CONSTABLE NICK BOX SET 1–5 five feel-good village cozy mysteries

by Nicholas Rhea

  After the introductory small talk and a brief chat about the quality of his latest acquisition of pigs, Ambrose asked:

  “Does thoo reckon to know owt about dogs, Mr Rhea?”

  “Not a great deal,” I admitted.

  “Oh,” he said, without further comment.

  “Something wrong?” I recognised the countryman’s hesitation to lead into the problem. He wanted me to take the initiative, and turned his head to look down upon the sleeping dog.

  “Aye, mebbe. Ah’m not sure.”

  “Something to do with Shep?”

  “It could be his age,” he said.

  Mrs Lowe next spoke up. “He’s twelve, you see, and he’s had a hard life.”

  “Is he lame or something?” I ventured, thinking the dog might have a form of rheumatism.

  “Nay, lad, nowt like that,” and Ambrose paused to drink from his cup. “I reckon he’s gone deaf.”

  “Deaf?”

  “Aye, deaf. Dogs do go deaf, thoo knows, quite young sometimes. But awd Shep’s getting on in years . . .”

  “Has the vet seen him?”

  “No, he hasn’t, and Ah didn’t feel like calling him all this way if it was nowt.”

  “He would tell you one way or the other,” I said seriously. “And he might be able to treat the condition.”

  Mrs Lowe spoke again. “You see, Mr Rhea, we don’t think he’s really deaf. We think he’s pretending.”

  “Pretending?” I almost laughed aloud. “Dogs can’t pretend; they can’t tell lies or be devious, can they?”

  “Ah reckon thus ’un is, Mr Rhea,” said Ambrose, who now seemed relieved that his wife had opened up the conversation by mentioning their private worry.

  “You must have a good reason for thinking that,” I put to them both.

  “Aye, we ’ave, Mr Rhea,” said Ambrose. “It’s not a sudden idea, like. Me and our missus have been watching Shep of late, and Ah’m positive he’s up to summat.”

  “Tell me more.” I sipped from my cup.

  “It’s like this,” he began carefully, speaking slowly with emphasis on the key words. “Ah’ve noticed, over t’ past few weeks, that when Ah tell Shep it’s time to start work, he just lies near yon door and never moves. We’ve both tried him . . .”

  “Aye,” confirmed Mrs Lowe. “Ah’ve told him it’s time to fetch t’ cows in, or round up a few sheep, and he just lies there, never twitching an eyelid. We’ve had to kick him into life, you know. Clout him with a mop or summat, and then he’ll stir himself. Bone-idle he is.”

  “He could be deaf,” I said. “If he’s always been a good worker before . . .”

  “Aye, lad,” Ambrose raised a finger to emphasise the point, “but when oor missus tells him it’s dinner-time, he hears that all right! By gum, he does that! He’s up and at his dinner like a flash. We tried whispering, real quiet like, and he never missed a meal. Not once. But you try and tell him its milking time and he has to fetch t’cows in, and he’ll doze there like it would take a bomb to shift him.”

  “He thinks it’s time we got another dog, I reckon,” Mrs Lowe offered her opinion. “I mean, in human terms, he’s turned eighty, isn’t he? He should be retired and he knows it.”

  “Let’s see how he reacts now,” I suggested. “Will he behave like that while I’m here?”

  “He won’t dare do otherwise if he doesn’t want to be caught out!” and Ambrose Lowe put on a coat, took a crook from the corner and made all the noises he would have made under a normal excursion to locate sheep. Then he said, “Come, Shep, come lad.”

  I watched the inert form at the base of the door. The dog never moved, not even a flicker of an eyelid or a movement of an ear.

  “Shep, come on, time to get sheep,” called his master.

  Nothing.

  “It’s a rum soort of a gahin on.” I momentarily lapsed into the dialect of the area. “Is he allus like this?”

  “Aye, just now. Now Ah’ll get outside and pretend Ah’ve gone, leaving him there. Ooor missus will tell him it’s dinner-time and thoo see what he does.”

