There was a puzzled silence from the other end of the line. Hugh does not and cannot believe that I actually like Bunty, love Bunty, and do not simply pretend to love her to annoy him. I was sure it had given him a thrill of guilty pleasure to pack her off to me like this, but it had backfired.
‘Have you sent her things?’ I asked.
Hugh rumbled.
‘Oh, Hugh, please! You have sent her things along with her, haven’t you?’
‘It’s a dog, Dandy,’ said Hugh. ‘It doesn’t have things.’
With this he had the upper hand again and there was no regaining it so I thanked him and rang off.
‘Bunty?’ said Alec. I nodded. ‘And dastardly Hugh has sent her out into the harsh world without so much as a flask of tea and a change of underwear?’
‘You don’t mind, Buttercup, do you?’ I asked. ‘My dog coming? Too bad if you do, really, because she’s arriving off the 7.40. She’s no trouble. Beautifully trained and…’ I trailed off, aware that there was no point in building her up when they were just about to meet her face to face and learn the truth. ‘Well, she’s still a puppy, really,’ I said.
‘She’s seven,’ said Alec. ‘If she were a person she would be older than you.’
‘No, we don’t mind if Buttercup comes, do we, Freddy?’ said Cad.
Buttercup did not answer, but only shook her fist at me and growled.
I walked to the station – there was just time – thinking that Bunty might be a bit overwrought by the excitement of the journey and a ride in a motor car on top of it would not put her in the best light when she met her hosts. Besides, the rain and hail had spent themselves and the evening was sparkling again as the sinking sun caught the droplets on leaves, grass and fence wire. I tramped along, sniffing the damped-dust smell that summer rain leaves behind it, and feeling very content with my lot. We were making headway with the case – and we now had the strong arm of the law to take on the nosy-parkering jobs that give the amateur detective so much trouble – Bunty was coming, Alec was here and Hugh, now that he had got rid of my darling from under his feet, was apparently quite happy to let me do as I chose for as long as I chose to do it. Added to all of this, because either the afternoon’s storm or Robert Dudgeon’s funeral in the morning had brought an interruption to the work of the day, there were men and children amongst the hay, there were women out in front of the Dalmeny cottages, putting their washing back up to catch the last warmth of the sun and there were labourers at work in a far corner of a road-side field, the steady tock-tock of their hammers against the stones sounding like a metronome to keep the gurgling songbirds in time. In short, bucolic bliss.
I slowed, stopped and retraced my steps until I could see the glint off the bare shoulders of the labourers again. If they were at work in a corner of a field, bashing hammers against rock, they could only be wall-menders, which meant that one of them was more than likely Donald Dudgeon.
Obviously, I could not scale the nearest gate and make straight for them, but if I were to go back to the corner by the village green and start from there, making for the station, I would pass through them as though on a plumb-line. So, with my feet already beginning to squelch in my light shoes, I set off. There were no meadow flowers to pick as late in the season as this, which was a shame since that would have explained very nicely why I should splash through a field instead of walking sensibly down the road and along the bottom, but the straight path across the field was the shortest route, so I began to walk very fast and looked at my watch with an extravagant gesture every few seconds or so. If they saw me coming they would naturally think I was late and making a beeline. Actually, when I focused on my watch-face during one of these ostentatious checks I saw that I really was rather late, and I redoubled my pace.
‘Phew!’ I said loudly, nearing the group of men a minute or two later. ‘Who would have thought it could get so warm again after that downpour?’ I said this partly to put them at their ease about being discovered with their shirts off, partly just in greeting, and by the time I’d delivered my little speech I had had time to look around the group and see that I recognized none of them. They all touched their caps and then stood staring at me, wondering what I was doing suddenly in their midst. ‘Still it must be much more pleasant work now than at noon, I daresay.’
One of the men, the oldest and so probably the boss, answered.
‘It is that, madam. That it is.’ Again he looked inquiringly at me.
‘I’m making for the station,’ I said, to nods of dawning comprehension. Most helpfully at that moment we all heard the sound of the train beginning the crossing of the Forth towards us, the metal of the bridge setting up a rumble like distant thunder.
‘I doubt ye’ve missed it,’ said the foreman, looking over his shoulder at the field I still had to cross to get there, but I assured him that I was only going to collect a parcel and I leaned companionably against the mended bit of wall while one of his underlings set about untying the string holding the gate shut to allow me passage.
‘I suppose you’re behindhand, what with the rain and the funeral?’ I said. ‘And you’re short of men too, without Donald Dudgeon.’ This was rather clunking but I could think of no better way to lead up to it before the gate was opened and I was forced to leave them.
‘Donald whae?’ said the foreman, looking around his team as though to check that all were present and correct.
‘Wasn’t he off all day in mourning?’ I said. ‘And Friday too? Am I right in thinking he was off on Friday?’
‘Mourning?’ said the foreman. His expression, as plain as could be, was asking what on earth I was wittering on about, but he was too polite to follow it up in voice.
‘Rab Dudgeon was buried today,’ said one of the lads. ‘Is that what ye’re meaning? But whae’s Donald?’
‘Oh!’ said the foreman. ‘Flamin’ Donald, you mean. Naw, Flamin’ Donald’s no’ one o’ ma men. He’s wi’ that Yank over Cassilis.’ He spoke as though Cassilis was in the next but one county, not just a stroll in summer shoes up the nearest road.
‘I thought you were Cassilis men,’ I said. There was a ripple of low laughter at that and the foreman shook his head.
‘Naw, that’s a tinpot wee caper,’ he said. ‘Jist Flamin’ Donald and one laddie. We’re Rosebery.’ So I had splashed through the field and made myself late for nothing. ‘Here,’ went on the foreman, ‘has the Yank been goin’ about saying’ this is his land?’
‘Here, Addie,’ said another. ‘He’s maybe got battle plans. If yous hear musket fire, get ready to lay doon yer life.’
‘Aye, ken whit thon pilgrims are like,’ said the foreman, showing a rather shaky grasp, I thought, of colonial history. The boy had got the gate untied by now and I passed through with a nod of thanks, considering briefly whether to reveal that I was a guest of thon pilgrim Yankee but deciding against it.
I scurried across the fields towards the station, racing the train even while I told myself I had not a hope of beating it. Poor Donald Dudgeon! One could understand why he had attracted such a nickname if he really were the star-turn of the hellfire and damnation preaching world in these parts, but it was bound to be a grievance to him if he were as strait-laced linguistically as these types usually seemed to be. I remembered one particular nursemaid of my youth, terribly purse-mouthed and unyielding, who smacked my hand with a pudding spoon just for saying ‘Heavens!’ Her name had been Florence Poste and we children had called her Fencepost which was an absolutely accurate description of her outline and general demeanour, but she had not seen it in that light when she overheard it. I had always been immune from nicknames myself, friends and enemies alike agreeing that they could not improve on Dandelion Dahlia, but I had sympathy for those saddled with real burdens. Buttercup, for instance, had my pity although it would never be possible for me to think of her as anything else, and to be fair when she was dubbed Buttercup it was not intended to be descriptive. I wondered briefly about Shinie Brown as I jumped down from the final gate and trotted between the two rows of railwaymen’s cottages while the train drew into the station above me. He was not bald, nor particularly red-faced, and there was no obvious source of boyhood shininess that I could think of. If his surname had been White or even Gold… The engine gathered steam and began to haul away and as it did so I could hear, loud and clear, a stream of excited barks and whines and the sound of the station-master swearing.