Constable Along the Lane (A Constable Nick Mystery Book 7)

by Nicholas Rhea

  “There was that man in the pub,” said one small girl.

  “What man was that?” I asked.

  “We got crisps and lemonade at the pub.”

  “The Brewers Arms?”

  “Yes. We went to the door like we always do.”

  “And what about the man? What did he do?”

  “He smacked Fred on the nose,” said one of them. “Just fun, though, he was just playing.”

  “Maybe that’s upset Fred!” I smiled. “Maybe he’s taken the huff and gone off to sulk! So what happened exactly, Denise?”

  “We had Fred with us. We wanted some crisps and things, so we went to the pub. Fred followed us in. Or he tried to. He poked his nose over the counter and this man clonked him on the nose, just in fun it was. Fred backed away … that was all.”

  “And after your walk with him, you put him back in the paddock with the others?”

  “Yes, we gave him some hay, patted him for a minute or two and then we went home.”

  “And did you shut that gate?”

  They all swore that it was properly closed. Jack Sedgewick said he did his rounds after ten o’clock that night and noticed nothing amiss. I looked at the lanes which led away from the donkey paddock; if it had got out, it could have wandered into the village, or into the surrounding woods and hills, or even along the river bank. It could be anywhere.

  “What about your buildings, Jack? Have they been searched?”

  The children provided the answer; they had searched everywhere on the farm before calling me.

  “I’ll report him as missing,” I said. “Now, how about organising a hunt for him?”

  And so I organised a small hunt around the likely places in and around Aidensfield; there were empty farm buildings, woods, copses, fields and so on. I allocated a safe place for groups of these children to search; each group comprised three for safety reasons.

  Jack said he would walk his own land this morning to check ditches and other likely places, and I decided to ask questions around the village. After all, someone might have spotted a lone donkey trotting along the road. I told them I’d keep Mr Sedgewick informed of developments.

  A couple of hours later, I was in the Post Office asking about Fred. Several people were there. They were asking for postal orders and stamps, and some were at the grocery counter. As I chatted and spread the news about Fred, a man in hiking gear walked in to buy some fruit and drinks. He noticed me, but he was not a local man. I didn’t know him.

  “Ah, Officer,” he said, his keen grey eyes showing bright in his weathered face. “Just the fellow. I’ve just come through Plantation Wood,” and he showed me his route on a map clipped to his belt. “And there’s a dead donkey just off the footpath … ”

  “Dead donkey?” I almost shouted. “Are you sure?” “Well,” he seemed surprised at my reaction. “Well, it was lying down … maybe it wasn’t dead … ”

  I asked him to pinpoint the exact place, and noticed that everyone in the shop was listening. We identified the place as being about half-way along the bridleway between High Nab and Cross Plain, where it ran alongside Plantation Wood.

  As I confirmed the details, the shop emptied rapidly and the customers scurried to their homes. They seemed to have been galvanized into action at the news. I decided to walk back to Jack Sedgewick’s farm and break the news to him, then I would have to break the news to the children and decide whether or not to take them to the scene. I was sure Jack would help me to deal with the corpse.

  “A dead donkey?” he gasped when I located him down his fields.

  “So the man said,” I replied.

  “Right, come wi’ me, Mr Rhea, and be sharp,” and he led me to his implement shed. He started the engine of one of his tractors and bade me climb aboard. And off we rushed towards Plantation Wood, the tractor bouncing and bumping along the rough farm tracks. There was a definite note of urgency in his actions.

  “What’s the panic, Jack?” I shouted above the noise of the engine.

  “A dead donkey!” he shouted back. “I ‘ope it’s not poor awd Fred, but nobody’s ever seen a dead donkey, Mr Rhea. Did tha know that? It’s reckoned ti be good luck to see yan. An’ we all need a spot o’ good luck.”

  He accelerated across the fields and from my uncomfortable perch beside his seat, I could now see a straggly line of local people. They were all rushing in the same direction, using a short cut from the village.

  “Are they all going to see it?” I shouted at him.

  “Aye, likely. Word soon gets about when summat like this ‘appens. A dead donkey’s a rare thing.”

