The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter Sixteen

‘Oh Lord,’ I said, as I swung the motor car into the mouth of the lane and saw the swarm of red bobbing around against the tree trunks. ‘We could have done without them.’

I honked my horn and the red disappeared as five of the little Dudgeons turned to see where the noise had come from. They misinterpreted the signal though and came whooping and galloping towards us, thinking they had been summoned. The first to arrive clambered up on to the running board and hung their arms over the open windows with not a thought to my paintwork and the others jostling from the back and shoving against their siblings hardly helped.

‘Now, now, be careful,’ I said, but my voice was drowned in the hubbub.

‘… another hurl in yer car, missus.’

‘… huvnae been in the front seat yet and Lila’s been twice.’

‘… on a picnic and take us wi’ ye, missus.’

This last request was so bold and so untempting that I could not help but laugh.

‘It’s good to see you all out playing in the sunshine again,’ I said. ‘No more demons and ghosties?’

‘Naw,’ said the boy I thought was Randall. ‘They’re away somewhere else.’

‘Aye, and Auntie Chrissie did her exercises,’ said Lila. ‘And they cannae come back.’

‘Well, isn’t that splendid,’ said Alec, after rolling his eyes at me. ‘You’re free to roam in perfect safety then. Excellent.’

‘Aye, as long as we stay oot o’ they shell holes,’ said a small boy.

‘Of course,’ I agreed. ‘It’s never a good idea to go falling down holes, nor to shove your little sister down there, boys. Remember that.’

‘Well, we wouldnae fa’ cos there’s ladders,’ said Randall. ‘But we’re no goin’ doon the ladders cos there’s ghosties there for sure.’

My shoulders sank but Alec only threw back his head and laughed, telling them to get off the boards and let us proceed or there would be the ghosts of five squashed children in the woods. They were obviously rather taken with this idea and they fell away writhing on the ground as though shot and beginning already to emit their ghostly moans.

‘Unspeakable, aren’t they?’ Alec said as we rolled forward. ‘Do you think Chrissie Dudgeon really performed an exorcism?’

‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘Perhaps she went out with a broom and shouted “Shoo!” to humour them, but the “exercises” must have got into their heads from elsewhere. Rather nasty when it gets as serious as that.’

Mrs Dudgeon was alone when we reached the cottage, and the relief on her face when she opened the door and saw it was us told me that she had not yet had her visit from Inspector Cruickshank.

‘It’s only me,’ I assured her and she smiled before glancing at Alec.

‘I’ll wait out here,’ he said tactfully, patting his pockets in search of his pipe. This had not been agreed but I saw immediately that it was best and I followed Mrs Dudgeon inside.

‘How are you?’ I asked her as we sat, although I winced as I said it. How could she be anything but utterly wretched after all? When I looked closely, however, I was surprised to see that she looked rather better than I had ever seen her before, calmer and more rested, although admittedly with the unmistakable tug of bottomless sadness behind her eyes.

‘I’m no’ so bad,’ she said, perfectly summing up in these few words what showed in her face. ‘Thank ye kindly, madam, for comin’ and askin’.’

I squirmed a little at that. Not to say that I should not have visited again with simple condolences – it was obvious that Buttercup did not count these attentions among her duties – but my purpose was far from kind, however one viewed it. Even justice, if I dared cast my current pursuit in that light, was far from compassionate and tended to dole out its rewards and punishments more ruthlessly than I could, if it were ever left to me.

‘I need to ask you a question,’ I said. ‘Two questions actually.’ For I had thought of another; even less likely to get a straight answer but worthy of the airing nonetheless.

‘I wish to goodness ye’d -’ she said, but she bit it off.

‘On Friday evening,’ I went on as though she had not spoken, ‘when your husband returned to the Rosebery Hall, did he drink anything? Any whisky?’

She studied me for a moment before answering. I could practically hear the thoughts whirring, engaging and disengaging, as she decided how best to answer. Eventually she lifted her hands and let them fall into her lap with a soft clap.

‘A tate fae his flask,’ she said, and the defeat in her voice told me that she had given up trying to work out what I was up to and had simply answered me.

