The Flaxborough Crab f-6

by Colin Watson

  “But she’s demented, this bloody woman! This, this...Wahnsinnige...”

  “Just a moment, sir.”

  Purbright turned to Miss Teatime.

  “Are you quite certain about this?”

  “Absolutely. I only wish I were not. I mean, it was such a petty thing to do. A doctor filching another doctor’s stethoscope...”

  “You’re out of your mind!” shouted Brennan.

  “It was,” continued Miss Teatime, undeterred, “the meanness of it that shocked me. Like stealing straw to make a brick. Of course, I resolved at once that I could not possibly accept the five thousand pounds unless Dr Brunnen could give a completely satisfactory explanation for his behaviour.”

  “And can you, sir?” Purbright blandly inquired of Brennan.

  “But this is sheer fantasy! Can’t you see that? She has been pestering me. Sexually, you understand? And because I would have nothing to do with her, she makes these lunatic accusations.”

  “Stealing,” said Purbright, “is what we in this country term an indictable offence, sir. I have to explain that, because the legal distinction is important. Technically speaking, this lady has laid information against you, Mr, er, Dr Brunnen, and it is my duty to take it seriously.”

  “But you can’t! I have told you why she is talking all this nonsense.”

  “At the moment, it is your word against hers that it is nonsense. You must appreciate that I have to satisfy myself whether there is any truth in Miss Teatime’s charge. The other matter can wait for the time being.”

  “What other matter?”

  “The question of your whereabouts at eight o’clock on the evening of the twelfth.”

  Brennan cast a quick look at Miss Teatime, but she remained in patient contemplation of the inspector’s face.

  “Have you any objection,” Purbright asked, “to our making a search of your property, sir?”

  “Of course I have. I object very strongly to the way I am being treated as a criminal. But if you want to waste your time looking for what is not here, by all means look. I need hardly say that this whole affair will be brought to the notice of your Foreign Ministry.”

  “Very well, sir. If you will kindly remain where you are for a few minutes... Oh, and perhaps the lady would be good enough to wait outside in the corridor.”

  Purbright and Love searched less astutely than Miss Teatime had done, but a good deal more industriously. Love, whose duties had afforded him a similar opportunity only once before in his life, found it highly enjoyable and determined to drag it out. More than once, Purbright had to point out to him that no degree of criminal ingenuity was likely to have succeeded in secreting a stethoscope within a stud box or submerging it in a bottle of after-shave lotion.

  They finished at last, however, and the inspector presented himself to the cooler but still resentful Brennan.

  “Would you mind coming down with us to the garage, sir?”

  They walked in silence along the corridor, passing Miss Teatime at the first turn. She waited a moment, then followed quietly a few yards behind.

  Brennan, invited by Purbright to walk ahead, led the two policemen into the roofed enclosure and stood beside the grey Hillman. He was quite calm now. As he handed the inspector a key, he made the slightest of bows.

  Purbright opened the car door.

  The two cases were in the same position, but the raincoat had been pushed into one of the compartments beneath the facia. Purbright drew it out and unrolled it. Holding it up, he shook it. Of the scarf, or whatever had been wrapped in the coat before, there was now no sign. He folded the coat and laid it on the seat.

  Love was busy excavating and scrutinizing the contents of the boot. He found a foot pump, a tin box with a few small tools in it, a deflated beach ball, some rope, a folded canvas stool, a lemonade bottle half filled with a liquid which he decided, after careful sniffing, to be paraffin, and a much worn tyre.

  By the time Love had loaded these back again, the inspector had completed his examination of the inside of the car and was about to open the smaller of the two cases with one of the pair of keys helpfully volunteered by Brennan.

  The case contained, as he had guessed, a range of small sample bottles and packs of capsules. All bore labels under the Elixon imprint.

  Purbright locked it again, replaced it on the seat, and pulled forward the larger case.

  Sergeant Love looked over the inspector’s shoulder as the lid was raised.

  He could not have put names to more than two or three of the things he saw revealed, but he knew that they were pieces of diagnostic equipment of a kind he had seen from time to time in surgeries and hospitals. He recognized an instrument for looking into ears. Another, a sort of barometer, was similar to one by which he once had had his very normal blood pressure measured. There were slim chrome torches, rubber-headed mallets, thermometers in transparent pocket cases, stainless steel spatulas. All were sealed in polythene and neatly arranged in compartments. Love gazed admiringly at their workmanship and pristine brightness. No wonder, he reflected, that it cost so much to set up as a doctor.

  “Go on, inspector,” he heard Brennan say quietly, “There’s more under those.”

  Purbright gave the top section a pull. It lifted and hinged back. He reached into the bottom of the case and drew up something black and tubular and flabby.

