Constable in the Dale (A Constable Nick Mystery Book 5) Read online

  I had to speak with Joe Scully, our man in charge of rubbish in streams.

  “It wasn’t there last week, Mr Rhea,” Joe assured me. “I checked — I inspected every bridge in our parish. They was all clear, honest, so somebody’s put it there! I’ll bet it was the Elsinby lot!”

  “Elsinby? That’s a rotten trick!” I shouted.

  “They’re like that down there,” he said grimly. “They’ll resort to anything to get us to lose this contest. If the judges had spotted yon bedstead, we’d lose points, Mr Rhea. Points and the contest would go.”

  “We’d better have it shifted then,” I said.

  “Leave it to me!” he winked. “I’ll have it taken back to Elsinby at the dead of night. I’ll cap’em.”

  “They’ll know who’s done it, won’t they?” I reminded him. “Then they’ll only fetch it back when it’s too late for us to move it.”

  “Then leave it to me, Mr Rhea. I’m in charge of streams.”

  I did. I saw him four or five days later and asked, “Well, Joe, you managed to dispose of that old bedstead for us?”

  “Aye,” he grinned. “I took it down to Crampton and stuck it under one of their bridges.”

  “I meant you to take it to the tip!” I laughed, “not nobble the competition!”

  But the deed was done, and I reported to the committee that saboteurs were abroad, so we must maintain constant vigilance. I did not tell the committee about the bedstead or its destination, but left a question mark in the air by saying I had received the tip-off about saboteurs from one of my reliable sources.

  Our next piece of trouble came from Rufus, a golden labrador dog with a lust for emptying dustbins. In the time I had been at Aidensfield, Rufus had been the catalyst of many fierce arguments because of his urge to push off the lids of dustbins large and small in order to scatter their contents over a wide area. Unfortunately, he continued this game during the run-up to the Best-Kept Village competition, and his owner had an awful time with him. Rufus got blamed for every piece of spare rubbish in the village.

  The worst came one Wednesday morning. I received an irate telephone call from Mr J. C. Roberts, who occupied a bungalow almost opposite the house where Rufus lived.

  I walked down the village to see the cause of Mr Roberts’ complaint and when I arrived, I discovered a large sheet of newspaper stuck to his coalhouse door. The paper had clearly contained fish-and-chips at some stage of its history, and it was not a pleasant piece of rubbish. Also stuck to the same door was a margarine wrapper, a bread wrapper and a crumpled up piece of tissue paper containing some unmentionable goo. The finished result was a terrible example of modern art — “Papers on a coalhouse door.”

  “Look at that!” bellowed the irate Mr Roberts. “It’s that bloody dog again!”

  “Rufus?” I asked innocently.

  “Who else? He’s upturned that dustbin at the house opposite, and last night’s wind had blown those filthy papers on to my new paint. I’d just painted that door, Mr Rhea, ready for the judging and look at it now… ”

  It meant another trip to see Rufus’s master, who made his usual apologies, and I knew my efforts were wasted. I pleaded with him to keep the animal in close custody during the final days before judging. As it began next week, these final days were invaluable. Promises were made; Mr Roberts repainted his door and I hoped things would subside.

  But they didn’t. The next complaint I got was from a Mr M. C. Argument whose name was a perfect portrayal of his personality. He rang me at home one Sunday morning, and fortunately I was on duty. I called on him at ten o’clock that morning and he took me down his garden.

  “Just you look at that, Mr Rhea!”

  And there, in the centre of his lovely lawn was a huge pile of rubbish, clearly the contents of someone’s dustbin. There were ashes, bottles, waste cartons, orange peel — in fact, a whole week’s waste from a typical kitchen, all piled in the centre of his lawn.

  “It’s not yours, I assume?” I said inanely.

  “It most certainly is not!” he affirmed with some feeling. “It’s that neighbour of mine. I’ve had nothing but trouble from him; he throws all sorts into my garden — weeds, junk…”

  “But never a full dustbin?” I asked.

