The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter Fourteen

Alec saw us off and watched as we picked our way carefully down the slope on grass even more slippery for the afternoon’s rain then he shut the door with a clang and went back, I presumed, to his pipe. It was almost full darkness now but Bunty was gleaming in the moonlight and I was getting to know the twists of the lane very well so I was content to strike out into the night like a cat. As ever, my eyes adjusted within minutes anyway, and very shortly I had gained the familiar clearing without mishap.

It was hard to say whether there was a material difference on this trip which could be held responsible for my sanguinity, but there was no return of the dread I had felt on my sorties the day before, even with Nipper in tow, and one would have expected the woods to be creepier at night if anything. Perhaps it was the presence of Bunty, plodding along in front of me, the shifting muscles on her back making her spotty coat wink and ripple. My children always fancied that they could see in Bunty’s coat a picture of a circus clown juggling five balls. In fact, when they were small they had got into the biggest trouble of their young lives by finishing off this vague illustration using oil paints and a fine brush. I looked for the juggler again now, walking up the path to Mrs Dudgeon’s front door, but not with much success although the five balls themselves were indisputable.

Pausing on the doorstep with my breath held, I listened to hear if there was still the murmur of visitors sitting with the widow, or worse the hubbub of a wake in full swing, but even though the living-room window was open at the bottom and a light was shining out from the crack in the curtains I heard nothing. Mrs Dudgeon it seemed was alone. I knocked and the steps that came in response were surprisingly fleet, the voice which called out from behind the door wavering with anxiety.

‘Is that – Who is it?’

‘It’s Mrs Gilver, Mrs Dudgeon,’ I called back. ‘Can I come in?’

The door opened and Mrs Dudgeon stared out at me, searching my face.

‘Just you?’ she said, glancing behind me. I spread my hands in a gesture of openness. Just me, I tried to show her, and I mean you no harm.

‘Have you come with a message?’ she asked me.

‘No,’ I said, wondering what she could mean by this. ‘I just came to see how you were.’

At last, she stepped aside and gestured for me to enter and I went into the living room with Bunty at my heels, to find the remains of the funeral feast still spread on the table, although the extra cups and plates were all washed and stacked tidily on the sideboard waiting to be returned.

‘Actually,’ I said, sitting at the table, shoving Bunty under it and keeping her penned there by bracing my leg against the pedestal, ‘I wanted to return something of yours. I found it in the woods quite by chance and I thought it best to give it back into your safe-keeping.’ Mrs Dudgeon’s face had drained as I spoke, turning a blue-ish yellow, and she looked around wildly, at the door, up above the mantelpiece behind my head, and then back at me.

I unclasped my bag and fished around in it, while Mrs Dudgeon again threw a terrified glance towards the wall behind me and then towards the door. My hand closed round the pen finally and I drew it out and held it towards her.

‘You dropped it, I believe.’

She stared at the pen for a good three or four of her panting breaths before she seemed to be able to understand what it was, then she put her hand out and took it from me.

‘What made ye think it wis mine?’ she said.

‘One of your sisters told me you were out in the woods with a bottle of ink,’ I said. ‘So when I found this naturally I assumed…’

‘One o’ my sisters?’ she echoed. I realized that I had very likely just dropped someone in it. ‘Whae?’

‘Tina, I think it was,’ I said.

‘Ahh,’ she said. ‘Aye, they are that. They are that.’ Then she shook herself. ‘I had forgotten. I’ve no’ been myself,’ and then with a heart-rending attempt at levity she gave a little laugh. ‘I dinnae ken whit wis up wi’ me that nicht, traipsin’ around the woods like a daftie.’

‘It’s been a very difficult time for you,’ I said. ‘And I’m afraid it’s far from over.’

Again the three-cornered look, up at the wall, over at the door and back to my face.

‘What do ye mean?’ she whispered. ‘What’s happened?’

‘The burrs,’ I said. ‘All the burrs that you brought home?’

‘Where are they?’ she said, her eyes widening until I could see the whites all around. ‘I cannae believe it! I forgot a’ about them. We were suppose tae burn them and I forgot.’ Then she did something I had never seen before and hope never to see again. She clamped both fists against the sides of her head and looking up at the wall behind my head she drummed her knuckles fast and hard on her scalp, her face stark with terror. Unable to bear the sight or the sound of this, I reached forward and caught her wrists in my hands. I had to let go the barrier keeping Bunty under the table top, but she stayed where she was, cowering further back into the shadows if anything.