  The sergeant very nearly said, “Ah!”

  Then Purbright’s hand went again into the case.

  Another stethoscope emerged.

  Then another. And another.

  By now, the inspector was looking rather like a man who had unwisely allowed himself to assist in some bizarre and protracted feat of conjuring.

  Brennan, his face expressionless save for a slight thrusting forward of his lips that gave him something of a proprietory air, looked on.

  The seventh, and final, stethoscope joined the bundle in Purbright’s left hand. He stood up. Love gazed with open wonder at the collection.

  Brennan smiled.

  “And which one,” he asked, “am I supposed to have stolen, inspector?”

  It was a good question, Purbright bitterly reflected. Unless an answer presented itself pretty quickly, it was a winner.

  He diligently examined the seven stethoscopes, comparing one with another. All seemed brand new and of exactly the same pattern. Their design, though, was unconventional—or so he supposed—for at the union of the earpieces was a small black box fitted with a rocker switch. A metal strip riveted to the top of this box carried the word Elixon in red.

  “These are manufactured by your firm, are they, sir?”

  “No, but they are made to our specification.”

  “And you sell them?”

  “I do not think you quite understand, inspector. All this”—he made general indication of the stethioscopes and the other contents of the case—“is just a small extra service that we are pleased to perform for the medical profession. Doctors find them very acceptable, I think.”

  “You mean they’re free gifts?”

  Brennan received this interpretation coldly. “They are gestures that help to maintain good will between one profession and another, that is all.”

  “Rather expensive gestures,” Purbright remarked. He was looking closely at the stethoscope he had kept in his hand after dropping the others back in the case. “I don’t know much about these things, but this seems to be of fairly advanced design.”

  “Oh, it is. This type is extremely sensitive. Electronics, of course.”

  Brennan moved close. He held the black box lightly in his open palm.

  “In here are the transistors, battery, and so forth. It is a very small radio set, in fact.” His fingers, the inspector noticed, bore several black grease smears. “You simply press this switch and you can hear a heart making a noise like an ocean liner.”

  Purbright gave the switch experimental pressure, but Brennan shook his head.

  “No, no—it is designed to work on
ly when the earpieces are extended in use. To prevent accidental battery wear, you see.”

  “And what’s this?” The inspector peered at the lettering he indicated with one finger immediately below the switch.

  “Verstärker—amplifier,” Brennan explained.

  For some time Purbright continued to stare at the tiny moulded letters. Then, without taking his eyes off them, he beckoned.

  “Sergeant...”

  Love, who had been stooping to look under the car, stood upright and came to Purbright’s side.

  “Read that out loud, will you.” Purbright told him.

  “Vurze...” He hesitated, and made a second attempt. “Vurzetarker...” He looked inquiringly at the inspector. “Is that right?”

  “It will do, sergeant. It will do very nicely.”

  Love withdrew and resumed his painstaking scrutiny of the car’s underbelly, watched impassively by Miss Teatime.

  “Did Dr Meadow,” Purbright asked Brennan, “possess one of these stethoscopes?”

  “No. They are a completely new line. As a matter of fact, I intended to give him one that day when he collapsed. If you remember, I was waiting to see him.”

  “And you had it on you, did you?”

  Brennan agreed, almost eagerly, that he had indeed been carrying the instrument intended for Dr Meadow.

  “Of course!” he exclaimed. “This lady must have noticed it sticking from my pocket and concluded that I had stolen it!”

  “That could be the explanation, sir.”

  “Could? It must be. Does a man with a case full of beautiful instruments like this steal an old stethoscope from some little country doctor?”

  Purbright smilingly conceded that such behaviour was most unlikely. He was sorry that Mr Brennan—or Dr Brunnen, rather—had been subjected to inconvenience.

  Brennan (or Brunnen) bowed. Not at all. These little misunderstandings did arise from time to time. He quite understood. Perhaps now that the matter had been cleared up, however...

  In the midst of this mutual affability, Purbright had been keeping a wary eye on the progress of Sergeant Love. By now, he had methodically worked round to the front of the car and had just raised the lid of the engine compartment.

  “Excuse me a moment, sir,” Purbright said to Brennan. “We might as well finish the formalities.”

  He casually walked over to join Love and leaned with him over the engine.

  “If it’s anywhere,” he murmured very softly, “it’s in here. He’s still got oil on his hands.”

  Both men peered intently into every recess, every conceivable hiding place from end to end of the engine compartment. Love probed beneath the cylinder block and behind the clutch housing and would have unscrewed both the radiator and oil filler caps had not Purbright dissuaded him.

  The search revealed nothing.

  Purbright was the first to straighten up. He took care not to sigh too obviously. The sergeant remained dutifully inclined over the engine for a few minutes more. Then he, too, stepped back.

