by Colin Watson
“It was the way he ran,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. You know how soldiers shuffle along to one side when they are doing drill—closing ranks, do they call it? Anyway, it was rather like that, only much, much faster and with bigger steps, of course. He was actually running sideways, if you can imagine such a thing.”
“What, like a crab?”
“That’s it exactly. Like a crab. Now isn’t that odd?”
“Most decidedly,” said Purbright.
Chapter Two
Unlike Miss Butters, nineteen years old Brenda Sweeting, shop assistant, considered sexual molestation to be a permanent and universal hazard.
This view derived partly from her mother’s admonition, repeated every day in life, to “watch your step and mind who you talk to”; partly from a certain freedom of gesture and remark that characterized the young Flaxborough male; but chiefly from the traumatic experience in early childhood of hearing auntie command: “Don’t pick those flowers, dear: the dickybirds have wee-wee’d on them.”
In a world where even birds had villainous habits and the very flowers were impure, it was obvious to Brenda that merely human virginity was at a pretty sharp discount.
She knew what to expect, therefore, when an arm reached out from a bush-enshrouded driveway on Heston Lane and closed round her waist.
The time was half-past ten and Brenda was on her way home after spending the evening with a girl friend. Heston Lane was not the shortest route she could have chosen, but it was the best lighted and an occasional bus passed along it. Moreover, the Heston Lane residents were reputed to be of good financial standing, and this quality was näively equated in Brenda’s mind with aloofness from lust.
Almost before the arm touched her, she screamed. The scream had been on a hair trigger, so to speak, and it went off at full charge. She twisted, tugged, flailed and kicked. Then she screamed again. But the arm held fast.
Not a door opened in Heston Lane. Those occupants who heard Brenda’s cries were accustomed, unfortunately for her, to associating such sounds with the boisterous enjoyment of the lower classes. They winced disapprovingly, and hoped the rhododendrons were not taking too bad a beating.
The point at which Brenda had been waylaid was exactly midway between two street lamps and fairly dark in consequence but she managed to resist the man’s efforts to drag her into the even deeper obscurity of the driveway from which he had emerged.
A third scream brought no sign of rescue, so she concentrated her energy into wrenching herself nearer the light. Kicks were now more painful to her than to their target, as both shoes had fallen off, so she used her knees instead.
One luckily placed blow earned a sharp wail of distress and she gained another three yards towards the lamp. But still she could not break free of the encircling arm.
With his other hand the man was warding off the punches that Brenda repeatedly but not very effectually directed towards his lowered, always averted, face. At last he caught and held her wrist.
His grip on her flesh was dry and bony. It frightened her more than anything else that had happened to her so far. She knew that the grip was not very strong. Yet she could not tug her wrist away. The sudden revelation of her own spent strength was a horror that buckled her and laid her sobbing and slack across the arm she had been fighting to escape.
The man stood there, hesitant. He seemed bewildered by the collapse of the girl’s resistance. Several seconds went by before he started, his attention caught by the approach of a car from the direction of the town.
He grasped Brenda close in both arms and began half-carrying, half-dragging her back to the driveway.
The car, travelling fast, was only two or three hundred yards distant. The note of its engine changed. Brenda felt her captor’s effort increase. He was taking great gulps of breath as he heaved her like a too-heavy sack. The twigs of a bush raked across her face.
It was only then that the noise of the car broke into her consciousness. She opened her eyes a little. The hot, thick tears transmuted the headlamps’ glare into a jumbled constellation of bright silver orbs, but she knew that they signified the possibility of deliverance. She strained towards the light and threw into it one last retching scream.
She was alone, free of the grappling, claw-like hands and of the rasping breath that had smelled unpleasantly of cigarette-ends and cough medicine. She knelt, head bowed, and was grateful for the feel of cold asphalt through her torn stockings.
Somewhere a car door slammed. There was a shout, a scuffling of feet.
Brenda looked about her wonderingly.
The car, its lights still ablaze, was across the pavement a few yards away, angled ready to enter the drive of one of the houses. Running away from the car were two men, pursued and pursuer. Brenda watched them cross the road and pass through the pool of light cast by the nearest street lamp.
She thought the first man was going to fall over. He had turned as he ran and was now scuttling along sideways, his legs all over the place.
The girl giggled, then at once began to cry again. She saw one of her shoes lying in the road. She bent over and picked it up.
When she caught sight of the two men again, they were almost directly beneath the next street lamp. One had grabbed the other’s arm and was pulling him to a halt. Brenda felt pleased that her attacker had been caught. Now he would be punished. At the same time, her terror was renewed at the thought of having him once again in close proximity, even under the guard of policemen.
