The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter Five

Alec’s face, upon first seeing the castle, was a sight not to be missed so I made sure to be standing alongside Cad and Buttercup outside the great iron-studded door as his motor car negotiated the grassy ramp. He looked up, up, up, counting arrow slits on the Hall floor, the library floor, and the first bedroom floor, then took a step back and shaded his eyes with one hand to look at the last two floors above. His head-shake as he turned his gaze back to Cad must have been meant to loosen the crick in his neck, but Cad took it as awe.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ Cad said, absolutely artless.

‘Wonderful isn’t the word,’ said Alec.

I managed to turn my snort into a cough, but Cad was busy anyway, introducing himself and Buttercup and trying to explain to Alec’s valet about the other house and the system of connecting telephones.

Buttercup could not be prevented from launching into her tour.

‘We ’ll finish up in the library, darlings, so wait for us there,’ she said, before bearing Alec away into the kitchens. I saw that she was set to turn into one of those hostesses who process house guests rather than entertaining them, but there are worse kinds of hostess than that since, when one has been simmered, seasoned, minced and tinned by them, one is then left pleasantly alone. Besides, the castle and Buttercup’s guileless raptures over it were genuinely diverting and at least here it was rooms and fittings not dreary gardens or, worse, the drains, walls and ditches over which my own husband enthuses so mystifyingly. Hugh is always rather bewildered at his guests’ blanket refusals to be shown a new kind of cattle grid or an ingenious self-filling water-trough in a far field.

While we waited in the library, I took the chance to hammer home to Cad one point I felt our earlier discussion had left rather vague.

‘I do hope you realize, darling, that even though you’ve retained my services’ – I pronounced it as I thought a real private detective might: ‘a-retayned may a-suhvices’, which was lost on Cad, of course, hardly Henry Higgins after all – ‘I can’t guarantee to find anything out. And if I do, I’m an absolutely independent agent.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said Cad, then spoiled it by adding, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I probably won’t discover anything at all, but I’m setting out to discover “what” and “whether”, not to confirm “that”.’

‘Daisy told me this would happen,’ said Cad. ‘She warned me that I wouldn’t understand what on God’s green earth you were doing, much less talking about, but that I should leave you to it and it would all come right in the end.’

‘That’s the thing, you see,’ I told him earnestly. ‘It depends what you mean by “come right”.’

‘And there you go again.’

‘Look,’ I persisted. It was quite, quite crucial to establish this, I thought, and I was most impressed with myself for my scrupulousness. After all, I wanted nothing more than to racket about in Queensferry, on expenses, with Alec, and if I ever got Cad to listen to what I was saying and take it in, I might find myself back in Perthshire instead, stuck with the children all day and nothing to look forward to but spending the evening with Hugh. ‘Put it this way: if you were the peddler of a patent home Marceller – no electricity, singeing or stickiness – I would not be one of your own medical doctors saying that hair would be strengthened and rejuvenated with every application, Cad, I would be the woman who wrote to the papers saying mine had all fallen out and not grown back again. Which is not to say that you are, of course.’

Cad’s face told me before I was finished that my analogy had not been helpful, so I told him straight.

‘I think something strange is going on,’ I said. ‘Clearly Robert Dudgeon was troubled on Thursday evening, and Mrs Dudgeon is worried and perplexed as well as grief-stricken now. And Robert died. If he was murdered -’

‘He was.’

‘If he was murdered, then his fears, his widow’s anxieties and his death might all be explained at one fell swoop. But it may just as easily be that he was worried about one thing, his wife is worried about another and in the middle of it all his heart gave out from alcoholic poisoning. I just want to make it very clear that although I know you feel dreadfully guilty, Cad dear, I am not a salver of your conscience in this. I’m a…’

‘Seeker of truth.’

‘Yes! Exactly.’ I had, at last, got through his glowing, creamy skin. ‘I’m a seeker of truth, and I’m afraid that unearthing grubby but unrelated secrets is -’

‘Your speciality?’ said Alec’s voice. I had been so caught up, I had managed to miss their advancing tread and he and Buttercup stood framed in the doorway.

‘But darling, there’s your card right there!’ said Buttercup. ‘Dandy Gilver: Servant of Truth. And underneath in italics: Grubby Secrets a Speciality.’

‘I’ll order five hundred to be going on with,’ I said, drily. ‘I was going to say “an unavoidable hazard”. Well, Alec?’

‘Quite,’ said Alec, sitting.

