The Burry Man's Day (29 page)

‘You’re quite right,’ said Alec. ‘We’ve been so excited about the burrs and working out how that bit was managed that we’ve barely thought about the death all day.’

‘And now the burrs have been carted off into police custody and we have no chance of running any of them past our toxicologist,’ I wailed.

‘You said . . . You said . . .’ spluttered Alec. ‘Dandy, you germ. You let me lacerate myself from head to toe and you still thought they were poisoned?’

‘You have a toxicologist?’ said Cad, sounding impressed and Alec laughed in spite of himself.

‘I was joking,’ I told Alec. ‘And no, Cad, we don’t. Nor, I fear, are we going to need one. Our mushroom theory was only needed if Dudgeon had spent his day with two babysitters hanging on his arms. And anyway, I’m still sure it’s as I said, I’m afraid. Remember? Right at the start. I said that there was something going on that was worrying the Dudgeons and in the middle of it all Dudgeon died, but there was no reason to think the worry and the death were connected. I don’t see any reason to abandon that now. All that’s happened is that we’ve found out what it was that the Dudgeons were up to.’

‘But not why,’ Alec pointed out. ‘We’ve not even begun to wonder why. Have we, Dan? Dan?’

‘Sorry, darling, I was just thinking,’ I said. ‘That there might be a connection after all. Far too twisty for Inspector Cruickshank, but see what you think. Only don’t get excited, Cad, I fear it’s not nearly twisty
enough
for you. It’s as I was saying to the inspector – one possible reason for the Dudgeons to stay at the Fair on Friday evening was to make everything look as near normal as it possibly could. A guilty conscience seriously disrupts the judgement on these matters; one doesn’t dare to do anything the least bit odd if one has something to hide and one begins to imagine that any little thing one
does
do is going to stick out like a red banner and draw the crowds. So although we can imagine that people would just have shrugged and thought nothing of it had Robert not climbed the pole that evening, Dudgeon himself might have thought it was an indispensable part of his “I’ve just been the Burry Man as usual and I’m having the Burry Man’s usual day” routine. So if he was trying to get every detail just so . . . what was the other striking feature of the Burry Man’s day? Apart from the burrs.’

‘Whisky,’ said Buttercup.

I clapped my hands. ‘Have a gold star, darling, and go to the top of the class. Whisky, exactly. Do you see?’

‘I think so,’ said Alec, as I would have expected.

‘No,’ said Cad, just as predictably.

‘Dr Rennick the police surgeon thought there was enough alcohol in Dudgeon’s system to have poisoned him even if he’d sipped it over the course of a long day and done a good bit of walking in between times. Imagine if Dudgeon – after getting back to the Rosebery Hall – tried to catch up all at once. Wouldn’t that make the poisoning much more likely?’

‘If he glugged down a bottle of the stuff?’ said Alec. ‘I suppose it could do, although I’m happy to say I’ve no personal experience on which to draw.’

‘It stands to reason, though, doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘Oh God, you do realize that the obvious way for us to find out is to go cap in hand to Mr Turnbull and ask for borrower’s privileges for his “substantial library” on the demon drink.’

‘Needs must,’ said Alec rather complacently.

‘I’m glad you agree,’ I told him. ‘I certainly can’t suddenly feign an interest after making my thoughts on the matter so very plain. No, that delightful little task is going to fall to you.’ I bared my teeth at him in an innocent smile. ‘Meanwhile . . .’

‘Meanwhile?’ echoed Cad.

‘Meanwhile we must find out what Robert Dudgeon was up to. We must discover how the Burry Man spent his day. It would also be helpful to discover who the stand-in was, although I suppose that’s the kind of task the police are better placed to handle. They can go around questioning everyone’s whereabouts without getting a “mind your own business” and a bop on the nose.’

‘Who do you think it might have been?’ said Alec. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Well, it would have to be a man roughly the same height and weight . . . my initial hunch would be to investigate the ever-obliging Donald.’

‘It wasn’t Donald,’ said Cad. ‘He’s my dyker – my wall-mender, you know – and my men didn’t have the day off.’

‘As far as you know they didn’t,’ I said. ‘But did you see Donald with your own eyes on Friday? If not, I think it’s worth checking.’

‘What about the whisky?’ said Buttercup. ‘I thought Donald was dead set against it.’

‘Oh damn, you’re right,’ I said. ‘It depends on the circumstances, though, surely. I daresay family feeling could overcome his scruples in a sufficiently tight pinch. It
was
only a hunch, mind you. It needn’t be someone bound to the Dudgeons by brotherly loyalty. It could be an accomplice, plain and simple, bound by common cause.’