She turned away and limped painfully towards the car, searching the ground for her other shoe. When she found it, she saw with a new stab of distress that it was broken, ruined. She thought of the impending disapproval of her mother and hated the old man even more.
Old. That he was old, it had not occurred to her to doubt. He had felt and smelled old. The girl shuddered and carefully eased on the broken shoe while she supported herself against the car.
Someone was crossing the road towards her. She looked up. The owner of the car, the old man’s pursuer. But he was alone.
“Now, young lady.”
He was a man she had seen before several times, here and there in the town; tall, quite handsome, self-possessed; not young, though. He looked well off.
Her gaze slipped past him into the dark and became a stare of alarm.
“Where is he?”
The man shrugged elegantly. “I’m afraid he got away.” He saw her expression. “You’re quite safe now, though. Don’t worry. Just let me take the car in and we’ll have a look at you in the house.”
She knew now who he was. Doctor Meadow. Quite a posh doctor. Her friend Sylvia Bart was one of his patients. Yes, but...
“But he can’t have! That old man. Got away, I mean. You had hold of him.”
“I’m afraid he did, though. Look—keep close to the car and I’ll see you at the front door. Then I’ll drive you home again afterwards.”
The house was very grand. As the doctor led her through a panelled hall with thick carpet on the floor, he switched on one light after another and left them burning even after they had passed into a side room and through that to a much bigger one with long crimson velvet curtains draping a window the size of a cinema screen. In this room, Brenda counted eight separate lamps. Five were set in the walls behind pink silk shades, gold-braided. The other three were huge standard lamps, taller than herself. Her feet sank into carpet as thick as a sheep’s fleece and of the colour of very milky coffee. The four armchairs and two settees were every bit as splendid looking, in their livery of pale cerise damask, as those in the new Odeon foyer had been when it was first re-opened for Bingo.
The doctor led her gently to one of the chairs and stood looking down at her. He held her wrist for a few seconds, very lightly, then stooped to peer at her eyes. She caught a faint smell, not unpleasant, that was half-way between scent and disinfectant. As he examined her, Meadow hummed behind a wide but handsome mouth. Brenda thought he
looked as if he shaved a lot: the tanned skin was so smooth that it reflected the light of the standard lamp behind her.
“Mmm, hmm,” said Meadow, wisely. He rubbed long, white, well-washed hands, and nodded. “Mm, hm.”
Brenda supposed this to signify that she had suffered no lasting harm.
“Hadn’t you better ring up, now?” she asked, anxiously.
“Ring up?” Meadow had turned his attention to a small pile of letters lying on a scalloped walnut table nearby.
“The police.”
“Ah,” said Meadow to the envelope on the top of the pile. He clearly was a man capable of thinking of two or three things at once. Brenda waited for him to go over to the pale pink telephone that she had spotted on a beautifully polished writing desk near the window.
He did, in fact, stroll over to the desk, opening his letter as he moved; but when he reached it, it was to pull out a little drawer. He came back with a phial in his hand, shook a white tablet on to the table, and wordlessly invited her to swallow it. The tablet looked and tasted like aspirin.
When it had gone down, not without difficulty, the girl said: “They could still catch him if you get on to them straight away.”
“Now, now—you mustn’t worry.” He was reading the letter, not looking at her.
She shifted to the edge of the chair, as if about to get up.
“Would you rather I telephoned? I don’t mind. The only trouble is, I can’t tell them what he looks like, and you can.”
Meadow laid aside his correspondence and gave her a big, concerned smile.
“Now, what is all this you’re bothered about, eh?”
He had a fruity, very nicely educated voice, she thought; surely he couldn’t be as thick as he pretended.
“The patient is our main concern, isn’t she? How is she feeling now, hmm?” He felt her forehead with the backs of his fingers and pouted judiciously.
“I’m very much better, thank you, and I would like you to telephone the police at once.”
He laughed and walked to the phone.
She heard him give the policeman at the other end of the line the bare facts of what had happened. It did not sound a very exciting account. Then, after a pause, he called out: “I say...” and she looked across to see him with his hand over the mouthpiece.
“They want to know your name and address.”
She told him. He repeated the words to his listener, enunciating them very clearly and with a faint smile as if there were something funny about being called Sweeting and living in Washington Road.
When he had put down the receiver, Meadow resumed reading his mail.
“They want you to stay here,” he told Brenda. “It seems that someone is coming round to ask you some questions.”
“But I can’t. Mum will be worrying her head off.”
“That’s all right: they’re letting your people know.” He had not looked up.
