The Burry Man's Day (19 page)

‘Thanks for nothing,’ I muttered to Nipper when we were on our way at last, but he really was beginning to limp, poor little chap, and I felt too guilty to be cross with him for long. His master, however, was quite unperturbed by the news of the roll in the horse dung, and even scratched his jaw in embarrassment and said he should have warned me about it. He was no less courteous about the cut paw, saying that it could have happened at any time and I was not to ‘fash’ myself about it.

Thankfully, Alec had sobered up during a long nap after luncheon and was installed in the library with his pipe, looking alert if rather seedy.

‘How can you?’ I said, as he lit up and puffed deeply. ‘At the best of times it’s mysterious enough, but with a hangover? How can you?’

‘I don’t have a hangover, Dandy,’ said Alec witheringly, but at that moment Buttercup’s butler came in with a glass of something effervescent on a small tray which he proffered to Alec with an assurance that Mr de Cassilis swore by it.

‘Hm,’ I said, with what I thought was great restraint. ‘I’m off to change.’

‘Yes, please do,’ said Alec. ‘You stink, darling. What is it?’

‘Whisky, dog’s blood, horse dung and rotting leaves,’ I said. ‘I’ll explain when I return.’

It was almost teatime before I was back with him; I had not seemed that bad while I was out in the woods, but standing on the pale carpet in my bedroom I got more and more redolent and disgusting as I peeled off layers, and in the end I bundled up every stitch I had on and rang for a bath. Apart from anything else, a good long spell alone with no interruptions would give me a chance to digest all that I had learned, all that I had surmised on the strength of it, and what I planned to do next. No such luck. I had only just finished running over the peculiar conversation with the Turnbulls when my bedroom door was swept open and I heard Grant’s voice bossing about whatever unfortunate underling had landed the job of carrying my trunk up from the hall.

‘Stuffy,’ I heard her say, and then, ‘Worse than stuffy. What on earth has she been
-'

‘Grant!’ I squeaked as she threw the bathroom door wide, concerned that a hallboy might still be lurking.

‘Oh, you’re there . . .’ she said, ‘madam,’ with her usual pause. ‘What is that smell?’

‘I came a cropper with a shovelful of dung and a bleeding dog,’ I told her, sure that if I made it sound revolting enough she would not ask for any details. I was right. She simply rolled her eyes.

‘What were you wearing?’ she demanded, her mind running naturally to laundry.

‘Oh, my two-layered green and calfskin walking shoes,’ I said. ‘No worries there.’

‘Gloves?’

‘None.’

She nodded, satisfied, and squaring her shoulders went to find the washing.

Chapter Nine

‘So,’ I said to Alec back down in the library, ‘what do you think?’ Cadwallader was off on some errand but Buttercup was there, on the edge of her seat with interest, her buttery curls bouncing as she chewed her cake.

‘Can they possibly be as they seem?’ said Alec, meaning the Turnbulls.

‘Are they for real?’ said Buttercup in gurgling American. ‘That’s how you’d say it in New York, darling,’ she said as we turned to stare. ‘You’d say “Are they for real?” In the Outer Burghs anyway.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘One does meet some strange people who turn out to be exactly what they portray themselves to be. Look at Hugh. He’s “for real”.’

‘Poor old Hugh,’ said Alec. ‘You are mean about him, Dan. And I’m beginning to see the other side of it, now. Gilverton is in better heart and better repair than many a grander –’

‘Spare me, Alec, please,’ I begged him. ‘It’s not the doing. It’s the reporting afterwards. I spend a great deal of my time at dress-fittings. Or I used to anyway, and Hugh is often pleased with the results, but I don’t bring home the paper patterns and spread them on the tea-table to explain how it’s done. And to return to the subject, if they are to be relied upon, then what that means is that we need to explain why those burdock seeds ended up on the Dudgeons’ midden.’

‘It’s not half as glamorous as I thought, being a detective,’ grumbled Buttercup.

‘It depends on the case,’ I said. ‘If I murder you now, for interrupting, there won’t be any middens involved.’

Buttercup pursed her lips ostentatiously and I resumed.

