Constable Across the Moors (9 page)

“That should be no trouble,” I pulled a road atlas from the bookshelf in my office. “I went a couple of years ago, and know the route well.”

“Oh, I know the route,” she said, pausing for effect.

“You do?”

“You’ve not heard of my problem?” she asked me solemnly.

“No.” I wondered which problem she meant. “What
problem
?”

“I’m surprised no one has mentioned it to you,” she
continued
to talk in a low voice. “And I’m surprised you have not noticed for yourself, Mr Rhea. I thought policemen were supposed to be very observant …”

“I haven’t been here long,” I began to make an excuse.

“My driving,” she said. “It’s the way I drive.”

“Oh, yes.” I thought of all the catastrophes she might create between Aidensfield and Stratford, and wondered if I should warn all constabularies
en
route.

She laughed and appeared able to read my thoughts, for she said, “It’s not my parking problems, Mr Rhea, or my reversing difficulties.”

“No?” I could not think of anything else right now.

“It’s my inability to turn right,” she said, pausing for the awesome implications of that remark to sink into my skull.

“Turn right?” I questioned.

“Yes, I cannot turn right off a road. I go everywhere by making left turns,” she told me in all seriousness. “I can cope with right turns off one-way streets, but not on ordinary roads. Surely you’ve seen me coming home different ways?”

“I had no idea that was the reason,” I said. “So you are telling me you intend to drive to Stratford-on-Avon without ever turning right?”

“Yes, that’s why I came to see you. Last year, I set off to go to Harrogate to the theatre and things went fine until I came to a new one-way street in Ripon. I got hopelessly lost …”

“What happened?” I asked, suppressing a chuckle.

“I got to Middlesbrough, miles from where I intended, and had to get a train back. It’s all very embarrassing, Mr Rhea, and I cannot help it.”

“I don’t know whether I’m capable of producing a route for you all that way, Esme; I wonder if there are other people like you?”

“A cousin of mine could never go around a roundabout,” she said. “He always took the right-hand route instead of the left and got into no end of bother from the police. He blocked the whole of Newcastle upon Tyne one Saturday morning because he hit a bus on a roundabout. He was fine if he drove on the continent.”

I did not want to let her down and promised I’d do my best to find a route to Stratford-on-Avon, a distance of some two hundred miles, without her having to turn right. She was going in a fortnight’s time, she told me, so there was no great rush.

With Mary’s help, I settled down to work out a route and it was not as difficult as I had anticipated. Working along the main roads, I could plan the basic route bearing in mind one must make huge circular tours from time to time, and that the exits from motorways are all to the left anyway. The tricky bits were
the towns, especially Stratford itself on the final lap, although I did suggest she parked on the outskirts and caught a bus into the town centre.

I calculated the length of this circuitous journey and felt she would travel at least twice the true distance, but on the appointed day she sallied forth full of confidence with a
grey-haired
lady passenger beaming hopefully from the front seat.

She allowed herself two days to reach her destination, and I was somewhat surprised when she rang me from Penrith in Cumberland, and then from Chester, to find out where she’d gone wrong. But she arrived safely three days later, having covered nearly eight hundred miles in large circular routes.

My plan hadn’t helped because she’d missed several turnings and I’d not counted a new one-way system in Leeds. I couldn’t remember including Leeds in my route, but did not argue.

I did wonder how she’d get back.

She returned a fortnight later and in the following days, I received twenty-five requests from police forces to visit her and report her for parking infringements, one-way street offences and careless driving on that trip, and they included places as far apart as Lancaster, Lincoln, Huntingdon, Warwick,
Chippenham
and Gateshead. But her Morris Minor hadn’t a scratch, and neither had she.

In communities as small as Aidensfield, Maddleskirk and the like, there is usually one eccentric motorist whose deeds are widely known to the local people, and they contrive to keep well out of the way when the said eccentric is in motion. But these villages had Esme and another. Two of them in such a small area seemed destined to bring chaos.

