‘Well, I think I owe the doctor and you an apology,’ I said. ‘I have no reason to doubt the report. What we’ve found isn’t about how Mr Dudgeon died, but it’s a strange thing that needs some explanation all the same. As you’ll soon see.’
I swung the motor car into the east gate of the park and took the back lane to the stable, going very slowly around the corners since it was just after five and the stable lads were all making their way home, heads bent against the downpour which had begun in earnest now.
‘I found the burrs from Mr Dudgeon’s suit on the midden heap behind the cottages,’ I explained as we drew up and got down. ‘And I – well, I suppose I stole them.’ I could see the oil lamp in the tack room and could just make out the figure of Alec standing at the back of the room like a scarecrow. ‘We’ve been doing a bit of reconstruction,’ I said, beckoning the inspector towards the door, ‘and we’ve made a rather startling discovery.’
Alec’s neck must have been getting terribly stiff and it was no doubt this that caused the slow creaking turn of his head as we came in, but if he had spent the whole of his time alone thinking it out he could not have come up with a more eerie finishing touch to the whole tableau.
‘Bloody hell!’ yelped Inspector Cruickshank, and took a step backwards on to my foot.
‘Alec Osborne, sir,’ Alec said. ‘We haven’t met.’
I began to laugh at that as much as at the inspector’s outburst, hopping about shaking my crushed foot, and Alec grinned too. Even the inspector gave a rueful smile along with his apology to me, then his eye was caught by the contents of the tack table and the smile switched instantly off.
‘There were two quite separate garments underneath,’ I explained a moment later. ‘You can tell from all this white stuff. We think the ones we’ve used here were the real Burry Man’s burrs, the ones gathered officially and put together by people who knew what they were doing. They’re still hanging together in patches, many of them. These ones are terribly second rate.’ I stirred the heaps with my finger. ‘Hastily collected, inexpertly picked, and stuck to ordinary combinations, from which they gathered a great deal of stray fabric. I daresay when we take Alec’s suit off it will be covered in little bits of the same.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Inspector Cruickshank.
‘Well, if you’re convinced,’ said Alec, ‘might I trouble someone to help me disrobe? I’ve had enough of this.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said Inspector Cruickshank. ‘Now the easiest thing for you and quite handy for me too for I’d like to keep a hold of this suit all made up like that, the easiest thing would be if I just cut you out of it with my army knife here. Slit the combinations down the back and pull them off your front.’
He turned and looked at me. Alec too was smiling at me, waiting.
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll step outside.’ I pondered whether to go and tell Cad the bad news about the fate of his combinations but, inspector or no, the man was standing behind Alec with an army knife at the ready and, since the case was still wide open and we did not know who we suspected and who therefore we did not, I decided to stick very close by. Besides, the rain had turned to hail stones now, one of those astonishing, but short-lived, hail storms which had always seemed so unseasonal to me when I had first come north but which I now knew very well. Across the yard, Nipper’s master was sheltering in a doorway, Nipper himself tucked pitifully at his heels and looking up at the sky with the whites of his eyes showing.
‘This is a surprise, isn’t it?’ I called over.
‘Naw. I kent it would come to hell,’ the lad called back, making me blink.
‘Sorry?’ I said.
‘I could tell fae the sky. I kent it would come tae hell stones afore it was done.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘Hail stones. Yes, I see.’ What had I been saying to Alec, about the impossibility of ever really getting a ‘guid Scots tongue’ into an English head?
‘Now then, Mrs Gilver,’ said Inspector Cruickshank, sweeping open the tack room door. Inside, Alec was knotting his tie with arms which still looked rather stiff and fumbling. ‘We can go down to the station or I can come up to the castle, whichever suits you the best. I know you’re a guest there and if you’d rather not -’
‘Oh no, no, no. It will be absolutely fine,’ I assured him, thinking that Cad would hate to miss this. ‘In fact, it was Cad – Mr de Cassilis, you know – who was first convinced that something was up and persuaded me to take the c-… to look into it.’ I felt rather bashful about revealing my status in the matter now that a real professional was about to enter the arena.
‘All well and good,’ said the inspector. ‘To the castle it is.’
‘So then,’ said Inspector Cruickshank, settling into an armchair in the library with a large whisky and soda, the half-eaten plate of fish and chips and the pot of tea apparently put well behind him. Alec and I, the principals, were facing him on two further armchairs while Cad and Buttercup sat perched on a bench under the window, keeping quiet and hoping not to be sent out, like two children past their bedtimes. ‘We had an extra Burry Man running around the place on Friday, did we?’ went on the inspector. ‘And up to no good, I imagine. Tell me what first roused your suspicions, and we’ll take it from there.’
‘I’ll let Dandy tell you, Inspector,’ said Alec, whom Cruickshank seemed to be addressing. ‘She was here first after all.’
‘All right,’ I said, attempting to order my thoughts. ‘The first thing to say is that even though we’re not sure about much, I don’t think it was exactly what you say: a rogue Burry Man duplicating the real one. What would be the point for one thing?’
‘Money?’ said the inspector. ‘In the buckets? Or whisky? I think I’ll put a couple of men on just to check that the Burry Man didn’t come round twice to the same place with different helpers.’
‘Wouldn’t everyone know that it should be Pat Rearden and… the other one?’ I said.
‘Not these days,’ said Mr Cruickshank. ‘The Ferry’s getting bigger every year with incomers. It’s not the place it used to be. And as for the helpers: people would hardly question whether it was genuine as long as the Burry Man was there in the middle of it all. Maybe it was a burglary scheme. Everyone outside cheering the Burry Man and one of the gang in the houses looking for anything worth lifting.’
I was finding this rather flustering, truth be told, unused to someone else confidently barging in with his own theories, and such dull little theories at that. It revealed to me as nothing else would have just how very collaborative Alec was in comparison.
‘You know best, Inspector,’ I said, I hoped placatingly. ‘But we were thinking more along these lines: that the real Burry Man – Robert Dudgeon, that is – was elsewhere on Friday and was using let’s call him the duplicate Burry Man as an… well, as an alibi. If I explain where our suspicions arose, you’ll see why that is.
‘First of all, there was Dudgeon’s sudden and extreme reluctance to do the job. It came over him out of nowhere on Thursday afternoon, making him try with some considerable determination to wriggle out of the commitment. Then just as suddenly he seemed to change his mind back again and think that it could be managed. And now that I come to think of it, I did joke a little about Mr de Cassilis stepping into the breach – it was only a joke, Cad – and I think I did say that even though he was a newcomer and it would not be popular with those in the know, I expected that once he was in costume no one would be any the wiser.