  I waited as the little drama was acted out. Ambrose left the farmhouse and made the normal noises for such an occasion. Shep slept on. Then Mrs Lowe began to prepare a dog’s dinner. She found his old enamel plate and opened the pantry door to produce some old bones and dog-biscuits from a tin. She placed these on the plate then put it on the floor, making a small noise. I saw Shep’s ears prick at the sound.

  “Come, Shep,” she said in a normal voice. “Dinner.”

  And he was on his feet in a split second. Wagging his long tail, he moved quickly across the floor and began to wolf down his meal, showing sheer enjoyment and every sign of fitness.

  This dog was certainly not deaf and he was most certainly not suffering from rheumatics. But could a dog feign deafness in order to avoid work? I doubted it. Surely dogs didn’t possess that sort of cunning?

  When he was midway through the meal, Ambrose returned and smiled at the active dog.

  “Well?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “He heard Mrs Lowe all right. He must know when you’re going out to work, eh? By the noises you make. He just lies there, waiting for you to call him, then ignores you . . .”

  “He makes a good draught-excluder for yon door, and that’s about all he’s good for these days,” commented Mrs Lowe. “What can we do, Mr Rhea? He’s bone-idle — look at him. He’s getting fatter all the time and more and more lazy.”

  I shook my head in bewilderment, then asked, “Have you come across this before, either of you? In other dogs — yours or anyone else’s?”

  “Never,” he said firmly. “Never.”

  “A vet might have,” I ventured. “Maybe if you rang the vet, he’d have a simple answer. It’s maybe a common condition.”

  “Them fellers cost money, and Ah’ve enough trouble making ends meet as it is. Nay, I wanted a second opinion and you happened to come along. You’ve confirmed what we thought. So now, would you say he’s having us on?”

  “It looks very much like it.” I didn’t dare commit myself totally. How could I say, in all honesty, that this dog was nothing more than a confidence trickster or at least, one of the nation’s shirkers?

  I looked at Shep. He had finished his hefty meal and had returned to the space at the base of the inner door, where he lay down, sighed loudly and closed his eyes.

  “It’s milking time at half past four,” Ambrose told me. “Ah’ll warrant Ah’ll nivver shift him then unless I clout him. By, he’s takkin a lot of waking up these days.”

  I continued to watch the inert canine form and wondered if Shep could understand what we were saying. He gave no indication that he could hear us or understand us, and then an idea came to me.

  “I’ve an idea,” I said. “I think we could teach him a lesson!”

  “Ah’ve yelled and cursed him, and we’ve both knocked him to his feet,” said Ambrose. “Ah don’t think there’s owt a policeman can do.”

  “Why don’t you both convince Shep that he really is deaf?” I suggested.

  For a moment, there was no response from the couple, then Ambrose looked sideways at me. “How do you mean, Mr Rhea?”

  “Well,” I began, “I noticed that you made a lot of noise getting ready to go out. Banging doors, tapping your crook on the floor, that sort of thing. And your missus, well, she banged his plate down, there was a noise when she opened the pantry door and got the stuff out . . . and there’s the words you use, like dinner, food, cows and so on. He knows what they all mean. He’s a clever dog.”

  “Aye,” agreed Ambrose.

  “Well, whenever he’s lying there, you should do everything very, very quietly. Make no noise at all. And if you talk to him when he’s awake just shape the words, don’t speak them. Put his dinner down silently and don’t tell him it’s ready . . . make him think he’s gone deaf.”

  “By lad, that’s a capper!” grinned Ambrose. “Aye, we can do that, can’t
we, oor missus?”

  “It won’t be easy, Mr Rhea, will it? I mean, he’ll hear other noises, won’t he, and we might forget sometimes . . .”

  “I don’t think it will take very long to get him puzzled about it,” I ventured. “A day or two. It might cure his idleness.”

  “Right, we’ll try it.”

  I hadn’t time to remain behind on this occasion in order to see how this middle-aged rural couple went about their deception. Knowing the pair, it would have been a treat to observe them both mouthing silent words at each other and putting everything down in total silence when the dog was there — which was most of the time. When I told Mary about it, she laughed until the tears ran down her face, and said she thought I was crackers. I began to wonder who was daft — me or that lazy dog!

