Constable Among the Heather (16 page)

‘Presents,’ I said. ‘For the children.’

‘Oh no, they’re not,’ she retorted. ‘Just you get rid of those this very morning!’

She went on at some length, but the children had heard the commotion and came downstairs to see what was happening. All of them fell heavily and immediately in love with the mice. Amid much persuasion, Mary allowed us to keep them and soon grew fond of their presence, even if they did become a wee bit pungent at times. Happily, they were of the same sex, although I’m not sure which, so they did not reproduce. They lived on that shelf for many years, growing gracefully old, as pet mice do, while enjoying the occasional romp around the house. I did not think that naming them Ian and Myra was at all correct, neither was Matt and Peggy, and so, for reasons which escape me, we called them Ebb and Flo.

But we never undertook a further search of the North York Moors, nor did I ever learn whether the murder team had examined any of the possible sites we had identified. The mystery of Peggy Copeland’s unusual sighting remains unresolved.

Another murder mystery was even more curious.

The date was 8 June when a postman hurried into Ashfordly police station; it was around 10 a.m., and by chance I was in the office.

He told me that that morning, while on his rounds, he’d been driving past a clump of pine trees on the moors behind Ashfordly when he’d noticed a small wooden cross planted in the earth. It had not been there before that day. It was adorned with ribbons, and the turf and soil beside it had been newly dug over. I asked him for a precise location and he showed me on an Ordnance Survey map. The clump of trees was beside a lonely moorland road which led through Lairsbeck to serve a few isolated farms before petering out upon the heights of the moors.

I thanked him and decided to have a look at the scene before taking any further action. I found it just as he had described. The cross stood about two feet high and had been fashioned from two hazel twigs. White ribbons dangled from the arms,
and it stood within a circle of some two dozen pine trees, with not a cottage or farm in sight. The cross was firmly upright in a thick grassy patch, and immediately in front of it was a small area of recently dug earth. My own guess was that the earth was very fresh – it might even have been dug over that morning; certainly it was not more than a day or two old. It was the size of a human grave, not one small enough for a cat or a dog. Remaining at the site, I radioed the control room at Eltering and outlined the situation. Sergeant Bairstow said he would liaise with me at the scene, his estimated time of arrival being half an hour. I was instructed to wait and not touch anything.

When Charlie Bairstow arrived, he stood and looked for a long time at that odd sight, occasionally scratching his head while walking in a circle around the trees.

‘What do you make of it, Nick?’ he asked.

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘Could it be a horse, a pony perhaps? A pet cow or calf? Goat? It looks as though something’s been buried and commemorated, doesn’t it?’

‘But would anybody commemorate an animal with a cross?’ he asked.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ I said, recalling that some
Americans
arranged weddings for dogs and birthday parties for cats. ‘But who’d bury a person here and then mark the grave like that?’

‘There’s only one way to find out. We’ll have to call in the cavalry.’

By that, he meant he’d call in the CID and their experts, for they would surely examine the grave by digging it up.

From his car radio, he summoned divisional headquarters, whereupon Detective Sergeant Gerry Connolly said he would come immediately; we had to wait yet again and not touch anything. He arrived within three-quarters of an hour and examined the lonely site.

‘We’ll have to dig it up,’ he pronounced. ‘I’ll get my lads to do it – I’ll need a photographer standing by. I’ll radio them now while we tape off the area.’

‘Anything I can do?’ I asked.

‘Yes, Nick, get the yellow tape from my car boot. Circle those trees with it and watch where you put your feet. If you
find anything there – anything at all, leave it where it is, then tell me.’

Thus the formalities began. One or two cars passed as we worked, but at this stage we did not ask any questions, nor did we interview the few householders whose cottages occupied these remote moors. The nearest was almost half a mile away. Detective Constables Ian Shackleton and Paul Wharton arrived with spades, picks and wheelbarrow, and Detective Sergeant Marks, the photographer, arrived to record progress. The scene was now one of activity and interest, with no fewer than five police cars, lots of police officers and yellow tape, all laced with a high degree of anticipated drama.

