The Flaxborough Crab f-6

by Colin Watson

  Meadow watched the inspector’s last commending glance at the room’s contents before he turned to leave.

  “You are a furniture man, are you Purbright?”

  He sounded eager to establish kinship, as with a newly identified club member.

  “I am not a collector, if that’s what you mean, sir. I find some of it very satisfying to look at, though.”

  “I see you’re too wise to become acquisitive.”

  “No—just too poor.”

  As Purbright walked away from the closing front door, he realized that the doctor had considered his final remark to be simply a smart riposte, a piece of policemanlike repartee. Meadow clearly was well-off to that degree at which shortness of cash is an abstraction as imponderable as death.

  Chapter Ten

  Sergeant Love’s auntie at Strawbridge was very pleased to see him. She straightened his tie, asked him if he thought his jacket would be warm enough should the weather change, announced that it was a bad year for plums, put her hands over his ears (“My, you are cold!”) in order to haul his forehead down to kissing distance, and said she thought he ought to eat more.

  Having submitted to these affectionate preliminaries and drunk a cup of milky coffee totted up with his aunt’s rhubarb brandy, Love asked what she knew of what went on at Moldham Meres these days, particularly in the matter of laboratories.

  “Laboratories?”

  “That’s right. The Moldham Meres Laboratories. That’s what they call themselves.”

  “You don’t mean the old herb farm, do you?”

  Love looked doubtful. Despite Purbright’s caution, he had hoped for white-coated scientists, toting test tubes against a background of retorts and spiralling lights. The old herb farm, as he recalled it, was an overgrown field containing a decrepit cottage and a couple of sheds.

  “There is somebody there now,” his aunt persisted. “The house was done up about a year ago and there’s a board outside. I haven’t looked close to see what’s on it.” She waited a moment. “Well, there’s nothing else at the Meres.”

  This, as Love well knew, was no overstatement. It was the herb farm or nothing.

  He set off on the two miles walk across country after promising his aunt that he would be back in time to have what she called ‘a proper meal’ before returning to Flaxborough on the afternoon train from Strawbridge.

  He enjoyed the walk. By keeping to remembered bridle paths and rights of way around the fields of late, reddish-brown corn, he was able to avoid metalled road altogether until he emerged on the lane leading to Moldham Halt.

  On the way, he provided himself with a switch of elder and light-heartedly slashed the tops of nettle and cow parsley as he strode. Have-at-you Love, with all-conquering blade. Zounds... At intervals, he plucked and munched a blackberry.

  His aunt had been right. He was still a hundred yards from the cottage when he saw the patches of bright new tile with which the roof had been repaired. From a chimney rose a thin plume of smoke. Some of the creeper on the side facing the road had been cut away to leave the windows clear. The panes were picked out with fresh paint.

  Love halted at the new tubular steel gate and looked through.

  The field looked unchanged from when he had last seen it. There were no signs of cultivation. The once neat herb beds had long since ceased to be distinguishable. They were overrun with weeds and rank grass, although here and there a great bolted bush of sage or thyme survived as testimony to the place’s original use.

  Fixed to the cottage wall, at one side of an uncurtained but clean window, was a board with an announcement in slim, pale green lettering on a chocolate ground.

  MOLDHAM MERES LABORATORIES : Registered Office.

  Love opened the gate and walked down the path to the cottage. There was a door in the gable end. He let fall its horseshoe knocker. It produced an echoing sound suggestive of the house being sparsely furnished. He waited. Nothing happened. He knocked again. No result.

  He noticed a little text, lettered in a style and colour-scheme similar to those of the signboard, set in the top panel of the door.

  ‘NATURE—O TRUE APOTHECARY!’

  Dinky, Love reflected.

  He walked round to the back of the cottage and looked through a window. He saw a big office table on which stood an addressograph, a typewriter and several piles of leaflets, stationery and packets. Two filing cabinets stood against the farther wall.

  The next window was that of a small kitchen containing sink, stove and refrigerator. On the table were the remains of a meal.

  In the room beyond—the last on this side of the house—the sergeant saw a low divan bed, unmade, a couple of chairs, a gate-leg table and a television set. The floor was carpeted and there were curtains at the window.

  Love was still peering into this room when he heard the sudden rising whine of an electric motor, followed by a chattering, grating sound. He turned.

  The noise seemed to come from one of three adjoining sheds at the farther side of the paved yard in which he stood. It was a vaguely familiar sound. After a few moments he placed it. An electric food blender, running on dry ingredients.

  The door of the right-hand shed opened and the noise became louder. There emerged a short, thin, wiry, baldheaded man in shirt and trousers. Love saw sunlight flash from a pair of rimless spectacles. The man stood outside the door. He blinked, scratched an ear, yawned, then bent down to stroke a ginger cat that had appeared from round the corner of the shed.

  As the man straightened again, he spotted the sergeant. Hastily he stepped back through the doorway.

  Half a minute passed. Then he came once more into the sunlit yard, this time with slow dignity. Love was surprised to see that he was now wearing a kind of voluminious brown dressing gown, corded round the waist.