‘A slug of whisky from his hip flask?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘More than a slug, really. A good swallow, like. It wis full and he more or less drained it. Does that tell ye what ye want tae ken?’ She spoke as though I had beaten this out of her.

‘And is the flask of the usual sort of size?’ I asked.

She stood and went to the sideboard drawer, where she found it instantly. Of course she did, since it must have been in her husband’s pocket until the last few days and she must only just have decided where to keep it now, or where to store it while she decided whether to keep it at all. She passed it to me and I felt the weight of it in my hand, an everyday little flask, made of pewter, the size of my palm. There was no way the contents of this could kill a drinking man. I unscrewed the cap and sniffed it, jerking my head back sharply at the hated, half-familiar, fruity stink. Then I locked eyes again with Mrs Dudgeon. I was sure she was telling me the truth about this, and that sealed her innocence as far as I was concerned

‘I think your husband was murdered,’ I said, not even trying to dress it up or soften it in any way.

She shook her head, vehemently, blood instantly draining. ‘The doctor said himself it wis his heart. You were the one that told me.’

‘But that’s when he thought that Robert had been drinking whisky all the day long,’ I told her. ‘He knew – or thought he did – about the Burry Man’s day, he found some whisky still to be absorbed and he put the two together and concluded that there was enough whisky there to put a strain on Robert’s heart. But there wasn’t, was there, Mrs Dudgeon? And he didn’t have a weak heart, did he?’ She was shaking her head, looking defeated again, and numb with sorrow.

‘Don’t you want to find out who killed him?’ I asked her. Again she shook her head.

‘Yer a wummin yersel’, are ye no’?’ she said, looking at me searchingly. ‘A wife and a mither o’ bairns?’ I nodded. ‘Can ye no’ jist leave it be?’ she asked. ‘Can ye no’ for the love of God jist leave it?’

I was more puzzled than ever. What woman would not want the murder of her husband to be investigated? What woman in the world would not want her husband’s killer to be caught? What did she mean?

‘I can’t leave it, Mrs Dudgeon,’ I said. ‘But I promise that I’ll do my best to keep your private business private.’

She looked at me very shrewdly, almost amused, and said to me: ‘I’d doubt that, madam. If ye kent whit it wis. I doubt you’d do that.’

‘Two more questions,’ I told her. ‘You don’t have to answer but I need to ask. First, what were you doing that night, with the pen and ink?’ She shook her head and gave a short, bleak laugh.

‘Nothin’,’ she said. ‘Runnin’ roun’ the woods like a daftie.’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to press you. And now this is my last question, I promise. Do you know why, can you tell me why, Robert was going to leave you?’ Her look of incomprehension was quite genuine, I was sure. ‘I know about the ticket,’ I told her, ‘I know it was for your husband alone.’ It took a moment or two for her to understand what I meant and then there was no flush of annoyance or shame, only a tired shake of the head to brush the silliness out of her way.

‘I will find out in the end,’ I said. ‘I must.’

‘Well, if you must you must,’ she said, her tone almost mocking. ‘But it’s no matter to me, madam. It’s no matter at all now.’

I recounted all of this to Alec as we made our way home, trying to give him a flavour of her mood, her strange serenity, even though there was nothing very concrete to which I could pin it.

‘It could just be grief,’ he said, showing me that I had failed. ‘Or maybe she finally got the doctor to prescribe a little something as her sisters were pressing her to do. Very frustrating for us, obviously, but the police will be able to make her talk. So it will come out in the end even if we don’t have the satisfaction of getting our questions answered.’

‘It was just one question she wouldn’t answer,’ I said. ‘About the pen and the ink. She was perfectly honest about the hip flask, I’m sure, and her face answered me more plainly than any words could have on the point of Robert leaving her. Whatever he was up to it wasn’t that.’

‘It must have been,’ said Alec. ‘Nothing else makes sense. Her face must just be better suited for poker than you’re giving it credit for. What about X?’

‘X?’ I said. ‘X leaving her? I’m not with you, darling.’

‘I mean did you ask Mrs Dudgeon about X? Did you ask her who he was? If anyone’s in a position to verify his identity, it must be her. He was in the cart with her.’