  As we drew nearer I could see the distinctive figure of the hiker leading the way. Several children had also joined the march. The news had spread with amazing speed. Jack’s tractor pushed its way through the throng of people and we arrived, breathless almost, at the same time as the head of the procession. The hiker, baffled by this turn of events, was standing and pointing.

  “It’s gone,” he said, opening his arms wide in an expression of puzzlement. “It was here, I saw it. And it’s gone. It was lying right there!” and he stamped the ground with his boot.

  And so the villagers never saw their dead donkey.

  This is one of those peculiar legends which is supposed to have been started by Charles Dickens; it is said that no one has ever seen a dead donkey and if the news reached a village that a donkey was dying, everyone went to have a look. The legend has probably arisen from a belief that donkeys will wander off to seek a secret place to die.

  We turned the tractor around and chugged back to Lingfield Farm.

  “Could yon ‘ave been Fred?” asked Jack.

  “Who else?” I said. “Mebbe he was just resting.”

  “Aye,” said Jack. “Mebbe. Mebbe he’ll come back. Donkeys can live wild, tha knaws. Ah’ve ‘eard of one living twelve years in a wood … Fred’ll come back.”

  The children were pleased it wasn’t Fred who had died, but the mystery caused all sorts of rumours. People went back several times to see if the donkey reappeared but it never did. And Fred never returned to the farm. His companions showed no sign of distress at his continuing absence and the children did get over their sorrow. Later that spring, Lucy, Linda, Betty and Bonny went back to their beach without Fred, and no one ever saw him again.

  To this day, I do not know what happened to him. In my official report, I recorded him as ‘Missing’ because there was no evidence of theft.

  But could that donkey have been Fred lying dead in the wood? Is there a mystery about dead donkeys that has never been revealed? Or did Fred find a new home somewhere?

  I do not know. But I have never seen a dead donkey.

  Among the lesser known duties of the village policeman are those connected with contagious diseases of animals. During our training-courses, we were told about anthrax, foot and mouth disease, sheep scab and sheep pox, swine fever, tuberculosis, cattle plague, fowl pest, rabies, atrophic rhinitis, epizootic lymphangitis, pleuro-pneumonia, bovine tuberculosis, sarcoptic parasitic mange, glanders and farcy and other exotic sounding plagues which produced devastating results and misery among farmers.

  In the event of an outbreak, or even a suspected outbreak of any of these diseases, it was vital that immediate action was taken by the police, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the owner of the livestock. Police action involved the enforcement of a multitude of rules and regulations and the serving of a document called ‘Form A’.

  As many of our training-school instructors were city types, I’m sure they did not know the effect of, or the reason for, Form A. The result was that we emerged from training-school with the knowledge that if a cow frothed at the mouth or a pig was sick we served Form A. It all seemed very puzzling, and it was not until I worked in a rural area, where domestic livestock is so important to farmers and to the nation’s economy, that the real purpose and importance of Form A registered in my mind.

  Form A was a printed do
cument which had to be completed by a police officer who suspected an outbreak of one of the diseases I have listed. He completed the form with the name and address of the farm, or even a portion of the farm in question such as a cattle-shed or pigsty, and formally delivered a copy to the farmer. For most diseases, copies were also sent to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food at local and national level, the local council, and to various police stations. The effect of this document was to bring to a standstill all movements of animals in and out of the suspect premises until a Ministry vet had carried out his inspection. If he declared the animal(s) to be free from disease, the restrictions were lifted and life returned to normal. If he confirmed the disease, another set of procedures swung into action which could lead to the killing of a solitary pig on a small unit or the slaughter of a complete herd of pedigree cattle on a dairy farm. The precise action depended upon the disease in question; I have outlined the general procedures.

  Form A was just one small part of the entire system, but as a whole, the impact of the rules and regulations did appear successful. For example, swine fever had practically been eliminated, sheep-dipping had virtually abolished sheep scab and strict import regulations kept rabies at bay. I never did know of a horse which caught epizootic lymphangitis and the last outbreak of pleuropneumonia was in 1898. We knew, therefore, that a major outbreak of a serious and contagious animal disease was very unlikely, and it’s fair to say there were several false alarms, albeit with good intent. No chances were taken. Every suspicion was treated with the utmost care and attention.

