My family and I were enjoying our summer holiday in a cottage near Ullswater and on the day — a damp and misty one — we decided to spend some time in Keswick where we could find shelter, shops and a plentiful supply of drinks and food. I found a second-hand shop full of fascinating odds and ends and, always interested in old books, I began to browse among the stock of books, magazines and prints. Hanging on the wall above me was a painting of a huge ox, with a top-hatted man standing nearby. The massive animal, a longhorn, was painted in a mixture of greyish-brown and white and had long white horns; it was a mammoth creature. At first, I did not pay a lot of attention to the picture but then, as I straightened my back after poring through some Lakeland topographical books, I noticed the caption. It said, ‘The Elsinby Ox.’
Although Elsinby was a village on my beat, and only two miles from Aidensfield, I had never heard of the Elsinby Ox. Closer examination revealed a note under the caption which said the ox was born in 1840 and when it was slaughtered in 1851 following the breaking of a leg, it weighed 188 stone. So far as was known, only the famous Durham Ox, a shorthorn, was a larger beast. The painting was priced at £2. 10s. 0d. I lifted it from the wall and on turning it around discovered that a fairly modern newspaper clipping had been pasted to the rear of the picture.
According to the cutting, the Elsinby Ox had been reared by John and George Sinclair, farmers of Spennymoor in County Durham; they had moved to High Barns, Elsinby, a village on the North York Moors, when their ox had grown to such massive proportions that they used to transport it around for display at agricultural shows and fairs in the north-east. Later, their children, Thomas aged fifteen and Hester aged twelve, helped to care for the massive animal during its travels to exhibitions — it travelled in this way for just over five years before breaking a leg during a stumble in a rabbit hole. Rivalled only by the Durham Ox which had been travelling to exhibitions earlier that century, this splendid longhorn became known as the Elsinby Ox.
And there, in this one compact note, was the reason for the reticence of the villagers of present-day Elsinby.
Thomas and Hester Sinclair were brother and sister, not man and wife. That meant that their child, Maud, was the result of incest. I began to guess that, upon the birth of the little girl, Thomas would have been condemned by the local people and so it was quite feasible that he could have committed suicide. If he had, Hester had apparently remained to face her critics and to rear the little girl. Indeed, she had eventually married a Sanderson and so her rehabilitation had been complete. Later, so it would seem, her daughter had married into a good family — the Barrs — and Mrs Melrose was a descendant. Intrigued by my good fortune, I bought the picture of the Elsinby Ox, half thinking it might be of interest to the Melrose family and half thinking it would be useful for my own collection of Yorkshire memorabilia.
Having acquired the picture, though, I was now faced with the same dilemma as the other more senior residents of Elsinby — should I tell the Melrose couple what I had discovered? Should I inform Kathleen Melrose that her grandmother was the result of an incestuous relationship between a brother and his sister? After due reflection, I decided against it. I felt it would be better if she never knew about that sordid chapter in the history of her family.
A few months later, I revisited High Barns on a routine check of stock registers and after signing the books over a nice coffee, I said to Jim, ‘You know about the Elsinby Ox? And its links with your farm?’
‘Aye, I do, Nick. Some animal, eh?’
I told him about my discovery in the Keswick second-hand shop, and of its revelation, adding, ‘So I know there was incest, Jim. But I shan’t say anything to that Melrose couple. Like you said at the time, it’s best they don’t know.’
He rubbed his bristly chin with a huge hand and smiled, ‘Well, you’re wrong, Nick. It wasn’t incest. But the problem was that everybody thought it was. One of the Sandersons fathered that child, Nick, but Hester made folks think it was Thomas. They gave him a hell of a time, Nick, the local folks. Hester wasn’t all that bright, you see; she thought it better to say her brother was the dad because folks frowned on lasses having illegitimate bairns. Put up to it, she was. By the Sandersons. So Maud wasn’t the result of incest, Nick. Nowt of the sort, but she was illegitimate.’
‘But she married a Sanderson later, didn’t she?’ I asked. ‘And that would legitimize the little girl?’
