It is a crime that might have intrigued Torquay’s most famous former resident, the late Agatha Christie, queen of the detective story. Some time between 7.15pm on Thursday and 10am on Friday last week, someone crept on to Tony Mason’s allotment with malicious intent.
It was the day before the Torquay Allotments Association’s annual show and the saboteur knew what he was doing. Using a pair of secateurs — the horticulturalist’s favourite weapon — he gouged holes in Mr Mason’s prize pumpkin, drove a stake through the hearts of his ten largest cabbages and made off with a bunch of foot-long carrots leaving just their holes behind.
The attack was the latest in a series of raids on allotments in the resort on the English Riviera. Exactly two weeks earlier, someone had sprayed weed-killer over Richard Pastewski’s prize-winning dahlias, dashing his hopes of sweeping the board at the national show this weekend.
Other allotment holders report having their best vegetables damaged or stolen. Police are investigating the possibility that the same culprit or culprits may be responsible.
For Mr Mason it was a moment of tragedy and triumph. His cabbages, though mortally wounded, still took first prize, his second-best pumpkin won in its category and his three remaining carrots, though shorter and spindlier than those that had vanished, came second.
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Mr Pastewski managed to win five cups, including the prize for the best dahlias with only the three flowers that had survived. But although there is a likely motive and much of the evidence was left behind, even Agatha Christie’s sleuths Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot might have a problem solving this case. The difficulty is not too few suspects, but too many. More than 80 people have keys to the Southparks Allotments, where Mr Mason and Mr Pastewski have plots a few yards apart. And gardeners have plenty of excuses for carrying implements that are a danger to vegetables. Mr Mason, 68, said: “Everyone looks at everyone else with suspicion now. I just don’t know who could have done it, but I am sure it was an inside job.”
He and his wife, Janet, had watered their prize-winning vegetables twice a day for weeks in preparation for the big show. As for the size of his carrots, he can only imagine. “There were four or five inches of carrot sticking out of the ground, so they must have been huge, but what really hurts is I will never know,” he said.
Southparks is the largest of four allotment sites in Torquay. The association has 141 members. Mr Pastewski, 57, the secretary of the allotment holders’ association, said: “It is definitely not a vandal attack. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing. I was deliberately targeted.
“Weedkiller was sprayed on 120 of my dahlias that I had been growing for the past five years. I have done very well in local competitions and I was planning to enter the nationals for the first time this year. All the local dahlia growers know each other and I’d have a hard time believing it was one of them. I can only imagine it was someone so eaten up with jealousy that this is what they decided to do.”
Mr Pastewski, a hospital porter, now has a nail-biting wait to see whether any of his award-winning plants will recover. He estimates that his crop would cost at least £1,000 to replace.
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Among the leads being investigated by police is the possibility that the attack might have been revenge for the dismissal of a member of the association’s committee who was accused of having his hand in the till.
Mr Pastewski had “no reason” to suspect the individual, but a Torbay police spokesman said: “This appears to have been a deliberate act to sabotage the plants which has followed two other similar incidents. We are investigating this latest incident as criminal damage and we are keeping an open mind as to whether there is a connection.”
The allotment holders are planning to set up “vegilante” patrols to keep their crops safe. Mr Mason said: “We’ve had enough. The only option is to take it in turns to watch the place at night. We’ll take it in shifts and keep and eye out and hopefully catch the culprit red-handed.”