The Burry Man's Day (27 page)

‘I feel pretty foolish,’ I announced at length.

‘Hm,’ said Alec. ‘Did you expect some of them to have little skulls and crossbones on them?’ He spoke peremptorily, but he was clearly feeling much the same.

‘Let’s be forensic about it nevertheless,’ I said. ‘We’ve never had to do anything like this before so let’s make sure our inaugural attempt is at least thorough and not a disgrace to Mr Holmes.’ I buttoned the cuffs of my gloves carefully and began to poke about in the mess.

‘Right. What is there to note?’

‘Nothing,’ said Alec. ‘There are thousands of them. All identical.’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Not when you look closely. Some of them are fairly fresh-looking while others are dried up and turning yellow. That supports what Cad said about the scarcity this year. The pickers could not afford to be choosy. And look, some of them have been quite carefully harvested, neat little spheres, while others have been ripped off the plant and still have bits of stalk. Lots of them have fluff stuck in the spurs.’

‘Some of them are stuck together in plates,’ said Alec, getting into the spirit of the thing. ‘Look at this.’ He held up a sheet of burrs about three feet long and ten inches wide, holding together quite firmly although ragged at the sides.

‘I didn’t notice that when I was bundling them off the heap,’ I admitted. ‘Here’s a huge one.’ I held up a corner, but it began to rip apart as I did so.

‘Careful, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘Lay it out flat. That must be the back piece or the breast piece.’

‘Yes, and that long one you found first is a leg surely. Rather grisly somehow, isn’t it?’ But Alec was as happy as a little boy with frog-spawn now, rummaging around on the tack table for more big pieces.

‘Here’s some of the head, surely,’ he cried, lifting a curved cap of burrs carefully over his hands. I shuddered. Alec laid the latest find at the top of the table above the large square patch and stood back.

‘I’m not sure I want to reconstruct the whole thing,’ I said. ‘It’s giving me the willies.’

‘Are you afraid that when we put the last piece in place, he’ll sit up and reach out towards you?’ said Alec, in a whisper.

‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘You’re worse than those horrid children.’ I was trying to laugh but really the idea was shivery-making. ‘I’m surprised there aren’t such rumours about the Burry Man,’ I went on. ‘Except that his bare hands would scotch it.’

‘Anyway there’s not much chance of our putting the whole thing together,’ Alec said, fitting another short leg piece on the other side. ‘Look at all these odd bits and single burrs from all the nooks and crannies. Heaps of them.’

I nodded. There were indeed undulating piles of burrs left on the table besides the large knitted-together sections. With their wisps of fluff sticking to them and their stalks jutting out they made the table top look like one of those miniature battle scenes my sons are always constructing. A wintry battle scene with patches of thin snow and lots of dead trees.

‘Have you noticed,’ I said, ‘that all the stuck-together ones are quite clean, and all the loose ones have the white wool or whatever it is clinging to them?’

Alec took a moment to check and then nodded.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That’s odd. And the stuck-together ones are the best ones too, the fresh whole ones with no bits of stalk.’

‘I suppose that makes sense,’ I said. ‘Using the cream of the crop for the places the imperfections would show and using up the dregs in the corners.’ Alec was laying some more pieces on top of the body patch, trying them this way and that to make them fit.

‘I wonder if this is the front or the back,’ he said, half to himself.

‘I’d say the back is in one piece and those are the front bits, broken up like a jigsaw,’ I said. ‘Remember – Dudgeon began pulling his suit off himself. He’d hardly reach round and snatch it off his back. Ooh! Here’s an arm.’ I handed it over to Alec who laid it in place sticking out from the shoulder.

‘Can we move all these odds and ends on to the floor?’ he said. ‘There isn’t room to make the suit up properly with all the extras in the way.’

I am not sure whether it occurred first to him or to me, but certainly by the time I had looked up to catch his eye he was already raising his head to stare back.

‘And that shouldn’t be, should it?’ I said, with my heart thumping.

Alec looked at the table again, first at the emerging form of the burry suit and then at the battleground piles all around.

‘Could these possibly be used up in the joins?’ he said, talking slowly, trying to stay calm, apparently fighting excitement of his own.