I groaned. Somehow, unbelievably, I had forgotten to ask a single thing about that. So there was another question we needed to hand over to Inspector Cruickshank. Unless… I took my foot off the accelerator pedal and the car began to slow gently in the soft dirt of the lane. It was not possible, surely, for all of these questions to be unrelated. X, the ticket to New Zealand, and the pen and ink all had to be connected somehow, and thanks to something that Alec had just that moment said, something which found an echo in my memory, I began to see what it was.

‘In a position to verify his identity,’ I said.

‘Oh Lord,’ said Alec. ‘Did I really just say that? Forgive me. Detecting is one thing, Dan, but please stop me if I start to speak like a newly promoted sergeant with his own bicycle and bell.’

‘It was the chap at Brunwick, Allanson you were quoting,’ I told him. ‘Not that he’s much of a role model either.’ The motor car had ground to a complete halt now and I disengaged the gear and turned to face him.

‘Listen to this,’ I said. ‘What if the ticket wasn’t for Robert Dudgeon at all. What if it was for X. X needed to get away – not the Dudgeons, not Robert – they were just the go-betweens. Perhaps X had a criminal record and would set off alarms if he bought a ticket with his own passport. So Robert planned to do it for him, only when the news broke about the passport office being closed and they realized the clash with the Burry Man it looked as though they were scuppered. Then they had the idea that while Robert was standing in for X, X could stand in for him.

‘Afterwards they were supposed to give him the ticket, in plenty of time for the departure on Tuesday evening, but Robert Dudgeon died and all the paperwork he had on him was stuck in the mortuary. Absolute panic stations. And even when the body and all his belongings were returned, the house was overrun with sisters and X couldn’t get near.’

‘And the pen and ink?’ said Alec.

‘Was to doctor the ticket,’ I said feeling triumphant. ‘To change it from one name – Dudgeon’s – to another – X’s. Only once again, Donald was sitting with the body and one or another of the sisters was sitting with the widow and the day was approaching ever closer. Hence Mrs Dudgeon out wandering in the woods trying to furnish X with what he needed to do the job himself. And hence also her extreme agitation as ten o’clock rolled around on Tuesday night. If X was caught, she would be tried for fraud, or for something anyway, but once he was off British soil and away she was safe.’

‘There’s something in that,’ said Alec. ‘It’s not perfect but…’

‘In what way isn’t it?’ I demanded. ‘It could even explain how Dudgeon died. X killed him. X didn’t trust Dudgeon not to go to the police and confess before X had a chance to get away, and so he killed him. In what way is this not the perfect solution?’

‘Well, doctoring the ticket, for one thing,’ said Alec.

‘The clerk said that as long as they turn up sober -’

‘As long as they turn up with a passport and ticket and sober,’ Alec said. ‘But I’m sure that if the name on the ticket were scratched out and another one scrawled underneath they would have something to say about it.’

‘Well, then, maybe there aren’t names on the ticket,’ I said.

‘Then what would X need the ink for?’ said Alec, which was a very good point. ‘And why would the Dudgeons do this? It must be illegal in some way although I don’t know the name of the crime. Why would they take the risk?’

‘For money?’ I said. ‘If X were paying them? Or threatening them. They might do it out of fear, under duress.’

‘Also,’ said Alec, ‘I don’t really see wh rs Dudgeon would be in a state about registering Robert’s death if what you’re saying now is the answer to the riddle. By Sunday night she had all of his papers back, didn’t she? What was the difficulty?’

I rubbed my nose, trying to think of an answer. There was none as far as I could see, but I was still sure I had hit on something.

‘Perhaps just my saying “birth certificate and passport” together like that when they were so very much in the front of her mind? I don’t know.’ I looked at my watch. ‘But I wonder if there’s time to telephone to Brunwick, Allanson and offer that clerk enormous bribes to let us go in and look through the passenger lists, try to match them up. If we find a name on the passenger list that doesn’t appear on the ticket receipts, that, my darling, will be X.’

‘So it will,’ said Alec. ‘Well, get a move on then, it’s nearly five.’

The clerk did us even better than that, though. When we had been put through to his office by the girl on the main switchboard, far from having to bribe him with favours, he sounded tremendously pleased to hear from us and launched in right away.

