The Flaxborough Crab

“So then you telephoned for help, did you, Mrs Pasquith?”

“Well, no, I didn’t, actually. I thought I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction—you know, to think that he’d scared me into calling for help. I was scared, oh yes, but after all I knew I was safe where I was. You see? I thought, you won’t want to hang about there much longer and risk getting caught. You’ll get tired of it before I do, I thought. And so he did. I heard him walk away up the aisle and out the back, and soon afterwards the vicar came in and everything was all right. But I thought I ought to report him because you never know what someone like that might do next. Well...”

Policewoman Bellweather frowned. “Don’t you think it would have been wiser to telephone straight away, Mrs Pasquith? It’s rather late for us to do anything about the man now.”

“Yes, but you see I didn’t really like to. I didn’t know, what people might think. I mean, he’d said all those horrible things and I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t tell lies if somebody came and caught him. Lies about me, I mean. Well, they do, don’t they? And I’m on the flower committee and everything, you see.”

The policewoman did not see. “But if he had told lies, it’s most unlikely that they would have been believed surely?”

Mrs Pasquith puckered her flower committee lips in a smile of forgiveness for Miss Bellweather’s naivete.

“When you were making for the vestry door...”

“Yes, love?”

“Did you get a better view of what the man looked like? He must have been nearer by then.”

“Well, he was, of course, but I didn’t stop to stare, I can tell you. I just sort of caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, if you see what I mean.”

“You can’t give me a description, then? Not even a rough impression?”

Mrs Pasquith shook her head regretfully, but continued to give the matter thought.

“He certainly wasn’t a young man, that’s all I can tell you.”

“How did he speak?”

“Oh, very impudent, very bold. Well, I told you...”

“No, I mean was he an educated sort of man?”

“You might call him that, yes. Well, ‘pollinate’—I mean that’s not a word that somebody ignorant would think of using, is it?”

“I suppose not,” said the policewoman.

There did not seem to be any other question she might usefully ask. The interview had been a waste of time. It had not produced a single clue to the man’s identity. So far as she could see, he hadn’t even committed a crime. Threatening words and behaviour? Possibly. Conduct likely to lead to a breach of the peace? Well, at a pinch...

“There is just one thing,” Mrs Pasquith said suddenly.

“Yes?”

“I told you I saw the man out of the corner of my eye, well, that’s right, he was just a sort of shape coming nearer, but there was something about him that I must have noticed because I thought about it later and wondered if I couldn’t have been mistaken. You see, he seemed to be coming towards me, well, sideways on, as if he didn’t have proper control over his legs.”

The policewoman took conscientious note.

“I suppose,” Mrs Pasquith concluded regretfully, as if admitting the unlikelihood of her own attractions having sparked off the drama, “that he must have been drinking.”

This explanation did not commend itself to Inspector Purbright. He sat regarding Policewoman Bellweather’s typed report with considerable gloom. A mere drunk might have got away with such behaviour once, or even twice, but it was inconceivable that his luck would have held for three forays against the modesty of Flaxborough womankind. Whoever was responsible had reserves of cunning and energy that were not provided by alcohol.

The most depressing aspect of the business was the probability that the man would continue his exploits until gossip about them induced a public scare out of all proportion to the harm of which he was actually capable.

And yet, who could say what that was? The experience of the Sweeting girl had been a good deal more serious than a brush with a randy old eccentric. And a weaker, less determined woman than Brangwyn Butters could have suffered badly in the isolation of Gorry Wood.

No, it was natural enough for people to get frightened while this sort of thing was going on in the town. It was also reasonable—and proper—for them to demand what their police force was doing about it.

The trouble was, as Purbright well knew from past experience of Flaxborough’s endemic sexual impetiuosity, that the offender invariably was unpredictable as well as wily. He also seemed to have a complacent wife, acquaintances who had the greatest difficulty in recognizing him at a distance of more than three feet, and a genius for picking victims with delayed reactions and bad memories.

The inspector’s mood was not lightened when his telephone rang and he heard the eagerly inquisitive voice of young Henry Popplewell.

“Now then, chiefy, what’s all this about the Flaxborough Crab?”

Henry, the son of Mrs Popplewell, Justice of the Peace, was the Flaxborough Citizen’s most recently acquired and already regretted junior reporter.

“Crab?” echoed Purbright, in genuine bewilderment.

“That’s right. The whole town’s talking about him. You know—all this peeping through curtains and chasing women. We’ve got no end of stories. I’m just tying them up.”