CONSTABLE IN DISGUISE a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 9)

by NICHOLAS RHEA

  I found myself investigating this type of crime soon after I began my attachment to Eltering CID, and it involved the hall which adjoined the Anglican church of St Erasmus. The hall was a busy one and was in use most days of the week, with regular events such as hunt balls, dances, whist drives, evening classes and afternoon classes, craft fairs, private parties and a range of other popular events. It had even hosted a dog show, a model railway exhibition and a ballet dancing display. It was a fine, spacious building with a superb sprung dance floor of polished wood, a balcony for observers, an anteroom for use as a bar, and two large cloakrooms standing at either side of the impressive entrance hall.

  The chairman of the St Erasmus Hall Social Committee was Mr Aaron Eyles, a retired butcher, and he called at the police station one Monday morning.

  ‘Ah’ve a bit of a delicate matter to discuss,’ was his opening remark, ‘summat that’ll not do with being spread around.’

  The station duty constable knew old Aaron very well and managed to elicit the fact that he wished to discuss some crimes at the church hall, crimes of a highly sensitive nature, and so John referred him to the CID. Gerry Connolly invited him into his office and offered him a chair and a cup of coffee. I took in the two coffees, and Gerry said, ‘Sit down, Nick. Fetch your coffee in here,’ then introduced us. He made it clear to Aaron that I was utterly reliable and would not spread gossip about the town.

  ‘So, Aaron, these crimes,’ said Gerry. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Sneak thieves, Mr Connolly. Somebody’s pinching from t’ladies’ cloakrooms at St Erasmus’s. Bit o’ cash, cosmetics, purses, umbrellas even. Daft things like that — one woman’s lost a torch, and somebody else has had a new scarf pinched.’

  ‘Over what sort of period, Aaron?’ asked Connolly.

  ‘Six months mebbe. Mebbe a bit longer.’

  ‘And you’ve not reported any to us, is that right? I can’t recall any reports.’

  ‘Nay, we haven’t. T’committee thought they could fettle it themselves. Ah think some of them thought them thefts were not really thefts, tha knaws; they thought it was folks forgetting where they’d putten things, you know what folks are.’

  ‘I know what folks are,’ agreed Connolly. ‘So, when are the things vanishing? I thought you had cloakroom attendants at all your dos.’

  ‘Nearly all, Mr Connolly. Some of t’private hirings don’t use attendants; Ah mean, a wedding wouldn’t bother with ’em, and they sometimes don’t get asked for t’smaller jobs. It costs, you see; they get paid by the hour, and t’hirer has to pay.’

  ‘And are all the things vanishing from the ladies’ cloakroom?’

  He nodded and there was sadness in his eyes. ‘Aye,’ he said softly. ‘That’s t’problem. You see, Ada Clarkson is attendant in the ladies’ end. Now she’s been doing that job for years, Mr Connolly, with never a hint of owt going wrong. Never a hint. Ah mean, she’s churchwarden, she cleans t’church and organises flower rotas, she’s into charitable work in town, helps old folks, the blind, the infirm . . . you couldn’t find a more helpful, honest woman.’

  ‘And the stuff is going when Ada is on duty?’ I could see Connolly hated to disillusion this old man but he was merely echoing the thoughts that poor old Aaron was entertaining.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘That’s true. At first, folks were reporting the thefts to Ada but they stopped when nowt was done. So they come to me or t’secretary now — that’s young Miss McCowey, Alec’s lass.’

  ‘And have you mentioned anything to Ada?’ asked Gerry.

  ‘Not for t’last month, Mr Connolly. Ah thowt Ah’d give her t’benefit of my doubts, in a manner of speaking, but Ah kept a record of complaints. There’s been four late dances, two evening classes and a demonstration of cooking by gas in the evening, and in all cases Ada was working. During each of the four dances, money went from t’ladies’ cloakroom, Mr Connolly, and Ah don’t know what to make of it.’

  Connolly was firm with him. ‘Aaron, some of the most unlikely people turn to crime for all kinds of reasons. Ada is mebbe going through a crisis . . . is she passing through the menopause, eh? Doing things not in character? That’s if it is her. We might be making too many accusations without doing the necessary investigations. We might be making assumptions that are wrong.’

