The Flaxborough Crab f-6

by Colin Watson

  The deputy coroner, too, had lowered his voice. He was nervous lest anything they said should elicit further reminiscence from old James.

  “I take it as definitely your opinion that there shouldn’t be an inquest. Is that right, sir?”

  Thompson stiffened. “Of course it’s right. Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “I just wanted to be sure, sir.”

  Dr James glanced sharply across at them.

  “Sure about what?”

  “Nothing, doctor. The sergeant was only asking if we had any other cases to be dealt with today.”

  “He said something about an inquest,” persisted the old man. “Why should there be an inquest? I’ve signed a certificate, haven’t I?” His head was rocking gently up and down, as if he had some machinery inside him.

  “As long as you’re satisfied, doctor,” said Malley, easily.

  He peered inside his cap, adjusted its shape a little, and put it on. The cap was not quite big enough and he had to pull it well forward and down to conform with the Chief Constable’s dictum that no policeman could do his job properly unless the tip of his cap peak were in line with, and equidistant from his ear lobes.

  Dr James stared at the result and mistook for insolent indifference the sergeant’s resemblance to a patient, blinkered carthorse.

  “I should like to know just what you are insinuating, officer. If it is suggested that after fifty-two years in general practice...”

  “Oh, come now, doctor,” Thompson interjected. “I’m sure my officer would not dream of calling your judgment into doubt. He simply has to report the facts to his inspector, and he wishes to be absolutely accurate. Isn’t that so, Malley?”

  “Of course, sir.” said the horse.

  Dr James simmered silently a few moments longer, then made a determined effort to stop nodding.

  “Very well, then. But don’t let us hear any more talk about inquests. That won’t do anybody any good. It’s a sad enough business as it is. Great loss to the profession. And to the town.”

  He stared out once more through the small, dusty panes of the window, as though to see how the town was taking it.

  “Indeed yes,” murmured Dr Thompson. Surreptitiously he gave Malley a nudge to signify that he’d better go while the going was good.

  In another lawyer’s office, Inspector Purbright was cheerfully telling Mr Scorpe that he proposed to be so shamelessly unethical as to try and pick that gentleman’s brains.

  Since his talk over the telephone with Pauline Sutton, Purbright had been feeling a good deal more energetic. New hope engendered a pleasant recklessness.

  Mr Scorpe at first looked startled. Then he lowered the angle of his long wooden face and gazed over his spectacles with a touch of amusement.

  “You are being very frank, inspector.”

  “Not frank. Downright impertinent. I want you to tell me what the analyst found in that sample of herbs you sent off to him.”

  Scorpe pulled a tray of letters across the desk top and began sorting through them.

  “Go away,” he said.

  “Come along, you can afford to do me a favour. And this one won’t cost you anything.”

  “What gives you the idea”—Scorpe did not raise his eyes—“that I should have wanted something analysing? This isn’t a forensic science agency.”

  “No, but you’re acting for the Winges, and we all know their family motto—‘Somebody’s Got to be Summonsed’. Moldham Meres Laboratories will do as well as anyone else.”

  “Really, inspector! That is a most improper suggestion!”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  Purbright put his head on one side and gently scratched his ear.

  “What did they find?”

  Scorpe turned over another couple of letters.

  “You get your own analysing done,” he said, gruffly. “My client has to pay. Yours don’t.”

  “Aye, but it’s a question of saving time. You wouldn’t mind doing that for me, I know.”

  Scorpe remained for half a minute in silent examination of his correspondence. Then, without looking, he opened and reached into a drawer and held out a small sheet of buff-coloured paper. Purbright took it.

  The report was short. It referred to inert vegetable matter, minimal water content, insignificant mineral traces, non-toxic alkaloids, all derived from a plant of the genus Compositae, probably Taraxacum Officinale, or the common dandelion.

  “Hard luck,” said Purbright. He put the sheet back into the still extended hand of Mr Scorpe.

  “You haven’t seen me,” said the solicitor, feeling for the drawer.

  Purbright made his way through Priory Lane to the river end of East Street and went into the Roebuck. After drinking half a pint of bitter in the deserted public bar, he sought out the manager, Mr Maddox, and asked him if a gentleman named Brennan was still among his guests.

  The manager’s morning frown deepened. He looked at the register, then behind him at the key board.

  “He is, yes. Did you want to see him?”

  “Not at the moment. Has he given any indication of how long he intends to stay?”

  “He’s booked until the day after tomorrow.”

  “Right. If he changes his plans, I shall be glad if you will telephone at once and let us know, Mr Maddox. It’s very important.”

