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

by Nicholas Rhea

  I was not unduly worried, but when I saw his daughter, Jane, on the up-platform I asked.

  “Your dad’s not here then?”

  “He’s somewhere about, Mr Rhea,” she smiled. “He said he was working, helping out, and got dressed up in his old clothes.”

  “Old clothes?” I asked.

  “Yes, his railway clothes. You know, his flat cap with a peak, his railway coat and boots. He wore them years ago and never got rid of them. And he took his bait bag with his sandwiches and flask. He got done up in those and said it was something special.”

  I smiled. Someone had clearly asked a special favour of Awd Simon and, knowing how the committee of the Hopbind functioned, I guessed it would be some set piece for him to perform, some final act and some positive way of making Simon feel needed and useful. I knew, and I’m sure they knew, he’d never see another railway train after today.

  Prompt at 12.35 p.m., the diesel with its garlands and gleaming bodywork rumbled into Elsinby Station. It hooted and hooted; the people cheered and several disembarked. Others climbed aboard, there were photographs and singing, paper chains were thrown and flowers tossed at the engine. Photographs were taken as the driver kissed several pretty girls on the platform and the guard did likewise, even including some grannies. It was a glorious ten minutes, and then with a long hoot on the horn the last train from Elsinby drew out of the little station.

  Now there were tears. Many spectators, men and women, wept as the full stop was written at the end of this important chapter. Suddenly, and with remarkable simplicity, it was all over. No more trains would pass this way. For over a century, they had used this bonny little station and it had ended so suddenly. It all seemed so unreal. Later the rails would be lifted, the station closed and all its contents disposed of. No longer would the signal cabin be required and the level-crossing gates could be left permanently open for road traffic. No more children would have to be warned of trains and those who wished to shop in York or Leeds would have to find alternative transport.

  We all walked away feeling sad, but luckily the bar was open on the station and almost everyone drifted inside for sandwiches. The liquor and food would dispel the feeling of melancholy. I looked around but failed to locate Awd Simon.

  “Have you seen Awd Simon?” I asked several people and all shook their heads.

  Between one o’clock and three, the celebrations continued and I left the noisy bunch to have a walk around the village. Away from the station, it was strangely silent, almost like a village after a funeral. I sought Awd Simon, but failed to find him. I tried all his pals and all his haunts with no success. I couldn’t understand it at all.

  I returned to the festivities and found his daughter, but she hadn’t seen him. She told me he’d been very secretive about his proposed trip, and not in the least morbid or sad. He seemed elated, she told me, and she guessed he was doing something confidential and very personal.

  I must admit I felt worried. No one else appeared to be in the least concerned about his whereabouts, but I felt it odd that the old man had not taken part in the celebrations. He had certainly dressed up for something connected with today’s events.

  I went home about four o’clock and had tea with Mary and the children. They had attended the festivities, albeit not at Elsinby. They’d been with friends from Aidensfield and had gone down to Ploatby Junction to see the manoeuvres of the engine as it transferred itself from one end of the train to the other for the rest of the trip. The children had secured a grandstand view from a field near the line and I was pleased they’d been present on this historic date, even though they’d probably never remember it in adult life.

  I told Mary about Awd Simon but she could shed no light on his behaviour and had not seen him at Ploatby. After tea, I changed into my civilian clothes, for I was off duty at five, and we watched the television news of the train’s final trip. People had turned out right along the route through Ryedale and made it a colourful and emotional occasion.

  At half past seven, the telephone rang and Mary answered it.

  “It’s for you,” she said. “I said you were off duty and she should ring Ashfordly, but she insisted she talks to you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Mrs Jobling.”

  “Awd Simon’s daughter?”

  Mary nodded and I went to take the call.

  “It’s Jane, Mr Rhea,” she gasped into the telephone. “It’s my dad, he’s still not come home. I’m worried now. We’ve been all over the village and Mr Rawlings says he didn’t buy a ticket to go to York or anywhere . . .”

  “I’ll come right away,” I promised.

  I spent an hour seeking him in the village, asking members of the committee and everyone else, but no one had seen him. He’d left home this morning in his old railway clothes and had not been seen since. He’d vanished completely.

  My professional problem was whether to mount a full-scale police search for the old man, or wait in the hope he’d return home. We had no real reason to think he was lying hurt anywhere, but my instinct told me something was wrong. I began to fear the worst.

  I went into the pub and hailed George.

  “George.” I talked quietly over the counter in the passage. “It’s Awd Simon.”

  “Aye,” he said, “they tell me he’s missing.”

  “I reckon we’d better search the place,” I said. “Can you rustle up any volunteers?”

  “There’s a barful right here, Mr Rhea,” he smiled and within minutes I had thirty men on the car park, all volunteering for the hunt. I told them the situation and provided a description of the old man. As it was dark by this time, we needed lights and this caused no problem. All were local men and each could produce a torch.

