The Burry Man's Day (37 page)

The sun beat steadily against my face and limbs and yet, upon this thought, goose pimples began to start out on my skin. The stone wall behind me radiated the warmth of a whole summer and yet my neck prickled with cold.

‘What is it?’ whispered Buttercup in an awe-struck voice.

‘What’s what?’ said Cad, also whispering.

‘Ssh!’ hissed Alec.

‘I’ve thought of something,’ I said in a steady voice.

‘Yes, dear, we noticed,’ said Alec. ‘Really, Dandy, if you ever get sick of detecting you could make a fortune running seances. Most theatrical. What is it?’

‘It ties in the passport, the birth certificate, the passenger lists and above all –
above all
– the reason they did it.’

‘Go on,’ said Alec. He took the teacup out of my hand and put it down for me on the table.

‘Not money,’ I said. ‘And not fear of threats. And not because it was “right” in some abstract sense, because they knew that it wasn’t. They did it for love. They gave X Robert Dudgeon’s birth certificate and passport and the ticket and X got on the ship and went away to a new life in New Zealand.’

‘But that couldn’t possibly work,’ said Alec. ‘The new passports have photographs on them. You can’t simply hand them over to any Tom, Dick or Harry.’

‘I’m not suggesting that you can,’ I said. ‘I’m suggesting that one could hand one’s passport over to one’s brother, or cousin or nephew, and that somewhere amongst the labyrinthine relations and connections of the Dudgeons there is a bad egg, a black sheep, whom the Dudgeons could not – for love – refuse.’

‘Must be a relation, not a connection,’ said Alec. ‘And one with quite a family resemblance, come to that, to get past the officials on a borrowed passport.’

‘Well, these photographs are not works of art, darling,’ I said. ‘And they’re tiny. A family resemblance would do it, or one striking feature. I daresay, for example, that any of the little ones next door would be able to pass for another in years to come with their mother’s red hair.’

Alec nodded, rather grudgingly.

‘Father’s,’ he said. ‘But yes, you could be right. We need to find out if any of the Dudgeon clan is missing.’

‘Father’s what?’ I asked him.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Cad, are there any more Dudgeons around on the estate here? Before we go searching further afield.’

‘Father’s red hair,’ said Buttercup, two steps behind as usual.

‘Whose father has red hair?’ I said, and all three of them turned to look at me.

‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Buttercup. ‘The savages’ father, of course. Donald.’

‘Donald doesn’t have red hair,’ I said. ‘They must get it from their mother.’

Cad, Buttercup and Alec were now exchanging looks of utter bewilderment.

‘Flaming Donald?’ said Cad. ‘Are you colour blind, Dandy? Flaming Donald has the reddest hair I’ve ever seen. Freddy couldn’t
buy
a bottle of redder hair than Flaming Donald’s.’

‘But I met him,’ I said. ‘He’s . . . He’s called Flaming Donald because of his beliefs, isn’t he? And he’s Robert Dudgeon’s brother.’

‘No,’ said Cad. ‘His name is Lamont and he’s married to Chrissie Dudgeon’s brown-haired sister. Isobel.’

‘So . . . that man that I met . . .’ I said, speaking slowly although thinking very fast. ‘He was most definitely a relative and he could have been – yes! – he
must
have been X. He must have, mustn’t he, Alec? Hanging around at the cottage that afternoon when everyone else was away. My God, it must have given him a shock to see me grubbing around in amongst the burrs.’

‘I’m surprised he didn’t cosh you on the back of the neck,’ Alec said.

I thought back to the fevered stream of apologies and explanations I had spouted to the man and remembered how he seemed to sum me up as a harmless idiot. I blushed.

‘So,’ I said, trying to bluster my way out of my feeling of shame even as the flush spread to the roots of my hair, ‘who is he? A brother?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Cad. ‘Dudgeon was the son of the old estate carpenter, the
only
son.’

‘X could be the son of one of his sisters, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Chrissie’s sister-in-law, that is. I never really believed that Tina and Bet and Lizzie and Margaret could all be Chrissie Dudgeon’s actual blood sisters. Some of them at least must be in-laws, and one of them could be the mother of X.’

‘Well, of course they couldn’t be sisters,’ said Alec. ‘When you think about it. Tina
and
Chrissie? Lizzie
and
Bet?’

