The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter Seventeen

This time there was no pussy-footing around ordering drinks and starting up apparently innocent conversations. I was hurrying along at Alec’s heels when he marched into Brown’s Bar like the wrath of God, and so I could not see his face, but both Joey and Shinie looked up at the sound of the door and did not need to ask what he was there for: they knew. What is more, they had quite clearly been waiting for this moment to arrive.

‘Joey,’ said Mr Brown, jerking his head towards the back.

His daughter lifted the flap of the bar counter to let us pass.

‘I’ll give ye five, ten minutes,’ said Brown, ‘then I’ll come up and let Joey down again. Somebody needs to stay here.’ There were indeed several customers in the pub tonight and so this seemed reasonable, although I had noticed in earlier visits that the Browns did not usually take pains to man the counter. I wondered if perhaps it was more that each felt disinclined to talk to us in the presence of the other.

Joey led Alec and me through the kitchen and along the passageway, clear today, all the boxes vanished.

‘Upstairs, Miss Brown,’ I said, ‘if it’s all the same to you.’ I did not want another interview in the noxious wash-house in the basement. Joey nodded without turning her head and opened a door concealing a box staircase to the upper floor. A few moments later we were facing one another, a little too close, in what seemed to be a spare bedroom at the back of the house. There was nowhere to sit except the narrow bed and so we remained standing, awkwardly, waiting for someone to speak.

Perhaps we can blame the compulsion to make sure one’s guests are always having fun at one’s parties, deeply ingrained at finishing school where we were taught how to handle any social encounter with aplomb, or perhaps the even earlier training of being scrubbed and primped and brought down after tea to bore Mummy’s guests with endless verses of ‘The Blessed Damezel’. Of course, it is only now that one can see how bored they must have been. At the time, well-schooled themselves, they seemed enchanted. For whatever reason, it was me who cracked first and broke the silence.

‘You recognized him,’ I said, making not quite a question but more than a statement of it. Joey Brown heaved an enormous guttering sigh and turned away from us. In the silence we could hear voices from the bar below.

‘I thocht I did,’ she said.

‘And are you saying that he didn’t make any attempt to contact you?’ said Alec. ‘That the only time you saw him was here, on the Burry Man’s day?’ She turned back at that, looking at him quizzically.

‘I thocht I recognized him,’ she said with more emphasis, ‘but I wis wrong. He wis that like his daddy. And wi’ the face all covered up and jist the eyes and the hands, I wis sure fur a minute, but I wis wrong.’

I could not quite see where this certainty came from but I could understand the sadness in her voice: even if she had concluded that the vision of her sweetheart was a haunting, she would rather have had that than nothing. I could not think what to say to her to bring comfort. Would it be better for her to keep believing that her eyes had played tricks or would she want to know that he had indeed been here and was still alive, but had left her without a word? I wished the clamouring voices downstairs would hush and let me concentrate.

‘Did you tell your father?’ Alec asked her. ‘Is that why he rushed outside to challenge him?’

She nodded.

‘And was it your father who told you you were wrong?’

Joey seemed to consider this carefully before she spoke.

‘Aye,’ she said at last. ‘Father telt me it wis Rab Dudgeon right enough. Telt me I wis bein’ daft – I’ve always been feart o’ the Burry Man.’

I tried to catch Alec’s eye to see if he knew where to go from here. It was possible, I suppose, that she had recognized Bobby Dudgeon but had been persuaded out of it by her father, but there was more going on here than Miss Brown was telling. Alec was studying her intently, frowning a little, as distracted as I was by the cries from below.

‘Shop!’ came a particularly lusty yell, followed by laughter.

‘Shinie! Joey! We’re dyin’ o’ thirst here,’ came another.

‘You had better go down,’ I said to her. ‘Your father is obviously on his way to find us and your customers seem to be getting restless.’ Joey bobbed a curtsy without looking us in the eye and hurriedly left.