Cedric Gladstone was the other’s name, and he lived in a nice bungalow on the edge of Aidensfield with his lovely wife and two spaniels. Cedric was a retired motor engineer, a short, tubby gent with rimless spectacles and a bristling white
moustache
who had, in his working life, been something of an expert at his craft. In his retirement, he spent a lot of time in his workshop, making objects which no other craftsmen would tackle due to the time and patience needed. He fashioned
objects like keys for grandfather clocks or winding handles for gramophones, small tools for specialist tasks and knick-knacks for household use. He did this for fun, although he was not averse to accepting gratuities in the shape of bottles of whisky as payment for his craftsmanship.

Cedric ran an old Rover car, a lovely 1949 model in a delicate shade of tan with darker brown mudguards, and this was his pride and joy. He had spent years with this car, having bought it new, and upon his retirement had managed to acquire a
comprehensive
stock of spares. By this prudent advance planning, Cedric was able to keep his car on the road when others fell by the wayside or ended their life on waste tips and scrap metal dumps.

I liked Cedric. I loved to chat with him in his workshop as he filed and soldered precious little pieces of metal together to create some implement useful for an obscure task. Even in his advancing years, a pride of creation and inventiveness
remained
. He showed me some of the things he’d produced – trowels, a ball-point pen, thousands of keys for hundreds of jobs, a toasting fork with a shield to protect the hand from the heat of the fire, all sorts of gadgets for working in car engines, a rack for shoelaces, a toothbrush holder and so forth. It’s fair to say I spent many a happy hour watching him at work in his hessian apron and battered old flat cap.

But in that beautiful car, Cedric was a changed person. His big problem was drink, and I must admit it was a long time before I realised he was an alcoholic. I might have guessed because his home was stacked with an infinite variety of
whiskies
, collected over many years from the Highlands of Scotland, and drunk deeply every day by a thirsty Cedric. He was a frequent visitor to the local inns where he happily drank their whisky, or the whisky of anyone who would pay for the pleasure of seeing it vanish down Cedric’s throat.

It is difficult to recall exactly when I became aware of this black side of Cedric’s character. Certainly, his lovely Rover was at large most days, always immaculately polished and chugging beautifully along the lanes or through the villages as Cedric and his wife, Amelia, went about their business and pleasure. I had often seen the car during my patrols, and there was never any
reason to halt it or to check the driver for illegalities. It had always been carefully driven, then one spring morning, some time after arriving at Aidensfield, my professional attention was drawn to the car.

It emerged from the drive of Cedric’s house and someone was grating the gears. There was an awful noise as metal fought with metal, the gears doing their best to mesh under some intolerable handicap. I stared at the immaculate little car, wondering if it was being stolen, but saw that Cedric was driving.

I watched in considerable horror, wincing at the thought of unseen damage as the lovely vehicle emerged on to the road to groan its way into the village. As I was on foot, I was not in a position to chase him, although I did follow its path, listening to the clonking noises and the agonising screeching of the
protesting
gears. The din ceased somewhere along the village street.

Minutes later, I found Cedric’s car. It was in the car park of the Brewers Arms, neatly parked and driverless. I checked my watch – it was ten thirty, opening time. I decided to pop in to see if Cedric was ill or in need of help and found him perched on a bar stool chatting amiably with Sid, the resident barman. He looked very content and relaxed, and in his hand was a double Scotch.

“Ah, Mr Rhea, can I tempt you?” he held the glass high, his grey eyes glistening with evident pleasure as he scrutinised the bronze contents.

“No, thank you, Cedric, not when I’m on duty.” I couldn’t face a whisky or any alcohol at this time of morning.

“I’m having a coffee, Mr Rhea,” Sid offered. “There’s some in the pot.”

“I’d love one, Sid,” and with no more ado, he produced a coffee pot and poured a steaming mugful. I removed my uniform cap and settled on a stool at Cedric’s side. He looked in the bloom of youth now, sitting high on that stool with his back as straight as a ramrod, and his white moustache bristling with energy. His thick white hair bore no signs of thinning and his eyebrows matched his hair, thick and white, all set in a healthy pink face. His clothes were neat too, all cavalry twills, Harris tweeds and wool shirts with brogue shoes and green woollen socks.