‘Someone put them on the midden heap out the back,’ I said.

‘We’ve got tae burn them,’ she said. ‘Quick.’ Again the eyes darted to the door and up to the wall.

‘We can’t do that, Mrs Dudgeon,’ I told her. ‘I’m afraid that the police have them now. And they know there are twice as many as there should be. It’s too late.’

‘When?’ she said. ‘When did they get them? How long have they known?’

‘Since this afternoon,’ I told her. ‘But I wouldn’t say they “know” anything much. They’re certainly going to try to find out though.’ To the wall, to the door, back to my face again.

‘Since this afternoon, you say? They’ve never been near me. They’d never… They’d never work it a’ out without comin’ to me. No’ in time.’ The glance flicked around twice, to the wall, to the door, to my face, as she spoke.

I craned around awkwardly, hurting my neck, still holding her hands. Above me and behind me on the wall was their kitchen clock; when I turned back she was looking up at it once more.

‘In time for what?’ I asked her.

She shook her head and said nothing.

‘Inspector Cruickshank thinks that someone was impersonating your husband,’ I said, ‘going around with two helpers of his own getting money and whisky or robbing people’s houses while they all came out to greet him.’ Again it took her a moment or two longer to understand this than it should have, but when the message did get through, she looked at me alert, intrigued.

‘That’s whit they’re thinkin’?’ Her voice was almost scornful.

‘And – this is only my guess – but I think they’ll be round here tomorrow first thing, so you need to get ready and decide what you’re going to tell them.’

‘Tomorrow?’ she said. ‘No’ tonight?’ To the door, to the clock and back to my face again. I shook my head.

‘I don’t think so,’ I told her. ‘If they were coming they would be here by now. It’s almost ten o’clock after all.’ I felt a shiver go through her body as I said this, and this time both she and I looked up at the clock together.

‘Are you expecting someone?’ I asked as her eyes made their route around the room once more. She shook her head.

‘They can come if they like tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’m no’ carin’ what happens tomorrow.’

‘Would you like me to go? If you’re expecting a visitor.’

‘No!’ she said and she wrested one of her wrists from mine only to clasp my arm in return. Bunty gave a tremulous little yelp at the sudden movement. ‘Don’t leave me, I’m beggin’ you, madam. I’m fit to go mad wi’ it, if I’m on ma’ own. Don’t leave me alone.’

I would have preferred a less ambiguous answer to my question before I told her yes or no: the only sense I could make of her fevered glances to the clock and the living-room door was that someone was on his way here to arrive at an appointed hour not long hence and if that person could reduce Mrs Dudgeon to the shambles of nerves before me I was not at all sure I was equal to being one of the welcome party. My only consolation was that Bunty, thoroughly rattled by the tension in the air and huddled quite out of sight under the table, would not stand for any harm coming to me, but would launch herself on any assailant and, while Dalmatians are the least intimidating of all dogs – threat and polka-dots being mutually exclusive – they are really quite large, especially when they have paws on one’s shoulders and are barking right into one’s face. Hugh once found this out when Bunty, happening into a room where he was trying to take a splinter out of my hand and I was being a coward about it, made an understandable mistake and went for him like a wolverine.

‘Of course I won’t leave you,’ I said in what I hoped was a staunch yet soothing voice, ‘but won’t you please tell me what it is that’s wrong? Maybe I can help.’

Mrs Dudgeon shook her head and spoke in a soft, bleak voice.

‘Naeb’dy but the good Lord can help me now,’ she said. ‘And I cannae even bring myself tae ask him.’

So we sat on like that, my hand on her wrist and her hand on mine, without talking, hardly moving, not even looking at each other. Every few seconds I felt a slight shift as she raised her head to look at the clock and turned it to look at the door and I could see the face of my watch on my stretched-out arm as it ticked round, five minutes to ten, three minutes to ten. I was getting a knot between my shoulders and a dull ache lower down from my awkward pose, leaning forward with both arms in front, but I dared not move, lest I miss the sound of feet approaching or the latch lifting on the front door. I could just see Bunty out of the corner of my eye, her eyes gleaming dully in the shadows and her nose quivering with anxious interest at the strangeness of all this.

Then, all of a sudden, I felt Mrs Dudgeon give way like a sandcastle breached by the tide. I thought I must have missed a sound and I looked wildly around at the doors and windows, heart hammering, but there was nothing to be seen, no one there. Mrs Dudgeon lay back in her chair with eyes closed.

