The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter Ten

‘So where does all of that get us?’ said Alec, through toast-crumbs, the next morning. He had his breakfast napkin tucked into his stiff collar to preserve the sparkling shirt-front and the black tie. Cadwallader, surprisingly less pragmatic – perhaps wearing one’s napkin in one’s collar fell foul of one of those unexpected pockets of etiquette in American life, although why they bother with these odd little nods to politeness in the overall scheme of things one can hardly see – Cadwallader for whatever reason, anyway, was simply leaning over from well back with his neck stretched out and scooping egg into the bowl of his fork, rather confirming my point.

Cad and Alec were bound for Robert Dudgeon’s funeral, Buttercup and I, of course, being barred from attendance along with all other females including his own widow. I had always thought this particular stricture of the Presbyterian Scotch one of the most unbending (from a very strong field) but I was glad that Mrs Dudgeon did not have a funeral to contend with; if she was no more restored to herself than she had been at my last sight of her I was sure she could not have stood it.

I had been rather wrung out myself at the end of the day before, when I had finally deposited the six little scallywags plus pushchair at their garden gate and returned home, and I had been almost thankful when Buttercup stuck out her lip and firmly vetoed any talk of the case over dinner or through our card game afterwards. Since she was breakfasting in bed this morning, however – her habitual indolence having overcome any thoughts of her role as hostess at last after five days of manful effort – I was taking the chance to bring the men up to date.

Cad had been torn between triumph and sulks when I revealed that I was coming around to the idea of poisoning after all, and seemed to think I had not been playing fair in not telling him all about my mysterious mushroom on the very first night.

‘We must remain cautious,’ I had told him. ‘It might be something that would show up clearly in the stomach, in which case it can’t have been the sandwich. Or it might be something which doesn’t work through the blood, in which case it couldn’t be the burrs. And we might find a perfectly innocent explanation for either the sandwich or the burrs or both, in which case we are back where we started.’

‘Well?’ prompted Alec. ‘Remaining cautious, of course, what’s next?’

‘What’s next,’ I said, ‘are some jobs suitable for the untrained enthusiast – you and me – and some for which we unfortunately need an expert. We need to find out where the cart turned around and why. I’m going to walk the obvious routes today and see what I can see. You, Cad, are going to latch on to the Burry Man’s boys at the funeral – can you remember what they looked like? Good – and pin this blasted sandwich down once and for all. Then this evening, Alec, you must go to “Broon’s Bar”, with fingers crossed that the fair Joey is on duty, and see if you can get any further with her – I’m sure she knows something and I can’t quite work out what her standing is with the Dudgeon family. She was trusted to sit with Mr Dudgeon’s body – trust which she betrayed, by the way, in leaving him alone – but on the other hand Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters are divided in their opinions of her. One of them sounded very sniffy about the girl yesterday, until another reminded her rather grudgingly that we are all “Jock Tamson’s bairns” when all’s said and done -’

‘All who?’ said Alec.

‘Jock Thompson’s bairns,’ I said. ‘All the same underneath I suppose is the best way to explain it. All God’s children.’

‘Sounds rather a disrespectful name for God,’ said Cad.

‘It wasn’t a literal translation,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Bet – or was it Lizzy? – said that and then Tina said that they of all people – meaning the sisters – had no business turning their noses up at the girl just because she worked in a bar either. Interesting, don’t you think?’

‘Interesting is putting it rather mildly,’ said Cad. ‘It’s like a ball of wool.’

‘If only it were that straightforward,’ said Alec. ‘It’s more like a bowl of Italian noodles. Slipperier than wool, and when it’s all unravelled there are far more than one strand and most of them are irrelevant anyway.’

‘And the irrelevant ones will look identical to the crucial ones right until the end, knowing our luck,’ I said. Alec and I were showing off a little in front of Cad, I suppose, but he was so easy to show off to, so very guileless in his readiness to be impressed.

‘And all the while,’ I said, getting back to my pep-talk, ‘you can be thinking about what Mrs Dudgeon would be doing with a pen and ink out in the woods in the wee small hours. And I’ll be doing the same.’

‘Did you look around for paper?’ said Alec.

‘Why would there be paper?’ I said. ‘Why, if she simply wanted to write something down, or write a letter, could she not have done it in her own bedroom with the key turned in the lock and a candle to work by? Why would she have stumbled out into the black night?’

‘But it’s just as hard to explain why she did so with only the pen and the ink,’ said Alec. I agreed.

‘Is this why you need an expert?’ said Cad.

‘No,’ I told him. ‘That problem only needs to be worried at until logic prevails. We need a medical doctor who knows what tests are routinely carried out during a post-mortem. And an expert – a chemist, to be precise – to augment my very slim store of memories about this alcohol-dependent poison wouldn’t hurt either.’

‘Mr Turnbull?’ suggested Cad.

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Mr Turnbull with his scientific background and extensive knowledge of plants would be ideal if he were not so in the thick of it all. What I mean is that Mr Turnbull is auditioning for the part of first murderer and doing rather well. He can’t possibly understudy as expert witness too.’

