The Burry Man's Day (33 page)

This made perfect sense, of course, and should have occurred to us earlier. We left him rather despondently and turned down towards the promenade to walk up and down and reconsider, while Bunty rushed at seagulls and chased after stray pieces of picnic litter left over from the weekend and the Fair.

‘We’re not getting anywhere very much, are we?’ I said, leaning against the sea wall and watching the waves lap the rocks below. ‘We still don’t know who X is, or why he was necessary, or how Dudgeon died if it wasn’t a heart attack. How I wish I’d asked Mrs Dudgeon about a flask, Alec.’

‘A flask?’

‘When Robert got back to the Rosebery Hall, you know. Whether he topped himself up with whisky.’

‘It would take more than a flask,’ said Alec. ‘I’m no drinker, but even I could down a hip flask and come to no harm. If we’re talking about enough to make the doctor believe that he’d been at it all day, we’d need to be looking at a bottle. A half-bottle at the very least. And don’t be too hard on yourself, Dan. It was only yesterday we cracked the puzzle of the burrs after all.’

‘But I know we’re missing something about the registry and the documents,’ I said. ‘I was sure we wouldn’t find that marriage entry.’

‘Well, there was no mistaking it,’ said Alec. ‘And it was right in the middle of the page, not even at the bottom where we could say it had been squeezed in by a master forger.’

‘I know you’re joking,’ I said. ‘But Mrs Dudgeon
was
out wandering in the night with a pen and ink, and we
did
ask ourselves what one could need to write that one couldn’t write in the comfort of one’s own bedroom.’

‘Are you suggesting that she tramped all the way down here, and broke into the registry to tamper with an entry?’ said Alec. ‘I agree the pen and ink need to be explained, but I don’t think that particular explanation is going to do the job.’

I was worrying at a piece of moss growing in the crack between two copestones on top of the wall, picking at it with the hard point at the tip of my glove where the seams met and then blowing the pieces away.

‘Grant will scold you,’ said Alec, mildly. I said nothing. ‘Oh, come on, Dandy,’ he went on. ‘Give it up. It’s not like you to hold on so obstinately to an idea just because it’s your own.’ I thought back to the newspapers of the evening before but forbore to mention them.

‘Let’s think about X instead,’ I said.

The sea breeze was beginning to make my eyes water and I turned my back on the view and leaned against the wall facing McIver’s Brae instead. A brewer’s cart had drawn up at the awkward corner by Brown’s Bar and the draymen, having thrown a stuffed sack to the ground, were expertly letting barrels fall on to it then bounce off towards the open hatch to the cellar. A sudden prickle ran down the back of my neck, more than could be explained by the wind ruffling my collar.

‘Joey Brown!’ I exclaimed. ‘Alec, remember what I told you about when Joey Brown gave the Burry Man his dram? That was before we knew about X and we believed that she was just being a ninny. But now, thinking about it now, I don’t think she
was
just spooked by the costume. I think she knew it wasn’t him.’

‘But if she noticed, wouldn’t lots of other people?’

‘No, darling. She was a close friend of the family. Her brother was the Dudgeon boy’s lifelong chum and she was practically their daughter-in-law. And add to that the fact that she was frozen with terror and so probably looking much more closely at him than anyone else – you know the way your eyes are drawn to sights that terrify you. I was there. I saw her look at his hands and then look into his eyes and then shriek.’

‘And then she told her father?’ said Alec. He looked just as excited as I felt. ‘And when Willie Brown came rushing out into the street with the glass of whisky it was to check the story out, or to see if he recognized who it was. Would that fit with how the scene played?’

I thought back to the curious little drama on the cobbles just along the road from where we now stood, and nodded.

‘Yes, and what’s more, I think that was why the Burry Man refused the glass and the proffered whisky was dashed to the ground. Shinie didn’t really want to give the “cup o’ kindness” to someone who had tricked him and X wasn’t about to take it from someone who wasn’t playing along. Oh, Shinie Brown and his whisky. It’s all very torrid and heaving with significance, isn’t it?’

‘How d’you mean?’ said Alec.

‘I mean the bottle of Royal Highlander for his son really, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Haven’t I told you about that? I thought it was touching at first – he keeps a bottle of special malt in case of his son’s miraculous return from the war – but now I’m beginning to find it a little strained, a little mawkish. There are things in life too solemn to be played out with whisky after all.’

