The Burry Man's Day (35 page)

We assured him that we did not, and although he huffed a little more about the slight irregularity and had to talk himself into it, telling us (as if we did not know) that these were public documents after all and that we were doing no harm, then he muttered for a moment about the Empire and the war and asked himself what the point was of fighting it if we were not now able to live free lives under His Majesty and, eventually, he left to fetch them.

The current records might be what passed for an unholy mess in the clerk’s opinion – he said as much with a great many apologies as he returned – but when one has recently gone through two sacks of burdock seeds with a garnish of horse-dung a box file full of papers can hold no fears and they were, as he said, in roughly date order. I untied the tape holding the file shut and the side dropped down. The early-booked, first class and cabin class tickets on the bottom were stacked in a neat-edged pile but as we got nearer the top towards the last-minute steerage bookings the receipts took on the dishevelled and scraped-together look one could imagine of the passengers themselves. I wriggled a finger into the stack just where the neatness stopped and the crumple began and heaved the top lot out.

‘Last Tuesday,’ I said, reading off the bottom chit, and I began to flick through them until I had isolated the fat bundle for Friday. I halved these and pushed Alec’s portion towards him.

Starting at a steady pace, I worked through my bundle, distraction always threatening – it was of some interest to see how many single men, how many young couples, and how surprisingly many huge families of children had set out on this trip – but as I pondered them I became aware of Alec whipping through his pile, snapping each receipt off the top, no more than glancing at it, and smacking it face-down on the growing stack at his other side. Almost automatically, I began to speed up too; I knew what he was up to. He wanted to be the one who found the prize and, in case he did not have it in front of him, he was ripping through his portion planning to take what was left of mine too. Having two sons for whom small daily bouts of competition were as necessary and as much relished as their four square meals, I recognized this immediately, ludicrous as it might appear, and being only human myself I did feel a pang of irritation when he spoke up.

‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Robert George Dudgeon, Cassilis, South Queensferry One-way, steerage class, paid cash in full.’

‘And?’ I said.

‘And nothing,’ said Alec. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just him?’ I said. ‘No Mrs Dudgeon? Let me see that.’ I snatched the receipt from him and looked for myself.

‘Would she be mentioned separately if she was on his passport?’ said Alec.

‘Absolutely she would be,’ I said. ‘Look at this: Bernard Lessom, Mrs Lessom, and all the little Lessoms down to Margaret Ann 15th May 1923 – imagine setting off with a babe in arms. Alec, if Chrissie Dudgeon was ever planning to go her name would be here.’

We sat for a minute drilling looks at the scrap of paper as though it could possibly have more to tell us, then Alec spoke at last.

‘So he was going to leave her, then.’

‘And she murdered him?’ I said. ‘Impossible. And anyway, she was in on the whole thing. Driving the cart, hiding the burrs. She wouldn’t collaborate in her own abandonment.’

‘Well, perhaps the plan was that they were both going and he double-crossed her. She found out and she murdered him for that.’

‘I don’t like the way this murder keeps blinking on and off like a faulty lamp whenever it suits us,’ I said. ‘We’ve been very remiss about tracking down these loose ends, you know.
If
Robert didn’t drink enough whisky to explain his death, but he
did
drink some at least,
and
he took some poison such as the mushroom, which
wouldn’t
show up on a post-mortem examination . . . those are a great many things to assume.’

‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ said Alec. ‘We need to find out whether he downed a whole bottle in the changing room at the Rosebery Hall. If he didn’t then we know at least that there’s a case to answer.’

‘Unless it was a heart attack,’ I said, dispirited even though I knew it was wicked to be dispirited at the idea of a natural death instead of murder.

‘Which would be a monstrous coincidence,’ said Alec. ‘Now, who do we ask about the whisky?’

‘Pat Rearden, I suppose,’ I said. ‘He was there in the disrobing room at the end of the day. But I’d like to start by asking Mrs Dudgeon. I don’t expect she’ll tell us straight but I want to see her reaction to the question. Let’s go.’

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.