‘Do you believe her?’ I asked Alec once she had gone. ‘Do you believe that it was only a passing notion – one that happened to be spot on – or do you think she knew full well that it was Bobby Dudgeon in the suit?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Alec. ‘There’s something not right here. Lord, I wish those men would shut up. She should be there by now. What’s taking her?’ Indeed, the shouts for service from the bar customers had, if anything, got louder and more sustained.

‘I’m trying to cast my mind back to that day,’ I said. ‘There was always something odd about the way Shinie Brown went crashing out into the street to confront him. The way he held out the glass, the way they locked eyes. There was something so urgent about it all. So I can believe easily that Shinie rushed out to see if it was true – to see if it really was Bobby – and that he recognized that it was, and Bobby knew he’d been recognized, and Shinie knew that he knew and so on and so on. And they didn’t bumble the glass and spill the whisky, you know. The Burry Man reared back like a stag at bay and Shinie quite deliberately, contemptuously, dashed it away on to the ground. So that fits too.’

‘Yes,’ said Alec. ‘The father of a lost soldier wouldn’t want to welcome home a deserter with a glass of cheer.’ He was having to talk loudly now to be heard above the chanting from below.

‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘He’d sooner…’

‘What?’ said Alec.

‘I was going to say he’d sooner poison him.’

‘If he happened to have poison lying around.’

‘And not just the Turnbulls’ idea of poison,’ I said. ‘Good God, what a noise from down there. Where are they, do you suppose? Shinie was supposed to come to us when Joey went back.’ We waited a moment or two longer, and then it seemed to dawn on us both together: the shouts for service had begun even while Joey was here. She had led us upstairs out of the way and, like lambs, we had followed.

We practically fell over each other trying to get out of the door and down the narrow stairway. There was no one behind the bar counter or in the back kitchen, only the customers shouting for their beer and joking about search parties. Then we wasted precious moments searching for a back door into the yard before realizing that the only exit must be from the basement. We clattered down the steps, banged open the door to the cellar room and ran in.

A sharp cry stopped me dead. Joey was there, huddled once more into the same corner behind the copper, shaking. Alec, beside me, still panting, looked around and his mouth fell open.

‘Good God,’ he said.

‘Where is he?’ I demanded, going up to Joey and taking her chin in my hand. ‘Where did he go?’

She bit her lip and shook her head, tears beginning to gather in her eyes.

‘I wis wrong,’ she said again. ‘I telt him it wis Bobby and I wis wrong. It’s all my fault.’

‘Listen to me,’ I said, grabbing hold of her arms but managing not to shake her. ‘You were right. It was Bobby.’

‘But it was his father who…’ she said.

‘It was his father who what?’ I asked. I could sense that we were getting to it now.

‘It was his father… afterwards.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was his father again afterwards.’

‘And he never went home. He stayed and went to the greasy pole and – and – he died. So I must have been wrong.’

Suddenly I could see what she meant. She had been inside somewhere, probably right here, that day when Brown had followed the Burry Man outside. She had not seen a thing.

‘He didn’t drink it,’ I said. ‘Do you hear me? He didn’t drink from the glass out there in the street. I saw it all.’

‘But he must have,’ said Joey. ‘He died.’

‘So it was poison?’ said Alec.

Joey nodded in a tiny voice, and said something that sounded like ‘believe’.

I tightened my grip on her arms and spoke to her as though she were a very young child.

‘Where is your father?’ I asked her. ‘Where has he gone?’

‘Cassilis,’ said Joey in the faintest whisper.

Alec and I were upstairs, through the bar and out on to the pavement before I was aware of having decided to move, then I caught myself short, staring up and down the empty street.

‘He’s taken my car,’ I said. ‘Quick, run to the police station, Alec. I’ll catch up.’ But Alec had had a better idea. Following Brown’s example, he strode across the street to where an Austin car, ancient but very well-kept and shining, was parked outside Sealscraig House. The motor was running before I was in my seat, then he turned in three expert darts in the narrow space and roared away along the road to the Hawes.

‘Shinie Brown,’ he said. ‘Shinie Brown. Why did none of us ask what that meant?’

‘I don’t understand you,’ I told him.

