might be some treatment from which he could benefit. I did ponder briefly upon his own sexuality, for I was aware they had no children although I did not know the reason. But, as Deirdre had said, all this was her problem or more truthfully, it was their joint problem. I could not and should not interfere.