The Burry Man's Day (38 page)

Perhaps we can blame the compulsion to make sure one’s guests are always having fun at one’s parties, deeply ingrained at finishing school where we were taught how to handle any social encounter with aplomb, or perhaps the even earlier training of being scrubbed and primped and brought down after tea to bore Mummy’s guests with endless verses of ‘The Blessed Damezel’. Of course, it is only now that one can see how bored they must have been. At the time, well-schooled themselves, they seemed enchanted. For whatever reason, it was me who cracked first and broke the silence.

‘You recognized him,’ I said, making not quite a question but more than a statement of it. Joey Brown heaved an enormous guttering sigh and turned away from us. In the silence we could hear voices from the bar below.

‘I thocht I did,’ she said.

‘And are you saying that he didn’t make any attempt to contact you?’ said Alec. ‘That the only time you saw him was here, on the Burry Man’s day?’ She turned back at that, looking at him quizzically.

‘I
thocht
I recognized him,’ she said with more emphasis, ‘but I wis wrong. He wis that like his daddy. And wi’ the face all covered up and jist the eyes and the hands, I wis sure fur a minute, but I wis wrong.’

I could not quite see where this certainty came from but I could understand the sadness in her voice: even if she had concluded that the vision of her sweetheart was a haunting, she would rather have had that than nothing. I could not think what to say to her to bring comfort. Would it be better for her to keep believing that her eyes had played tricks or would she want to know that he had indeed been here and was still alive, but had left her without a word? I wished the clamouring voices downstairs would hush and let me concentrate.

‘Did you tell your father?’ Alec asked her. ‘Is that why he rushed outside to challenge him?’

She nodded.

‘And was it your father who told you you were wrong?’

Joey seemed to consider this carefully before she spoke.

‘Aye,’ she said at last. ‘Father telt me it wis Rab Dudgeon right enough. Telt me I wis bein’ daft – I’ve always been feart o’ the Burry Man.’

I tried to catch Alec’s eye to see if he knew where to go from here. It was possible, I suppose, that she had recognized Bobby Dudgeon but had been persuaded out of it by her father, but there was more going on here than Miss Brown was telling. Alec was studying her intently, frowning a little, as distracted as I was by the cries from below.

‘Shop!’ came a particularly lusty yell, followed by laughter.

‘Shinie! Joey! We’re dyin’ o’ thirst here,’ came another.

‘You had better go down,’ I said to her. ‘Your father is obviously on his way to find us and your customers seem to be getting restless.’ Joey bobbed a curtsy without looking us in the eye and hurriedly left.

‘Do you believe her?’ I asked Alec once she had gone. ‘Do you believe that it was only a passing notion – one that happened to be spot on – or do you think she knew full well that it was Bobby Dudgeon in the suit?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Alec. ‘There’s something not right here. Lord, I wish those men would shut up. She should be there by now. What’s taking her?’ Indeed, the shouts for service from the bar customers had, if anything, got louder and more sustained.

‘I’m trying to cast my mind back to that day,’ I said. ‘There was always something odd about the way Shinie Brown went crashing out into the street to confront him. The way he held out the glass, the way they locked eyes. There was something so urgent about it all. So I can believe easily that Shinie rushed out to see if it was true – to see if it really was Bobby – and that he recognized that it was, and Bobby knew he’d been recognized, and Shinie knew that he knew and so on and so on. And they didn’t bumble the glass and spill the whisky, you know. The Burry Man reared back like a stag at bay and Shinie quite deliberately, contemptuously, dashed it away on to the ground. So that fits too.’

‘Yes,’ said Alec. ‘The father of a lost soldier wouldn’t want to welcome home a deserter with a glass of cheer.’ He was having to talk loudly now to be heard above the chanting from below.

‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘He’d sooner . . .’

‘What?’ said Alec.

‘I was going to say he’d sooner poison him.’

‘If he happened to have poison lying around.’

‘And not just the Turnbulls’ idea of poison,’ I said. ‘Good God, what a noise from down there. Where are they, do you suppose? Shinie was supposed to come to us when Joey went back.’ We waited a moment or two longer, and then it seemed to dawn on us both together: the shouts for service had begun even while Joey was here. She had led us upstairs out of the way and, like lambs, we had followed.