‘Moonshine, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘You saw it for yourself.’

‘Where?’ I said.

Alec glared at me, the car swerving as he took his attention from the road. ‘Right there. In the cellar. That, my dear, was a still.’

I boggled for a second or two but soon caught up.

‘The damson gin,’ I said. ‘Of course. Father Cormack was absolutely tickled pink to see me drinking the damson gin and he joked with Brown about giving me the recipe. He even told me Brown used to work for a distiller. What a brainless idiot I am! But I still don’t see how it would have helped us. Not really.’

‘It would have helped us,’ said Alec, grimly, ‘because when it comes to moonshine, the Turnbulls are right. Anyone who can distil alcohol that’s fit to drink can just as readily distil lethal poison.’

‘But why would he?’ I said. ‘Why would it be there? I mean, chemists can make poison too, but if the average chemist flies into a murderous rage, he doesn’t just reach out his hand and close it around a bottle of the stuff.’

‘Perhaps he kept it for the very purpose he ended up using it for,’ said Alec. ‘For deserters. He’s not exactly balanced when it comes to his lost son after all. Perhaps he kept the poison in the name of his boy as well as the special whisky.’

‘And how did he do it?’ I said. ‘When did Dudgeon drink it?’

We had just entered the Cassilis estate on the back lane and were rushing so fast along such a narrow space between the trees that I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut, sure that at any moment we were going to hit one of the trunks and burst into flames. When we came to the first fork in the road, Alec slewed to a stop.

‘Where will I go?’ he asked me. ‘Where will he have gone?’

It was not until that moment that I realized I did not know. Joey Brown had said ‘Cassilis’ and off we had shot, but there was no way of telling whether that meant the castle, one of the cottages or some secret place in the woods.

‘Let’s quickly check the castle,’ I said, ‘then warn Mrs Dudgeon. Then, if we haven’t seen him, we’ll start searching the estate.’

It felt to me as though aeons had passed but when we crossed the ha-ha and approached the castle mound, there Cad and Buttercup still were in their wooden deck chairs by the west wall, only with cocktails in their hands instead of tea. Alec began a fanfare on the horn as we neared them and I leaned out of the Austin’s window beckoning them down the slope.

‘Whose motor car is th-’ began Buttercup, until I shushed her.

‘Go inside and stay there,’ I said. ‘And call the police. It was Shinie Brown. He poisoned Robert Dudgeon and he’s somewhere here right now, doing God knows what. Quick, Buttercup!’ I screamed as she blinked slowly, trying to take in my news through a fug of tea, cocktails and warm afternoon.

‘I knew it!’ Cad was saying as I hopped back in. ‘Murder! I knew it all along.’

There was no sign of my motor car at Mrs Dudgeon’s cottage. We skidded to a halt and jumped down as both front doors opened to reveal Mrs Dudgeon in one doorway and a man who had to be Flaming Donald in the other.

‘Mrs Dudgeon,’ I said, rushing up the path. ‘Has Mr Brown – Shinie Brown – Willie Brown – is he here? Has he been here?’

Mrs Dudgeon dithered from foot to foot on her doorstep and gobbled, looking at me and at Alec’s grim face, bewildered. I took this to be a no.

‘Where is he, then?’ I asked Alec. ‘Was Joey lying to us?’

‘He must be somewhere out on the estate,’ said Alec. ‘In the woods. But if he’s still in your car we’ll find him.’ He made as though to go off down the path, but Mrs Dudgeon put out a hand and stopped him.

‘Whit d’you want wi’ him?’ she said.

Alec and I glanced at each other and nodded.

‘Let’s go inside,’ I suggested, mindful of Donald standing so close and watching the scene with eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

‘He killed your husband,’ Alec told her once the door was shut behind us and we were standing in the narrow hall.

‘Willie Brown?’ she said. ‘Willie Brown? Not -’ but she could not even say the thing which had been haunting her.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Willie Brown.’

‘But why?’ she wailed.

Alec and I flicked a glance at each other again.

‘He thought,’ I began carefully, ‘he thought he recognized the Burry Man.’ She looked at me for a moment until what I had said sank in, then she lowered her head.

