‘You gullible fool, Dandy,’ I muttered to myself. ‘They saw you coming.’
Chapter Ten
‘So where does all of that get us?’ said Alec, through toast-crumbs, the next morning. He had his breakfast napkin tucked into his stiff collar to preserve the sparkling shirt-front and the black tie. Cadwallader, surprisingly less pragmatic – perhaps wearing one’s napkin in one’s collar fell foul of one of those unexpected pockets of etiquette in American life, although why they bother with these odd little nods to politeness in the overall scheme of things one can hardly see – Cadwallader for whatever reason, anyway, was simply leaning over from well back with his neck stretched out and scooping egg into the bowl of his fork, rather confirming my point.
Cad and Alec were bound for Robert Dudgeon’s funeral, Buttercup and I, of course, being barred from attendance along with all other females including his own widow. I had always thought this particular stricture of the Presbyterian Scotch one of the most unbending (from a very strong field) but I was glad that Mrs Dudgeon did not have a funeral to contend with; if she was no more restored to herself than she had been at my last sight of her I was sure she could not have stood it.
I had been rather wrung out myself at the end of the day before, when I had finally deposited the six little scallywags plus pushchair at their garden gate and returned home, and I had been almost thankful when Buttercup stuck out her lip and firmly vetoed any talk of the case over dinner or through our card game afterwards. Since she was breakfasting in bed this morning, however – her habitual indolence having overcome any thoughts of her role as hostess at last after five days of manful effort – I was taking the chance to bring the men up to date.
Cad had been torn between triumph and sulks when I revealed that I was coming around to the idea of poisoning after all, and seemed to think I had not been playing fair in not telling him all about my mysterious mushroom on the very first night.
‘We must remain cautious,’ I had told him. ‘It might be something that would show up clearly in the stomach, in which case it can’t have been the sandwich. Or it might be something which doesn’t work through the blood, in which case it couldn’t be the burrs. And we might find a perfectly innocent explanation for either the sandwich or the burrs or both, in which case we are back where we started.’
‘Well?’ prompted Alec. ‘Remaining cautious, of course, what’s next?’
‘What’s next,’ I said, ‘are some jobs suitable for the untrained enthusiast – you and me – and some for which we unfortunately need an expert. We need to find out where the cart turned around and why. I’m going to walk the obvious routes today and see what I can see. You, Cad, are going to latch on to the Burry Man’s boys at the funeral – can you remember what they looked like? Good – and pin this blasted sandwich down once and for all. Then this evening, Alec, you must go to “Broon’s Bar”, with fingers crossed that the fair Joey is on duty, and see if you can get any further with her – I’m sure she knows something and I can’t quite work out what her standing is with the Dudgeon family. She was trusted to sit with Mr Dudgeon’s body – trust which she betrayed, by the way, in leaving him alone – but on the other hand Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters are divided in their opinions of her. One of them sounded very sniffy about the girl yesterday, until another reminded her rather grudgingly that we are all “Jock Tamson’s bairns” when all’s said and done -’
‘All who?’ said Alec.
‘Jock Thompson’s bairns,’ I said. ‘All the same underneath I suppose is the best way to explain it. All God’s children.’
‘Sounds rather a disrespectful name for God,’ said Cad.
‘It wasn’t a literal translation,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Bet – or was it Lizzy? – said that and then Tina said that they of all people – meaning the sisters – had no business turning their noses up at the girl just because she worked in a bar either. Interesting, don’t you think?’
‘Interesting is putting it rather mildly,’ said Cad. ‘It’s like a ball of wool.’
‘If only it were that straightforward,’ said Alec. ‘It’s more like a bowl of Italian noodles. Slipperier than wool, and when it’s all unravelled there are far more than one strand and most of them are irrelevant anyway.’
‘And the irrelevant ones will look identical to the crucial ones right until the end, knowing our luck,’ I said. Alec and I were showing off a little in front of Cad, I suppose, but he was so easy to show off to, so very guileless in his readiness to be impressed.
‘And all the while,’ I said, getting back to my pep-talk, ‘you can be thinking about what Mrs Dudgeon would be doing with a pen and ink out in the woods in the wee small hours. And I’ll be doing the same.’
‘Did you look around for paper?’ said Alec.
‘Why would there be paper?’ I said. ‘Why, if she simply wanted to write something down, or write a letter, could she not have done it in her own bedroom with the key turned in the lock and a candle to work by? Why would she have stumbled out into the black night?’
‘But it’s just as hard to explain why she did so with only the pen and the ink,’ said Alec. I agreed.
‘Is this why you need an expert?’ said Cad.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘That problem only needs to be worried at until logic prevails. We need a medical doctor who knows what tests are routinely carried out during a post-mortem. And an expert – a chemist, to be precise – to augment my very slim store of memories about this alcohol-dependent poison wouldn’t hurt either.’
‘Mr Turnbull?’ suggested Cad.
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Mr Turnbull with his scientific background and extensive knowledge of plants would be ideal if he were not so in the thick of it all. What I mean is that Mr Turnbull is auditioning for the part of first murderer and doing rather well. He can’t possibly understudy as expert witness too.’
‘Mr Turnbull?’ Cad was almost spluttering. ‘Mr Turnbull with his rosy cheeks and “healthful exercise”?’ Alec and I shared a smile, each of us thinking that Cad was a fine one to talk.
‘Oh, but I’m with Dandy there,’ said Alec. ‘At least, I bumped into Mrs Turnbull coming out of the Queensferry Arms yesterday and she struck me as utterly ruthless. She didn’t know me from Adam and yet she launched right in, sermonizing. So if she’s anything like her husband…’
‘She certainly is,’ I told him. ‘She’s a wife in the Adam’s rib style. Sickening. But I must say, darling, if this meeting was near luncheon time you must have been quite irresistible to any Temperance enthusiast for miles around.’
‘Once and for all, Dandy,’ said Alec sternly, whisking his napkin out of his collar and flicking away the crumbs in his lap, ‘I was not drunk.’ This time it was Cad and I who shared the smile.
I parked my motor car at the Bellstane and set off in the cart tracks of the Dudgeons up the steep street known as the Loan. The Burry Man had arrived back at the Rosebery Hall at bang on six o’clock, ending his day with the curious little stiff-legged sprint up the steps, as I myself had seen. Mr and Mrs Dudgeon had appeared at the greasy pole competition not long after it began at half past six. I was happy to say a quarter to seven at the latest: I remembered someone grumbling that the fun would be over too soon and that ‘Rubbert’ should be held back until some of the less accomplished and so much more entertaining contestants had had a bash. So, with ten minutes at least to get him out of his burry suit and into his own clothes – and considerably longer if he washed and if he rubbed his arms and legs as much as I would have liked to after such a day – and taking into consideration the numbers of townspeople still surging down the Loan towards the fun, who along with the gradient would prevent the pony from picking up any kind of pace – I did not see how they could even have got as far as the edge of the village before turning back.