We recovered the iron from the river, and the forensic experts found strands of her hair and blood upon it. I did not arrest or charge Nigel with his crime — that was done by Sergeant Connolly, but I did feel I had done my bit towards arresting a killer. He pleaded guilty to burglary but not guilty to the charge of murder. The court accepted a plea of guilty to manslaughter, however, and he was given five years imprisonment for the manslaughter, and two for the burglary, the sentences to run concurrently. He’d stolen £23 from her house.
He is now out of prison and living in Lancashire.
Another case remains a puzzle, at least in my mind if not in the official records.
One December morning, when drizzle and fog made the countryside damp and miserable, a farmer’s wife called Irene Sheldon came into the police station. She reported that her husband, William, was missing from home. He was seventy-two years old and rather frail, and she was worried about him.
Ian Shackleton interviewed her. She was a very attractive woman, well dressed in green clothes which highlighted her long auburn hair and her pale skin. There was an aura of power about her, the sort of woman who was dominant and capable, the kind who could run any successful business, ranging from a farm to a restaurant. She was also capable of undertaking manual tasks about the farm, shearing the sheep or loading bales of hay, although she usually got others to perform such labouring tasks.
‘So why would he go missing?’ Ian asked her.
She hung her handsome head. ‘He found out I was having an affaire,’ she readily admitted. ‘I’ve been seeing another man — but that’s not a criminal offence, is it?’ She stuck out her chin defiantly.
‘You are much younger than him?’ commented Ian.
‘Yes, I’m forty-five. I’m his second wife. His first died eight years ago, and I used to be his housekeeper. He married me five years ago. He’s too old. There’s too much of an age-gap between us. I should have known better, really, but he is a charming old man, really charming . . .’
‘So what precisely prompted him to run off?’
‘We had a row. He found out I was seeing Bernard — my feller — at weekends and evenings. We’d been away, you see, me and Bernard, to the Royal Show and to other events. I mean, I do need a younger man . . .’
‘This row,’ Ian quizzed her, ‘was it violent?’
She shook her head. ‘No, he’s not a violent man, not at all. He sometimes sulks a lot, gets very depressed and moody, and when I said I could not stop seeing Bernard, well, he just went absolutely quiet. That was last night. He went to bed early, soon after nine, and was very quiet. When I took him his tea up this morning, his bed was empty. We slept in separate rooms, by the way, His outdoor clothes have gone, the ones he works in, but he’s taken no money or anything. His car’s still there.’
‘Shotguns? Has he taken any guns? Gone shooting maybe?’
‘No, I looked. The gun’s still there, the one he uses for rabbiting.’
‘Was he suicidal at all, during the time you’ve known him?’
‘Yes, often,’ she said. ‘He can be very jealous; if he took me to the hunt ball and I was asked by someone else to dance, he would go into a huff and sulk all night. Several times, he’s threatened to end it all because he thought I’d stopped loving him. He’s odd, like that, very dark at times, very moody and deep.’
‘Normally, when an adult goes missing, we are not too interested,’ said Ian. ‘Adults are free to leave home whenever they wish. So unless there is a suggestion of a crime either by them, or against them, we take little action. But I think in this case there is real concern for his safety. We’ll circulate details and a description of him.’
‘What about a search? Don’t you make a search?’ she asked.
‘Not unless we have good cause, and at this stage there is no cause for a search — besides, where do we start? No, we will circulate the surrounding police officers in the hope they might find him wandering or that he is seen somewhere so that we have an indication of his whereabouts. Old folks do wander, you know. They get on buses, go for long walks, ride bikes, spend time in pubs and cafés . . .’
Ian talked to her for a long time, eliciting from her what amounted to a most frank confession of her affaires with other men, the current one being Bernard Balcombe, who was a salesman for cattle feeds. Some she had managed to conceal from poor old William, but this one had come to a head in this terrible manner. Ian asked if there was a likelihood that William had known of the previous ones, even if he had not said so. She thought it was possible, but unlikely. He also learned that, by his first wife, William had two sons, and so Ian said he would ask them if they had seen their father. She gave us their addresses, thanked us for our interest and left.
‘What do you make of her?’ Ian asked when she had gone.
‘She comes over as a cold and calculating woman,’ I said. ‘“Chilling” is the word I’d use.’
‘The sort who would drive a fellow to suicide to get her hands on his money, eh?’ He floated his thoughts in this way.
‘I wouldn’t put it past her.’ My own views were that she was a calculating sort of woman.
‘I’m off for a word with his sons,’ he decided.
He returned two hours later. The old man had not gone to either of his sons during his anguish, something they both found odd. Each said that in the past old William had gone to one or other of his sons to complain about his new wife: that she was getting through too much money, that she was not caring for him, that she was spending time away from the farm, meeting other men . . .
