‘Well, well, well,’ said Alec. ‘That must have made things rather awkward at times in the family circle. Anyway, Donald and I got to talking, trailing along there behind the coffin, which was quite a surprise to me at first. Since he was the chief mourner in absence of anyone closer to fill the role, I’d have thought he’d be ringed around with pals. But it seems that a funeral is like a wedding in that respect. No one ever speaks to the groom at a wedding because they always assume he should be talking to someone else.’
‘I noticed that,’ said Cad. ‘It was one of the loneliest days of my life.’
‘Ooh, I loved my wedding day,’ said Buttercup. ‘Both of them. I wish I could have lots more.’
‘Ever the diplomat, darling,’ I said, as she clapped her hand belatedly over her mouth. ‘Are you going to send Cad to Brighton with a floozy or shove him off the ramparts?’
‘As I was saying,’ Alec resumed, sounding severe, ‘Donald and I started to chat about this and that and inevitably the talk turned to Robert Dudgeon and his last day and Donald latched on to that odd little moment, when the Burry Man was almost home and dry and he slipped his leash and headed for the hills. Well, the stairs. Donald told me that Dudgeon was found inside by the dignitaries, tearing off his burry suit, only he didn’t – Donald didn’t, I mean – take this to be an indication of poison. Instead he pointed out that people who are suffering a heart attack often talk about a constricted feeling in the chest. A “tight band” or a “band of steel” are the phrases and Donald’s theory is that Dudgeon felt this, took it to be sudden claustrophobia caused by being trussed up like a parcel all day and simply had to get out of the damn things with not a moment to lose.’
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘It certainly fits the facts. Now Alec, since you’re on the subject of burrs, please tell me you remembered to -’
‘I remembered,’ said Alec with a great show of weary patience in his voice. ‘Have some faith in me, Dandy, please.’
‘Remembered what?’ said Buttercup.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Because the other Burry Boy was out cold on the bar counter before I had a chance to ask him.’
‘What?’ said Cad, Alec and Buttercup together, staring at me.
‘Oh yes, I’ve a tale of my own to tell about this morning,’ I said. ‘But first things first. Alec?’
‘I’m rather proud of this,’ said Alec. ‘I asked just how bad a thing it was for Dudgeon to do that rushing and ripping off stunt. Asked – you know, very wide-eyed and eager to understand the folklore – if it was bad luck or sacrilege or anything to treat the burrs in that way.’
‘Oh, good thinking,’ I said. ‘Excellent!’
‘And Donald told me that no, not especially, although he did mention that in days gone by people used to pluck burrs from the suit as the Burry Man came around and replace them with flowers. It’s died out for some reason, but Donald supposed that that’s the origin of the few flowers still sticking out of the costume here and there.’
‘What a shame it stopped,’ said Buttercup. ‘That must have been lovely. Cad, I think if you and I are in on this next year we should try to reinstate the flower thingummy. We can donate the blooms if our gardens are up and running in time.’
‘Anyway,’ said Alec, ‘it was the easiest step in the world from there to asking what does happen to the things afterwards, and hearing that it’s usually nothing in particular, they just go out for the dustmen once they’ve been picked off the inner suit. And then I asked him if he knew how they ended up back at Dudgeon’s house this year, and he said he didn’t know.’
‘That was skating pretty close to the edge,’ I said. ‘Did it raise his suspicions to have you asking about them? After him finding me guddling with them yesterday, I mean?’
‘It didn’t seem to,’ said Alec. ‘He didn’t mention you.’
‘Hmm,’ I said, stirring my spoon round and round in my syllabub. It started to collapse and then I remembered how delicious Mrs Murdoch’s fruit fool had been the day before and decided just in time that this syllabub probably deserved better treatment. I licked my spoon clean and laid it down again. ‘It would have been good to hear from one of the horses’ mouths, just exactly what happened about those burrs,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of any innocent reason for them to have been saved. And I can’t really see how anyone except Dudgeon or Mrs Dudgeon could have organized getting them into a sack and into the cart. But then I’m absolutely convinced that Mrs Dudgeon did not kill her husband, so I can’t see why she should be concerned to take the things home. And if she was then why did she let them lie for days on the midden heap for anyone to find?’
‘We’ve already said that she was desperate to get rid of everyone from the house,’ said Alec. ‘To give her the chance to get the things on the fire.’
‘In which case she would have been discovered wandering around in the night with a box of matches and some kindling,’ I pointed out. ‘Not with a bottle of ink and a pen.’
‘It’s terribly niggly-piggly sort of work, detecting, isn’t it?’ said Buttercup. ‘You sound so cross with each other, bickering away like that.’ She stood up and dropped her napkin on to her seat. ‘I think I’ll go for a nap,’ she announced. ‘Cad? Come and tuck me in?’
‘Absolutely, my love, I’ll be right there,’ said Cadwallader. ‘But Dandy,’ he went on, ‘are you really saying that the poisoned burrs theory is still on the table?’ Buttercup left the room unnoticed, her shoulders in a sorrowful little slump of self-pity. Cadwallader would have to do some extra billing and cooing this afternoon to make up for the slight.
‘Darling,’ I told him, happy to be in the position to spread such cheer, ‘I am. For one thing there is a rumour to that effect doing the rounds of the local tots and I’ve had independent corroboration this very morning that these little ones are to be ignored at our peril.’ Cad looked at me, open-mouthed, eager for more, but I was tired of having an audience. I wanted to get Alec to myself and really thrash the thing out.
‘Buttercup awaits,’ I reminded him.
‘Is that a secret code?’ he breathed in response. Alec gave a shout of laughter, and Cad joined in with a good-natured grin.
‘I think I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘It’s all way, way over my head. And Freddy’s expecting me.’
Chapter Twelve
An hour in the drawing room with cigarettes, pipe and sheets of paper would be enough for Alec and me to feel that we were both of one mind again, shoulder to shoulder viewing the path ahead.
‘Right, then,’ I said. ‘These burrs, poisoned or otherwise.’ For we had decided to take seriously – at least until we were proved wrong – the fantastical-seeming theory about the burrs. Alec’s brainwave during our session had been to scrutinize them and, if any of them looked poisoned’, to parcel them up and send them to a specialist for analysis.
‘What specialist, though?’ I said. In story books, detectives always just happen to have a very useful selection of acquaintances, chemists and locksmiths and the like, but Alec and I had no such connections to draw on and we were stumped.
‘Well, no one who’s anything to do with the police or the police surgeon,’ said Alec. ‘We must use a little discretion, at least for now.’
‘And we can’t just troop into Edinburgh and hawk them around the hospital corridors searching for a kind man in a white coat,’ I said. ‘They’ve been in a feed sack in a stable, for one thing. And before that, in a midden heap with horse drop-’ I stopped.
‘What?’ said Alec.
‘What about the Dick Vet?’ I said. ‘The Veterinary College at the university. They’re bound to have chemists and poison people there, aren’t they? And one would think they’d be less sniffy about grubby samples of this and that. If we were to telephone and say… I don’t know… say that a horse had come out in dreadful suppurating sores where he had been brushing against a burdock bush -’