‘Are you -’ I began, suddenly convinced that what I had felt was the life escaping her.

She opened her eyes and smiled at me.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That wis a great kindness, madam. To sit wi’ me like that. I thank ye. Now!’ She rose to her feet, slowly and with all the marks of extreme tiredness, but with a calm determination which I could not begin to interpret. ‘Will ye take a cup o’ tea?’ she said. ‘For yer pains. Or a wee nip o’ somethin’ maybe?’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what just happened.’ As far as I could tell, nothing had happened, and yet suddenly she was released from the prison of worry she had been in for the last four days. Was she mad after all, then? Was she communing with spirits here? Or imagining herself to be?

‘Thank ye for tellin’ me aboot the police comin’,’ she said as she filled her kettle from a jug and drew it forward on to the grate. ‘I’ll need tae make sure and be ready fur them. No’ that I’m carin’ whit happens now. No’ really.’

‘Mrs Dudgeon, I do wish you would tell me what it’s all about,’ I said. ‘I’ll find out, one way or another in the end, I’m sure I will, but if you told me we could put our heads together and keep the police out of it.’

‘And why would you do that for me, madam,’ she said, ‘when ye dinnae even ken whit it is ye’re asking me to tell ye?’

‘Because I trust you,’ I said. ‘Because I’m sure that whatever it is that’s wrong, I’d be on your side.’

‘Mebbes if you were standin’ where I am,’ she said, her face hardening. ‘But ye’re not.’

‘I don’t have to be,’ I told her. ‘It’s no more than common humanity to feel compassion for your suffering. Sorrow for your losses.’

She frowned at me when I said that and her body sagged, just a little, as though someone had let the tiniest peep of air out of a balloon.

‘My losses,’ she said, and she turned away from me, burying her face into the teacloth she had taken to wipe out the cups. ‘Oh, Robert. Oh, God help me. I’m all alone now.’

‘For all the world as though she had only just remembered that he’d died,’ I told Alec, half an hour later, sitting in the firelight in the library once more. Cad and Buttercup had retired for the night but Alec had waited up for me and was now listening raptly, sucking on yet another pipe and scratching Bunty between the ears as she rested her chin on his thigh. She had gone straight to him as soon as I let her off her leash, craving some solid, masculine calm after the hysteria of the little scene in the cottage, the turncoat.

‘And what on earth could have put the thought of her husband’s death out of her head, on the day of his funeral no less, with all the plates of drying sandwiches still littered around?’

‘The more I hear about this the less sense any of it makes,’ Alec said. ‘Are you sure she’s not just insane?’

‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘There was something definite and – if I’m not mistaken – something rather horrid due to happen at ten o’clock and when it didn’t materialize, Mrs Dudgeon felt her first moment’s peace since Friday.’

‘Just as well for her that it didn’t happen,’ said Alec, rather grimly. ‘You don’t seem to feel any of the anger you’d be perfectly justified in feeling, that she was apparently ready to let you sit there and get swept up in it, whatever it was.’

‘It wasn’t like that, Alec,’ I said. ‘I’m still absolutely convinced that she’s innocent of any real wrongdoing in this. She said I would understand and sympathize if I were standing in her shoes. She’d hardly say that if it were something shabby.’

‘Perhaps she just meant you’d understand if you were a poor woman like her instead of a rich woman like you, then you’d understand the lengths someone might go to.’

I shook my head with impatience. ‘She’s not a poor woman, Alec. She’s a perfectly snug, secure, working man’s wife. Or at least she was. And I can’t foresee that she’ll be turned out of her cottage just because her husband is gone.’

‘By Cad and Buttercup?’ said Alec, eyebrows raised. ‘Hardly.’

‘Anyway, it wasn’t like that, I keep trying to tell you. I was talking to her about fellow feeling and the brotherhood of man – that kind of sympathy. I said I was on her side out of sorrow for her losses. That’s what reminded her that her husband had just died in fact.’

‘Losses?’ said Alec. ‘Plural?’

‘Her son died in the war,’ I said.

‘And what was his name?’ said Alec. I screwed up my face trying to remember.

‘Young Bobby, I think,’ I said. ‘At least I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were, with Donald and wee Donald and Isobel and wee Isobel next door. Not forgetting Bel’s wee Bella, and young Tina, Tina’s lassie. They are a family of little imagination, either that or monstrous egos.’

