He heard the young constable gasp and swallow, but Tucker stood his ground gamely and stared around.
“Any idea who the dead man could be?” asked Macdonald, but Tucker shook his head.
“No, sir—and it’d be hard to say. Now reckon it’s my job to put down all particulars for the inspector: he won’t want me to go meddling in there, though it looks plain enough to me. Deceased broke in through that wall there after forcing the dairy door and he went up that ladder to see around upstairs and he fell on ’s head.” Stepping aside, the young constable produced his notebook and Macdonald said:
“That’s right, Tucker. Mr. Brough of Greenholme and Mr. Macdonald of Fellcock met outside High Garth Hall on Monday, March twenty-eighth, at 1:30 p.m.”
“Should I write Superintendent Macdonald?” asked Tucker, but the older man shook his head.
“No. I’m plain Mr. at this juncture. I’m here to farm, nothing else.”
“That’s as may be,” said Tucker.
Chapter Five
SHORTLY AFTERWARDS, three experienced men stood and looked at the sorry remains on the kitchen floor at High Garth. All three had had experience of “old mortality.” Macdonald, perhaps, had met such contingencies more frequently than the others, but Inspector Bord of Camton had had to deal with corpses washed up on the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay, and Doctor Lee, the police surgeon, had held his present post for many years. A young photographer had performed his gruesome task of obtaining close-ups of the dead man, and had then taken his gear outside. Bord looked at the hole in the wall and at the ladder like steps and then at the spread-eagled body.
“Looks plain enough, or was arranged to look plain enough,” he said. “The question is, who was deceased and how long has he been there?”
Dr. Lee turned to Macdonald. “You’ve probably had more experience than either of us of problems like this. What’s your guess?”
“I’d say he’d been there for a year—or longer,” replied Macdonald. “How near can you get to the answer when you dissect him out? ”
“Not very near—as you know well enough: it’s a matter of assumption, balancing one probability against another. In every exhumation where I’ve taken part in the examination of remains there’s been a wide variation in the state of same, and in those cases we knew when death had occurred. From a glance at this subject, I’d agree with your estimate, about a year: his neck’s broken, as you’d expect it to be if he pitched on his head on those flagstones. Well, the sooner we get him to the forensic lab the better. He’s in no state for an examination in situ. Can I tell the chaps to bring the stretcher in and load him up? We’ve got medicated sheets and so forth.”
Bord nodded. “The sooner you get him moved the better. I’ll follow you shortly and we’ll see if there’s anything on him to decide identity. I’ve no notion who he can be, and there’s been no disappearance from my district the last year or so. Age? About fifty?”
“Fifty to sixty at a guess. We’ll be able to tell you that later.”
“Looks more like an industrial bloke than a farmer,” added Bord, and Macdonald replied:
“It’s hard to tell: they all wear dungarees these days and ‘windjammer’ coats, factory hands, lorry drivers, tractor drivers, and stock men. Could this chap be Sam Borwick, Bord?”
“No. Sam’s still a young chap: this one wasn’t young.”
The stretcher men arrived, and Bord said: “Let’s have a look at this door you were talking about.”
“I’ve got a door hung the same way at my place, with a gap at the top, like this one,” said Macdonald. “It was locked and the key was missing when I took over: I heaved it off its hinges—like this.”
He went outside and picked up an iron bar which lay against the wall. “This was in the shippon,” he said. “It’s been handled often enough so I’m not destroying evidence.” He picked up a wooden block, set it on the ground a few inches from the dairy door, slipped the rod under the loosely fitting door, and then, levering against the wooden block, raised the door inch by inch until he felt that it was off its primitive hinges.
“The lock’s very old and there’s plenty of play,” he said, and set his shoulder to the door, which gave with a rasp and groan until there was space for a man to sidle through. Once Macdonald was inside, Bord followed him. The “dairy,” if such it had been, was a space about ten feet long by six feet wide, and enough light came through the partially open door to show that the place had been used as a lumber room, rather than a dairy. There were some buckets, a milking stool, a small old-fashioned paraffin stove, a pile of billets and kindling, a hatchet, a broken pickaxe, and other tools.
“What could have been easier, once the chap had got inside here,” observed Macdonald. “When you remember the way P.O.W.S cut through stone walls with nothing to help them but half a broken knife or some such, it was child’s play to hack a way through that rubble wall with all the tools lying around here.”
Bord nodded. “True enough, Super, and that’s the way it was done, but I’d say one thing: either the chap knew this place, or he acted ‘on information received.’ ”
“Something in that,” agreed Macdonald, “but shall we look over the house and leave the talking till later?”
Bord nodded. They went back into the kitchen and Macdonald said: “I’ll go and open the front door and let the wind blow right through the place. None of these windows will open.”
He walked round outside the house to the front door, unlocked the padlocks, and turned the huge