‘What did you think of the oubliette?’ I went on. ‘Larder? Or not?’

‘Larder would be such a waste,’ said Alec, turning innocent eyes on Cad and Buttercup. ‘An ice house, perhaps. Or a hot bubble bath, although the plumbing would be a bit of a challenge, and off the kitchen is hardly handy. Venison smokery? Or, if one could put in a large pane of glass, it would make a tremendous fish tank. You could grow your own lobsters, de Cassilis. Or, substitute wire mesh for the glass and it could be an aviary. If I were Mrs Murdoch, I’d like nothing more than a pair of peach-cheeked lovebirds wittering away while I pounded my bread dough.’

This was going far too far and, although the pair of peach-cheeked lovebirds opposite me in armchairs seemed impervious, I frowned at him.

‘Alec is teasing, Buttercup,’ I said.

‘Alec’s doing what?’ said Cad. Buttercup squealed.

‘Dandelion,’ she said threateningly.

‘Frederica Ambrosine Rosamund Jane?’ I said.

‘What a memory!’ she exclaimed. ‘Small wonder you’ve turned Sherlock, darling.’

Cadwallader looked at his pocket watch with an extravagant gesture and sighed.

‘I followed every word for almost three minutes then,’ he said. ‘But I’m lost again.’

‘Give up now,’ said Alec. ‘Watch their teeth and smile when they smile, old man, it’s the only way.’

‘Oh, so it’s not a transatlantic problem,’ said Cad, sweet in his ingenuousness.

‘God no,’ said Alec. ‘Now, since my cover story for being here is that I’m helping you with your stocking, what say we go up on to those splendid ramparts and you show me the lie of the land.’

‘Ooh, speaking of the lie of the land, Cad,’ I said, ‘are there really shell holes on the Cassilis estate?’

‘Shell holes?’ echoed Cad. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I hardly know,’ I said. ‘Holes from shelling, I suppose. Or trenches just possibly.’

‘Neither,’ said Cad. ‘Why would anyone shell here?’

‘They wouldn’t,’ said Alec. He stood and turned. ‘Let’s go. Unless there’s anything you need me for this minute, Dan?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to fill you in of course, but after lunch will do.’ Buttercup smirked at me, adding to the ruffled and slightly foolish feelings which were whisking around me like the tails of hungry cats around one’s ankles.

‘Alec,’ said Buttercup, ‘I meant to ask you: how did Dandy persuade you off the moor in the end?’

‘Oh, easily,’ Alec said, looking her straight in the eye. ‘I far prefer hunting to shooting, and hunting clues beats hunting foxes any day.’

‘Lunch at two?’ said Cad, halfway to the door.

‘Mrs Murdoch looked to be boning a duck when we passed through,’ said Buttercup. ‘So don’t be late.’

Mrs Murdoch had indeed boned a duck, and had made choux pastry and whipped rather a lot of cream, all since it was Sunday I presume, so Buttercup and Cad were happy to laze about in the library afterwards and made no protest when I commandeered Alec to walk in the park and receive his briefing. I had told him very little over the telephone the day before, only that it seemed there might be another ‘case’ in the offing and since I knew he had no party with him – he had only very recently come into his estate at Dunelgar and his little bit of grouse moor and fledgling staff of servants were not yet ready for a public – what did he think?

‘I stopped in at Gilverton on the way,’ he said now, as we set off down the slope, my summer shoes skidding slightly on the close velvet nap of the sheep-cropped grass.

‘Hugh’s at Wester Ross with the Wallaces until Tuesday,’ I said. ‘Yeek!’ I slipped down another yard. ‘Should have worn boots. And the children are off to the seaside with the Esslemonts. That’s why Daisy had to go.’

Alec stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Daisy has taken your children off to the seaside?’ he said in owlish wonderment.

‘Hardly, darling! I mean my boys are off to the seaside – Arbroath: brrr! – with the Esslemont boys and both nannies, and Daisy went home to wave them off. She and Silas are in Monte until September now.’ I sighed, as one must when one’s friend is in Monaco and oneself is in Scotland, but actually I hate gambling – having, as my boys tell me, a poker face that’s not even good for snap – and with my sallow skin I cannot lie in a beach chair without turning as brown as a tinker; my pink legs from Thursday were already golder than Buttercup’s hair.

‘What took you to Gilverton?’

‘Hedges,’ said Alec. ‘Your steward is an excellent chap with hedges, Dandy. I’m thinking of trying to poach him.’

