The Burry Man's Day (30 page)

I slowed, stopped and retraced my steps until I could see the glint off the bare shoulders of the labourers again. If they were at work in a corner of a field, bashing hammers against rock, they could only be wall-menders, which meant that one of them was more than likely Donald Dudgeon.

Obviously, I could not scale the nearest gate and make straight for them, but if I were to go back to the corner by the village green and start from there, making for the station, I would pass through them as though on a plumb-line. So, with my feet already beginning to squelch in my light shoes, I set off. There were no meadow flowers to pick as late in the season as this, which was a shame since that would have explained very nicely why I should splash through a field instead of walking sensibly down the road and along the bottom, but the straight path across the field was the shortest route, so I began to walk very fast and looked at my watch with an extravagant gesture every few seconds or so. If they saw me coming they would naturally think I was late and making a beeline. Actually, when I focused on my watch-face during one of these ostentatious checks I saw that I really was rather late, and I redoubled my pace.

‘Phew!’ I said loudly, nearing the group of men a minute or two later. ‘Who would have thought it could get so warm again after that downpour?’ I said this partly to put them at their ease about being discovered with their shirts off, partly just in greeting, and by the time I’d delivered my little speech I had had time to look around the group and see that I recognized none of them. They all touched their caps and then stood staring at me, wondering what I was doing suddenly in their midst. ‘Still it must be much more pleasant work now than at noon, I daresay.’

One of the men, the oldest and so probably the boss, answered.

‘It is that, madam. That it is.’ Again he looked inquiringly at me.

‘I’m making for the station,’ I said, to nods of dawning comprehension. Most helpfully at that moment we all heard the sound of the train beginning the crossing of the Forth towards us, the metal of the bridge setting up a rumble like distant thunder.

‘I doubt ye’ve missed it,’ said the foreman, looking over his shoulder at the field I still had to cross to get there, but I assured him that I was only going to collect a parcel and I leaned companionably against the mended bit of wall while one of his underlings set about untying the string holding the gate shut to allow me passage.

‘I suppose you’re behindhand, what with the rain and the funeral?’ I said. ‘And you’re short of men too, without Donald Dudgeon.’ This was rather clunking but I could think of no better way to lead up to it before the gate was opened and I was forced to leave them.

‘Donald whae?’ said the foreman, looking around his team as though to check that all were present and correct.

‘Wasn’t he off all day in mourning?’ I said. ‘And Friday too? Am I right in thinking he was off on Friday?’

‘Mourning?’ said the foreman. His expression, as plain as could be, was asking what on earth I was wittering on about, but he was too polite to follow it up in voice.

‘Rab Dudgeon was buried today,’ said one of the lads. ‘Is that what ye’re meaning? But whae’s Donald?’

‘Oh!’ said the foreman. ‘Flamin’ Donald, you mean. Naw, Flamin’ Donald’s no’ one o’ ma men. He’s wi’ that Yank over Cassilis.’ He spoke as though Cassilis was in the next but one county, not just a stroll in summer shoes up the nearest road.

‘I thought you
were
Cassilis men,’ I said. There was a ripple of low laughter at that and the foreman shook his head.

‘Naw, that’s a tinpot wee caper,’ he said. ‘Jist Flamin’ Donald and one laddie. We’re Rosebery.’ So I had splashed through the field and made myself late for nothing. ‘Here,’ went on the foreman, ‘has the Yank been goin’ about saying’ this is his land?’

‘Here, Addie,’ said another. ‘He’s maybe got battle plans. If yous hear musket fire, get ready to lay doon yer life.’

‘Aye, ken whit thon pilgrims are like,’ said the foreman, showing a rather shaky grasp, I thought, of colonial history. The boy had got the gate untied by now and I passed through with a nod of thanks, considering briefly whether to reveal that I was a guest of thon pilgrim Yankee but deciding against it.

