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 secured 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?”
