The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter Thirteen

‘Do you think he’s right?’ I asked Alec as soon as I thought the inspector would be out of earshot.

‘No,’ Alec replied. ‘Not a chance of it. He has no explanation for how all the burrs ended up on the Dudgeons’ midden for one thing. I expect he’s just one of those people who needs to make his own way to an idea. Not everyone relishes being told what to think.’

‘Hm,’ I said. ‘Especially by some silly chit of a woman, you mean. Didn’t you notice how you got all the glory for the burrs and I got all the scorn for the rest of it? You should have told him when he asked you, and not left it to me.’

‘And what would you have said to that?’ said Alec, laughing. ‘If I had and he’d still not believed a word, you would have told me I’d barged in and mucked it up, wouldn’t you?’

‘Probably,’ I conceded, laughing with him.

‘Well, one thing’s clear,’ said Cad, speaking for the first time since the inspector had entered the room. ‘You two must certainly carry on. There’s no question of handing the whole thing over to the police and sitting back if they’re going to show such staggering lack of imagination. He didn’t even mention the question of why Dudgeon actually died. But then – I couldn’t help noticing – neither did you.’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Alec. ‘We’ve been so excited about the burrs and working out how that bit was managed that we’ve barely thought about the death all day.’

‘And now the burrs have been carted off into police custody and we have no chance of running any of them past our toxicologist,’ I wailed.

‘You said… You said…’ spluttered Alec. ‘Dandy, you germ. You let me lacerate myself from head to toe and you still thought they were poisoned?’

‘You have a toxicologist?’ said Cad, sounding impressed and Alec laughed in spite of himself.

‘I was joking,’ I told Alec. ‘And no, Cad, we don’t. Nor, I fear, are we going to need one. Our mushroom theory was only needed if Dudgeon had spent his day with two babysitters hanging on his arms. And anyway, I’m still sure it’s as I said, I’m afraid. Remember? Right at the start. I said that there was something going on that was worrying the Dudgeons and in the middle of it all Dudgeon died, but there was no reason to think the worry and the death were connected. I don’t see any reason to abandon that now. All that’s happened is that we’ve found out what it was that the Dudgeons were up to.’

‘But not why,’ Alec pointed out. ‘We’ve not even begun to wonder why. Have we, Dan? Dan?’

‘Sorry, darling, I was just thinking,’ I said. ‘That there might be a connection after all. Far too twisty for Inspector Cruickshank, but see what you think. Only don’t get excited, Cad, I fear it’s not nearly twisty enough for you. It’s as I was saying to the inspector – one possible reason for the Dudgeons to stay at the Fair on Friday evening was to make everything look as near normal as it possibly could. A guilty conscience seriously disrupts the judgement on these matters; one doesn’t dare to do anything the least bit odd if one has something to hide and one begins to imagine that any little thing one does do is going to stick out like a red banner and draw the crowds. So although we can imagine that people would just have shrugged and thought nothing of it had Robert not climbed the pole that evening, Dudgeon himself might have thought it was an indispensable part of his “I’ve just been the Burry Man as usual and I’m having the Burry Man’s usual day” routine. So if he was trying to get every detail just so… what was the other striking feature of the Burry Man’s day? Apart from the burrs.’

‘Whisky,’ said Buttercup.

I clapped my hands. ‘Have a gold star, darling, and go to the top of the class. Whisky, exactly. Do you see?’

‘I think so,’ said Alec, as I would have expected.

‘No,’ said Cad, just as predictably.

‘Dr Rennick the police surgeon thought there was enough alcohol in Dudgeon’s system to have poisoned him even if he’d sipped it over the course of a long day and done a good bit of walking in between times. Imagine if Dudgeon – after getting back to the Rosebery Hall – tried to catch up all at once. Wouldn’t that make the poisoning much more likely?’

‘If he glugged down a bottle of the stuff?’ said Alec. ‘I suppose it could do, although I’m happy to say I’ve no personal experience on which to draw.’

‘It stands to reason, though, doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘Oh God, you do realize that the obvious way for us to find out is to go cap in hand to Mr Turnbull and ask for borrower’s privileges for his “substantial library” on the demon drink.’

