Dishonour Among Thieves

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “I remember,” said Wharton. “You wanted to be quit of him because he and Flanagan were always fighting.”

  “That was it, and the other chaps were taking sides—bad for discipline. I couldn’t have it. Since it was Reilley who wanted to go, I said he’d better go. And I got Turner to drive him to Heysham and see him on his boat. He went— back to Ireland. Flanagan stayed his month and then left, and I was glad to be quit of him, even though we were short-handed at the time. It was the end of February, you remember. Well, before he left, Flanagan came to me and said I’d always been unfair to him, had a down on him, because he couldn’t stand Reilley. Reilley was a real bad ’un. I shut him up. I knew in my bones that if one of those two men was a bad ’un, it was Flanagan. And then a week later, Taffy Jones came and told me that Flanagan had said that Reilley was that convict who escaped from Dartmoor in January.”

  “Good lord!” exclaimed Wharton. “You never reported it, Bob.”

  “I didn’t believe it,” retorted Lawley. “It was just the sort of lie Flanagan would tell. Taffy Jones didn’t believe it either, but he said he was quite willing to believe that Flanagan was the escaped convict. Well, there it was. Reilley had gone, Flanagan had gone, and where they’d gone was none of my business. What was the use of making a song about it? There wasn’t any evidence, just a lot of say so. I got talking to some of the chaps about it: nobody knew anything, just what Flanagan whispered around before he left, and the ones who’d heard the whispers told me straight that if they knew for a fact one of those Irishmen was an escaped convict, they wouldn’t have given him away: far from it, they’d have helped him to get clear. That’s how they feel about it.”

  “It’s awkward,” said Wharton. “If the police do come here, I’m pretty well bound to tell them that story.”

  “I don’t see any sense in telling them,” said Lawley. “What does it boil down to? We took on a scratch lot of men because some of our chaps were laid up. When that happens, you have to take on any able-bodied man who’s willing to come. You get a set of scallywags, the dregs of the labour market, and make the best of it. The regular gangers know all the difficulties and they keep order of a sort themselves: see to it there’s no pilfering of other men’s property, such as it is. Well, the men we took on weren’t a bad lot—the two Irishmen were the trouble makers because they quarrelled. Reilley was from Northern Ireland, Flanagan from the south. When I saw they were making trouble, I let Reilley go.”

  “You say we’ve still got six chaps here of the dozen you took on early in February: let’s get them listed. Of the whole lot, those six are the ones we know least about. We can answer for the old hands to some extent, and the lot who came on from Pembridge—well, they know each other to some extent.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean, boss: the February lot were rag, tag and bobtail, came from goodness knows where. All we cared about was that they were able-bodied, used to navvying and capable of putting their backs into a job. The six who’re still here—wait a jiff, I’ll list them for you. There’s Taffy Jones, a good worker but a damned quarrelsome Welshman. Fred Hodges, he’s a cockney and he’s worked his way up north putting in time on road works. Tom Martin came here when the road job at Cowholme was finished, Martin’s the pick of that bunch. Then there were three blokes, Blunt, Scott and Welby, who’d been doing demolition work in Birmingham—clearing slum property. They’re about browned off with this job. It isn’t the work, they’re all tough. It isn’t the eats or living conditions, they’re comfortable and they know it, but they’re bored stiff. They like streets and flicks and skirts, a fish-and-chips at the comer and the chance of going to bed drunk any night they like.”

  “In common with working blokes in general,” said Wharton. “Thanks a lot, Bob. You’re a wonder the way you get to know these chaps and their background.”

  “You’ve got to treat ’em as human beings, listen to their grouses, and find out where they came from,” said Lawley. “It’s like the army over again, in a manner of speaking. A pack of toughs who’re cut off from their homes and their wives. If you can get ’em talking in the evening, it helps. In the army it was regulations and discipline kept them at it: here it’s the knowledge they’ll have a good pay packet at the end of the contract, over and above what’s sent to their wives and deducted for their keep.”

  Wharton nodded and Lawley got up. “See here, boss; I’ll go and get cracking with some of the chaps and see if I can find out a bit more about Reilley and Flanagan. And if so be the flics come up here this evening, don’t go spilling that damn’ silly story of Flanagan’s about Reilley being the escaped convict. It’ll only go putting ideas into policemen’s heads, and I reckon I can kill it stone dead, so that you needn’t repeat it at all, even though you’ve got a conscience where law and order’s concerned.”

  “All right, Bob. Report back later.”

  3

  “Hallo, Tom; come and have a bit of a jaw,” said Lawley. He had spotted Tom Martin as the latter was crossing from the canteen to the men’s huts, and Martin replied, “O.K.,” and fell in behind the overseer. In Lawley’s office, Martin asked: “Any complaints, boss?”

  “Not so far as work’s concerned. The job’s going fine, but what’s this I hear about you and Butler packing up on us?”

