“Did he sell his stock when he gave up?” asked Macdonald, who was beginning to know something about the economics of farming.
“Aye, he sold his stock: twenty head of cattle, poultry and geese, a horse (he never had no tractor), and forty ewes, with hoggetts and shearlings. The man at Fellcock—your place—he bought the sheep and kept them on die fell, the land they knew. I went to the sale. Nat Borwick cleared over five hundred pounds that day, in cash, mark you, and if some chap bid ten pounds for summat and wanted to pay in silver—well, silver’s legal tender, and a lot of farmers save their silver coins and go to a farm sale with a bag o’ half-crowns and florins and shillings that’s a job to carry.”
Macdonald nodded. “So I’ve heard. Someone told me that one farmer in the valley saved every half-crown that ever came his way and at the end of the war he’d got a milk kit full of half-crowns.”
“ ’Tis true, I know that. Now after his sale, Nat Borwick had over £500 in currency notes and silver, and I’ve a feeling he never took all that money with him to the little place they live in now. There was nowhere he could hide it, away from his wife and all. I told you he was a mean old skinflint If his wife wanted to buy aught, she’d a job getting any money out of him. Real subsistence farming it was up at High Garth. They kept a cow, and Mrs. Borwick, she made butter and cheese. They grew potatoes and some veges, and they had tea oatcake in place of bread and porridge at most meals. The only meat they had was pig meat, pork, bacon, and that. They never went hungry, but ’twas a hard life. About the only things they paid for was candles and paraffin, because oil’s cheaper than coal for cooking, and there was precious little wood to cut up there. Well, that’s the picture, and I’d say when Nat Borwick realised he’d got to give up, he hid his money somewhere up there at High Garth, where he’d always hid his money.”
“Buried it?” asked Macdonald, but Staple shook his head.
“Nay. If he hid it, ’twas in t’ house somewhere. Why did he have those bars screwed across t’ doors? Because his brass was inside t’ house.”
“Well, as you say, that’s the picture, Mr. Staple, and a very vivid picture you’ve made it,” said Macdonald. “Now let’s get back to Sam Borwick. Don’t you think, when he came out of the army, he’d have come back to these parts to see if his parents were still living?”
“He’d have wanted to know that, right enow. His father had always said, ‘When I’m dead, the land comes to you and you can farm it.’ Sam never meant to farm it, but if it came to him, he could sell it. I’ve no doubt he found out his dad was still alive.”
“And don’t you think he’d have gone up to High Garth, to see if there was anything he could pick up?”
“Aye, he’d have done that, likely enow, and he’d have seen those bars across the doors and thought a bit. He’d have known his father would have had a sale, and Sam would have known, near enough, what the stock was worth.”
“Do you think Sam would have known where his dad hid his money in the old days?”
“Not where he hid it. If Sam had known that, the money wouldn’t ha’ been safe for long. No. The old man was a sight too cunning to let Sam know where t’ money was hid.”
“I’m interested in those two points you made,” went on Macdonald. “First, that Sam would have known, more or less, how much money the sale of the stock would have realised, and second, that seeing the bars across the doors, he argued to himself that the money was hidden in the house somewhere.”
“That’s about the size of it,” agreed Staple.
“So it seems reasonable to suppose that Sam had a go at finding the money,” went on Macdonald. “Knowing the house as he did, it was easy for him to break in through the dairy wall.” Here Macdonald told Staple the manner of entry. “It was cunning, you know, because no one going round the outside of the house, as Brough may have done, or Jock Shearling, would have had any idea that the place had been broken into.”
“Aye, it was cunning, all right. Now about the dead man you found there, any ideas how he fits in?”
“Several ideas, but they may be very wide of the mark. First, Sam may have searched several times himself without finding anything, and said to himself he might do better if he had some help. The money might have been buried under one of those great flagstones and they’d be a difficult job for one man to lift.”
“That’s why the money wasn’t buried under one,” replied Staple. “It had to be somewhere Nat Borwick could get at himself, by himself, and somewhere his wife wouldn’t notice while he was on the job, him being that suspicious. Now in many old houses there’s a hiding place folks’d never think of: in the roof timbers, in the chimneys, aye, in the very beams, hollowed out by some dead-and-gone chap who was