We practically fell over each other trying to get out of the door and down the narrow stairway. There was no one behind the bar counter or in the back kitchen, only the customers shouting for their beer and joking about search parties. Then we wasted precious moments searching for a back door into the yard before realizing that the only exit must be from the basement. We clattered down the steps, banged open the door to the cellar room and ran in.

A sharp cry stopped me dead. Joey was there, huddled once more into the same corner behind the copper, shaking. Alec, beside me, still panting, looked around and his mouth fell open.

‘Good God,’ he said.

‘Where is he?’ I demanded, going up to Joey and taking her chin in my hand. ‘Where did he go?’

She bit her lip and shook her head, tears beginning to gather in her eyes.

‘I wis wrong,’ she said again. ‘I telt him it wis Bobby and I wis wrong. It’s all my fault.’

‘Listen to me,’ I said, grabbing hold of her arms but managing not to shake her. ‘You were right. It
was
Bobby.’

‘But it was his father who . . .’ she said.

‘It was his father who what?’ I asked. I could sense that we were getting to it now.

‘It was his father . . . afterwards.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was his father again afterwards.’

‘And he never went home. He stayed and went to the greasy pole and – and – he died. So I must have been wrong.’

Suddenly I could see what she meant. She had been inside somewhere, probably right here, that day when Brown had followed the Burry Man outside. She had not seen a thing.

‘He didn’t drink it,’ I said. ‘Do you hear me? He didn’t drink from the glass out there in the street. I saw it all.’

‘But he must have,’ said Joey. ‘He died.’

‘So it
was
poison?’ said Alec.

Joey nodded in a tiny voice, and said something that sounded like ‘believe’.

I tightened my grip on her arms and spoke to her as though she were a very young child.

‘Where is your father?’ I asked her. ‘Where has he gone?’

‘Cassilis,’ said Joey in the faintest whisper.

Alec and I were upstairs, through the bar and out on to the pavement before I was aware of having decided to move, then I caught myself short, staring up and down the empty street.

‘He’s taken my car,’ I said. ‘Quick, run to the police station, Alec. I’ll catch up.’ But Alec had had a better idea. Following Brown’s example, he strode across the street to where an Austin car, ancient but very well-kept and shining, was parked outside Sealscraig House. The motor was running before I was in my seat, then he turned in three expert darts in the narrow space and roared away along the road to the Hawes.

‘Shinie Brown,’ he said. ‘
Shinie
Brown. Why did none of us ask what that meant?’

‘I don’t understand you,’ I told him.

‘Moonshine, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘You saw it for yourself.’

‘Where?’ I said.

Alec glared at me, the car swerving as he took his attention from the road. ‘Right there. In the cellar. That, my dear, was a still.’

I boggled for a second or two but soon caught up.

‘The damson gin,’ I said. ‘Of course. Father Cormack was absolutely tickled pink to see me drinking the damson gin and he joked with Brown about giving me the recipe. He even told me Brown used to work for a distiller. What a brainless idiot I am! But I still don’t see how it would have helped us. Not really.’

‘It would have helped us,’ said Alec, grimly, ‘because when it comes to moonshine, the Turnbulls are right. Anyone who can distil alcohol that’s fit to drink can just as readily distil lethal poison.’

‘But why would he?’ I said. ‘Why would it
be
there? I mean, chemists can make poison too, but if the average chemist flies into a murderous rage, he doesn’t just reach out his hand and close it around a bottle of the stuff.’

‘Perhaps he kept it for the very purpose he ended up using it for,’ said Alec. ‘For deserters. He’s not exactly balanced when it comes to his lost son after all. Perhaps he kept the poison in the name of his boy as well as the special whisky.’

‘And
how
did he do it?’ I said. ‘When did Dudgeon drink it?’

We had just entered the Cassilis estate on the back lane and were rushing so fast along such a narrow space between the trees that I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut, sure that at any moment we were going to hit one of the trunks and burst into flames. When we came to the first fork in the road, Alec slewed to a stop.

‘Where will I go?’ he asked me. ‘Where will
he
have gone?’

It was not until that moment that I realized I did not know. Joey Brown had said ‘Cassilis’ and off we had shot, but there was no way of telling whether that meant the castle, one of the cottages or some secret place in the woods.

‘Let’s quickly check the castle,’ I said, ‘then warn Mrs Dudgeon. Then, if we haven’t seen him, we’ll start searching the estate.’

