The Burry Man's Day (28 page)

‘Oh no, no, no. It will be absolutely fine,’ I assured him, thinking that Cad would hate to miss this. ‘In fact, it was Cad – Mr de Cassilis, you know – who was first convinced that something was up and persuaded me to take the c– . . . to look into it.’ I felt rather bashful about revealing my status in the matter now that a real professional was about to enter the arena.

‘All well and good,’ said the inspector. ‘To the castle it is.’

‘So then,’ said Inspector Cruickshank, settling into an armchair in the library with a large whisky and soda, the half-eaten plate of fish and chips and the pot of tea apparently put well behind him. Alec and I, the principals, were facing him on two further armchairs while Cad and Buttercup sat perched on a bench under the window, keeping quiet and hoping not to be sent out, like two children past their bedtimes. ‘We had an extra Burry Man running around the place on Friday, did we?’ went on the inspector. ‘And up to no good, I imagine. Tell me what first roused your suspicions, and we’ll take it from there.’

‘I’ll let Dandy tell you, Inspector,’ said Alec, whom Cruickshank seemed to be addressing. ‘She was here first after all.’

‘All right,’ I said, attempting to order my thoughts. ‘The first thing to say is that even though we’re not sure about much, I don’t think it was exactly what you say: a rogue Burry Man duplicating the real one. What would be the point for one thing?’

‘Money?’ said the inspector. ‘In the buckets? Or whisky? I think I’ll put a couple of men on just to check that the Burry Man didn’t come round twice to the same place with different helpers.’

‘Wouldn’t everyone know that it should be Pat Rearden and . . . the other one?’ I said.

‘Not these days,’ said Mr Cruickshank. ‘The Ferry’s getting bigger every year with incomers. It’s not the place it used to be. And as for the helpers: people would hardly question whether it was genuine as long as the Burry Man was there in the middle of it all. Maybe it was a burglary scheme. Everyone outside cheering the Burry Man and one of the gang in the houses looking for anything worth lifting.’

I was finding this rather flustering, truth be told, unused to someone else confidently barging in with his own theories, and such dull little theories at that. It revealed to me as nothing else would have just how very collaborative Alec was in comparison.

‘You know best, Inspector,’ I said, I hoped placatingly. ‘But we were thinking more along these lines: that the real Burry Man – Robert Dudgeon, that is – was elsewhere on Friday and was using let’s call him the duplicate Burry Man as an . . . well, as an alibi. If I explain where our suspicions arose, you’ll see why that is.

‘First of all, there was Dudgeon’s sudden and extreme reluctance to do the job. It came over him out of nowhere on Thursday afternoon, making him try with some considerable determination to wriggle out of the commitment. Then just as suddenly he seemed to change his mind back again and think that it could be managed. And now that I come to think of it, I did joke a little about Mr de Cassilis stepping into the breach – it
was
only a joke, Cad – and I think I did say that even though he was a newcomer and it would not be popular with those in the know, I expected that once he was in costume no one would be any the wiser.

‘That’s one suspicious circumstance. Then, of course, it was clear right away on Friday night that there was something wrong with
Mrs
Dudgeon. Something extra wrong, I mean, over and above the grief and shock. Only now does that begin to make sense. She knew, you see, and she dreaded anyone else finding out. Also, there was the blasted ham sandwich which Robert Dudgeon ate sometime before his death. We simply could not track down the origin of that ham sandwich, Inspector. Obviously, he could consume nothing during his round and we knew that Mrs Dudgeon did not intend him to dine off a sandwich because she was all set to take him straight home and she had made a meal for him to eat when he got there. The dishes were still being washed up later that evening when Mrs de Cassilis and I visited her.’

‘Now as to the switch itself,’ said Alec. ‘That was very neatly handled indeed. Tell him, Dan.’

