Dishonour Among Thieves

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “I’m perfectly willing to come with you: I’d like to see the house, but it seems to me you might be more in order if you got your local constable to accompany you. I gather you’re thinking the place may have been robbed, and if that’s happened, it’ll be a job for the local police.”

  “And that’s what I don’t want to do: if folks see the constable from Kirkham coming up here, tongues’ll start wagging and stories going round when there’s no need. I’ve told you what I had in mind, Mr. Macdonald, because I know you won’t go round telling folks what I said. I may be wrong and I hope I am. But if you’ll come round High Garth with me, we could see how things be. You’re up here at Fellcock and I come up to see to my stock at High Garth and there’s nothing out of the way for folks to notice. All in the day’s work as you might say.”

  “Yes. I see your point, but if you find things are wrong, you’ll have to report it, Mr. Brough. You can’t ask me to compound a felony as it were, to cover up a theft.”

  Brough nodded his head thoughtfully and Macdonald went on, “Of course the best thing would be to get old Mrs. Borwick to see the place herself: we could drive her up to Fellcock: from here on to High Garth, could she manage with the seat on the tractor if you held her on?”

  Brough shook his head. “No, ’tisn’t possible: she’s got rheumatiz in her knees so bad that she can’t walk more’n a few steps and a weak heart with it. That’d kill her, what with the effort and excitement and all. It’s as much as I dare do to ask her to find the keys, poor old soul. Happen I’d better let things be, but you know how ’tis, once you get an idea in your head, you can’t let that be, or the idea won’t give you no peace.”

  “Yes, I know how it is,” agreed Macdonald, “but I wish you’d tell me this: have you any reason for believing that house has been interfered with or the contents stolen? Have you any evidence at all to that effect?”

  “Nought you’d call evidence, ’tis no’ but an idea and I’ll tell you when it came into my head. I never liked young Sam Borwick, never trusted him. When Mr. Staple said he’d seen Sam run in in Leverstone and that Sam had turned out a real bad ’un, I thought, well, Leverstone’s not that far away and there’s that house, with some stuff in it a chap could raise money on. It’s nowt but a plaguey idea: all the same, I’d be happier in my mind if we could look into things. See here, Mr. Macdonald: tomorrow’s Sunday and I’ll go and see Mrs. Borwick. If so be she lets me have the keys, will you come to High Garth with me early afternoon Monday?”

  “Very well. I’ll come, Mr. Brough.”

  “That’s champion: and after that, maybe, I’ll be quit of worrying.”

  5

  When Mr. Brough had gone, Macdonald sat over his fire and pondered. In spite of Brough’s insistence that it was only an idea which had set him worrying about High Garth Hall and its contents, Macdonald guessed that there was something which had prompted Brough’s idea. Farmers are not imaginative men, least of all northern farmers. Had somebody seen Sam Borwick in the locality, or was it possible that Sam had been to see his parents and tried to get some money out of them, or even found where they kept the keys of High Garth? This might be a case of wheels within wheels, in which somebody (old Mrs. Borwick for example) had confided in Brough after making him promise to keep her confidence secret.

  Macdonald was amused about Brough’s caution: he had enlisted the assistance of the law without bringing the local police into the matter, thereby ensuring in his own way that local tongues should not be set wagging, and also safeguarded himself. As Macdonald knew, if it was found that the old house had been robbed, some people might point out that Brough himself had had every opportunity to remove what he liked: others might accuse Jock Shearling and Jock could retaliate by accusing the pipe-line gangers. In short, if it were proved that robbery had occurred, rumour would be many-tongued and Macdonald knew it.

  He was glad that Brough had come to him and that they were going over High Garth together—if the keys were forthcoming. There was going to be no “breaking and entering,” but Macdonald believed that that was what Brough had hoped he (Macdonald) would agree to. Brough was an independent character who had followed his own notions of what was permissible within die law and since he had decided “that wanted looking into,” he was prepared to take such steps as he chose to put his idea into effect, and had been surprised when Macdonald insisted that the keys must be handed over before any inspection could take place.