‘I don’t think so,’ I answered, ‘but I’m afraid there’s only one way to find out. Do you happen to have a pair of thick combinations with you, darling? I suppose not since it’s August. Well, you shall just have to borrow some from Cad.’

‘Steady on,’ said Alec. ‘We can just lay them out on the table here, surely.’

‘I’d feel better if there was a three-dimensional reconstruction,’ I said. ‘To make sure. I know from some very unsuccessful attempts at dressmaking when I was a child that the third dimension makes quite a difference.’

‘And what about the poison?’ said Alec, refusing to give in without a fight.

‘I think we always knew the poison was a stretch,’ I reminded him. ‘We only entertained the poison because we couldn’t see any other reason to hang on to the burrs, but we can now. Come on, let’s go and ask Cad.’

The afternoon was turning to evening by the time we had finished and the sky had blackened and was threatening rain the way it can after a hot afternoon, making the tack room horribly gloomy despite the oil lamp. Alec, out of modesty, had reconstructed his own burry trousers, working up from the ankles with loud gasps and winces, and then I had pressed the back patch to his shoulders and pieced together the other squares and strips over his front. We scrupulously avoided any burrs with white fluffy garnishing, and once I had got my eye in I found it easier and easier to tell which were the prime burrs – the fat, green, carefully picked ones – and used only these to make the joins and to fill, as Alec had put it, the nooks and crannies.

I had filched a flask of brandy from the library while the winter combinations were being hunted out and I lifted it to his lips again now, as he stood there with one hand braced against the tack room wall and the other out to the side holding a broomstick for support.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked, stoppering the flask. Alec nodded. ‘Because I think we’ve fairly well proved our case as it is.’

‘Heads are larger than anyone ever thinks,’ Alec replied. ‘I know that from drawing classes.’

‘I’ll go and get a flour bag from Mrs Murdoch then,’ I said and made for the door. ‘There should just be time before the deluge.’

‘Only – Dandy . . .?’ said Alec. I turned. It was hard not to smile seeing him standing there, until – that is – I looked into his eyes. ‘Hurry back, won’t you?’ he said. I nodded, sober again, and sped off.

Once the flour bag was thoroughly banged against the wall to dislodge the dust I lowered it over Alec’s head and felt with a piece of coal for his eyes and mouth. Then I took it off and set about the coal marks with my nail scissors. When it went back on again it no doubt felt better to him but it looked even worse to me and I remembered how it was the eyes and dark hole of a mouth that were the worst of it all on the Burry Man’s day; that and the white hands grasping the staves. I shuddered. Alec must have felt it because he said:

‘Try this end of the stick, darling,’ and I apologized.

When the back of his head was covered I began on the face, ringing his eyes and putting a strip down his nose, partly to lighten the mood and partly to give myself a pattern to work to. I was engrossed in the task of getting the things on in some kind of order, and had almost forgotten Alec in spite of the closeness of his steady breathing when suddenly I felt him begin to shake under my fingers.

‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Take it off. Take the bag off. Now!’

I grabbed the top of the flour bag despite the barbs piercing the palms of my hands and tore it off, ignoring the rip as the joining layer of burrs along his shoulders protested.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Can’t really account for that, I’m afraid, but I just couldn’t stand it a minute longer.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I told him. ‘The bag itself is more than half covered whether you wear it or not. And look.’

He craned round stiffly and looked at the table, where the snowy battleground lay undisturbed, easily as many burrs as Alec was wearing, all lying there, left over.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘I think I can stand this long enough for you to get Inspector Cruickshank, Dandy. So long as he’s available now and willing to come along. But God knows how Robert Dudgeon did it for hours on end.’

‘Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘He didn’t. Paddy Rearden told me as much. “He wasn’t himself that day.” He told me over and over again, if I’d only had the wits to hear it. The Burry Man wasn’t himself at all.’

Inspector Cruickshank was at his tea when I banged on the door of his house ten minutes later, but he covered his plate with a pan lid and set it to the side of the stove to keep warm, all without a murmur, even though it was fried fish and potatoes and bound to be soggy when he returned.

‘It may seem terribly theatrical when you see what we’ve done, Inspector,’ I said to him as we drove back up the Dalmeny road for the Cassilis stable yard through the beginning of the rain, ‘but we felt we had to convince you because without the evidence of your own eyes it all sounds so very nebulous and strained. And we have to convince you because although we’ve made an important discovery we have no earthly idea what it means or where to go next.’