‘Yes, but what cause?’ Alec said. ‘What tight pinch? What the hell was going on? Something very peculiar when you consider all the details. It had to be premeditated since he knew in advance that it was coming off, and yet not too premeditated because he didn’t seem to know very
far
in advance, did he? Thursday teatime. What could it have been?’

‘Mail train robbery?’ said Buttercup. ‘And he only found out from the rest of the gang on Thursday afternoon when the train with all the loot was going to be on the tracks?’

‘Welcome home, darling,’ I said. ‘You are not in the Wild West any more and Robert Dudgeon was neither a cattle rustler nor a robber of mail trains.’

‘New York isn’t the Wild West,’ said Buttercup. ‘But I see what you mean, sorry.’

‘Freddy’s got a point, though,’ said Cad. ‘Not a train robbery, but a robbery of some kind perhaps. Because Dudgeon was in difficulty with money. He came to me a week or two ago asking about an advance on his wages and offering to do extra work for extra pay. D’you remember, Dandy, when he was trying to wriggle out of the Burry Man’s day, and you asked him if he was paid for it and I hinted that if so he surely couldn’t pass it up? I did it quite subtly so as not to embarrass him but you might have picked up on it.’

‘Yes, I think I did just manage to catch a whiff of something,’ I said, keeping a straight face but not daring to look at Alec. ‘I don’t suppose he told you what the emergency was?’ Cad shook his head. ‘And did you give him the advance?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Cadwallader. ‘But I looked through the wages books with the steward and when I saw what he was being paid I gave him a raise. Backdated it to when I arrived. Old Uncle Cad really was the most god-awful skinflint.’

‘So in effect, he got the money he was after,’ said Alec. ‘Doesn’t that thicken the plot? Wouldn’t he have been able to get out of his commitment – whatever it was – if he didn’t need the money?’’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But say there was a gang, with a plan to do something nefarious, and say Dudgeon bought his way out with the cash from Cad. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t renege at the last minute on Thursday afternoon and put pressure on him to come in with them after all.’

‘No honour among thieves?’ said Alec.

‘But I don’t like that explanation,’ I said. ‘For one thing it doesn’t fit with what I saw of Robert Dudgeon. He simply didn’t seem the type to be mixed up in anything criminal. And he certainly didn’t seem the type to mix his wife up in it with him. And mark my words, she was in it with him. Up to her neck.’

‘But Dandy, that’s quite run of the mill, you know,’ said Buttercup. ‘Gangsters’ molls are ten a penny in some places and lots of them are every bit as fierce as their boyfriends.’

‘In some places,’ I said. ‘But do you think Queensferry is one of them? And do many gangsters have estate carpentering as a sideline?’ I did not wait for a response. ‘We must be thorough, of course. We can’t rule it out of hand right now. So . . .?’

‘We can look in the newspapers, see if any likely crime was committed on Friday,’ said Alec. ‘And we should certainly share our thoughts with Inspector Cruickshank. Whether he agrees or not, it’s better that he should know, so that if he comes across something odd he’ll be able to put the bits together.’

‘And I shall continue to cultivate Mrs Dudgeon,’ I said, ‘in hopes that I can persuade her to trust me and tell me what’s going on. Only I need to get to her before the police.’

‘What if your hunch about her were wrong, though?’ said Alec. ‘What if you got her to tell all, assuring her that she could trust you, and then she told you something you simply
had
to pass on to the inspector?’

I shook my head, unwilling to countenance the notion. ‘How could she? How could those people – Dudgeon and Mrs Dudgeon, I mean, with their neat vegetable patch and their knitted cushions on the footstool – be mixed up in anything truly bad?’

‘You hardly know the woman,’ said Alec. ‘And you only met him once.’

‘It does not always take extensive acquaintance to get the measure of a man,’ I said. ‘The moment I set eyes on Mr Dudgeon – standing in this very room in his stocking soles – I could see that he was as honest as the day is long.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Alec. ‘And what about some of your other first impressions? Rearden, say? Or Shinie Brown? What about the inspector, or that stable lad you seem to have struck up a friendship with? When was the last time you met someone whom you
didn’t
immediately decide was a good egg?’

‘He’s right, you know, Dandy,’ said Buttercup. ‘You were just as bad at school.’

‘Donald,’ I said, stoutly. ‘I didn’t take to Brother Donald at all. And I can’t stick the Turnbulls.’

‘Oh well, the Turnbulls!’ said Alec. ‘There are limits even for you.’