‘Aye, it would, although she kept the Sinclair name, but it meant that yon Sanderson man got the farm. Which is what he wanted all along. He got rid of Thomas, making him an exile, so he could get his hands on the farm through Hester. Thomas, the eldest son, should have inherited the farm. He was a nasty piece of work, Nick, was that Sanderson. But if you think about it, even a chap like that would hardly marry a woman who’d committed incest, would he?’
‘Do the local people know all this?’
‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘I should think most of them have memories of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents talking about High Barns and the incest which made Thomas run away. Mebbe they don’t know the truth of what the Sandersons did.’
‘So what happened to Thomas? Was his body ever found? Did he commit suicide?’
‘He knew every inch of those moors, Nick, so he’d never get lost; he never took a firearm away with him and he was made of stern stuff. He had a bit of money put away, so he took that, walked away across to the other side of the moors and caught a coach to Leicestershire. Then he worked on a farm down there, rearing his own livestock and selling it in his spare time. He bought and sold until he had enough money to set himself up on his own farm. Then he married and had a family.’
‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.
‘Family word of mouth, Nick. He was my great grandfather on my mother’s side,’ smiled Jim. ‘We’re back home you see, at High Barns.’
The next time I called, I presented Jim with my picture of the Elsinby Ox but even today, I do not know if the Melrose family ever discovered the truth.
* * *
The third circumstances to which I referred at the beginning of this chapter generated rather more involvement by the police and was even more traumatic for two families.
One family was called Warriner and they owned and managed a busy newsagent’s in Ashfordly. Known simply as Warriners, it was just off the marketplace and occupied a former large stone-built house which had been converted to provide business premises on the ground floor with a flat above. The owners, Joyce and Ian Warriner, lived in a nice detached house about half a mile away, and the flat was occupied by their daughter, Tessa. Vivacious and blonde, she was in her early twenties and worked in the shop, alternating with her father to rise early to prepare the newspapers for distribution by their team of delivery boys. Apart from newspapers and magazines, they sold sweets, cigarettes, maps, stationery of various kinds, paperback books and ice cream. It was a busy shop which was popular with its customers, chiefly due to the cheerfulness of Tessa, and it provided a good living for the Warriners.
It opened at 6 a.m. which meant it attracted the early morning workers, many of whom popped in for their daily paper, cigarettes and sweets.
Lots of them bought the same things every day of the week and if Tessa or her father were working on their own, sorting the piles of newspapers for delivery, most of the regulars would help themselves to whatever they wanted and pop their money on the counter. It was that kind of shop, although when tourists and strangers walked in, there was more formality and security.
Usually, there was some good-natured banter between the customers and staff, particularly those who called in the early hours — and among them were several police officers who were working early turn. If I was working an early route on my motorbike or in the minivan with which I was later issued, I would pop into Warriners for a bar of fruit and nut chocolate or a paper to read during my meal break. In that way, I got to know Tessa and her parents quite well.
They we
re a very nice family — there was a son too, called Brian, but he was working away from home, something to do with the chemical industry on Teesside, and he came home for weekends. But it was Tessa who enlivened many a dull morning for those early-morning newspaper and cigarette buyers.
One of them was a man called Stuart Cabler who lived in my patch. His home was at Briggsby, a hilltop village between Aidensfield and Ashfordly, and he went to work every day on a small motorbike. He worked as a machine operator in a bacon factory at Brantsford and started work each weekday at 6.30 a.m. His journey to work took about twenty-five minutes but he allowed a little extra time for his newspaper stop in Ashfordly en route, and a little more time upon arrival to change from his motorcycle gear into his work clothing.
In his early fifties, he was a small man, a mere five feet two inches tall, and correspondingly thin with a skull-like balding head adorned with thin wisps of fair hair. He had a thin fair moustache too, and matching eyebrows, and wore rounded spectacles with small lenses. For his ride to work, he dressed in an old RAF greatcoat, Wellington boots, an RAF pilot’s helmet and goggles.
