The Burry Man's Day (34 page)

‘I never said that,’ she whispered, glancing back the way we had come as though frightened her father would hear.

‘Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters told me,’ I said to her. ‘I know it wasn’t universally welcomed. I’m so sorry.’

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, madam,’ said Joey, the toddler and the broken vase going strong.

‘But you’ve obviously been a great comfort to his parents,’ I said. ‘And now to his mother alone. You’ve been a good girl.’

‘I don’t . . . I don’t . . .’ said Joey, but her voice quavered and failed.

I hated myself for it, but we were right here, just the two of us, face to face, and I might never get another chance to ask. Alec and I were getting nowhere with the case, I thought, and surely if someone was in a position to help I had to swallow my scruples and plunge in.

‘I know you must have spent some considerable time with the Dudgeons, Joey,’ I said. ‘Long enough to know that it wasn’t Robert Dudgeon in the burry suit on Friday, when you looked at his hands, was it? Or when you looked into his eyes?’

She was shaking her head, quickly enough to make herself dizzy I thought, and I put out a hand to try to calm her.

‘Inspector Cruickshank knows,’ I said. ‘But he doesn’t know who it was in there or why they swapped.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Joey.

‘So if you recognized who it was as well as who it wasn’t,’ I said, ‘it’s your duty to tell the police.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said again and I gave up.

‘It’s absolutely infuriating,’ I said to Alec as we left the bar minutes later. ‘Just saying: I don’t know what you mean, I don’t understand, I don’t know who that is. I mean – I said, “Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters” and she said, “I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Ridiculous girl. She didn’t quite have the gall to claim no knowledge of the Dudgeons themselves and she let a reference to Inspector Cruickshank go past without wondering aloud who
he
was, but apart from that it was a perfect festival of denial.’

‘It seems a remarkably effective strategy,’ said Alec. ‘It got rid of you.’

‘Hmph,’ I said, almost jollied out of my temper by his tone. ‘Well, I’m glad she has to live in a smelly pub and do her laundry in a beer cellar full of fumes. I’ve no patience with the girl, Alec, none.’

‘And does your impatience extend to going along to the police station and telling tales on her?’ asked Alec.

‘Absolutely it does,’ I said. ‘At least, I’ll ask whether they’ve got anywhere themselves with the identity of X, but if not then certainly I’ll tell them I think Joey Brown has an idea, and possibly Shinie Brown too. Or you tell them, Alec. After our experiences with the inspector I think perhaps the information would carry more weight coming from you. And I’ll wait outside and make daisy chains.’

It was just as well that he had teased me back into humour in this way and that we had elected to play by the inspector’s rules and let Alec do all the talking; if I had stood outside the police station boiling with impotent rage or if Alec had stood there fussing with his pipe while I went in to report or if we had both gone in and bearded the sergeant together, we might never have solved the case at all.

As it was, Alec entered the inner sanctum alone and I sat placidly outside on the wall, perusing the notice-boards. There was one official one with close-typed signs regarding licensing hours and motor car lights, names and telephone numbers and office hours for all the officials one could ever need in a long lifetime, notices regarding customs and excise, immigration and emigration, emergency procedures for fire, flood and power failure; all very dull. As well as this, though, there was another much more interesting noticeboard where the less official, more home-made signs could be found: a lost cat with a red collar and a bounty of two shillings on its head; a found headscarf ‘real silk, pattern of horseshoes, rather stained and mended’ which I doubted, after that description, anyone would have the courage to claim, real silk or no. There also were the new Fair notices, one proclaiming the grand total of the police station’s collection in aid of the Ferry Fair fund – £7 10s 3d – and a list of winners of the Fair events, including, I was proud to note, the name of Doreen Urquhart opposite the new high chair and the towel bale donated by the Co-operative Store Drapers.

Alec was taking his time and soon I had enjoyed all that there was to enjoy of the human side of the noticeboard and was back with the regulations and procedures. I noticed that the library hours seemed especially designed to prevent anyone from ever being able to borrow a book without taking a day off work or school to do so, and that the rules about how long a catch could stay harbour-side and in what kind of container at what times on what days seemed to be a signal to the fishermen to have a taxi waiting as they moored so that they could throw each fish into the back seat without its scales ever touching the ground.