‘Well, there you are then,’ said Alec. ‘She hadn’t forgotten about her husband at all, but when you said losses plural it reminded her about her son too. And that cry of “Robert” was for him.’

‘Well, I feel an absolute heel now,’ I said, convinced that he was right. ‘I’m going to go to bed and pick away at that like a sore all night, darling. Thank you.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said Alec. ‘Look.’ He reached down beside his armchair, dislodging Bunty who had fallen asleep sitting up with her head in his lap. She gave a long two-note moan from deep in her throat and after circling twice curled up to sleep in earnest. With an equally heartfelt groan, Alec heaved an armload of newspapers on to his lap and patted them.

‘Scotsmans and Evening Newses for Saturday, yesterday and today,’ he said. ‘I’ve scoured the household for them while you were out. We’re looking for anything that Dudgeon might have been mixed up in. Anything that happened on Friday.’

‘Oh, not tonight,’ I pleaded. ‘I’m absolutely all in.’

‘Certainly tonight,’ said Alec. ‘There’s not much else that we can do until the sun is up and the world is open for business again. So let’s get started and with luck, before the morning comes, we’ll have something to lay before the inspector.’

‘Such as what?’ I asked.

‘Any odd happenings, any other unexplained deaths, anything at all.’

‘Dudgeon’s death isn’t unexplained,’ I said. ‘Damn!’

‘What?’

‘Oh, just that I wish I’d remembered to ask Mrs Dudgeon tonight if Robert did indeed take a great draught of whisky at the end of the day. She might have told me straight out if I’d asked her tonight. But she’s dedicating herself to getting a story all ready for the police even as we speak – I myself suggested that she should, no less! – so if I ask her tomorrow there’s no reason to think she’ll tell the truth.’

‘Time to make up for that blunder with a bit of solid detective work, then,’ said Alec. It was quite sickening the way he was plugging this task, just because he had been the one to find the newspapers.

‘Well, pour me a drink,’ I said. ‘And bags me the Evening News. Not so many long words.’

Stiff-necked from hunching over the tiny print and streaked with ink from rubbing our weary faces, after scrutinizing Saturday’s and Monday’s editions we had nothing to show for our efforts beyond a burglary at a manor house outside Linlithgow where a collection of Italian drawings had gone missing.

‘What a very law-abiding bunch these Lothianites are,’ said Alec. ‘Very slim pickings.’

‘And even that can’t really be worth considering,’ I said. ‘There would be no earthly reason not to do it some other time instead. The place was shut up under dust sheets and one day was as easy as the next. Besides, why would the gang need a carpenter?’

‘To get them out of their frames?’ said Alec, but he was wincing even as he spoke at how feeble this sounded.

‘Ludicrous,’ I said.

‘Well, let’s keep at it anyway,’ said Alec, shoving today’s Evening News towards me, and opening the last of the Scotsmans. I sighed and followed suit.

‘Tommy has missed his chance,’ I said, finding the advertisement for steerage to New Zealand again. ‘I’m so bored I could have joined him.’

‘What?’ said Alec.

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a joke. Ignore me.’

He did and all was peaceful except for the occasional turning over of a page and the sounds of Bunty’s dreams until Alec exclaimed in a loud voice: ‘Dandy!’

‘Wha-… have you found something?’

‘You’re reading an advertisement for dress patterns. Really!’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Alec, but this is a complete waste of time. I’m sure of it. It’s all wrong for the character of Robert Dudgeon to imagine that he’d commit a crime and even if it weren’t it doesn’t make sense of the last minute turn-around on Thursday evening. You can’t suddenly find out with only twelve hours to spare that you’re going to need an alibi. You don’t “find out” something like that, do you see? And that’s very much how it seemed to me when I spoke to Dudgeon. Something had come up, something had unexpectedly moved forwards, or backwards, making an unforeseen clash. It happens to me all the time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, you know,’ I said. ‘You say to yourself I’ll spend next week on Christmas shopping and then the week before Christmas on writing letters and going round the tenants and I’ll just be able to fit it all in, and then you look at your diary and you realize that next week is the week before Christmas which means there’s exactly half as much time as you thought there was and you haven’t a hope in hell.’

‘Well, if it were a diary clash of some sort – and I can’t really see what sort, I must tell you – why wouldn’t Dudgeon just tell Cad about it?’

