The system was designed for town and city policemen, but it was based upon the ideals of rural policing. The focal point of the system was a constable who lived on his patch. He was provided with a car in which to patrol and a back-up force to aid him in his duties. Basing this idea on the notion that rural bobbies know everyone and everything that happens on their patch, the pundits reckoned the same logic could apply to a city area if the area had its own constable. And so the Unit Beat system was born. To assist the constable living in pseudo-rural bliss among slag heaps and council houses, he was allocated a team of panda car drivers to patrol the area. They were to deal with matters of urgency and transport the resident bobby around and there was a plain-clothes man from the C.I.D. He sorted out the villains on the patch. Between them, these men policed their Unit and spent time getting to know everything and everyone. In theory, it was masterly.

  The snag was that it didn’t quite work like that. It is quite impossible to transplant rural systems into city environments. City people are a different breed and do not react or behave like countryfolk. And, furthermore, one car cannot do the work of five men. The result was that every police force developed its own interpretation of the Unit Beat system and few of them benefited from it.

  One redeeming feature, however, was the Collator and his concomitant indexing system.

  There was nothing original in having a comprehensive index and in fact most rural beat constables used their own excellent systems. The problem was that they filed most of the information in their heads. They knew who got up early, who came home late, which car belonged to whom and whose wife was seeing someone else’s husband. They knew the villains and the goodies, the perverts and the businessmen. In short, they knew a lot. If a constable left the vicinity, he took all his information with him. That was the problem because the new man had to start all over again. If only all that information was recorded…. With this idea of bliss in mind, Home Office experts created the Collator. This was merely a man with a filing system. He used reference cards, strip indexes and other office requisites to keep tabs on the villains and ne’er-do-wells. The basic idea was sound. It said that every policeman who patrolled a Unit Beat area would make a written note of what he saw. If, for example, he observed Burgling Bert from Bridlington walking along Albany Street at 6 o’clock one morning and carrying a walking-stick, he would note that fact in his police notebook. He would then enter the fact in the Collator’s files, probably under the name of Burgling Bert. Gradually a file would grow and the Collator would have a complete record of Burgling Bert’s movements should anyone wish to run a check on his activities at any time. The system was useful because it could identify a villain, but, if correctly compiled, it could also clear a suspect. It might prove the alibi of an innocent person.

  Most rural beat constables ran a similar system long before the Home Office came up with its mind-boggling advance and I kept my own record of events on Aidensfield beat.

  It was through my system that I became very suspicious of John Henry Tyler. It must be said at the outset that, in spite of this new and revolutionary aid to common sense, I would have become suspicious of the fellow. Recorded facts cannot lie; John Henry Tyler was up to something and my files proved it.

  He was a retired hill farmer in his middle sixties who had come down from a remote part of the North Yorkshire moors to retire to Aidensfield. His wife was called Ruth and they kept a collie dog called Wade, named after the giant who lived near their farm years ago. John Henry was a stout man with a walk like a sailor and his shortness, when in motion, served only to give him the appearance of a trundling barrel. His face was round and jolly and it always wore two or three days’ growth of whiskers. I wondered when he shaved, or how he shaved, in order to preserve this unkempt appearance. His clothing was rough and rural, practical perhaps but never smart. To complement his rustic countenance, he reeked of farmyards, middens and cow-sheds. He was a walking example of the scents of the English countryside.

  Not once during my first few months at Aidensfield did I have any reason to suspect him of illegality. He taxed his car, licensed his dog, paid his rates and ensured that all his firearms documents were in order. He was the epitome of a worthy villager, true as they come and as straight as a newly fletched arrow.

  Having been a hard-working and poorly paid hill-farmer, he had been accustomed to rising very early and it was the continuance of this habit that drew my attention to him. Very early one morning, I was sitting astride my stationary motor-cycle at the junction of Aidensfield village street and Elsinby Road. I could hear approaching footsteps and was tucked nicely beneath an overhanging conifer. I knew I was practically invisible so I remained very very still in the shadows. I looked at my watch. It was 5.30 a.m.