‘Spoken like a true cocktail drinker,’ said Alec. ‘And there’s no such thing as Royal Highlander whisky, I’m sure.’

This was going a step too far.

‘I may not like the stuff, Alec, but I do pay attention to details when I’m on a case and I tell you I saw it with my own eyes. Royal Highlander whisky, with a picture of a regimental piper on the label.’

‘Are you sure you’re not thinking of porridge oats?’ said Alec, and then stepped smartly out of the way of my toe as I went to kick him.

‘Positive,’ I said. ‘Pat Rearden told me all about it that day in Brown’s Bar. Apparently it sits on the top shelf. Come on, I’ll show you while we quiz Miss Brown.’

It was just on eleven and since today was a working day there was only one pair of old men to be scandalized by my entering the pub. Not even that, because when they turned to look as the door opened I recognized one of them as a neighbour from the crowd at Craw’s Close on the night of the greasy pole.

‘Grand day,’ he said in greeting as we reached the bar and Alec rapped on the counter for service.

‘A grand day to be bringing yer wife into a public bar at eleven o’clock in the forenoon,’ said the other witheringly, which was a bit much since he was sitting there himself with a small glass of beer and an enormous whisky before him.

‘I’m not his wife,’ I said which, on reflection, was hardly helpful to my bid for respectability. My chum from Friday evening only laughed his wheezy laugh and told us to ‘never mind Sandy’.

‘Good morning, Miss Brown,’ I said as that young lady appeared in response to Alec’s knock.

‘Madam,’ said Joey Brown. ‘Sir. What can I get you?’

‘I’ll have a large whisky,’ said Alec. ‘And the same for you, Dandy?’

‘Is there any of the damson gin still on the go?’ I asked. Joey Brown shook her head with her eyes wide and staring and the two old men at the end of the bar broke off their conversation and craned to look at me. I could feel two spots of colour begin on my cheeks and start to spread out across my neck in blotches. Was it really so shocking?

‘Lemonade, then,’ I muttered.

‘Somebody’s settled intae the Ferry awfy quick,’ said the sour one of the old men half under his breath. Joey Brown poured some whisky for Alec and then reached a bottle of lemonade from under the counter, shook it violently and unstoppered it. I watched her as she poured it expertly into a glass, but I was aware of the tilt of Alec’s chin out of the corner of my eye as he looked up and along the row of bottles on the top shelf.

‘As I thought,’ he said softly, ‘no such thing.’ I sighed extravagantly and looked up for myself, ready to enjoy the moment when I pointed out to him that there it was in plain view all the time. Macallan, Glenmorangie, Glenfiddich, Jura, Highland Park . . . I could not see it.

‘Highland Park?’ I said doubtfully.

‘And the piper?’ asked Alec. He was right, the picture on the Highland Park bottle was the usual one of an anonymous glen done in garish daubs.

‘Miss Brown,’ I said, taking a sip of the lemonade, which was delicious; sweet-tart and very cold, ‘I hope you won’t mind my mentioning it, but your father and I and Mr Rearden were chatting the other day – and then I happened to tell Mr Osborne here – about the bottle of Royal Highlander.’

There was a sucking in of breath from one or both of the worthies at the end of the bar, and I supposed it was rather clod-hopping of me simply to launch in like that. Joey Brown said nothing but only stared at me with her customary terrified rabbit stare. One wondered how such a nervous, flustered type ever coped when the men were three deep at the counter and baying in slurred voices. (I remembered that when I had passed on Ferry Fair’s Eve she had coped by turning her back on the crowds and cleaning behind the bar.)

‘Your brother’s whisky?’ I said, trying to speak as gently as I could. ‘The special bottle your father keeps for your brother? Only I can’t see it now. Was it drunk? Please don’t tell me someone stole it – I understand it was rather a special one. I do hope no one was so disrespectful as to . . .’

Joey Brown had been blinking faster and faster and rocking on her heels as I spoke, and at this point she broke away and fled into the back shop bumping hard off the door lintel and stumbling. I bit my lip and looked at Alec, horrified. The two old-timers were looking most uncomfortable.

‘Ye’re right enough, though, missus,’ said the friendly one, after an awkward pause. ‘Take a look, Sandy. It’s away again.’

Sandy screwed up his face and squinted at the top shelf, then nodded.

‘Ye’re right,’ he said. ‘It used to sit in the middle there between the . . . Och, but they’re a’ jumbled up from Joey cleanin’.’

