‘As far as you know they didn’t,’ I said. ‘But did you see Donald with your own eyes on Friday? If not, I think it’s worth checking.’
‘What about the whisky?’ said Buttercup. ‘I thought Donald was dead set against it.’
‘Oh damn, you’re right,’ I said. ‘It depends on the circumstances, though, surely. I daresay family feeling could overcome his scruples in a sufficiently tight pinch. It was only a hunch, mind you. It needn’t be someone bound to the Dudgeons by brotherly loyalty. It could be an accomplice, plain and simple, bound by common cause.’
‘Yes, but what cause?’ Alec said. ‘What tight pinch? What the hell was going on? Something very peculiar when you consider all the details. It had to be premeditated since he knew in advance that it was coming off, and yet not too premeditated because he didn’t seem to know very far in advance, did he? Thursday teatime. What could it have been?’
‘Mail train robbery?’ said Buttercup. ‘And he only found out from the rest of the gang on Thursday afternoon when the train with all the loot was going to be on the tracks?’
‘Welcome home, darling,’ I said. ‘You are not in the Wild West any more and Robert Dudgeon was neither a cattle rustler nor a robber of mail trains.’
‘New York isn’t the Wild West,’ said Buttercup. ‘But I see what you mean, sorry.’
‘Freddy’s got a point, though,’ said Cad. ‘Not a train robbery, but a robbery of some kind perhaps. Because Dudgeon was in difficulty with money. He came to me a week or two ago asking about an advance on his wages and offering to do extra work for extra pay. D’you remember, Dandy, when he was trying to wriggle out of the Burry Man’s day, and you asked him if he was paid for it and I hinted that if so he surely couldn’t pass it up? I did it quite subtly so as not to embarrass him but you might have picked up on it.’
‘Yes, I think I did just manage to catch a whiff of something,’ I said, keeping a straight face but not daring to look at Alec. ‘I don’t suppose he told you what the emergency was?’ Cad shook his head. ‘And did you give him the advance?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Cadwallader. ‘But I looked through the wages books with the steward and when I saw what he was being paid I gave him a raise. Backdated it to when I arrived. Old Uncle Cad really was the most god-awful skinflint.’
‘So in effect, he got the money he was after,’ said Alec. ‘Doesn’t that thicken the plot? Wouldn’t he have been able to get out of his commitment – whatever it was – if he didn’t need the money?’’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But say there was a gang, with a plan to do something nefarious, and say Dudgeon bought his way out with the cash from Cad. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t renege at the last minute on Thursday afternoon and put pressure on him to come in with them after all.’
‘No honour among thieves?’ said Alec.
‘But I don’t like that explanation,’ I said. ‘For one thing it doesn’t fit with what I saw of Robert Dudgeon. He simply didn’t seem the type to be mixed up in anything criminal. And he certainly didn’t seem the type to mix his wife up in it with him. And mark my words, she was in it with him. Up to her neck.’
‘But Dandy, that’s quite run of the mill, you know,’ said Buttercup. ‘Gangsters’ molls are ten a penny in some places and lots of them are every bit as fierce as their boyfriends.’
‘In some places,’ I said. ‘But do you think Queensferry is one of them? And do many gangsters have estate carpentering as a sideline?’ I did not wait for a response. ‘We must be thorough, of course. We can’t rule it out of hand right now. So…?’
‘We can look in the newspapers, see if any likely crime was committed on Friday,’ said Alec. ‘And we should certainly share our thoughts with Inspector Cruickshank. Whether he agrees or not, it’s better that he should know, so that if he comes across something odd he’ll be able to put the bits together.’
‘And I shall continue to cultivate Mrs Dudgeon,’ I said, ‘in hopes that I can persuade her to trust me and tell me what’s going on. Only I need to get to her before the police.’
‘What if your hunch about her were wrong, though?’ said Alec. ‘What if you got her to tell all, assuring her that she could trust you, and then she told you something you simply had to pass on to the inspector?’
I shook my head, unwilling to countenance the notion. ‘How could she? How could those people – Dudgeon and Mrs Dudgeon, I mean, with their neat vegetable patch and their knitted cushions on the footstool – be mixed up in anything truly bad?’
‘You hardly know the woman,’ said Alec. ‘And you only met him once.’
‘It does not always take extensive acquaintance to get the measure of a man,’ I said. ‘The moment I set eyes on Mr Dudgeon – standing in this very room in his stocking soles – I could see that he was as honest as the day is long.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Alec. ‘And what about some of your other first impressions? Rearden, say? Or Shinie Brown? What about the inspector, or that stable lad you seem to have struck up a friendship with? When was the last time you met someone whom you didn’t immediately decide was a good egg?’
‘He’s right, you know, Dandy,’ said Buttercup. ‘You were just as bad at school.’
‘Donald,’ I said, stoutly. ‘I didn’t take to Brother Donald at all. And I can’t stick the Turnbulls.’
‘Oh well, the Turnbulls!’ said Alec. ‘There are limits even for you.’
At that moment, the telephone on Cadwallader’s desk began ringing and he went to answer it, laughing along with the others; I suppose it must have made a nice change for him to have someone else be the butt of the jokes for a while.
‘It’s for you, Dandy,’ he said. ‘One of your conquests, no doubt. Ringing to ask you out for a walk in the moonlight,’ I gave a good-natured smile and took the receiver.
‘Dandy?’ said Hugh’s voice down the line. ‘Who in the world was that?’ I sobered immediately. Hugh was not likely to have rung me up just to hear the sweet sound of my voice, and I feared a summons home. What he said next only confirmed it.
‘Look, this can’t go on. It’s been days on end now and it’s getting a bit much.’
‘How’s the shoot?’ I asked him. I felt I knew the answer. Hugh would only ever decide he needed me at home if things were going very badly on the grouse moor and he needed a recipient for his grumbles. Indeed he can get testy enough, if driven to it by recalcitrant birds and clumsy beaters, to hold me and the other wives in the party responsible; for keeping the guns late at breakfast and distracting them after dinner with cards and silly gossip. Obviously, if I were away from home and his party was one of bachelors and widowers only, as this year, and yet the bag was still disappointing it was much harder to lay the blame at my door. Hence, my essential return. His next words, however, suggested that these assumptions were wrong.
‘What?’ he said. ‘The shoot? Oh, fine, fine, fine. If I could get a minute’s peace to enjoy it. It’s that bloody mutt of yours, Dandy. It’s well out of season now, has been for days, and it’s upsetting the whole household’ – by ‘household’, I knew that Hugh meant his smelly pack of hounds, terriers and accidents – ‘so I’m sending it to you.’
I had a vision of Bunty with a brown label around her neck being carried up the castle drive in the basket of a bicycling postman.
‘Drysdale put it on the 5.28. You’re to meet the train at Dalmeny at 7.40. It’s in the guard’s van.’
‘Hugh!’ I squeaked.
‘Too late to argue,’ said Hugh. Of course it was. He deliberately had not rung me until it was too late to argue; that was him through and through, but his machinations were redundant in this case.
‘I’m not arguing,’ I said. ‘What a sweet thing to have thought of. Thank you.’