Ian Shackleton lost no time in commencing his dig. As the earth was soft, he found it a comparatively easy task, and very soon he had a broad and deep hole. But apart from the soil and a few surprised worms, there was nothing buried there. Joined by Paul Wharton and his pick-axe, they expanded the area of digging until they covered an area of about twelve feet by six in rough terms. Having stretched beyond the boundaries of the original grave without finding anything, they dug several shallow trenches without encountering anything remotely suspicious, and then concentrated upon digging deeper into the original grave and also below the cross. Soon they came to the sub-soil, which was undisturbed. It wasn’t long before we had a hole large enough to contain a small swimming-pool, and nothing to show for it but a huge pile of earth. The forlorn little wooden cross lay on one side.

‘Nothing,’ said Connolly eventually. ‘Sod all, in fact. Nowt. Nil.’

‘Does it suggest the ground’s been prepared for a grave?’ suggested Ian Shackleton.

‘Well, we’re not going to fill it in! If somebody else cares to bury summat here, let ’em!’ laughed Connolly. ‘Leave the earth as it is, but replace the cross. Charlie,’ he addressed Sergeant Bairstow, ‘get your lads to visit this place regularly, will you? Summat’s being going on, but I’ve no idea what. See what you can turn up.’

‘It’s a good task for young Rhea,’ beamed Sergeant Bairstow. ‘How about it, Nick? See if you can find out just what’s been happening here.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I promised.

And so we dispersed, leaving the earth around the edge of the massive hole, and the cross in its original position, albeit now in bare, upturned earth. I decided to do my best to find answers to the puzzles. Who had place the cross there and why? And who had turned over this earth, and why?

When the others had gone, I drove to the nearest cottage. It was occupied by a farm labourer and his wife who were having their afternoon tea break when I arrived. I was invited in, offered a seat at their kitchen table and given a mug of tea with a piece of fruitcake. I learned that the couple, in their fifties, were Mr and Mrs Byworth, George and Ada. I explained our actions, and George smiled. ‘Aye, Mr Rhea, Ah spotted yon police cars and reckoned they’d be digging.’

‘You know what’s been happening there?’

‘A murder, Mr Rhea. Yon trees are called Grave Wood, there’s a circle of ’em. They were planted around a grave.’

‘When was this?’ I interrupted him.

‘1895,’ he said. ‘My dad told me all about it. He lived here before me. It was a farmhand called John Appleton. He killed his wife and little lass and buried ’em right where you were digging. Nasty case, it was. He had no other woman, nowt like that, but he was a bit daft, only in his twenties, and he led his wife and bairn out to look at that grave. He’d dug it ready, and as they stood looking into it, wondering what it was, he killed ’em both, shot ’em. They fell into that grave and he buried ’em. He was found out, mind, and they hanged him.’

‘What happened to the bodies? Do you know?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘The woman and her bairn were reburied in Ashfordly churchyard. It was a funny do. They had a funny vicar then: ’e wouldn’t allow the bodies to come in through t’lychgate for some reason. They had to pass t’coffins over t’church wall. T’graves are still there.’

‘And somebody planted those pines in memory of them?’

‘They ’ad no relations hereabouts; they came from away when Appleton got work here as a farmhand. I know because
he worked on t’same farm as my dad. But they found no relations for the lass and her bairn. Nobody. So the local folks planted them trees, Mr Rhea. In memory.’

Then another aspect occurred to me.

‘When was the murder in 1895?’ I asked.

‘8 June,’ he said. ‘8 June 1895.’

‘That’s seventy years ago today,’ I whispered. ‘Today is 8 June.’

‘Aye,’ he said.

‘So the digging out there? The digging before we came, and that cross? What do you know about that, Mr Byworth?’

‘Nowt,’ he said. ‘But awd Horace Baines might know.’

‘Horace Baines?’ I didn’t know the man.

‘Used to be our roadman, retired a few years back. He lives in Ashfordly, not far from t’front gate of t’castle.’

‘So why should he know?’

‘He was up here at six this morning,’ smiled George.

‘Out for a long walk, was he?’

‘No, he was digging, in Grave Wood,’ he smiled almost wickedly.

I realized that if we’d asked a few questions before
commencing
our own digging operation, we might have saved ourselves a lot of work. But I decided the exercise had been good for those CID lads!