‘Not my steward,’ I said. ‘And he loves Hugh with a devotion you could not hope to dent.’

‘Anyway, it seemed uncivil to drive right past when I might have been able to bring a message or something.’

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘What a chump I am. You might have collected my things. I was only meant to be here a day or so, and I’m running out badly. Practically going to be wrapped in brown paper by tomorrow.’

‘Of course,’ said Alec. ‘What would have been easier than for me to rummage through your wardrobe and pick out a few frocks?’

‘Grant is there doing the picking, idiot,’ I said, severely. ‘I meant you could bring them. Now for goodness’ sake let’s get on with it.’

‘Yes, do stop wittering on about frocks and fish tanks, Dandy, please.’

I ignored him, gathered my thoughts briefly, and began.

‘Humph,’ he said, when I had finished. ‘It’s a bit thin, isn’t it? If I’ve got you aright. Between teatime and dinner on Thursday, Dudgeon suddenly developed a strong disinclination to carry out his yearly duty as this green man character. I shall have to see a photograph of it, you know, because at the moment the mind rather boggles. He would not elucidate the problem, but when you tried to persuade him he promptly changed his mind back again for no obvious reason. He walked the town, drinking whisky, eating nothing, and not even – as you put it – powdering his little green nose, from nine in the morning until six in the afternoon. He was then going to go straight home with his wife – another departure from the norm – but changed his mind again, came back to the Fair, climbed the pole as was his wont and there, in the most theatrical way imaginable, died. The police were suspicious at first, but the post-mortem showed heart failure caused by alcohol -’

‘I’m not happy about that,’ I said. ‘Could we say that the examination found heart failure, enough alcohol to explain the heart failure, and nothing else that would have caused him to die. Can you see how that makes a difference?’

‘I can indeed, and it’s a salutary point, humbly taken. Right then, his wife was upset, but not – what would you say? – not as upset as she ought to be?’

‘No, it’s not that. I don’t think for a second she did it. She was considerably distraught. Devastated would hardly be too strong a word. But she was also worried by something, and when she heard that there was to be no investigation, that there was no question of foul play, she seemed…’

‘Relieved? She would be.’

‘Not relieved exactly. More like unwilling to believe her… I don’t want to call it her luck for after all her husband did die and I’m sure she loved him and is heartbroken, but I think she suspects something, or maybe even knows something, so while she’s relieved, she’s also puzzled and not quite ready to trust that it won’t still blow up in her face.’

‘She must be cultivated, clearly.’

‘Of course.’

‘And not to shirk, darling, but that would rather fall to you.’

‘Of course, of course. I shall have to take Buttercup along, I expect, but nothing could be more natural. Now, where you come in is to -’

‘Hold on. Don’t just plunge. I take it, by the way, that “Buttercup” is Frederica? Not kind. Anyway, all that – Dudgeon’s ambivalence, Mrs Dudgeon’s distraction and the death – that’s what we know, but what do we think, Dandy? What does de Cassilis think happened? And why did the doctor miss it? Who are our suspects? What are our theories?’

I had to work hard not to let my spirits and my shoulders droop under the weight of all this. Suspects? Theories? There were none. And yet, when I set my mind to it, various little sparks did begin to flash.

‘To start with,’ I said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I feel very wary of admitting the notion that the doctor “missed” something. I know Cad is leaping gaily on to the “untraceable poison” wagon, but it seems altogether too far-fetched to me.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Also Dr Rennick is practically suppressing the facts as it is, putting the heart thing centre-stage and drawing a thick veil over the whisky. He wouldn’t do that if he had been less than thorough.’

‘Let’s hope not. But you’re dismantling our case before we’ve even started and on the telephone you seemed to think there was something in it.’

‘I do. Dudgeon was not himself. Something happened on Thursday afternoon. After his death Mrs Dudgeon was terribly worried that an inquiry was going to reveal what that something was. There is our mystery. There is our case. But I believe, I really do, that the death was exactly as Dr Rennick described it.’

‘A meaningless coincidence?’ Alec looked at me, inquiringly.

‘I’m afraid so, unsatisfactory as it seems. Or perhaps not exactly. Perhaps the mystery contributed to the strain on Dudgeon’s heart in some way.’

