Constable Around the Village (14 page)

Alwyn Foxton was on duty and chanced to be in the office. He listened sympathetically and asked her not to touch anything. He told her he would despatch a policeman immediately to the scene. Alwyn then telephoned me, for I was on duty that Sunday.

“I’ll go straight there,” I said.

Within minutes, I had donned my crash-helmet and heavy coat against the threat of April showers and within two minutes of leaving my hill-top house I was drawing up beside Miss Prudom’s cottage. She came to the door to greet me and her ashen face and red-rimmed eyes told of her solitary distress.

“I’m P.C. Rhea,” I announced. “Your local policeman—we haven’t met formally.”

“You were in the shop the other morning,” she said seriously.

“Yes, I often pop in to talk with Mr Woodall.”

“It’s awful, Mr Rhea, the mess. Just to think that
somebody
has been in there, while I was in bed, going through my belongings….”

“I’ll examine the house first, to give a quick assessment, and then I’ll call the C.I.D. They’ll come to fingerprint the house and examine it for other clues….”

“Oh, you can’t come in,” she said pertly. “I’m sorry.”

“But I need to, Miss Prudom. It’s vital that the police come in to examine the scene of the crime. We can’t make a proper investigation without seeing for ourselves….”

“No, you don’t understand. Mr Rhea, you are a Catholic, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” I confirmed.

“But you see, I do not allow papists into my home. I never have and never will. And today is Sunday too. You must know of Mr Potter’s conditions of sale, about Catholics not entering or buying this house….”

“But, Miss Prudom, it is my job. If I am to have even the remotest chance of detecting this crime, I must come inside to see how the criminal has gone about his work. And I need to talk to you, to take a statement from you, to ask about identification of the stolen goods and a host of other things, like values and detailed descriptions….”

“I’m sorry, Mr Rhea,” was all she said.

I stood on the doorstep looking at her. She was a sad picture; her eyes were rimmed with red and her pretty face was pale and drawn. She was wringing her hands before her frail body as she kept me at bay and I must admit I didn’t know how to tackle this problem. I felt desperately sorry for her.

“Can I see the window then, at the back? I can examine it from the outside. That will be a help.”

“Yes, that will be all right.”

She led me to the rear of the house and I examined the smashed window-pane. It had been broken with some heavy object, and pieces of glass lay inside, on the window-ledge. Chummy had opened the latch, climbed in and ransacked the place, leaving by the front door with his loot.

I made notes of this, which was all I could see.

Back at the front door, I smiled at her. I remembered one little item.

“Miss Prudom,” I said. “You were in the shop the other Sunday and you bought some food.”

“Yes.”

“That was an emergency, wasn’t it? And I noticed how you paid by cheque, dated Monday, to avoid buying them on the Sabbath.”

“Yes, but it was a dire emergency….”

“Then so is this. The police might be able to catch the criminal if we can come inside…. I could always date my reports tomorrow, you see….”

“You miss the point, Mr Rhea. The point is that papists must not enter my house. That is the point, it’s nothing to do with the Sabbath.”

“If Christ lived here, would He let me enter?” I asked her.

She remained very silent and her bright eyes regarded me solemnly, before adding, “But He doesn’t live here. I do.”

I felt like quoting the Parable of the Lost Sheep but knew I was fighting a losing battle. “Well, Miss Prudom, what can I do? A crime has been committed on my beat, and I am responsible for recording the fact and investigating the matter. I cannot do my work, which could lead to the arrest of the criminal, without examining your house.”

“Mr Rhea,” she smiled sweetly. “I have nothing against you personally. You must realise that. It has long been the practice in my family never to associate with or to encourage popery in any shape or form. You must allow me to exercise my principles.”

“Even if it means post-dating a cheque to allow you to buy goods on the Sabbath?” I was angry now and utterly failed to understand the hypocrisy in her. I could have argued all day and all night but it would not have made any difference to her bigotry. I knew it would be unchristian of me to begin a pitched theological battle on her doorstep, and besides, she had suffered the ignominy of a burglary. I did not wish to add to her obvious distress.

I left, saying, “I’ll get another officer to call on you.”

It was with some sadness, therefore, that I returned to my house on the hill and telephoned the office at Ashfordly. As
Alwyn Foxton answered the telephone, my experience of the bishop’s visit to Elsinby came to mind.

“Is Sergeant Blaketon there?” I asked.

“I’ll put you through,” he said.

“Blaketon,” came the solemn response. “Something wrong, Rhea?”

“I’ve a problem I think you might solve for me, Sergeant.”

“Oh, something you can’t cope with?” I thought I detected a faint hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“Yes,” I said, “a woman.”