  I allocated teams of two men to every path and road and allowed them two hours for their search. As it was almost nine o’clock, I said we’d all meet back in the pub at eleven to compare notes. I felt sure we would secure a drink apiece, being friends of the licensee. I had a map in the car and would cross off the examined sections as they were cleared. I told Jane Jobling of our actions and she was pleased; I said that if this spontaneous search, by local men who knew the terrain, produced nothing I would call in a police search team, complete with dogs. That would take time to arrange.

  We went to work as only a team of volunteers can, and I found myself paired with a youngster called John Fellows, an apprentice plumber.

  “Did you know Awd Simon?” I asked John as we began our search.

  “Yes,” he said fondly. “He told me all about trains, Mr Rhea. I got a Hornby train when I was a lad, and he told me all about signals, engine types and so on.”

  “Where do you reckon he is, then?” I asked.

  “We were talking in the pub before you came in,” he said seriously. “Some of us reckoned he might have gone onto the line.”

  “The line?”

  “Aye, he often went down the line, walking the sleepers like he did when he worked.”

  “I never thought of that!” I had to admit. “Which was his favourite part of the line?”

  “Down near the beck. There’s a level-crossing down there, near Marshlands Farm. He sometimes went there.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  The walk across the muddy fields and farm tracks took us about twenty minutes and eventually we had reached the area known to the lad. The line was a single track here, running through narrow openings and thick with shrubs and trees, and there was a farm crossing. Here the line was open with no gates. This meant farmers and their workers had to be alert to the possibility of an advancing train, but to my knowledge there’d been no accidents.

  “You go east, I’ll go west,” I said.

  John obeyed. Together we gained access to the railway line and I began to walk along the sleepers, quickly acquiring the necessary pace as my feet adjusted to the regular small steps.

  “Five minutes that way!” I called and John waved his torch in reply.

&n
bsp; I walked along the line, my torch picking out the railway furniture, the glistening metals, the rows of wooden sleepers like an eternal staircase leading nowhere, while in the darkness of the vegetation tiny pinpricks of light showed. Glow-worms were abroad — it was Walter de la Mare who wrote: “But dusk would come in the apple boughs, the green of the glow-worm shine. The birds in the nest would crouch to rest, and home I’d trudge to mine.”

  And then I found him.

  Quite suddenly, quite horribly, I found Awd Simon.

  He was lying between the rails, quite dead, battered and bloody. Poor, poor man. He was clad in his railway clothes, with his bait bag across his shoulder while his peaked cap lay several yards away, knocked from his head.

  I stood for a full minute looking upon his battered and torn body, wondering why. Was this an accident or was it deliberate? Had he donned his workaday clothes of yesteryear for the sole purpose of undertaking his own final sentimental journey? Was it so impossible for Awd Simon to tolerate life without his beloved railways?

  I shall never know.

  He could have sprung from these thick bushes without the driver ever realising.

  “John,” I shouted to the lad, for we had to return to the village.

  I had work to do.

  Chapter Eight

  Even a child is known by his doings.

  Book of Proverbs, xx 11

  It was William Blake who wrote “when the voices of children are heard on the green, and laughing is heard on the hill”, but I suspect that the author of that resounding phrase “Children should be seen and not heard” lived in a village. Playing children do make a terrible noise and the larger their numbers the greater the noise. In play, children display a desperate desire to shout louder than their friends and their high-spirited physical antics tend to annoy those residents whose gardens receive footballs, whose greenhouses swallow cricket-balls and whose chimney-pots fly badly routed kites.

  Rural children are better off than their city and suburban cousins because they have acres of fields and lots of open space to use for the noisy release of their excess energies, but this does not encourage them to play away from home all the time. Somehow they contrive to play where nobody wants them. All children love playing near their homes or, better still, near someone else’s home. While most adults will tolerate their good-natured noise and their unintentional vandalism of rose-beds and windows, there is a hard core of householders who persistently telephone the village constable to complain about playing children.

  Since the beginning of constabulary duties, policemen have suffered from this incessant complaining. They have been told loudly of children sliding down icy roads, jumping on rickety roofs, torturing cats or plaguing dogs, building houses in unsafe trees, killing each other or demolishing valuable property . . .

  And always, by the time the policeman arrives, the children have vanished and the misdeeds have ended. Policemen know how the system works, consequently they do not rush to the scene of a complaint in a flurry of blue lights and rising dust. Instead, they proceed at a leisurely pace, knowing full well that the subjects of the irate complaint will have scarpered into prearranged hiding-places at the first hint of trouble from long-suffering adults. By arriving at an empty scene, the police officer preserves everyone’s dignity. The system operates something like this. The children have succeeded in annoying their victim, which is what they require; the victim has called in the police, who have responded, so he is happy, and the policeman is content because, knowing human nature somewhat better than most, he realises that his leisurely “action” keeps everyone sweet. There are no upset parents, no children to brag about being nicked and no reports or summonses for him to waste time in submitting. It is a very diplomatic arrangement, practised over the nation by discerning police officers. It keeps politicians happy about the incidence of juvenile crime and professional social workers happy that their skills are producing fruit.

  It is true, however, that children’s games can get out of hand. This is frequently the case when children discover a victim who responds violently to their taunts. The more he responds, the better the children like it, and the more he will be taunted by them. They knock on his door and run away, they smear paint on his windows or pull up his plants, they perpetrate all manner of hooligan pranks upon the unfortunate person who rises to the occasion for their entertainment.