  “No, that’s why I have called you in, Mr Rhea. This is the end. I’ve done my best for the Best-Kept Village competition, and this really is the limit. I have taken immense pains to get rid of my own rubbish and to keep my garden and house tidy — and then this!”

  “I’ll have a word with him,” I promised.

  I walked around to the bungalow next door and knocked.

  A pretty young woman with her hair all tousled and dressed in a housecoat opened the kitchen door and her pretty face crumpled into a puzzled frown when she saw me.

  “Oh, I thought it was the papers,” she blushed.

  “Mrs Fletcher?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Is your husband in?”

  “No, he’s gone fishing,” she told me. “Is something wrong?”

  “Somebody has tipped a dustbin full of rubbish on to Mr Argument’s lawn,” I said in what I hoped was not an accusatory manner.

  She began to giggle and then clapped her hand over her mouth as she fought to control herself.

  “Really?” she chuckled, showing good firm teeth and a marvellous sense of humour. “Who?”

  “Your husband?” I ventured, smiling with her.

  “Oh!” she came out of the house in her slippers and pottered around to a point beneath the kitchen window. “It’s gone!”

  She pointed to a space on the concrete beneath the kitchen window and there was the circle of damp where the bin had recently stood. It had gone. I searched her small garden, and peered over the wall into the adjoining allotments, but there was no sign of the dustbin.

  “Somebody’s stolen our dustbin!” she began to giggle. “Oh dear, whatever next. Why would anyone do that?”

  “I’ll bet it’s one of the Elsinby lot!” I chuckled with her.

  “They’re desperate to win this Best-Kept Village trophy.”

  “Do I have to report it officially?” she asked, clutching the coat about her slim body.

  “Wait until your husband comes home,” I advised. “He might know what’s happened to it. He won’t have taken it fishing, will he?”

  She giggled again, prettily, and said, “It was a brand new bin too, Mr Rhea.”

  “I don’t think this is one of Rufus’s pranks,” I said, wondering if she knew of the dog’s delight, “but I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  I left Mrs Fletcher and retraced my steps to Mr Argument where I acquainted him with the truth. When I explained that someone had apparently stolen the Fletchers’ new bin and had dumped the contents on his lawn, he saw the funny side of it and laughed it off. I never did get a phone call from Mr Fletcher to make an official report of the theft, although I did keep my ears and eyes open for the phantom bin pilferer. He or she was never traced, and that mystery remains.

  Another event during the run-up to the judging involved a weekend caravan family and a farmer called Derek Lightfoot. Derek farmed an expansive patch along the road between Aidensfield and Elsinby and at one point his land stretched well over a mile at both sides of the highway. He had several fields down there, one of which had a pleasing copse on top of a small mound, and this pretty area attracted passing campers and caravanners.

  Derek had no objection to them camping there; often, it meant sales of eggs and milk, with a modest rental for the site. Some of his regulars came year after year, visiting the site over many weekends during the summer. But, in those final days as the Best-Kept Village contest produced its most hectic session of clearing the countryside, a man and his wife arrived in their caravan. They asked if they could park on this lovely little site for the weekend, Friday afternoon through to Sunday lunchtime. Derek agreed; he charged his few pounds in rent, sold them a dozen eggs and three pints of milk, and express
ed a wish that they enjoy themselves. The man paid by cheque for everything, and thanked Derek profusely for his kindness.

  During that weekend, Derek travelled past the site several times and saw the caravan parked half-way up his tree-covered mound. By tea-time on the Sunday it had gone. On that Sunday evening, Derek went for a walk with two of his dogs, and his route took him through the very same area. To his dismay, there was an enormous pile of household rubbish which had not been there on the Friday before the arrival of that family. It was more than a weekend’s caravanning rubbish — it looked like a fortnight’s kitchen waste.

