The Flaxborough Crab

Mr Grope shook his head. For some time, his gaze had been fixed on Miss Teatime’s knees.

“I could make a poem about you, if you like,” he said suddenly.

“You cannot remember?”

“The prescription, you mean? Oh, it was just a squiggle. I couldn’t make it out.”

“Oh, dear.”

Mr Grope swallowed. He appeared to be working out some kind of a problem. Hopefully, Miss Teatime waited.

“When beauty like yours I see, my memory...”

He looked at the ceiling, his lips moving silently.

“No, wait a minute... When on your looks I dwell, my eye-sight flickers...A Voice I hear: She is your dear—Be bold, take off her knickers.”

So sternly reproving was Miss Teatime’s immediate “Mister Grope! You will kindly remember to whom you are speaking!” that Grope jumped and knocked the side of his head against the carved case of a wall clock. He looked hurt, bewildered, and quite harmless. Miss Teatime felt sorry for having startled him.

“You must not bring discredit on that beautiful uniform, you know,” she said kindly.

Grope recovered a little. “You like it?”

“Very much.”

Proudly, “It was a retirement present.”

Miss Teatime glanced once more at her watch and stood up. She hoped that Mr Grope’s amorous urge had subsided. It would not be dignified to take part in an obstacle race through all that furniture.

Mr Grope took off the big peaked hat with RIALTO embroidered upon it in gold. He scratched his head.

“About what you were asking,” he said. “I’ve had a thought.”

Not another erotic rhyme, prayed Miss Teatime.

But Grope had lumbered from the room. She heard his boots on the stair. Taking her opportunity, she slipped out into the corridor and stood close to the street door after making sure that it would open easily.

When he came downstairs again, he was holding something in his hand.

“I’ve been keeping one by,” he said. “I meant to go to another doctor if Meadow didn’t change his mind about stopping them. I’d have to have one to show, you see.”

He handed her a small brown-tinted bottle. On its label, headed AMIS & JEFFREY, CHEMISTS, EASTGATE, FLAXBOROUGH, was the instruction: ‘One to be taken, three times a day, after food.’

Miss Teatime unscrewed the cap and tipped on to her palm the single tablet that the bottle contained. It was octagonal in shape and pale green. One face was stamped with the letters E.D.G.S.

“You can borrow it, if you like,” said Mr Grope. “Promise to bring it back, though, won’t you?”

“I shall, indeed. As soon as my department has identified this tablet—how pretty it is, by the way—and corrected its prescription records, I shall deliver it back to you personally. You have been most helpful, Mr Grope.”

She slid the octagon into the bottle. Grope leaned over her, watching the bottle disappear in her handbag.

“Marvellous pick-me-up, are those—They’d warm the blood of Eski-mos.”

Miss Teatime reached smartly for the latch and pulled open the door.

“If you happen not to be in when I return,” she said, “I shall put it through the letter-box.”

“Until you come, my brain will burn—with thoughts of you without your frocks!”

Eluding the hand that sought to favour her posterior with a farewell squeeze, Miss Teatime hastened down the steps and made for her car.

She drove at once to Eastgate and parked as close as she could to the shop of Amis and Jeffrey. Before leaving the car, she transferred Mr Grope’s tablet from its bottle to an envelope.

“I should like,” said Miss Teatime to one of two girls behind the counter, “to speak to your chief dispenser, please.”

There appeared, after an interval of discussion at the back of the shop as to what so flattering a description as ‘chief dispenser’ might portend, a wary-looking young man who said he was the manager and could he be of any assistance, Mrs, er...?

“Miss,” she corrected sweetly. “Yes, I do have a small problem, but I am sure it can be resolved very quickly with your help.

“You see, an uncle of mine arrived last night to take a short holiday with me here in Flaxborough. He is a fairly elderly gentleman—quite spry, you understand, but getting on in years—and for some time he has been taking tablets prescribed by his doctor. Three every day, I believe. They probably are a simple tonic, but the Dean—my uncle, that is—does feel they are important to him.”

The manager, whose black, back-brushed hair and ebony-framed spectacles seemed to have been fashioned as a single headpiece to cap his sharp, sallow face, regarded her solemnly and without a trace of sympathy. Miss Teatime gave a little cough and persevered.

“He was most upset, as you may imagine, on discovering when he arrived that the box containing a week’s