  Chapter Four

  MACDONALD, when he followed Mr. Brough over the fell on the Monday, was still pondering hard over the situation. Many years of detection had made the C.I.D. superintendent very acute at discerning the underlying impulses of those he dealt with, whether witnesses or accused persons. Macdonald found himself more and more sceptical of Mr. Brough’s abstract “idea”: it seemed out of character for the farmer to have taken the action he did without something in the way of evidence to prompt him. Brough could have followed a mere idea independently without confiding in anybody: he could have borrowed the keys or used other methods of entering that long-abandoned house, but he wanted a witness, someone to safeguard himself. Not the local police, but still a policeman, and from that fact Macdonald deduced that something more substantial than an idea had made the burly farmer seek for a witness to, and a companion on, his tour of inspection at High Garth Hall.

  It was a bright clear afternoon and away to the northwest the waters of Morecambe Bay shone palely under the September sky. Mr. Brough greeted Macdonald cheerfully.

  “ ’Tis a right bonny view,” he said. “I don’t wonder old Borwick was loath to leave High Garth: he’d known that prospect all his seventy-five years and when he left here and went down yonder, he said he felt shut in. He’d got to the stage when he wasn’t safe on his feet, mark you. He had to go.”

  Mr. Brough produced a key ring the size of a handcuff, boasting a miscellany of keys of which the largest could have been put to use as a weapon, so long and heavy it was.

  “She found ’em under the floorboards, the old lady did,” he went on, “and she swore she wouldn’t have parted with them to none but me. I’ve brought an oil can to ease the locks and hinges. Now then, would you like to open a door that’s not been opened nigh on ten years?”

  “Let us walk round the house first and see if we can find any signs of a forcible entry,” said Macdonald. “I take it there aren’t any duplicates to these keys.”

  “Not that anybody’s ever heard on,” replied Brough. “This big ’un now, I reckon ’tis as old as the house and it’d be a job for a blacksmith to make another.”

  They stood by the front door: it was oak and most of the paint had gone, worn off by years of rain and frost and sun, leaving the weathered timber still hard and good. Brough drummed on the oak with his homy fingers. “Hard as iron,” he said. “It’d take a battering ram to get that down.”

  A hinged iron bar had been secured to the door on one side and on the other the bar was looped over a hasp and secured by a heavy padlock. Macdonald stood back and glanced at the windows: they were mullioned and he guessed that the narrow casements had never been made to open. The glass was intact and shutters closed on the inside. Brough chuckled a little.

  “If so be I’d tried housebreaking, reckon I’d have had a hard job,” he said. “A chap my size could never get through those slits of windows.”

  “A young chap might have done it, but no one has,” said Macdonald.

  They walked along the frontage: as usual in Lunesdale farmhouses, house and barn were under the same rooftree, but there was no entry between barn and house. They passed the great barn door and turned south at the gable-end, past the shippon door, and Jock Shearling’s young beasts bawled at them hopefully: turning west along the back of the buildings, they passed a small door into the barn and then came to the back door of the house, the one which was habitually used by farming households. This door was as solid, though less handsomely panelled, than the front door, and it also was sec
ured by a bar and padlock.

  “Seems all shipshape,” said Brough, applying his oil can to padlock and hinges. “No one ever got in here unless they had the keys.”

  Macdonald examined the padlock before he inserted the key. He knew that padlocks were generally sold with two keys, and that once the padlock was opened and the bar hinged back, the huge old locks of the ancient door would present no problem to a cracksman skilled in the manipulation of locks: the keyhole was so large that it would be easy to insert long-nosed pliers and shoot the lock back. There was, however, no sign of any forced entry and he undid the padlock and pulled the bar free and then put in the great key and turned it with both hands: with a loud rasp and groan the door moved on its unwilling hinges and Brough stared into the shadowy kitchen.