  The Lowes weren’t on the telephone so I couldn’t ring them to ask about Shep’s deafness cure, so I was delighted when I had to pop over to the farm later that week to see about a movement licence for some pigs.

  I arrived at my usual time, just before eleven, and knew there’d be a cup of coffee and biscuits. Mrs Lowe saw me coming and, as I parked the motorcycle against a wall, she beckoned me to enter. She also placed a finger across her lips, indicating silence. She then came out to meet me, closing the outer door very, very quietly.

  “By,” she said, “our Shep’s right puzzled.”

  “You’re still giving him the treatment?” I exclaimed.

  “We are,” she confirmed. “Ambrose said we should keep it up until you came next time, so you could see if it worked. So here you are.”

  “It should be interesting,” I smiled. “Where is Ambrose?”

  “He’ll be in any minute for his elevenses,” she said. “Any road, he’ll have heard your bike.”

  She took me into the kitchen where Shep lay in his usual place at the base of the door, performing his role as a draught-excluder and forgetting he was a working farm dog. As I entered, he looked quizzically at me, but Mrs Lowe smiled and mouthed the words, “Would you like a coffee?”

  Feeling something of an idiot, I answered “Yes” in an exaggerated silence.

  She went about the chore and I noted that she did everything in total silence. She had become expert at her new skill. The cups and saucers made not a sound, the kettle was boiled in the kitchen and everything was done completely without noise. Within five minutes, Ambrose entered and it was like watching a silent film. The couple went about their daily domestic chores in a remarkable way and I saw the puzzled dog watching this charade. He shook his head several times, and looked at me as if to ask what on earth was happening. Ambrose smiled, sat down and carried on a weird conversation with me, saying absolutely nothing and I responded in like manner. If Sergeant Blaketon came in now . . .

  To complete the performance, Mrs Lowe got Shep’s dinner ready. Out came a tin of dog-biscuits, some old bones and scraps, and a tin of dog-meat. His old enamel plate was placed on the floor in total silence and then she looked at him. He looked at her and shook his head, and she mouthed the words, “Come, Shep, dinner.”

  Shep looked at me and then at her, struggled heavily from his prone position and ambled across to eat the meal. As he licked the plate there was a faint noise as it scudded about the floor, but he appeared to ignore this. Then, having eaten, he returned to the door, curled up and lay down, but this time kept his large brown eyes open, watching us all in turn.

  Ambrose smiled at me and mouthed the words, “Now, let’s see if all this performance has fettled him.”

  Getting up from the chair, he went over to the crook in the corner, banged its ferrule on the floor and, in a normal voice, said, “Shep, come along. Time for work.”

  The dog lay there for the briefest of moments before leaping to his feet with a delighted bark. In no time, he was panting at the door wanting to be out. The ruse had worked perfectly. Or had it?

  That weekend, in the Brewers Arms at Aidensfield, I heard Ambrose telling the tale to his drinking companions.

  “By,” he was saying, “oor dog was that glad he’d gat his hearing back, he ran inti my fields and rounded up all oor sheep and cows half a dozen times. He’s never been idle since, Ah can tell you.”

  Nonetheless, I think Shep did win in the end. A few months later, Ambrose bought a young dog called Bob to take over from Shep, and Shep was honoured with the duty of showing the young dog how to work on the farm.

  Before long, Shep would be officially retired. He’d earned his rest, and I knew that dog was far from stupid. But I did wonder what kind of tricks he would teach young Bob.

  Chapter Four

  Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

  FRANCIS BACON, 1561—1626

  It has been said that if a ten-pence piece fell over the side of an ocean liner in a storm, the first man to reach the water after it would be a Yorkshireman and the second a Scotsman. The Jews are not in the race. It is difficult to assess the truth of this bold statement without actually testing it on location, but it is fair to say that where money is concerned a Yorkshireman does exercise considerable care.

  Right across this massive county, the natives possess an inbred cunning where finance is involved and I think this yarn illustrates the point.