  It seemed they had loaded their surplus junk into a large plastic bag to bring here for disposal. There were empty soup and fruit tins, newspapers, a cracked bowl, a broken radio, several beer bottles, an old pair of trousers, two brassieres, fruit waste like apple cores and orange peel, paper, ashes and other household junk. It was a dustbin-sized heap and more, and it was attracting the undivided attention of the area’s flies. Furthermore, tins with jagged lids and broken bottles were a hazard to both the wild and domestic life. Poor Derek stood there, with his anger rising. It was a terrible manner by which to repay a favour.

  Even if the contest had not been running, this would have angered anyone, and Derek stormed home to ring me. Sympathetic though I was, I did not feel that the provisions of the Litter Act extended to private premises. It catered only for the dumping of rubbish in any place in the open air to which the public had access without payment. Derek’s caravan site was not open to the general public, but only to a section of the public, and furthermore, he made a charge for its use. This meant I could not hope to bring a successful prosecution against the ghastly couple; in any case, it would not be easy to prove they had left it. Regretfully, I had to inform him that the rubbish was his problem.

  “Aye, right ho,” he said. “Ah’ll deal with it.”

  I saw him the following Friday as he trundled a tractor load of manure through the village. I stopped him to ask whether he’d sorted out his litter problem.

  “Aye, Ah did, Mr Rhea. Ah capped that lot,” and he smiled knowingly.

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, they paid by cheque, Mr Rhea, and the bloke’s name was on it. It was a funny name, with three initials. F. W. P.

  Oliphant, it was, and his bank was at Middlesbrough. Now there’s not many blokes of that name, so Ah looked in t’tele-phone directory and found him. Ah rang him just to make sure it was t’same feller who’d camped on my land, and it was. Ah said he’d left summat behind, and seeing Ah was coming to Middlesbrough on Wednesday, Ah’d fetch it. So, you see, Ah went to Middlesbrough last Wednesday, Mr Rhea, and found his house.”

  I began to guess what he’d done.

  “Go on,” I grinned.

  “Well, it was one of them neat little semi-bungalows, with a garden like a postage stamp. All neat and tidy, it was. Ah’d gitten all this stuff on my trailer and a good deal more besides, Ah might add, and Ah just tipped it all into his little garden. A whole trailer load, Mr Rhea. Mine, his and a fair bit from Aidensfield added in for good measure.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nowt, Mr Rhea. He said absolutely nowt, and Ah just left. He can’t take me to court under t’Litter Act, either,’cos his is private land, like you said. Ah reckon more farmers and land-owners should do this. Ah felt better after it, an’ all.”

  Unorthodox though it was, I had to admire Derek for his initiative and said I’d tell the story around the village, in the hope that others would take similar action against litter louts.

  Then it was judging time. We knew the judges would arrive without warning and without identifying themselves, and so we worked hard to make our village spotless right through July and August. The schoolchildren helped by organising themselves into Keep Aidensfield Tidy groups during the holidays, and they set a wonderful example to their parents. It kept them occupied during the holidays too, and we maintained our tidy, litter-free condition well into September.

  It was towards the end of September that Rudolph, in his capacity as chairman of our Best-Kept Village committee, received a letter from the organisers. It listed the points we had lost and gave the reasons, but then said we had won!

  Aidensfield was declared the best-kept village in our area, and we were to be awarded the tall oak post with its lovely plaque on top. There was also to be a framed certificate to display in the village hall.

  We had won by a narrow margin, beating Woodthorpe into second place. Woodthorpe was not on my beat, but it is a beautiful village on the east of Malton, on the way to Scarborough.

  Needless to say we all celebrated, and then the big day arrived. The trophy was to be formally presented, and the committee decided it would be erected at the junction of the village street with the Ashfordly-Elsinby road. At that point, there is a small rising portion of land from which the sign would dominate the village and remind all-corners of our success. The Chairman of the Ryedale Village Communities Association intimated he would make the formal presentation on 8 October, a Saturday afternoon, and Rudolph was asked to make the necessary arrangements. All necessary publicity, and notification to the local Press, would be undertaken by the Association.

  And so the great day dawned. Rudolph had organised a suitable hole for the pole and it was neatly squared with cement. Men from the village ceremoniously dropped the post into the hole and secured it, and then the speeches were made. There was a lot of cheering and pleasurable sounds from the assembled people, and I was pleased to see our triumph had attracted sightseers and villagers from far away.