‘Needs must,’ said Alec rather complacently.

‘I’m glad you agree,’ I told him. ‘I certainly can’t suddenly feign an interest after making my thoughts on the matter so very plain. No, that delightful little task is going to fall to you.’ I bared my teeth at him in an innocent smile. ‘Meanwhile…’

‘Meanwhile?’ echoed Cad.

‘Meanwhile we must find out what Robert Dudgeon was up to. We must discover how the Burry Man spent his day. It would also be helpful to discover who the stand-in was, although I suppose that’s the kind of task the police are better placed to handle. They can go around questioning everyone’s whereabouts without getting a “mind your own business” and a bop on the nose.’

‘Who do you think it might have been?’ said Alec. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Well, it would have to be a man roughly the same height and weight… my initial hunch would be to investigate the ever-obliging Donald.’

‘It wasn’t Donald,’ said Cad. ‘He’s my dyker – my wall-mender, you know – and my men didn’t have the day off.’

‘As far as you know they didn’t,’ I said. ‘But did you see Donald with your own eyes on Friday? If not, I think it’s worth checking.’

‘What about the whisky?’ said Buttercup. ‘I thought Donald was dead set against it.’

‘Oh damn, you’re right,’ I said. ‘It depends on the circumstances, though, surely. I daresay family feeling could overcome his scruples in a sufficiently tight pinch. It was only a hunch, mind you. It needn’t be someone bound to the Dudgeons by brotherly loyalty. It could be an accomplice, plain and simple, bound by common cause.’

‘Yes, but what cause?’ Alec said. ‘What tight pinch? What the hell was going on? Something very peculiar when you consider all the details. It had to be premeditated since he knew in advance that it was coming off, and yet not too premeditated because he didn’t seem to know very far in advance, did he? Thursday teatime. What could it have been?’

‘Mail train robbery?’ said Buttercup. ‘And he only found out from the rest of the gang on Thursday afternoon when the train with all the loot was going to be on the tracks?’

‘Welcome home, darling,’ I said. ‘You are not in the Wild West any more and Robert Dudgeon was neither a cattle rustler nor a robber of mail trains.’

‘New York isn’t the Wild West,’ said Buttercup. ‘But I see what you mean, sorry.’

‘Freddy’s got a point, though,’ said Cad. ‘Not a train robbery, but a robbery of some kind perhaps. Because Dudgeon was in difficulty with money. He came to me a week or two ago asking about an advance on his wages and offering to do extra work for extra pay. D’you remember, Dandy, when he was trying to wriggle out of the Burry Man’s day, and you asked him if he was paid for it and I hinted that if so he surely couldn’t pass it up? I did it quite subtly so as not to embarrass him but you might have picked up on it.’

‘Yes, I think I did just manage to catch a whiff of something,’ I said, keeping a straight face but not daring to look at Alec. ‘I don’t suppose he told you what the emergency was?’ Cad shook his head. ‘And did you give him the advance?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Cadwallader. ‘But I looked through the wages books with the steward and when I saw what he was being paid I gave him a raise. Backdated it to when I arrived. Old Uncle Cad really was the most god-awful skinflint.’

‘So in effect, he got the money he was after,’ said Alec. ‘Doesn’t that thicken the plot? Wouldn’t he have been able to get out of his commitment – whatever it was – if he didn’t need the money?’’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But say there was a gang, with a plan to do something nefarious, and say Dudgeon bought his way out with the cash from Cad. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t renege at the last minute on Thursday afternoon and put pressure on him to come in with them after all.’

‘No honour among thieves?’ said Alec.

‘But I don’t like that explanation,’ I said. ‘For one thing it doesn’t fit with what I saw of Robert Dudgeon. He simply didn’t seem the type to be mixed up in anything criminal. And he certainly didn’t seem the type to mix his wife up in it with him. And mark my words, she was in it with him. Up to her neck.’

‘But Dandy, that’s quite run of the mill, you know,’ said Buttercup. ‘Gangsters’ molls are ten a penny in some places and lots of them are every bit as fierce as their boyfriends.’