  In our county (the North Riding of Yorkshire), all police-officers were appointed Inspectors under the Diseases of Animals Act; in some counties, only sergeants and those with higher rank carried this responsibility and in some city areas, there might be just one such designated inspector within a police force. In a large rural area, it made sense for all officers to have the powers thus conferred upon him or her and this meant that in addition to normal criminal law and police procedures, we had to be fully conversant with the statutes and procedures relating to this huge and at times complex subject.

  In some areas, members of the Ministry of Agriculture’s staff carried out these duties and during my time at Aidensfield, there was a growing feeling that all such work should be carried out by civilian inspectors. The authorities felt that this aspect of police work should be gradually phased out. Both the police and the farmers greeted this possible change with mixed feelings. For the police, it gave them a marvellous insight into rural life and helped them perform their wide range of other duties, while the farmers welcomed a uniform presence rather than a plainclothes person wandering about their premises, especially in times of strife.

  It was during these slow but relentless changes that the country suffered a huge and devastating outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The awful effects of it filtered down to Reg Lumley’s herd at West Gill Farm, Aidensfield.

  I learned of the outbreak in October through the newspapers. A report said that foot and mouth disease had been confirmed at Oswestry in Shropshire, and that the police were faced with the task of tracing 2,500 animals which had been sold in the local market shortly before the disease had been discovered. It was a huge task; the cattle could be anywhere in the United Kingdom and every one of them could be carrying the virus. The problem was that the licensing system was not foolproof; bad writing on licences; missing ear-tag numbers which are so vital in the positive identification of a particular beast; and sheer carelessness in record keeping, meant that many cattle would never be traced. They could pass on the disease.

  During an epidemic, a contact animal was often identified only when a new outbreak occurred many miles from the point of sale. Meanwhile, it had infected other animals, some of which had been moved away, and so the hunt continued. Foot and mouth disease spreads so rapidly that within five days of that original outbreak, fourteen English counties were declared Controlled Areas. Markets were prohibited and farmers guarded their farm entrances, allowing no one to enter unless their clothing and feet were disinfected.

  This huge, fast spreading outbreak was one of the few occasions when members of the general public were inconvenienced. Its awful impact and consequences were such that it pricked the communal conscience of the public as never before. For probably the first time, the great British public knew something of the drama being played out on the farms of their countryside.

  At Leeds and Bradford Airport, for example, passengers bound for Ireland had to walk over disinfected mats; the RAC Rally was cancelled; two hundred members of the Second Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment were drafted in to fight the outbreak near Shrewsbury; National Hunt racing was called off; the import of fruit, nuts and fresh meat was restricted on the Isle of Man; Christmas trees became scarce due to the restrictions imposed on movements to and from land, and farmers even had to get permission to vote in a by-election. All dogs within five miles of an infected place had to be confined and even poultry movements were restricted.

  300 extra veterinary surgeons were drafted in, along with 2,500 ancillary workers; there were fourteen control centres in the country and everyone involved worked fifteen hours per day. All police leave was cancelled and the troops were called in to help with many of the heavy tasks. Burial of the slaughtered animals was one example where military hardware and skills proved most useful.

  One paper summed it up like this: “Two brothers came home to find a cow frothing at the mouth. They shut themselves and their families inside the house. Men from the Ministry came to slaughter and bury; the farm was quarantined and red and white ‘Keep Out’ notices were erected around the boundaries. Policemen arrived and moved into a hut near the farm gate to stop visitors; the local market was cancelled and a pin was stuck in a map at the Foot and Mouth Control Headquarters.

  The fear generated by this outbreak can scarcely be imagined; the far-reaching consequences of the disease caused every farmer to barricade himself in his farm and to take every possible precaution to safeguard his own herd. And it was during this atmosphere that I got a call from Reg Lumley.

  “Can thoo come, Mr Rhea?” he sounded almost in tears.