‘Mr Turnbull?’ Cad was almost spluttering. ‘Mr Turnbull with his rosy cheeks and “healthful exercise”?’ Alec and I shared a smile, each of us thinking that Cad was a fine one to talk.

‘Oh, but I’m with Dandy there,’ said Alec. ‘At least, I bumped into Mrs Turnbull coming out of the Queensferry Arms yesterday and she struck me as utterly ruthless. She didn’t know me from Adam and yet she launched right in, sermonizing. So if she’s anything like her husband…’

‘She certainly is,’ I told him. ‘She’s a wife in the Adam’s rib style. Sickening. But I must say, darling, if this meeting was near luncheon time you must have been quite irresistible to any Temperance enthusiast for miles around.’

‘Once and for all, Dandy,’ said Alec sternly, whisking his napkin out of his collar and flicking away the crumbs in his lap, ‘I was not drunk.’ This time it was Cad and I who shared the smile.

I parked my motor car at the Bellstane and set off in the cart tracks of the Dudgeons up the steep street known as the Loan. The Burry Man had arrived back at the Rosebery Hall at bang on six o’clock, ending his day with the curious little stiff-legged sprint up the steps, as I myself had seen. Mr and Mrs Dudgeon had appeared at the greasy pole competition not long after it began at half past six. I was happy to say a quarter to seven at the latest: I remembered someone grumbling that the fun would be over too soon and that ‘Rubbert’ should be held back until some of the less accomplished and so much more entertaining contestants had had a bash. So, with ten minutes at least to get him out of his burry suit and into his own clothes – and considerably longer if he washed and if he rubbed his arms and legs as much as I would have liked to after such a day – and taking into consideration the numbers of townspeople still surging down the Loan towards the fun, who along with the gradient would prevent the pony from picking up any kind of pace – I did not see how they could even have got as far as the edge of the village before turning back.

Thinking it all out like this I soon realized that if they had been waylaid at all it must have been the very briefest of accostings and must have taken place in the street, the kind of encounter into which it was hard to incorporate an impromptu sandwich – Lord, how sick and tired I was of that blasted sandwich! I hoped with all my heart that Alec would manage to discover from one of the Burry Man’s helpers that some whiter-than-white sister-in-law slipped it into one of the buckets for his teatime snack and we could cut it out of our considerations once and for all.

The upside to my having worked out that their little trip up the hill and down again was so short, however, was that I felt sure someone must have seen them turn. Revellers were simply flocking to the Fair and the Loan was like a funnel, pouring all comers into the bottleneck of Craw’s Close and the Bellstane Square. As I looked up the street now, I saw that one side of the Loan was unpromising for a stretch, the hulk of the bottling plant and a couple of dairies taking up most of it, but on the other side there were lanes opening off it and cottages facing on to it all the way up to the New Kirk, after which a run of villas lined one side of the road as it levelled off, these stretching past the village school to the end of Killinghouse Road and beyond. I felt sure they could not possibly have got any further than Killinghouse Road in the time. They might, of course, have turned off before that, along Station Road where a row of grander villas sat rather more anonymously behind high hedges, and if they had spotted someone they did not care to meet on Station Road and turned around in a hurry there was a chance that they might have managed it unobserved. But all in all, it looked very promising. I could but try.

Although it made me puff as I climbed it, I was glad of the steep rise of the Loan, for it gave me a reason, when I saw a pair of village women talking at the corner of Stoneycroft Lane, to stop near them and turn around, pretending to admire the view.

They lowered their voices a little and I could hear the rhythm of their chatter slow down as they took half of their attention away from the conversation to appraise me, but they kept talking and so it was the most natural thing in the world for me to turn towards them, having drunk my fill of the sight of the river, and politely exchange a few words.

‘Beautiful view,’ I said. They nodded, unsmiling.

‘But a very sad day,’ I added. I was in the black linen that Grant had provided and these two were in grey and black too, albeit under white aprons and with sleeves rolled to the elbows and hidden under white cuffs.

‘We were just sayin’ the Fair would nivver be the same again,’ said one. ‘It’s a terrible thing for the Ferry.’

‘Indeed it is terrible,’ I agreed. ‘But as to its effect on the Fair…’ They looked at me, intrigued. ‘I don’t know if you heard any of the kerfuffle between the various parties.’ I gestured up the hill a little to where St Andrew’s UP and St Margaret’s RC squared up to each other across the street. They raised their eyebrows and drew a little nearer, gossips by nature, clearly. ‘I don’t pretend to know who is on which side or even why,’ I went on with perfect honesty, ‘but there was talk about trying to stamp it out. I should have thought it would be much harder to do so now. It would look so dreadfully like disrespect to Mr Dudgeon. To my mind anyway.’ This could easily have misfired, had these two women happened to straddle the sectarian divide (and I felt a little guilty about blaming the reverends quite so fair and square as all this. I was pretty sure it was the local ladies who were the ringleaders and the ministers and priests had simply had their heads turned. Boredom, I had decided, is responsible for a great deal of unwarranted meddling. Look, after all, at me) but I was lucky, in this instance.