‘In some places,’ I said. ‘But do you think Queensferry is one of them? And do many gangsters have estate carpentering as a sideline?’ I did not wait for a response. ‘We must be thorough, of course. We can’t rule it out of hand right now. So…?’

‘We can look in the newspapers, see if any likely crime was committed on Friday,’ said Alec. ‘And we should certainly share our thoughts with Inspector Cruickshank. Whether he agrees or not, it’s better that he should know, so that if he comes across something odd he’ll be able to put the bits together.’

‘And I shall continue to cultivate Mrs Dudgeon,’ I said, ‘in hopes that I can persuade her to trust me and tell me what’s going on. Only I need to get to her before the police.’

‘What if your hunch about her were wrong, though?’ said Alec. ‘What if you got her to tell all, assuring her that she could trust you, and then she told you something you simply had to pass on to the inspector?’

I shook my head, unwilling to countenance the notion. ‘How could she? How could those people – Dudgeon and Mrs Dudgeon, I mean, with their neat vegetable patch and their knitted cushions on the footstool – be mixed up in anything truly bad?’

‘You hardly know the woman,’ said Alec. ‘And you only met him once.’

‘It does not always take extensive acquaintance to get the measure of a man,’ I said. ‘The moment I set eyes on Mr Dudgeon – standing in this very room in his stocking soles – I could see that he was as honest as the day is long.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Alec. ‘And what about some of your other first impressions? Rearden, say? Or Shinie Brown? What about the inspector, or that stable lad you seem to have struck up a friendship with? When was the last time you met someone whom you didn’t immediately decide was a good egg?’

‘He’s right, you know, Dandy,’ said Buttercup. ‘You were just as bad at school.’

‘Donald,’ I said, stoutly. ‘I didn’t take to Brother Donald at all. And I can’t stick the Turnbulls.’

‘Oh well, the Turnbulls!’ said Alec. ‘There are limits even for you.’

At that moment, the telephone on Cadwallader’s desk began ringing and he went to answer it, laughing along with the others; I suppose it must have made a nice change for him to have someone else be the butt of the jokes for a while.

‘It’s for you, Dandy,’ he said. ‘One of your conquests, no doubt. Ringing to ask you out for a walk in the moonlight,’ I gave a good-natured smile and took the receiver.

‘Dandy?’ said Hugh’s voice down the line. ‘Who in the world was that?’ I sobered immediately. Hugh was not likely to have rung me up just to hear the sweet sound of my voice, and I feared a summons home. What he said next only confirmed it.

‘Look, this can’t go on. It’s been days on end now and it’s getting a bit much.’

‘How’s the shoot?’ I asked him. I felt I knew the answer. Hugh would only ever decide he needed me at home if things were going very badly on the grouse moor and he needed a recipient for his grumbles. Indeed he can get testy enough, if driven to it by recalcitrant birds and clumsy beaters, to hold me and the other wives in the party responsible; for keeping the guns late at breakfast and distracting them after dinner with cards and silly gossip. Obviously, if I were away from home and his party was one of bachelors and widowers only, as this year, and yet the bag was still disappointing it was much harder to lay the blame at my door. Hence, my essential return. His next words, however, suggested that these assumptions were wrong.

‘What?’ he said. ‘The shoot? Oh, fine, fine, fine. If I could get a minute’s peace to enjoy it. It’s that bloody mutt of yours, Dandy. It’s well out of season now, has been for days, and it’s upsetting the whole household’ – by ‘household’, I knew that Hugh meant his smelly pack of hounds, terriers and accidents – ‘so I’m sending it to you.’

I had a vision of Bunty with a brown label around her neck being carried up the castle drive in the basket of a bicycling postman.

‘Drysdale put it on the 5.28. You’re to meet the train at Dalmeny at 7.40. It’s in the guard’s van.’

‘Hugh!’ I squeaked.

‘Too late to argue,’ said Hugh. Of course it was. He deliberately had not rung me until it was too late to argue; that was him through and through, but his machinations were redundant in this case.

‘I’m not arguing,’ I said. ‘What a sweet thing to have thought of. Thank you.’