‘Aye, that would be reason enough,’ she said. ‘He never did get over his laddie.’ Then a fresh thought struck her. ‘But how did he dae it? When?’

‘We don’t know,’ Alec said. ‘He might have had poison in his cellar.’

‘But Rab never went near Broon’s Bar that day,’ said Mrs Dudgeon.

‘Well, then Brown must have come to him,’ I said.

‘I’d have seen him,’ she insisted. ‘Rab wisnae oot o’ my sicht fae the minute he come oot the toon hall to the minute he… fell. You’re wrong aboot this, madam, ye must be.’

Alec looked half convinced by her. He was chewing his lip and frowning at me, waiting for me to speak.

‘When we came along the street at the end of the Burry Man’s day,’ I said slowly, trying to remember, ‘Joey Brown was alone in the bar. I could see in, you know, and I remember thinking how odd it was because the place was thronging and she was all on her own and was even doing her Ferry Fair cleaning, had all the bottles off the shelves behind the counter.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ said Alec.

‘Just that Shinie Brown could have been out of the bar,’ I said. ‘He could have been along at the Rosebery Hall, lying in wait.’

‘And how would he have persuaded Mr Dudgeon to swallow poison?’ said Alec.

Mrs Dudgeon gasped and I put an arm around her shoulders. She was shaking and felt unsteady, tottering slightly as I touched her. My mind, despite everything, ran instantly to the need for a little something medicinal to calm her nerves.

Suddenly I had it.

‘Mrs Dudgeon,’ I said. ‘Do you still have the flask?’

She nodded wordlessly.

‘And have you rinsed it out?’

She looked at me, confused, for a moment then her eyes flared as she got it too. She turned on her heel and disappeared into the living room, returning a second later with the small pewter flask, pressing it into my hand. I began to pick at the stopper but Alec took it, wrenched it open, and sniffed warily.

‘Good grief,’ he said. ‘We don’t need a chemist. I could write the report on that.’

‘Whit is it?’ said Mrs Dudgeon.

‘Methanol,’ said Alec. ‘Absolutely lethal, but close enough to alcohol to pass for it if no one had reason to check. Good Lord, a flask of this stuff? Your poor husband didn’t stand a chance.’

‘It makes sense, I know,’ I said. ‘But I can hardly believe that he just marched into the Rosebery Hall in broad daylight and put it in the flask. What if someone had seen him?’

‘He cannae have been in his senses,’ said Mrs Dudgeon. ‘He’s no’ been the man he wis since he lost his laddie. Nivver been the same.’ I began to lead her towards the living room hoping to comfort her, but Alec stopped me.

‘No time,’ he said. ‘Mrs Dudgeon, I’m sorry, but we have to go. Stay here and lock your door.’

Back in the Austin, we crept forward through the gathering gloom of the woods; I sent a prayer of thanks for the careful owner of the little motor car with its smooth, quiet running.

‘Why didn’t you take the top off and sniff it yourself, Dandy?’ said Alec. ‘When she first showed it to you.’

‘I did,’ I told him. ‘I just thought it was that particularly dreadful whisky one comes across that smells of apples.’

‘No whisky in the world smells of apples,’ he said.

Aware that my ignorance had let us down again, I should have hung my head in shame but I was still stubbornly sure that I had smelled exactly that sickly apple smell before.

‘God,’ I groaned, remembering. ‘When I knelt at his side at the bottom of the greasy pole, I remember thinking that he couldn’t be dead because he smelled so alive. Of sweat, you know, and flour dust and of the fairground itself. I thought he had eaten a toffee apple – that sweet fruity smell. And then how many times did we tell ourselves afterwards – a ham sandwich and too much whisky. A ham sandwich and too much whisky… and I never made the connection, or rather noticed that there wasn’t one. If I had mentioned the apply smell right there and then…’

‘Yes,’ said Alec, not even trying to comfort me.

‘But I was sure that whisky could smell like that too.’

