The Flaxborough Crab f-6

by Colin Watson

  “Ah, there you are, Mr Purbright.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s all this they tell me about poor old Steven Winge? Shocking business.”

  Mr Chubb laid his bowler hat carefully on the corner of his desk, peeled his gloves into it, and walked over to the fireplace.

  “No, sit down, Mr Purbright, sit down.”

  The inspector did so.

  “It seems that we can dispense with the special night patrols now, sir. I think we’ve heard the last of the Flaxborough Crab.”

  Mr Chubb frowned. “I do wish the newspapers would not coin these offensive catchwords. Mr Winge may have fallen from grace, as it were, but he had a very distinguished record, you know.”

  “Well, versatile, certainly,” said Purbright, rather daringly.

  The Chief Constable seemed not to hear.

  “I’ve just been to a Rotary lunch, and Winge’s name did crop up in the course of conversation, as you might imagine. He’ll be missed, naturally.”

  “No doubt, sir.”

  “Very nasty for his wife, too, poor soul.”

  The inspector did not look convinced. “My impression at the inquest was that she’s a very strong-minded woman. I think she’ll live this down quite quickly—possibly with the help of an action for damages against Dr Meadow.”

  “Good gracious me! Whatever for? Against Meadow, you say?”

  “Scorpe was representing her. And his questions to Heineman and Meadow were extremely pointed. I should say that Scorpe hopes to prove—or to suggest strongly enough to impress a court—that Winge’s behaviour was caused by his doctor’s faulty prescribing.”

  “But that’s a very long shot, surely? As I understand it, people only sue doctors for leaving scissors and things inside them. Not for giving them medicine.”

  “It depends on the nature of the medicine, sir. Mr Scorpe hinted that the drug given to Winge had not been properly tested and that Meadow didn’t know what effects it might have.”

  “Ah, well, that is Meadow’s worry, not ours. These patrols, Mr Purbright—you’re quite happy about our dropping them now, are you?”

  “Aren’t you, sir?”

  “Oh, certainly—so long as you are convinced that poor Winge was responsible for all those unfortunate incidents.”

  “I think there can be no reasonable doubt, sir. The behaviour pattern was identical in every case.”

  “You don’t think you ought to check back, as it were? Check each incident, I mean, against Winge’s availability at the time?”

  Purbright recognized in the suggestion one of those fairly rare instances of Mr Chubb’s choosing to show himself much more intelligent than most people thought. Nevertheless, he shook his head.

  “The man will not be accused officially of any of these things, sir, so there is no question of a miscarriage of justice. In any case, reluctance to speak ill of the dead is very strong in a place like Flaxborough—as you must have noticed yourself, sir. Loyalty of that kind does tend to make memories somewhat unreliable.”

  The Chief Constable, Rotarianly sensible of what Purbright was getting at, made no comment.

  “Even the living are spared on occasion,” Purbright added. “You may remember, sir, what the girl Brenda Sweeting said about the man who attacked her. She was sure that Dr Meadow could have identified him. I think so, too. I think he recognized Alderman Winge, an old and valuable patient, whom he let go and pretended later not to have seen.”

  “Ah, but we cannot make an accusation of that kind, Mr Purbright. Not without incontrovertible proof. Compounding a felony... Well, I mean that is what it would amount to.”

  “Yes, it would, sir,” said Purbright, simply. “And I don’t think it’s too harsh a name for behaviour that was calculated to put more women in danger.”

  “Perhaps it is as well,” said Mr Chubb, after some thought, “that things took the turn they did. Strange, how these little mishaps sometimes prove to be blessings in disguise.”

  The inspector rose. “If there’s nothing else, sir...”

  “No, nothing. Thank you very much.”

  When Purbright had gone, the Chief Constable sighed and picked up his hat and gloves. Inquests somehow left a musty smell about the place, even in his own cool and quiet office. An hour’s gardening before tea would be rather nice. He put on his hat and gave it a pat in the very middle of its crown. Yes. One hour. Just what the doctor ordered.

  The inspector, too, went home earlier than usual. He was not a gardening man, or at least, not compulsively so, but he felt he had earned a little extra leisure.

  So did Sergeant Love. He left the police station five minutes before six o’clock and treated himself to a good long look into every shop window on the way home, in particular that of Kumfihomes, on South Gate, where bedroom suites sang siren songs of the Good Life.

  Sergeant Malley, for once not having old Albert Amblesby to dispose of, cleared up in record time such matters as filing depositions, obtaining a burial certificate for the undertaker, and reminding the deputy coroner to shell out Dr Heineman’s fee. By half-past five, he was watching with keen anticipation the slicing of six ounces of home-cured ham that he was buying from ‘Trotter’ Hamble’s in Cromwell Lane to take home for his tea.