There was a puzzled silence from the other end of the line. Hugh does not and cannot believe that I actually like Bunty, love Bunty, and do not simply pretend to love her to annoy him. I was sure it had given him a thrill of guilty pleasure to pack her off to me like this, but it had backfired.

‘Have you sent her things?’ I asked.

Hugh rumbled.

‘Oh, Hugh, please! You have sent her things along with her, haven’t you?’

‘It’s a dog, Dandy,’ said Hugh. ‘It doesn’t have things.’

With this he had the upper hand again and there was no regaining it so I thanked him and rang off.

‘Bunty?’ said Alec. I nodded. ‘And dastardly Hugh has sent her out into the harsh world without so much as a flask of tea and a change of underwear?’

‘You don’t mind, Buttercup, do you?’ I asked. ‘My dog coming? Too bad if you do, really, because she’s arriving off the 7.40. She’s no trouble. Beautifully trained and…’ I trailed off, aware that there was no point in building her up when they were just about to meet her face to face and learn the truth. ‘Well, she’s still a puppy, really,’ I said.

‘She’s seven,’ said Alec. ‘If she were a person she would be older than you.’

‘No, we don’t mind if Buttercup comes, do we, Freddy?’ said Cad.

Buttercup did not answer, but only shook her fist at me and growled.

I walked to the station – there was just time – thinking that Bunty might be a bit overwrought by the excitement of the journey and a ride in a motor car on top of it would not put her in the best light when she met her hosts. Besides, the rain and hail had spent themselves and the evening was sparkling again as the sinking sun caught the droplets on leaves, grass and fence wire. I tramped along, sniffing the damped-dust smell that summer rain leaves behind it, and feeling very content with my lot. We were making headway with the case – and we now had the strong arm of the law to take on the nosy-parkering jobs that give the amateur detective so much trouble – Bunty was coming, Alec was here and Hugh, now that he had got rid of my darling from under his feet, was apparently quite happy to let me do as I chose for as long as I chose to do it. Added to all of this, because either the afternoon’s storm or Robert Dudgeon’s funeral in the morning had brought an interruption to the work of the day, there were men and children amongst the hay, there were women out in front of the Dalmeny cottages, putting their washing back up to catch the last warmth of the sun and there were labourers at work in a far corner of a road-side field, the steady tock-tock of their hammers against the stones sounding like a metronome to keep the gurgling songbirds in time. In short, bucolic bliss.

I slowed, stopped and retraced my steps until I could see the glint off the bare shoulders of the labourers again. If they were at work in a corner of a field, bashing hammers against rock, they could only be wall-menders, which meant that one of them was more than likely Donald Dudgeon.

Obviously, I could not scale the nearest gate and make straight for them, but if I were to go back to the corner by the village green and start from there, making for the station, I would pass through them as though on a plumb-line. So, with my feet already beginning to squelch in my light shoes, I set off. There were no meadow flowers to pick as late in the season as this, which was a shame since that would have explained very nicely why I should splash through a field instead of walking sensibly down the road and along the bottom, but the straight path across the field was the shortest route, so I began to walk very fast and looked at my watch with an extravagant gesture every few seconds or so. If they saw me coming they would naturally think I was late and making a beeline. Actually, when I focused on my watch-face during one of these ostentatious checks I saw that I really was rather late, and I redoubled my pace.

‘Phew!’ I said loudly, nearing the group of men a minute or two later. ‘Who would have thought it could get so warm again after that downpour?’ I said this partly to put them at their ease about being discovered with their shirts off, partly just in greeting, and by the time I’d delivered my little speech I had had time to look around the group and see that I recognized none of them. They all touched their caps and then stood staring at me, wondering what I was doing suddenly in their midst. ‘Still it must be much more pleasant work now than at noon, I daresay.’

One of the men, the oldest and so probably the boss, answered.

‘It is that, madam. That it is.’ Again he looked inquiringly at me.

‘I’m making for the station,’ I said, to nods of dawning comprehension. Most helpfully at that moment we all heard the sound of the train beginning the crossing of the Forth towards us, the metal of the bridge setting up a rumble like distant thunder.

