The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter Six

Buttercup was aghast at the notion of being dragged back to the Dudgeons’ cottage that day after tea. Mrs Murdoch had done us proud – a pot of stew under a lard crust, a fruit pie and two bottles of cordial – but her mistress stuck out her bottom lip and shook her head.

‘He’s there, Dandy,’ she said, shuddering. ‘I simply couldn’t.’

‘He won’t be in the living room,’ I said. ‘And you must. Even if it weren’t for me you should have to, but I certainly can’t go on my own.’

‘He will be,’ said Buttercup crossly. ‘You wait and see. He’ll be in the middle of the floor with the lid open and candles all around, and I shall faint.’

I suppose one should have felt pity; after all she had been in New York all the years of the war and had not got used to the idea, and sometimes the sight, of men dead and dying all around, but I had been no more stout of heart my first day at the hospital, indeed my knees had knocked so badly that my starched apron crackled even when I was standing still, but I had made myself face it, had got used to it in the end, and felt nothing but exasperation for Buttercup baulking at one peaceful corpse tidily in its coffin with, if we were lucky, the lid well nailed down.

‘Don’t people die in America?’ I said, crossly. ‘Go and get your hat and I’ll start the motor car.’

Buttercup picked up a magazine and opened it on her lap.

‘You must, Buttercup. You and Cad must both look after her now.’

She perked up at this.

‘Fine. I’ve been twice, so it must be Cad’s turn. Take him.’ She pulled the bell rope before I could begin to protest at how wrong this would be and, ignoring my glares, asked the maid who answered to find Mr de Cassilis and send him to her.

I was right, of course. A bedroom window to the left of the door was thrown wide with its blind drawn down and fly netting tacked across the opening and this was the most we saw of Robert Dudgeon throughout the visit. Cadwallader moreover did not notice even this much, which was just as well since he was grumbling almost as pitifully as Buttercup.

‘I was going to go for a drink with Osborne,’ he said again as we knocked and waited on the doorstep. ‘Several drinks, from what he seemed to be suggesting. And what on earth am I to say?’ This in a whisper as we heard footsteps approaching. I was tempted to ask again whether people died in America, but the door opened before I had a chance and one of the women I had taken to be Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters stood aside to let us enter.

‘Come away in, sir, madam,’ she said. ‘It’s that good of you to come. Chrissie’ll be no end touched. Come away in.’

She ushered us into the living room, which was still full of the women we had seen the day before, and with Miss Joey Brown added to their number, her father clearly having persuaded her in the end.

Mrs Dudgeon sat as before in a hard chair, the two by the fire empty, and I caught my breath at the sight of her. Perhaps, after all, the endless daily toll of the war had coarsened us, taken us too far from Buttercup’s fearful recoil, and I was the ghoulish one, calmly expecting that within a day the widow would rally and would be thinking of funeral invitations and refreshments. In fact, Mrs Dudgeon looked so much worse, so more stricken and agitated, than she had the previous day that I was almost sure something else must have happened. Her face was white and dry-looking, with lines which must always have been there but which I had not noticed before dividing her brow in two, more lines joining her nostrils to the down-turned ends of her mouth. Her eyes were red and pinched, their sockets deeply visible and eyelids puckered like badly laundered linen bunched at its seam. In all she looked ten years older.

‘Here’s Mr and Mrs de Cassilis to see you, Chris,’ said the woman who had shown us in. Sorting that out took a minute or two, the more so since there was no easy way to account for its being me and not horrid selfish Buttercup who was here, but when we had cleared it up Mrs Dudgeon spoke.

‘I just want, need, to be on my own,’ she said, causing a maelstrom of shushing and clucking amongst the women, as they tried simultaneously to reprimand her, comfort her and cover their embarrassment, all without looking me or Cad in the eye. Cad, however, took a line which led us to safer waters.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘And you are quite right to say so – you mustn’t bottle things up – but others know best. This is a time for family.’

Mrs Dudgeon frowned at him momentarily, but seemed to decide not to bother pursuing it and went back to twisting her handkerchief and rocking gently in her chair, mouthing the word ‘alone’.

‘Aye well,’ said one of the women, with a hint of bluster which I could not quite interpret, ‘Izzy has her hands full with eight and wee Izzy’s jist a bairn herself for all she’s a rare help to her mammy.’ Cad had begun by nodding along to this but was obviously mystified by the end and did not respond. I was sure he would soon become as bilingual as the rest of us but for the moment he was lost. And to be fair to him, although I understood the words and the accent and could parse it beautifully – the ‘rerr hilp tae urr mammy’ was as the King’s English to me after all my years at Gilverton – I could not tie it to any preceding remark or fit it otherwise into the current context. I smiled vaguely and let it pass.

