The Flaxborough Crab

A woman in an olive-green tweed suit was gazing at her with an expression compounded of inquiry and distaste. The woman was middle-aged and had a long, rather weather-beaten face. She looked energetic and determined to be neither persuaded nor amused by anyone on earth.

Her husband unhurriedly put down his magazine.

“This young lady,” he informed her, “has had a rather nasty experience.”

Mrs Meadow’s unchanged stare indicated her opinion that Brenda belonged to that group of young females for whom unpleasant experiences were customary nutriment.

“She is just having a little rest,” Meadow added, “until the police arrive.”

“The police!”

“Some fellow attacked her in the road outside here. They will want to ask her some questions.”

“Is there any reason why she can’t go to the police station? I mean, that is the usual procedure, isn’t it?” Mrs Meadow had entered the room and was searching for something in the drawer of a glass-fronted bureau.

“Mmm?” said the doctor. The medical journal was engrossing him once more.

Brenda felt very guilty at having disturbed the routine of two such busy and important people. She remembered now having seen frequent references in the Flaxborough Citizen to Mrs Meadow’s activities. She belonged to lots of things and was never photographed, indoors or out, without a hat—a sure sign of considerable social status.

The girl was about to suggest that perhaps she should go home now and call at the police station the next day, when she heard the mellifluous chimes of the Meadows’ three-tone front door bell.

No one made a move. Then Mrs Meadow murmured something over her shoulder about being Elizabeth’s night off. The doctor, still reading, strolled slowly out of the room.

He returned with two men.

One was Inspector Purbright.

The other was an individual whose patently mature bodily development was quite disconcertingly at odds with the face of a fourteen-year-old choir boy. This was Detective Sergeant Love, sometimes playfully referred to by his superiors as ‘whited-sepulchre Sid’.

Mrs Meadow acknowledged introductions with only the slightest tilt of the boulder of her face. The ordained role of the police, she considered, was the protection of private property; if young women insisted on indulging in the frivolity of getting raped, then that was no good reason for the diversion of the constabulary from its proper duties.

It was with Brenda, now pale and weary-looking, that Purbright concerned himself at once.

He glanced at the table beside her.

“Have you had something to drink?”

“I have given her a sedative,” Meadow said.

“Oh, but a hot drink...” The inspector looked across at Mrs Meadow. “Do you think something in that line could be managed? Tea, perhaps?”

Mrs Meadow was too surprised to produce indignation commensurate with the audacity of the request. “Well, it is rather awkward, actually. The maid...”

“No, no,” Purbright protested cheerfully. “The sergeant is awfully good at making tea. He’d be pleased to do it.”

Love beamed like a boy scout unexpectedly invited to demonstrate fire-craft in the middle of the sitting-room carpet.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Mrs Meadow, already on her way to the door.

The sergeant took out his notebook and Purbright began asking Brenda quiet, gently phrased questions.

Dr Meadow listened.

Chapter Three

The inspector and the sergeant discussed the ordeal of Miss Sweeting.

It was the following morning.

As in the case of the attack upon the resourceful librarian, the search for the man responsible had been undertaken more as a gesture of helpfulness than with any hope of success. It had been quite fruitless. Heston Lane could have been as uninhabited as Gorry Wood for all the notice its sequestered residents had taken of the drama in their midst.

One thing was clear. Both incidents displayed common features. And the most striking of these was the curious crab-like flight of the women’s assailant.

“He’s not one of the regulars, you know, Sid,” Purbright observed thoughtfully. He had been perusing the Flaxborough version of that list kept by every police force of its sexually enterprising locals, both the convicted and the so far lucky.

Love agreed.

“And yet,” the inspector went on, “the girl and the Butters woman both speak of his being fairly old. Unless he’s a new arrival in the district, it’s queer that he should suddenly break out like this so late in life. These people are usually pretty well set in their ways.”

“Maybe it’s the weather,” suggested the sergeant. “They tell me they’ve had quite a bit of awkwardness over at Twilight Court during the past couple of weeks. They’ve cut out stout at supper on the men’s wards.”