  “I trust there’s nothing, ah...”

  Long experience of the contingencies of the hotel trade had instilled in Mr Maddox a chronic anxiety, attested by his apparent inability to finish a sentence. Moreover, whenever he said ‘I trust...’—which was very often—he meant exactly the opposite.

  “No, no, nothing,” said Purbright, airily.

  “The fact is, we’ve had two already this week who haven’t, ah...”

  “Have you, indeed?”

  “Mr Brennan didn’t strike me as that sort, actually.”

  “Oh? As what sort did he strike you?”

  “Rather gentlemanly for a commercial. If he is one, that is. I’ve not noticed him playing billiards, come to think of it, although I suppose that’s not, er...”

  “Did you happen to notice at what time he came in last night?”

  “Ye-es, it would be about, oh, nine, quarter-past nine.”

  “How was he dressed?”

  Maddox shook his head doubtfully.

  “That I couldn’t really say. I think he was carrying a coat... no, I’m wrong—I was thinking of someone else. He’s got his own car here, you know. Or is it hired? Yes, I remember he asked about hiring when he arrived. Simpsons probably, ah... Or the Two-Star, perhaps. It’s a grey Hillman, anyway.”

  “You say you did see him come in last night. Did you see anything of a scarf?”

  At this question, which Maddox obviously considered to have sinister overtones, his expression changed to one of alarm.

  “I do feel, inspector, that for the sake of the hotel, you should say if there’s anything, ah...”

  Purbright assured him at once that he had no need to feel apprehensive. To the truthful assertion that nothing was known to Mr Brennan’s discredit, he added, less truthfully: “We are only trying to eliminate him from an inquiry that’s been going on.”

  “I see,” said the manager. “Well, that’s all right, then. A scarf, you say.... No, I’ve never seen him wearing a scarf.”

  “What room is he in?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “And he’s in it now?”

  Maddox again consulted the key board. “Yes.”

  “In that case, I wonder if you’d mind coming outside and showing me which is his car.”

  At the back of the hotel was a walled area that once had been the coaching yard. Part of it was still paved with cobblestones. Above the broad archway that divided the hotel’s ground floor and gave access to the street, there survived a balustraded balcony from which guests of two hundred years before had watched ostlers hasten to tend the steaming horses that had drawn the ‘Nottingham Flyer’ or the ‘E
astern Mail’.

  Purbright looked up at the balcony and at the windows above. “Is there any chance of his spotting us down here?”

  “No, twenty-seven is on the far side. In any case, the residents’ cars are kept under cover. I’ll show you.”

  He led the way to a roofed enclosure. There were ten or a dozen cars inside. Maddox pointed to one of them and then turned to stand facing the yard.

  Brennan’s car was locked. Purbright made a note of its number, then circled the car, peering through the windows. On the back seat were two leather cases, one small, the other about the size of a suitcase. Both were square and rigid-looking; designed, Purbright imagined, to hold pharmaceutical or surgical samples. He did not see the briefcase he had noticed Brennan carrying in the surgery. Several Elixon leaflets were in evidence, though.

  On the front passenger seat was a rolled-up raincoat. It was a very pale mushroom colour; in better light, it would look practically white. Purbright scrutinized this coat from as many angles as he could by pressing his face against the glass and shielding off reflections with his hands. From one position he succeeded in spotting a tuck of some darker material. Something—possibly a thin scarf or silk square—had been rolled within the coat.

  He rejoined Maddox, whom he thanked and again adjured to make instant report of any sign of his guest’s intention to depart. Then he set off for the other end of town and Heston Lane.

  How deeply grieved was Mrs Meadow by her husband’s death, Purbright found difficult at first sight to decide. What was certain was that he encountered a woman monumentally put out.

  His condolences were received with a formality just short of indifference. He had put no more than three questions before she shook her head impatiently.

  “I’m sorry, inspector, but if you really must know these things, you will have to ask someone else. Perhaps my husband’s solicitor could find time to help you.”

  “I doubt if that would meet the case, Mrs Meadow. You must believe me when I say that I am trying to spare you as much distress and inconvenience as I can. But there are some questions—they will not take long, I promise you—which you alone can answer.”

  Grudgingly, she relaxed slightly the attitude of preparing to get up from her chair.

  “I asked you a moment ago,” Purbright resumed, “where the doctor was yesterday between, say, five o’clock and six, when he went into surgery.”

  “He was here, naturally. We always have tea served at four-thirty.”

  “Did he not go out at any time during that hour?”

  “No.”

  “And was there no one else in the house, apart from yourself?”