At that moment, the telephone on Cadwallader’s desk began ringing and he went to answer it, laughing along with the others; I suppose it must have made a nice change for him to have someone else be the butt of the jokes for a while.

‘It’s for you, Dandy,’ he said. ‘One of your conquests, no doubt. Ringing to ask you out for a walk in the moonlight,’ I gave a good-natured smile and took the receiver.

‘Dandy?’ said Hugh’s voice down the line. ‘Who in the world was that?’ I sobered immediately. Hugh was not likely to have rung me up just to hear the sweet sound of my voice, and I feared a summons home. What he said next only confirmed it.

‘Look, this can’t go on. It’s been days on end now and it’s getting a bit much.’

‘How’s the shoot?’ I asked him. I felt I knew the answer. Hugh would only ever decide he needed me at home if things were going very badly on the grouse moor and he needed a recipient for his grumbles. Indeed he can get testy enough, if driven to it by recalcitrant birds and clumsy beaters, to hold me and the other wives in the party responsible; for keeping the guns late at breakfast and distracting them after dinner with cards and silly gossip. Obviously, if I were away from home and his party was one of bachelors and widowers only, as this year, and yet the bag was still disappointing it was much harder to lay the blame at my door. Hence, my essential return. His next words, however, suggested that these assumptions were wrong.

‘What?’ he said. ‘The shoot? Oh, fine, fine, fine. If I could get a minute’s peace to enjoy it. It’s that bloody mutt of yours, Dandy. It’s well out of season now, has been for days, and it’s upsetting the whole household’ – by ‘household’, I knew that Hugh meant his smelly pack of hounds, terriers and accidents – ‘so I’m sending it to you.’

I had a vision of Bunty with a brown label around her neck being carried up the castle drive in the basket of a bicycling postman.

‘Drysdale put it on the 5.28. You’re to meet the train at Dalmeny at 7.40. It’s in the guard’s van.’

‘Hugh!’ I squeaked.

‘Too late to argue,’ said Hugh. Of course it was. He deliberately had not rung me until it was too late to argue; that was him through and through, but his machinations were redundant in this case.

‘I’m not arguing,’ I said. ‘What a sweet thing to have thought of. Thank you.’

There was a puzzled silence from the other end of the line. Hugh does not and cannot believe that I actually like Bunty,
love
Bunty, and do not simply pretend to love her to annoy him. I was sure it had given him a thrill of guilty pleasure to pack her off to me like this, but it had backfired.

‘Have you sent her things?’ I asked.

Hugh rumbled.

‘Oh, Hugh, please! You have sent her things along with her, haven’t you?’

‘It’s a dog, Dandy,’ said Hugh. ‘It doesn’t have things.’

With this he had the upper hand again and there was no regaining it so I thanked him and rang off.

‘Bunty?’ said Alec. I nodded. ‘And dastardly Hugh has sent her out into the harsh world without so much as a flask of tea and a change of underwear?’

‘You don’t mind, Buttercup, do you?’ I asked. ‘My dog coming? Too bad if you do, really, because she’s arriving off the 7.40. She’s no trouble. Beautifully trained and . . .’ I trailed off, aware that there was no point in building her up when they were just about to meet her face to face and learn the truth. ‘Well, she’s still a puppy, really,’ I said.

‘She’s seven,’ said Alec. ‘If she were a person she would be older than you.’

‘No, we don’t mind if Buttercup comes, do we, Freddy?’ said Cad.

Buttercup did not answer, but only shook her fist at me and growled.

I walked to the station – there was just time – thinking that Bunty might be a bit overwrought by the excitement of the journey and a ride in a motor car on top of it would not put her in the best light when she met her hosts. Besides, the rain and hail had spent themselves and the evening was sparkling again as the sinking sun caught the droplets on leaves, grass and fence wire. I tramped along, sniffing the damped-dust smell that summer rain leaves behind it, and feeling very content with my lot. We were making headway with the case – and we now had the strong arm of the law to take on the nosy-parkering jobs that give the amateur detective so much trouble – Bunty was coming, Alec was here and Hugh, now that he had got rid of my darling from under his feet, was apparently quite happy to let me do as I chose for as long as I chose to do it. Added to all of this, because either the afternoon’s storm or Robert Dudgeon’s funeral in the morning had brought an interruption to the work of the day, there were men and children amongst the hay, there were women out in front of the Dalmeny cottages, putting their washing back up to catch the last warmth of the sun and there were labourers at work in a far corner of a road-side field, the steady tock-tock of their hammers against the stones sounding like a metronome to keep the gurgling songbirds in time. In short, bucolic bliss.