I scurried across the fields towards the station, racing the train even while I told myself I had not a hope of beating it. Poor Donald Dudgeon! One could understand why he had attracted such a nickname if he really were the star-turn of the hellfire and damnation preaching world in these parts, but it was bound to be a grievance to him if he were as strait-laced linguistically as these types usually seemed to be. I remembered one particular nursemaid of my youth, terribly purse-mouthed and unyielding, who smacked my hand with a pudding spoon just for saying ‘Heavens!’ Her name had been Florence Poste and we children had called her Fencepost which was an absolutely accurate description of her outline and general demeanour, but she had not seen it in that light when she overheard it. I had always been immune from nicknames myself, friends and enemies alike agreeing that they could not improve on Dandelion Dahlia, but I had sympathy for those saddled with real burdens. Buttercup, for instance, had my pity although it would never be possible for me to think of her as anything else, and to be fair when she was dubbed Buttercup it was not intended to be descriptive. I wondered briefly about Shinie Brown as I jumped down from the final gate and trotted between the two rows of railwaymen’s cottages while the train drew into the station above me. He was not bald, nor particularly red-faced, and there was no obvious source of boyhood shininess that I could think of. If his surname had been White or even Gold . . . The engine gathered steam and began to haul away and as it did so I could hear, loud and clear, a stream of excited barks and whines and the sound of the station-master swearing.

Buttercup once again vetoed discussion of the case around the dinner table and the talk veered chaotically amongst Bessie Smith’s New York debut, which Buttercup was desolate to have missed, the Royal Family, whom Cad seemed cheerfully optimistic of meeting sometime soon, and the Klu Klux Klan of whom Alec kept demanding to know what they were
for
exactly and Cad kept insisting that he had no idea. I have never been able to keep up with those conversations where each of the participants sticks to his own personal topic and barely seems to notice that the others are doing just the same, and so to save myself from developing the inevitable headache if I tried, I retreated into my thoughts and left them to it.

‘You can’t!’ said Alec, when I told him afterwards what plans for the evening I had been hatching. I was determined that Inspector Cruickshank would not beat me to the widow. ‘She buried her husband today, Dandy, and you absolutely quite simply can’t. You must wait until tomorrow at the very least.’

‘That’s exactly what the inspector will be thinking,’ I said. ‘He’ll be there tomorrow with a constable and a little notebook, and he doesn’t have to wait until a decent time for making social calls. Imagine if he got there before me. Or worse, if I were sitting there and he marched in. And anyway, I’m going there as a friend, to warn her and to offer an ear and a shoulder. And to prove it, I’m taking her pen back.’

‘Have you even told Inspector Cruickshank about the pen?’ Alec asked.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I forgot about it. But it was the merest chance that I found it or that she dropped it, and the bottle of ink is common knowledge. He can intuit the pen for himself. As he and I would both have had to if I hadn’t happened to spot it there.’

‘But if the police start a real investigation they might decide to search the woods, Dandy, and if they find out afterwards that there was something there to find but you’d removed it before they got the chance . . . Well, I’m not sure that isn’t one of those spoilsporty sounding things one can go to jail for.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, laughing. ‘What spoil-sporty sounding things are these?’

‘Oh, interfering with a criminal investigation or obstructing the police in the execution of their duty or whatever they’re called. They’ve always seemed to me to be a bit much.’ I was laughing in earnest now at the sincerity of his outrage. ‘No, really,’ he went on. ‘It doesn’t seem fair to let the police decide what they think is annoying and then make up a pompous name for it and call it a crime. Wouldn’t we all like to do that?’

‘It would make a splendid parlour game.’ I said. ‘I’d have “Obstructing me in the execution of my pleasure by sitting me next to a bore at dinner”. Ten months’ hard labour for that, and Daisy Esslemont would be breaking stones in a chain-gang as we speak.’

‘Or how about “Wilful and malicious amateur drama”?’ said Alec. ‘I could have shut down a good few house parties over the years with that on the statute books.’

‘Be all of that as it may,’ I said, seemingly unable to stop talking like a member of the legal professions now that I had started, ‘I’m off to Mrs Dudgeon’s. Come and lounge in my bedroom doorway while I get my hat and coat. Stop Grant from ticking me off about the state of my afternoon shoes.’ Alec heaved himself to his feet, leaving his pipe politely in the ashtray, and accompanied me, shuffling up the stone steps to the bedroom floor, holding tight to the banister rope. I, as Buttercup had predicted, had got used to the bevelled stone and the inky blackness and was now tripping up and down the spiral steps like a Gaiety Girl in her tap shoes.