  “Only the maid.”

  “Elizabeth Loder?”

  She looked at him narrowly.

  “I don’t see why you should know her name... Oh, the business down the road, of course. I hope nothing’s going to be made of that, by the way. Not on top of everything else. The girl wasn’t hurt, you know.”

  “No,” said Purbright. “She wasn’t.” He thought for a moment, then asked: “Did anyone call on the doctor yesterday afternoon?”

  “I don’t think so. He was across at the office for most of the afternoon. Until about half-past four. No, I’m sure no one called.”

  “So he had no contact with anyone other than you or Miss Loder from four-thirty until he left the house at six.”

  “Ten to six,” she corrected. “The patients begin to be seen at six, but my husband always went over ten or fifteen minutes beforehand.”

  “Might he have had a caller during that time?”

  “Yesterday evening, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s possible... But really, inspector. I don’t get the drift of all this.”

  Purbright delved for what might serve as a plausible explanation.

  “I’m sorry. The fact is that we believe that the man who attacked Miss Loder might have been hanging round the house or the surgery earlier in the day.”

  “Miss Loder...? Oh, you mean Elizabeth. But surely you’re not taking up all this time and asking me all these odd questions because of that? It was a very trivial incident.”

  “There have been other attacks, Mrs Meadow.”

  “There might have been, but that doesn’t mean my house should be flooded with policemen. Especially at a time like this. Tell me, does Mr Chubb know you’re here?”

  “The Chief Constable is aware that inquiries are being made,” Purbright said, stiffly.

  Mrs Meadow gave a short nod. “I think I shall have to have a word with him.”

  “Very good. But if I might take advantage of your forbearance for one moment more, Mrs Meadow, I should like just to be a little clearer about the period we were discussing. Can you suggest—and I assure you that this is important—anyone at all who may have visited the doctor between ten minutes to six yesterday evening and six o’clock when the surgery opened?”

  Despite her expression of bleak resentment, she did appear to give the question thought.

  After a while, she said: “There is one possibility, although I’m sure it is irrelevant. My husband had been writing an article for professional publication. He finished it yesterday. Apparently it made reference to the effects of some drug or other, and I believe Dr Meadow intended to show the article to the representative of a firm—one of the leading pharmaceutical firms—for which he had been doing research. He may—and I say may—have seen this man before surgery. It was a period he set aside for dealing with travellers and people like that. So that his patients would not be inconvenienced, you understand.”

  She stood up.

  “That is all I can tell you, inspector. And now you must please excuse me. Elizabeth will see you out.”

  She picked up a little ornamental handbell and, somewhat to the inspector’s embarrassment, shook it resolutely.

  Purbright waited until the girl was about to open the front. door before he spoke to her.

  “Hang on a minute, Elizabeth. Just a couple of quick questions about what happened to you yesterday.”

  She looked at him nervously, then glanced back down the hall.

  “I don’t know that I ought, really...she says I’m not to make any fuss about it.”

  “I shan’t keep you a second.”

  “But the policeman who came—he wrote everything down, I told it all to him.” She kept one slim, brown hand on the door catch.

  “The car the man was hiding behind—I don’t think you described that, did you?”

  “I didn’t notice it, really.”

  “Not the colour, even?”

  “I think it was a sort of greyish colour.” Again she looked past him, towards the room containing Mrs Meadow and her bell.

  “I see. Make? Number? No good?”

  She shook her head.

  “Never mind. Now the man. His face was covered. In something brown, you said. Something patterned? Or not.”

  “Patterned, I think.”

  “And his coat. You said white. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, white. It was thin and sort of smooth.”

  “Have you ever seen a continental raincoat, Elizabeth? The sort they wear in Germany, Scandinavia, places like that?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “The letters. Now I want you to think very carefully. When you picked them up again, are you sure they were all there?”

  “Please—I’ll have to be getting back...” She turned her face and began opening the door, but not quickly enough to hide sudden flushed cheeks.

  Purbright touched her arm.

  “How many were missing, Elizabeth? It’s very important that I know.”

  “One. Only one. I...I daren’t let on about it. She’d have got mad at me.”

  “Do you know which one? Had you seen the address on it?”

  “Somewhere in London, I think. It was one of those long envelopes, and it had more stamps on than the others. You won’t let her know, will you?”

&n
bsp; “Typewritten?”

  The girl nodded miserably.

  “Listen,” said Purbright. “Does this sound familiar? The British...” He formed his lips into the pronunciation of an M, and waited.

  Suddenly she brightened, her unhappiness dispelled for the moment by a chance to show herself clever.