‘Look!’ said Alec. ‘What’s that?’ He paused, the little motor car trembling as his foot attempted to hold the balance of the clutch. ‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I thought I saw a light shining, but it’s the tin roof on the den, I think.’

‘Yes, it could be,’ I said. ‘We ’re near the rascals’ stamping grounds here.’

‘And don’t berate yourself about the whisky, Dan,’ said Alec. ‘We both know it’s not your strong point.’

‘Wait though,’ I said, for thoughts were stirring in me, of glinting things in the woods and the smell of apples from a bottle of whisky, and then it fell into place with a click.

‘Oh, bloody hell,’ I said. ‘Alec, you’re going to kill me. Turn round. We need to go back.’

Alec did so and drove in silence, waiting for me to explain.

‘I know how Brown happened to have poison to hand,’ I said. ‘And I know why I thought that whisky could smell that way. I even know what Joey Brown was doing hanging round here after the death.’

Again he waited and at last I plucked up the courage to lay out how blind I had been.

‘It was the bottle of Royal Highlander,’ I said. ‘The special bottle of whisky for Billy Brown’s return.’

‘Of course,’ said Alec. ‘The Royal Highlanders.’

‘Otherwise known as the Black Watch. Billy’s regiment. Bobby’s too.’

‘So the special bottle wasn’t whisky at all,’ said Alec. ‘It was methanol. It was poison.’

‘And so it wasn’t exactly for Billy. But it was in his honour. To be used exactly as Brown tried to use it. And when Joey told her father that it was Bobby Dudgeon in the burry suit he didn’t hesitate.’

‘So it was never Robert Dudgeon that he meant to kill.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I told him. ‘Out in the street, it was certainly Bobby he had in his sights. When he went to the Rosebery Hall to poison the flask… he might have thought that “the Burry Man” – meaning Bobby – would be the one to drink it. But when he brought the bottle here he must have meant it for Robert. To punish him for harbouring his son.’

‘Here?’ said Alec looking around the dark woods.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He brought it to the cottage and left it there on Burry Man’s day. Of course, once Robert Dudgeon dropped dead at the greasy pole Brown knew that he had drunk the flask and the bottle here wasn’t needed; more than that, he knew it would be dangerous to leave it here in case the police mounted an investigation. So he packed Joey off to get rid of it. That’s why she was dug in like a dog in a foxhole. That’s why she was so very unnerved when the sisters started offering Cad a drink of whisky and saying that they’d seen a bottle of malt, and that was what she’d been doing round the back of the cottage when I happened upon her.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Alec. ‘What had she been doing?’

‘She’d been pouring the poison away and putting the bottle on Donald’s rubbish heap,’ I said. ‘I met her coming back.’

‘So do you think it’ll still be there?’ said Alec, pressing down on the pedal and making the little motor car surge forward.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I know it’s not. It’s buried in some undergrowth between the cottages and the castle. I know it is because I put it there myself. But Brown doesn’t know that and, unless I’m mistaken, he’ll be out the back at the cottages, searching for it, or waiting until everyone has gone to bed so that he can search for it then. Stop here, darling, and let’s walk.’

We stepped down and made our way silently along the verge of the lane, slower and slower until we were only edging forward. In the dusk, the kitchen lights of the cottages were winking at us through the tree trunks and the outlines of the sheds and midden heaps at the bottom of the gardens stood out against the glow. We stopped as soon as we had a decent view of the whole scene.

‘I don’t think he’s here,’ said Alec. ‘Where is he? If he didn’t come to Mrs Dudgeon’s and he’s not at the castle what’s he doing here at all?’

Before I could answer, there came a drumming of running footsteps, getting louder all the time, twigs snapping. I spun around on my heels, my heart hammering. It sounded like an army approaching us and both Alec and I took a couple of hesitant steps towards the lights of the cottages. Then we began to make out shapes, low and scurrying, and to hear the ragged panting and the high pitch of the hissing voices as they rushed towards us.

‘We’re nearly hame, Lila, come on!’ ‘We’ll get Daddy tae go and catch ‘im.’ And above the voices came Lila’s whimpering and deep, revolting sniffs.