  “What’s up, Reg?” I felt that I needn’t have asked.

  “Yan o’ my coos is frothing,” he said.

  “Oh my God!”

  My heart sank; it looked as if we had foot and mouth in this area, in Aidensfield. I could not comprehend the consequences.

  “I’ll call the Ministry,” I told him. “I won’t come down to the farm, I might pick up the disease on my feet. Can you arrange a system of disinfectant at the gate, Reg? A bath or summat will do for folks to walk through. Make folks paddle through it going in and out.”

  “Aye,” he said slowly. “Ah’ve been preparing, just in case. Ah’ve got a load of disinfectant and some waterproofs … Ah’ll see to t’ gate; Ah’ll chain it up to keep traffic out.”

  Over the past weeks, as the disease had spread across the nation, I had been issued with some red and white ‘Keep Out’ posters and so, for the first time during my duties at Aidensfield, I found myself typing out Form A. It had Reg Lumley’s name and address on it, and where it asked for the name of the suspected premises, I typed ‘The whole of the premises of West Gill Farm, Aidensfield.’

  As force procedure demanded, I compiled a telegram for transmission to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Animal Health Division) at Tolworth, Surbiton, Surrey. It said, in the jargon of the time, ‘Important. Anhealth, Surbiton, Telex. Suspected foot and mouth disease. Reginald Lumley, West Gill Farm, Aidensfield, near York. N.R. Police, Aidensfield.’

  Having dispatched this, I next telephoned the local office of that organisation and asked for the Divisional Veterinary Inspector. The Ministry now had vets working all over the county but I asked them to send one to Reg’s farm; I then called the County Medical Officer’s department and notified them, after which I rang my own Force Headquarters and finally Sergeant Blake
ton at Ashfordly.

  He asked me what I’d done and I told him; I assured him I’d done everything necessary and that Reg was already providing disinfectant at his farm entrance. I explained that I was on my way to the farm within the next few minutes with my ‘Keep Out’ notices and to serve Form A upon poor old Reg to isolate his premises. I knew he would have quarantined his own farm, but the official wheels must turn.

  I then put on my rubber leggings, a long waterproof mackintosh and Wellington boots. Dressed like this, I decided to walk the half-mile or so, for in this type of urgency we were no longer thinking in terms of minutes or seconds. Everything had come to a standstill and would remain so until the Ministry’s vets had examined the suspect cow or cows. With my notices under my arm, and Reg’s Form A in a buff envelope, I made my harrowing journey along the lane.

  By the time I arrived at West Gill Farm, Reg was already in position at his gate. Dressed in oilskins and Wellington boots, he was standing guard with a shotgun in his hand. A large zinc bath full of pale yellow fluid stood just inside the gate. A yard brush lay beside it and a tractor and trailer were parked nearby.

  “Now, Reg,” I said.

  “Noo then, Mr Rhea. Got all t’ papers, hast tha?” His face was sad and drawn, and I knew I must be careful how I spoke to him. I must not be flippant at all, for farmers treat their cows like old friends. I knew he was on the verge of breaking into tears as he nodded towards the roll of notices under my arm.

  “‘Keep Out’” signs,” I told him. “I’ll stick ‘em up for you, on all your entrances. This makes all entrances forbidden areas, Reg. This is the only one that leads down to the house and buildings, isn’t it?”

  “Aye, t’ others are just gates into my fields.”

  “Good, well, I won’t come through the gate. I’ll do this job first — I’ve got some drawing-pins and string. I’ll fix ‘em on all the roadside trees and gateposts.”

  “Thanks. Ah’ve already had two daft townies trying to walk their dog down my road. Ah told”em it was an infected spot, but they didn’t understand. They reckoned it was a public footpath down to t’ pond, so Ah said it was out o’ bounds now and anyrooad anybody coming in would have to paddle through that bath o’ stuff. They didn’t like that, nut wi’ their townie shoes on. That’s why Ah fetched my gun — folks don’t argue wi’ that, Mr Rhea. That lot sharp cleared off then an’ Ah told ‘em foot and mouth was catching for humans, an’ all. It mebbe is, is it?”