‘Any number of reasons,’ I said. ‘It could have been very personal or something he didn’t feel particularly proud of. But it needn’t be the kind of thing that gets into the papers. We’ve scoured every inch of them barring the Births, Marriages and Deaths!’

‘I’m not willing to settle at “any number of reasons”, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘Name some; name at least one thing that must suddenly be done and can’t be left undone and is worth all the rigmarole of the stand-in Burry Man to get it done, because I can’t think of any.’

‘Nor can I,’ I admitted, ‘except speaking of births, marriages and deaths…’

‘What?’ said Alec.

‘Just that,’ I said. ‘One has to register them by a certain date and when the date comes round it can’t be put off any further.’

‘But anyone can register a death,’ said Alec. ‘Within reason. And I suppose the same goes for a birth too. It’s only a marriage that needs the principals to – What is it?’

‘Listen!’ I said. ‘Don’t look at me like that. On Saturday – no, Sunday – one of the times I was at the Dudgeons’ cottage anyway, do you remember? Mrs Dudgeon was holding forth about not being able to register Robert’s death the next day, because the registry office was shut. Her sisters tried to shout her down but she held to it adamantly, maintaining that it had been open the week before on the August Bank Holiday to let everyone who had business then get it done while they were off their work, and that it was shut this Monday – i.e. yesterday – to let the staff have their holiday too. Alec, I think that’s it! Why would Mrs Dudgeon know all the ins and outs of the registry office holiday times unless she had just found out with a terrible jolt that it was shut when she thought it would be open? That’s it. Dudgeon found out on Thursday afternoon that the office was closed on Monday and that Friday was the only chance to go, but he couldn’t tell anyone why he had to go there.’

Alec blinked.

‘But she was wrong,’ he said. ‘And even if she wasn’t, why did he have to go there? We’ve already said it couldn’t be to register a birth or death.’

‘Well, it must have been to register a marriage, then,’ I said.

‘Whose?’ said Alec. He sounded terribly irritated and I supposed I was looking rather smug, but for one thing it had been his idea to sit up until we were both tired beyond the point of politeness and for another I had just thought of something. An explanation both plausible and easily checked.

‘His,’ I answered. ‘It had to be. Because if anyone can register a birth or a death the same goes for witnessing a marriage. It’s only the principals in each who aren’t interchangeable. He was getting married.’

‘But… if you’re right – although I am sure you’re not – who was he going to marry?’

‘Mrs Dudgeon?’ I suggested. ‘Or the woman we’ve been calling Mrs Dudgeon.’

‘If he was going to legitimize his marriage to his wife,’ said Alec, ‘she would have to know that they weren’t actually married already.’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘In fact, I think she did know. When I blurted out to her – during that same conversation – that she would have to look out his certificates, meaning his birth and marriage certificates and his passport – she flew into a complete panic. And her sisters twittering round asking if she had lost the certificates and offering to look for them only made her worse. And – Oh my, Alec! This must be right – do you remember? She was beside herself when the body wasn’t brought home. She kept asking about his things, asking if they had gone through his pockets and looked at all his things. I couldn’t work out for my life what it was that she could be so very worried about being seen, but imagine if he had some document to do with the marriage and someone read it. What a scandal that would be.’

‘Indeed it would,’ said Alec. ‘Which raises the question: how could they possibly not be married? They’ve lived here all their lives, surrounded by brother and sisters all of whom were probably at their wedding. And it will be recorded large as life in the parish register for all to see. Also, if it was such a dark secret, who did they let into the plan?’

‘Why need they let anyone in?’ I said.

‘X?’ said Alec. ‘Remember X? Someone was in on it. Someone who was willing to step into Robert Dudgeon’s shoes. And anyway if he were going to marry Mrs Dudgeon she’d need to be there. And she wasn’t, she was sitting in Craw’s Close in her little cart.’

‘So maybe he was going to marry someone else,’ I said.

‘Who?’ said Alec. ‘Why? And if he was going to marry someone else, Mrs Dudgeon would hardly help him.’ He stretched luxuriously in his armchair and dumped the lapful of newspapers off his lap. ‘I think this is one of those ingenious explanations which occur in the small hours and seem quite hopeful until one looks at them again in the light of day. And it doesn’t explain anything about Dudgeon’s death.’

‘Neither does anything else we’ve come up with,’ I pointed out. ‘At least this adds enough stress and strain to explain why his heart might give out.’

Alec merely stared at me.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’m talking drivel. It’s time for bed. But in the morning I’m going to go and look in the parish register at least.’