‘This is conjecture, you understand,’ I said to the inspector, ‘but it all fits. Pat Rearden told me that in the morning, for the first time in all his Burry Mann-ing years, Robert Dudgeon asked to be left quite alone. I need to check with Mr Rearden – or I suppose it will be you who checks now, Inspector – but I’ll bet that this moment alone was requested once Dudgeon was completely in costume. He would then withdraw into a cupboard or something and be replaced by the other Burry Man who’d been waiting in the same cupboard to be handed the baton.’ Inspector Cruickshank looked rather sceptical, but said nothing. ‘At the end of the day, as we all know, the Burry Man – not Mr Dudgeon, so let’s call him X for the moment – X dashed off up the stairs away from his guards and when they caught up with him, somewhere in the bowels of the Rosebery Hall, they found Robert Dudgeon ostensibly having ripped off the headpiece and some of the body suit. In fact of course he had shrugged most of it back
on,
and only just left a bit undone. X, the Burry Man that Rearden and his pal had been steering around all day, was once again tucked away out of view.

‘Now, here is another very significant piece of evidence, Inspector, and one that we are very lucky to have got our hands on. Mrs Dudgeon had her pony and cart parked in Craw’s Close on Friday as she waited for her husband’s return. She refused to move it even though the pony – as ponies will – left droppings all over the Craw’s Close washing green and the women of the Close were not best pleased. You know the layout of the town better than me, of course, but I’m sure we’ll find that the spot where the cart stood is handily situated for a back exit from the Rosebery Hall. There are back doors giving on to that general area, aren’t there?’ The inspector nodded. ‘I thought so. Very well then, the decoy Burry Man scurries into the cart – there’s an opening at the back under the seats, you know – and Mrs Dudgeon, again for the first time in all her years of connection with the event, bundles up the burrs from Robert’s costume and shoves them in there too. Next they set off for home, up the Loan and – most unaccountably, it seemed to me at first – along the Back Braes just below Station Road.’

‘There’s never room for a pony and cart along there,’ said Inspector Cruickshank.

‘Well, the Dudgeons’ little cart really is tiny,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ said the inspector. ‘Robert made himself a wee bogie from one of the hutches when the works here closed, I was forgetting.’

‘So there is room, just,’ I said. ‘But there’s certainly no room to turn it. And yet that is exactly what happened. At the bowling green corner, with much toing and froing and with the pony and cart uncoupled while it was carried out, they turned the cart, went
back
along the brae and rejoined the Fair in time for the greasy pole.’

‘And how do you know this?’ said the inspector.

‘They were seen,’ Alec told him. ‘What was her name, Dan?’

‘Netta Stoddart,’ I supplied. ‘Sitting at the back of the bowling green clubhouse waiting for her daddy, Netta Stoddart saw them turn the cart. This much I believed right from the start. I now believe the next section of her evidence too. That the Burry Man fell off the cart and rolled down the hill to the railway line. I had that down as a taradiddle. For one thing, why would Dudgeon come back to the Fair if he had just had a tumble? But I now see that little Netta was not talking about “Robert Dudgeon”; she was talking about a “Burry Man”. That is, a man covered in a suit of burrs, and she saw him rolling out of the cart and down the slope to make his getaway. Of course, the next bit – that a train came along and squashed him – is just Netta making life more interesting for herself and can be filed away with the ghost pony and the swamp. Not to mention the holes with the ghostie soldiers down them, the demon in the woods and the dead babies who cry in the night.’

Inspector Cruickshank gave all of this very careful consideration, but when he began to speak, the opening sniff said it all.

‘A very clever tale, madam,’ he said, ‘but a bit too fanciful for my taste, I’m afraid, even if you have managed to convince Mr Osborne here.’

Alec looked rather startled at this take on things, but said nothing.

‘I mean to say,’ the inspector continued, in a patient tone, ‘you say yourself that the Stoddart girl made things up –’

‘Yes but –’ said Alec, but Inspector Cruickshank sailed on.

‘And I still don’t think there’s room for the cart along that lane,’ he said. ‘Never mind space to turn it.’

‘There are clear tracks,’ I said, but then we both looked out of the castle window where the hail storm had given way once more to hammering rain.

‘And why was it that Mrs Dudgeon took the burrs, you’re saying?’ he asked.

‘Ah, this was a nice touch,’ said Alec. ‘What better place to hide a lot of burrs than with another lot of burrs after all.’

‘And if the tragedy of Friday night had not occurred,’ I chipped in, ‘no doubt Dudgeon would soon have burnt the lot.’

‘And why didn’t Mrs Dudgeon do the same?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Perhaps she forgot about them in all the horror of what happened. She was absolutely beside herself, Inspector. Or perhaps – if Mr Dudgeon was the gardener in the family – she did not know that they wouldn’t just dissolve harmlessly there on the heap.’ This was rather feeble and I could see that I was in danger of losing him completely.