  Children like nothing better than an outraged adult threatening hell, fire and thunder from the safety of his curtilage. And another thing, no sensible adult will attempt to chase the children — this hasn’t a hope in hell of achieving anything, other than a grievous loss of dignity by the adult and a repeat performance by the kids in the very near future.

  It is far, far better to ignore their taunts. Children whose actions do not raise a flicker of interest from their victim rapidly lose interest. Quite often, the teasing of adults by children is a psychological battle which the youngsters win due to their instinctive understanding of human nature. Adults do not react in quite the same instinctive way and very often provide a memorable display of free entertainment.

  The policeman must always bear in mind that children can get out of hand and wreak damage or injury if not checked. Old people can get hurt or shocked by youthful actions, but somewhere in the centre of this long-running conflict there is a level of tolerance which can be achieved by all parties. It is the duty of the village bobby to find that middle course.

  I found myself seeking such a course in Ashfordly one autumn afternoon. It involved a formidable lady who stood almost six feet tall in her silk stockings and had a nose as long as Saltburn pier. Domineering and undoubtedly severe, she lived alone in a rambling house on the outskirts of Ashfordly and dressed characteristically in tweed skirts with pleats, brogue shoes with the tongues sticking out and hats that looked like fish-wives’ bonnets. Her dark hair was severely styled with large slides holding it back above the ears and she spoke with a heavy accent which suggested a lineage of high-class breeding. She was Miss Deirdre Finlay who may have been in her mid-forties and who drove a little Morris estate car which was always full of plant pots and fertilizer sacks. She strode about the town as if she wore seven-league boots.

  I do not believe she had a job of any sort. I understand she existed on a legacy from Daddy although she did grow plants of all kinds which she sold to the local greengrocers, fruiterers and market traders. Certainly this activity alone was insufficient to support her but it kept her occupied and probably brought in a few pounds cash every week, tax-free.

  Her garden was one of the old-fashioned enclosed type, surrounded entirely by a tall brick wall a good eight feet high. Inside, it was suitably secluded and private and within those high walls Miss Finlay grew her widely assorted plants. One corner was devoted to apple-trees, all neatly pruned and all expert at producing a wide range of Bramley’s, Cox’s Orange Pippin and other soundly established varieties. She sold these too and made a useful income from her stock of sixty trees.

  Late that autumn afternoon, it was fortuitous that I was patrolling the Ashfordly area. I had parked the motorcycle and was enjoying a leisurely foot patrol around the market square, admiring the shops, the pubs and the pretty women who always seemed to be going somewhere important. During those blissful perambulations, I wandered through the streets away from the town centre and found myself patrolling along Water End. This was where a small stream, which meandered from the surrounding hills, joined the river and it was a very pleasant and pretty part of the town.

  Miss Finlay’s house was upon the side of this beck and it was by sheer chance that she poked that formidable head around her gatepost just as I was passing.

  “Constable!” she called loudly as she noticed me. “A minute, if you don’t mind.”

  I approached her with a smile on my face. Although we had never spoken before, I knew of this lady and her fierce reputation. I decided to be pleasant to her.

  “Yes?”

  “You are new
?”

  “I am. I’m P.C. Rhea from Aidensfield. I’m patrolling the town this afternoon.”

  “Then I have work for you. I have caught a thief.”

  “A thief?” I must have sounded surprised.

  “Yes, a thieving youth, a good-for-nothing layabout. He was stealing my apples.”

  I looked around the gatepost and into her spacious grounds but saw no captured youth.

  “Where is he?”

  “I have locked him in my potato store,” and she suddenly grinned. “That’ll teach him, what?”

  “Take me to him,” I suggested. I wondered what sort of thief this was.

  She took me into the well-kept grounds and at the side of her beautiful home there was an array of outbuildings, one of which was resounding with loud thumps and frenzied cries of “Let me out.”

  “In there.” She pointed to a closed door. It was of solid wood with a padlock slipped neatly through a stout hasp, securely imprisoning the villain.

  “Who is it?” I called through the door before releasing him.

  “I cannot say.” She shook her notable head. “I have not seen him before.”

  The door rattled and banged as the incarcerated rogue attempted to regain his freedom, so I shouted, “It’s the police.”

  The banging stopped and I heard a whispered voice inside say, “Oh, bloody hell.”

  “Who’s in there?” I called through the wooden panels.

  No reply.

  I began to slip the padlock from the hasp, so she warned me. “He’s quick, Officer, you’ll have to watch him. I had trouble, you know; it’s a good job I’m fit. Hockey, you know. It keeps me trim.”

  I smiled an unspoken answer to that claim and carefully unbolted the door. It opened easily and there, blinking in the sudden flood of daylight, was a diminutive youth with carroty hair and elfin features set in a freckled face. He made no effort to gallop to freedom, possibly because both I and Miss Finlay occupied the doorway of the potato-house and effectively prevented any exit. To this tiny lad, the opposition must have looked formidable.