That man stole my tulips

Walking home this evening, I pass a man walking in the opposite direction. A big bloke, squeezed into a dapper suit that he doesn't look used to. He's carrying a bunch of tulips and has a serious expression and a stride on him.
I carry on thinking nothing of it, and a few gardens along I meet a plump, elderly woman standing at her garden gate aiming a querulous finger in the direction of the the guy in the suit.

Now, having titled this photograph as I have, it occurs to me at this point that I've done myself out of a twist here.

"That man stole my tulips," she says. Eyeballing me until I stop and engage.

By this point, the man is quite some distance away. The light is fading fast and all I can really see of him is the bobbing red and yellow of the bouquet of pilfered posies. So, for the reasons that (a) he's considerably bigger than me, (b) he's quite a long way away by now and (c) of late, the closest I've been to getting in a fight was changing a duvet cover (long story, but you should have seen the other guy). Anyway, long story short, I dither uselessly and fail to do anything chivalrous at all.

Don't get me wrong, I manage to make some sympathetic noises but that - to my discredit - is about as far as it goes. Had it been her handbag, her life savings, I might have given chase, but I figure the tulips had been cut. They weren't going to get un-cut and replanted.

Eventually, the woman turns around and heads back to the door.

"Lucky for him my sons weren't here," she says, glowering at me over her shoulder. "They'd have given him what for, I can tell you."

I believe her. Even by the way she says it, I can imagine that her sons are huge.

I walk the rest of the way down the river. I see this guy having a skull. He didn't have anything to do with the tulips being stolen. Just so that's clear.