  Celebration, in fact, was in the air. Nothing wild, nothing that would have offended the high moral principles of the man whose demise had occasioned it. It was simply a sense of sober satisfaction in the solution of a mystery and the abatement of a dangerous nuisance. Rarely enough are policemen the beneficiaries of the strokes of fate. They generally have to clear up after them. But here, everyone agreed, was one little providential side-swipe that had saved them a lot of trouble.

  That night, detectives Pook and Harper, constables Wilkinson and Burke, and their comrades of the Crab-catching Patrol, all slept thankfully and well.

  And to an unmarried schoolteacher, alone in the bedroom of her bungalow in Darlington Gardens, there appeared—but not in a vision—a man of mature years who wore no trousers. She dropped her book, screamed, and leaped out of bed to close the curtains. Reaching the window, she saw that the man was already in flight across the lawn. He scuttled towards the back gate in a singularly ungainly manner and disappeared sideways into the lane beyond. A moment later, she heard the starting of a car engine. As she went round the house satisfying herself that all its doors and windows were secure, she wondered if she should dress and telephone the police from the call-box at the end of the road. It seemed pointless now. Instead, she made a cup of hot malted milk, went back to bed, and stayed stubbornly awake until dawn. At half-past nine, she rang the inquiries bell at Fen Street police headquarters and asked by name for Inspector Purbright, whom she once had met, and rather liked, at a school sports day.

  He welcomed her with a warmth that was occasioned as much by his still lively appreciation of Alderman Winge’s co-operative departure as by the sight of an attractive and sensible-looking young woman.

  That was before he heard what she had come to tell.

  Even as her story unfolded, he tried to persuade himself that here was some maidenly delusion, born of classroom anxieties and stimulated by wishful thinking. Then he recalled that the schools were on holiday and that, in any case, the desires of so presentable and self-assured a girl were hardly likely to fasten upon an untrousered ancient. No, what she was describing had unquestionably occurred.

  A freakish coincidence, then? An isolated event, quite unrelated to the spate of attacks with which the late alderman had so confidently been credited? One could but hope.

  But then came the girl’s clearly drawn picture of that now all-too-familiar locomotion of flight—disjointed, crazy, crab-like. Purbright groaned inwardly and surrendered to the facts.

  Unless it was the ghost of Alderman Winge that had tumbled across a lawn and driven away by car, the police were now faced with the awesome probability of having to capture not one Flaxborough Crab, but several. And there was not a wor
thwhile clue to the identity of any of them. Not even the Chief Constable, Purbright reflected, could be so madly sanguine as to expect them all to plunge into a reservoir.

  He thanked his caller, tried to give her the assurance, that he was so far from feeling himself, and saw her out. Then he descended to the C.I.D. room with the intention of breaking the bad news to Love.

  Love, though, had troubles already. They were being unloaded by a small, dark-eyed, elderly woman with an expression of resolute gloom. From the sergeant’s loud articulation, Purbright judged her to be somewhat deaf.

  Spotting the inspector’s diffident approach, Love introduced the woman as Mrs Grope.

  “The lady is having trou-ble with her hus-band,” he explained at unnecessary volume.

  “Oh, yes?”

  Mrs Grope seized Purbright’s sleeve. “I’m having trouble with Mr Grope.”

  “What sort of trouble, madam?”

  She looked inquiringly at Love, as if asking him to waive copyright.

  “It seems he’s been pestering her a bit lately,” said the sergeant.

  Mrs Grope nodded. “He’s forever on about his conjuggling rights. That’s not like Mr Grope. It’s not his way. I don’t know what’s come over him.”

  “If you mean what I think you mean, Mrs Grope, I really don’t think this is a matter in which it would be right for the police to interfere. What did you have in mind to ask us to do?”

  “Well, he’s taking something, you see.”

  Love again intervened.

  “She says her husband is taking some sort of a herbal mixture. She thinks it’s having an effect on him.”

  “It’s herbs,” said Mrs Grope. “I’ve brought along a packet for you to look at.”

  From the depths of a great leather patchwork shopping bag she drew out a green envelope, rather tattered but still bearing a legible yellow label.

  Purbright smoothed it out on the table. The label bore, in whimsical woodcraft type, the words SAMSON’S SALAD. Smaller print beneath announced: ‘A Product of Moldham Meres Laboratories. Prepared from the Genuine Lucky Fen Wort. The Secret of the Amazing Virility of Boadicea’s Warriors. Dissolves Instantly.’

  When the inspector spoke again, his air of polite indifference had changed.

  “Tell me, Mrs Grope—in what way has your husband’s behaviour been worrying you?”

  “Well, several ways. He’s not really been himself since we moved to Flax when he left the pictures...”

  Interpreter Love quickly scotched the image of Walter Grope, film star.

  “He was commissionaire at that cinema in Chalmsbury,1 remember. The Rialto. Retired last year.”