‘I doubt ye’ve missed it,’ said the foreman, looking over his shoulder at the field I still had to cross to get there, but I assured him that I was only going to collect a parcel and I leaned companionably against the mended bit of wall while one of his underlings set about untying the string holding the gate shut to allow me passage.

‘I suppose you’re behindhand, what with the rain and the funeral?’ I said. ‘And you’re short of men too, without Donald Dudgeon.’ This was rather clunking but I could think of no better way to lead up to it before the gate was opened and I was forced to leave them.

‘Donald whae?’ said the foreman, looking around his team as though to check that all were present and correct.

‘Wasn’t he off all day in mourning?’ I said. ‘And Friday too? Am I right in thinking he was off on Friday?’

‘Mourning?’ said the foreman. His expression, as plain as could be, was asking what on earth I was wittering on about, but he was too polite to follow it up in voice.

‘Rab Dudgeon was buried today,’ said one of the lads. ‘Is that what ye’re meaning? But whae’s Donald?’

‘Oh!’ said the foreman. ‘Flamin’ Donald, you mean. Naw, Flamin’ Donald’s no’ one o’ ma men. He’s wi’ that Yank over Cassilis.’ He spoke as though Cassilis was in the next but one county, not just a stroll in summer shoes up the nearest road.

‘I thought you were Cassilis men,’ I said. There was a ripple of low laughter at that and the foreman shook his head.

‘Naw, that’s a tinpot wee caper,’ he said. ‘Jist Flamin’ Donald and one laddie. We’re Rosebery.’ So I had splashed through the field and made myself late for nothing. ‘Here,’ went on the foreman, ‘has the Yank been goin’ about saying’ this is his land?’

‘Here, Addie,’ said another. ‘He’s maybe got battle plans. If yous hear musket fire, get ready to lay doon yer life.’

‘Aye, ken whit thon pilgrims are like,’ said the foreman, showing a rather shaky grasp, I thought, of colonial history. The boy had got the gate untied by now and I passed through with a nod of thanks, considering briefly whether to reveal that I was a guest of thon pilgrim Yankee but deciding against it.

I scurried across the fields towards the station, racing the train even while I told myself I had not a hope of beating it. Poor Donald Dudgeon! One could understand why he had attracted such a nickname if he really were the star-turn of the hellfire and damnation preaching world in these parts, but it was bound to be a grievance to him if he were as strait-laced linguistically as these types usually seemed to be. I remembered one particular nursemaid of my youth, terribly purse-mouthed and unyielding, who smacked my hand with a pudding spoon just for saying ‘Heavens!’ Her name had been Florence Poste and we children had called her Fencepost which was an absolutely accurate description of her outline and general demeanour, but she had not seen it in that light when she overheard it. I had always been immune from nicknames myself, friends and enemies alike agreeing that they could not improve on Dandelion Dahlia, but I had sympathy for those saddled with real burdens. Buttercup, for instance, had my pity although it would never be possible for me to think of her as anything else, and to be fair when she was dubbed Buttercup it was not intended to be descriptive. I wondered briefly about Shinie Brown as I jumped down from the final gate and trotted between the two rows of railwaymen’s cottages while the train drew into the station above me. He was not bald, nor particularly red-faced, and there was no obvious source of boyhood shininess that I could think of. If his surname had been White or even Gold… The engine gathered steam and began to haul away and as it did so I could hear, loud and clear, a stream of excited barks and whines and the sound of the station-master swearing.

Buttercup once again vetoed discussion of the case around the dinner table and the talk veered chaotically amongst Bessie Smith’s New York debut, which Buttercup was desolate to have missed, the Royal Family, whom Cad seemed cheerfully optimistic of meeting sometime soon, and the Klu Klux Klan of whom Alec kept demanding to know what they were for exactly and Cad kept insisting that he had no idea. I have never been able to keep up with those conversations where each of the participants sticks to his own personal topic and barely seems to notice that the others are doing just the same, and so to save myself from developing the inevitable headache if I tried, I retreated into my thoughts and left them to it.

‘You can’t!’ said Alec, when I told him afterwards what plans for the evening I had been hatching. I was determined that Inspector Cruickshank would not beat me to the widow. ‘She buried her husband today, Dandy, and you absolutely quite simply can’t. You must wait until tomorrow at the very least.’

