‘But why?’ said the inspector. ‘I’m not saying I agree with anything you’ve said, mind, but just for the sake of argument if any of that did happen, why? Why did Robert and Chrissie Dudgeon not go all the way home with this mystery man hidden under the back of the cart? That would have been much safer than leaving him to flit through the woods on his own no matter how empty they were. It would only take one sober, respectable adult to see him and the game would be up.’
I could see the sense in this.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, making a last attempt, ‘perhaps they were concerned to make everything look as near normal as possible, and normal on that particular evening meant staying at the Fair and climbing the greasy pole.’
The inspector was shaking his head again.
‘You’ve put together a wondrous tale,’ he said, ‘but it’s all smoke and mirrors when you get right down to it. Still, good work with the burrs, Mr Osborne. I’ll certainly have to look into that. It could be that there’s a lot of folk have things missing from the house and they haven’t put two and two together. Or maybe they have and they’re hanging back not wanting to point the finger at Robert Dudgeon when he’s not here any more to defend himself.’ I could not believe that he was brushing off all our lovely evidence and our beautifully knitted-together explanations and sticking to this boring account of petty thievery, but there did not seem to be anything else to say that would convince him he was wrong, so Alec and I simply bade him farewell with as much good grace as we could muster.
‘If I can have the use of your telephone, Mr de Cassilis,’ he said, ‘I’ll ring the sergeant and get him to pick me up and take the evidence away at the same time. No, no, no,’ he brushed off Buttercup’s mutterings of hospitality, ‘I’ll wait in the stable yard, if it’s all the same, Mrs de Cassilis. He’ll only be a minute up from the Ferry to get me.’ He bowed slightly to me and I inclined my head in return but when he turned his back to leave, I stuck my tongue out at him and crossed my eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Do you think he’s right?’ I asked Alec as soon as I thought the inspector would be out of earshot.
‘No,’ Alec replied. ‘Not a chance of it. He has no explanation for how all the burrs ended up on the Dudgeons’ midden for one thing. I expect he’s just one of those people who needs to make his own way to an idea. Not everyone relishes being told what to think.’
‘Hm,’ I said. ‘Especially by some silly chit of a woman, you mean. Didn’t you notice how you got all the glory for the burrs and I got all the scorn for the rest of it? You should have told him when he asked you, and not left it to me.’
‘And what would you have said to that?’ said Alec, laughing. ‘If I had and he’d still not believed a word, you would have told me I’d barged in and mucked it up, wouldn’t you?’
‘Probably,’ I conceded, laughing with him.
‘Well, one thing’s clear,’ said Cad, speaking for the first time since the inspector had entered the room. ‘You two must certainly carry on. There’s no question of handing the whole thing over to the police and sitting back if they’re going to show such staggering lack of imagination. He didn’t even mention the question of why Dudgeon actually died. But then – I couldn’t help noticing – neither did you.’
‘You’re quite right,’ said Alec. ‘We’ve been so excited about the burrs and working out how that bit was managed that we’ve barely thought about the death all day.’
‘And now the burrs have been carted off into police custody and we have no chance of running any of them past our toxicologist,’ I wailed.
‘You said… You said…’ spluttered Alec. ‘Dandy, you germ. You let me lacerate myself from head to toe and you still thought they were poisoned?’
‘You have a toxicologist?’ said Cad, sounding impressed and Alec laughed in spite of himself.
‘I was joking,’ I told Alec. ‘And no, Cad, we don’t. Nor, I fear, are we going to need one. Our mushroom theory was only needed if Dudgeon had spent his day with two babysitters hanging on his arms. And anyway, I’m still sure it’s as I said, I’m afraid. Remember? Right at the start. I said that there was something going on that was worrying the Dudgeons and in the middle of it all Dudgeon died, but there was no reason to think the worry and the death were connected. I don’t see any reason to abandon that now. All that’s happened is that we’ve found out what it was that the Dudgeons were up to.’
‘But not why,’ Alec pointed out. ‘We’ve not even begun to wonder why. Have we, Dan? Dan?’
‘Sorry, darling, I was just thinking,’ I said. ‘That there might be a connection after all. Far too twisty for Inspector Cruickshank, but see what you think. Only don’t get excited, Cad, I fear it’s not nearly twisty enough for you. It’s as I was saying to the inspector – one possible reason for the Dudgeons to stay at the Fair on Friday evening was to make everything look as near normal as it possibly could. A guilty conscience seriously disrupts the judgement on these matters; one doesn’t dare to do anything the least bit odd if one has something to hide and one begins to imagine that any little thing one does do is going to stick out like a red banner and draw the crowds. So although we can imagine that people would just have shrugged and thought nothing of it had Robert not climbed the pole that evening, Dudgeon himself might have thought it was an indispensable part of his “I’ve just been the Burry Man as usual and I’m having the Burry Man’s usual day” routine. So if he was trying to get every detail just so… what was the other striking feature of the Burry Man’s day? Apart from the burrs.’
‘Whisky,’ said Buttercup.
I clapped my hands. ‘Have a gold star, darling, and go to the top of the class. Whisky, exactly. Do you see?’
‘I think so,’ said Alec, as I would have expected.
‘No,’ said Cad, just as predictably.
‘Dr Rennick the police surgeon thought there was enough alcohol in Dudgeon’s system to have poisoned him even if he’d sipped it over the course of a long day and done a good bit of walking in between times. Imagine if Dudgeon – after getting back to the Rosebery Hall – tried to catch up all at once. Wouldn’t that make the poisoning much more likely?’
‘If he glugged down a bottle of the stuff?’ said Alec. ‘I suppose it could do, although I’m happy to say I’ve no personal experience on which to draw.’
‘It stands to reason, though, doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘Oh God, you do realize that the obvious way for us to find out is to go cap in hand to Mr Turnbull and ask for borrower’s privileges for his “substantial library” on the demon drink.’
‘Needs must,’ said Alec rather complacently.
‘I’m glad you agree,’ I told him. ‘I certainly can’t suddenly feign an interest after making my thoughts on the matter so very plain. No, that delightful little task is going to fall to you.’ I bared my teeth at him in an innocent smile. ‘Meanwhile…’
‘Meanwhile?’ echoed Cad.
‘Meanwhile we must find out what Robert Dudgeon was up to. We must discover how the Burry Man spent his day. It would also be helpful to discover who the stand-in was, although I suppose that’s the kind of task the police are better placed to handle. They can go around questioning everyone’s whereabouts without getting a “mind your own business” and a bop on the nose.’
‘Who do you think it might have been?’ said Alec. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Well, it would have to be a man roughly the same height and weight… my initial hunch would be to investigate the ever-obliging Donald.’
‘It wasn’t Donald,’ said Cad. ‘He’s my dyker – my wall-mender, you know – and my men didn’t have the day off.’