‘Oh, God in heaven,’ I said, stepping towards them, ‘if he’s hurt one of them… Donald? Randall? Can you see me?’

When they heard my voice they changed direction towards it like a flock of starlings on the wing and began shouting their news.

‘He’s back, missus. He’s goin’ to the holes.’ ‘The demon’s back and he seen us and -’ ‘Hush now, hush now,’ I said as they drew near. ‘Is anyone hurt? Did he touch you?’ They barely paused in their clamouring but amongst the shouts I could make out ‘Naeb’dy got catched’ and ‘We’re a’ grand but -’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Now listen. Where is he?’

‘In the woods, missus.’

‘He’s goin’ to the ghostie holes.’

I raised my voice to be heard above them. ‘Randall,’ I said to the tallest boy, ‘can you find your way there and show us?’ Randall’s eyes flared with fear, but he nodded even before I had had the chance to reassure him: ‘We’ll both be with you. We won’t let him lay a finger upon you. You other children go inside. Donald, tell your mummy and daddy -’

‘I’ll come with you, missus,’ said Tommy.

‘No!’ I told him. ‘Absolutely not. Donald, you are responsible for getting all these little ones safely inside, do you hear me?’

‘Aye,’ said Donald. ‘Will I tell my daddy that the demon -’

‘Tell him that Willie Brown killed your uncle Robert and he’s trying to run away.’ Donald nodded, already shepherding the smallest brothers and Lila before him.

‘Come on then,’ I said and, taking Randall’s hand firmly in my own, I led him and Alec back into the trees.

‘You’re telling the truth about this?’ said Alec to Randall.

‘They always were,’ I said. ‘A demon, Randall, wasn’t it? A bad man with a bottle of the demon drink went into Auntie Chrissie’s house when no one was there?’ Randall’s head was nodding furiously.

‘He shouted that he’d come back and kill us in oor beds if we telt on him,’ said Randall in a voice struggling with the bravado of a ten-year-old boy who fears nothing and the horror of a small boy, only ten years old, who wants to run to his mother’s knee. ‘But Lila telt Daddy and Daddy said he was real.’ I tightened my grip on his sweaty little hand.

‘Monster,’ Alec whispered.

‘And the ghost of the soldier who was living in the den until Lila’s accident there?’ I said to Randall. ‘He was real too.’

‘Aye,’ said Randall. ‘But he wid nivver hurt us.’ There was a pause. ‘He’s like a ghostie doon the shell holes.’

I felt a shiver run through me from head to toe and I was aware of Alec moving in a little closer towards me. If the demon and the soldier were flesh and blood, then what were we to make of these holes that we were heading straight towards, not to mention the ghosties that lived in them? We hurried on, silent except for the quick thump of our steps on the soft forest floor.

It almost beggars belief, but so intent were we on our progress, threading our way as quickly and quietly as possible through the trees, that we heard nothing and one can only assume that the same was true for him, for the first we knew of Shinie Brown was the sudden flash as he flitted across our path not twenty feet in front. Randall and I both shrieked and at that Brown broke into a run and began crashing forward, all thoughts of stealth abandoned. Alec took off after him like a hound. I hesitated for a second and looked at Randall, who looked back at me, then of one mind we plunged into the trees.

Covering the ground more rapidly than I could have believed – Randall was, of course, as fit as a flea and there was no way I could hold him back and no way on earth that I would let him go – we were at Alec’s heels in an instant, Shinie Brown ten yards ahead of us and going strong. We were gaining on him all the time, though; he was struggling through thickets of bramble leaving it clear for us behind him. He was darting and twisting looking for a path and we could save seconds following. And as well, most curiously, he was not only running, but was also shrugging himself out of his jacket, ripping off his shirt, as he raced on. At first I thought he was caught on thorns and would leave the things behind him, but he held on to them as he ran, and with his shirt off he began to struggle out of his braces too.

‘What’s he doing?’ I panted.