  Very soon, the oncoming footsteps materialised into the rounded shape of John Henry Tyler. His head was down against the fresh breeze of an early spring morning and he wore a muffler about his neck. On his feet were the traditional leather-topped clogs of the district and he wore the only coat I’d ever seen him use, a tatty, dull brown, sack-like affair with bulging pockets and a massive collar. His hands were deep in those commodious pockets, his chin was tucked into the ample collar and his feet were eating up the yards as he hurried about his early business.

  He walked right past without seeing me. I observed that grizzled grey hair, the unshaven weather-beaten face and his rough country clothes as he hurried along the lane. John Henry hadn’t changed in retirement. He still went about unshaven and smelling of cows and pigs. This morning was no exception. But he wasn’t going to work, surely? Naturally, I was curious about his purpose, but didn’t interrupt. Instead, I simply kept him under observation.

  He turned right at the junction and hurried down the gentle gradient which led to Elsinby, two miles distant. I waited ten minutes before I left my vantage-point and took the motor-cycle to the hill top. From there, I could see John Henry’s diminishing figure striding along the road. He was still heading towards Elsinby with his hands in his large pockets and his old head bowed against the chilly breeze. Where was he going? At this point, I never suspected his involvement in anything criminal. I took him to be an active countryman going for an early morning walk.

  Over the following months, however, this event repeated itself many times. I noticed him on several occasions, always walking that stretch of road and always at this time of the morning. He was always dressed in his scruffy old clothes and clogs and never carried anything. Furthermore, I never saw him make a return journey. Mentally I had noted these sightings but now decided to record them in writing. Maybe they could be linked with some distant crimes? Had he a woman? Once or twice, I waited in Elsinby village but always missed him there. He seemed to vanish somewhere on the road between the two villages. One or two of my colleagues reported seeing him during their early morning patrols around my beat, but none saw him actually in Elsinby. This created even more interest.

  The frequency of his trips bothered me too. My awkward shifts did not allow me to see him regularly, but by dint of asking my colleagues and checking from time to time myself the fact emerged that it was a monthly outing, usually on a Thursday.

  I could not believe that John Henry was a criminal. He was not a criminal type, he was a stolid rural character, a bit sharp perhaps, but definitely not a villain. I had no reports of criminal activities on my beat with which he could be associated but I did check my Crime Bulletins just to be sure that there was nothing suspicious along my beat boundaries. I was very aware that a series of burglaries had been committed in widespread rural areas over a period of about two years and all had been perpetrated during the early hours of the morning. Collators over a large area had pooled their information, and as a result, an early-morning worker from York was arrested. His practice was to hitch-hike out of town to his place of work, but this system sometimes provided him with spare time. He made profitable use of that time by breaking into houses. The mass of apparently unconnected intelligence gathered by the collators, eventually linked his movements with the burglaries and brought about his arrest. It was not impossible that old John Henry was perpetrating something highly illegal. Stranger things had happened, but I had to know. I had not to ask him directly, not yet. I must discover more about him and began discreet enquiries into his background. He lived in a rented house in Aidensfield with his wife and dog, and had never had children. His circumstances could be described as “poor”. The farm he’d worked high on the North Yorkshire moors had also been rented, and throughout his life he had worked from morning until night, scraping the barest of livings from that tough moorland area. He’d kept a few sheep and half a dozen milking cows and he had grown root-crops in a small enclosure surrounded by a dry-stone wall. My sources told me his income had never exceeded £11 per week. John Henry was indeed a poor man, but proud. If he’d existed all his life in this manner, it was barely credible that he’d turn to crime in his retirement.

  Nonetheless, the fact that he had retired meant he would have little to live on. So was the old devil going stealing at dawn? It seemed a feasible theory and one which would impress Sergeant Blaketon, so I decided to intensify my observations and enquiries.