  Purbright looked towards Brennan.

  “That appears to be all, then, sir,” he said. He motioned Love to close the lid.

  “Excuse me, inspector.”

  Purbright turned to find beside him the small figure of Miss Teatime. She was gazing pensively at the car.

  “That model, if I remember rightly,” she said, “is fitted with a one-and-a-half litre engine.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Purbright, more abruptly than he had intended.

  “A four-cylinder engine, in fact,” she said.

  “Possibly.”

  “No, inspector—quite definitely. So why, I wonder, should there appear to be six distributor leads? I thought I had better mention it before the sergeant puts the bonnet down.”

  Purbright reached forward and parted the complex of black rubber-covered cables that ran from the distributor to the four sparking plugs. Two were loose. They had been tucked and twisted amongst the others. And now that he was deliberately looking at them and not simply glimpsing and accepting them as familiar parts of a car’s mechanism, their greater thickness and newness registered immediately.

  He tugged them free.

  There came to light the little black box at their junction, then the stethoscope’s third tube, the foot of the “Y”, ending in the button-like microphone housing.

  Purbright examined the find. It appeared to be identical with the seven instruments in Brennan’s case. The same design, the same workmanship, the same little Elixon name plate. Yet there was a difference. This one was noticeably heavier.

  “Do you wish to give me any explanation about this, sir?”

  Brennan stared contemptuously into the middle distance. He said nothing.

  The inspector waited a while, then handed the stethoscope to Love and again addressed Brennan.

  “Erich Brunnen, or Brennan, I am now going to take you into custody. You will be charged with stealing, at or about half past six in the evening of the twelfth of this month, in Heston Lane, Flaxborough, one stethoscope, the property of Dr Augustus Meadow...”

  “What a fiendish device, Mr Purbright!”

  It was three days later.

  The Chief Constable was looking at a sketch that the inspector had made on the back of an envelope.

  “Yes, sir. The forensic people were quite impressed. That, you see,”—he pointed—“is the compressed air cartridge, rather like a soda syphon bulb, which releases its charge when that switch is pressed. Hence the hissing noise that Mrs McCreavy mistakenly ascribed to Dr Meadow’s impatience.

  “Now look at the two tubes that form the earpieces. That one is just a dummy, like the bottom tube with its imitation microphone, but the other is a piece of small-bore hydraulic hose with steel mesh reinforcement under a smooth rubber facing. A sort of flexible gun barrel, in fact.”

  “Good Lord!” said Mr Chubb. “I see what you’re getting at, of course. The whole thing’s a kind of air gun.”

  “Exactly, sir. And pretty powerful, according to the lab report.”

  “What does it fire? A pellet, or something?”

  “No, sir. Probably a dart, a small steel spike. As you can imagine, it would have to be fairly sharp to pass through the petrous bone.”

  “Yes, of course it would.” Mr Chubb saw no immediate reason to admit that he had never before heard of petrous bone.

  “Tell me, Mr Purbright—why did you suppose this fellow to be lying when he claimed he had not seen Dr Meadow that day?”

  “I knew for certain that he was lying as soon as I saw the word that was printed under the switch. The German word for amplifier—Verstarker. The last thing that Dr Meadow said before he collapsed was so curious that Mrs McCreavy remembered it. According to her, it was ‘The fur’s darker’. That is just how a muttered and probably anglicized pronunciation of the word would be interpreted by someone over-hearing it. So it was clear that Meadow had been using one of Brennan’s new stedioscopes. And there was only one way he could have got hold of it. Brennan must have presented him with it before the surgery opened at six o’clock.”

  “I suppose that from then on Brennan was hanging around in order to reclaim the thing as soon as it had...well, gone off?”

  “Yes, sir. It was essential to prevent its being examined by anybody else.”

  “He was taking an awful risk, wasn’t he?”

  Purbright shrugged. “There was a great deal at stake, sir. We’ve turned up a copy of the letter Meadow wrote to Elixon immediately after the inquest on Alderman Winge. It stated his misgivings about this drug ‘Juniform’ and said that he would have to withdraw what he had published previously about its safety. Brennan and his firm stood to lose sales that promised eventually to be worth millions. Men in that position do tend to favour boldness.”

  “Lucky that Teatime person had her wits about her, eh?” remarked Mr Chubb. “We owe her quite a lot, you know.”

  “Yes, sir. She seems a very public-spirited lady.
”

  Inspector Purbright, too, could be magnanimous when he wished.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: b7c86fe0-20f7-4970-bb30-5b7d2552671f

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 11.12.2012

  Created using: calibre 0.9.9, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software

  Document authors :

  Colin Watson