‘And this is to do with Robert Dudgeon, is it?’ said Inspector Cruickshank. ‘I thought as much. You weren’t happy that day at the Fair, were you, madam? With the doctor’s report? I’ve not had a look like that since I scuffed my new boots first day on and had to come in and tell my mammy.’ He spoke affably enough, but even so I blushed. I had not realized that my disapproval had been quite so obvious as all that.

‘Well, I think I owe the doctor and you an apology,’ I said. ‘I have no reason to doubt the report. What we’ve found isn’t about how Mr Dudgeon died, but it’s a strange thing that needs some explanation all the same. As you’ll soon see.’

I swung the motor car into the east gate of the park and took the back lane to the stable, going very slowly around the corners since it was just after five and the stable lads were all making their way home, heads bent against the downpour which had begun in earnest now.

‘I found the burrs from Mr Dudgeon’s suit on the midden heap behind the cottages,’ I explained as we drew up and got down. ‘And I – well, I suppose I stole them.’ I could see the oil lamp in the tack room and could just make out the figure of Alec standing at the back of the room like a scarecrow. ‘We’ve been doing a bit of reconstruction,’ I said, beckoning the inspector towards the door, ‘and we’ve made a rather startling discovery.’

Alec’s neck must have been getting terribly stiff and it was no doubt this that caused the slow creaking turn of his head as we came in, but if he had spent the whole of his time alone thinking it out he could not have come up with a more eerie finishing touch to the whole tableau.

‘Bloody hell!’ yelped Inspector Cruickshank, and took a step backwards on to my foot.

‘Alec Osborne, sir,’ Alec said. ‘We haven’t met.’

I began to laugh at that as much as at the inspector’s outburst, hopping about shaking my crushed foot, and Alec grinned too. Even the inspector gave a rueful smile along with his apology to me, then his eye was caught by the contents of the tack table and the smile switched instantly off.

‘There were two quite separate garments underneath,’ I explained a moment later. ‘You can tell from all this white stuff. We think the ones we’ve used here were the real Burry Man’s burrs, the ones gathered officially and put together by people who knew what they were doing. They’re still hanging together in patches, many of them. These ones are terribly second rate.’ I stirred the heaps with my finger. ‘Hastily collected, inexpertly picked, and stuck to ordinary combinations, from which they gathered a great deal of stray fabric. I daresay when we take Alec’s suit off it will be covered in little bits of the same.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Inspector Cruickshank.

‘Well, if you’re convinced,’ said Alec, ‘might I trouble someone to help me disrobe? I’ve had enough of this.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Inspector Cruickshank. ‘Now the easiest thing for you and quite handy for me too for I’d like to keep a hold of this suit all made up like that, the easiest thing would be if I just cut you out of it with my army knife here. Slit the combinations down the back and pull them off your front.’

He turned and looked at me. Alec too was smiling at me, waiting.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll step outside.’ I pondered whether to go and tell Cad the bad news about the fate of his combinations but, inspector or no, the man was standing behind Alec with an army knife at the ready and, since the case was still wide open and we did not know who we suspected and who therefore we did not, I decided to stick very close by. Besides, the rain had turned to hail stones now, one of those astonishing, but short-lived, hail storms which had always seemed so unseasonal to me when I had first come north but which I now knew very well. Across the yard, Nipper’s master was sheltering in a doorway, Nipper himself tucked pitifully at his heels and looking up at the sky with the whites of his eyes showing.

‘This is a surprise, isn’t it?’ I called over.

‘Naw. I kent it would come to hell,’ the lad called back, making me blink.

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘I could tell fae the sky. I kent it would come tae hell stones afore it was done.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘Hail stones. Yes, I see.’ What had I been saying to Alec, about the impossibility of ever really getting a ‘guid Scots tongue’ into an English head?

‘Now then, Mrs Gilver,’ said Inspector Cruickshank, sweeping open the tack room door. Inside, Alec was knotting his tie with arms which still looked rather stiff and fumbling. ‘We can go down to the station or I can come up to the castle, whichever suits you the best. I know you’re a guest there and if you’d rather not –’