  I checked all the reported burglaries, housebreakings, shop-breakings, larcenies, poachings and other crimes in the district and compared their times with the known movements of John Henry. It is fair to say that none could be positively attributed to him, but in some cases they could have been. Rather sorrowfully, I began to grow worried about him. I knew that if I made a good arrest, especially one which cleared up a spate of serious crimes, I would be in Sergeant Blaketon’s good books for a time. I found myself regarding John Henry’s movements as a key to my future. Through him, I could make a name for myself.

  I knew I had to be cunning. I had to catch him either in the act or with the stolen property. It was little use going about the place on the noisy Francis Barnett as that would alert him so I crept out of the house on several mornings and went about furtive foot patrols. I kept to the shadows, to the fields and woods as I attempted to keep an eye on this early morning clog walker.

  Finally, there came a moment of triumph. I was concealed behind an old building alongside the Aidensfield-Elsinby road when I heard the familiar clip-clop of his clogs. It was a lovely summer morning with the birds singing and the scent of blossom in the air; it was most certainly not a time to be engaged in furtive criminal activities, but, sure enough, John Henry was heading my way.

  I watched him from the security of the building. His head was down in that familiar style and his hands were tucked deep into those huge pockets as he stomped along the road. I waited until he was fifty yards ahead of me and began to shadow him. I used the heavily-leaved hedges and copses as my shelter as I moved stealthily along the fields. I readily kept pace with the active old man and he never once turned to look my way. I got the impression that he was deep in thought, his mind a long way from this peaceful stretch of England.

  I shadowed him all the way to Elsinby where he arrived just before six o’clock. But instead of entering the village street he turned sharp left and for a moment I lost him. Blast! He’d tricked me! In order to catch him I had to scramble out of the fields and regain the road, and I did so with considerable effort and anxiety. Eventually, I landed muddy-footed on the highway, panting slightly and with my cap at an angle. I hurried after him into the village, but he’d vanished. He’d got away! The cunning old devil!

  He could only have gone one way and that was along the lane to Ploatby, so that was the road I took. But even before I’d gone fifty yards a car emerged from one of the cottages along that road. It was a nice tan Rover 2000 driven by a smart gentleman and in the front passenger seat was none other than John Henry Tyler.

  It was past before I could stop it and I was rewarded by a wave from both men as the car vanished through the village towards York. I knew the owner of that car—he was a Mr Eugene Peterson, a retired wealthy businessman from Croydon. It was a most unlikely partnership, so what was going on?

  The mysterious pair vanished from my sight with no attempt to conceal their departure, so I now wondered if Peterson was a high-class villain, perhaps a con-man, using old Tyler as a stooge? It was not beyond the bounds of credibility.

  Deflated, I was now faced with a long walk back home and my efforts had produced very little more information, except I now knew the identity of his partner in crime. Back in my office an hour later, I rang York’s collator to see if there was any record of that car in their files, but there wasn’t. It had never come to the notice of York police in a suspicious manner, nor had its occupants. Either they were very clever criminals or they weren’t criminals at all.

  I was now faced with several probabilities and several different ways of tackling the problem. Certainly, something unusual was going on. There was no doubt about that and it was my duty as the local constable to unearth the truth. If I told Sergeant Bairstow, he’d laugh it off, and Sergeant Blaketon would wheel them both in for interview. Neither seemed the right approach. I had to find out for myself and then tell the sergeants. I could be bold and ask them outright to account for their movements, but, if they were engaged in crime, that would alert them to police interest and we’d never solve anything.

  The only solution was to make discreet enquiries in Elsinby and the finest starting-place for such delicate questions was the Hopbind Inn. Later that morning, I made it my first calling-place and George produced a cup of warm coffee. It was just ten o’clock.

  “Busy?” he asked, by way of opening the conversation along official lines.