  “Something’s amiss,” he said, “the furniture’s been pushed around.”

  “Something’s very much amiss,” said Macdonald. His nose told him that, before he could see inside at all. The cold clammy air seeped out from the doorway, air foul with the stink of corruption, and Macdonald knew only too well what that foulness meant. A thought flashed through his mind, hopefully. “A dead dog—a dead sheep,” but he knew it could be neither. Neither dog nor sheep could have got into that locked, barred house. He pushed the door wide and Brough stared into the stone-flagged kitchen.

  “God ha’ mercy! ” he gasped. “I never thought o’ nowt like this. Who can that be?”

  2

  A man’s body lay on the flagstones at the foot of the ladderlike stairway which led to the upper floor. There was no staircase proper in the house, only the steep wooden steps which ran up to a rectangular aperture in the kitchen ceiling.

  “He must ha’ slipped and fallen forward and broken’s neck on the flags,” said Brough, “but who can that be? ’Twill be a job to know, poor chap.”

  Macdonald knew that the body must have lain there for months—if not years: the flesh of face and gnarled hands was shrunken and corrupted to a degree that made recognition impossible. Drawing back to the fresh air for a moment, Macdonald asked:

  “Could that be Sam Borwick’s body, Mr. Brough?”

  “Nay, that’s not Sam. Sam’s a redhead, proper carrots. But as to who ’tis, it’d be hard to say. Can’t even tell how old the chap was. And what’s that press been moved for? Stood against t’ wall, that did.”

  The oak. “press,” as Brough called it, was a big piece of furniture, cupboards above, drawers below. It had been pulled forward at one end and now stood athwart the floor.

  “ ’Tis as I said,” went on Brough, “someone came thieving. That’s a fine piece, that is. He must ’a gone upstairs, to move the dower chest maybe, and he pitched forward down them steps, plaguey dangerous them steps.”

  He had moved outside the door to escape the stench within, and as though the fresh air brightened his wits, he added, “But how came it the doors were locked on him? ’Tis a proper puzzle.”

  “It is that,” agreed Macdonald. “Now this is a job for the local police, Mr. Brough, and you’ll have to go and notify them. I shall stand by here. Drive down to the constabulary and report and tell the constable to ring his superintendent at Camton before he comes up here—and the sooner you get there the better.”

  “Well, I’ll do as you say, but the poor chap’s waited long enough before he was found,” said Brough. “Months ago he must have fallen down them steps.” He turned away, adding, “I’ll get on and tell young Tucker to ring Camton.”

  “And tell him to say they must send their technicians and the mortuary van and stretcher men up here,” said Macdonald.

  “Aye, I’ll tell him. ’Tis a shocking business and all.”

  As soon as Brough had hurried away, Macdonald went into the farmhouse kitchen again. There was no mystery about how the dead man could have got into the locked house without any keys at all. Behind the oak press, at floor level, a hole had been made through the wall, which consisted of rubble rather than solid masonry. On the far side of the wall was an outbuilding, a dairy Macdonald guessed, which had stone walls. It was closed by a sturdy door which stood at right angles to the house wall and which had two steps leading down to the door. Being quite sure that this was the way access had been obtained to the house, Macdonald examined the door and its huge old keyhole. He soon ascertained that the door could be dealt with by lifting it off its hinges. He had a similar door to the old dairy at Fellcock: the door was hinged like the five-barred gates, with two upright iron spikes (called gudgeons locally), on the doorposts, over which fitted rings attached to the door. Doors and gates swung easily by this means, but they could be lifted off the gudgeons: the door would then (while still locked) open sufficiently to admit a man. He was satisfied that he had found out how access to the dairy was obtained: once inside, a man could have worked away at the rubble wall until he had made a large enough hole to crawl through. Since the hole would have been blocked by the heavy wooden press, it was to be assumed that the housebreaker had managed to shift the press away from the wall to the position the press now occupied.

