Colin Watson - The Flaxborough Crab

Ah, a salesman, Miss Teatime told herself. One thing about these pharmaceutical people, though—they had an air of distinction, of being concerned with higher things than mere money, that you never found in a groceries rep or a hawker of hardware.

She tried to confirm her guess by reading the bigger type on the topmost leaflet, but she was hampered by its being upside-down. Only one word could she make out without going nearer and putting on her glasses (and she could imagine no pretext for anything so brash as that). It was ELIXON. Not much help. She withdrew again behind her New Yorker .

A buzz proclaimed that Dr Bruce was free once more, but no one made a move. After a while, his consulting-room door opened and there appeared a tall, slightly bewildered looking man of about thirty-five, with thin, untidy hair and long hands that kept wrestling with each other. He gazed challengingly at the three people who were still waiting, shrugged, and went back into his room. Miss Teatime heard water begin to run. Dr Bruce doubtless was washing his hands of them all.

“Oh, by the way, Mr Brennan...”

The receptionist was leaning out of her hatch. The man in the grey suit looked up.

“Did you manage to see the doctor earlier on?” she asked him.

“No, I didn’t, actually. There’s no hurry. I shall wait now until he has finished surgery.”

There was some quality in his voice that Miss Teatime had detected before without being able quite to define it. Now she knew what it was: a slight lisp—not an affectation, but the kind of speech flaw that could have resulted from an injury.

“I just wondered,” the girl went on, “because there was something I think he wanted to show you. It’s a copy of that article he rang you about yesterday, and I’ve only just finished typing it.”

“That’s fine. I’ll take it with me when I go in, shall I?...” He put aside the leaflets and stood up.

The girl left the hatch and reappeared holding a long buff-coloured envelope which she handed to Brennan. He slipped it into an inside pocket and resumed his seat after thanking her and taking a casual glimpse of the desk where she had been typing.

For lack of anything else to do, Miss Teatime turned her attention to the girl with the folded arms. Why was she hugging herself like that, as if trying not to be noticed? She looked lonely and in trouble. Miss Teatime felt increasingly sorry for her. Some plausible Flaxborough buck had fed her one of the usual legends, no doubt. I’ll be all right if you run about a bit afterwards and drink plenty of water . How sad that people were so ready to believe what they wanted to believe—or what others wanted them to bel...

There burst in upon this melancholy reflection a quick succession of violent sounds. A collision, as if of furniture...the crash of something overtoppled...a crumpling thud. Then, after an absolute silence no less shocking than the noise that had preceded it, the door to which all eyes turned seemed visibly to be straining against the assault upon it from within by a long, rasping scream.

For an absurdly extended time, nobody did anything. Did not convention decree that the right to intrude upon a doctor’s privacy was strictly reserved to nurses or other doctors?

The dilemma was resolved when the door was suddenly dragged open by a Mrs McCreavy transformed by near-nudity and shock.

Clutching a bundle of snatched-up clothing to her breast, she staggered out of the room with head thrust forward and mouth open. Pert no longer, the brilliantly red lips looked like the edges of a deep, rawly inflicted cut which had drained her face of what little colour it had had.

The girl opposite Miss Teatime was the first to move. She sprang to Mrs McCreavy, put an arm round her shoulder, and led her to a chair.

Brennan stared at them, momentarily bewildered, then strode to the open door. Miss Teatime followed close behind.

On the floor of the consulting room lay Dr Meadow, face down. His arms and legs were disposed like those of a swimmer who had reached shore at last gasp and fallen at once to sleep. Near his head, and caught in a leg of the heavy office chair whose overturning they had heard, were the black coils of his stethoscope.

Brennan knelt. Miss Teatime watched the fine grey cloth of his jacket tighten against underlying muscle as he heaved Dr Meadow over and bent to listen to his chest.

Behind them, the receptionist had opened a window and was shouting “Doctor Bruce!” Having found his room empty, she had looked out to see him getting into his car, which he had parked behind Meadow’s big Lagonda.

“I think,” Brennan said, “that the poor chap is dead.”

He raised his head and looked over his shoulder at Miss Teatime.

“Perhaps you had better try and find Dr Bruce.”

“The girl has been calling for him.” She listened. “I believe I can hear someone coming in from outside now.”

Brennan turned again to the body. He felt one wrist, then the chest. He shook his head and got up slowly, buttoning his jacket. “Extraordinary,” he murmured.

Bruce came into the room, pale-faced and anxious, yet quietly businesslike. Brennan and Miss Teatime moved aside to make way for him. They stood back close against the wall, silent spectators. From the doorway, the receptionist watched, knuckles pressed hard on her lower lip. The only sound was the muffled sobbing of Mrs McCreavy, who had been helped back into her crumpled dress and was now sitting grasping the hand of the girl with troubles.

Bruce squatted down beside his partner. Fingertips explored with delicate expertise. He unfastened Meadow’s shirt, tugged his own stethoscope from his side pocket, and listened, head bowed.

After nearly half a minute, he took off his jacket, folded it several times, and beckoned the girl at the door.

“Slip it under his shoulders when I raise him. I want his head well back.”

The receptionist did as she was told.

“Ambulance,” Bruce said. He nodded towards the telephone on the desk. “Then you’d better give the police a ring.”

The soft whirr of the spun dial sounded as loud as a helicopter rotor in the small, silent room.

Bruce crouched low, his mouth over Meadow’s. Firmly, almost violently, he pressed the heel of his hand into the man’s chest.

The girl was asking for an ambulance. She glanced down at Dr Bruce and remembered something else. Would they please alert the resuscitation unit.

She dialled again.

The calm, matter-of-fact voice of the answering policeman made the scene around her seem suddenly unreal. She tried to give a simple account, but he sounded as if he wanted to sit there all day asking subsidiary questions. She looked helplessly at Bruce. He interrupted what he was doing only long enough to inject a shot of adrenalin.

The voice at the other end became louder.

“I said, is he dead. Miss? Can you hear me?”

She started. “Yes. Yes, I think he is.”

“You only think ...?”

She put down the phone.

When, at last, Bruce rose to his feet, he stared wearily at Meadow’s body for several seconds before he stooped once more and gently eased free his folded jacket. He put it on and went out into the waiting-room. Brennan and Miss Teatime followed him.

The receptionist lingered unhappily by the consulting room door. She seemed to be wondering whether she ought to close it. Bruce touched her sleeve.

“Miss Sutton, would you mind staying on here until the ambulance comes. It shouldn’t be many minutes. I must go round to the house now. Mrs Meadow will have to be told.”

Among the several matters exercising the busy mind of Miss Teatime was the reflection that her original purpose in visiting the surgery would not now be fulfilled. She watched the departure of the still tearful Mrs McCreavy in the custody of her younger companion, whose own anxiety, presumably, had been overlaid temporarily by the evening’s excitement. What could Mrs McCreavy tell of Dr Meadow’s dramatic end? She had volunteered not a single word and in the general distress no one had thought to ask her. The police, no doubt, would set that record straight in their own good time. Mr Brennan...had he gone yet? No, there he was by the door, his back towards her, putting the things back in his briefcase. A lost sale? Hardly. Those people were on a fairly easy pitch. Doctors did not like to think they were missing out on one of the latest fashions in miracle drugs. There had been a couple of those leaflets of his on the doctor’s desk. ELIXON. Tall, dark blue letters. But what, for goodness’ sake, was she to make of that other curious thing she had seen soon after entering Meadow’s room? She would have to think about that. Most puzzling.