It felt to me as though aeons had passed but when we crossed the ha-ha and approached the castle mound, there Cad and Buttercup still were in their wooden deck chairs by the west wall, only with cocktails in their hands instead of tea. Alec began a fanfare on the horn as we neared them and I leaned out of the Austin’s window beckoning them down the slope.

‘Whose motor car is th–’ began Buttercup, until I shushed her.

‘Go inside and stay there,’ I said. ‘And call the police. It was Shinie Brown. He poisoned Robert Dudgeon and he’s somewhere here right now, doing God knows what. Quick, Buttercup!’ I screamed as she blinked slowly, trying to take in my news through a fug of tea, cocktails and warm afternoon.

‘I knew it!’ Cad was saying as I hopped back in. ‘Murder! I knew it all along.’

There was no sign of my motor car at Mrs Dudgeon’s cottage. We skidded to a halt and jumped down as both front doors opened to reveal Mrs Dudgeon in one doorway and a man who had to be Flaming Donald in the other.

‘Mrs Dudgeon,’ I said, rushing up the path. ‘Has Mr Brown – Shinie Brown – Willie Brown – is he here? Has he been here?’

Mrs Dudgeon dithered from foot to foot on her doorstep and gobbled, looking at me and at Alec’s grim face, bewildered. I took this to be a no.

‘Where is he, then?’ I asked Alec. ‘Was Joey lying to us?’

‘He must be somewhere out on the estate,’ said Alec. ‘In the woods. But if he’s still in your car we’ll find him.’ He made as though to go off down the path, but Mrs Dudgeon put out a hand and stopped him.

‘Whit d’you want wi’ him?’ she said.

Alec and I glanced at each other and nodded.

‘Let’s go inside,’ I suggested, mindful of Donald standing so close and watching the scene with eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

‘He killed your husband,’ Alec told her once the door was shut behind us and we were standing in the narrow hall.

‘Willie Brown?’ she said. ‘Willie Brown? Not –’ but she could not even say the thing which had been haunting her.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Willie Brown.’

‘But why?’ she wailed.

Alec and I flicked a glance at each other again.

‘He thought,’ I began carefully, ‘he thought he recognized the Burry Man.’ She looked at me for a moment until what I had said sank in, then she lowered her head.

‘Aye, that would be reason enough,’ she said. ‘He never did get over his laddie.’ Then a fresh thought struck her. ‘But how did he dae it? When?’

‘We don’t know,’ Alec said. ‘He might have had poison in his cellar.’

‘But Rab never went near Broon’s Bar that day,’ said Mrs Dudgeon.

‘Well, then Brown must have come to him,’ I said.

‘I’d have seen him,’ she insisted. ‘Rab wisnae oot o’ my sicht fae the minute he come oot the toon hall to the minute he . . . fell. You’re wrong aboot this, madam, ye must be.’

Alec looked half convinced by her. He was chewing his lip and frowning at me, waiting for me to speak.

‘When we came along the street at the end of the Burry Man’s day,’ I said slowly, trying to remember, ‘Joey Brown was alone in the bar. I could see in, you know, and I remember thinking how odd it was because the place was thronging and she was all on her own and was even doing her Ferry Fair cleaning, had all the bottles off the shelves behind the counter.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ said Alec.

‘Just that Shinie Brown could have been out of the bar,’ I said. ‘He could have been along at the Rosebery Hall, lying in wait.’

‘And how would he have persuaded Mr Dudgeon to swallow poison?’ said Alec.

Mrs Dudgeon gasped and I put an arm around her shoulders. She was shaking and felt unsteady, tottering slightly as I touched her. My mind, despite everything, ran instantly to the need for a little something medicinal to calm her nerves.

Suddenly I had it.

‘Mrs Dudgeon,’ I said. ‘Do you still have the flask?’

She nodded wordlessly.

‘And have you rinsed it out?’

She looked at me, confused, for a moment then her eyes flared as she got it too. She turned on her heel and disappeared into the living room, returning a second later with the small pewter flask, pressing it into my hand. I began to pick at the stopper but Alec took it, wrenched it open, and sniffed warily.

‘Good grief,’ he said. ‘We don’t need a chemist.
I
could write the report on that.’

‘Whit is it?’ said Mrs Dudgeon.

‘Methanol,’ said Alec. ‘Absolutely lethal, but close enough to alcohol to pass for it if no one had reason to check. Good Lord, a flask of this stuff? Your poor husband didn’t stand a chance.’