Although meagre, his wage had enabled him to marry and he lived with his wife, Frances, in a council house in Briggsby; there were no children of the union although the couple did keep a pair of spaniels and a canary. Frances helped the family finances by working at a dairy farm in the village. They were a very quiet couple, clearly devoted to one another, and their only interests, apart from walking the dogs, appeared to be their garden and the village chapel. The garden was always beautifully maintained and spectacular with flowers from spring into late autumn; it was a veritable showpiece. Frances also kept the Methodist chapel in a clean and neat condition, both inside and out. Stuart helped with things like running repairs and decorating. Frances made sure there were always flowers inside, taking them from her own garden and, after the Sunday services, she pottered around with a duster and brush.
Every working day, therefore, Stuart left home shortly after 5.50 a.m. and rode the short distance into Ashfordly where he parked his machine on its rest in the street outside Warriners. As he usually arrived a couple of minutes before the shop opened, he waited patiently and was then first into the shop when the door was opened.
Tessa, or her father, whomever was working at that time, would put out Stuart’s Daily Mirror, packet of ten Woodbines and a Mars Bar and, upon collecting them, Stuart would place his money on the counter before bidding his farewell. It was a morning routine which never varied.
Whereas Mr Warriner would merely say ‘Good morning, Mr Cabler’, Tessa would show a little more friendship. She would smile at this early customer, ask him about the weather outside or praise his garden which she had noticed from time to time when passing through Briggsby. Sometimes, if he did not have the correct change, she would knock off a penny, or suggest he paid next time — and she always smiled at him. And she had such a lovely smile and a figure which was stunning. Even the loose smock she wore in the shop would not conceal her splendid shape.
Once when his motorcycle glove had got wet after falling into a puddle as he was parking the machine, she had offered him one of her own woollen gloves to get him to work, saying he could return it in the morning. In other words, Tessa showed a range of small courtesies and oceans of smiling friendship towards Stuart Cabler and there is little doubt that these niceties brightened his day and sent him off to work whistling as he drove along the quiet road. He was just one of the many early-morning customers at Warriners but remembered by them because he was always the first to arrive.
Then Tessa began to receive obscene notes through the letterbox. Marked with her name but without the name of the writer, they arrived sometime between closing at 7 p.m. and reopening next morning at 6 a.m. In every case, they were pushed through the letterbox of the shop door. They were in small plain brown envelopes and written on lined paper, the kind one might find in a cheap school exercise book or writing pad. They were written in blue ballpoint ink in block capital letters and expressed, in no uncertain terms, what the writer would like to do to Tessa in bed, on the sofa, in the woods or elsewhere. At first, she thought they were from a schoolboy in the town, or written as some kind of crude joke and she ignored them. She never told anyone, however, but simply threw them into the wastebin.
After receiving seven or eight such letters in a period of a couple of months, the tone of the letters hardened. Instead of saying what he would like to do to Tessa, the writer threatened that he was actually going to do all the things he had mentioned and now, because she lived in the flat above the shop, she became alarmed. She told her parents and they suggested she move into their house until the letters ceased. Even at that stage, the Warriners did not inform the police, thinking the letters were the work of a crank who would soon tire of them. They did notice, however, that the letters arrived only when Tessa was working her early shift — none arrived when Mr Warriner was due to work an early shift in the shop.
But the letters did not cease. At the rate of one a week, they continued and then began to include photographs and drawings taken from obscene magazines and books, with inked-in messages saying, ‘Me and You’ or ‘Tessa on top, me beneath’ and other commentaries.
The Warriners, and Tessa in particular, had no idea who was sending these notes, nor did they know at what time they were being pushed through the letterbox. From time to time, they had kept discreet observations upon their premises, but without any success. Mr Warriner had offered to work every early-morning shift but Tessa had said she did not want this nutcase to ruin her life or change the family routine.
It was when used contraceptives were included in the envelopes that the Warriners contacted Ashfordly Police. Not every one included this extra item but it was the first of such packages which prompted Mr Warriner to inform Sergeant Blaketon. It was then that the entire story emerged, with Tessa saying she had no idea of the identity of the sender. She had never given any encouragement to anyone visiting the shop, nor had any of her customers given any indication they might have had that kind of romantic notion towards her. The identity of her unbalanced admirer was a mystery.