‘I took to heart what you said, sir,’ he began. Alec was talking and we were sharing the earpiece, huddled with heads together making what Nanny Palmer used to call, with a shudder, nit bridges. ‘About there being official persons coming to sniff around after you had gone. I didn’t want Brunwick’s to look bad in their eyes, so I’ve spent the entire afternoon since you left making up the final lists. Lord, you want to hear those lady clerks grumbling about being put to the trouble, as though they’re not paid a perfectly good wage for taking the trouble. It’s not like the old days. Anyway, sir, I’m happy to report that there were no irregularities, none at all, so there’s a load off your mind.’

‘Ask him -’ I began in a whisper, but Alec was ahead of me this time.

‘Did you happen, I mean is it possible – do you cross-reference the last-minute stand-ins in any way? Is it possible to lay one’s hands on them without crosschecking the whole list?’

‘The last-minute stand-ins, sir?’ said the clerk. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Well, no,’ said Alec. ‘I daresay that’s not what you call them. I mean people who come along having bought a ticket at second-hand or who come along and wait in hopes of a berth becoming available. If it were the theatre we’d call them returns.’

The clerk spluttered, scandalized.

‘There would never, never be anything like that on a Brunwick’s ship. Stowaways, sir? Not nowadays, anyway. Different in the old days before the war, of course. Then you would have whole families turning up on the off-chance, to be sure, but not now. Every ticket has the name of the passport holder on it and both are checked at boarding and that’s what I’m saying. There were no irregularities at all.’

Alec, for all his quibbling earlier, looked quite as disappointed as I felt to have our latest theory scuppered in this way.

‘So,’ he said, ‘how many vacant places were there? In total? How many no-shows?’

‘None,’ cried the clerk. ‘As I’m saying to you, no irregularities at all. A perfectly orderly, smooth departure. We don’t send lady clerks to the boarding desk, you know.’

Alec and I pulled faces at each other and tried not to laugh. Despite our personal setback it was rather entertaining to hear this poor man talking himself into such a hole. It was beginning to look likely that there was the most glaring irregularity possible right there under his nose.

‘I wonder,’ said Alec, ‘since you’ve worked so hard to get the lists ready, is it possible to double-check on a particular entry? Are they accessible? Would it take long?’

‘They’re right here in front of me,’ said the clerk and we could hear the thump of him patting something with the flat of his hand. ‘What is the name of the passenger you’re interested in?’

‘Robert George Dudgeon,’ said Alec, and immediately we could hear a furious fluttering and snapping of pages at the other end of the line.

‘Robert George Dudgeon,’ said the clerk. ‘He’ll be rounding the Cape to Portugal now, sir, and his ears will be burning. Robert George Dudgeon. Here he is. Robert George Dudgeon, 1st June 1899, Cassilis, Dalmeny Boarded the ship at nine-oh-five pip emma, rather late but we won’t hold that against him. Anything else I can help you with, sir?’

Alec assured him that there was not and rang off.

‘So much for their marvellous system,’ he said. ‘I wonder if they’ll ever find out that he’s not there.’

‘I blame the lady clerks, naturally,’ I said. ‘Odd though, that they should have a time of boarding and everything, wasn’t it?’

‘Remind me never to sail with Brunwick, Allanson,’ said Alec and he dropped into a cruelly accurate approximation of the clerk’s voice. ‘“Lifeboats, sir? Oh plenty. I have the list right here. No irregularities at all with the lifeboats, sir.”’

‘Well, shall we call the inspector now, or leave it until tomorrow?’ I said. ‘I’m for leaving it, I must say, sleep on it all and see if we can make something a bit more consistent out of it tomorrow morning. At the moment it’s a dreadful lot of scraps and rags. X planned to leave but the plan fell through and we don’t know who he is or why he had to flee or why the Dudgeons helped him. And Robert died in the middle of it all for no particular reason.’

At that moment, as though to stop us worrying away at it any longer, we heard Cad hailing us from the bottom of the stairs – ‘Dandee? Alec? Tea!’ – and we both burst into fits of uncontrollable giggles.

‘Poor Cad!’ I managed to say finally. ‘Can’t you take him aside and tell him man-to-man, Alec?’