‘Anyway,’ said Buttercup suddenly, ‘the charmless Isobel is Mrs Dudgeon’s only sister. She told me that the very first night when we were in the scullery. ‘

I put my head into my hands and groaned. Time and again over the days, I had seen my listener frown and puzzle and never stopped to wonder why. Joey Brown had said she did not know who I was talking about; the men working at the wall didn’t know who Donald Dudgeon was; even Mrs Dudgeon herself had asked me what I meant when I talked of ‘one of her sisters’ and when I had told her I meant Tina she had smiled and said she supposed they were.

‘But Mrs Dudgeon said it herself that night,’ I said, clutching at straws now. ‘She clearly said “my sisters”.’

‘“My sisters” what?’ said Alec.

‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘It was when we were alone, she said “my sisters” and then she heard Isobel coming back and stopped.’

‘Well, there you are then,’ said Alec. ‘She was saying “my sister’s coming back” probably.’

I nodded, defeated.

‘So who were those women?’ I said. ‘Who are they? And what were they all doing there all the time?’

‘They were Mrs Dudgeon’s workmates from the bottling,’ said Buttercup. ‘You should have heard Isobel talking about them. Very sour.’

‘And you never said a word of this?’ Alec demanded, turning to her. ‘You must have heard us talking about Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters over and over again! Weren’t you
ever
listening?’

Buttercup shrugged.

‘Why did it matter anyway?’ she said.

‘Because,’ I explained, very patiently, ‘if I had known everyone’s name and who they were I would have known that the man in the cottage garden that day wasn’t Donald, and I might have been able to work out that he was X, before the ship sailed.’

‘Ah well,’ said Buttercup, comfortably. ‘What’s in a name?’

So, you see, she really was asking for it.

‘Cad,’ I said, ‘Freddy’s nickname at school was Buttercup.’ Then I shouted over the top of the resulting laughter and cursing: ‘But never mind that now. The question remains. If X wasn’t a brother or a nephew, then who was he that he could unite both Mr and Mrs Dudgeon in such a risky . . .’

‘It does seem a bit extravagant for a cousin,’ Cad began, but Alec shushed him.

The goose pimples were back, and the neck prickles and I heard Mrs Dudgeon’s voice once more, telling me exactly who he was. At least telling me who I was and who she was and what that meant.

‘She’s off again,’ said Alec.

‘Dandy, what is it?’ said Buttercup. ‘You look very peculiar.’

‘He looked exactly like Robert Dudgeon,’ I said. ‘Like a younger and sadder version of Robert Dudgeon. And he’s the only one who – even if he
had
killed Robert and got away – Mrs Dudgeon would not want anyone to find out and bring him back. Not her. Not any “mither o’ bairns”.’

‘Who was it?’ said Cad.

‘Young Bobby,’ said Alec and I nodded.

‘But he died in the war,’ said Cad.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He went missing in the war. Missing presumed dead. And it took him years but he finally made it back here to where people would help him even if they knew it was wrong. Goodness knows how long it took to hatch the plan. He was living in the woods – the ghost of a soldier like the children told us – counting on his parents to help him.’

‘A deserter?’ said Cad. ‘I can’t believe it of them.’

‘She told me as much,’ I said. ‘Mrs Dudgeon. I assured her that I would keep her private business private and she said if I knew what her private business was I would soon change my mind.’

‘And you don’t think the ship’s people would be able to tell the difference?’ said Alec. ‘Between a young man and his father?’

I shook my head. ‘For one thing, Bobby Dudgeon doesn’t look like a young man,’ I said. ‘I thought he was Donald, father of all those rascals. And for another . . .’ I laughed. ‘I thought the clerk had made a mistake when he read from the passenger list. Robert George Dudgeon. 1st June 1899.’

‘The pen and ink!’ said Alec, sitting up straight and slapping his hands on his thighs.

‘The pen and ink,’ I agreed. ‘Dudgeon was born in 1873 and his son certainly couldn’t pass for fifty.’ I traced the digits on the tea-table cloth with my finger. ‘It could be done. A seven into a nine. A three into a nine. It could easily be done.’

‘Of course, Robert Dudgeon getting a passport at fifty years would be safe from any checks against military lists,’ Alec said.

‘So as easily as that,’ I went on, ‘Bobby could have got a passport and ticket which matched his birth certificate. The passport would show a photograph which possibly did not do him justice but, these days, who would point out to a young man that he looks rather haggard for his years and ask him what on earth he had been up to to get that way?’