And then I saw it.

Almost as soon as my eyes had registered what I was seeing, or my brain had heard what the voice in my head was reading, the door of the station opened and Alec was at my side.

‘What is it?’ he said. Goodness only knows what expression I must have had on my face.

‘Look,’ I said, putting a finger on the notice. He bent close to read the small and rather smudged black type.

‘“. . . will remain open on all bank holidays between the hours of ten o’clock and three, and on all local holidays between the hours of nine o’clock and five, and will close in lieu upon the following Monday except where . . .”’ He shifted my finger off the paper where it was hiding the print underneath, and said: ‘Passports.’

‘Passports,’ I said. ‘Edinburgh and Leith Emigration Agents. Passports, ticketing, travel documents prepared.’ My mind was racing, or not so much racing, nothing so linear as racing, more as though my thoughts were schoolchildren who had been inside all morning while the snow fell and were now released to gather it up, roll it together and throw it all around. ‘He was getting a passport. He was going to run away.’

‘From what?’ said Alec.

‘Or not run away,’ I corrected. ‘But he was going to leave. They both were, on the quiet, for some reason, and on Thursday afternoon Mrs Dudgeon saw this sign, read that the office was closed on Monday and – look here – it’s closed every Saturday and on Sunday, obviously, and so Friday – the Burry Man’s day – was the only chance.’

‘Why not Tuesday?’ said Alec. ‘Or some other day? And where were they going? And why?’

‘I have no idea why,’ I said. ‘But where, I think I can hazard a guess. At least there’s a possibility that also explains why a later day was no good. There was a ship leaving Leith on Tuesday bound for New Zealand. I read about it when we were going through the papers last night. He would need to get the passport before the ticket and the tickets were on sale on Friday. Alec, this must be right. Remember I said Chrissie Dudgeon was so very keyed up, looking at the clock, looking at the door and then suddenly she just seemed to relax for no reason? It was around ten o’clock last night and I’ll bet my eyes that she was sitting there watching the clock tick round to the moment of sailing, thinking about the plan and about how if she had the nerve she could still go, alone, if she dared. Then all of a sudden it was too late; she hadn’t gone. The chance had passed and it was almost like a relief to her. Terribly sad, but a relief.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ said Alec. ‘She couldn’t have got there in time without a magic carpet and she would have had to go through customs and everything.’

‘I didn’t mean literally,’ I said. ‘You can be very prosaic sometimes, darling. I meant that she sat there while the other path of her life was being bricked up – Oh, don’t look at me like that, you know I’m right. And it also explains why she was so worried about the police going through Robert’s things. She was frightened they would find the passport and the tickets and begin to wonder what was going on.’

‘As am I,’ said Alec. ‘What on earth would make them suddenly up sticks to New Zealand without telling anyone?’

‘Once again we come up against my conviction of the Dudgeons’ basic honesty. The only likely reasons in general don’t seem at all likely for them.’

‘No matter,’ said Alec. ‘We don’t have to offer a motive. We can check the facts with the greatest of ease.’

‘The passport office would never let us trawl through the records,’ I told him. ‘And aren’t these emigration agents a rather shady bunch? Oughtn’t we to hand it over to the police?’

‘Not the passport office, Dandy,’ said Alec and, seeing my puzzled glance, he rolled his eyes. ‘There really should be a basic training course,’ he said, ‘for all budding detectives. We can go to Leith to the shipping line and look at the passenger lists. Or rather look at the ticket-booking receipts. They won’t be on the passenger lists, of course, since they didn’t go. Some pair of lucky adventurers waiting on the quayside on the chance of a space will have got a windfall on Tuesday night, Dan.’

‘Just imagine,’ I said. ‘Imagine bundling up all one’s belongings and going to wait, not knowing whether one is off to the other side of the world for ever or whether one will be trailing the same bundle back through the dark streets to more of the same.’

‘Yes, said Alec. ‘Just imagine. But walk quickly while you’re at it, won’t you? And you drive, darling. I’ve never been to Leith.’