‘Tell him what, though?’ said Alec.

‘Well, for a start, not to halloo up the stairs like a nursery governess to tell guests that it’s teatime,’ I said.

‘But that would only teach him that one thing,’ said Alec, ‘and there’s no knowing what he’ll do next. If there were some general rule from which all behaviours could be deduced, I’d happily tell him what it was.’

‘Well, it’s getting desperate,’ I said. ‘Even Buttercup was laughing at him yesterday. He came through the yard at the other house and some of the laundry had blown out of its pegs in the breeze, so he picked it up and began to rehang it, then realizing that it was dry he took it all down instead and set off into the kitchens with the basket looking for someone to give it to. He is a love, actually,’ I concluded. ‘Even if you do work out the general rule don’t tell him, Alec. I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Not much chance of it,’ said Alec, glumly. ‘At least, I don’t seem in danger of stumbling over any organizing principles as a detective’s assistant, so I don’t suppose I’m suddenly going to see the light as a…’

‘Husband-trainer?’ I suggested. ‘But I think you can give yourself the title of detective, don’t you? Under-detective, anyway. I don’t think of you as an assistant.’ It gave me pause, if I am honest, to hear that he did. Or rather, to extrapolate from that point to the fact that as far as Alec was concerned I was the boss. I was in charge. I was not altogether sure that I liked the idea either. I had certainly had one or two flashes of inspiration in the last few days and if I were being kind to myself I should say I was bumbling a little less than I had on my first adventure, but still there were a great many trailing threads and no chance in sight of their being knotted and snipped any time soon. It was terribly deflating to be forced to hand it all over to the police in this ragged state.

We reached the ground floor and went out of the massive front door to join Cad and Buttercup who were sitting at tea in those peculiar American deck chairs with the very short legs, basking in the sunshine against the west wall.

‘Well?’ said Cad, rather breathlessly as we plumped down into the low seats and waited for our cups and scones. Cad himself, I was enchanted to notice, had given up on that particular little bit of authenticity and was holding a tall glass of milk in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

‘Well, we’ve found out what Dudgeon was up to,’ I said. ‘To a point, although not why. And we’ve found out enough to be able to conclude that it was either murder or a straight heart attack, one of the two; it wasn’t the drink. But we still don’t know who X is.’

‘Well, do tell all, Dandy,’ said Buttercup. ‘And don’t sound so jaded. It’s only been days. How are you getting on with the ham sandwich, for instance, if you can manage it without any gory details.’

‘Lunch in a pub, more than likely,’ I said and Buttercup’s face fell.

‘That’s hardly thrilling,’ she said. ‘What about the pen and ink?’

‘No idea,’ said Alec. ‘One of the many things that Inspector Cruickshank will have to get to the bottom of. Even if he needs to arrest Mrs Dudgeon to do so.’

There was a spluttering sound from beside me and Cad sat up straight, wiping his mouth.

‘Dandy,’ he said, ‘are you resigning?’

‘Resigning?’ I echoed.

‘I’m not sure you can, you know. I entered this business arrangement in good faith and now you say that you’re fed up and you’re simply going to tell the inspector all he needs to know to arrest one of my estate tenants who has had enough trouble to last her a lifetime? Well, all I’m saying is I’m not sure that’s on. Not sure at all.’

This was, I think, the sternest speech I had ever heard Cadwallader make and I was about to appeal to Buttercup and Alec for support, to remind Cad that I had taken pains right from the start to explain to him about the unkindness of justice and the impossibility of telling where the ball would roll once one had let go of it, but before I could gather my wits to speak it struck me that he was right. I could not possibly hand over what I knew to Inspector Cruickshank and just leave Mrs Dudgeon to his mercy; not because she was under Cad’s wing and Cad had employed me – I was firm on that point and always would be – but because I knew in my very bones that Cad was right: she had had enough trouble to last her a lifetime. And if cruel blind justice would only make her suffer more, then cruel blind justice would have to do it without my help.

