‘Stuffy,’ I heard her say, and then, ‘Worse than stuffy. What on earth has she been -'
‘Grant!’ I squeaked as she threw the bathroom door wide, concerned that a hallboy might still be lurking.
‘Oh, you’re there…’ she said, ‘madam,’ with her usual pause. ‘What is that smell?’
‘I came a cropper with a shovelful of dung and a bleeding dog,’ I told her, sure that if I made it sound revolting enough she would not ask for any details. I was right. She simply rolled her eyes.
‘What were you wearing?’ she demanded, her mind running naturally to laundry.
‘Oh, my two-layered green and calfskin walking shoes,’ I said. ‘No worries there.’
‘Gloves?’
‘None.’
She nodded, satisfied, and squaring her shoulders went to find the washing.
Chapter Nine
‘So,’ I said to Alec back down in the library, ‘what do you think?’ Cadwallader was off on some errand but Buttercup was there, on the edge of her seat with interest, her buttery curls bouncing as she chewed her cake.
‘Can they possibly be as they seem?’ said Alec, meaning the Turnbulls.
‘Are they for real?’ said Buttercup in gurgling American. ‘That’s how you’d say it in New York, darling,’ she said as we turned to stare. ‘You’d say “Are they for real?” In the Outer Burghs anyway.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘One does meet some strange people who turn out to be exactly what they portray themselves to be. Look at Hugh. He’s “for real”.’
‘Poor old Hugh,’ said Alec. ‘You are mean about him, Dan. And I’m beginning to see the other side of it, now. Gilverton is in better heart and better repair than many a grander -’
‘Spare me, Alec, please,’ I begged him. ‘It’s not the doing. It’s the reporting afterwards. I spend a great deal of my time at dress-fittings. Or I used to anyway, and Hugh is often pleased with the results, but I don’t bring home the paper patterns and spread them on the tea-table to explain how it’s done. And to return to the subject, if they are to be relied upon, then what that means is that we need to explain why those burdock seeds ended up on the Dudgeons’ midden.’
‘It’s not half as glamorous as I thought, being a detective,’ grumbled Buttercup.
‘It depends on the case,’ I said. ‘If I murder you now, for interrupting, there won’t be any middens involved.’
Buttercup pursed her lips ostentatiously and I resumed.
‘Now, what I thought was this: perhaps Mrs Dudgeon always brings them home – perhaps it’s part of the mystical magical element. But this year, of course, they would have been the last thing on her mind and so one of the sisters may have dealt with them instead. Some sister who’s not much of a Gertrude Jekyll and who simply thought, “Bits of dead plant: put them with all the other bits of dead plant,” which is exactly what I would have done had it been me. We can easily find out – and by we I mean you, darling – from one of the Burry Man’s two helpers what usually happens to the seeds at the end of the day. And you’ll be killing two birds with one stone if you seek them out, Alec, because they will also be able to tell you whether they saw anyone slip Robert Dudgeon the famous sandwich.’ I saw Buttercup get ready to remind me that he could not eat a thing all day – she was very proud of having spotted this before anyone else – but I quelled her. ‘In a packet, I mean. For later. We certainly need to find that out.’
‘The sandwich?’ said Alec. ‘I don’t quite… I had a dream about a sandwich. Last night, I think.’
‘It wasn’t last night, darling,’ I told him. ‘It was luncheon today. And you weren’t dreaming, you were listening to me talking through the alcoholic haze.’ Alec nodded rather sheepishly.
‘Now, if the Burry Man doesn’t usually take his burrs home for some ritual purpose at the end of the day, then we need to find out at whose instigation they ended up back at the cottage this year. Who gathered them up and put them in the cart. Because – and it gives me great pain to say this – I can’t see any reason for them to be whisked away from the scene except the most sinister reason imaginable.’
‘Oh Dandy, you can’t be serious,’ said Alec. Buttercup looked puzzled.
‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘But Mr Turnbull – or to be more exact Mrs Turnbull – with her comfortable knowledge of local fungi got me thinking. Isn’t there some kind of mushroom – toadstool, really – that’s completely harmless if ingested in most circumstances, but absolutely deadly if taken along with alcoholic drink?’
‘Is there?’ said Alec.
‘I’m sure there is,’ I said. ‘You never met my parents, darling, but they were most… what’s the word, Buttercup?’
‘Mad?’ said Buttercup. ‘Not to be unkind, but I’d say they were mad.’
‘Well, certainly eccentric,’ I admitted. ‘William Morris wasn’t nearly earthy enough for them. William Cobbett, now! And they thumbed through Culpeper’s Herbal as though it were Whitaker’s Almanack.’
Buttercup snorted. ‘D’you remember, Dan, when I came to stay with you and your mother burnt my bodice in the drawing-room fire and gave me that leaflet about consumption and healthy lungs?’ We both laughed. ‘Although I must say,’ she went on, ‘it was wonderful afterwards. No corsets for three glorious weeks until I got home again and my mother whisked me straight to the Army and Navy. She was shocked to the core.’
‘I must have overheard it from them,’ I said. ‘I’m absolutely sure that there is such a mushroom. And – I can’t believe I’m giving air to this when Cad isn’t here to enjoy it – but on the subject of untraceable poisons, there’s “untraceable” and then there’s “perfectly traceable if one looks for it but so unlikely that one doesn’t”. And I just wonder. If the burrs were poisoned, then the poison wouldn’t be in the stomach at all, but only in the blood. And if the doctor didn’t check the blood for that particular poison – and why would he? – then Bob’s your uncle.’
‘But are you saying that Mrs Dudgeon did this?’ said Alec. ‘Wouldn’t she burn them in that case?’
‘No, I don’t think she did do it,’ I said, ‘if anyone actually did anything. It’s the Turnbulls and Miss Brown who are in my sights at the moment. The Turnbulls because they have the required knowledge and their peculiar ideas almost amount to a motive and Joey Brown because she has acted rather shiftily more than once and she obviously has something on her mind. And actually, of course! That’s what she might have been doing round the back this morning. Putting the burrs on the heap or checking that they had been or something. That would make perfect sense. But… let’s consider Mrs Dudgeon for a moment.’
‘If we find out that it was not her idea to take the burrs home, then she is in the clear,’ said Alec.
‘But if it was her idea,’ I supplied, ‘then perhaps the reason she was so desperate to get rid of all her sisters and have the place to herself was so that she could go out and burn them.’
‘And now she has got the place to herself,’ said Alec, sitting up suddenly.
‘Yes indeed, but only by taking the extreme step of sending her husband’s body to the undertakers for its last night above ground. And that obviously took a lot of resolve to carry through, Alec. She was visibly pained at the thought of doing it. And for that reason I’m willing to bet that if there was a murder it wasn’t anything to do with Mrs Dudgeon. I bet if you track down someone who was there you’ll find that it wasn’t her who put the burrs in the cart.’