‘We’re both Parish,’ said one of the women with a touch of pride at making up a corner of such a reasonable threesome.

‘And I said as much to thon Mrs Turnbull when she come round with her pamphlets,’ said the other. ‘We get all the preaching we need for the week at the Vennel on a Sunday morning, thank you very much.’

‘Oh, she’s at it already?’ I said. They nodded, lips tightly pursed.

‘And Rab no’ even in his grave.’ This was accompanied by a raising of one corner of an apron to dab at the eyes.

‘What twaddle,’ I said, suppressing the thought that the post-mortem had shown this to be very far from true. In fact, Mrs Turnbull with her Temperance pamphlets was suspiciously near the mark. With a feeling of thankfulness at how easily the conversation had come round to the bit, I went on: ‘What a shame Mr and Mrs Dudgeon didn’t go straight home on Friday night after all, though, wasn’t it? Perhaps if he had gone quietly home to rest.’

‘That was a thing he nivver did, madam,’ said the woman who had been dabbing her eyes. ‘He was Burry Man all day and then he climbed the greasy pole at nicht.’

‘Aye, and won the ham most years, at that.’

‘A grand man.’

‘Indeed,’ I said and left a respectful pause. ‘But didn’t you know that they set off to go home on Friday at six o’clock in their little cart and then changed their minds? I’m surprised you didn’t notice them passing.’

‘I was doon at the Fair well afore six.’

‘Tae think we’ll nivver see him again on thon daft wee shell hutch.’

‘Indeed,’ I said again. ‘Well, that’s the fact of the matter. They set off and then they turned back. I wonder why.’

‘A proud man,’ said the weeping woman, beginning to dissolve in earnest now. ‘He must have been feelin’ no’ well and then his pride got the better of him and he pushed hissel’ too far. Puir Rubbert.’

‘But you didn’t actually see them turning,’ I said, making sure. Then I addressed the other, more stalwart of the pair. ‘Did you happen to be about when the little cart turned around?’

‘Naw, I didnae,’ she said while her companion sobbed. ‘I didnae see them at all on Burry Man’s day. First time in my life I didnae see the Burry Man. I was that busy cleaning ready for the Fair, I jist sent the bairn to the door with a penny and I never saw him. Never gave him a nip.’ She was beginning to brim too.

‘Aw, Alice now,’ said the other. ‘Dinnae gie yersel’ trouble. You couldnae have kent and like you say the bairn gave him his penny, ye’ve naethin’ to feel bad for.’

I wondered in silence at this; it was hard to credit that one of these women, as sane and everyday-looking as one could imagine, might feel she had brought down misfortune on Dudgeon’s head by neglecting to go to the door with his whisky.

‘I’m as bad, if you like,’ the other went on. ‘I saw Chrissie the day before and I wis sure there was something no’ right with her, but I wis rushin’ to get done and get back hame to get the teas on and I let her go by. It’s jist the way o’ things. If you knew when trouble wis comin’ ye’d be more careful-like.’

I listened patiently to all of it. It was just as Alec had found with his barman; everyone was now ready shamelessly to claim they had ‘known something was wrong’ but everyone had unaccountably done nothing about it and had somehow neglected to mention it until events proved them right. I smiled blandly, inwardly deciding that this woman at least was too full of self-important fancy to be relied upon, but then I stopped. She said she noticed something wrong with Mrs Dudgeon the day before? But as far as the world at large knew, there was nothing wrong with Mrs Dudgeon, either the day before or at any other time. Only Alec, Cad and I – and Buttercup, so far as Buttercup ever thought anything – thought that something was wrong with Mrs Dudgeon the day before.

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘I mean what was it that concerned you about poor Mrs Dudgeon? I mean, I’m sure you have no more to berate yourself for than your friend does.’ I gave Alice’s arm a friendly rub. The rub did her no good, but she perked up a little at the prospect of hearing what her neighbour had to say.

‘I wis in the baker’s,’ said the woman, ‘in the queue, and I saw Chrissie Dudgeon across the road, at the police station.’

At this, Alice gasped and I felt my pulse surge with excitement. A woman like Mrs Dudgeon would only darken the door of a police station in the very direst emergency, I was sure. Amongst her kind, frequenting police stations was on a par with popping in and out of pawnshops or having a standing account at the bookies’.

‘She didnae go in. She was… it wis like she was minded to go in, though. She stood ootside, goin’ from foot to foot, jist lookin’ and then she turned, suddenlike, as if a pack of dogs was after her and away she went along the street, like nothin’ on earth.’

‘But why?’ I said. ‘What happened? Did someone say something to her? Did someone follow her?’

The woman misunderstood.

‘I ken,’ she said. ‘I ken fine I should have gone after her, but I didnae want to lose my place. There wis only six pies left and I needed four and there was a long queue at ma back, and I hud nae time to make anything else for their teas with my Fair cleanin’ needin’ done, so I just watched her go. And now… puir Chrissie.’

