Colin Watson - The Flaxborough Crab

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 ‘Eastern 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.”