Macdonald nodded. “Suits us, as you say, Jock, and it’s a pity for good buildings not to be used. Do you think Mr. Borwick’s son will ever come back here?”
“Not him: he’ll never come back,” said Jock. “Some folks down in Crossghyll know a thing or two about Sam Borwick, though they’d never tell his dad: not that the old man’d listen if they tried: deaf as a post he is, and simple with it. He’s over eighty now and gone childish.”
“But folks know that Sam Borwick is alive, then? He wasn’t killed in the war?”
“Not him: came back all right, Sam did, but he wasn’t coming back here and who’s to blame him? His dad saw to it Sam worked harder than any hired man and he didn’t pay him proper. And ’twas a hard life up here, with no sort o’ comfort in t’ house, the old lady being past bothering about cooking and that. No: reckon Sam Borwick had enough and to spare of High Garth.”
“Then what’s he doing now? Farming somewhere else?”
“Folks say not. Lives in a town now: a real wild one, is Sam, if what’s said is true.”
Jock gave a final glance at his beasts and the two men turned away, fastened the shippon door and set off back to Fellcock. Macdonald said: “What do you think will happen to High Garth when old Borwick dies, Jock?” And Jock smiled.
“ ’Tis left to Sam in his father’s will, that’s well known,” he replied. “Sam’ll sell it, house, land and all, get the highest price he can and that won’t be so much. There’s not many farmers’d bid for it, it’s been let go, land and buildings and all, and that house: well, ’twas never a good house like Fellcock, a right cosy house, Fellcock is. High Garth—well, rector once called it Heartbreak House, ’tis that drear. Not that you couldn’t make something of it if you had a mind,” he added. “Same with the land: that’s sour, drainage all broken down: but nothing that couldn’t be put right if a man had the will to right it.”
Macdonald laughed. “Well, those who five longest will see most,” he said, and Jock nodded contentedly.
“I’m glad you’re casting an eye on it, gaffer. You come along of me sometime and we’ll look over the land, careful-like—just in case.”
Chapter Three
“JUST IN CASE,” echoed Macdonald to himself that evening, as he settled down by the log fire in his own sitting room at Fellcock. He had been round the flock of ewes with Jock and Betty and had been told that there should be some lambs by morning. He had helped Jock to load the trailer with dung from the midden and had driven the tractor while Jock did the muck-spreading and he had taken an axe and chopped enough logs to keep his fire going for a while. Now, pleasantly tired, he looked round his room and thought how comfortable and attractive it was. It was “the parlour” of the farmhouse, a good-sized low-ceilinged room, crossed by beams which were only a few inches above Macdonald’s head: there was a good fireplace, with stone surround and overmantel, and the mullioned windows looked out over Lunesdale and to die heights of the northwest. Behind the parlour was another smaller room which would one day be his office—at the moment it only boasted a table and chair and a filing-cabinet for Government forms.
“Just in case.” It was High Garth that he was thinking about, and there was a sound reason for his preoccupation with that rather derelict holding. Chief Inspector Reeves, who had worked at Scotland Yard with Macdonald for over twenty-five years, had a son named George, who had just finished his National Service. George had spent some of his school holidays in Lunesdale (staying at Giles Hoggett’s cottage in the dales), and now George had determined to become a farmer, with the example of Giles Hoggett and Superintendent Macdonald to overcome his mother’s objections. (His father raised none: Chief Inspector Reeves was all in favour of a farmer son.)
George was now at an agricultural college: when Macdonald looked at the abandoned farmhouse at High Garth, his thoughts turned to George Reeves. The place was likely to come on the market sometime, and what pleasanter neighbour than young Reeves, with the Shearlings to advise him and lend him a hand? The cultivated land of both holdings together was only about eighty acres and there would be three able-bodied men to work them, with perhaps an Irishman to help at hay time, in accordance with local custom. It all seemed to Macdonald an excellent idea: young George would marry, of course, but until he had a wife, his sister Margaret could housekeep for him (this had already been discussed).
Macdonald laughed to himself a little, as he thought out the advantages of the scheme: he would like to see High Garth Hall occupied. He knew that there was some element of policeman’s prejudice in his attitude to an uninhabited, derelict house; too often, in every policeman’s experience, empty houses had been the scenes of crime. In addition was his thrifty Scots’ sense that an unlived-in house was sheer waste in a period when house room was at a premium. It would be a tough job to get High Garth habitable again, but no vigorous young people need shrink from a tough job.
It was at this stage in his meditations that Betty came to the door saying: “Mr. Brough’s here, Mr. Macdonald. He says can you spare him a minute?”
“Of course, Betty. Ask him to come in.”
2
Mr. Matthew Brough was nearing seventy, but he was a fine vigorous figure of a man with huge shoulders and solid girth: washed and shaved for his visit, his face was as fresh-coloured as a young man’s, his blue eyes bright
