There was a spluttering sound from beside me and Cad sat up straight, wiping his mouth.
‘Dandy,’ he said, ‘are you resigning?’
‘Resigning?’ I echoed.
‘I’m not sure you can, you know. I entered this business arrangement in good faith and now you say that you’re fed up and you’re simply going to tell the inspector all he needs to know to arrest one of my estate tenants who has had enough trouble to last her a lifetime? Well, all I’m saying is I’m not sure that’s on. Not sure at all.’
This was, I think, the sternest speech I had ever heard Cadwallader make and I was about to appeal to Buttercup and Alec for support, to remind Cad that I had taken pains right from the start to explain to him about the unkindness of justice and the impossibility of telling where the ball would roll once one had let go of it, but before I could gather my wits to speak it struck me that he was right. I could not possibly hand over what I knew to Inspector Cruickshank and just leave Mrs Dudgeon to his mercy; not because she was under Cad’s wing and Cad had employed me – I was firm on that point and always would be – but because I knew in my very bones that Cad was right: she had had enough trouble to last her a lifetime. And if cruel blind justice would only make her suffer more, then cruel blind justice would have to do it without my help.
I did not quite know what to make of this revelation as it struck me; I should far rather have thought of myself as ‘Dandy Gilver: servant of truth’ than as ‘Dandy Gilver: woman, wife and mither o’ bairns’ and I knew that taking cases and meddling in police business was only justified so long as I marched in step with them, doing what they also would do. Once I began to plough my own furrow, I was in danger of committing one of those ‘spoilsporty’ crimes Alec so despised and I would be had up for it if they caught me. Not that I would be in a position to obstruct much police business in the future unless I could harden my heart: for if I did ever have business cards made, then ‘sentimental fudging of the facts a speciality’ would not bring me many plum jobs. In the present case, though, neither my future as a sleuth nor my fear of prosecution could sway me, for if sentiment, compassion, love for my fellow man – whatever I chose to call it – if it trumped justice then it certainly trumped money too and it should, if I was any kind of ‘wummin’ at all, trump fear of the police and what they might do to me. It certainly seemed to for Chrissie Dudgeon.
The sun beat steadily against my face and limbs and yet, upon this thought, goose pimples began to start out on my skin. The stone wall behind me radiated the warmth of a whole summer and yet my neck prickled with cold.
‘What is it?’ whispered Buttercup in an awe-struck voice.
‘What’s what?’ said Cad, also whispering.
‘Ssh!’ hissed Alec.
‘I’ve thought of something,’ I said in a steady voice.
‘Yes, dear, we noticed,’ said Alec. ‘Really, Dandy, if you ever get sick of detecting you could make a fortune running seances. Most theatrical. What is it?’
‘It ties in the passport, the birth certificate, the passenger lists and above all – above all – the reason they did it.’
‘Go on,’ said Alec. He took the teacup out of my hand and put it down for me on the table.
‘Not money,’ I said. ‘And not fear of threats. And not because it was “right” in some abstract sense, because they knew that it wasn’t. They did it for love. They gave X Robert Dudgeon’s birth certificate and passport and the ticket and X got on the ship and went away to a new life in New Zealand.’
‘But that couldn’t possibly work,’ said Alec. ‘The new passports have photographs on them. You can’t simply hand them over to any Tom, Dick or Harry.’
‘I’m not suggesting that you can,’ I said. ‘I’m suggesting that one could hand one’s passport over to one’s brother, or cousin or nephew, and that somewhere amongst the labyrinthine relations and connections of the Dudgeons there is a bad egg, a black sheep, whom the Dudgeons could not – for love – refuse.’
‘Must be a relation, not a connection,’ said Alec. ‘And one with quite a family resemblance, come to that, to get past the officials on a borrowed passport.’
‘Well, these photographs are not works of art, darling,’ I said. ‘And they’re tiny. A family resemblance would do it, or one striking feature. I daresay, for example, that any of the little ones next door would be able to pass for another in years to come with their mother’s red hair.’
Alec nodded, rather grudgingly.
‘Father’s,’ he said. ‘But yes, you could be right. We need to find out if any of the Dudgeon clan is missing.’
‘Father’s what?’ I asked him.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Cad, are there any more Dudgeons around on the estate here? Before we go searching further afield.’
‘Father’s red hair,’ said Buttercup, two steps behind as usual.
‘Whose father has red hair?’ I said, and all three of them turned to look at me.
‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Buttercup. ‘The savages’ father, of course. Donald.’
‘Donald doesn’t have red hair,’ I said. ‘They must get it from their mother.’
Cad, Buttercup and Alec were now exchanging looks of utter bewilderment.
‘Flaming Donald?’ said Cad. ‘Are you colour blind, Dandy? Flaming Donald has the reddest hair I’ve ever seen. Freddy couldn’t buy a bottle of redder hair than Flaming Donald’s.’
‘But I met him,’ I said. ‘He’s… He’s called Flaming Donald because of his beliefs, isn’t he? And he’s Robert Dudgeon’s brother.’
‘No,’ said Cad. ‘His name is Lamont and he’s married to Chrissie Dudgeon’s brown-haired sister. Isobel.’
‘So… that man that I met…’ I said, speaking slowly although thinking very fast. ‘He was most definitely a relative and he could have been – yes! – he must have been X. He must have, mustn’t he, Alec? Hanging around at the cottage that afternoon when everyone else was away. My God, it must have given him a shock to see me grubbing around in amongst the burrs.’
‘I’m surprised he didn’t cosh you on the back of the neck,’ Alec said.
I thought back to the fevered stream of apologies and explanations I had spouted to the man and remembered how he seemed to sum me up as a harmless idiot. I blushed.
‘So,’ I said, trying to bluster my way out of my feeling of shame even as the flush spread to the roots of my hair, ‘who is he? A brother?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Cad. ‘Dudgeon was the son of the old estate carpenter, the only son.’
‘X could be the son of one of his sisters, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Chrissie’s sister-in-law, that is. I never really believed that Tina and Bet and Lizzie and Margaret could all be Chrissie Dudgeon’s actual blood sisters. Some of them at least must be in-laws, and one of them could be the mother of X.’
‘Well, of course they couldn’t be sisters,’ said Alec. ‘When you think about it. Tina and Chrissie? Lizzie and Bet?’
‘Anyway,’ said Buttercup suddenly, ‘the charmless Isobel is Mrs Dudgeon’s only sister. She told me that the very first night when we were in the scullery. ‘
I put my head into my hands and groaned. Time and again over the days, I had seen my listener frown and puzzle and never stopped to wonder why. Joey Brown had said she did not know who I was talking about; the men working at the wall didn’t know who Donald Dudgeon was; even Mrs Dudgeon herself had asked me what I meant when I talked of ‘one of her sisters’ and when I had told her I meant Tina she had smiled and said she supposed they were.
‘But Mrs Dudgeon said it herself that night,’ I said, clutching at straws now. ‘She clearly said “my sisters”.’