“That’s the lot,” said Lawley, closing the last door, and Staple said:
“Aye. I counted—forty-eight, all told.”
They went back to the manager’s office and heard Wharton saying, “Tim O’Hallaran, he was only here two weeks, last February, it was. Lawley, do you remember the redheaded Irishman, O’Hallaran?”
“Aye, I mind him well enough, and a lazy swine he was.”
“Irishman?” asked Staple.
“So he said,” replied Lawley. “He was no more an Irishman than I am meself. Lancashire, he was. I knew from ’s speech. Well, if it was a red-polled ne’er-do-well you were after, Mr. Staple, I reckon the fellow who called himself O’Hallaran was your man. But where he is now I can’t say, save that it’s not here. Now you’ll be able to tell the Inspector that all our chaps are in the huts. You’ve seen ’em and you’ve counted ’em.”
“That’s right, forty-eight of them,” said Staple; “and no trouble at all. I saw all their faces and I know I’ve never seen any o’ them before.”
“Well, thanks a lot, Mr. Wharton,” said Bord. “We’ve done the job we came to do, and not caused you any trouble, I’m hoping.”
“No trouble at all, Inspector. You can give our chaps a clean sheet so far as this afternoon is concerned. I admit I’m glad it’s turned out the way it has. I hate having trouble with the gangs and if you get their backs up, the work suffers and everything goes haywire.”
As Bord and Staple got in the car again and they moved downhill in the grey evening, Staple said: “Well, that’s that. It wasn’t any of that lot downed Brough. The overseers know what they’re talking about.”
Bord nodded. “Yes, we’ve got to accept their evidence. The next thing to do is to try to get news of Sam Borwick. Perhaps the Leverstone chaps will help us there.”
“One thing you can be sure of: he won’t show his face in our valley,” said Staple.
Chapter Nine
IT WAS DUSK before Macdonald reached home again on that Monday evening (and when he saw the lights gleaming from the windows of Fellcock, he realised how the solitary farmhouse indeed meant “home” to him, his own house, his own land). After leaving Mr. Staple to accompany Bord, Macdonald followed his own devices. He went to see Mrs. Brough, in the guise of sympathetic farming neighbour rather than of police officer, though in Macdonald’s case the two characters often merged into one. Mrs. Brough was a big stout old lady with a magnificent knot of white hair coiled above her plump rosy face. She was a fine upstanding woman, showing no tendency to weep or lament.
“I’m so very sorry about your husband’s accident,” said Macdonald. “I blame myself for it in a way. I sent him hurrying off, for I hadn’t any idea he wasn’t in the best of health: he always seemed so hale and hearty and vigorous.”
“True enough,” she replied. “He’s never been one to fuss or make ado about his health, though doctor did warn him to take things quietly, but bless you, what man has any sense that way? But I’m sorry I didn’t stop him going to that house: I knew no good’d come of it. I had a feeling there was trouble there. I’d have said, ‘No, you don’t go inside there, ’tis no business of ours, leave it alone.’ But when he told me you were going there with him, Mr. Macdonald, I thought that’d be all right.”
“I wish you’d tell me exactly what you mean when you say you had a feeling there was trouble there, Mrs. Brough.”
“There’d always been trouble in a manner of speaking. Old Nat Borwick was a hard, cruel cheese-paring old skinflint. A proper miser he was. He’d rather see his wife go in rags than allow her a few shillings to get a decent coat to her back. Hid his money, wouldn’t even trust it in the bank in case folks knew what he’d got. And he was hard to that boy, cruel hard. Sam was a rogue, but could you blame him, treated the way he was? Oh, that was a dreadful house, I’ve always said so. And when Sam ran away and old Nat had to give up, I said, ‘A good thing, too. If they’d gone on as they were much longer, heaven knows what might’ve happened.’ He had a good sale at the end, old Nat did. Stock was fetching a good price, and look at the way they’ve lived since in that wretched cottage they’ve got.”
She broke off and Macdonald put in: “It was known that old Borwick had a good sale. Do you think he hid his money away in High Garth?”
“Of course he did,” she replied, “and put them bolts and bars across t’ doors, and his old wife without a single decent blanket to keep her warm in winter, a poor thing she was, a bit weak in t’ head if you ask me. And my husband, he was sorry for her. ‘We’ll see to it she gets her rights some time,’ he said. That’s why he was so taken with his idea of going up to High Garth, to see that no one had broken in. And I reminded him, ‘Everyone knows old Nat hid his money up there, you be careful lest some say, “You was the first to find it.” And that was when he said, ‘I’ll ask Mr. Macdonald to come with me, and he’ll bear witness there wasn’t anything there shouldn’t have been.’ ”
“Yes, I understand that,” rejoined Macdonald, “but the only