  ‘Aye, well, Ah’ve been through it time and time again, trying to tell myself it can’t be Ada, never in a million years, but it all points to her, Mr Connolly. Ah daren’t face her about it . . .’

  ‘Someone will have to, Aaron.’

  ‘Aye, Ah know. But Ah couldn’t. Ah just couldn’t. Ah’ll be honest with you. Ah couldn’t face her, not Ada, not after all t’happy times we’ve had and the wonderful work she’s done for t’church and t’people of Eltering. Ah mean, you couldn’t find a better woman, a more honest worker.’

  ‘But in spite of that, you sound convinced of her guilt. If she’s as honest as you say, it could be somebody else. What about her companion, the man who operates the gents’ cloakroom?’

  ‘Harry Nattrass? Honest as the day is long, he is, an’ all. There’s nowt gone from his cloakroom, Mr Connolly, not ever.’

  ‘And he’s a church worker as well, is he?’

  ‘Not particularly. He does this job as an interest, really. He’s got a full-time job. He works in a grocer’s shop in town, Major’s. Not much of a job, but he’s content.’

  ‘Ages? How old are they?’

  Connolly was thinking of Ada’s possible menopause, for we knew that some women who were going through that difficult phase of their lives were prone to shoplifting.

  ‘Ada? She’ll be fiftyish. She’s got a grown-up family, both married. Husband’s a churchwarden an’ all. He works for Langton’s Garage, a mechanic.’

  ‘And Harry?’

  ‘Forty mebbe. Married with two bairns, having a struggle to live on his wage — shop assistants aren’t well paid, Mr Connolly, and Ah happen to know he’s having to take care what he spends. He never has new clothes, can’t afford to run a car and hardly ever goes for a drink, so he takes part-time jobs to make ends meet.’

  ‘A suitable candidate for our suspicious minds, eh?’ said Connolly. ‘He can’t make ends meet, his growing family need clothes, shoes, food and so on, so he starts pinching to help him meet his costs. And once he’s started, he can’t stop. It could be him, Aaron.’

  Aaron shook his head. ‘Nay, lad nowt’s ever gone from his cloakroom. He does a good job for us, allus has.’

  ‘So what are you going to do, Aaron?’ asked Connolly, his eyes searching the old man’s face as he mischievously put this question.

  ‘T’committee’s asked me to report the thefts to t’police, Mr Connolly. We did consider sacking Ada but felt we ought to be sure she was guilty first.’

  ‘So you want us to catch Ada red-handed?’

  ‘Well, aye, if that’s what it means, Mr Connolly.’

  ‘Right, we need a record of the crimes already committed; those you have recorded yourself will do for a start. Days, dates and times are what we need, with a list of things that have gone.’

  Aaron had a list of those in his pocket, the result of the committee’s interest in events. He handed them to Gerry, who scanned them.

  ‘This’ll do for us,’ he said. ‘I have to have evidence of the commission of the crimes before I can take action. Now, Aaron, how about a look around the hall?’

  ‘Aye, any time.’

  ‘Now?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ agreed Aaron. And so Gerry drove us to St Erasmus’s Church Hall and let us in with his key. It was around 11.30 a.m. now, and the building was deserted.

  The entrance was via two huge double doors in thick wood. They were painted a dark green and were as solid as those in ancient castles. They swung wide into a deep foyer, where on the left was the ladies’ cloakroom, with the gentlemen’s on the right. In each wall between the foyer and the cloakrooms was a hatch for handing over coats and other articles in return for t
ickets, while access to each cloakroom was a separate door leading from the foyer.

  ‘Are the public allowed in at all?’ I heard Connolly ask.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ acknowledged Aaron. ‘Ah mean to say, Mr Connolly, the toilets are in there an’ all, behind the coat rails. When a do is in progress, folks come and go all t’ time. But Ada and Harry keep an eye on folks moving through. If anyone stopped to pick a pocket or raid a handbag, Ada would see ’em.’

  ‘Even if she was coping with a rush of customers at that hatch? Issuing cloakroom tickets? Taking money?’

  In Connolly’s professional eyes, this was the first chink in the argument over Ada’s probable guilt, but he looked carefully at the toilet, shut away in a cubicle behind the coat rails, and then had a look in the gentlemen’s room. It mirrored the ladies’ room.

