Bord glanced in from the door which opened into the kitchen and Macdonald said:
“Nothing amiss in here, apart from a bit of plaster fallen. This was a well-built house. If my opinion’s worth anything, any collector or furniture dealer would be glad to have the chance of making an offer for the furniture. It’s uncommonly good.”
“Aye, it’s good and maybe a collector would pay a tidy price for it: genuine old farmhouse furniture’s prized these days. Well, I don’t know if that fact’s got anything to do with our business. There’s nought wrong here. We’d better go upstairs.”
They went back into the kitchen and stood considering the wooden ladder: there was nothing to be learnt from the treads, for plaster dust lay on them undisturbed. Dust from the rubble of the wall and dust from fallen plaster, for patches had fallen from the ceilings in the neglected house.
“It’s a dangerous setup, if you’re not used to steps like those,” said Bord. “Those who are used to them come down facing the steps, not facing outwards: then if you slip, there’s not much harm done.”
Macdonald nodded. “Shouldn’t there be a rope hanging there, to hold on to?” he asked. “The steps are like those up to the hay lofts above the shippons: there’s a stout rope hanging by my barn steps at Fellcock.”
“Aye, it’s the usual thing,” agreed Bord.
They went up the ladder to the bedroom above: it was white with plaster, but showed no footprints. “Nothing in that,” said Bord; “the plaster’s coming down all the time.”
There was an ancient wooden bedstead, “large enow to take the whole family,” said Bord, and a rotted mattress still lay athwart it, horsehair and crude wool protruding from the rotted ticking. Another huge dower chest and another “press,” similar to the one in the kitchen, stood against the walls.
“Reckon he come up here to look around and missed his footing going down,” said Bord.
“Or was pushed down,” said Macdonald. “If you gave me a hefty shove when I wasn’t expecting it, I should probably go forward and there’s nothing to hold on to. The devil of this job is that it might be accident or might not. We’ll get those lads to go over everything with their fingerprint apparatus. A lot will depend on whether there are any fingerprints you can’t account for.”
Bord nodded and a few minutes later they went down the treacherous ladder, and outside again into the fresh air.
2
“Why didn’t the damned old fool tell you what he knew?” demanded Bord irritably. He was talking of Mr. Brough, and Mr. Brough had been taken to hospital, snoring intermittently but incapable of speech.
“He’s seventy and he weighs over fifteen stone,” said the doctor. “His blood pressure’s much too high and he took a toss when he was trying to run. He crashed down full length, a proper wallop, and he hit his head on the ground as he landed. As to whether he was downed because someone hit him, either by throwing a stone or at close quarters, I can’t tell you. The damage is as much shock and the fall as the bruise on his head. If he doesn’t have a thrombosis, I shall be surprised, and it’ll be a good time before he’ll be fit to be questioned—and you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t have a stroke to put the lid on it.”
Bord felt almost personally aggrieved. He agreed with Macdonald that there was nothing to show if accident or violence had caused the death of the unknown man in High Garth kitchen, but Mr. Brough’s “accident” did seem to indicate that violence was afoot. Macdonald set to work to tell Bord about Brough’s conversation with himself and his allusions to Sam Borwick.
“Now what are the real facts about Sam?” asked Macdonald.
Bord was so obviously anxious to have the superintendent’s co-operation, that all talk of etiquette had been disregarded and they were talking like the old cronies which they, in fact, were.
“I can’t tell you the facts about Sam, because I haven’t any facts,” said Bord. “There was a lot of gossip when he didn’t come home when he was demobbed: he stayed on in the Army after his term and served in Malaya, but he was demobbed in Leverstone in 1948: twenty-five, he’d have been then. One or two farmers from hereabouts knew Sam was in Leverstone, they saw him around the cattle market: he was skilled at handling beasts, and he got jobs as drover and suchlike. Folks said he was wild, living the sort of life that’s no credit to anyone, but I never heard any exact statement until Mr. Staple said he’d actually seen Sam run in, arrested when he was driving a stolen lorry. Well, it happened I was in Leverstone myself on business six months ago, and I asked the city police about Sam: they’d never heard of him. Now that doesn’t mean he hadn’t been through their hands, it means he gave a false name if ever he was picked up. You know the form, the name given is Brown, Jones, or Robinson, no fixed address, occupation, none. If nobody comes forward to identify the man charged, there’s no way of learning his real name. If it’s a charge of larceny or suchlike, it’s