  Love stepped to meet the thin man, who nodded gravely and raised two fingers in greeting. (Scoutmaster? wondered the sergeant—no, surely not.)

  “Good morning, sir. I am Detective Sergeant Love, from Flaxborough, and I should like to speak to the manager.”

  Love believed that straightforward declarations of this kind were more productive in the long run than the clever, pussy-footed approach.

  “’Ow do?” responded the man. He held out his hand. “Brother Culpepper’s the name.”

  As he shook hands, Love tried not to show the apprehension that always rose within him whenever involvement with religion threatened. A bloody monk! Surreptitiously, he glanced across the other’s shoulder for the sure sign of monkhood, a cowl. Yes, there it was.

  “Pleased to meet you, Your, er...” (Reverence, was it? Grace?)

  “The boss ain’t ’ere yet,” said Brother Culpepper. “I’m on me tod, ’smatterfact. Anyfink I can do for you?”

  “Well, I don’t quite know. I’m just making some routine inquiries.”

  Brother Culpepper looked up at him in friendly wonderment.

  “Wot, somebody lost somefink, you mean?”

  The chirpy Cockney accent increased rather than diminished Love’s respect. A man who could achieve holy orders despite such a social disadvantage must clearly be of the strongest character.

  “No, nothing special, really. I just want to check on various things. Food and Drugs Act. You know.”

  “Like to see rahnd? I’m the ’erbmaster. Or if you’d rather come back abaht eleven... Christ! I’ve left them choppers runnin’...”

  He darted back into the shed. A few seconds later, the electric blender noise died.

  “Sorry abaht that, but they run ’ot if they’re left. Nah then, wot was I sayin’?—yeah, if you like to give it an hour, the boss orter be in then. Wotcher fink?”

  Love deliberated.

  “Well, actually... Beg pardon, what was it you said you did here?”

  “I’m ’erbmaster.”

  “You look after the, er...” Love jerked his head towards the sheds.

  “Thasright. The ’ole caboodle—’erbs, driers, choppers—the l
ot.”

  “But isn’t there anyone else here? Working, I mean.”

  “Only young Florrie.”

  Brother Culpepper looked at his hands, then gave them a vigorous wipe on a square yard of his robe.

  “She comes over three times a week from Moldham to do the packin’ an’ that. Then there’s the boss, o’ course. Office stuff—she does all that. But ’er hours ain’t wot you’d call regular, ’cos she’s got a long way to come, see.”

  “And do you have far to travel?” Love knew of only one monastery and that was twenty miles the other side of Flaxborough.

  “Wot, me? I live in, ’erbmasters always live in, mate. There are fings can go wrong. Lots o’fings.”

  “Oh,” said Love.

  He looked away from the man’s bright, upturned face. It reminded him a little of the face of a salesman on Flaxborough market who once had inveigled him into buying a ‘fuel extender’ to increase by forty per cent his motor cycle’s mileage performance. It had turned the petrol into a toffee-like substance that had effectively sealed the engine for ever. But this fellow seemed genuine enough. Why should he wear this get-up out here in the middle of nowhere if he wasn’t a real monk?

  “I’ve always rather fancied gardening,” Love remarked. “Nice quiet sort of life.” He hoped he had compensated for the unworthy straying of his thoughts.

  “Oh, it’s ’eaven,” agreed Brother Culpepper.

  He regarded the sergeant carefully for a moment.

  “I’m on wot they call release from the Order, see? Sort of lent aht. Abbot’s dispensation.”

  “Ah,” said Love, nodding.

  “Lickewer’s really my line, o’ course. Chartroose. This makes a change, though.”

  “Yes, it must.”

  Love gazed past the end shed, trying to discern some area of disciplined cultivation in the wilderness of weeds.

  “What is it, exactly, this, er...you know—what you make here?”

  “Wot is it?” echoed Culpepper, incredulously. “Don’t tell me you ’aven’t ’eard of Lucky Fen Wort?”

  “Well, I...”

  “Balm of Befle’em?”

  The sergeant pretended to think hard.

  “Samson’s Salad?” urged Culpepper. “Cor, but you must ’ave!”

  “Oh, that. Yes. Yes, I have.”

  “Course you ’ave!” The monk puffed his cheeks rougishly and gave Love’s chest a flip with the back of his hand.

  The sergeant swallowed. “What is it supposed to do, though? I’m not very well up on herbs.”

  At once Culpepper’s face was serious and eager once more.

  “Look,” he said, “if I didn’t know wot was wot regardin’ miracles an’ that, I’d say that stuff was one. A miracle. No—straight up, I would.”

  “Good, is it?”

  “Good? Good?” Culpepper’s little eyes squeezed to mere creases behind his glasses, then popped. “It’s aht o’ this flippin’ world, bruvver!”

  “You mean it cures things?”

