Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

It should also be noted that Cllr Thorndyke was wearing a T-shirt — and only a T-shirt, in temperatures of 20 degrees and under — during his exchange with PC Hill. PC Hill said, ‘His teeth were chattering as he spoke. It was actually quite difficult to decipher what he was saying at some points. I don’t know why he didn’t just go home and put his coat on.’)

A short while later, as he was climbing into his patrol car, PC Hill apprehended the aforementioned Mr Woods (the source of all this unbridled hysteria), driving up to the box in his postal van. PC Hill said he was ‘to all intents and purposes a broken man, skulking around the place like a beaten dog…’

On being questioned about the theft, Woods was quoted as saying, ‘They can’t pay me enough to do the collection here, mate. They’re nutters. They should have me on danger money. They’re all sodding lunatics.’

Suffice to say, following PC Hill’s initial investigation of the crime scene (and following the discovery of the refuse sack of letters found dumped in a back alley in Skipton — a mere two doors down from the bijou residence of notorious local petty criminal, Timmy Dickson), I contacted all those individuals whose letters now form a part of the official evidence, informing them that their post couldn’t be returned — or forwarded on — until it had been formally declassified as such.

Next, I initiated an official mail-out to the entire village (also enclosed, Rog, translated into the obligatory three languages — I chose Portuguese, Mandarin and Xhosa) to try and discover if anyone had posted a letter on the evening of Dec. 21st, which had not — for some reason — been retrieved in the Skipton cache.

Nobody had, although Rita Bramwell couldn’t be entirely certain. She said she thought she might have sent something, but that she wasn’t sure what it was, or to whom it was addressed (she’s several wires short of the full radio, Rog). As it transpired, she had actually sent something (case letter 13).

When I then asked her if she had received my earlier communication (informing her that exactly such a letter was being held by us, as evidence), she hotly denied that I had sent her one — although her husband, Peter Bramwell, later found it stuffed down the back of a chaise longue, and was kind enough to apologize to me for his wife’s behaviour.

I subsequently sent Mrs Bramwell a photocopy of her own letter (in an attempt to dispel her confusion). Her response was not at all as I had expected it to be. She hotly denied having sent it — in a long and erratic email — making a series of wild, unsubstantiated claims and accusations — one of which was that it had been ‘forged’, and that I myself was ‘in the frame’ as one of the suspects for the crime (we all had a good chuckle at that in the staff canteen)!

Several people were, you will be stunned to discover, Rog, a little peeved by the news that their post would not be immediately returned to them (you may have seen the bilious squall of angry letters in the local rag, Rog), but this is Burley Cross, after all: a tiny, ridiculously affluent, ludicrously puffed-up moor-side village, stuffed to capacity with spoilt second-home owners, southerners, the strange, the ‘artistic’, the eccentric and the retired (most of them tick all of the above boxes, Rog, and several more besides — although I’m sure I don’t have the natural intelligence, fine vocabulary or social acuity to do them all justice here… Matt Endive (Sr) — case letter 4 — who perfectly exemplifies those latent, Burley Cross characteristics of tragic retard and unalloyed fat-head combined, called me a ‘bumped-up little northern grammar-school oik’, only yesterday on the phone, and then, when I laughed him off, said I was ‘tragically out of my depth’ and ‘riddled with contumely’. I responded — quick as a flash, Rog. I said, ‘Are you sure you don’t mean “contumacy,” Mr Endive — from the Latin com = intense + tumere = to swell?’

A long silence followed, Rog, and I don’t mind admitting that I enjoyed every damn second of it — although, in retrospect, I think he probably did mean contumely).

Of course you know better than anybody, Rog, what kind of problems we’re up against here: to say Burley Cross is ‘Little England writ large’, would be like saying Stilton is ‘a dairy product with blue bits running through it’ (i.e. an understatement, Rog, and a considerable understatement at that).

This is, after all, the same place where the local council’s decision not to install a speed-bump last year caused a mini-riot on Pancake Day which was later ‘Recorded for Posterity, that Future Generations Might Read and Weep’, in a seven-hundred-line epic poem, (still pinned up on the notice board outside the local shop, with copies available for sale inside):

The butcher got the worst of it, when spade and axe did fall,

The baker put up quite a fight, when caught up in the brawl …

(Ironically, there is no baker in Burley Cross, Rog, and never has been, either, so far as I am aware.)

Before I finally wind up, Rog, here’s a little something extra that might just pique your interest: while nobody was willing to admit to having had a letter stolen during the theft, two people were determined to make it publicly known that the letters written in their names were not penned by their own hands (the first, Rita Bramwell, as mentioned previously; the second, Tom Augustine, whose letter about a little incident at the public toilets I found especially informative, Rog — if deeply unedifying).

A final, brief aside, Rog: I couldn’t help remarking on how many letters had been sent on the day of the robbery. The number seemed unusually high in these text- and email-friendly times (even taking into consideration the pre-Christmas rush). I was about to launch some half-cocked investigations re The Royal Mail (Consignia, et al.) when PC Hill happily set my mind at rest on the issue.

It transpires that an extremely attractive, young lady — Nina Springhill — has recently started work in the post office, and, since her employment there, the volume of post being sent from the village has significantly increased (not only that, but an unprecedented number of pensioners — all male — have reverted to the traditional way of receiving their bi-monthly pay-outs: at the counter, as opposed to having it paid directly into their bank accounts).

I was only too happy to check the veracity of this tip-off myself, Rog, a week or so back, when I dropped into the PO to buy a book of stamps (in fact I bought three — two more on successive visits) which Sandy later came across — on wash day — while going through my pockets.

When I staggered home from work that night, there they all were, formally arranged on the kitchen table, like pieces of evidence — in fact I think there may have been five of them, in total — and Sandy standing next to them, pointing, with a face like thunder, demanding to know who I was planning to write to, and why.

(I mean all this fuss and nonsense over seven little books of stamps, Rog! Whatever next, eh?!)

So that’s pretty much the sum of it, Rog. I do hope my paltry insights have proved moderately useful as I step graciously aside — severing the spell-binding umbilical of this case once and for all — and redirect my energies to solving Skipton’s ever increasing backlog of run-of-the-mill murders, arsons, rapes, indecent assaults etc. (and, of course, in case I ever get too smug and complacent: the perennially fascinating mystery of Mrs Compton-Rees’s nomadic recycling bin; they found it in Hurston on Friday, then, on Sunday, a bemused call from the Laundromat in New Leasey…).