‘Is that – Who is it?’
‘It’s Mrs Gilver, Mrs Dudgeon,’ I called back. ‘Can I come in?’
The door opened and Mrs Dudgeon stared out at me, searching my face.
‘Just you?’ she said, glancing behind me. I spread my hands in a gesture of openness. Just me, I tried to show her, and I mean you no harm.
‘Have you come with a message?’ she asked me.
‘No,’ I said, wondering what she could mean by this. ‘I just came to see how you were.’
At last, she stepped aside and gestured for me to enter and I went into the living room with Bunty at my heels, to find the remains of the funeral feast still spread on the table, although the extra cups and plates were all washed and stacked tidily on the sideboard waiting to be returned.
‘Actually,’ I said, sitting at the table, shoving Bunty under it and keeping her penned there by bracing my leg against the pedestal, ‘I wanted to return something of yours. I found it in the woods quite by chance and I thought it best to give it back into your safe-keeping.’ Mrs Dudgeon’s face had drained as I spoke, turning a blue-ish yellow, and she looked around wildly, at the door, up above the mantelpiece behind my head, and then back at me.
I unclasped my bag and fished around in it, while Mrs Dudgeon again threw a terrified glance towards the wall behind me and then towards the door. My hand closed round the pen finally and I drew it out and held it towards her.
‘You dropped it, I believe.’
She stared at the pen for a good three or four of her panting breaths before she seemed to be able to understand what it was, then she put her hand out and took it from me.
‘What made ye think it wis mine?’ she said.
‘One of your sisters told me you were out in the woods with a bottle of ink,’ I said. ‘So when I found this naturally I assumed…’
‘One o’ my sisters?’ she echoed. I realized that I had very likely just dropped someone in it. ‘Whae?’
‘Tina, I think it was,’ I said.
‘Ahh,’ she said. ‘Aye, they are that. They are that.’ Then she shook herself. ‘I had forgotten. I’ve no’ been myself,’ and then with a heart-rending attempt at levity she gave a little laugh. ‘I dinnae ken whit wis up wi’ me that nicht, traipsin’ around the woods like a daftie.’
‘It’s been a very difficult time for you,’ I said. ‘And I’m afraid it’s far from over.’
Again the three-cornered look, up at the wall, over at the door and back to my face.
‘What do ye mean?’ she whispered. ‘What’s happened?’
‘The burrs,’ I said. ‘All the burrs that you brought home?’
‘Where are they?’ she said, her eyes widening until I could see the whites all around. ‘I cannae believe it! I forgot a’ about them. We were suppose tae burn them and I forgot.’ Then she did something I had never seen before and hope never to see again. She clamped both fists against the sides of her head and looking up at the wall behind my head she drummed her knuckles fast and hard on her scalp, her face stark with terror. Unable to bear the sight or the sound of this, I reached forward and caught her wrists in my hands. I had to let go the barrier keeping Bunty under the table top, but she stayed where she was, cowering further back into the shadows if anything.
‘Someone put them on the midden heap out the back,’ I said.
‘We’ve got tae burn them,’ she said. ‘Quick.’ Again the eyes darted to the door and up to the wall.
‘We can’t do that, Mrs Dudgeon,’ I told her. ‘I’m afraid that the police have them now. And they know there are twice as many as there should be. It’s too late.’
‘When?’ she said. ‘When did they get them? How long have they known?’
‘Since this afternoon,’ I told her. ‘But I wouldn’t say they “know” anything much. They’re certainly going to try to find out though.’ To the wall, to the door, back to my face again.
‘Since this afternoon, you say? They’ve never been near me. They’d never… They’d never work it a’ out without comin’ to me. No’ in time.’ The glance flicked around twice, to the wall, to the door, to my face, as she spoke.
I craned around awkwardly, hurting my neck, still holding her hands. Above me and behind me on the wall was their kitchen clock; when I turned back she was looking up at it once more.
‘In time for what?’ I asked her.
She shook her head and said nothing.
‘Inspector Cruickshank thinks that someone was impersonating your husband,’ I said, ‘going around with two helpers of his own getting money and whisky or robbing people’s houses while they all came out to greet him.’ Again it took her a moment or two longer to understand this than it should have, but when the message did get through, she looked at me alert, intrigued.
‘That’s whit they’re thinkin’?’ Her voice was almost scornful.
‘And – this is only my guess – but I think they’ll be round here tomorrow first thing, so you need to get ready and decide what you’re going to tell them.’
‘Tomorrow?’ she said. ‘No’ tonight?’ To the door, to the clock and back to my face again. I shook my head.
‘I don’t think so,’ I told her. ‘If they were coming they would be here by now. It’s almost ten o’clock after all.’ I felt a shiver go through her body as I said this, and this time both she and I looked up at the clock together.
‘Are you expecting someone?’ I asked as her eyes made their route around the room once more. She shook her head.
‘They can come if they like tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’m no’ carin’ what happens tomorrow.’
‘Would you like me to go? If you’re expecting a visitor.’
‘No!’ she said and she wrested one of her wrists from mine only to clasp my arm in return. Bunty gave a tremulous little yelp at the sudden movement. ‘Don’t leave me, I’m beggin’ you, madam. I’m fit to go mad wi’ it, if I’m on ma’ own. Don’t leave me alone.’
I would have preferred a less ambiguous answer to my question before I told her yes or no: the only sense I could make of her fevered glances to the clock and the living-room door was that someone was on his way here to arrive at an appointed hour not long hence and if that person could reduce Mrs Dudgeon to the shambles of nerves before me I was not at all sure I was equal to being one of the welcome party. My only consolation was that Bunty, thoroughly rattled by the tension in the air and huddled quite out of sight under the table, would not stand for any harm coming to me, but would launch herself on any assailant and, while Dalmatians are the least intimidating of all dogs – threat and polka-dots being mutually exclusive – they are really quite large, especially when they have paws on one’s shoulders and are barking right into one’s face. Hugh once found this out when Bunty, happening into a room where he was trying to take a splinter out of my hand and I was being a coward about it, made an understandable mistake and went for him like a wolverine.
‘Of course I won’t leave you,’ I said in what I hoped was a staunch yet soothing voice, ‘but won’t you please tell me what it is that’s wrong? Maybe I can help.’
Mrs Dudgeon shook her head and spoke in a soft, bleak voice.
‘Naeb’dy but the good Lord can help me now,’ she said. ‘And I cannae even bring myself tae ask him.’
So we sat on like that, my hand on her wrist and her hand on mine, without talking, hardly moving, not even looking at each other. Every few seconds I felt a slight shift as she raised her head to look at the clock and turned it to look at the door and I could see the face of my watch on my stretched-out arm as it ticked round, five minutes to ten, three minutes to ten. I was getting a knot between my shoulders and a dull ache lower down from my awkward pose, leaning forward with both arms in front, but I dared not move, lest I miss the sound of feet approaching or the latch lifting on the front door. I could just see Bunty out of the corner of my eye, her eyes gleaming dully in the shadows and her nose quivering with anxious interest at the strangeness of all this.