Grant was indeed frowning and muttering over my sodden shoes, and ripping up sheets of today’s newspaper – which I had not had a chance to read yet – in order to stuff them. She always makes a point of doing a great deal of her maidly chores right there in my bedroom instead of behind the baize door, but I supposed one had to forgive her in this instance, since the servants’ wing was half a mile of parkland away.

‘Ah, Grant,’ I said. ‘I’m off out with Bunty before bedtime.’ Grant shot a poisonous look towards Bunty who had been fast asleep on the middle of my bed, recovering from the excitements of the day but, at the sound of my voice, had opened her eyes, given a great creaking yawn and begun rolling and twisting on her back with all four legs pedalling in the air and her tail sweeping the counterpane.

I tore off the feathered band I had been wearing at dinner and pulled on the little mourning hat in its place. Grant and I reached the wardrobe door neck and neck, I to withdraw my grey linen coat – it was long and wide and would cover my beaded dress perfectly – and Grant to take out the skirt and coat she clearly thought were essential for even the shortest country walk.

‘I’m not changing, Grant,’ I told her. ‘I’m only going down the lane and back.’

Grant replaced the skirt and coat and took out a devoré wrap with a huge fur collar instead, the very wrap I usually wore with this little dress if dining out. I ignored her and shrugged into my linen coat, buttoning it up to the neck to hide all trace of what lay underneath, then I kicked off my evening slippers and sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on my short boots. Wet feet once a day was more than enough for me. Grant closed the wardrobe door and left with meekly downturned face although boiling with rage inside I could tell.

‘Grant would have got on very well with Leviticus,’ I said once she was out of range, ‘at least in the matter of wearing cloth of mixed thread. Come on, Bunty.’

Chapter Fourteen

Alec saw us off and watched as we picked our way carefully down the slope on grass even more slippery for the afternoon’s rain then he shut the door with a clang and went back, I presumed, to his pipe. It was almost full darkness now but Bunty was gleaming in the moonlight and I was getting to know the twists of the lane very well so I was content to strike out into the night like a cat. As ever, my eyes adjusted within minutes anyway, and very shortly I had gained the familiar clearing without mishap.

It was hard to say whether there was a material difference on this trip which could be held responsible for my sanguinity, but there was no return of the dread I had felt on my sorties the day before, even with Nipper in tow, and one would have expected the woods to be creepier at night if anything. Perhaps it was the presence of Bunty, plodding along in front of me, the shifting muscles on her back making her spotty coat wink and ripple. My children always fancied that they could see in Bunty’s coat a picture of a circus clown juggling five balls. In fact, when they were small they had got into the biggest trouble of their young lives by finishing off this vague illustration using oil paints and a fine brush. I looked for the juggler again now, walking up the path to Mrs Dudgeon’s front door, but not with much success although the five balls themselves were indisputable.

Pausing on the doorstep with my breath held, I listened to hear if there was still the murmur of visitors sitting with the widow, or worse the hubbub of a wake in full swing, but even though the living-room window was open at the bottom and a light was shining out from the crack in the curtains I heard nothing. Mrs Dudgeon it seemed was alone. I knocked and the steps that came in response were surprisingly fleet, the voice which called out from behind the door wavering with anxiety.

‘Is that – Who is it?’

‘It’s Mrs Gilver, Mrs Dudgeon,’ I called back. ‘Can I come in?’

The door opened and Mrs Dudgeon stared out at me, searching my face.

‘Just you?’ she said, glancing behind me. I spread my hands in a gesture of openness. Just me, I tried to show her, and I mean you no harm.

‘Have you come with a message?’ she asked me.

‘No,’ I said, wondering what she could mean by this. ‘I just came to see how you were.’

At last, she stepped aside and gestured for me to enter and I went into the living room with Bunty at my heels, to find the remains of the funeral feast still spread on the table, although the extra cups and plates were all washed and stacked tidily on the sideboard waiting to be returned.

‘Actually,’ I said, sitting at the table, shoving Bunty under it and keeping her penned there by bracing my leg against the pedestal, ‘I wanted to return something of yours. I found it in the woods quite by chance and I thought it best to give it back into your safe-keeping.’ Mrs Dudgeon’s face had drained as I spoke, turning a blue-ish yellow, and she looked around wildly, at the door, up above the mantelpiece behind my head, and then back at me.