  “Well, I was going to tell you: they’re wanting men on the extensions to Heysham Harbour. The pay’s no better than here and hours are longer, but at least there’s a bit of life when you have done for the day. This blasted wilderness is all right for a bit, then it gets you down.”

  “Yes, I know all about that, but we’re nearly through with this job. If you stick it out, you can be entered on the company’s permanent pay roll and I’m looking out for another gang leader. You’ve pulled your weight here, Tom. I’d recommend you and the next job’s at Leverstone. However, just think it over. Don’t go off to Heysham all in a hurry: that job won’t last long. Now there was another thing I wanted to talk to you about; weren’t you and Reilley buddies?”

  “More or less. What’s this about Reilley?”

  “You heard the rumour Flanagan put round that Reilley was the chap who escaped from Dartmoor?”

  “Flanagan was a bloody liar. But why dig up that silly bilge?”

  “You can guess, Tom; you’re not lacking. You heard the story Turner told this afternoon?”

  “Oh, my gawd. . . . You mean the camp’s going to be lousy with cops?”

  “They’ll come up, they’re Sound to. One thing, we’ve got this afternoon taped. I know that none of our chaps was over the fell, taking pot shots at farmers.”

  “That’s a bit of luck,” said Martin. “Most days anybody might have been anywhere. Now you’re never going to fill the police up with Flanagan’s ruddy lies about Reilley?”

  “Not if you can prove it was only lies.”

  “Easy,” said Martin. “When was it that Dartmoor bloke broke prison? Sometime in January, wasn’t it?”

  “Aye, the middle of January.”

  “Well, that’s that. Reilley was working on the Globe Electric job all January. I know, I was on that job, too. They laid a new road from the factory to railhead, at Cowholme junction—saved them a pull of twenty miles over the fell roads to get their stuff on the railway. I went there from Ringway, where we’d been laying a new runway. Reilley was on the Globe job when I got there at the new year, so was Taffy Jones. We all came on here together early February, when we’d seen the notices you put out, unskilled labour required—that’s us.”

  “Well, thanks for telling me about Reilley,” said Lawley. “While we’re talking about unskilled labour, I’ve often wondered why chaps like you didn’t learn a trade and cash in on the wages a skilled man gets.”

  “Learn a trade—and what happens then? Join a union, get a card before you can take a job anywhere. Kowtow to Union rules, what you can do, what you can’t, be bossed by the shop stewards. Industry’s lousy with Union regulations, gives me the sick. While a bloke’s
only using a shovel, shifting this, that and the other, no one bothers him with regulations. You can dig in a garden or shift muck from a cow house and no one cares how long you work and what tools you do it with. I like my freedom; I like working in the open and no ruddy shop stewards watching you at a flicking conveyor belt.”

  “Well, it’s lucky for us there are other blokes like you: casual labour, as they say. Now see here, Tom; you’ve put me wise about Reilley. Do you know anything about Flanagan?”

  “No, and nobody else does either, except that he’s a dirty dog.”

  “I often wondered why he came here. He hadn’t got the guts to do a heavy job like this.”

  “You’re not the only one who wondered. I’ll tell you my guess, but it’s only a guess. He came here because he knew explosives were used when we struck rock. He knew if he could lay hands on detonators and suchlike he could market them to the I.R.A.—or that’s my guess. But he found this outfit was too well managed for him to get away with it.”

  “Why did he hate Reilley?”

  “I think Reilley knew a bit about Flanagan. I bet Flan was on the crook since he was first breeched—but don’t go putting the cops on his trail. Once you start on that line, there’s not a chap in any of the gangs who won’t pack up on you, including yours truly. The minute the cops get an idea we’re a blooming lot of criminals or ex-convicts, they’ll be after us for ever and always. Leave it alone, boss—or you’ll be left alone yourself to finish the job without any gangers.”

  “Keep your hair on,” said Lawley. “I’m no more keen on having the police up here than you are.”

  Chapter Seven

  “GOOD DAY, Mr. Macdonald,” said John Staple. “I’m right glad to see you; come inside. ’Tis a small house, but cosy and homely, and I’m right comfortable here. I’ve got a few beasts and a bit of land—only six acres and the garden—but it’s enough to keep me interested. Sit in the corner there, you’ll mind that chair, you always liked it. So you’ve found a spot of trouble up in the hills over yonder?”

  “We have indeed,” said Macdonald. He liked old John Staple and knew him to be trustworthy. “News travels apace in these parts,” he added.

  “Aye; the story’s all over the valley and I don’t wonder at it Now can you tell me about Mr. Brough? Is he in a bad way, as they say?”

  “He’s a sick man, but it wasn’t only the tumble and the blow on his head. There’s blood pressure and other problems to worry the doctors.”

  “Aye, I know he had trouble that way, and he’s a big weight. Fat’s no good to a man as he ages.”