‘Now, what I thought was this: perhaps Mrs Dudgeon always brings them home – perhaps it’s part of the mystical magical element. But this year, of course, they would have been the last thing on her mind and so one of the sisters may have dealt with them instead. Some sister who’s not much of a Gertrude Jekyll and who simply thought, “Bits of dead plant: put them with all the other bits of dead plant,” which is exactly what I would have done had it been me. We can easily find out – and by we I mean you, darling – from one of the Burry Man’s two helpers what usually happens to the seeds at the end of the day. And you’ll be killing two birds with one stone if you seek them out, Alec, because they will also be able to tell you whether they saw anyone slip Robert Dudgeon the famous sandwich.’ I saw Buttercup get ready to remind me that he could not eat a thing all day – she was very proud of having spotted this before anyone else – but I quelled her. ‘In a packet, I mean. For later. We certainly need to find that out.’

‘The sandwich?’ said Alec. ‘I don’t quite . . . I had a dream about a sandwich. Last night, I think.’

‘It wasn’t last night, darling,’ I told him. ‘It was luncheon today. And you weren’t dreaming, you were listening to me talking through the alcoholic haze.’ Alec nodded rather sheepishly.

‘Now, if the Burry Man doesn’t usually take his burrs home for some ritual purpose at the end of the day, then we need to find out at whose instigation they ended up back at the cottage this year. Who gathered them up and put them in the cart. Because – and it gives me great pain to say this – I can’t see any reason for them to be whisked away from the scene except the most sinister reason imaginable.’

‘Oh Dandy, you can’t be serious,’ said Alec. Buttercup looked puzzled.

‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘But Mr Turnbull – or to be more exact Mrs Turnbull – with her comfortable knowledge of local fungi got me thinking. Isn’t there some kind of mushroom – toadstool, really – that’s completely harmless if ingested in most circumstances, but absolutely deadly if taken along with alcoholic drink?’

‘Is there?’ said Alec.

‘I’m sure there is,’ I said. ‘You never met my parents, darling, but they were most . . . what’s the word, Buttercup?’

‘Mad?’ said Buttercup. ‘Not to be unkind, but I’d say they were mad.’

‘Well, certainly eccentric,’ I admitted. ‘William Morris wasn’t nearly earthy enough for them. William Cobbett, now! And they thumbed through Culpeper’s Herbal as though it were Whitaker’s Almanack.’

Buttercup snorted. ‘D’you remember, Dan, when I came to stay with you and your mother burnt my bodice in the drawing-room fire and gave me that leaflet about consumption and healthy lungs?’ We both laughed. ‘Although I must say,’ she went on, ‘it was wonderful afterwards. No corsets for three glorious weeks until I got home again and my mother whisked me straight to the Army and Navy. She was shocked to the core.’

‘I must have overheard it from them,’ I said. ‘I’m absolutely sure that there is such a mushroom. And – I can’t believe I’m giving air to this when Cad isn’t here to enjoy it – but on the subject of untraceable poisons, there’s “untraceable” and then there’s “perfectly traceable if one looks for it but so unlikely that one doesn’t”. And I just wonder. If the burrs were poisoned, then the poison wouldn’t be in the stomach at all, but only in the blood. And if the doctor didn’t check the blood for that particular poison – and why would he? – then Bob’s your uncle.’

‘But are you saying that Mrs Dudgeon did this?’ said Alec. ‘Wouldn’t she burn them in that case?’

‘No, I don’t think she did do it,’ I said, ‘if anyone actually did anything. It’s the Turnbulls and Miss Brown who are in my sights at the moment. The Turnbulls because they have the required knowledge and their peculiar ideas almost amount to a motive and Joey Brown because she has acted rather shiftily more than once and she obviously has something on her mind. And actually, of course! That’s what she might have been doing round the back this morning. Putting the burrs on the heap or checking that they had been or something. That would make perfect sense. But . . . let’s consider Mrs Dudgeon for a moment.’

‘If we find out that it was
not
her idea to take the burrs home, then she is in the clear,’ said Alec.

‘But if it
was
her idea,’ I supplied, ‘then perhaps the reason she was so desperate to get rid of all her sisters and have the place to herself was so that she could go out and burn them.’

‘And now she
has
got the place to herself,’ said Alec, sitting up suddenly.

‘Yes indeed, but only by taking the extreme step of sending her husband’s body to the undertakers for its last night above ground. And that obviously took a lot of resolve to carry through, Alec. She was visibly pained at the thought of doing it. And for that reason I’m willing to bet that if there was a murder it wasn’t anything to do with Mrs Dudgeon. I bet if you track down someone who was there you’ll find that it wasn’t her who put the burrs in the cart.’

‘Well, who then?’ said Buttercup.

‘Who indeed,’ said Alec. ‘If we knew that we’d know everything.’