‘Aye well,’ said his friend. ‘It’s for the best, doubtless, don’t you think?’

‘I do indeed,’ I said to him. ‘Although one can hardly imagine how much it must hurt his father to give up after all this time.’

‘He tried before, ye ken,’ said Sandy. ‘Took the bottle away without a word. This was years back. Four or five years now.’

‘Four, it’ll be, Sandy,’ said the other. ‘I mind it was just about a year after the end o’ it all. The bottle was gone and then it was back again. Mebbes this time, though, eh?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Alec. ‘Although Miss Joey still seems considerably upset.’ There was still neither sight nor sound of Joey Brown returning.

‘I’d better go after her,’ I said. ‘Since it was me who put my foot in it. I can’t just leave her to weep.’

Alec gave me a shrewd look and I knew what he was thinking. Part of me wanted to comfort Joey, it was true, but there was another part of me which knew if I comforted her into a proper lull I could then ask some questions with a hope of a plain answer. Hardly something to be proud of but there it was. Alec lifted the wooden flap of the bar and I stepped behind and through the doorway to the passage.

There was no sign of the girl in the back kitchen or in the passageway where I threaded my way along beside crates of empties and boxes tied shut with twine, but a door at the end was ajar. I knocked softly and pushed it open a little more.

‘Miss Brown?’ I called. There was no answer. I was at the head of a set of stairs leading down and although the steps themselves were in darkness there was a suggestion of a light on somewhere below. I began to feel my way down carefully. Five days at Cassilis Castle had fitted me well to tackle strange stairways in the dark and these were wooden and straight; I reached the bottom without mishap and set off towards the light, passing various dungeons where barrels rested and pipes gurgled. I knocked again on the door with the light behind it and then went in.

It was a large, square cellar with a door open to the back yard. Shinie Brown was in there, standing in the middle of the floor with a polishing cloth in one hand and an empty bottle in the other looking between me and the corner of the room, frozen in astonishment. I followed his gaze and there sat Joey huddled on a brick ledge in the wall, half-hidden by the wash copper, as though trying to stay warm.

‘I’m so sorry to be barging about like this,’ I said, dividing the apology between the father and daughter, ‘but I’ve upset you, Miss Brown, and I wanted to come to apologize.’

‘I broke it,’ said Joey Brown. It took me a couple of minutes to understand her meaning.

‘I broke it when I was cleaning, Burry Man’s night,’ she said. She threw a terrified glance towards her father as she said this, and I looked too, hoping that he was not going to fly into a rage with her and force me to leap in to her defence. He was still staring at me, however, an amused glint beginning to mingle with the amazement in his eyes. Eventually he turned towards the girl and spoke.

‘That’s right, lass,’ he said. He went over towards Joey and drew her away from the corner, tidying up as he did so, shifting the lid of the copper into place and tucking the hose pipes in neatly underneath it out of the way. If Joey was halfway through a wash she seemed to have forgotten it, and she followed her father meekly out into the centre of the room.

‘It’s time to put that behind us,’ he said. ‘I could never have taken it doon myself and got rid o’ it, madam, but when Joey here said tae me she’d broke it, I found I wisnae angered nor sad, I was jist relieved. It’s time tae put a’ that ahint us.’

Joey Brown seemed to take no comfort from any of this, however, but searched her father’s face as though he spoke in some code she could not decipher.

‘I’ll take you back upstairs,’ I said. I was sure being down here among the fumes of this noxious chamber could not be good for her, upset as she was. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mr Brown,’ I said. ‘I can see you’re busy.’

Shinie Brown shrugged with a gesture of great magnanimity and again the look of amusement danced in his eyes. I could see that I must be a ridiculous figure to him, bumbling around, no sense at all of how to behave, and I was glad to draw Joey Brown’s arm into mine and lead her away.

‘I found out about Bobby Dudgeon and you,’ I told her as we mounted the dark stairs again, ‘since we spoke last, and I wanted to say how sorry I was. I understand now why you were so very upset at Mr Dudgeon’s death.’ We edged our way back along the passageway and into the kitchen, where Joey Brown turned to face me.

‘I don’t know what you mean, madam,’ she said.

‘I mean I know you were engaged,’ I said, thinking how very childlike she seemed with her blanket denials, like a toddler standing over the bits of a broken vase insisting she never touched it.