  1 See Bump in the Night.

  Purbright did remember. Grope the rhyming doorman. Big, ponderous and harmless—if one expected teetotalism and an inordinate capacity for versifying. Poor old Grope. Bingo had done for him, as for so many of those splendidly apparelled foyer field-marshals, captains of the queues....

  “Yes, of course,” Purbright said. “I met your husband a year or two back.”

  “He’s not the same man now,” said Mrs Grope. “Oh, I don’t just mean this conjuggling rights business. I can deal with that. But it’s the other things. Just look what I found in the boot cupboard the other morning.”

  She pulled from her bag a multi-coloured bundle and thrust it into Purbright’s lap, where it unfurled into a miscellany of pairs of knickers.

  “Where did he get them, I’d like to know!”

  “Where, indeed,” murmured Purbright, much impressed.

  “From clothes lines, I should think,” Love said, after looking critically at some of the garments. He glanced at the inspector and lowered his voice. “There have been reports.”

  Purbright put the clothing in a heap on the table.

  “You’d better let the policewomen take charge of these for the time being,” he told Mrs Grope. “Now is there anything else you feel you ought to tell us?”

  She pondered darkly.

  “He stays out very late some nights.”

  “How late?”

  “Oh, eleven and after. Once it was nearly one in the morning.”

  “Doesn’t he tell you where he’s been?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Where he’s been. Does he tell you?”

  “Never ask.”

  “I see. All right. Anything else, Mrs Grope?”

  “Well, just that business with the woman in the supermarket.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s supposed to have interfered with her behind the Shredded Wheat, but there was only her word against his and I’d never known him do that before.”

  “Ah, well we mustn’t make too much of it, men, must we?” Purbright, hating himself, gave Mrs Grope a reassuring smile. “I wonder,” he said, “if it might not be a good idea to have a word with his doctor?”

  She shook her head. “He’s not a man you can talk to, Dr Meadow isn’t. Very proud. Mr Grope sees him once a week, regular, but I won’t go. Not to him.”

  “Never mind—why don’t you talk things over with your husband and persuade him to ask the doctor for advice? You don’t really want him to be in trouble with the law, I’m sure.”

  Purbright cast a worried glance at the heap of underclothes and hoped that their assorted owners would not complicate his life further by positively identifying them. Larceny charges were the last things he wanted to be bothered with at the moment.

  Love saw Mrs Grope out. He returned to find the inspector with an unwontedly wild look in his eye.

  “My God, Sid! The whole bloody town’s infested with sexual maniacs! What the hell are we going to do?”

  The sergeant, who could not remember ever before having received so direct a plea for his opinion, did his best to convey an impression of urgent intelligence.

  Purbright patted his shoulder.

  “Look, before we try and organize anything else, I think we should try and find out all we can about two factors that are common to the only people we’ve so far been able to connect with this business. Meadow’s practice is one factor—both Winge and Grope were his patients. And the second is the stuff in that packet.”

  “Did Winge take it as well, then?”

  “Meadow said so at the inquest.”

  Love held the envelope open and sniffed.

  “Smells like lawn clippings.”

  “You notice where it’s made.”

  “Moldham Meres, I suppose. Queer sort of place to find laboratories.”

  “I fancy,” said Purbright, “that ‘laboratories’ will turn out to be huts. Or one hut. Pretentious terms are the very breath of commerce nowadays, Sid.”

  “The only sign of life I ever saw out there was a postman taking a short cut from Strawbridge to Moldham Halt.”

  “Oh, you do know that part of the world, then?”

  Love confessed to having an aunt at Strawbridge whom he visited occasionally.

  “In that case, you may mix business with pleasure tomorrow and see what you can learn about Moldham Meres Laboratories. Tactfully, of course. Perhaps your aunt will be able to give you a start. People in country districts are very well informed.”

  Purbright looked about him. “Where’s Harper?”

  “Probably in the canteen. Shall I find him for you?”

  Detective Harper having been traced and summoned, the inspector entrusted him with the surveillance until further notice of Mr Grope.

  “Not all the time, you know. I doubt if he will get up to anything during daylight. But watch for him going out in the evening and keep him in sight until he gets back home again. If he does anything really naughty, pull him in, naturally.”

  “Mind you,” Purbright confided to Love when Harper had gone, “I can’t imagine dozy old Walter as a rapist, somehow. The trouble is that we can’t be sure of anybody any more. Something or other is sending half the over-sixties round the twist. Until we know what it is and who’s behind it, there’s precious little we
can do.”

  The sergeant was examining again the packet left by Mrs Grope. He moistened the tip of his little finger and touched the powdery grey-green contents. Then, very cautionsly, he licked the grains that had stuck to the finger end. Eyes closed, he made rabbity little movements with his mouth, then remained quite still for several seconds as if hopeful of a Dracula-like transformation. The only outcome, however, was a sneeze.

  “Bless you,” said Purbright.