Constable by the Sea by Nicholas Rhea Read Free Book Online

main, they were local people going about their business or pleasure in their small and charming town. Hedda Flynn was such a person. He caught my attention when I noticed he was beginning to loiter around the entrance to St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church and that he chose to do so at a time the local churches were experiencing a spate of offertory box thefts.
    Several boxes had been broken into during the early summer months, the technique being by the simple medium of using what police described as a ‘blunt instrument’ to force open the lids. This was probably a screwdriver. The cash contents, the amount of which was invariably unknown, were stolen. Although these crimes were comparatively minor, they did present problems.
    No community, whether in a town or a village, likes its church to be attacked in any way, and these crimes were considered very distasteful. It was felt they were the work of a travelling vagrant, because none of the boxes contained a large amount. The task of forcing the wooden lids and removing the contents would often result in the theft of only a few shillings, hardly a major crime.
    Some good Christians argued that if the thief was so poor that the funds within the offertory boxes were vital to his existence, why not let him take them? After all, wasn’t the Church there to provide for the poor? If the fellow had asked the priest or vicarfor some money, it would probably have been given. This was an argument which did not impress the police. In their books a crime was a crime, whatever the reason for its commission.
    As a form of crime prevention, we toured all the churches and chapels within our Division and suggested to their priests, vicars and ministers that they make their offertory boxes more substantial and secure. We even suggested they enclose them within the walls of their churches or make them of metal, then cement them into the floor. Some did this.
    One who did not follow our advice was Monsignor Joseph O’Flaherty of St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, and it was his offertory box which I suspected was an object of great interest to Hedda Flynn.
    There was a time when I considered arresting Hedda under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, for that quaint old statute created an offence of being a suspected person or reputed thief loitering with intent to commit a crime. Certainly, Hedda had undertaken a good deal of loitering, usually around lunch-time, but his intentions were unknown. There was no evidence that he intended to commit a crime, nor could he be described as either a suspected person or a reputed thief. The law lays down quite specifically what is meant by ‘suspected person’, and Hedda’s behaviour had not quite lifted him into that category. In fact, he was a very decent fellow.
    Having noticed him once or twice, I carried out my own discreet enquiries and learned he was a married man with two small children. He worked behind the counter of a gentlemen’s clothes shop in Strensford for what was probably a pittance, and he would be about thirty-five years old. He was a small, dark man whose own clothes hung from him; they appeared to be several sizes too large, and I guessed that, as a child, his mother had always bought him clothes which were too large, so that he could grow into them. I reckoned he never had grown into them but that he still hoped he would.
    His thin, sallow face with its bushy eyebrows and dark troubled eyes gave him the appearance of a haunted man, and it was clear something was troubling him. Was he a lapsed Catholic who wanted to return to the faith?
    On the other hand, I wondered if his conscience was troubling him. I wondered if he was fiddling the till at work, or whether he had another woman in tow, or, of course, whether he was the offertory box thief who was plaguing the district.
    I decided to speak to Monsignor O’Flaherty about Hedda and about the risks to his offertory box. I had seen the box in question – it was a simple wooden