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?”