‘And can we do anything?’ said Cad.
‘You could try to come up with a reason that Mrs Dudgeon should be out wandering the woods in the middle of the night with a bottle of ink,’ I said. ‘Or actually, more usefully, do you have a Post Office Directory in the house?’ Cad and Buttercup looked at each other and then shrugged in unison. ‘If you do you could try to work out the Dudgeons’ most obvious route from the Rosebery Hall towards their cottage and see who lives along the way that might be of interest.’
‘Of interest in what way?’ said Buttercup, screwing up her face as she used to do when asked questions in class at our finishing school. I knew exactly what I meant, but it was impossible to explain to someone who did not catch on to it automatically.
‘Or,’ I said, scooting down in my seat as Buttercup had done and giving Alec a sharp kick on the front of the shin, ‘you could see what you can do with this sorry case. Try holding him under in a water-butt perhaps and then get him to do the detecting. It’s what he’s here for, after all. And, finally, tell me where I can lay my hands on a dog.’
Chapter Eight
One of the stable boys, it transpired, had a dear little dog and was only too happy to loan it out for the afternoon – it was usually condemned to spend its days tied to a ring in the yard except when he could spare a few minutes. It was a typical Scottish villager’s dog, about spaniel-sized, with a bit of whippet and a bit of shaggy terrier in it somewhere, no carriage to speak of, bandy in the rear legs, with an extravagantly fringed tail curving over its back. In local parlance: a wee black dug, and I felt a pang of longing for Bunty, who would have been coming back on the train with Grant and the extra clothes that very minute, except that now was not a time for her to be out in society, poor thing. I hoped fervently that Hugh was doing a good job of keeping her confined, because sweet as this little fellow was, I would not like Bunty’s children to have another like him as their father.
He would serve my afternoon’s purposes however, keeping my earlier shivers at bay and giving me, more importantly, an excuse to be walking through the woods. In the first of these roles, I have to say, he did not excel because far from snuffling on with his nose to the path and ignoring the phantoms which had so unnerved me on my first outing he began, as we advanced, to prick up his ears and lift his quivering nose into the still air of the forest and once or twice he looked up at me as though seeking reassurance instead of providing it, shrinking close into my legs with his tail down.
‘Do you smell rabbits?’ I asked him, in a hearty voice. ‘Rabbits are nothing to a fine fellow like you. Or is it a fox you hear? I won’t let a fox get you.’
He rolled his eyes at me and then faced to the front again as though to say: ‘Well, all right then, if you promise.’
So I was forced to stride out, bravely whistling, keeping up his spirits instead of he mine and all the while trying not to think that it was ghosts that were raising his hackles as they had done to me. It might be Lila and her band of brothers, silently stalking me, except I knew in my heart that they would never do anything silently. Well then, it must be a peculiarity of the wind in the trees or some other natural oddity. It was not ghosts. Ghosts, for one thing, did not exist and even if they did they would hardly haunt dogs. Who ever heard of a haunted dog? Cats, certainly – cats were eerie things at the best of times – and possibly horses. But never dogs.
At last my little path fell in with the lane and I forgot all about the possible supernatural inhabitants of Cadwallader’s woods as I planned the task before me. Thankfully for my purposes, all was tranquil at both houses; I was certain that if the holy terrors had been cooped up inside the walls would have pulsed with the effort of containing them. Their father was undoubtedly out at work, and there was no sign of their careworn elder sister either nor the mother, who had yet to appear. I supposed she might well be in confinement again, awaiting another addition to her brood, but I was glad that she was nowhere to be seen right now.
There were signs too that Mr Faichen had been and gone with his hearse. A trail of fresh horse droppings led along the lane before me and there were eight rosettes printed in the dust at Mrs Dudgeon’s gate showing clearly how two enormous horses had stood, shifting their hooves, waiting while the coffin was carried out. Now to my sleuthing. Luckily, there were no windows on the side wall of the cottage and so, knowing that I could not be seen by anyone inside, I bent down and untied the string from the collar of my little friend. He sat patiently while I did so and remained sitting, looking up at me, once he was free. Bunty would never have been so well behaved.
‘Shoo,’ I told him, in a whisper. ‘Go on with you. Run along and play.’
At last, with a look over his shoulder to make sure he had understood me, he trotted off along the front of the cottages. I turned a sharp right and made my way around the back. I would ‘realize’ shortly that I had lost him, and then would skirt the cottages closely in my ‘search’ and have a good look at whatever might have been Joey Brown’s object back there this morning. The stable lad had assured me that it was perfectly safe to let the dog off its leash – I was not being that cavalier with another’s loved one – and that he would come back when called by his name, which was Nipper. ‘Cos of how he was the wee-est one, mind,’ the boy had assured me. ‘Not cos he bites, cos he disnae.’
I strolled, whistling under my breath, along the tree-line at the back of the cottages, wishing it were autumn and I might pick up pretty-coloured leaves. (I should never actually be so soppy as to trip along in woodland picking up autumn leaves, of course, but Mrs Dudgeon or her neighbours weren’t to know that and I could have dithered about quite plausibly had the season allowed.) As it was I had to make do with walking as slowly as I could and shooting sideways glances towards the back of the cottages from under my hat.
There were coal bunkers and log stores along the back walls of the cottages under the scullery windows, axes and shovels hanging neatly from nails beside them. Between the cottages and the boundary of the gardens lay the washing greens, empty on one side and loaded on the other, and a pair of vegetable patches, both well-stocked and looking extremely lush in the current season. Then along the boundary closest to me were the usual little sheds and tool stores, rusting heaps of old wheelbarrows and rotten fence posts, as well as the midden heaps which I supposed had to go along with such bountiful-looking kitchen gardens. I knew rather more than I should have chosen to about midden heaps, their construction, their proper maintenance and management, and their invaluable contribution to a cropping scheme – they were another of Hugh’s mystifying enthusiasms, and at the crushing end of the spectrum of boredom, even for him. These he would have heartily approved of: two pairs, one of each pair open and one covered, as all good midden heap makers know is essential. They were neatly contained inside walls of sod and utterly revolting on this hot afternoon, buzzing with flies and reeking of elderly cabbage and grass.
After these, and hardly a respite to the senses, came a rather noisome, brick-walled privy, evidently shared between the two families, and with a sudden sinking of the heart and a flush of shame it struck me that this might be the solution to the mystery of Joey Brown’s morning excursion. Nothing more than this. If she were the dainty, easily discomfited type, she might well have been thrown into confusion upon meeting me on her way back from a visit here. But if such a visit had been her object would she not have asked one of the sisters to sit with Robert’s body? Could she possibly be so ludicrously modest as all that? And her a barmaid. I could hardly believe that a girl robust enough to sit with a corpse could not summon the grit to mention a visit to a privy. If it came to that, however, I could hardly believe that the same girl who shrieked and fled Robert Dudgeon in his burry suit could calmly sit beside him in his shroud.