‘Puir, puir Chrissie,’ chimed Alice. ‘Wi’ her man and her laddie both gone.’ At this both of them gave in completely and I offered a sickly grin. I was unsure of the polite way to take leave of a person one has found chatting calmly and then reduced to tears.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I muttered, and left.

It was all I could do to contain my euphoria. We had been utterly stumped as to why Dudgeon suddenly changed his mind about donning the burry suit. All we had known was that whatever it was had happened on Thursday afternoon, at teatime. Now here was Mrs Dudgeon, going to the police, or rather almost going to the police, and leaving in a hurry, visibly disturbed. And on Thursday afternoon, at teatime, no less – it had to be if the cottager woman had no time to cook and could not relinquish her dibs on the shop-bought pies. Mrs Dudgeon must have seen someone, inside the police station I should guess, that she most fervently did not want to see, someone who sent her scuttling back the way she had come, to tell her husband that he had to abandon his role. It was not too much of a stretch either to imagine that she had seen this same someone on the Loan or Station Road on Friday evening, once Dudgeon had gone through with it after all, and that again she had turned and fled, this time on the little cart and with her husband beside her. Whatever hold this person had over the Dudgeons, whatever harm it was this person threatened, I did not know and could not readily guess but a picture was beginning to form in me – unimaginative as I usually am – of the two of them, harried and hunted, unable to tell anyone what was wrong, unable finally to bear the strain. In the heat of the August morning, I suddenly shivered.

There were no more villagers loitering usefully as I ascended the rest of the Loan and as I had expected there were no signs of life along Station Road, just the sweep of low walls and high hedges hiding the solid Edwardian dwellings from view. There was no way of knowing whether the cart might have turned along here on Friday evening or carried on up the hill straight ahead, but thinking that there was more chance of another encounter if I kept on, I passed the end of the road and kept climbing then, as the hill levelled off at the gates to the school playground, I heard a hearty voice hailing me.

‘Good morning, Mrs Gilver.’

‘Oh, God,’ I groaned to myself. Of course, since I was passing the school, I was also passing the schoolhouse, and just as inevitably on this bright summer morning, Mr and Mrs Turnbull were out in their garden, engaged in healthful exercise in the fresh air. I deliberated about waving and walking on, and then decided to take the bull by the horns. For one thing, it might have been one of the Turnbulls that turned the Dudgeons round on Friday evening and sent them back down to the Craw’s Close and the greasy pole. So I needed to ask what they were up to on Thursday afternoon too. And besides, I might, just possibly, be able to turn the conversation back to toadstools again – in fact, given how much they both seemed to enjoy discomfiting other people, they might well turn it for me – and it would be very interesting to see if they began to squirm when I veered towards the particular mushroom in question. (How I wished I could remember its name!) Even if I did not have the nerve to do this much, though, it might still be well worth my while to get them talking again: I needed to decide for myself whether I suspected them because they were actually suspicious or if I merely disliked them so much that I wanted them to be guilty. Thinking that a detective’s life is full of sacrifice, I organized my face into a surprised smile and called back.

‘We meet again! How lovely! And what a splendid garden.’ This was pure flattery. The truth was, I was very pleased to see, that their plot was not a patch on either of the Mr Dudgeons’, looking straggly and rather dry, their spinach bolting for the heavens.

‘You certainly do keep busy,’ I added toadyingly, as I reached the garden wall. ‘I’m surprised you have time for this with all your other pursuits.’

‘A little each day is easily accomplished,’ said Mr Turnbull.

‘And it’s such healthful exercise,’ Mrs Turnbull chimed in. I managed to maintain my smile and suppress my groan.

‘But I must leave it there for today, my dear,’ said Mr Turnbull, taking a fat watch out of his waistcoat pocket, ‘and get ready for the funeral.’

‘Ah yes,’ I said, as though only then remembering. ‘Poor Robert Dudgeon. It’s today, isn’t it?’

Mrs Turnbull was gathering together her trowels and her basket of greenery – whether scrawny harvest bound for their luncheon table or weeds bound for the heap it was hard to tell – clearly not planning to continue her toils alone.

‘I wonder if you would like to join me for a cup of coffee, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘It’s just gone eleven.’

Now, I am no snob but I was a little startled at this. The woman seemed to have not the faintest idea of her place. However, as it happened, the invitation was most welcome from a professional point of view, even if it was quite improper and without any social appeal.

‘Delightful,’ I gushed. ‘How kind.’ I unlatched the garden gate and entered, mentally looking forward with great eagerness to a day when the case would be solved and I could cut her dead.