‘And the clerk himself told us that they do no checks at boarding,’ said Alec. ‘It was a perfect plan. Inspired.’

I looked intently at him, not quite straight-on so that he would not see me looking. He was not a woman, wife and mother of sons like me and I could not decipher from his face or his words what he made of this, whether or not he was about to leap to his feet and storm away to Inspector Cruickshank demanding that the ship be met at Lisbon and the traitor brought home.

‘Perfect until the shock news of the day’s holiday in lieu,’ I said. ‘But in the end they weathered even that.’

‘And then,’ said Cad, ‘he killed his father?’

There was a gasp from Buttercup.

‘That’s what Chrissie Dudgeon believes,’ I said.

‘But why?’ Buttercup asked.

I shrugged.

‘Perhaps Robert Dudgeon was changing his mind,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps he suddenly said to Bobby that he couldn’t let him go through with it. We never did explain to ourselves why Chrissie was standing outside the police station that day when she saw the holiday notice. Perhaps she was loitering there, considering whether or not to turn him in.’

‘Can’t have been that,’ said Alec. ‘Can’t have been. Bobby can’t just have conjured an untraceable poison out of his hat on the spur of the moment because his father surprised him with bad news. Robert Dudgeon must simply have died, as we’ve been saying all along. And now that we know what he was doing, the notion of his heart giving out under strain only becomes more plausible than ever.’

We sat quietly in our ring of chairs for a while then. I supposed each of us was waiting for someone else to decide what to do. It was my case, it was at Cad’s behest that I had taken it, but Alec alone amongst us was in the position to call for mercy. He was the only one who had faced what Bobby Dudgeon had faced and had resisted the escape route that Bobby had taken. The rest of us had no right to cast any stones.

Surprisingly, it was Buttercup who spoke up, at last. Unsurprisingly, when she did, it was to plant both her feet on the sore spot with all the grace of a bison.

‘Well, Alec?’ she said. ‘Obviously it’s up to you.’

But Alec’s mind was working away at other things, it appeared.

‘Joey Brown,’ he said, and I could not help a little cry of enlightenment escaping me.

‘Of course! Joey Brown. She didn’t only recognize who the Burry Man wasn’t. She recognized who it was.’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ said Alec. ‘But what I meant was, I think we should put it to Joey Brown. I’ve always been interested to know . . . how could one not be? But usually there’s no balance to the thing. Chrissie Dudgeon is all one way. Shinie Brown all the other. This is a rare opportunity indeed. Will Joey Brown choose to save her brother’s honour or her sweetheart’s neck, if we put it to her, if she’s to decide?’

There was a high hardness in his voice that did not quite manage to cover every trace of the tremor beneath it and I ached to be able to comfort him. One thing I had learned though, in that ghastly uniform in that living nightmare of a nursing home, was that punching someone in the eye, raging at blameless little maids, getting roaring drunk with the other soldiers, or taking nurses away to hotels on overnight passes, all these could bring some kind of comfort. Actual comfort, delivered by volunteer ladies two afternoons a week, was absolutely bloody useless and only made the punching worse.

Chapter Seventeen

This time there was no pussy-footing around ordering drinks and starting up apparently innocent conversations. I was hurrying along at Alec’s heels when he marched into Brown’s Bar like the wrath of God, and so I could not see his face, but both Joey and Shinie looked up at the sound of the door and did not need to ask what he was there for: they knew. What is more, they had quite clearly been waiting for this moment to arrive.

‘Joey,’ said Mr Brown, jerking his head towards the back.

His daughter lifted the flap of the bar counter to let us pass.

‘I’ll give ye five, ten minutes,’ said Brown, ‘then I’ll come up and let Joey down again. Somebody needs to stay here.’ There were indeed several customers in the pub tonight and so this seemed reasonable, although I had noticed in earlier visits that the Browns did not usually take pains to man the counter. I wondered if perhaps it was more that each felt disinclined to talk to us in the presence of the other.

Joey led Alec and me through the kitchen and along the passageway, clear today, all the boxes vanished.

‘Upstairs, Miss Brown,’ I said, ‘if it’s all the same to you.’ I did not want another interview in the noxious wash-house in the basement. Joey nodded without turning her head and opened a door concealing a box staircase to the upper floor. A few moments later we were facing one another, a little too close, in what seemed to be a spare bedroom at the back of the house. There was nowhere to sit except the narrow bed and so we remained standing, awkwardly, waiting for someone to speak.