‘So why would he be digging there?’ I asked.

‘You’d better ask him, Mr Rhea, cos I don’t know.’

‘And you don’t know who put that little cross there?’

‘No idea,’ he said, and his wife concurred.

I thanked them for their wonderful co-operation and drove back into Ashfordly, where I had no trouble locating Horace Baines. He was in his pretty stone cottage, a truly picturesque place with honeysuckle over the front door and roses climbing over an outhouse. He led me into his garden, where I admired his flowers and vegetables.

‘I’m not in trouble, am I?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I assured him. ‘It’s curiosity, that’s all,’ and I explained my purpose.

‘You’ll know about the murder then?’ he put to me.

‘I do now,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t know until today.’

‘Well, after that lass and her bairn were killed, somebody erected a memorial stone. It stood for years, until the Second World War. Then these moors were used as tank training grounds.’

‘Was this before the pines were planted?’

‘Aye,’ he said briefly. ‘Well, I was the roadman; that length was my responsibility. I used to see that little stone every time I came this way. But when the tanks started to train here, they drove straight over it. It got pressed into the earth, Mr Rhea, and in time it got lost, overgrown mebbe.’

‘I see.’ I could guess what he was going to tell me.

‘Well, I kept thinking I would rescue it, but you know how it was, tanks and soldiers everywhere. I never did get it rescued, so this morning, because I woke early, I thought I’d have a look for it and erect it somewhere proper. After the war, when the tanks had gone, somebody planted those trees where the grave was, so I dug in there. But I never found it. Mebbe it is still there, or mebbe somebody else has got it.’

‘Our lads dug it over pretty well this morning,’ I assured him. ‘We dug much more than you, but we never found even a fragment.’

‘It’ll be somewhere about.’ He sounded confident. ‘Mebbe it’s in a farm shed somewhere, or being used as a paving stone in a footpath or in somebody’s rockery …’

‘Is there a special reason for wanting to recover it?’ I asked.

‘It was my dad helped the police catch Appleton,’ he said. ‘He came past one day and saw Appleton digging there. When the lass and kiddie disappeared, he told the police what he’d seen – and they found the bodies. Dad would have wanted me to find that stone, you see.’

‘And why did you make the effort today?’ I asked him. ‘You know it’s seventy years today since the murder?’

‘Is it? No, I hadn’t realized that. I just decided to go all of a sudden. I’d been thinking about it for a week or two. Fancy me picking today of all days!’

‘Thanks, it is a strange coincidence, but you have solved one mystery,’ I said. ‘Now, the little cross of hazel twigs. Did you put that there?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t me.’

‘Was it there when you were digging?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It was. I moved it while I dug, but I never put it there.’

‘Any idea who might have?’ I pressed him. ‘I’m curious, that’s all. There’s no official police inquiry about all this, not after all this time!’

‘No idea,’ he smiled. ‘But you might find Mrs Gowland who lives beside the butcher’s can help.’

And so I continued my enquiries by calling on Mrs Gladys Gowland, a lady of almost eighty. The uniform helped me to gain her confidence, for she was shy and cautious, but when I explained my interest, she smiled and invited me to sit down. She produced a cup of tea and a scone, then a large wooden box full of newspaper cuttings and faded photographs.

‘I don’t want any of this published or copied,’ she said guardedly. ‘I have built my collection of news cuttings about Ashfordly for many, many years, and it is my personal collection, you see.’

I had to convince her that I had no intention of removing any of her documents or of copying anything. She showed me yellowed cuttings about the murder, the trial and the funeral of the victims, a fascinating piece of local history. But apart from a lot of local colour and somewhat exaggerated drama, the cuttings did not tell me much more than Horace Baines had revealed. They shed no light at all on the mysterious little wooden cross, although a later cutting did say that the local people had planted the trees after the Second World War because the grave had been obliterated by the actions of the tanks in training.

I asked her outright: ‘Mrs Gowland, when we arrived today, there was a little wooden cross near the grave. Did you put it there?’

‘No,’ she said, and I believed her, for how could she have trekked in secret to that location?

And so the mystery remained, and it remains to this day. I have no idea who placed that cross on the grave to two murder victims who died during the last century, without relations but with some enduring friends.