I did not quite know what to make of this revelation as it struck me; I should far rather have thought of myself as ‘Dandy Gilver: servant of truth’ than as ‘Dandy Gilver: woman, wife and mither o’ bairns’ and I knew that taking cases and meddling in police business was only justified so long as I marched in step with them, doing what they also would do. Once I began to plough my own furrow, I was in danger of committing one of those ‘spoilsporty’ crimes Alec so despised and I would be had up for it if they caught me. Not that I would be in a position to obstruct much police business in the future unless I could harden my heart: for if I did ever have business cards made, then ‘sentimental fudging of the facts a speciality’ would not bring me many plum jobs. In the present case, though, neither my future as a sleuth nor my fear of prosecution could sway me, for if sentiment, compassion, love for my fellow man – whatever I chose to call it – if it trumped justice then it certainly trumped money too and it should, if I was any kind of ‘wummin’ at all, trump fear of the police and what they might do to me. It certainly seemed to for Chrissie Dudgeon.

The sun beat steadily against my face and limbs and yet, upon this thought, goose pimples began to start out on my skin. The stone wall behind me radiated the warmth of a whole summer and yet my neck prickled with cold.

‘What is it?’ whispered Buttercup in an awe-struck voice.

‘What’s what?’ said Cad, also whispering.

‘Ssh!’ hissed Alec.

‘I’ve thought of something,’ I said in a steady voice.

‘Yes, dear, we noticed,’ said Alec. ‘Really, Dandy, if you ever get sick of detecting you could make a fortune running seances. Most theatrical. What is it?’

‘It ties in the passport, the birth certificate, the passenger lists and above all – above all – the reason they did it.’

‘Go on,’ said Alec. He took the teacup out of my hand and put it down for me on the table.

‘Not money,’ I said. ‘And not fear of threats. And not because it was “right” in some abstract sense, because they knew that it wasn’t. They did it for love. They gave X Robert Dudgeon’s birth certificate and passport and the ticket and X got on the ship and went away to a new life in New Zealand.’

‘But that couldn’t possibly work,’ said Alec. ‘The new passports have photographs on them. You can’t simply hand them over to any Tom, Dick or Harry.’

‘I’m not suggesting that you can,’ I said. ‘I’m suggesting that one could hand one’s passport over to one’s brother, or cousin or nephew, and that somewhere amongst the labyrinthine relations and connections of the Dudgeons there is a bad egg, a black sheep, whom the Dudgeons could not – for love – refuse.’

‘Must be a relation, not a connection,’ said Alec. ‘And one with quite a family resemblance, come to that, to get past the officials on a borrowed passport.’

‘Well, these photographs are not works of art, darling,’ I said. ‘And they’re tiny. A family resemblance would do it, or one striking feature. I daresay, for example, that any of the little ones next door would be able to pass for another in years to come with their mother’s red hair.’

Alec nodded, rather grudgingly.

‘Father’s,’ he said. ‘But yes, you could be right. We need to find out if any of the Dudgeon clan is missing.’

‘Father’s what?’ I asked him.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Cad, are there any more Dudgeons around on the estate here? Before we go searching further afield.’

‘Father’s red hair,’ said Buttercup, two steps behind as usual.

‘Whose father has red hair?’ I said, and all three of them turned to look at me.

‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Buttercup. ‘The savages’ father, of course. Donald.’

‘Donald doesn’t have red hair,’ I said. ‘They must get it from their mother.’

Cad, Buttercup and Alec were now exchanging looks of utter bewilderment.

‘Flaming Donald?’ said Cad. ‘Are you colour blind, Dandy? Flaming Donald has the reddest hair I’ve ever seen. Freddy couldn’t buy a bottle of redder hair than Flaming Donald’s.’

‘But I met him,’ I said. ‘He’s… He’s called Flaming Donald because of his beliefs, isn’t he? And he’s Robert Dudgeon’s brother.’

‘No,’ said Cad. ‘His name is Lamont and he’s married to Chrissie Dudgeon’s brown-haired sister. Isobel.’

‘So… that man that I met…’ I said, speaking slowly although thinking very fast. ‘He was most definitely a relative and he could have been – yes! – he must have been X. He must have, mustn’t he, Alec? Hanging around at the cottage that afternoon when everyone else was away. My God, it must have given him a shock to see me grubbing around in amongst the burrs.’

‘I’m surprised he didn’t cosh you on the back of the neck,’ Alec said.

