The Burry Man's Day by Catriona McPherson Page B

failure,’ said the little doctor. There was something just slightly off about his manner. He held his head back and looked down his nose through his half-spectacles, rather ridiculously since even Daisy and I were taller than him by inches and Cad and the inspector positively loomed.
    ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Inspector Cruickshank. ‘That’s agreed then.’
    This was a very odd remark and to cover it, I supposed, Cruickshank began to direct Daisy and me in rather hectoring tones to go and find Buttercup and get ready to visit Mrs Dudgeon, and when this petered out he took to bidding the doctor an elaborate farewell. Dr Rennick, with one hard-ish look at us all, melted away into the crowd. Meanwhile, I continued to stare at Inspector Cruickshank who, to his credit, after watching Dr Rennick’s back for a moment or two, then looking around above my head and whistling, finally met my eye.
    ‘You are quite right, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, obviously too cryptically for Daisy who looked at him in surprise. Before speaking again, he ushered us all out of the cramped doorway and we began to walk along the crowded street looking for Buttercup.
    ‘A death certificate is a very serious matter,’ Cruickshank went on. ‘But do not be alarmed. Robert Dudgeon did die of heart failure. Only it was brought on by alcoholic poisoning.’
    ‘Poisoning?’ echoed Daisy, stopping in her tracks.
    ‘Alcoholic poisoning,’ said Inspector Cruickshank, putting a hand under her elbow to keep her moving, ‘is the medical term. In layman’s terms he drank too much and his heart gave out. At least a bottle of whisky as far as we can make out, never mind the beer, and only a wee ham sandwich to soak it up. Dr Rennick said he had never seen anything like it.’
    ‘How on earth do you know –’ began Daisy, then stopped and grimaced. ‘Oh, how revolting, Inspector really.’
    ‘And the death certificate will show . . .?’ I said.
    ‘Heart failure following on excessive consumption of alcoholic liquor,’ said Inspector Cruickshank. ‘We need to be scrupulous as far as the certificate goes. But let’s call it heart failure plain and simple when we speak of it. I’m a great believer in taking care of the living and letting the good Lord take care of the dead.’ A surprising statement to come from a policeman, I thought, unblinking zeal in the pursuit of justice being rather more usual.
    ‘Well, I guess,’ said Cadwallader, as though rolling some idea around in his head.
    ‘Look around you,’ said Inspector Cruickshank. ‘Look at them all in their blacks and their armbands. Dudgeon was their friend and you can be sure near every one of them gave the Burry Man a nip yesterday. What good would it do to go using a word like poisoning and make them think they had killed him?’
    I glanced around at the villagers, and felt myself beginning to agree.
    ‘And,’ he went on, ‘it would awaken some very unwelcome ghosts.’ I saw Daisy rolling her eyes, but when she spoke her tone was quite polite.
    ‘Ghosts, Inspector?’
    ‘Figurative ghosts,’ he assured her. ‘There was a case here before, of what might have been alcoholic poisoning. And we never got to the bottom of it.’
    ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Recently?’
    ‘Oh no, years ago,’ said the inspector. ‘Must have been four or five years ago now. Four more like; I remember it was about a year after the end of the war. Two young . . . gentlemen, I suppose you’d call them. Came on a sketching holiday and ended up dead.’ His voice was hard. ‘They went on a drinking spree along the High Street and once they were in their cups they let it slip that the pair of them had been conshies. The next morning they were found, face down and dead, down the lane behind the Sealscraig.’
    ‘Poisoned?’ asked Buttercup.
    ‘Hard to say,’ said the inspector. ‘Could have been. They were certainly well pickled. Or they could have passed out and died of hypothermia, lying out all