  “So, so.” I shrugged my shoulders, hoping he’d accept that as an indication of the non-urgent nature of my presence.

  “You’re early—it’s usually dinner-time when you get here.” Dinner-time for Yorkshire folk is lunch-time for other people.

  “Aye.” I sipped the coffee as I perched on a stool in his bar. He wiped many glasses. “Tell me, George, do you know Eugene Peterson, the chap with the Rover?”

  “Aye, I do,” he said, looking earnestly at me.

  “What sort of chap is he?” I continued. We were alone.

  “All right,” said George. “Honest, quite well-off, I’d say. Grown up family, retired businessman. Pleasant enough chap.”

  “Honest?”

  “I’d say so. I’ve never heard anything against him.”

  I didn’t respond but savoured his coffee so now he came at me with:

  “Come along, Mr Rhea, what’s on your mind? Is he up to something?”

  “I don’t know,” I said wistfully. “I don’t know, but I must find out.”

  “Why, what’s he done?”

  I knew I could trust George’s discretion, so I unfolded my catalogue of early suspicions about John Henry Tyler and now Eugene Peterson. George listened carefully, wiping more glasses and sipping occasionally from his own coffee.

  He smiled as I unfolded my yarn, his smile broadening as I enlarged my tale. I could see he was amused and knew, at that point, that my two suspects were not criminals.

  “So, there it is, George. What’s going on?”

  “You’ve no idea, have you?” he grinned wickedly.

  “No,” I said, “I haven’t.”

  “Well, every third Thursday in the month, John Henry walks down here and goes off in Peterson’s Rover. They go to York Railway Station and catch an early train to London.”

  “Go on,” I encouraged him.

  “Well, you might believe this of Peterson, but not your John Henry. You see, they’re both top chess-players; they play international chess at a club in London. Some are postal contests, some are live, and I believe some are played over the telephone. Peterson introduced John Henry to the London club, and they go there every month. John Henry’s loved down there!”

  “John Henry Tyler? You mean that smelly old farmer is a major chess-player?”

  “One of the country’s best; you’ll occasionally see his name in the posh Sundays—last year, he beat a Russian grandmaster….”

  “But why doesn’t he get dressed up?”

  “He never dresses up for anything and he doesn’t want the village to know about it. You won’t tell anyone, will you? The club has agreed not to publicise his real identity, so don’t let John Henry know that you’re onto him. He’ll kill me for letting his secret out.”

  Back in the office, I wrote “checkmate” on my file about John Henry Tyler.

  It was the ubiquitous Shakespeare who called the milkmaid “Queen of curds and cream”, while Sir Thomas Overbury in 1614 wrote, “In milking a cow and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter.”

  These lovely rural ladies were considered the height of perfection and in days of yore were worshipped as the purest of creatures. When farms were run as highly competitive commercial enterprises, even ladies of standing regarded the job of milkmaid as worthwhile. It was never looked upon as a menial task and advice given to dairy farmers was to have a good breed of cow, to possess proper buildings and implements and to have an attractive and skilful dairymaid. One farmer, writing in the last century said, “It is a truly feminine employment and to their hands it (the milking) should be left.” It was widely accepted that cows “never let their milk down pleasantly” to someone they dreaded or disliked and it was felt that cows enjoyed being soothed by mild usage, especially when ticklish and young. It was known that contented cows provided good creamy milk, and it was the job of the milkmaid to win the best from her bovine charges.

  Although my beat embraced many dairy-farms, there were not many milkmaids in or around Aidensfield. To be truthful, I did not personally know one, but it seemed that there was such a beauty on a remote farm. One day I would meet her, I felt sure. The farm in question, a large dairy-farm on the moors beyond Briggsby, occupied a considerable but isolated site well away from the main road to Harrowby. I had called on a couple of occasions in the past to check the stock registers but never during those brief visits had I espied this renowned beauty.