She rang for coffee as we entered the hall and then excused herself to go and tidy the garden out of her hair and fingernails, ushering me towards a parlour. It was exactly what I should have expected. Some good late Georgian furniture, inherited no doubt, but with all its lovely gleam polished so aggressively that it looked as though it was coated in golden treacle, bare dark boards smelling strongly of household soap with not a rug in sight, and ill-fitting slub covers over the chairs and sofa in one of those prints of cabbage roses like bunches of gargoyles tied together at the neck. The same ugly print made up the curtains, the pelmet, the runner on the sideboard and even the lampshades, suggesting that Mrs Turnbull had made a bulk purchase of the stuff and run up the lot herself. Despite the warmth of the morning outside, slowly melting its way to another hot afternoon, the room was frigid, even the paper fan in the grate curling with damp, a cold not to be explained by the way that the windows were ‘healthfully’ open six inches at top and bottom, and I would have bet my eyes that the paper fan was kept there all year round and that Mr and Mrs Turnbull sat here in the midwinter with nothing but their own glowing selves to keep them warm. If I had been on the school board I should have taken them up about it; it takes years to warm a stone house up again once it has got properly cold, and one could imagine the next incumbent shivering through a few Januarys cursing the Turnbulls with chattering teeth.

Mrs Turnbull rejoined me just as the coffee arrived, looking rather revolting with bare legs and sleeves cut short to the shoulder. I had kept my little jacket around my shoulders and I had to try hard not to cradle the coffee cup in my hands for warmth when she passed it to me.

‘Yes, poor Mr Dudgeon,’ I said again, as we took our first sips.

Mrs Turnbull looked rather drawn both ways at this. She wanted nothing more than to launch into all that she felt about the death, but she did not want to start from a point of sympathizing with the departed. She pursed her mouth and made a tsk-ing sound.

‘The children are terribly unnerved by it all,’ she said.

‘Your children?’ I asked, wondering why that should be so.

‘In a sense,’ she answered. ‘My husband and I have not been blessed with children of our own, and so we think of all his charges as our children. And, as I say, they are beginning to make up silly stories about it already to frighten themselves with.’

‘It was most unfortunate,’ I said. ‘Dozens of them must have been right there on the spot when he fell. One can only hope that it was all over so quickly that they could be led away before they really latched on to what was happening.’

‘If only that were so,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘But I’m afraid the parents, nine times out of ten, take no care at all to keep their talk away from little ears. And when they try to be discreet they simply confuse the children even more. By the very next day, there were half a dozen different versions of what had happened, all wildly fanciful, of course. I heard them regaling one another as they sat having their picnics. Quite tiny children some of them and you would not believe what they came out with.’

‘Oh, I think I would,’ I said, laughing. ‘I’ve been exposed to the Dudgeons next door.’

‘The who?’ said Mrs Turnbull.

‘Next door to Robert and Chrissie,’ I said. ‘The little red-headed scamps. They have some simply bloodcurdling tales to tell of what goes on in those woods.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Turnbull, frowning slightly, ‘there we cannot blame the parents. Donald is one of our stalwarts.’

‘Really?’ I said, wondering to what manner of stalwart she was alluding.

‘Oh yes, a tireless worker for the cause.’

I racked my brain briefly to determine which cause this might be. He did seem to have a green thumb, but could horticulture, even to such as the Turnbulls, really be called ‘a cause’?

‘He is quite the most charismatic speaker on our entire summer circuit,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘His success rate astonishes even me sometimes. In fact, I have suggested to him that he would make an excellent lay-preacher, but he’s a religious conservative through and through. He wouldn’t hear of it.’

I was having to work pretty hard by now to stop myself from gaping. Charismatic? A speaker? A lay-preacher, even?

‘You seem surprised, Mrs Gilver,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘Have you and Donald met?’

‘I have met him, just briefly,’ I said. ‘And more to the point I’ve seen the whisky bottles on the rubbish heap outside his cottage. I shouldn’t have thought he was lay-preacher material at all.’

Mrs Turnbull threw back her head and let out a peal of laughter. Happy as I always am to provide entertainment for my fellow man, I felt the stirrings of annoyance as wave after wave of chuckles issued from her. I was glad to see that she slopped some coffee on to the lap of her dress, which was rather pale, and I hoped it left a stain.

‘He speaks in our Temperance tent,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘And each time he does, men flock to the front to hand over their bottles and watch him pour them out into the ground. It’s a marvellous sight, Mrs Gilver. But I suppose it does mean that he ends up with more than a few empties!’ She was laughing again, and this time I had the grace to smile a little with her.

‘Well, so much for my judgement of character then,’ I said with what I thought was great magnanimity. ‘I thought he looked a born drinker. In fact, I thought he was drunk!’

‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘It’s not the first time poor Donald, with his looks what they are, has been taken for one of the lost lambs instead of the shepherd. But he is as fierce a foe of the demon drink as any man born and he is leading his children along the straight path in the most determined way.’

I thought wryly to myself that he might care to widen his scope a little. They were perhaps well drilled in the evils of drink but their minds ran far from the lessons of Sunday school when at play in the woods.

‘Well, I’m glad for the sake of the children and their mother to have the source of all the bottles cleared up,’ I said. I was merely making chit-chat, but to my horror Mrs Turnbull read rather more into it than I had meant.

‘You’re of our mind?’ she said. ‘I had heard that at Mrs de Cassilis’s little party, you had a cocktail in your hand. But I’m delighted to hear it.’

