“You’re right there, by gum,” agreed Bord. “Once the old man’s dead, and he won’t last long, I’m told, there’ll be nothing for the old lady to live on. Sam will sell the farm, but he won’t help his mother.”
“Well, let’s have a bash at searching,” said Macdonald. “You can concentrate on the house, I’ll do the barn. Giles Hoggett’s coming up to help me, he knows more about these old stone barns than either of us.”
“Right,” said Bord cheerfully, “and if we find the cash, we’ll take the law into our own hands and give it to the old lady, saying, ‘See here, ma’am, this must be your husband’s, so you take it to him. You’ve been looking after him a long time now, so you can look after his money, too.’ She’ll understand and that’s the last we shall ever hear of it,” ended Bord cheerfully.
2
Giles Hoggett stood in the great barn at High Garth and stared about him thoughtfully. “Valuables have been hidden in old barns for generations,” he said. “In the old days when the Scots came marauding down Lunesdale, driving the cattle off and looting the houses, valuables were often sunk in the wells. But I don’t think old Borwick would have used the well, he was hiding things from his son and his wife, not from the marauding Scots, and his son and wife would have noticed if the old man was busy round the well. Try those grain bins, Macdonald—they may have false bottoms. I’ve looked at the cattle standings, but the flagstones haven’t been lifted for a lifetime, and the threshing floor and the rest haven’t been dug up.” He looked up to the great beams of the roof, and said, “There are plenty of hiding places up there, but I don’t think old Nat Borwick would have gone so high. He was old and shaky and a ladder tall enough to reach those beams would have been too heavy for him to shift.”
“What are the holes in the wall?” asked Macdonald.
“They were left to support the beams for a mason’s scaffolding, as the wall got too high to be reached from ground level,” said Giles. “They’ve got birds’ nests in them. There’s a ladder there will reach them. Are you going up, or shall I?”
“I’ll go up,” said Macdonald. The holes were about fifteen feet from the ground, at intervals of ten feet or so, and he shifted the ladder along and reached into hole after hole, pulling out the closely packed straw and mud which some industrious birds had woven together to make a close compact nest—but he found no sign of coins, of cashbox or wallet or bag, and at last he said, “Nothing doing, Giles,” and stared across at the opposite wall of the barn.
“It’s odd,” he went on. “If those holes were meant for beams, you’d expect to find corresponding holes in the wall opposite, and there aren’t any.”
“You’ve got it,” said Giles. “There must have been corresponding holes in the opposite wall, that’s how the beam was supported. And the holes on this side have been blocked up so that you can’t see them: they’re blocked with stone slabs so that they don’t show, but they must be there. And anybody who took all that trouble to block them so skilfully must have had a reason for doing it. I’ve got a wide chisel and a bar to lever with—so up you go. It all fits,” he added. “There’s this ladder, which is long enough to reach those holes, but not long enough to reach the roof, and it’s not too heavy for an old chap to lift.”
Macdonald went up the ladder, fixing it carefully so that it was exactly opposite the beam holes in the farther wall, and Giles paced out the intervals carefully and measured the height of the holes. When Macdonald tackled the first spot, he knew they had found a deliberately contrived hiding place. The hole was blocked by a stone, fashioned so that it fitted the gap accurately and looked exactly like the rest of the stone wall. With Giles Hoggett’s wide chisel and levering bar, Macdonald cleared the stone away, but there was nothing hidden in the gap behind it. He came down and shifted the ladder, three times, each time removing a roughly dressed stone. It wasn’t until he had moved a fourth stone that he