  “Har...”—Culpepper raised a finger—“as to that, we’ve got to be careful, ’aven’t we, eh? Claims is dodgy fings. I’m not goin’ to stand ’ere an’ tell you Lucky Fen Wort will cure this and Lucky Fen Wort will cure that. I mean, I know all abaht renderin’ under Caesar an’ all that. But wot I will say—and may ’E strike me if I tell a lie—’Im, not Caesar, I mean—wot I will say is, Lucky Fen Wort didn’t get it’s name for nuffink.”

  The sergeant looked at his watch. The inspector was not going to thank him for having spent an entire morning learning that the promoters of Samson’s Salad offered nothing more definite than good luck (the late Alderman Winge’s experience notwithstanding).

  “This manager of yours—you think she’d be here about eleven.”

  “Should be.”

  “And what did you say her name was?”

  Brother Culpepper hauled up his gown and fished a leather wallet from his trousers pocket. He extracted a pale lilac card and handed it to Love.

  “That’s ’er.” He pointed to the name in the bottom left corner of the card. “Luvly lady. Used to be a missionary.”

  The sergeant noted that a smile of blissful devotion had appeared on Culpepper’s face. He examined the card. Under a delicate floral motif was printed MOLDHAM MERES LABORATORIES, MOLDHAM, ENGLAND...Director: Lucilla E. C. Teatime, M.B.E.

  Love frowned, but only for a second.

  “Is that the Miss Teatime who does the charity work in Flax?”

  “Wot! You know ’er?” A beam of surprise and congratulation.

  “We have met once or twice.”

  “Oh, a luvly lady!”

  Love looked again at the card, then slipped it into his pocket. “I hadn’t realized she was an M.B.E.”

  “She’s a great one for ’iding lights under bushes,” explained Brother Culpepper. He sighed. “Anyway, p’raps you’d like to come an’ ’ave a shufti?”

  “A what?”

  “A look-see. A stroll rahnd.”

  He led Love to the first shed and held the door open for him to enter.

  It was very dim inside. There was a cool, earthy smell, overlaid with an aromatic odour that reminded Love of newly mown road verges. Against one side of the shed had been heaped greenery of some kind, spangled with bright yellow flowers.

  “That’s the wort ’arvest,” his guide told him. “It’s brought in ’ere an’ graded.”

  The sergeant saw no evidence of grading. The green stuff lay in one big pile. There were several baskets lying around, though. He stepped between them and picked a sample of the harvest, examining leaves and stalk with what he hoped would look like intelligent appreciation.

  “Very like dandelion,” was the only comment that occurred to him.

  “Ah,” responded Culpepper immediately, “yor dead right. Lots o’ people can’t see the diff’rence. But ’erbs is like everyfink else—you gotta know ’em, see? Takes years.”

  He took the sample from Love, sniffed it fastidiously, then slowly split a stem with his thumb nail.

  “See?” He indicated the stem’s viscous inner surface. “That’s wort orlright.”

  He tossed the plant back on the heap and turned towards the door.

  In the middle shed, Culpepper pointed to nets stretched from wall to wall on which were spread thin layers of shrivelling leaves.

  “Dryin’ ’ouse,” he explained.

  They went on to the third shed.

  The air here was dusty. It smelled. Love thought, rather like the inside of Pearsons’ seed warehouse in North Street. This was where the sound of machinery had come from. He saw an electric motor bolted to a table and, nearby, what appeared to be an outsize coffee mill. The mill was surmounted by a hopper. To a delivery pipe at the bottom of the machine a canvas bag, rather similar to a post office sorting bag, had been clipped.

  Culpepper tipped the contents of a basket into the hopper and switched on the motor. Above the resultant racket he shouted triumphantly: “Untouched by ’uman ’and!” and pointed to the canvas bag, which slowly fattened.

  On the other side of the gangway was a second table, bearing a big enamelled bowl, a couple of scoops, a kitchen spring balance and a pile of empty packets.

  Brother Culpepper walked over to it.

  “This is where young Florrie gives an ’and.”

  He thrust a scoop into what Lucky Fen Wort had been left in the bowl at the end of Florrie’s last shift and yelled:

  “Goes all over the flippin’ country, this does! Arsk an’ it shall be given unto yew!”

  Love took this to be a scriptural jest of some sort and grinned sheepishly.

  Culpepper stepped back and switched off the motor.

  “That’s abaht it, then,” he said.

  “Very interesting,” said Love. He was wondering what else he could usefully ask when Culpepper perked up his head and listened.

  “ ’Ello, ’ello, ’ello—’ere comes the Queen o’ Sheba!”

&n
bsp; The sergeant heard the hornet-like crescendo of an approaching car—a sports car, without doubt. He followed Culpepper into the sunlight. Three seconds later, what seemed to be a wheeled projectile, immaculately agleam and pulsating wickedly, drew up before them.

  A shoe—brown suede, well cut; a neat ankle and calf, finely stockinged; a skirt low enough to be modest without looking dowdy; a slim yet energetic body, dressed one season in arrear but with that kind of informed taste that makes fashion seem beside the point; delicate but capable hands, fluttering now to show pleasure; a face that bespoke no particular age despite its innocence of any but the most elementary make-up; gentle, shrewd eyes...