  By four o’clock, the ceremony was over, and everyone adjourned to the village hall for tea and cakes. I remained to guide a few visiting cars from the parking area, and as the last person left the scene, I noticed scores of ice-cream cartons, oceans of sweet papers, crumpled and discarded programmes and masses of empty cigarette packets which littered the area around our new trophy. There was rubbish everywhere!

  Now that we were famous, visitors could come and drop their litter!

  Unless it was the Elsinby lot dropping litter in pique…

  So if you come to Aidensfield to see our trophy and admire our tidiness, please use the bin we’ve provided for your rubbish. It’s the one marked “Keep Aidensfield Tidy”.

  *

  One interesting outcome of the Tidy Village contest was the devoted attention paid to the churchyard. Before the contest, the churchyard had been neglected. There was no other word for it. The prolific grass between the graves was allowed to grow without hindrance, whilst many of the older graves had suffered total neglect. New graves did receive attention from relatives of the dearly departed, lots of them being attractively maintained and regularly replenished with fresh flowers. But as memories faded, so did the interest in these final resting places.

  When a large area in a churchyard is neglected, the feeling is that the whole place needs attention, and for many years, this had been a problem for the Rev Roger Clifton. He was too busy to spend his time wielding a scythe and his spasmodic band of volunteers cut the grass with enthusiasm for a week or two, and then became too busy themselves. The families of the recent and uncomplaining occupants of the graveyard tended their graves, and this resulted in a tiny, if changing, portion of the place being neat all the time, thus making the remainder look even worse.

  It was the Best-Kept Village competition that changed the situation. In order to win, the churchyard must be groomed; the vicar did achieve great things on the run-up to judging because the grass was as smooth as a billiard table, and all the graves were neatly trimmed and supplied with fresh flowers. I do know that we received a very high mark for the quality of our churchyard.

  The secret lay in ten sheep. They were black-faced moorland ewes owned by one of Roger Clifton’s parishioners, Sam Skinner, and Sam had suggested there was nothing better than grazing sheep for keeping grass trimmed. He had volunteered their services free of charge, and had even of
fered to surround the churchyard’s walls and hedges with wire netting to keep them in. During the first exploratory visits by the ewes, the fresh flowers were removed from new graves so that these highly efficient grass-cutters could get down to their real mission of shearing the thick grass.

  There is no doubt they did an excellent job. Within a remarkably short time, the grass in Aidensfield Churchyard was shorn until it was velvety smooth, and even surplus weeds around the perimeter had been disposed of. Another of Roger Clifton’s willing parishioners had built some wire netting cages, comprising sheep netting and wooden stakes, and these were placed over the new graves to safeguard the flowers and other graveside augmentations. These allowed the sheep to graze freely.

  So successful were the sheep that it is fair to say they helped the village carry off the Best-Kept Village prize, although there had been some misgivings about the ethics of using sheep in such a hallowed place. The vicar rapidly side-stepped these misgivings by constantly alluding to shepherds and sheep in his sermons, saying these dumb animals were the Lord’s favourite. The fact was the graveyard had never been so neat and tidy, and so it was decided that the sheep would remain at work after the contest.

  And remain they did. Their presence kept the grass very neat, and the animals appeared to be content with their vital role in a human society. The local folks who had new graves to tend made good use of the portable, ewe-proof grave shields, and there were no further complaints.

  Then at seven-thirty one Tuesday morning, my telephone rang. I was still in bed, having worked late the previous evening, and it was a struggle to stagger downstairs to take the call. But I made it, and in the meantime the whole family was aroused.

  “P.C. Rhea,” I muttered into the mouthpiece.

  “Roger Clifton at the Vicarage,” the voice said. “Have I got you out of bed, Nicholas?”

  “I was just getting up,” I lied easily. “What’s the problem?”

  “My sheep. I mean the church sheep. Someone’s stolen them,” he sounded very agitated.