As I talked about nothing in particular, I realised I’d often seen his car here, never thinking he was in the pub. I thought he parked it as a matter of convenience for the shop or the post office, because at home I’d never seen him drink heavily. True, he’d shown me his collection of malt whiskies, but I’d never seen evidence of alcoholism. But now, sitting at his side as he rhapsodised over the drink and recalling the method of the Rover’s arrival, I realised I had a hardened drinker on my patch – and a motorist into the bargain.

This was long before the days of breathalysers and samples for laboratory analysis. In order to secure a conviction for drunken driving, it was necessary to prove beyond all doubt that the driver was under the influence of drink or drugs to such an extent as to be incapable of having proper control of the vehicle when driving or attempting to drive on a road. This was done by doctors; they were called by the police and conducted hilarious examinations of suspects by making them walk along white lines chalked upon the floor or asking them to add up sums of figures which not even the doctor could calculate correctly. The outcome was that many grossly drunken
individuals
managed to survive those primitive tests to escape conviction for an offence which so easily caused death to others. This was the reason for the introduction of the breath tests and the need for scientific analysis of the blood or urine to determine the alcohol level in the body. Thus, the guesswork and
favouritism
was eliminated.

But none of this affected Cedric. He was drinking long before such progress came to harass drunks. I looked closely at him. There was no sign of drunkenness. He was sitting unaided on a bar stool, with no back rest and he was not swaying nor was his speech slurred. He was conducting a most rational
conversation
with myself and Sid, and it was certainly not feasible to consider him drunk in charge of his vehicle. This differed from drunken
driving
because a person could be in charge of his van or car even when asleep in the back seat. Cedric was in charge of his car right now, sitting at that bar with the keys in his pocket …

But he was not drunk.

Once more, I recollected the pained howls from his car as it
negotiated our village street and concluded something must be wrong with it.

“Is the car all right, Cedric?” I ventured to ask during a lull.

“The car? It’s fine, Mr Rhea. Why do you ask?”

“I was walking up the village as you left home. It sounded as if the gears were fighting to jump out of their little box.”

“My fault,” he laughed. “I’m not at my best first thing, you know. I’m getting like my old car, I need a few minutes to get warmed up.”

I laughed it off, but did notice Sid gave me a sideways glance. At the time, I failed to read any significance into his action, but some time later I came to realise what he was trying to tell me.

On several occasions afterwards, I saw Cedric leave the pub at closing time after lunch, each time manoeuvring his lovely Rover out of the car park with the smoothest of motions and the utmost skill. There was never a rattle or a grating of gears; his driving was perfect. No drunk could achieve that standard of driving, I told myself.

It would be four or five months later, when I was again walking in the village in civilian clothes, enjoying a day off duty. I overheard the noisy approach of a car. The din was terrible; gears grated, brakes screeched, tyres fought with the road and sometimes the horn blared. I turned to find Cedric’s
immaculate
car bearing down on me. I stood aghast, watching the lovely old car struggle along the main street, and then it turned into the pub car park. I watched.

Cedric climbed out. Or rather, he staggered out. He ambled haphazardly across the empty park towards the front door of the Brewers Arms, and vanished inside seconds after the stroke of ten thirty. I was off duty, but Cedric had been drinking …

I hurried inside, and was in time to see him struggling to mount the bar stool. Sid was helping him and in moments, Cedric was perched high on the stool beaming at a full glass of whisky on the counter. Before I could climb the few steps into the bar, he picked up the glass and drained it at a gulp.

I rushed in.

“Cedric,” I cried. “For God’s sake no more … the way you drove that car …”

“Ah, Mr Rhea,” he turned to greet me, smiling all over his
rosy face with his eyes full of happiness. “Good to see you. Have a drink – I see you’re not on duty.”

“No thanks,” I declined, partly due to his state. “I can’t drink that stuff this early. Look,” I tried to talk to him. “I’ve just seen you drive in here, Cedric, and you must have been drunk, the way you drove your car …”