I thought back to the fevered stream of apologies and explanations I had spouted to the man and remembered how he seemed to sum me up as a harmless idiot. I blushed.

‘So,’ I said, trying to bluster my way out of my feeling of shame even as the flush spread to the roots of my hair, ‘who is he? A brother?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Cad. ‘Dudgeon was the son of the old estate carpenter, the only son.’

‘X could be the son of one of his sisters, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Chrissie’s sister-in-law, that is. I never really believed that Tina and Bet and Lizzie and Margaret could all be Chrissie Dudgeon’s actual blood sisters. Some of them at least must be in-laws, and one of them could be the mother of X.’

‘Well, of course they couldn’t be sisters,’ said Alec. ‘When you think about it. Tina and Chrissie? Lizzie and Bet?’

‘Anyway,’ said Buttercup suddenly, ‘the charmless Isobel is Mrs Dudgeon’s only sister. She told me that the very first night when we were in the scullery. ‘

I put my head into my hands and groaned. Time and again over the days, I had seen my listener frown and puzzle and never stopped to wonder why. Joey Brown had said she did not know who I was talking about; the men working at the wall didn’t know who Donald Dudgeon was; even Mrs Dudgeon herself had asked me what I meant when I talked of ‘one of her sisters’ and when I had told her I meant Tina she had smiled and said she supposed they were.

‘But Mrs Dudgeon said it herself that night,’ I said, clutching at straws now. ‘She clearly said “my sisters”.’

‘“My sisters” what?’ said Alec.

‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘It was when we were alone, she said “my sisters” and then she heard Isobel coming back and stopped.’

‘Well, there you are then,’ said Alec. ‘She was saying “my sister’s coming back” probably.’

I nodded, defeated.

‘So who were those women?’ I said. ‘Who are they? And what were they all doing there all the time?’

‘They were Mrs Dudgeon’s workmates from the bottling,’ said Buttercup. ‘You should have heard Isobel talking about them. Very sour.’

‘And you never said a word of this?’ Alec demanded, turning to her. ‘You must have heard us talking about Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters over and over again! Weren’t you ever listening?’

Buttercup shrugged.

‘Why did it matter anyway?’ she said.

‘Because,’ I explained, very patiently, ‘if I had known everyone’s name and who they were I would have known that the man in the cottage garden that day wasn’t Donald, and I might have been able to work out that he was X, before the ship sailed.’

‘Ah well,’ said Buttercup, comfortably. ‘What’s in a name?’

So, you see, she really was asking for it.

‘Cad,’ I said, ‘Freddy’s nickname at school was Buttercup.’ Then I shouted over the top of the resulting laughter and cursing: ‘But never mind that now. The question remains. If X wasn’t a brother or a nephew, then who was he that he could unite both Mr and Mrs Dudgeon in such a risky…’

‘It does seem a bit extravagant for a cousin,’ Cad began, but Alec shushed him.

The goose pimples were back, and the neck prickles and I heard Mrs Dudgeon’s voice once more, telling me exactly who he was. At least telling me who I was and who she was and what that meant.

‘She’s off again,’ said Alec.

‘Dandy, what is it?’ said Buttercup. ‘You look very peculiar.’

‘He looked exactly like Robert Dudgeon,’ I said. ‘Like a younger and sadder version of Robert Dudgeon. And he’s the only one who – even if he had killed Robert and got away – Mrs Dudgeon would not want anyone to find out and bring him back. Not her. Not any “mither o’ bairns”.’

‘Who was it?’ said Cad.

‘Young Bobby,’ said Alec and I nodded.

‘But he died in the war,’ said Cad.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He went missing in the war. Missing presumed dead. And it took him years but he finally made it back here to where people would help him even if they knew it was wrong. Goodness knows how long it took to hatch the plan. He was living in the woods – the ghost of a soldier like the children told us – counting on his parents to help him.’

‘A deserter?’ said Cad. ‘I can’t believe it of them.’

‘She told me as much,’ I said. ‘Mrs Dudgeon. I assured her that I would keep her private business private and she said if I knew what her private business was I would soon change my mind.’