  “You’re not troubled yourself that way,” said Macdonald, studying Mr. Staple’s lean stringy length. “Now Inspector Bord came up over yonder to look into things and Bord said a few hard words about Brough, because the latter had information he’d have done better to give to the police, but he kept quiet about it and he’s suffered for it. Now, Mr. Staple, one of the few facts which Brough told me brought your name into it: he said that you knew Sam Borwick was in trouble with the police in Leverstone, but the Leverstone police know nothing about Sam Borwick, not under that name, anyway.”

  “Aye, I see what you’re getting at,” replied Staple, “and I’ll tell you all I know, which isn’t much, and if I seem a long time getting to the point—well, you’re a patient man as I remember you.”

  “Yes, I’m patient and I don’t want to hustle you,” said Macdonald.

  “Then let’s begin at the beginning,” said Staple. “I always thought there might be trouble with that lad of Borwick’s. Sam was a twister and a liar; not all his fault maybe, for his father was a hard man and life up at High Garth was a hard life. The boy did a man’s work but was never paid a proper wage. Old Nat Borwick did all he could to stop the boy going into the army. He made his wife write to the recruiting people saying that his son was the only labour he’d got on the farm and if the government wanted the farmers to produce food they’d got to have some labour, so the boy’s call up was deferred. The end of that was that Sam made off on his own and joined the army and the old man carried on alone until he couldn’t do it any longer. Well, that’s the background, and some of us were sorry for Nat Borwick. Hard he might have been, but he was a worker and he tilled his land and cared for his beasts till they nearly had to carry him away. And then he said, ‘When Sam comes back, that’s all ready for him. Sam will farm High Garth as me and my dad did, and their dads before them.’ And again we was sorry for the old chap, because we knew Sam would never come back and work up there. We heard Sam had been seen around the cattle market at Leverstone, doing a drover’s job, but he never answered if anybody spoke to him, only to say, ‘I’m not Sam Borwick; never heard of him.’ ”

  “Did anybody ever tell Mr. and Mrs. Borwick they’d seen Sam?”

  “Nay, what was the good? It’d only have hurt them, had they known their boy was back in England and wouldn’t come near them. It was the same when the story got round that Sam had been sentenced for thieving, with some of his flash friends: Mr. Carter from up the valley, he heard that in the Leverstone cattle market, but Sam never gave his own name, called himself Evans or Davies or Owen or some such —there’s a lot of Welshmen in Leverstone and they’re mostly Evans or Davies or Owen. Well, Mr. Carter said to me: ‘No sort of use going to his parents with that story: only make them ashamed and they’re a sadly pair without making them any sadder.’ ”

  Staple paused a moment and looked across at Macdonald, very straight and stem. “That was true enow,” he went on. “I was right sorry for them, still saying, ‘When the boy comes back.’ Well, then there was quite a long while we heard nought and nobody saw Sam. I said, ‘Likely he’s in gaol,’ and he may have been, but ’twas said he’d got a job at the port, cook on a tramp steamer or suchlike. They’ll take on anybody when they’re short of men, for a cook they must have. And then about a year ago, I saw Sam, as Mr. Brough told you. He was driving a lorry behind the cattle market and the police stopped him and took him off. Well, I could have gone to the police and said, ‘I know that chap and I know his real name, which is more than you do.’ And what would have been the use? The police had got the chap and they could charge him. If I’d told his name, it’d have been in the papers all up and down the valley: ‘Son of Lunesdale farmer arrested in Leverstone. Sam Borwick charged with stealing a motor vehicle.’ As I saw it, ’twould bring more grief to the old folks and not a mite o’ help to anybody. Anyway, Sam wasn’t sentenced that time. Later I asked a chap who was beside me when the police took Sam off, ‘Did that fellow the police picked up get a long sentence?’ I asked, and he said, ‘No. They said there was no evidence of intent to steal.’ He was fined thirty shillings and discharged.”

  “I may have to go into that later with the Leverstone police,” said Macdonald. “We’ve got to get Sam Borwick identified. Now for a different question. You know old Borwick pretty well, Mr. Staple. Do you think there’s any chance he left anything valuable at High Garth, apart from the furniture, that is?”

  2

  “I’ve asked myself that question often enow,” said Staple. “Nat Borwick, he’s a rum customer, always has been. He can sign his name and read the headlines in the newspapers, maybe, but that’s as far as his schooling went. He could reckon, of course, tot up a few figures and work out the change due. Now Nat never had a bank account in’s life; paid ready cash and was paid in cash, that was his rule. If he took a beast to market, he’d ask the buyer to pay in cash. Folks knew him and he had his own way. If he bought stock in, he’d pay for it on the nail, pound notes and silver. Now a farmer who runs his business that way has to keep a lot of cash in the house, and an old skinflint like Nat, he’d have a safe hiding place, somewhere his own missis didn’t know about. That’s a fact, because I had a talk with her one day, after they gave up at High Garth.”

  “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.”