The girl continued to sit on the edge of her chair. She ruefully examined her holed stockings and twisted one foot to look at the damaged shoe. Then she noticed that a seam in her dress had been pulled apart. She tried to close the gap through which white nylon was showing.
The doctor, who had slipped the wrapper from a medical journal, was now leafing through it, apparently oblivious to her presence.
Five minutes went by. The girl sat hugging her knees and staring out through the big window. There was nothing to see but the trailing branch of a willow tree a few feet beyond the glass.
Suddenly she was aware of someone standing in the doorway. She turned.
A woman in an olive-green tweed suit was gazing at her with an expression compounded of inquiry and distaste. The woman was middle-aged and had a long, rather weather-beaten face. She looked energetic and determined to be neither persuaded nor amused by anyone on earth.
Her husband unhurriedly put down his magazine.
“This young lady,” he informed her, “has had a rather nasty experience.”
Mrs Meadow’s unchanged stare indicated her opinion that Brenda belonged to that group of young females for whom unpleasant experiences were customary nutriment.
“She is just having a little rest,” Meadow added, “until the police arrive.”
“The police!”
“Some fellow attacked her in the road outside here. They will want to ask her some questions.”
“Is there any reason why she can’t go to the police station? I mean, that is the usual procedure, isn’t it?” Mrs Meadow had entered the room and was searching for something in the drawer of a glass-fronted bureau.
“Mmm?” said the doctor. The medical journal was engrossing him once more.
Brenda felt very guilty at having disturbed the routine of two such busy and important people. She remembered now having seen frequent references in the Flaxborough Citizen to Mrs Meadow’s activities. She belonged to lots of things and was never photographed, indoors or out, without a hat—a sure sign of considerable social status.
The girl was about to suggest that perhaps she should go home now and call at the police station the next day, when she heard the mellifluous chimes of the Meadows’ three-tone front door bell.
No one made a move. Then Mrs Meadow murmured something over her shoulder about being Elizabeth’s night off. The doctor, still reading, strolled slowly out of the room.
He returned with two men.
One was Inspector Purbright.
The other was an individual whose patently mature bodily development was quite disconcertingly at odds with the face of a fourteen-year-old choir boy. This was Detective Sergeant Love, sometimes playfully referred to by his superiors as ‘whited-sepulchre Sid’.
Mrs Meadow acknowledged introductions with only the slightest tilt of the boulder of her face. The ordained role of the police, she considered, was the protection of private property; if young women insisted on indulging in the frivolity of getting raped, then that was no good reason for the diversion of the constabulary from its proper duties.
It was with Brenda, now pale and weary-looking, that Purbright concerned himself at once.
He glanced at the table beside her.
“Have you had something to drink?”
“I have given her a sedative,” Meadow said.
“Oh, but a hot drink...” The inspector looked across at Mrs Meadow. “Do you think something in that line could be managed? Tea, perhaps?”
Mrs Meadow was too surprised to produce indignation commensurate with the audacity of the request. “Well, it is rather awkward, actually. The maid...”
“No, no,” Purbright protested cheerfully. “The sergeant is awfully good at making tea. He’d be pleased to do it.”
Love beamed like a boy scout unexpectedly invited to demonstrate fire-craft in the middle of the sitting-room carpet.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Mrs Meadow, already on her way to the door.
The sergeant took out his notebook and Purbright began asking Brenda quiet, gently phrased questions.
Dr Meadow listened.
Chapter Three
The inspector and the sergeant discussed the ordeal of Miss Sweeting.
It was the following morning.
As in the case of the attack upon the resourceful librarian, the search for the man responsible had been undertaken more as a gesture of helpfulness than with any hope of success. It had been quite fruitless. Heston Lane could have been as uninhabited as Gorry Wood for all the notice its sequestered residents had taken of the drama in their midst.
One thing was clear. Both incidents displayed common features. And the most striking of these was the curious crab-like flight of the women’s assailant.
“He’s not one of the regulars, you know, Sid,” Purbright observed thoughtfully. He had been perusing the Flaxborough version of that list kept by every police force of its sexually enterprising locals, both the convicted and the so far lucky.
Love agreed.
“And yet,” the inspec
tor went on, “the girl and the Butters woman both speak of his being fairly old. Unless he’s a new arrival in the district, it’s queer that he should suddenly break out like this so late in life. These people are usually pretty well set in their ways.”
“Maybe it’s the weather,” suggested the sergeant. “They tell me they’ve had quite a bit of awkwardness over at Twilight Court during the past couple of weeks. They’ve cut out stout at supper on the men’s wards.”