I began to gabble. ‘Well, no, that is, yes. You did. I’m not. I can’t abide whisky but I’m not a teetotaller. Not that I’d say I’m a drinker, you understand. I’m – you know, a glass of sherry before lunch, a cocktail or two, wine with dinner and perhaps a little something afterwards…’ I ground to a halt, thinking that this list sounded positively debauched when one said it out loud in one breath like that. ‘Moderation in all things,’ I finished, lamely.

‘The doctrine of moderation in all things,’ said Mrs Turnbull, ‘is as harmful as it is hypocritical.’ I blinked. ‘That may sound radical,’ she went on. I had been thinking it sounded insufferably rude, but she was welcome to call it radical if she chose. ‘But no one actually means moderation in all things. No one really advocates moderation in murder, moderation in slavery.’ This was obviously a pre-prepared speech, one which had been wheeled out many a time before now and would be many more times to come. What a cheek, to make me sit through it here in her parlour where etiquette prevented me from escape!

‘In short, moderation is only to be recommended where the phenomenon in question is essentially harmless.’

‘I don’t agree,’ I said, which was a bald statement to make in any normal social intercourse, but as my sons would say ‘she started it’. ‘I think moderation can be safely advocated if the… stuff,’ I had forgotten her wording, ‘is harmless in moderation.’

‘Oh, but my dear Mrs Gilver,’ she said, earnestly coming to sit on the edge of her seat and leaning towards me, ‘it’s not. It’s poison.’

Under the present circumstances, I felt I could say nothing in argument against that. Mr Dudgeon’s intake had been far from moderate, it was true, but he was on his way to be buried that very morning and I was in no heart to champion whisky any further. One point worth noting in passing, I thought, was that this readiness on Mrs Turnbull’s part to talk of whisky as ‘poison’ rather pointed to her innocence in the matter of Robert Dudgeon’s death. She would hardly want to draw a close comparison between the two if she or her husband were the author of the crime.

‘It’s utter, utter poison and quite useless in the bodily economy,’ Mrs Turnbull was saying. ‘If my husband were only here he could tell you.’

‘Your wish has been granted,’ said Mr Turnbull, sweeping in the parlour door in a black tie and rather green-tinged dark suit. ‘What can I tell Mrs Gilver, my dear?’

‘Your wife is attempting to get my signature on the pledge,’ I said, speaking with no more reverence than this silly nonsense deserved; it was long past time I staked a claim in the conversation again.

‘You may scoff,’ said Mr Turnbull. I inclined my head, accepting his permission graciously, then I took a hold of myself again. I must swallow all annoyance and do what was needed for the case.

‘I hold no particular brief one way or the other,’ I said, trying to sound lofty. ‘Only I do wonder if going around saying it’s poison is wise. Around here in particular.’ I was speaking with forked tongue, hoping to jolt them, but if they did know anything about Robert Dudgeon they hid it remarkably well and only frowned at me in puzzlement and waited for more. ‘Around here where so many depend on the stuff for their livelihood, I mean. What would become of Queensferry without the bottling hall?’

‘Queensferry without the bottling hall,’ said Mr Turnbull in a dreamy voice, as though he was speaking of Elysium, ‘would be a better place in every way.’

‘Then you would only have to close all the mines and scuttle all the fishing boats and you’d be happy,’ I said, and I did not trouble with much politeness. All very well for Mr Turnbull to lay waste to any trade that was not ‘healthful exercise’ in another form, but we could not all be schoolmasters. ‘And our young men would be off on a ship to the New World to work down their mines instead.’ I remembered Tommy from the night of the greasy pole, threatening emigration to escape his wife and her nagging tongue, and I thought that I would accept a fairly long boat ride to get away from the Turnbulls right now. Mrs Turnbull, I noticed, was reddening with wifely anger to hear me speak to her husband so, but before she had managed more than a rumble, he stepped in.

‘We keep our eyes raised to the heavens and our hearts follow, Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘We are not troubled by those who would pull us down.’

‘Very admirable,’ I replied, although thinking that there comes a point where noble idealism becomes ruthless zeal and, once beyond that point, there is no knowing what people will do in the name of a cause, ‘but if you are trying to change minds, all I’m saying is that you might want to lower your sights a little. I don’t see that there’s any point in calling whisky “poison” in a town where so many drink the stuff every day and are manifestly alive and well. Unpoisoned, in fact,’ I explained.

‘But they’re very far from well,’ said Mr Turnbull. ‘They are killing themselves, slowly and insidiously, but killing themselves nonetheless. I speak now as a student of the natural sciences, Mrs Gilver. I have studied the topic in some depth and built up quite a substantial little library on it.’ He took a huge breath and I sensed the beginning of another sermon. I had to keep him out of the pulpit and try to get him to stick to particulars if I was ever to hear anything useful.

‘There are many peoples of the world who lack the European’s capacity to train himself to ingest this poison, Mrs Gilver. Were you aware of that?’

‘I believe I’ve heard as much,’ I said. ‘Red Indians…?’

‘And there are places in the world where the fashion is to ingest arsenic. They build up a tolerance to it, little by little.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘How odd.’