‘So he did know she was being unfaithful, long before this affaire.’
‘Yes, he knew, all right. He was moody, they both agreed with that, but he was never suicidal. They think he might have gone for a long walk, to think things over. But they will ask around their relatives and go out and look for him. They know his haunts.’
‘Is the farm his own?’ I asked.
‘Yes, he owns it outright; it’s worth a fortune. He’s changed his will, by the way, only in the last month; Irene does not know he’s done that.’
‘So who benefits?’ I wondered.
‘The farm and all the stock are willed to both lads. He’s cut her out completely; he reckons if she goes with other men now, she can find some other mug to look after her in old age. He’s had enough of her.’
‘So Irene thinks she will get the farm if he dies, eh?’ I asked Ian.
‘So the sons tell me.’
We heard nothing of William Sheldon for the next two days, in spite of searches by his wife, his sons and friends of the family and in spite of our own wide circulation. Then we got a 999 call from a fisherman.
‘There’s a body in the beck,’ he said. ‘The River Elter, about a mile downstream from Warren Bridge. It looks like a man.’
I went with the uniformed police constable, and we drove to the area known as Warren Ings. It lay some three miles from the town centre, and the River Elter wove a deep and winding course through the flat countryside. For well over two miles, the river skirted Sheldon’s land, where it formed a formidable barrier to the south of the extensive farm, I guided the constable to Warren Bridge, where we found the fisherman waiting for us.
‘It’s a fair walk down here.’ He showed us a footpath along the edge of the river, and we followed him through the hazels and alders that lined the banks.
We came eventually to a long, wide curve in the river where, on the bank which formed the outer rim of that curve, there were many thick alder trees whose roots formed a curious array of stems which protruded from the water. The flow of the river had gradually washed away the earth at this point, leaving the roots exposed, but the trees had not been weakened by it. They grew as strong and as firm as ever.
‘In that pool,’ said the fisherman, whose name we had learned was Frederick Shearman and who lived at Thirsk. He indicated a deep pool at the far side of those alders, and we approached to see the distinctive shape of a body subm
erged in the clear water. It looked very deep here, and the body was below the surface, being washed gently by the movement of the flow on this wide curve.
I studied its position for a few moments, noting that the bank over the position of the body was high and sheer. It was sandy in appearance, and there were sand martins’ nest holes at intervals along the miniature cliff. It was about six or seven feet high, with a sheer drop into the water. A tangle of alder roots was some six or seven feet upstream, but directly below the sheer bank the water looked very deep indeed. I asked the constable to go and radio for assistance; I needed to have the attendance of Gerry Connolly and the police underwater search unit, whose task would be to recover the corpse. In addition, I needed the inevitable doctor to certify death.
There was no need for heroics at this late stage. No one dived in to effect a dramatic rescue, for that this person was dead was never in doubt. As we waited for the next stage of this development, I wondered if I was looking at the remains of poor old William Sheldon.
With the eventual arrival of our experts, the body was recovered but, as it came out of the water with the aid of two police frogmen, there was a shock for us all. A cement block had been tied to its neck on the end of a length of rope, and that had kept the body anchored to the bottom of the river.
The body was that of William Sheldon; his eldest son, Stanley, later had the unpleasant job of making a formal identification of the remains. The post-mortem revealed that death had been due to drowning, which meant he was alive when he had entered the water, and there was a large abrasion to the back of his head. The pathologist could not say what had produced that — it might have been caused by the cement block striking him as it dragged him down, or contact with rocks under the surface, or he might have been knocked unconscious before entering the water.
At the inquest which followed, the coroner asked the pathologist the questions that we had all been asking ourselves and which, indeed, we had also put to him.
‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘tell me this. In your expert opinion, could Mr Sheldon have committed suicide? Could he have walked to the banks of that river, tied the block around his own neck and then jumped in, to be weighted down until he drowned?’
‘Yes, sir, he could. He was a frail man but, being a farmer, he could easily have carried that block. It is one of many that are still around the farm buildings. He used them for securing stack sheets against high winds.’
‘So a determined man could have committed suicide in this way?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now, tell me, Doctor. The abrasion on his skull. Was that sufficient to render him unconscious?’
‘Yes, in my opinion it was.’
‘And can you say whether that was inflicted before or after he entered the water?’
‘I can say it was inflicted when he was alive, sir, and we know he was alive when he entered the water. It is possible that someone knocked him unconscious with a heavy blow to the head, tied the weight around his neck and threw him into the river. That is not impossible but I cannot state with any certainty that that is what actually happened. We can only speculate upon what actually occurred, and I cannot speculate further upon the available evidence.’
‘But you can confirm that he died from drowning?’
