Thinking it all out like this I soon realized that if they had been waylaid at all it must have been the very briefest of accostings and must have taken place in the street, the kind of encounter into which it was hard to incorporate an impromptu sandwich – Lord, how sick and tired I was of that blasted sandwich! I hoped with all my heart that Alec would manage to discover from one of the Burry Man’s helpers that some whiter-than-white sister-in-law slipped it into one of the buckets for his teatime snack and we could cut it out of our considerations once and for all.
The upside to my having worked out that their little trip up the hill and down again was so short, however, was that I felt sure someone must have seen them turn. Revellers were simply flocking to the Fair and the Loan was like a funnel, pouring all comers into the bottleneck of Craw’s Close and the Bellstane Square. As I looked up the street now, I saw that one side of the Loan was unpromising for a stretch, the hulk of the bottling plant and a couple of dairies taking up most of it, but on the other side there were lanes opening off it and cottages facing on to it all the way up to the New Kirk, after which a run of villas lined one side of the road as it levelled off, these stretching past the village school to the end of Killinghouse Road and beyond. I felt sure they could not possibly have got any further than Killinghouse Road in the time. They might, of course, have turned off before that, along Station Road where a row of grander villas sat rather more anonymously behind high hedges, and if they had spotted someone they did not care to meet on Station Road and turned around in a hurry there was a chance that they might have managed it unobserved. But all in all, it looked very promising. I could but try.
Although it made me puff as I climbed it, I was glad of the steep rise of the Loan, for it gave me a reason, when I saw a pair of village women talking at the corner of Stoneycroft Lane, to stop near them and turn around, pretending to admire the view.
They lowered their voices a little and I could hear the rhythm of their chatter slow down as they took half of their attention away from the conversation to appraise me, but they kept talking and so it was the most natural thing in the world for me to turn towards them, having drunk my fill of the sight of the river, and politely exchange a few words.
‘Beautiful view,’ I said. They nodded, unsmiling.
‘But a very sad day,’ I added. I was in the black linen that Grant had provided and these two were in grey and black too, albeit under white aprons and with sleeves rolled to the elbows and hidden under white cuffs.
‘We were just sayin’ the Fair would nivver be the same again,’ said one. ‘It’s a terrible thing for the Ferry.’
‘Indeed it is terrible,’ I agreed. ‘But as to its effect on the Fair…’ They looked at me, intrigued. ‘I don’t know if you heard any of the kerfuffle between the various parties.’ I gestured up the hill a little to where St Andrew’s UP and St Margaret’s RC squared up to each other across the street. They raised their eyebrows and drew a little nearer, gossips by nature, clearly. ‘I don’t pretend to know who is on which side or even why,’ I went on with perfect honesty, ‘but there was talk about trying to stamp it out. I should have thought it would be much harder to do so now. It would look so dreadfully like disrespect to Mr Dudgeon. To my mind anyway.’ This could easily have misfired, had these two women happened to straddle the sectarian divide (and I felt a little guilty about blaming the reverends quite so fair and square as all this. I was pretty sure it was the local ladies who were the ringleaders and the ministers and priests had simply had their heads turned. Boredom, I had decided, is responsible for a great deal of unwarranted meddling. Look, after all, at me) but I was lucky, in this instance.
‘We’re both Parish,’ said one of the women with a touch of pride at making up a corner of such a reasonable threesome.
‘And I said as much to thon Mrs Turnbull when she come round with her pamphlets,’ said the other. ‘We get all the preaching we need for the week at the Vennel on a Sunday morning, thank you very much.’
‘Oh, she’s at it already?’ I said. They nodded, lips tightly pursed.
‘And Rab no’ even in his grave.’ This was accompanied by a raising of one corner of an apron to dab at the eyes.
‘What twaddle,’ I said, suppressing the thought that the post-mortem had shown this to be very far from true. In fact, Mrs Turnbull with her Temperance pamphlets was suspiciously near the mark. With a feeling of thankfulness at how easily the conversation had come round to the bit, I went on: ‘What a shame Mr and Mrs Dudgeon didn’t go straight home on Friday night after all, though, wasn’t it? Perhaps if he had gone quietly home to rest.’
‘That was a thing he nivver did, madam,’ said the woman who had been dabbing her eyes. ‘He was Burry Man all day and then he climbed the greasy pole at nicht.’
‘Aye, and won the ham most years, at that.’
‘A grand man.’
‘Indeed,’ I said and left a respectful pause. ‘But didn’t you know that they set off to go home on Friday at six o’clock in their little cart and then changed their minds? I’m surprised you didn’t notice them passing.’
‘I was doon at the Fair well afore six.’
‘Tae think we’ll nivver see him again on thon daft wee shell hutch.’
‘Indeed,’ I said again. ‘Well, that’s the fact of the matter. They set off and then they turned back. I wonder why.’
‘A proud man,’ said the weeping woman, beginning to dissolve in earnest now. ‘He must have been feelin’ no’ well and then his pride got the better of him and he pushed hissel’ too far. Puir Rubbert.’
‘But you didn’t actually see them turning,’ I said, making sure. Then I addressed the other, more stalwart of the pair. ‘Did you happen to be about when the little cart turned around?’
‘Naw, I didnae,’ she said while her companion sobbed. ‘I didnae see them at all on Burry Man’s day. First time in my life I didnae see the Burry Man. I was that busy cleaning ready for the Fair, I jist sent the bairn to the door with a penny and I never saw him. Never gave him a nip.’ She was beginning to brim too.
‘Aw, Alice now,’ said the other. ‘Dinnae gie yersel’ trouble. You couldnae have kent and like you say the bairn gave him his penny, ye’ve naethin’ to feel bad for.’
I wondered in silence at this; it was hard to credit that one of these women, as sane and everyday-looking as one could imagine, might feel she had brought down misfortune on Dudgeon’s head by neglecting to go to the door with his whisky.
‘I’m as bad, if you like,’ the other went on. ‘I saw Chrissie the day before and I wis sure there was something no’ right with her, but I wis rushin’ to get done and get back hame to get the teas on and I let her go by. It’s jist the way o’ things. If you knew when trouble wis comin’ ye’d be more careful-like.’
I listened patiently to all of it. It was just as Alec had found with his barman; everyone was now ready shamelessly to claim they had ‘known something was wrong’ but everyone had unaccountably done nothing about it and had somehow neglected to mention it until events proved them right. I smiled blandly, inwardly deciding that this woman at least was too full of self-important fancy to be relied upon, but then I stopped. She said she noticed something wrong with Mrs Dudgeon the day before? But as far as the world at large knew, there was nothing wrong with Mrs Dudgeon, either the day before or at any other time. Only Alec, Cad and I – and Buttercup, so far as Buttercup ever thought anything – thought that something was wrong with Mrs Dudgeon the day before.