“Surely he is not a miser too?” Iona asked.
“No, because he has nothin’ to hide. When he goes to look at what his uncle had left him, he finds it had all been hidden somewhere in the house or in the grounds or even in the lake and no one has set eyes on a penny of it.”
Iona stared at him.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “If he had money, even though he was afraid it might be stolen, why should he hide it anywhere but in a bank or a safe?”
“That be just what we has asked ourselves, miss. We thinks, as his Lordship did when he arrived, that all he had to do was to look around the house, put the key in the lock and Hey Presto there it’d be.”
The way the shopkeeper spoke made Iona laugh.
“But it was not there?” she quizzed.
“Not a sign of it. It were then he began to lose his temper. He
