‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘You’re worse than those horrid children.’ I was trying to laugh but really the idea was shivery-making. ‘I’m surprised there aren’t such rumours about the Burry Man,’ I went on. ‘Except that his bare hands would scotch it.’
‘Anyway there’s not much chance of our putting the whole thing together,’ Alec said, fitting another short leg piece on the other side. ‘Look at all these odd bits and single burrs from all the nooks and crannies. Heaps of them.’
I nodded. There were indeed undulating piles of burrs left on the table besides the large knitted-together sections. With their wisps of fluff sticking to them and their stalks jutting out they made the table top look like one of those miniature battle scenes my sons are always constructing. A wintry battle scene with patches of thin snow and lots of dead trees.
‘Have you noticed,’ I said, ‘that all the stuck-together ones are quite clean, and all the loose ones have the white wool or whatever it is clinging to them?’
Alec took a moment to check and then nodded.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That’s odd. And the stuck-together ones are the best ones too, the fresh whole ones with no bits of stalk.’
‘I suppose that makes sense,’ I said. ‘Using the cream of the crop for the places the imperfections would show and using up the dregs in the corners.’ Alec was laying some more pieces on top of the body patch, trying them this way and that to make them fit.
‘I wonder if this is the front or the back,’ he said, half to himself.
‘I’d say the back is in one piece and those are the front bits, broken up like a jigsaw,’ I said. ‘Remember – Dudgeon began pulling his suit off himself. He’d hardly reach round and snatch it off his back. Ooh! Here’s an arm.’ I handed it over to Alec who laid it in place sticking out from the shoulder.
‘Can we move all these odds and ends on to the floor?’ he said. ‘There isn’t room to make the suit up properly with all the extras in the way.’
I am not sure whether it occurred first to him or to me, but certainly by the time I had looked up to catch his eye he was already raising his head to stare back.
‘And that shouldn’t be, should it?’ I said, with my heart thumping.
Alec looked at the table again, first at the emerging form of the burry suit and then at the battleground piles all around.
‘Could these possibly be used up in the joins?’ he said, talking slowly, trying to stay calm, apparently fighting excitement of his own.
‘I don’t think so,’ I answered, ‘but I’m afraid there’s only one way to find out. Do you happen to have a pair of thick combinations with you, darling? I suppose not since it’s August. Well, you shall just have to borrow some from Cad.’
‘Steady on,’ said Alec. ‘We can just lay them out on the table here, surely.’
‘I’d feel better if there was a three-dimensional reconstruction,’ I said. ‘To make sure. I know from some very unsuccessful attempts at dressmaking when I was a child that the third dimension makes quite a difference.’
‘And what about the poison?’ said Alec, refusing to give in without a fight.
‘I think we always knew the poison was a stretch,’ I reminded him. ‘We only entertained the poison because we couldn’t see any other reason to hang on to the burrs, but we can now. Come on, let’s go and ask Cad.’
The afternoon was turning to evening by the time we had finished and the sky had blackened and was threatening rain the way it can after a hot afternoon, making the tack room horribly gloomy despite the oil lamp. Alec, out of modesty, had reconstructed his own burry trousers, working up from the ankles with loud gasps and winces, and then I had pressed the back patch to his shoulders and pieced together the other squares and strips over his front. We scrupulously avoided any burrs with white fluffy garnishing, and once I had got my eye in I found it easier and easier to tell which were the prime burrs – the fat, green, carefully picked ones – and used only these to make the joins and to fill, as Alec had put it, the nooks and crannies.
I had filched a flask of brandy from the library while the winter combinations were being hunted out and I lifted it to his lips again now, as he stood there with one hand braced against the tack room wall and the other out to the side holding a broomstick for support.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked, stoppering the flask. Alec nodded. ‘Because I think we’ve fairly well proved our case as it is.’
‘Heads are larger than anyone ever thinks,’ Alec replied. ‘I know that from drawing classes.’
‘I’ll go and get a flour bag from Mrs Murdoch then,’ I said and made for the door. ‘There should just be time before the deluge.’
‘Only – Dandy…?’ said Alec. I turned. It was hard not to smile seeing him standing there, until – that is – I looked into his eyes. ‘Hurry back, won’t you?’ he said. I nodded, sober again, and sped off.
Once the flour bag was thoroughly banged against the wall to dislodge the dust I lowered it over Alec’s head and felt with a piece of coal for his eyes and mouth. Then I took it off and set about the coal marks with my nail scissors. When it went back on again it no doubt felt better to him but it looked even worse to me and I remembered how it was the eyes and dark hole of a mouth that were the worst of it all on the Burry Man’s day; that and the white hands grasping the staves. I shuddered. Alec must have felt it because he said:
‘Try this end of the stick, darling,’ and I apologized.
When the back of his head was covered I began on the face, ringing his eyes and putting a strip down his nose, partly to lighten the mood and partly to give myself a pattern to work to. I was engrossed in the task of getting the things on in some kind of order, and had almost forgotten Alec in spite of the closeness of his steady breathing when suddenly I felt him begin to shake under my fingers.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Take it off. Take the bag off. Now!’
I grabbed the top of the flour bag despite the barbs piercing the palms of my hands and tore it off, ignoring the rip as the joining layer of burrs along his shoulders protested.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Can’t really account for that, I’m afraid, but I just couldn’t stand it a minute longer.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I told him. ‘The bag itself is more than half covered whether you wear it or not. And look.’
He craned round stiffly and looked at the table, where the snowy battleground lay undisturbed, easily as many burrs as Alec was wearing, all lying there, left over.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I think I can stand this long enough for you to get Inspector Cruickshank, Dandy. So long as he’s available now and willing to come along. But God knows how Robert Dudgeon did it for hours on end.’
‘Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘He didn’t. Paddy Rearden told me as much. “He wasn’t himself that day.” He told me over and over again, if I’d only had the wits to hear it. The Burry Man wasn’t himself at all.’
Inspector Cruickshank was at his tea when I banged on the door of his house ten minutes later, but he covered his plate with a pan lid and set it to the side of the stove to keep warm, all without a murmur, even though it was fried fish and potatoes and bound to be soggy when he returned.
‘It may seem terribly theatrical when you see what we’ve done, Inspector,’ I said to him as we drove back up the Dalmeny road for the Cassilis stable yard through the beginning of the rain, ‘but we felt we had to convince you because without the evidence of your own eyes it all sounds so very nebulous and strained. And we have to convince you because although we’ve made an important discovery we have no earthly idea what it means or where to go next.’
‘And this is to do with Robert Dudgeon, is it?’ said Inspector Cruickshank. ‘I thought as much. You weren’t happy that day at the Fair, were you, madam? With the doctor’s report? I’ve not had a look like that since I scuffed my new boots first day on and had to come in and tell my mammy.’ He spoke affably enough, but even so I blushed. I had not realized that my disapproval had been quite so obvious as all that.