‘And both arsenic and alcohol would kill a child. Or kill its greatest devotee by overdose. Where is the difference between the two? And yet think of the outcry there would be if there were an arsenic factory in the middle of our little burgh. What would you say to that?’

‘Um,’ I said, feeling as though I were back at school being given an oral test without warning. I considered saying that the difference lay in the capacity to make a delicious punch for a party, but I refrained. ‘I do see that you have a point, Mr Turnbull. I certainly do see that. Only, as I say, I wonder if the “poison” angle is your strongest lever in Queensferry of all places. People have to make a living. And I suppose one could say that if they are filching the stuff from the distillery, at least it’s real whisky. I’d have thought it was a good thing in a way to have such a ready supply keeping down the urge towards “moonshine”. I have a sister who married an Anglo-Irishman and the tales she has to tell…’

Mr and Mrs Turnbull rolled their eyes at each other, although whether to indicate that I was naive to think there were no illicit stills in the neighbourhood or simply to express horror at my readiness to find a silver lining in their personal black cloud, I could not say. One thing was now clear beyond a shadow of a doubt, however. They could not possibly have had anything to do with the death. No one in his right mind would bang on like this about the dangers of whisky-drinking if he were in the fortunate position of having his own crime tidied away on account of an excess of whisky-drinking by the corpse-to-be. So their creeping around in the woods must indeed have been a nature-walk, and the uncomfortable feeling they gave me, which I had mistaken for my detective hackles rising, must simply be the feeling one sometimes got from an innocent, everyday, monomaniacal, crashing bore.

‘And another thing,’ I said, free to offend them as I chose now, ‘if you spout a lot of talk about poison that they don’t believe and can’t believe, because their livelihoods depend on it and their own eyes refute it, then they won’t believe anything you do say. They’ll simply put every word down to “teetotallers’ fairy tales” and the baby will go out with the bathwater.’

‘Hmph,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘There is no problem with the locals believing fairy tales, Mrs Gilver. As you yourself have found.’

‘Well, they certainly enjoy them,’ I answered, ‘but as to believing them, who knows?’ I was thinking of the artless way the little Dudgeons had insisted on their current demon being ‘a real one’ as they tried to orchestrate a lift in my motor car. They as good as admitted that most of their monsters were fancy.

‘The children believe them and the parents give way to their silliness,’ pronounced Mr Turnbull. ‘So I am led to conclude that the parents themselves are taken in. No spiritual guidance whatsoever.’

‘That’s just what I was telling Mrs Gilver, my dear,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘About the Burry Man. The very next day! Sitting with their picnics at the Fair. And what dreadful unwholesome rubbish was in those picnic-bags. Trudie and Nellie Marshall were telling the little Quigley girl that Robert Dudgeon died because all the little spikes were poisoned and they stuck in him like a thousand darts.’

I sat up at this, trying not to look too unnaturally interested.

‘And the Christie boy told me in all seriousness that his granny had told him that the curse of the Burry Man fell after twenty-five years and everyone knew Robert Dudgeon shouldn’t never have dared to do it this last time. I ask you!’

‘Well, at least that shows that they know the Burry Man is just one of their neighbours dressed up for the day,’ I said. ‘Some of the other legends would have it that he’s a real bogeyman who lives in a swamp.’

‘Oh, there were plenty of those too,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘Netta Stoddart swears blind that she saw the Burry Man going home on his cart along the Back Braes on Friday night and that when the cart turned round the Burry Man fell off and rolled down the bank on to the railway line and was squashed by a train.’

I could not quite suppress a giggle at this. One had to admire the confidence of little Miss Stoddart to insist on her story when quite a hundred witnesses saw the Burry Man die in an entirely different way. It did occur to me, however, that although the falling, rolling and squashing were nonsense, perhaps Netta Stoddart might have seen the cart turn around.

‘Was there even a train?’ I said.

‘None at all,’ said Mr Turnbull, unsmiling.

‘And was she even in a position to be a witness to this adventure?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Turnbull, with a disapproving note that I could not easily account for at first. ‘The Back Braes run along behind Station Road down there and she was sitting at the back of the bowling green clubhouse with a bottle of ginger ale and a biscuit waiting for her father.’ This sounded fairly innocent so far and so my expression did not deliver the required outrage. Mrs Turnbull went on. ‘Mr Stoddart himself, of course, was in the clubhouse where they keep a jug of beer topped up on high days and holidays and let their members have glassfuls at very preferential rates. How I hate to see children sitting waiting outside for their fathers to finish drinking. And it’s even worse at the bowling green. No children are allowed, which is why poor Netta was hidden around the back, sitting there among the crates of empties, telling herself stories to while away the time.’

This was admittedly rather sordid, and if Mr Stoddart had volunteered to take his daughter to the Fair then it was a bit much for him to stop off on the way and fill up with cheap beer leaving her to kick her heels, but if she had indeed seen the cart turn round and used this as the foundation for her little tale then I was rather glad that Mr Stoddart was not the upstanding father Mrs Turnbull would have him be.