“Women are always problematical,” he propounded. “I thought a young lad like you would be able to charm a woman.”

“Not this one,” I said. “She’s a fierce chapel-going Methodist.”

“So?” he boomed.

“So she won’t let me into her house to investigate a burglary,” I said, “and if any of the CID are Catholics they won’t be allowed in either.”

He roared with laughter. I could hear him at the other end of the line, chortling in his happiness as I explained the problem.

“Nice one, Rhea, yes, a very nice one. Serve you right for getting our Anglican church full of papists the other week. Right, leave it to me. I’m with Miss Prudom on this one. I’ll sort it out.”

And so he did. She allowed him to enter her premises whereupon she provided all the necessary help and
information
. The CID were called too and Sergeant Blaketon first warned them not to bring a Catholic—she’d know if they did, he warned them. She could smell ’em. Through his help, the crime was reported in the formal way and the necessary documents were completed. Miss Prudom provided a very detailed list of all the stolen goods and in the course of the next few days we circulated the information to all police offices in the locality. This was standard procedure.

Sadly, the burglar was never found. He committed several similar crimes in and around the North Riding over the next
few months, and then he stopped. His hallmark was the method of entry and exit, and the type of property he took, but we never caught him. Perhaps another police force came across him, perhaps he was arrested elsewhere. We shall never know.

The sequel to the yarn, however, was the criminal’s return of a photograph. It showed a very young Miss Prudom with her father and it was endorsed to that effect on the rear. The picture was probably fifty years old or more and I’m sure it was of sentimental value to her. For that reason, it was returned to her through the post.

She called at my police house to inform me of this event and I invited her in so that I could amend the list of stolen goods. She entered my house without hesitation and we concluded that piece of official business. I considered questioning her ethics on this occasion, but decided against it.

She’d probably say the police house didn’t qualify in her rule-book due to its official function, so I didn’t ask. There seemed to be no point.

One of the inescapable features of a police officer’s life is to be told incessantly about parking tickets. In company, the moment one’s true occupation is known, out come all the harrowing tales of parking problems; he is told how the speaker parked only for the briefest of moments while he changed his library book/bought himself
underpants
/waited for the wife/suffered from dampness on his coil or got involved in some other accident of history. Never is a motorist at fault in such circumstances; everyone else is, especially the police.

Police officers who suffer from such ear-bending sessions can sympathise with doctors who are bored about operations, solicitors who are cornered by convicted innocents and plumbers who can’t get away from rattling taps or overflowing cisterns. For this reason, policemen who go on holiday seldom admit their true occupation—only a masochist would do that. Holidaying constables announce to their audience that they are variously employed as clerks for the government, officers in local authority employment, out-of-work salesmen, bingo callers or members of other sundry occupations. I know one
policeman
who, when on holiday, always tells his new-found friends that he is a button salesman. He reckons that’s the best conversation-stopper there is—after all, what can anyone ask about that?

One of my constabulary pals was on holiday in Scotland
when this problem arose. Paul was with his wife and they had booked into a beautiful bed-and-breakfast farmhouse in the Highlands intending to stay overnight. So nice was the place that they stayed the entire week, and found the only other residents were another gentleman and his wife. They became friendly, especially over the evening meal and at breakfast. As the week progressed, Paul realised that the other gentleman never once gave a clue to his own occupation. Moreover, he never asked Paul how he earned his living.

The state of unspoken bliss continued through the week and on the final breakfast morning, that Saturday, Paul decided to tackle the other about his job. All through the week, he had realised the other was being overcautious about his work and decided to put him to the test.

At breakfast, therefore, he said, “Look, Jonathan, let’s be honest, eh? You and I have been carefully avoiding any discussion about our jobs, haven’t we? All this week, you have carefully avoided talking about your work and so have I.”

The other smiled agreeably. “I don’t like to talk about my job when I’m on holiday.”

“Neither do I,” smiled Paul in return. “But this is our last morning together. By lunchtime, we’ll be on our way home. Let’s tell each other.”

The other smiled again. “All right,” he nodded. “Who’s first?”

“I raised the matter,” Paul admitted. “So I’ll start. I’m a policeman.”

“And I’m a bishop,” said his friend.

For the country constable, however, such anonymity cannot be enjoyed. If he walks into the shop, pub, church or meeting of any kind, he is always “the policeman” and his wife is always “the policeman’s wife”. When visiting one’s local pub, therefore, it is impossible to be anything other than the local bobby, even when dressed in gardening clothes and covered in non-artificial farmyard waste products.

This being so, the talk often turns to motoring
adventures
in alien cities, of being stopped for speeding, booked
for parking, checked for one’s driving licence and insurance or pulled up for faulty windscreen-wipers. But at least in Aidensfield, I had a variation of this eternal theme.