‘That’s exactly what the inspector will be thinking,’ I said. ‘He’ll be there tomorrow with a constable and a little notebook, and he doesn’t have to wait until a decent time for making social calls. Imagine if he got there before me. Or worse, if I were sitting there and he marched in. And anyway, I’m going there as a friend, to warn her and to offer an ear and a shoulder. And to prove it, I’m taking her pen back.’

‘Have you even told Inspector Cruickshank about the pen?’ Alec asked.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I forgot about it. But it was the merest chance that I found it or that she dropped it, and the bottle of ink is common knowledge. He can intuit the pen for himself. As he and I would both have had to if I hadn’t happened to spot it there.’

‘But if the police start a real investigation they might decide to search the woods, Dandy, and if they find out afterwards that there was something there to find but you’d removed it before they got the chance… Well, I’m not sure that isn’t one of those spoilsporty sounding things one can go to jail for.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, laughing. ‘What spoil-sporty sounding things are these?’

‘Oh, interfering with a criminal investigation or obstructing the police in the execution of their duty or whatever they’re called. They’ve always seemed to me to be a bit much.’ I was laughing in earnest now at the sincerity of his outrage. ‘No, really,’ he went on. ‘It doesn’t seem fair to let the police decide what they think is annoying and then make up a pompous name for it and call it a crime. Wouldn’t we all like to do that?’

‘It would make a splendid parlour game.’ I said. ‘I’d have “Obstructing me in the execution of my pleasure by sitting me next to a bore at dinner”. Ten months’ hard labour for that, and Daisy Esslemont would be breaking stones in a chain-gang as we speak.’

‘Or how about “Wilful and malicious amateur drama”?’ said Alec. ‘I could have shut down a good few house parties over the years with that on the statute books.’

‘Be all of that as it may,’ I said, seemingly unable to stop talking like a member of the legal professions now that I had started, ‘I’m off to Mrs Dudgeon’s. Come and lounge in my bedroom doorway while I get my hat and coat. Stop Grant from ticking me off about the state of my afternoon shoes.’ Alec heaved himself to his feet, leaving his pipe politely in the ashtray, and accompanied me, shuffling up the stone steps to the bedroom floor, holding tight to the banister rope. I, as Buttercup had predicted, had got used to the bevelled stone and the inky blackness and was now tripping up and down the spiral steps like a Gaiety Girl in her tap shoes.

Grant was indeed frowning and muttering over my sodden shoes, and ripping up sheets of today’s newspaper – which I had not had a chance to read yet – in order to stuff them. She always makes a point of doing a great deal of her maidly chores right there in my bedroom instead of behind the baize door, but I supposed one had to forgive her in this instance, since the servants’ wing was half a mile of parkland away.

‘Ah, Grant,’ I said. ‘I’m off out with Bunty before bedtime.’ Grant shot a poisonous look towards Bunty who had been fast asleep on the middle of my bed, recovering from the excitements of the day but, at the sound of my voice, had opened her eyes, given a great creaking yawn and begun rolling and twisting on her back with all four legs pedalling in the air and her tail sweeping the counterpane.

I tore off the feathered band I had been wearing at dinner and pulled on the little mourning hat in its place. Grant and I reached the wardrobe door neck and neck, I to withdraw my grey linen coat – it was long and wide and would cover my beaded dress perfectly – and Grant to take out the skirt and coat she clearly thought were essential for even the shortest country walk.

‘I’m not changing, Grant,’ I told her. ‘I’m only going down the lane and back.’

Grant replaced the skirt and coat and took out a devoré wrap with a huge fur collar instead, the very wrap I usually wore with this little dress if dining out. I ignored her and shrugged into my linen coat, buttoning it up to the neck to hide all trace of what lay underneath, then I kicked off my evening slippers and sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on my short boots. Wet feet once a day was more than enough for me. Grant closed the wardrobe door and left with meekly downturned face although boiling with rage inside I could tell.

‘Grant would have got on very well with Leviticus,’ I said once she was out of range, ‘at least in the matter of wearing cloth of mixed thread. Come on, Bunty.’