  ‘Now, Aaron,’ he said, ‘you said the stuffs been going during dances. So why dances, I wonder? What’s the procedure at dances — by Ada and Harry, I mean?’

  ‘Well, generally we start at eight or mebbe half past, and we keep t’doors open till eleven. We never let anybody in after eleven; that’s one of t’rules of this hall. After eleven, daft lads get stupid with drink and come causing bother, so we lock those outer doors till the dance ends. Folks can get out, sure, ’cos either Harry or Ada unlocks t’doors, but nobody gets in after eleven. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Saturday night dance that ends before midnight or a midweek ’un that goes on till one or two.’

  Connolly asked, ‘So Harry and Ada won’t be taking coats after eleven?’

  ‘No, but folks are using the toilets and they are dishing out coats to those who leave early — that’s not many, mark you.’

  ‘So what do Harry and Ada do after eleven?’ asked Connolly.

  ‘Relax a bit, Ah’d say,’ said Aaron. ‘Check t’takings, get ready for dishing t’coats out again, that sort o’ thing.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘This is a puzzle, Aaron. Right, now I’ve seen the place, I’m going to put forward a suggestion. I’ll need your consent, and I’ll need total secrecy from you if you agree.’

  Aaron looked at me for guidance, but I did not know what was in Gerry’s mind.

  ‘Aye, right, if it’ll stop the pinching,’ said Aaron.

  ‘It’ll tell us what goes on, but nobody must know we’re operating here, right? Not even your committee.’

  ‘Right, Mr Connolly.’

  Gerry told him that a time-lapse camera would be installed in the ladies’ cloakroom, and it would operate throughout the next dance and perhaps the one that followed. It took a picture every two seconds; it operated from a long-life battery and could be fixed to one of the wooden beams high above the cloakroom. It would be focused upon the rails of coats, and it had a wide-angle lens which would take in most of the floor area. If a thief came in to search the coats and handbags or to steal things like umbrellas and scarves, the camera would take a photograph of them in action.

  ‘What about one in t’gents?’ asked Aaron.

  ‘We’ve only the one camera at the moment,’ said Gerry. ‘And it’s in demand, as you can imagine. It’s used almost exclusively for this kind of work.’

  ‘So this sort o’ thing goes on a lot, eh?’ asked Aaron.

  ‘It does, I’m afraid, Aaron. But now I’ll need a note of the dates of your next few dances so we can select one when the camera is available. We’ll start with the ladies.’

  Aaron was in full agreement; for one thing, this would eliminate the necessity for a confrontation with Ada, and if she was guilty, this would provide proof instead of supposition.

  Within a fortnight of that meeting, Gerry had obtained permission to make use of the camera, and the experts from Headquarters arrived to fit it. They were dressed in old overalls and came in an old van; if anyone saw them at work in the hall, the explanation was that they were inspecting the wiring on behalf of the council, a fairly routine examination.

  Gerry and I went along to tell them exactly what was required of the camera, and a suitable place was determined. Happily, this hall had a lofty beamed ceiling without any form of underdrawing. Its rafters vanished into the darkness of the pointed roof. That applied to the cloakrooms too, and it was an easy task to conceal this small camera. It did make the tiniest of clicking sounds as it took its sequence of snaps, but it was felt the noise would not attract any interest — besides, no one could see into that dark roof void without a good torch, and the camera would be expertly sited and concealed.

  The first dance at which our camera was to be a witness was scheduled for a Saturday night. At five o’clock I went to set the camera in motion; it would run for forty-eight hours if necessary, but our scenes-of-crime experts would return to the hall on Sunday morning to retrieve it. They, Gerry Connolly, Aaron and I would then inspect the developed pictures; they should be ready that same afternoon. Aaron’s role was to identify any thief pictured on the film, and we knew he was dreading the task of having to identify Ada.

  So the trap was set.

  On the specific instructions of Sergeant Connolly, no police officers went into the dance hall that evening, although we were on duty in the office to await any call from Aaron. The uniform branch were not told of the reason for keeping away from the hall, but the instructions were issued via the duty sergeant, for we did not want our trap to be wasted by the unscheduled arrival of a crime-beating bobby. The dance progressed without incident until ten minutes to midnight, when a girl reported to Aaron, who was on duty as usual inside the main building, that her purse had been stolen, along with £5.12s.6d and a marcasite brooch worth fifteen shillings.