In doing so, of course, I was forgetting one of my hard-learned detecting maxims, which is that people always mean something when they speak. When it appears otherwise, I have missed the point. The difficulty is, of course, that to scent, track and run to ground every chance remark which puzzles one at first would not only be tiring, and not usually worth the effort, but it would put one beyond the pale in any social setting; would in fact turn every desultory chat and half-hearted passing of the time of day into a rerun of the Spanish Inquisition. Besides, it is only with hindsight that I can see how germane this would come to be. How could I have guessed it at the time?

In the excruciating silence, the sisters – could they really all be sisters? There were half a dozen including Mrs Dudgeon and, unlike the tribe next door, they were hardly a matched set – were fussing around with much muttering and sidelong glances towards us and towards the table where teacups and plates of shortbread were laid out.

‘Whisky?’ I heard one of them whisper, after a while.

‘Sandwich, mebbes?’ someone else breathed.

The difficulty was, of course, Cadwallader, for while tea and biscuits might do very well for all the females who would doubtless troop in and out to sit a while, the presence of a man, and a gentleman at that, demanded meat and drink.

‘Tea, Mrs Gilver?’ offered the woman who had answered the door, and then turning to Cad she inquired, ‘And something for yourself?’

At that moment, Joey Brown stood up suddenly from her perch on the creepie stool and came forward. I turned to her, feeling thankful that there would be a way out of the awkwardness if she had brought a bottle from her father’s establishment and was about to offer it, but she said nothing.

‘Have you a bottle open, Chris?’ said one of the women, rummaging in the sideboard. Mrs Dudgeon said nothing, but Miss Brown once again took a step forward. It was all getting most discomfiting, and I wished heartily that Joey Brown would overcome her gaucheness and get on with it if she did have a bottle about her somewhere, or that Cad would begin to register something, anything, of what was going on and defuse it. One thing to be thankful for, I thought, was that Mrs Dudgeon was oblivious and, since she was, I decided I could weigh in without causing her any embarrassment, so I murmured to the woman wielding the teapot:

‘There was some cherry brandy, I believe. Perhaps in the scullery?’

At last, however, Cad solved the problem himself by saying in a maniacally hearty voice as he saw me being passed a cup: ‘Ah tea! Wonderful. Tea, tea, tea. I’m getting quite British, you know, when it comes to a cup of tea.’ The companions smirked and I blushed for him but at least the catering was decided. Miss Brown sank back down on to her stool.

When cups and plates were distributed and the women had resumed their seats like so many starlings resettling after a shot, Mrs Dudgeon, unclamping her jaw with almost visible effort, spoke again at last.

‘I didnae mean to be rude,’ she said and she swept us all up in a desperate but determined look, ‘but I would do just anything for a bit of time to myself. Just tonight, maybe, and then anybody that wants to come can come back tomorrow.’ The starlings were ruffled again and several of them broke out at once.

‘Away, Chrissie. We’d nivver leave ye on yer own at a time like this.’

‘Bet’s through with him now, and when she goes hame, Tina’s to stay till Izzy’s got them settled and then she’ll be through and Bet’s wee Betty here’ll be back in the morning.’

‘Aye and then me the morn’s nicht.’

‘I’d be happy to stay awhile and let yous all away,’ said Joey Brown, sounding anything but, although she spoke stoutly.

Mrs Dudgeon waited with her eyes squeezed shut until they had subsided, then she looked around wildly, at the crowd of women in her room, out into the woods, a hard stare at the sideboard and then back out of the window again. The tension crackled around her like lightning; I could almost smell it from my seat at her side, and unable to bear it any longer, I rose and took my cup and plate to the table where I laid them down on the good damask cloth. They were snatched up immediately and borne away.

Cad was talking again now, of Mr Dudgeon and the excellent work he had done on the castle roof. Murmurs of quiet agreement came from the women:

‘Aye, he was a good man richt enough.’

‘We were blessed who knew him, it’s true.’

Mrs Dudgeon, eyes closed again and fists tight, endured the lapping of the talk and said nothing.

‘That’s a thought, Chrissie,’ said the woman called Tina, at last. ‘You were asking, sir, if there’s anything you could do?’

‘Anything at all. Name it,’ said Cad.

‘Well, someone’ll need to take thon,’ she gestured to the envelope on the sideboard, ‘to the toon hall.’

Cadwallader blinked at me for a translation.

‘Someone has to take the doctor’s certificate to the registrar’s tomorrow and register Mr Dudgeon’s…’ Thankfully Cad was nodding along with me by then and I could lapse into a gentle silence before the end.

‘Of course,’ said Cad.

‘Not tomorrow,’ said Mrs Dudgeon. ‘And it has to be a relative.’

‘Surely there’s someone,’ I said. ‘A male relative?’

‘I’ll do it,’ said the widow.

‘A brother-in-law?’ I insisted.