Shinie threw a desperate glance over his shoulder at us. He stopped running. Then, just as suddenly, he was off again. He had changed direction. Now he was making his way to the right, to the west, out of the woods. We surged after him. It was easier going now, heading out of the trees, but all that meant was that Shinie started to pull away. We passed his coat on the ground and then his shirt and, unencumbered, arms pumping like pistons, he sprinted ahead. By the time we gained the edge of the park he was across the ha-ha and well on his way to the castle rise. I kicked off my shoes and, ignoring my burning lungs, trusting that the jellied muscles in my legs would keep working even though I could no longer feel them, I let Randall pull me along, concentrating hard on Alec’s back and refusing to think. We saw Shinie Brown scale the slope, digging his hobnailed boots into the glossy grass, and then unbelievably we saw him wrench the door open and disappear.

‘They didn’t,’ I managed to pant on one breath. I could not believe it, even of Buttercup and Cad. They had a door of oak so thick I could hardly move the thing on its hinges and yet, knowing there was a murderer on the loose, they had not locked it. And now he was in there with them.

Reaching the start of the slope, Alec dug into Brown’s footsteps and, slipping a little in his light shoes, he scrambled up. Randall and I dropped to our hands and knees and crawled after him. At the top, Alec tugged on the iron handle of the door but could not budge it.

‘He’s locked them in with him,’ I wailed and began to pound on the door. ‘Buttercup! Buttercup, can you hear me?’

From deep inside the castle there was a shuddering clang. I clutched Alec’s arm and pulled Randall in close behind me.

‘Was that a shot?’ Alec said, thundering his fists on the door.

At that moment, the sound of a police klaxon came clearly across the park from the woods and, as we turned to look for it, the iron bar scraped and the door swung open behind us. We reeled round again and gaped.

There was Cad, beaming from ear to ear, and twirling an enormous sword like a showman with a silver-topped cane.

‘We got him,’ he said. Alec and I rushed inside with Randall at our heels and made for the staircase.

‘This way,’ said Cad, at the kitchen doorway. ‘In here, of course.’

In the kitchen, Buttercup and Mrs Murdoch stood arm-in-arm and panting, leaning on two more swords as though they were rolled umbrellas. From the doorway in the corner we could hear the faint scrabbling sounds of Shinie Brown trying in vain to climb the slick walls of the oubliette.

‘We saw him coming,’ said Cad. ‘We were watching for him. Only he didn’t see us through the arrow slits, of course.’

‘And Mrs Murdoch was waiting in here,’ said Buttercup. ‘In there, you know, at the back, in the dark, with the grille open.’

‘And when he got too close to see,’ went on Cad, ‘we stood in the Great Hall doorway and watched him through the murder hole.’

‘To see if he would come up the stairs or go straight to the kitchen.’

‘And he came up the stairs. So we hid.’

‘In the fireplace, behind the fire. He couldn’t see us, standing behind the light.’

‘And we waited and waited and waited.’

‘And then, when he went back downstairs at last…’

‘We followed him, with our swords.’

‘And he went into the kitchen and Mrs Murdoch made a little whimpering noise as we had agreed she would.’

‘And he come right over like a salmon on hook,’ said Mrs Murdoch. ‘He lookit in and saw me, but he didnae look down. Well, you dinnae, dae ye?’

‘He just stepped towards you, didn’t he, Mrs Murdoch?’ said Buttercup.

‘And down he went,’ said Cad. ‘And then clang!’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So we heard.’

‘I think an apology is in order, Dandy,’ said Buttercup.

‘For what?’ I asked.

‘For telling us we were silly,’ she said. ‘Or at least for thinking it and for all the smirking. You said this castle was impractical. Impractical. Huh!’

‘Is he all right?’ said Alec, as the sound of the police motor car stopping and doors slamming shut came from outside.

‘He’s fine,’ said Cad. ‘Come and see.’

In the oubliette, with the grille firmly closed and a barrel resting on top of it just in case, Shinie Brown stood defiantly in his string vest with his braces hanging down and stared up at us.

‘Ye’re a very bad man,’ shouted Randall, which pretty much summed things up for me.