I had never been to Leith either, or at least as I pointed out to Alec not to the docks, but I knew where it was and I navigated us there safely along the coast roads through Cramond and Granton and Trinity, braking and surging around the narrow twists and doglegs of the village streets, weaving through crowds of herring wives and, as we drew near the port, rather wobbly sailors newly released on leave. I remembered the name of the shipping company from my daydreaming over the steerage notice in the library last night and we were helpfully directed to their offices by a nautical-looking chap standing on fairly steady legs on the corner of Great Junction Street, whose accent was so much gibberish to me but in which Alec recognized the music of Dorset and of home. We wasted a good few minutes while the two of them reminisced about ‘The Bay’, but at last Alec dragged himself away again.

‘I miss these old Dorset boys,’ he said. ‘And the sea. Perthshire is delightful, of course, but when one has been brought up in sound of the sea it is a wrench to leave it. It must have been something fairly cataclysmic, I imagine, to drag Chrissie and Robert Dudgeon so far from the many bosoms of their families.’

‘Although New Zealand is not short of sea at least,’ I pointed out. ‘On maps it looks as though the tide might wash right over it at the height of springs, although I daresay that’s scale. Number fifteen, you said? Here we are.’

Brunwick, Allanson, the shipping line, had offices which struck a balance between the sepulchral dignity of a private bank and the rather more rakish atmosphere of a merchantman’s bridge during a party. There were a good many clerks flitting about in shades of grey but the panelled rooms were festooned with outdated nautical equipment of a semi-decorative sort and a few rather salty characters could be seen here and there through open doors. Above everything a mixture of lemon wax and pipe smoke gave a spice to the air that no bank ever had.

The desk clerk could not have been more helpful, but it soon became apparent that we were asking the most awkward of questions possible, inquiring about the passengers on a ship which had only left port the day before; in fact, the staff of the office were still referring to the departure time in hours of the nautical clock and would not, we were informed, begin to use the calendar date until the following morning when twenty-four hours had passed and the ship itself had docked and de-docked from the next port of call which was Plymouth.

‘If you wanted to see the passenger lists from last year, now,’ said the clerk, gesturing behind him at a wall of bound volumes with dates stamped in gold on their spines, ‘or ten years ago or even fifty, that would be the work of a moment with the help of a strong lad to lift down the book for you. But yesterday?’ He blew out his breath in a tootling little tune and shook his head. ‘And you’re not asking in an official capacity?’

‘
We’re
not,’ I told him, ‘but depending on what we find, someone soon might be. It’s best to be honest,’ I said, turning to where I could see Alec squirming beside me; clearly thinking we should have played our cards a little closer to our chests than this, fearful that the clerk would shut like an oyster at the hint of trouble.

The man merely shrugged and scratched at his chin, however.

‘We’ve nothing to worry about here at Brunwick, Allanson,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much to do with agents, and it’s not like the old days when we were our own excise men and our own policemen too. I’ve been forty years with the firm, you know, madam, and it’s changed.’ He settled his elbows on his counter and seemed disposed to launch into a tale. Perhaps even a clerk picks up the habits of sailors after forty years. ‘It was like the Wild West in the old Queen’s day,’ he went on, ‘before these picture passports and all the regulations. Well, that was the war, was that. There had to be some kind of a clampdown for wartime. Then it never really changed back and I don’t suppose it ever will now. So it’s up to the passport office these days to verify identities and make sure that all’s in order. At the quayside, as long as they turn up with a ticket and passport and are sober enough to say their names and walk aboard, we check them off on our boarding list and wave them through.’

‘Well, we don’t think these particular passengers did turn up, sober or not,’ said Alec, ‘but they certainly got a passport and we would make a large bet with our own money that they bought tickets too. Steerage tickets. On Friday.’

‘Steerage?’ said the clerk. ‘On Friday?’ I suspected that he might ring to have us removed on finding out that our interest was in something so lowly as a steerage ticket, but I could not have been more wrong. ‘In that case . . . and if you only want to see the ticket receipts themselves . . . that does help a little. They’re in date order – roughly – until we can cross-check the final lists and then we keep them all until the year end and send them to the bindery. But if you know it’s Friday and you don’t mind looking yourselves . . .’