The Flaxborough Crab

“He just grabbed her arm”—Purbright glanced down at the report—“and shoved her into the hedge. That’s the hedge near the post box, is it?”

“Yes, sir. It runs along by the Goodacres’ front garden. It’s the tall, yellowish one, rather neglected.”

“I know.”

The inspector read aloud: “He did not do anything more to me. I was frightened and a bit scratched with being pushed into the hedge. I was lying half through it and I could not get up at first. It took me perhaps half a minute to get up. The man had gone. I had heard a car. I think it must have been the car he had been hiding behind when I came along. I picked up the letters which I had dropped. I posted them and went back to Mrs Meadow’s.”

There was a pause.

“Those letters,” Purbright said. “Did she say if any were missing?”

“No, sir.” Pook sounded a little querulous.

“Well, he must have had some reason for knocking her over, mustn’t he?”

“But surely, sir, it’s the same fellow who’s been doing this sort of thing all over the place.”

“I doubt it. This man was waiting for her. He knew where to wait—by the post box nearest her employer’s house. And he made no attempt to molest her sexually. Another thing—she says here that he’d pulled a scarf up over his face. That’s not in line with the other cases. Then there’s her description of him, such as it is...middle-aged, powerful build, movements very quick... None of the other women saw anybody like that, did they, sergeant?”

Love started, then said no—no, they hadn’t.

Purbright continued to look at him, brows raised, happier now, inviting the sergeant to share his cheerfulness.

“You see? Meadow. Always back to Meadow, always this link. And you talk about natural causes, sergeant?

He lifted the phone. “Get me Flaxborough nine-three-six-three, will you, please. I shall want to speak to a young woman called Pauline Sutton, if she is there.”

Pook silently and respectfully bobbed his farewells and tip-toed from the room. As he was closing the door behind him, he heard the inspector greet Miss Sutton with considerable geniality. Now what? Pook said bitterly to himself. He was a grudging man.

“You may remember, Pauline,” Purbright was saying, “that there was some conversation yesterday evening between you and Mr Brennan concerning letters. I was not eavesdropping, you understand, but I did overhear the odd word. Now then, something has happened which may make what you were saying very important. I want you now to repeat it to me as precisely as you can recall it...”

Chapter Sixteen

Old Dr James stood at the window of the front office of Sparrow, Sparrow and Amblesby, solicitors, and stared gloomily at a passing parade of cars. It was the funeral procession of Alderman Steven Winge.

After the big square hearse, canopied with flowers and driven by a long, top-hatted man with a statuesque dedication that seemed quite unconnected with the vehicle’s mechanical controls, came three black limousines. Exactly identical with one another, they bore the same family resemblance to the hearse, whose pace they emulated like obedient sons, as, curiously enough, did their drivers to the petrified personage in the lead.

Following the limousines were two or three less opulent but still fairly expensive cars. Thereafter, the mourners’ transport became progressively less splendid—presumably in ratio to the standing and expectations of the occupants—until it terminated in the regrettable presence of the travel-stained baker’s van of some third cousins from Cardiff.

Dr James shook his head. He remembered the days of plumed horses and rows of bare-headed, silent spectators.

“Poor old Steve Winge,” he said, partly to himself, partly to the two men who stood behind him. “There was a time when the whole council would turn out to see an alderman off. They’d have followed on foot. Robes. The Mace. I wonder sometimes what has happened to our sense of occasion.”

He turned round.

“Sad. Don’t you think so, Thompson?”

The deputy coroner looked up from fiddling with a key ring and said yes, he did think it was sad, funerals nowadays were little better than disposal parties.

Sergeant Malley, who unwillingly half-filled what little space had been left in the little office by a welter of Victorian lawyers’ furniture, hoped that this sort of talk would not go on much longer. The inspector, he knew, was in an oddly impatient frame of mind; he wasn’t going to relish the news that after taking a look at Meadow’s body old James had blithely signed a certificate of natural death.

“You’ll not recall,” Dr James was saying, “when Bert Amblesby took over as coroner.”

It was a safe statement. Neither Malley nor Thompson had even been born at that remote remove of time.

“His partner, Zeke Sparrow, died the following year, and, do you know, there was black crepe all the way down the High Street. Fourteen carriages. Think of that.”

“People don’t have the time any more,” said Thompson. He was thinking that he was running a bit short of that commodity himself just then.

“Time? It’s respect they lack, not time. Did you notice what was happening out there?” Dr James indicated the window with a nod of his silver-white head. “There were cars overtaking and cutting in. One actually hooted at the hearse.”