I had a man who talked about buses.

It was soon very clear that he could talk about nothing else. For that reason, it became something of a trial to enter the pub knowing he lurked in the shadows, waiting to pounce on someone with his latest piece of juicy
information
about a 52-seater with reclining seats. I did my best to avoid him, as did every other regular in the bar of the Brewers Arms. They had had their fill of Plaxton Shells, Wallace Arnold tours and United Express runs with rural bus-stops.

At first, the fellow was interesting. I listened enthralled as he discussed the merits of demisters on side-windows and emergency exits near the front, tool-boxes under the offside exterior and double-deckers on rural routes, but when one has this indigestible manna during every visit it does begin to pall. I didn’t know a great deal about buses anyway, but wondered how much this fellow really knew. Was it all conjecture and legend, or did he really know a lot about buses?

His name was Arnold Merryweather and he would be in his early fifties. He was a genial fellow, heavily built with a thick head of ginger hair and bushy side-whiskers, and he loved Irish jokes and Guinness. He was the life and soul of the pub, and his stories were funny, even if they were all about buses.

Arnold drove the bus which crept around our lanes day after day, week after week, to collect passengers at
Ashfordly
and transport them through the picturesque lanes and villages into York. His bus left Ashfordly at 7.30 a.m. and trundled through Briggsby, Aidensfield, Elsinby, and then beyond the boundaries of my beat and eventually into York. It did a return trip around lunchtime and turned about immediately for York. It arrived in time to turn round in the City at 5.15 p.m. to bring home the diminishing army of workers. Every day, week in week out, Arnold’s bus
undertook
those journeys.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, he left York
immediately upon first arrival and did a special market-day run, collecting at Ashfordly at ten o’clock and getting into York around 11.30 a.m., having done a circuitous tour of Ryedale to get there. He was just able to fulfil his timetable with this extra trip and there’s little doubt he earned his money on those important three days. Those earnings probably lasted him all week.

I learned eventually that Arnold owned the bus. He did not operate for any company, but earned his living entirely by his bus. During the evenings, he would arrange tours to cinemas in York, or to the theatre, and he did runs to the seaside and works outings to breweries and other places of interest. He did a school run too, collecting a rowdy horde of children from isolated places and risking his bus and its passengers on gradients of 1-in-3 as he visited outlying farms and hamlets. But Arnold always got there and very rarely was he late. His purple and cream bus, with “
Merryweather
Coaches” emblazoned across the rear, was a familiar sight in the hills and valleys of Aidensfield and district.

To fulfil his many commitments, he had two coaches, and had a standby driver employed to assist when necessary. But if it was possible to use one bus and one driver for his complicated timetables then Arnold did so.

I made use of his bus once or twice. Sometimes, if the weather was atrocious and if Mary was using the car, I would catch Arnold’s bus at Aidensfield if I had business in Elsinby or Briggsby. I always paid, although he did offer me free transportation, for I reckoned he must be struggling to earn a living for himself and his colourless wife called Freda. He had to maintain his vehicles and premises too.

To partake of a trip on Merryweather Coaches was an experience which could be classed as unique. Each bus was identical and I think they were Albion 32-seaters. The seats were made of wooden laths set on iron frames and bolted to the floor. There were no cushions and other comforts, and the door was at the front. It was hinged in the middle and required a good kick from Arnold both to shut it and open it. Arnold acted as driver, conductor and guide as his precious heap of metal navigated the landscape.

My infrequent trips on his coaches proved to be an education. In the few flights I had, I saw him take on board one pig on a halter, three crates of chickens, a sheep and its lamb, a side of ham, several parcels and packages, a bicycle for repair, umpteen suits for cleaning or laundry for
washing
in York, and on one occasion he transported an unused coffin from Elsinby’s undertaker to a man at Ashfordly who wanted it for timber.

These assorted objects were loaded into the bus via the rear emergency door and I learned that Arnold was paid for these sociable services. In addition to being a carrier of people, he was a carrier of objects and this was accepted quite amicably by his human cargo. If Farmer Jones wished to send a pig to Farmer Brown twenty miles away, Arnold would deliver the said animal by bus for a small fee. It seemed a perfectly sound system, but its legality was in grave doubt.

I knew Arnold had been in buses since leaving school and I reckoned he’d put himself on the road long before officials like the Traffic Commissioners appeared with their P.S.V. licences, certifying officers, certificates of fitness and road service licences. Nonetheless, he displayed in his
windscreen
the various discs which proved someone knew he was operating a bus service. Even so, the other rules and regulations seemed to be superfluous so far as
Merryweather
’s Coaches were concerned.