‘We’re getting a long way ahead of ourselves here,’ I said, trying to remain the voice of reason, despite my excitement. ‘We don’t know yet that it wasn’t par for the course. We don’t know if this mushroom works through the bloodstream as well as the digestive system. We don’t even know if it grows here or if it’s in season. And we don’t know if it’s something that would stick out during the post-mortem like a sore thumb. So let’s stay calm.’

‘But the burrs on the midden heap?’ said Alec.

‘Oh yes, certainly,’ I said. ‘They need to be got away before Mrs Dudgeon or anyone else has a chance to start a bonfire and destroy them. But how we are to get them without being seen . . .’

‘Ooh!’ exclaimed Buttercup.

Alec and I waited for more, but she shook her head.

‘I half remembered something,’ she said. ‘But I’ve forgotten what it was.’

‘Well, do your best, Dandy,’ said Alec. I was about to protest when I realized he was right. As odd as it would be for me to be spotted skulking around in the cottage garden, it would be ten times odder for Alec. Why had I put the horse droppings on top, I lamented. It would have been bad enough without them; it would be ghastly now, and Grant was going to be livid.

I was just on my way out of the door with two sacks and a pair of borrowed gardening gloves when Buttercup hallooed from above me and knelt down to talk to me through the grille of the murder hole.

‘I’ve remembered,’ she sang out. ‘Don’t worry about being caught, Dandy. I was supposed to tell you from Cad, that he’s loaned out the Austin and a boy to take Mrs Dudgeon and “Donald’s” wife whoever “Donald” is to the Co-operative draper to be fitted up with their mourning. Sorry.’

‘Anything else?’ I said, resisting the urge to rush upstairs and box her ears.

‘Um? Yes! The children are at “their Auntie’s Betty’s” so you have a free run for poking about at the cottage.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘So there was no need to borrow the dog, which rolled in the dung, which went on the heap, which I’m about to toss like a salad with my bare hands. Well, gardening gloves. You are impossible, Buttercup.’ I thought for a moment. ‘This Donald has been doing all the least enticing jobs thus far and if his wife merits shop-bought mourning, then I must be right in thinking that he’s Mr Dudgeon’s brother. And if this wife being at the draper’s gives me a clear run then they must live next door. Ah yes, that makes sense. His wife is “Izzy who has her hands full with eight”. At last they all begin to fall into place. I’ll bet this trip to the draper’s is the most fun poor Izzy has had all year.’

If I had expected either familiarity or the scent of the chase to drive away other more fanciful notions on this third trip through the woods, then I soon found out I was mistaken: I still had the unnerving sensation of being watched as I strode along, and now when I told myself that there were no such things as ghosts I could answer myself that it need not be a ghost but might be a murderer, wondering what I was up to and just about to work it out and come up behind me to put his hands around my throat. It was Mr Turnbull’s hands I imagined in this little scene and Mr Turnbull’s scrubbed cheeks and shining eyes I imagined being the last thing my eyes ever saw in this life; his wife’s voice murmuring ‘That’s right, my dear’ being the last sound my ears ever heard. Despite working myself up into a muck sweat with these fantasies, however, I reached the back garden of Mrs Dudgeon’s cottage unmolested, drew on my gardening gloves and set to work.

The horse dung rolled away more easily than I expected and I did not have to pick too many little seeds out of it with my gloved fingers. I deliberated fairly long, in fact, whether I had to pick any at all. Would every burr be poisoned if this was indeed what had happened? Or would only a few? If only a few, though, how ironic if it happened to be those few I left behind. At last, the spirit of Nanny Palmer came to rest on my right shoulder and I heard her voice telling me that this job was like all others in the matter of being worth doing and therefore worth doing well.

So the light was beginning to fade by the time I was finished. Actual sunset was not until eightish but the clearing was very small and the spruce trees around the back of it quite well grown, so even as early as this the gardens had seen the last of the afternoon’s sunshine. Mrs Donald Dudgeon’s washing would get damp again, I thought, if she was not home soon to take it in.

As I glanced at it upon this thought, my heart leapt up into my throat and I gave a cry. There was a figure standing in the Dudgeons’ back doorway, standing quite still and looking towards me, and without being aware of having decided to do so I found myself running into the trees, the sacks forgotten. This was not prudence in the face of the unknown, nor even self-preservation on the off-chance that this figure might mean me harm; it was blind, whickering terror, for the figure in the doorway was Robert Dudgeon.