‘And have you any idea what that mystery is?’ said Alec.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘But have you asked yourself why Buttercup and Cad were catapulted into such a prominent role in the Fair within minutes of hanging their hats here?’ Alec shook his head. ‘Well, there are a clutch of interlocking little stand-offs – stands-off? – stand-offs being enacted very subtly by various parties. I haven’t quite sorted the players out yet, but there’s a teetotal element, which would like the Ferry Fair shut down, or at least turned into a tea-party which would amount to the same thing. There’s also a rather grim religious element which disapproves of the Burry Man for obvious reasons, and probably isn’t too mad about the general frivolity. There’s also a fearful bore of a schoolmaster who seems to straddle both camps. And I just wonder – Cad put me on to this, actually – whether Robert Dudgeon was, I believe the term is nobbled.’

‘Murdered by a representative of the Temperance Movement?’

‘Not murdered, Alec you goose. Haven’t you been listening? Nobbled. Bribed maybe, or blackmailed.’

‘I see!’ said Alec. ‘He undertook not to do his thing, then he double-crossed them and did it anyway and the added stress of knowing he was for it led to his heart attack and now Mrs Dudgeon is dreading the comeback. He must have been remarkably suggestible. Practically spineless.’

‘Hmm, he didn’t strike me that way, I’ll grant you. But it’s only a thought.’ I stopped, since we had come to a fence, and rested my arms upon one of its posts.

‘So,’ said Alec. ‘Worming away at Mrs Dudgeon is the first task for you. What about me? Am I to infiltrate a Temperance meeting? I doubt that the blackmail would be minuted and the sum entered into the accounts.’

‘Quite the reverse,’ I said. ‘The first thing I’d like you to do – with Cad if it’s easier or alone – is to go on what I believe is called a pub crawl. I want to get some idea of just how much whisky was involved on Friday so that we can talk Cad out of his fevered imaginings, and at the same time you can gossip away to the landlords and the bar regulars and might pick up a scent of what was on Dudgeon’s mind.’

‘So I’m to be quaffing beer and chatting up serving wenches and you’re to be holding the hand of the widow. That seems fair.’

‘As luck would have it, though, darling, Brown’s Bar where the comeliest of the local barmaids – Miss Brown – can be found is already ticked off the list. That’s the one place we know he had nothing. So sucks to you.’

‘Dandy, you must stop quoting those horrible children of yours.’

‘Make me,’ I replied. ‘To which the answer is “Watch me.” And then I think it’s “You and whose army?” You’re right, Alec. They’re unspeakable. I shall have them adopted. Now where shall we go? Into the woods, over the fields, or back to the castle?’

‘Not the fields. I saw them from the ramparts earlier and they’re a forest of reeds, bound to be marshy. De Cassilis needs to think about some drainage if he’s going to put stock on to -’

‘Et tu? Not drainage, for God’s sake, please.’

Alec laughed good-naturedly and did not pursue the topic. We looked up and down the fence for a gate into the woodland, and as we found it and clambered over – the latch being as stout as it was complicated – we began to hear distant shouts and squeals from amongst the trees ahead.

‘Speaking of unspeakable brats,’ I said, ‘if these are the children from the next-door cottage to Mrs Dudgeon, prepare yourself. They are what enthusiasts call unspoiled and everyone else calls holy terrors.’

Sure enough, it was them. Their number had swollen to five by the addition of another two brothers smaller than little Lila, definitely brothers too with their screeching red hair. This made, I calculated, a dizzying total of eight including the work-worn eldest sister we had encountered in the doorway with her two infant charges. Today the children were swarming on and around the remains of a long-dead beech tree, clearly a favoured venue for play since the earth surrounding it was bare and trodden hard and the stump itself was embellished with enough nails and pegs to allow even the smallest child to hoist himself up into its hollowed top. Here some old tin sheeting made a shelter which was currently being stoutly defended by one of the older children, waving a leafy branch in the faces of his siblings as they mounted attack.

‘Lila, Lila, headless horsies!’ shouted one of the boys and, with Lila’s willing compliance, he scooped her up on to his shoulders, she wound her chubby legs under his arms, he clamped his hands hard over her knees, and together they charged the tree-stump again. Another pair – large brother with small brother atop – followed suit and with the little ones grabbing like lobsters whenever the big ones lunged in close, the brother in possession of the stump soon dropped his branch and, shrieking, seemed in danger of being pulled apart.

‘Hey, hey, hey!’ shouted Alec as we approached them. ‘Steady on there.’

‘The best of luck to you, darling,’ I muttered under my breath.