His transportation of goods for hire or reward, for example, seemed to put him in the category of a goods vehicle rather than a bus, but it would be a stupid constable who attempted to stop that. After all, the fellow had to earn a living and he was doing a service to the community. I knew lots of house-bound folks depended upon Arnold for their weekly shopping, for he also spent his non-driving hours in York carrying out shopping requests for pensioners, invalids and others. He dealt with the parcels and packages on his bus, suits for the tailor to repair, carpets for the cleaners to clean, sewing-machines to mend, bikes to sell—the whole of society and its well-being made use of Arnold’s bus.

Late one winter evening, I was pleased I tolerated his
unofficial enterprises. My little Francis Barnet motor-cycle broke down due to the driving rain which had penetrated the electrical circuits, and the faithful machine completely refused to go. The savagery of the storm meant I could find no place to dry the connections, then salvation arrived in the shape of Arnold’s bus. He had taken a trip to the Theatre Royal in York to see a pantomime and his returning
headlights
picked me out in the appalling weather. Realising my predicament, Arnold hauled his laden coach to a halt and shouted:

“Stick it in t’ back, Mr Rhea.”

The rear door was flung open and several willing villagers leapt out. In a matter of seconds, they had manhandled my dripping motor-cycle into the back and we rode home in triumph with the inactive bike held upright by pantomime visitors in their best clothes. Arnold refused to accept
payment
for this assistance, so I promised to buy him a pint in the pub. For me that would be a real penance because he’d bend my ear for an hour or two on the merits of diesel oil for buses or left-hand-drive models for continental tours.

Even I failed fully to appreciate Arnold’s complete service to the public until I took his bus into York one market-day when I was off duty. Mary had a lot of shopping to do and Mrs Quarry took the children; the car was due for a service and it seemed a great idea to make use of Arnold’s
comprehensive
bus service. Armed with baskets and money, therefore, we waited at Aidensfield one Tuesday morning for Arnold’s market-day special. We were surrounded by little old ladies and retired gentlemen, all wondering why we had chosen this mode of transport, and we said it was because of Arnold’s world-wide reputation as a busman.

Halfway between Aidensfield and Elsinby, Arnold halted and switched off the engine. We were parked in the middle of nowhere—no houses, no village, no bus-stop. Nothing. No one spoke. They all sat there very quietly and I watched Arnold in his driving-seat. He was reading the
Daily
Mirror.
I checked my watch. We were running according to schedule. The fuel was all right, as he’d switched off the engine.

“Why have we stopped?” Mary ventured to ask in a
whispered
voice.

“I don’t know,” I had to admit. I didn’t dare make a fool of myself by asking the others.

Nothing happened. We must have waited a good ten minutes and by this time we were running late.

Then, as one, the assortment of passengers sighed with relief. I looked out of the window to my nearside and noticed a distant figure hurrying along a winding farm track. It was a farmer’s wife, laden with baskets.

I recognised her as she approached.

“It’s Mrs Owens,” I said to Mary.

“She always goes to market on Tuesdays,” breathed Mary. “I’ve heard her talk about it in the shop. I didn’t realise she lived down that lane.”

I learned that Mrs Owens travelled on Arnold’s bus every Tuesday and he always waited for her. Today she was a little late, but then that could happen to anyone. And so the bus continued.

The next diversion was about a mile out of Elsinby. Suddenly, we swung off the road and along a narrow tarmac lane. We trundled along this winding track for nearly half a mile and then Arnold turned his bus through a farm gate. We were now on a muddy track full of potholes and thick with half-buried rocks. Grass grew down the centre but Arnold’s groaning, bouncing old bus negotiated this rough terrain and came to rest in a grubby farmyard.

At this point, he began to crash the gears, seeking reverse. Eventually, with a shudder, the gear slotted home and he began the difficult manoeuvre of turning the bus within the confines of the farmyard. Chickens and ducks scattered, dogs barked and a horse stared in amazement as the purple and cream vehicle moved slowly forwards and backwards, turning gradually until it was facing the way it had come.

“Now what?” Mary grinned.

“A load of manure?” I ventured.

The engine died and someone threw open the rear door. Out jumped about a dozen passengers, just as they had done for my motor-cycle, and I watched them march towards a
small outbuilding. The door was opened and they collected trays of packed eggs. Dozens and dozens of eggs. They bore these to the rear of the bus and began to stack them
carefully
, each tray bearing a dozen fresh farmyard eggs. Gradually the pile grew until it was as high as the shoulders of the seated people, and a second pile began. I lost count but I knew there was an awful lot of eggs. Without a word, all the volunteer loaders climbed aboard and closed the door.