‘Meanwhile this other one, this X, went all the way from the bowling green corner along the edge of the railway line up to the Dudgeons’ cottage to put his burrs on the heap there too? Why would he do that now? Whoever he was.’

I looked to Alec, hoping that he had an answer for this, but he was looking back at me, hoping the same.

‘Maybe,’ I said slowly, thinking as I spoke, ‘if we knew who it was, that would become clear.’

‘And what’s more, you’re saying he went there in the burrs. Actually wearing all the burrs? Why would he do that?’ I had no answer this time.

‘So that he wouldn’t be recognized?’ suggested Alec.

‘And why should he care about being recognized?’ the inspector said.

‘Again,’ I insisted, ‘we might be able to answer that if we knew who he was. I can easily believe that he would make his way to his destination still wearing the burrs, though, even if it
was
torture, because he would have been beautifully camouflaged amongst the trees and anyone who saw him was likely to doubt his own eyes or be doubted if he tried to pass the news on. And actually,’ I said, finding my stride now, ‘he would have been pretty safe. There were no trains just then and there was not likely to be anyone in the woods. No children playing there for once, since everyone was at the Fair. Once he was beyond the footbridge over the line – and he went past that still on the cart – there was a clear run all the way back to Cassilis.’

‘But why?’ said the inspector. ‘I’m not saying I agree with anything you’ve said, mind, but just for the sake of argument if any of that did happen,
why?
Why did Robert and Chrissie Dudgeon not go all the way home with this mystery man hidden under the back of the cart? That would have been much safer than leaving him to flit through the woods on his own no matter how empty they were. It would only take one sober, respectable adult to see him and the game would be up.’

I could see the sense in this.

‘Perhaps,’ I said, making a last attempt, ‘perhaps they were concerned to make everything look as near normal as possible, and normal on that particular evening meant staying at the Fair and climbing the greasy pole.’

The inspector was shaking his head again.

‘You’ve put together a wondrous tale,’ he said, ‘but it’s all smoke and mirrors when you get right down to it. Still, good work with the burrs, Mr Osborne. I’ll certainly have to look into that. It could be that there’s a lot of folk have things missing from the house and they haven’t put two and two together. Or maybe they have and they’re hanging back not wanting to point the finger at Robert Dudgeon when he’s not here any more to defend himself.’ I could not believe that he was brushing off all our lovely evidence and our beautifully knitted-together explanations and sticking to this boring account of petty thievery, but there did not seem to be anything else to say that would convince him he was wrong, so Alec and I simply bade him farewell with as much good grace as we could muster.

‘If I can have the use of your telephone, Mr de Cassilis,’ he said, ‘I’ll ring the sergeant and get him to pick me up and take the evidence away at the same time. No, no, no,’ he brushed off Buttercup’s mutterings of hospitality, ‘I’ll wait in the stable yard, if it’s all the same, Mrs de Cassilis. He’ll only be a minute up from the Ferry to get me.’ He bowed slightly to me and I inclined my head in return but when he turned his back to leave, I stuck my tongue out at him and crossed my eyes.

Chapter Thirteen

‘Do you think he’s right?’ I asked Alec as soon as I thought the inspector would be out of earshot.

‘No,’ Alec replied. ‘Not a chance of it. He has no explanation for how all the burrs ended up on the Dudgeons’ midden for one thing. I expect he’s just one of those people who needs to make his own way to an idea. Not everyone relishes being told what to think.’

‘Hm,’ I said. ‘Especially by some silly chit of a woman, you mean. Didn’t you notice how you got all the glory for the burrs and I got all the scorn for the rest of it? You should have told him when he asked you, and not left it to me.’

‘And what would you have said to that?’ said Alec, laughing. ‘If I had and he’d
still
not believed a word, you would have told me I’d barged in and mucked it up, wouldn’t you?’

‘Probably,’ I conceded, laughing with him.

‘Well, one thing’s clear,’ said Cad, speaking for the first time since the inspector had entered the room. ‘You two must certainly carry on. There’s no question of handing the whole thing over to the police and sitting back if they’re going to show such staggering lack of imagination. He didn’t even mention the question of why Dudgeon actually died. But then – I couldn’t help noticing – neither did you.’