I looked around the bevy of sisters, thinking that surely one of their husbands could get some time off his work.

‘Donald would do it if I asked him,’ said Mrs Dudgeon. ‘But I just want to take care of it myself.’ She was working herself up again. ‘I’ll do it myself, first thing Tuesday.’

‘Well, it’s for you to say, Chrissie,’ said a voice. ‘But if you ask me, you’d better get it over and then your mind’ll be easy.’

Mrs Dudgeon threatened to laugh or perhaps to shriek at this, and I could not quite see how anyone looking at her now, half-mad with anguish, could foresee ease for her any time soon.

‘I can’t go tomorrow because it’s closed,’ she said at last through gritted teeth.

‘No, it’s never,’ said a young woman – Bet’s wee Betty, I think. ‘The morn’s Monday, Chris.’

‘Aye but the days jist run in together at a time like this,’ said another, reaching out and patting Mrs Dudgeon’s arm.

‘It’s closed this Monday for the August Bank Holiday,’ said Mrs Dudgeon. ‘I ken it was last weekend,’ she almost shouted this over the voices raised in denial, ‘I ken it was last weekend, but they stay open the bank holidays to let folk that’s off their work get their business done and they close the next. It’s closed.’ She was almost shouting and had to take three or four huge, groaning breaths before her voice was back under her command. When she spoke again, she sounded exhausted. ‘I’ll have to go on Tuesday. Tomorrow it’s closed.’

‘We’ll take care of everything,’ said one of the sisters, laying a hand upon Mrs Dudgeon’s shoulder. ‘We can look out his papers and someone’ll go with you.’

‘What papers?’ said Mrs Dudgeon, clutching at the woman’s hand.

‘Just his birth certificate,’ I told her, ‘and his marriage certificate and passport. Or no, sorry, I suppose he wouldn’t have a passport, but the other two…’

‘You never need to take all them,’ said Mrs Dudgeon. ‘Mr Faichen never told me you needed all them.’

‘Haven’t you got them?’ said one of the sisters. ‘Have you lost them, Chrissie?’

Mrs Dudgeon put her head in her hands and began to rock back and forward.

‘We can look them out for you, Chris,’ said a soothing voice. ‘We’ll find them.’ She was beginning to moan as she rocked and I glanced at Cadwallader in trepidation.

‘Mrs Dudgeon,’ he said, loudly. ‘I shall telephone the registrar himself, at home tonight if I have to, and ask whether it matters that Robert’s birth certificate is lost, and if it does, I shall take care of it all. I’ll pick you up in the motor car on Tuesday, whenever you like, take you there, and bring you home.’

Mrs Dudgeon stared at him for a moment and then spoke.

‘Or let me walk home by myself?’

The sisters set up a new protest at this, but Cad had the right idea.

‘Or let you walk home if that’s what you want,’ he said, nodding.

At that, we rose to go, while the sisters rallied around Mrs Dudgeon, the starling rustle starting up again:

‘… the doctor…’

‘Just so’s you get rest…’

‘… do yourself harm if you go on like…’

‘Goodbye, Mrs Dudgeon, ladies,’ I said, but we were quite forgotten and we let ourselves out.

‘Not to say I wouldn’t be half mad if that lot were buzzing round me,’ said Cadwallader, stopping on the doorstep, ‘but…’

‘Yes, I hope they do get the doctor,’ I said. ‘A state of nerves like that can’t be sustained for long without trouble. It would only take one more thing to tip her right over the edge.’

‘And not a big thing,’ said Cad. ‘Did you see how she took the news of having to look out a mere certificate?’

‘But you were wonderful,’ I told him. ‘Very calming. Well done. Only, you’re not really going to let her walk three miles home from the registrar’s all alone, are you?’

‘Of course not,’ said Cad. ‘But I thought if someone didn’t stop shushing her and start agreeing with her, she was going to have a fit.’

‘Still keen to be laird of the estate?’ I asked him. ‘Now that you see what it entails?’

‘Absolutely,’ he said firmly. ‘You said yourself I was wonderful back there. Although, it certainly does have more to it than I could have dreamt of, when I used to sit in the lawyer’s office in Manhattan signing papers and dreaming.

‘It’s all in such a godawful mess, Dandy. Not just the castle falling down around us, but farms running at a loss, rents unpaid for decades on the town properties, untold complications from some failed mining speculation back in the boom years. And now, just as I was beginning to get on top of it all, I’ve lost my carpenter.’ He sighed. ‘I must remember to get on to someone this evening and find out about this certificate question. Who do you think I should ask?’

That was more like it, I thought. For the first time since I had met him Cad sounded just like a husband; moaning about rents and business failures for one thing, and for another giving his word that he would attend to some matter then promptly turning to the nearest female to sort out the details for him. He was learning at last.