‘And you don’t think the ship’s people would be able to tell the difference?’ said Alec. ‘Between a young man and his father?’

I shook my head. ‘For one thing, Bobby Dudgeon doesn’t look like a young man,’ I said. ‘I thought he was Donald, father of all those rascals. And for another…’ I laughed. ‘I thought the clerk had made a mistake when he read from the passenger list. Robert George Dudgeon. 1st June 1899.’

‘The pen and ink!’ said Alec, sitting up straight and slapping his hands on his thighs.

‘The pen and ink,’ I agreed. ‘Dudgeon was born in 1873 and his son certainly couldn’t pass for fifty.’ I traced the digits on the tea-table cloth with my finger. ‘It could be done. A seven into a nine. A three into a nine. It could easily be done.’

‘Of course, Robert Dudgeon getting a passport at fifty years would be safe from any checks against military lists,’ Alec said.

‘So as easily as that,’ I went on, ‘Bobby could have got a passport and ticket which matched his birth certificate. The passport would show a photograph which possibly did not do him justice but, these days, who would point out to a young man that he looks rather haggard for his years and ask him what on earth he had been up to to get that way?’

‘And the clerk himself told us that they do no checks at boarding,’ said Alec. ‘It was a perfect plan. Inspired.’

I looked intently at him, not quite straight-on so that he would not see me looking. He was not a woman, wife and mother of sons like me and I could not decipher from his face or his words what he made of this, whether or not he was about to leap to his feet and storm away to Inspector Cruickshank demanding that the ship be met at Lisbon and the traitor brought home.

‘Perfect until the shock news of the day’s holiday in lieu,’ I said. ‘But in the end they weathered even that.’

‘And then,’ said Cad, ‘he killed his father?’

There was a gasp from Buttercup.

‘That’s what Chrissie Dudgeon believes,’ I said.

‘But why?’ Buttercup asked.

I shrugged.

‘Perhaps Robert Dudgeon was changing his mind,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps he suddenly said to Bobby that he couldn’t let him go through with it. We never did explain to ourselves why Chrissie was standing outside the police station that day when she saw the holiday notice. Perhaps she was loitering there, considering whether or not to turn him in.’

‘Can’t have been that,’ said Alec. ‘Can’t have been. Bobby can’t just have conjured an untraceable poison out of his hat on the spur of the moment because his father surprised him with bad news. Robert Dudgeon must simply have died, as we’ve been saying all along. And now that we know what he was doing, the notion of his heart giving out under strain only becomes more plausible than ever.’

We sat quietly in our ring of chairs for a while then. I supposed each of us was waiting for someone else to decide what to do. It was my case, it was at Cad’s behest that I had taken it, but Alec alone amongst us was in the position to call for mercy. He was the only one who had faced what Bobby Dudgeon had faced and had resisted the escape route that Bobby had taken. The rest of us had no right to cast any stones.

Surprisingly, it was Buttercup who spoke up, at last. Unsurprisingly, when she did, it was to plant both her feet on the sore spot with all the grace of a bison.

‘Well, Alec?’ she said. ‘Obviously it’s up to you.’

But Alec’s mind was working away at other things, it appeared.

‘Joey Brown,’ he said, and I could not help a little cry of enlightenment escaping me.

‘Of course! Joey Brown. She didn’t only recognize who the Burry Man wasn’t. She recognized who it was.’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ said Alec. ‘But what I meant was, I think we should put it to Joey Brown. I’ve always been interested to know… how could one not be? But usually there’s no balance to the thing. Chrissie Dudgeon is all one way. Shinie Brown all the other. This is a rare opportunity indeed. Will Joey Brown choose to save her brother’s honour or her sweetheart’s neck, if we put it to her, if she’s to decide?’

There was a high hardness in his voice that did not quite manage to cover every trace of the tremor beneath it and I ached to be able to comfort him. One thing I had learned though, in that ghastly uniform in that living nightmare of a nursing home, was that punching someone in the eye, raging at blameless little maids, getting roaring drunk with the other soldiers, or taking nurses away to hotels on overnight passes, all these could bring some kind of comfort. Actual comfort, delivered by volunteer ladies two afternoons a week, was absolutely bloody useless and only made the punching worse.