‘Well,’ I said, rising and pulling on my gloves. ‘Thank you for the delicious coffee’ – it had been filthy, of course – ‘and a most interesting chat. I hope the funeral goes off as one would have it do,’ I said to Mr Turnbull. ‘Do give my regards to Mrs Dudgeon, if you are going along afterwards.’ Mr Turnbull’s face puckered as though he had felt a sudden twinge of toothache. Of course he would not be going along afterwards! Watching a crowd of villagers get drunk in honour of the dead would be torture to him, and for once even he might feel that he could not hold forth on his views.

Leaving the schoolhouse by the garden gate, I turned back down the Loan and tried not to get too excited about Netta Stoddart’s tuppenceworth. I told myself that although there is often a case for listening to what falls from the lips of babes and children, there was also Master Christie’s ‘Silver Anniversary Curse’ to remind me that, just as often, what falls is gibberish.

Now, to find the ‘Back Braes’. There was indeed a little lane opening off the Loan and running along the back of the Station Road villas – I could see that some of them had garden gates giving on to it – but it was terribly narrow and I could not imagine why someone would choose to drive a cart along there, with Station Road itself, broad and smooth, only a moment further up the hill. It would be impossible for any ordinary cart and a pretty tight fit even for a cart as dainty as the Dudgeons’ ‘shell hutch’. Still, it was worth investigating.

I started along the lane at what I was beginning to think of as my detecting pace, slow enough to take in anything there was to see but fast enough so that someone happening to look at me would believe I was strolling and not loitering. I kept my head still, as though gazing mindlessly into the middle distance, while all the time my eyes were sweeping back and forth looking at the garden gates and the walls in which they were set, the ground under my feet, the fence to my left separating the lane from the steep wooded bank which fell to the railway line below. Almost immediately, I spotted something which made my heart bump in my ribcage. The lane was tramped hard along the middle where many pairs of feet every day must flatten it and there was no chance of a pony’s hoof prints showing up there, but here and there in the soft dirt towards the edges, I could see quite clearly the wheel tracks of a small cart, two sets, sometimes running along deeply on top of the other and sometimes diverging, making lozenge shapes until they fell together again. It beggared belief, I thought, that two miniature carts had recently made a one-way journey each along this tiny lane, with the brick walls looming on one side and the hawthorn and bramble grabbing at them from the other. The most obvious explanation was that one cart, for some reason – and a reason that had to be significant, I was sure – had come along and then turned back. It was almost as inconceivable that it was any cart except the Dudgeons’ miniature one. I blessed Mr Stoddart’s neglected daughter and hurried on.

Sure enough, beyond the end of the villas, beyond the little footbridge which crossed the railway and connected to another of these ‘back braes’, just where the lane turned the corner at the bowling green, the tracks became confused, crossing each other and making loops. Here too, a few hoof prints showed where the pony had stepped towards the edge of the path trying to turn around in the cramped space. Most compelling of all, there were broken branches on the bushes bordering the steep siding here and some fresh-looking scrapes on the bowling club wall too.

I stood in the middle of the lane, hands on hips, and wondered. Why on earth would someone turn a cart around here? Mr and Mrs Dudgeon must have had to unhitch the pony and manoeuvre the cart around themselves; there certainly was no room to manage the thing otherwise. If they had been strangers to the town, one could understand why they might set off along the lane judging it just wide enough and then have to abandon the plan when this unexpected sharp corner was thrown upon them, but as inhabitants of long standing, it made no sense. And even if one gave little Netta Stoddart her due – she had been right about seeing the cart turning after all – and went along with the next element in her tale, it was hard to see why Robert Dudgeon falling off the cart at this corner would make him decide to go back to the Fair, when he had already made up his mind to go straight home and when Mrs Dudgeon apparently had his dinner waiting for him. Much more likely that, if he had been considering going back to the Fair, falling on to the hard ground at the end of a gruelling day would make him abandon the plan for good and go home to his hot dinner and a mustard bath. It was equally hard to see why, moreover, even if he had decided to turn back to the Fair, he would literally turn back, at this awkward corner, and not simply carry on to where the brae must surely rejoin Station Road and make a loop back to the top of the Loan.

So, unsure whether I had in fact discovered anything here on the Back Braes or had only added more questions to my ever-growing list, I myself turned and began to walk back the way I had come. When I got to the little bridge across the railway line, however, I decided to make a detour. There was nothing to be seen over the high garden walls the way I had come and instead I crossed the little footbridge down towards the town. From the other side there was a choice of route. I could turn right and descend on the pleasant little lane known as McIver’s Brae which would give me a pleasant view of the river and the bridge, but would finally deposit me on the Edinburgh Road far beyond the end of the High Street, halfway to the Hawes almost, with a fair walk back to the Bellstane; or I could turn left and be sure somehow or other to emerge from the mouth of a close or lane or vennel somewhere on one of the terraces eventually. There were several dead ends this way, however, and at least one public house, the back yard of which one easily could end up in, and I did not want to make myself any more conspicuous than was absolutely necessary, certainly not as conspicuous as I should be lost amongst the washing lines and beer barrels. I turned for McIver’s Brae. I was shortly very glad indeed that I had done so.