  In a remote moorland village, the local simpleton found a half-crown lying in the middle of the road. This occurred in the days when a half-crown was of considerable value and the lad was delighted with his luck. It represented more than a day’s wages. Off he went into the local pub to spend it and announced to the landlord that he wished to buy a pint of best bitter. The landlord, knowing the lad wasn’t in the habit of spending his workaday pittance on beer, asked if he’d come into money.

  “Aye,” beamed the youth. “Ah’ve found a half-crown.”

  At this, a local ne’er-do’well approached the bar and said:

  “Well, fancy that, Roger, that’ll be that half-crown I lost this morning.”

  “Will it?” replied the finder sadly. “Did you lose it out there, in the street?”

  “Aye, I did,” agreed the trickster.

  “And did your half-crown have a little hole drilled through it, just near t’date?”

  “Aye, as a matter of fact it did!” smiled the villain of the piece.

  “Well, this ’un hasn’t,” grinned the simpleton, handing it to the landlord.

  Natural craftiness of this quality is perhaps the result of long and careful grooming in matters of finance, and there is little doubt that a close-fisted Yorkshireman is one of the meanest of creatures. He doesn’t see it in that light, of course. He sees the issue as one of care coupled with necessity, and he does not believe in parting with his brass to anyone who hasn’t earned it. It is no accident of history that a Yorkshireman’s motto is:

  Hear all, see all, say nowt,

  Eat all, drink all, pay nowt,

  And if thoo does owt for nowt,

  Do it for thyself.

  The county is replete with legendary yarns about the characteristic stinginess of Yorkshiremen and it is impossible to quote them all in these pages. To further illustrate Yorkshireman’s niggardly attitude, the following parables are but examples.

  There was a farmer’s wife who sat beside her husband’s deathbed, waiting for him to pass away. His customary meanness had infected her and it had been a long vigil. A candle burned at the bedside, for this was the only form of light in the house.

  The long hours passed but the old man clung to life with all the grit and determination of his Yorkshire breeding. Then he turned to his wife and said, “I could use a nice cup o’ tea, Martha.”

  “Nay, Sam,” she said, “Ah’m not gahin to waste food on you now. Thoo mun do without. Thoo’ll nut need food where thoo’s gahin.”

  “But Ah’s fair thosting for a drink,” he said.

  “Then Ah’ll fetch a glass o’watter,” and she rose from the bedside.

  “Thanks,” he managed to gasp in a sudden fit of coughing.

 
At this, she stopped at the door and said, “Sam, if thoo feels thysen slipping away while Ah’m downstairs, blow t’ candle oot.”

  Another example occurred in our village post office before decimalisation came to harass the older folk. A local farmer entered to draw money from his Post Office Savings Account. The post-mistress produced the necessary forms and he completed them.

  “Oh,” she said when she read his words, “you can’t draw out sixpence. You can only withdraw amounts of one shilling or greater.” For those no longer familiar with £.s.d. money, a shilling was twelve old pennies, now worth 5p.

  “I only want to buy six pennorth o’ stamps,” he retorted.

  “I’m sorry, it’ll have to be a shilling,” she told him firmly and so he completed another form for that amount. He received his shilling, bought six pennyworth of postage-stamps and then said, “Right missus, now I’d like to make a deposit.”

  “Certainly,” she smiled. “How much?”

  “Sixpence,” he said and this time she had to accept his cash. There was no such rule about deposits.

  Many local farmers and small business-people nurtured an open mistrust of banks. They utterly failed to understand the system and could never equate money with pieces of paper in cheque-books. Complicated matters like investments, securities, interest rates and the like were gibberish to these people, for they dealt always in cash, buying and selling everything in ready money and somehow managing to amass massive quantities of cash.

  I have personally witnessed milk-churns full of old £5 notes, some of which had been there so long the money had gone green with damp and mould, and there is the classic tale of a son who tried to convert his old dad into depositing his money with a bank. After much explanation and pleading, the old man agreed to deposit £10,000 with the bank in town and he asked the son to fetch the milk-churn from the pantry.

  They loaded the churn into the rear of the car and drove to the bank, where they manoeuvred this unusual purse into the building. There they stood and watched as the bewildered clerk counted out the money. Finally, she stopped.