  Aaron took particulars, as he always did; in this he played a superb role, for he gave an absolutely normal response. After the dance hall had closed, he rang us with news of the latest theft, and we felt sure we must have captured the thief on film. We were all anxious to solve this one — was it Ada or not?

  Although we had continued on duty until the end of the dance, just in case there had been other, unexpected developments, we now had to wait until Sunday to find out the truth about Ada Clarkson. On Sunday morning, the scenes-of-crime officers (SOCO) removed and developed the film. They came to Eltering Office at 3.30 p.m., when Aaron had been asked to attend.

  ‘We’ve a good set,’ beamed D/PC Mitchell as he addressed us. ‘We’ve caught a woman in action, dipping into several pockets and purses, and we’ve got summat else.’

  He spread the little black-and-white photographs along the table in sequence; each bore a date and time imprinted in white along the top edge.

  ‘Right, this is the entrance to the cloakroom.’ He indicated the door, standing open. ‘These are the rails of coats, this is the chair where Mrs Clarkson sits to take money, and here, in the bottom left-hand corner, is the ladies’ toilet with two cubicles. There’s a door leading into each one, but we can’t see into either because there’s a roof over them.’

  He began to point to each successive photograph and continued: ‘At eleven-o-one and fifteen seconds, she goes out. That’s when she locks the outer door, we believe. Comes back after twenty seconds . . . see her? Leaves the cloakroom door open . . . stands near the rails . . . then, look at this! In comes lover boy . . .’

  ‘That’s Harry!’ cried poor old Aaron, in shock and some disbelief.

  ‘Right,’ said D/PC Mitchell. ‘Harry comes into the ladies’ cloakroom . . . looks around . . . goes to Ada . . . they get into a clinch, see . . . his hands are all over her . . . and . . . wait for it . . . they go into one of the cubicles of the ladies’ toilet and vanish from our sight. Both of ’em. Lock themselves in . . . they were in there twenty bloody minutes . . .’

  ‘My God!’ cried Aaron. ‘Of all the people, of all the people I would never have said would do this . . . adultery . . . two people like that, two friends . . . married . . . happily . . .’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Mitchell. ‘Now, here comes your thief.’

  A young woman in her twenties came into
the cloakroom as Ada and Harry were busy in the cubicle; she made a furtive entry, looked through the hatch to peer across the passage to see if Harry’s cloakroom was empty, and then tried one cubicle door. It was locked, and so she tried the other — it was open and the cubicle was empty. At that point she began to rifle the pockets of the hanging coats. She worked through them quickly and expertly, and we could see her slipping items into her own handbag before leaving. In all, her actions took less than one minute, and no one else came in.

  ‘Do you know her?’ Connolly asked Aaron.

  ‘Aye, it’s that lass of Tomkins’. Jean.’ He was still in a state of shock at the revelations about Ada. ‘Works at the secondary modern school in the kitchens . . . allus was a worry to her dad . . . she’s got a bairn, you know, not married, mind . . .’

  ‘Right, well, it looks as if we have found our thief.’ Gerry was happy. ‘Nick, you can interview her later today. Take a policewoman with you in case she says you tried to rape her. Get a cough, threaten to search her house for the other missing odds and sods . . . get a voluntary from her.’

  ‘Right, fine.’ It would be nice to get several crimes written off as detected.

  Connolly thanked Mitchell for the valuable use of the time-lapse camera and said its merits would be noted in his quarterly report to Headquarters. I was about to leave and interview Jean Tomkins when Aaron asked, ‘Mr Connolly, that business between Ada and Harry. Well, I mean, what can I do now?’

  ‘That is not a crime, Aaron. It’s not an offence against criminal law, and so we are not interested. I’m afraid it’s down to you.’

  And so poor old Aaron had another matter about which to confront Ada Clarkson, and this time the police would not do it for him.

  When I interviewed Jean Tomkins, she admitted more than twenty crimes she had committed in that cloakroom. And as an excuse, she said, ‘I knew what Ada was up to, you see, and she’s always at my mum for not going to church . . .’

  ‘You don’t mean you did this to get at Ada?’ I was astonished.