The two tinies had let go of their prey, who was now flexing his shoulders and scowling, but they kept their seats on their brothers’ shoulders so that when we drew near Alec and I were looking them straight in the face. Lila at eye-level was not a pretty sight, lavishly filthy and quite clearly not having troubled herself with a handkerchief all the day long. The boys were no more appetizing, but somehow the dust and stains on their knitted jerseys and darned flannel shorts seemed less revolting than the evidence of breakfast, lunch and hours of play on Lila’s faded gingham and wretched little ribbon. Still, when one looked closely, if one could bear to, it was clear that all the dirt was today’s dirt and that the hair underneath the leaves and bits of twig was shiny, the cheeks underneath the dust rosy and smooth. I had seen much worse, and even if they had only been cleaned specially for the Fair it was nice to meet them once they had been and not before.

‘We’re jist playin’, mister,’ said the oldest boy. ‘And it’s my shot in the castle, Tommy.’ Tommy, shamed into fair play by the presence of grown-ups, scrambled out with medium-good grace: a tongue stuck out but no shoving.

‘That’s right, take turns like good brothers and sisters,’ I found myself saying sanctimoniously. Their answering expressions, although rude, were no more than I deserved and so to raise my stock a little – why does one always suck up so shamelessly to strange children? – I said:

‘So, castles today, eh? No ghosts and ghouls?’

‘The ghostie’s away down a hole cos Lila peed herself in the castle,’ was the startling response.

‘Naw-naw,’ said Lila, kicking out at her accuser and causing the brother who bore her on his shoulders to stagger around in an attempt to hold his balance.

‘Aye-aye,’ came back the chorus from all the boys. Lila, face thunderous under her flaming hair, struggled down to the ground and set off across the woods, bawling.

‘Lila pees her kni-ckers!’ sang brother Tommy to her retreating back and then at Alec’s cluck of disapproval: ‘She does, mister.’

‘That’s Lila’s business and no one else’s,’ said Alec, sounding pompous and quite ridiculous (I was smirking almost as much as the boys).

‘Aye well, it got rid of the ghostie,’ one of them said, philosophically.

‘Hadn’t you better go after her?’ I suggested as Lila’s howls began to fade. ‘She might get lost.’

‘She might get ate!’ cried a small brother. ‘She might get stole away and never brung back.’

‘Aye, or the demon might get her.’

‘Oh yes, the demon,’ I said. ‘You never did catch him then?’

‘And make her drink blood and then she’ll come back in the night when we’re all in our beds and – Waarghhh!’

At this, the small brother who had started the train of thought in the first place obviously reached the limits of his courage and began to snivel. In between, we could hear the classic soaring moans of a ghost – unmistakably Lila even without the odd hiccough left over from her recent tears – and the brothers one by one cocked their ears and fell silent.

‘Tommeee! Donaaald! Randaaaall!’ whooped the ghost.

‘She’s doon by the burn,’ they whispered. ‘Let’s fling her in.’ And with that, Alec and I quite forgotten, they were off.

Listening to their shouts and laughter and with an ear cocked, in my case at least, for any sudden splashes, we made our way back to the gate.

‘Cherubs all,’ I said.

‘Whatever happened to ring-a-roses?’ said Alec.

‘Ah yes. Well, along with the demon drink and the godless fertility rituals, this charming little Burgh does rather go in for bumps in the night, you’ll find.’

‘Perhaps I will take de Cassilis with me around the pubs then,’ said Alec, ‘to hold my hand.’

‘At least if I’m sitting with the widow, the presence of an actual corpse as large as – Well, decency will forbid them their ghost stories for once. I might even be able to get some proper helpful gossip.’

‘I must say, though,’ Alec went on, ‘I do approve of the practical note in their metaphysics: ghosts driven out by the simple application of a little girl with an unreliable bladder. And to think of all the chanting and potions that go into exorcism elsewhere!’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘They are perverse in their tales, woods full of the ghosts of soldiers even though the real soldiers all fell in the fields of France and yet not a peep about the ghosts of two young men who really did die here – and died horribly – and could easily be imagined to linger. And then the arrangement of their ontology – do I mean ontology? – seems a little random too. Why should ghosts live in holes guarded by demons and why should the Burry Man live in a swamp full of dead babies in his off-duty months?’

‘Why come to that should these unfortunate infants be in the swamp?’

‘Well, there there’s an answer, but let’s not pursue it or I shall have nightmares. Those red-headed angels certainly are fearless though, aren’t they? I doubt that at Lila’s age I would have taken off alone into a haunted wood whatever my mortification.’

‘Well, they do say it’s the living one need take care about,’ said Alec, echoing Inspector Cruickshank, ‘not the dead.’