  Macdonald continued his observations thus far but without touching anything. This investigation would be the job of the local police: unless his assistance were asked for, Macdonald was only in the position of a witness and he was punctilious about police procedure. After another glance at the sorry remains on the floor, he went outside and lighted a cigarette. Inevitably he surmised: if Brough’s suggestion were right, and it proved that the man could have met his death by falling headlong from the steps on to the stone floor, it looked like being an inconclusive case. As he pondered, Macdonald wondered if there could have been any rumours in the district about “valuables” hidden at High Garth: secret drawers in the old furniture, a secret hoard, hidden years ago and never discovered? Was that the basis of Brough’s “idea” he wondered—and then turned quickly as he heard Jock’s voice shouting his name.

  3

  Jock came running round the barn. “Mr. Brough’s hurt himself: tripped over that stony ridge and knocked himself out. Heck. . . . Whatever be that? ’Tis a dead beast, long dead.”

  “Long dead, but not a beast. There’s a dead man in the house, Jock. Mr. Brough was going for the police. Go back to him, I’ll just lock this door and then I’ll come and see to him.”

  The farmer lay face downwards in the tussocky grass, not much more than a hundred yards from High Garth Hall. He lay just beyond a rocky outcrop, one of those tiresome ridges which had determined long ago why the land between High Garth and Fellcock was not cultivated. Before Macdonald bent to turn Brough over, he wondered both why the farmer had tripped up on land he knew well, and, if he had tripped, how he had hit his head on the rock on which his feet now rested. It all looked a very improbable accident, but Mr. Brough’s head injury was plain enough: a cut and contusion stretched across his temple to his eyebrow and it was bleeding freely. Macdonald found a clean handkerchief in an inside pocket and folded it into a bandage while Jock said: “I don’t rightly see how he did it: likely he tripped, but there’s no rock where his head lies . . . reckon ’twas more like a stone, chucked at him. . . .”

  Macdonald nodded: it looked that way to him, too, and he stood up and stared down at the grass and clumps of heather.

  “That would ha’ done it,” said Jock. He picked up a big pebble, a heavy thing but shaped so that it would have fitted into a man’s hand for throwing. Macdonald knew at once that the pebble was no fragment of the rough outcrop: it was water-worn, smooth, and rounded. Jock was quick enough to realise the same thing.

  “I don’t like it,” he said slowly. “This stone, reckon it got up here in the load I carted from the shiller bed to make our track. I threw out the big ones, I wanted to get that level.”

  “That’s probably how the stone got here,” said Macdonald, “but what we’ve got to do is to get the police up here. This’ll be their job, not mine. Now go and get a hurdle and we’ll lay Mr. Brough on it and carry him indoors. He’s not dang
erously hurt so far as I can tell, but we can’t leave him lying here.”

  Within ten minutes they had got the farmer lifted on the hurdle and they carried him back to Fellcock and laid him on the settle in Betty’s kitchen, while she stood and looked at them with wide troubled eyes.

  “However did he do it?” she asked, and Jock replied quickly:

  “Reckon someone attacked him. Did you see anybody about when you went to gather some kindling?”

  “Aye. I saw a fellow up top. I thought he was one of Mr. Brough’s men, come to help round up his beasts.”

  “We shall have to leave all the questions until I get the police up here,” said Macdonald. “Jock, you stay in here with Betty until I come back.” He turned and glanced at Mr. Brough, who was beginning to stir and snort a little. “You can bathe his face and give him a drink of water if he comes to, but don’t let him move. I’ll be as fast as I can and I’ll get a doctor sent up.”

  4

  Macdonald drove down to the valley faster than he had ever driven down that hill before and those who noticed his car passing said, “He’s in a mighty hurry like, doesn’t often drive like that,” for he was known as a careful and considerate driver. “Something wrong like,” was the immediate reaction, coupled to the afterthought, “Mr. Brough, he went up to High Garth not so long since.” Country folk are quick to notice anything out of the common round, and quick to draw their own conclusions, though these are seldom passed on to any save their immediate familiars.