Sergeant Blaketon told the family that the only way to catch the offending person was for a police officer to be concealed on the premises to watch for the arrival of the letters. It was thought they were coming after midnight when the town was quiet — one or other of the Warriner family was usually on the premises until 9 p.m. even though the shop was closed. Another theory was that the letters arrived in the very early hours of the morning, before the shop opened. The family had, for a time, maintained a vigil without any success.
One or other of the family was usually in the shop around 5.30 a.m. as the papers were delivered from the wholesaler but because they were invariably sorting them in the rear room, they could not constantly watch the letterbox at the front. The delivery van dropped the papers at the rear door, which was the door the staff used to enter the premises prior to opening of the public. And, they said, they did not always go through the shop to the front door immediately upon arriving at 5.30 a.m., so they could not say whether the letters came during the night or early in the morning. But, quite often when going to open up for the day, the buff envelope addressed to Tessa would be lying on the mat.
The snag was that the letters did not arrive in a regular pattern. They might arrive on a Wednesday morning one week, a Tuesday the next, then a Friday or even a Sunday on some occasions. There was not always a letter each week — some weeks, two arrived, and during other weeks, none. There was no discernible pattern, which made police observations rather difficult and time-consuming.
One problem from the official police aspect was that the offender was not committing a crime — there was no statute by which his behaviour was punishable in a court of law which meant that long hours of silent observations by the police might be difficult to justify. The only thing we might do, if we caught him, was to arrest him for conduct which was likely to cau
se a breach of the peace, and present him before the magistrates’ court to have him bound over to be of good behaviour.
Catching him was important, but that presented the problem. Could we justify a continuing police presence in the shop when there was other work to consider? But as time went by, Tessa did begin to feel the strain. She felt she was under constant observation although no one had been observed hanging around the premises, and yet, bravely, she continued with her normal routine. Happily, the unwelcome attention she was receiving did not progress to telephone calls but Sergeant Blaketon, justifying his actions as being necessary for her safety, did initiate a system of observations by police officers of the Ashfordly section. And that included me.
As my turn came when the nights and mornings were brightening with a new spring, I had to enter the shop at 10 p.m. under the cover of darkness and via the rear door, and remain there until it opened at six a.m. Mr Warriner showed me the kettle and coffee, and positioned a chair at the back of the shop, in the darkness, from where I could watch the front door all through the night. It was agreed that the front door would be unlocked while I was watching it, so that I could gallop out in rapid pursuit of the villain if he turned up. It would be a long and dreary vigil and I had no hope of catching the offender. He — (or could it be a she with a vengeance?) — seemed to arrive when no one was maintaining such observations.
Shortly after ten o’clock one Tuesday night, therefore, I settled upon the hard chair in the darkness of the shop to begin my vigil. I had a clear view of the door. Through its glass, and the glass of the shop windows, I could see the street outside which was bathed in the orange glow of the streetlights and beyond was the road leading to the marketplace. Quite a lot of people were walking around at that time of night, going to or coming from the local pubs or just walking in the fresh air. An hour passed very quickly and then, a few minutes after eleven, I saw a dark figure heading for the shop doorway. It was a small person, a man by the look of it; he was wearing a long topcoat whose colour I could not discern in the dim light but he wore glasses which glinted in the reflected beams of the streetlamps. He was scurrying towards the shop . . . quickly, I got up from my chair. I must not reveal my presence, but knew that the layout of the shop and its shelves concealed me very well from the exterior. And then he came right to the door. I heard the crash of the flap of the letter box as the man turned and hurried away. I leapt into action. As I reached the doorway, I picked up the letter and thrust it into my pocket as I followed him into the marketplace, without once losing sight of him. I must not lose him — I needed a continuity of evidence if I was to prove that he was the phantom postman.
CONSTABLE ABOUT THE PARISH a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 17) Page 15