I regaled Alec with it all over a drink together in the drawing room later. He had been hanging around purposelessly for much of the day since, for all the beer shops and alehouses in Queensferry, there was only one establishment calling itself an hotel which could therefore offer refreshment on the Sabbath. There he had taken himself and, telling the landlord with hand on heart that he was a genuine traveller come down from Perthshire that morning, he had been supplied with a pint of seventy shilling ale at the counter in the lounge bar. Only then had it struck him that the labyrinthine licensing laws ensured that none of his fellow drinkers could possibly be a local man with anything to tell him of the Burry Man’s day.

‘I did get a few scraps from the barman,’ he told me, ‘but I think we had better take it with a pinch of salt.’

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Why so?’

‘Well, he was much too keen on muscling in to the centre of the story. Very full of this funny feeling he said he had that something was amiss. You know the kind of thing: “Soon as I saw him in the doorway, guvner, a goose walked over my grave and I knew there was trouble a-brewing.” The usual nonsense.’

‘A ghost,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it a ghost that walks over one’s grave?’

‘Why would a ghost give you goose pimples?’ Alec asked, reasonably enough. ‘Anyway, I shall have better luck tomorrow, I expect. Now what of you? You say she’s definitely still worried about something?’

‘Worried is hardly the word,’ I said. ‘If you could have seen her, Alec. And it wasn’t… Oh, it’s so hard to explain. It wasn’t the nagging kind of worry that one feels if one fears that something dreadful might happen. It wasn’t that. And it wasn’t the grind of waiting to hear something; we shall never forget what that looks like after all. This was… I don’t know.’

‘That’s simply not good enough, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘You must try.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘but don’t smile at me for being fanciful. Here goes. It was… Imagine… Imagine someone you care deeply about. Your mother, say. Imagine that your mother was tied to the railway line with a train coming and no one around you spoke English or understood your frantic gestures and no one would show you where the points were, or for some reason you did not dare to ask. It looked like that would. Worse, even. Horrid.’

‘It sounds like a nightmare,’ said Alec.

‘Yes!’ I yelled. ‘Exactly. She looked as though she were stuck in a nightmare with no one to turn to, even though we were all there trying to help.’

‘And does it fit in at all with our best guess as to what might be troubling her?’ said Alec. ‘Doesn’t sound it. We thought perhaps Dudgeon had been nobbled and had gone back on the deal and now Mrs Dudgeon might have to carry the can. What you’re describing doesn’t chime with that at all.’

I shook my head in agreement. ‘And the things she actually said didn’t seem at all as though they could be troubling on their own account. Bank holidays, and lost documents. Trivial things really. And then this ardent desire to be alone. First she was beside herself with the need to have her husband’s body back and now all she wants is for everyone to go away and leave her alone. I begin to wonder if she was quite normal before all this, because really she hardly seems sane now.’

I heard the ching! of the telephone being hung up in the library next door and then the sound of Cadwallader’s footsteps crossing the floor and advancing along the corridor towards us.

‘Good news,’ he said, entering. ‘She doesn’t need the birth and marriage certificates after all. I got it straight from the horse’s mouth. Well, the registrar’s. As long as the contents are known and there’s no doubt over identification, which there isn’t, she can just walk in and do it. Even better, he is open for business tomorrow, so we can get the whole thing under way. I’m going to slip back round to the cottage now and spread the tidings.’

‘Oh Cad, don’t descend again,’ I told him. ‘They’ll only get into another flap about feeding you. Send a footman, darling, much easier.’ Cad nodded his acquiescence and pulled the bell-rope to summon the maid.

‘I wonder what made Mrs Dudgeon so adamant that tomorrow was out,’ I said. ‘She was fierce about it, wasn’t she, Cad? Can she be quite normal? Have you ever heard any rumours that she wasn’t?’

Cadwallader shook his head. ‘Not that I would have,’ he said, which was a very good point.

‘I wish I knew where to look for a good old-fashioned malicious gossip,’ I said. ‘You must do what you can in the pubs tomorrow, Alec, but mental trouble is not really an interest of men’s.’

‘Well, haul yourself around the teashops and drapers,’ said Alec.

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But I daren’t simply plunge in and start asking. Far too many branches of the family. Anyone I quiz is bound to be a relative.’

‘Really?’ said Cad. ‘I haven’t begun to sort the locals out yet. Well done you.’

‘Oh, I haven’t sorted them out,’ I said. ‘The most I could do is attach offspring to parent and only that because they seem to employ so little imagination when it comes to naming them. Bet’s wee Betty, and young Tina that’s Tina’s lassie. Not forgetting young Izzy who’s such a help to Mammy Izzy, of course.’

‘Yes, there are teeming millions of nephews and nieces, certainly,’ said Cad. ‘You could hardly miss them.’