‘I can. If he had been dead when he entered the water, there would not have been water in his lungs. I have tested the water found in his lungs and confirm it is the same as that which flows in the River Elter.’
‘And that is significant?’ asked the coroner.
The pathologist continued: ‘Yes, sir. This means he was not drowned elsewhere and brought here for disposal. I confirm that he died from drowning, sir. But whether he was thrown in or threw himself in is something I cannot say. Nor can I say whether or not he was conscious when he entered the river.’
Having listened to this evidence, the coroner summed up.
‘We are told by the second Mrs Sheldon that her husband was suicidal, but no note has been found; we are also told by his sons that, although he was moody and upset at his wife’s self-confessed unfaithfulness, he was not suicidal. So there is a conflict of evidence here. However, I must place on record that his body was found in the River Elter and that he was alive when he entered the water, in a state of either consciousness or unconsciousness. His death is due to drowning, and there was an abrasion on his head which was sufficient to render him unconscious. I am not prepared to accept that William Sheldon took his own life; there is no evidence of that. Nor can I speculate under what precise circumstances his body came to be in the river — it is possible that a third party or parties knocked him unconscious and threw him into the river, his head weighted down so that he drowned. I therefore record an open verdict.’
This caused a buzz of interest in the court, for such a verdict was rather unusual, and the following day’s newspapers bore headlines such as ‘Mystery of Farmer’s Final Hours’.
Mrs Sheldon, with enormous suspicion hanging over her, left the farm to live in Wales, and the two sons moved back. Bernard Balcombe also moved on, having taken a job with another animal feeds firm in the Midlands.
So the facts surrounding the death of William Sheldon remain a mystery, and it was only three weeks after the inquest that I came to the end of my period as an Aide to CID. I left with happy memories and with this puzzle in my mind. Even now I still ponder over William’s death, wondering whether it was murder or suicide.
We shall never know until someone confesses.
That case was the last in which I was involved as a Constable in Disguise. I wondered if, over those interesting months, I had sufficiently impressed those faceless Powers-that-Be who decide the progress of one’s career and whether, at some distant time, I would join the CID. Gerry Connolly did say I’d fulfilled his expectations and that he hoped one day I would be selected for a detective training course as a prelude to joining the CID. But I knew that such a transfer could not be immediate — even if I had been successful in my recent work, I would have to await a vacancy and there were many ambitious young officers queueing for very few CID posts.
In the meantime, I returned to my beat at Aidensfield, there to continue my work as a rural constable in the stunning countryside of North Yorkshire.
THE END
ALSO BY NICHOLAS RHEA
CONSTABLE NICK MYSTERIES
Book 1: CONSTABLE ON THE HILL
Book 2: CONSTABLE ON THE PROWL
Book 3: CONSTABLE AROUND THE VILLAGE
Book 4: CONSTABLE ACROSS THE MOORS
Book 5: CONSTABLE IN THE DALE
Book 6: CONSTABLE BY THE SEA
Book 7: CONSTABLE ALONG THE LANE
Book 8: CONSTABLE THROUGH THE MEADOW
Book 9: CONSTABLE IN DISGUISE
Book 10: CONSTABLE AMONG THE HEATHER
Book 11: CONSTABLE BY THE STREAM
Book 12: CONSTABLE AROUND THE GREEN
Book 13: CONSTABLE BENEATH THE TREES
Book 14: CONSTABLE IN CONTROL
Book 15: CONSTABLE IN THE SHRUBBERY
Book 16: CONSTABLE VERSUS GREENGRASS
Book 17: CONSTABLE ABOUT THE PARISH
Book 18: CONSTABLE AT THE GATE
Book 19: CONSTABLE AT THE DAM
Book 20: CONSTABLE OVER THE STILE
Book 21: CONSTABLE UNDER THE GOOSEBERRY BUSH
Book 22: CONSTABLE IN THE FARMYARD
Book 23: CONSTABLE AROUND THE HOUSES
Book 24: CONSTABLE ALONG THE HIGHWAY
Book 25: CONSTABLE OVER THE BRIDGE
Book 26: CONSTABLE GOES TO MARKET
Book 27: CONSTABLE ALONG THE RIVERBANK
Book 28: CONSTABLE IN THE WILDERNESS
Book 29: CONSTABLE AROUND THE PARK
Book 30: CONSTABLE ALONG THE TRAIL
Book 31: CONSTABLE IN THE COUNTRY
Book 32: CONSTABLE ON THE COAST
Book 33: CONSTABLE ON VIEW
Book 34: CONSTABLE BEATS THE BOUNDS
Book
35: CONSTABLE AT THE FAIR
Book 36: CONSTABLE OVER THE HILL
Book 37: CONSTABLE ON TRIAL
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