Mad Hatter

mean?

After four diameters, Prothero left the pool by putting his hands on the side and jumping out with a neat bunny-hop. ‘Don’t believe in staying in the water longer than necessary, you know,’ he called. ‘Danger of chills. I’m going to take off my costume and give myself a good rubbing with a coarse towel. Get the body glowing, what?’

Moscrop waited for the sound of the bolt being turned in the door of Prothero’s cubicle before clambering out by way of the steps and locating his own clothes. For him, the process of towelling was necessarily brief; he needed to be ready to take up the pursuit as soon as the doctor quitted his cubicle. From now on, he would be exercising his wits to the full to avoid detection. It was no good bemoaning his lost anonymity. He should count himself lucky that only his face had been revealed; the doctor had no idea what height he was or what clothes he wore. Thank Heavens for a bowler and flannels!

By standing on the seat inside his cubicle he was able to watch the locked door across the pool for the sure indication that it was about to be unbolted-the sight of the crown of a silk hat above it. When it appeared, he ducked out of sight, counted up to twenty and set off after the doctor. In the steam-filled corridor outside, he almost caught him up, but had the resource to stop at a mangle and put his wet costume through it. In the foyer he paused again to return it to the attendant. By then his quarry was outside and crossing East Street. He followed him warily, down to the front, turning right into the King’s Road. The cannon on the West Pier fired. The doctor did what scores of other men were doing at that moment: checked his watch. Then he moved on to the eastern corner of West Street and marched through a dark green painted doorway and out of sight. Moscrop hurried towards it to read the legend over the door, Real Turtle Soup Always Ready. Dr. Prothero was dining at Mutton’s.

The aroma issuing from the double glass door all but seduced Moscrop inside. Turtle soup exerted a strong pull on a stomach subsisting on a Brighton landlady’s cold beef and bread puddings. Moreover, he already had it in mind to patronise Mutton’s; wasn’t it one of Brighton’s institutions, the logical place to visit after a bathe? Not while Dr. Prothero was inside, he decided with admirable self-control. His bowl of real turtle soup was the sacrifice he had to make to preserve what was left of his incognito. So he made a purchase at Streeter’s, the old bun-shop in Pool Valley, and dined surreptitiously from a paper bag, endeavouring to watch the entrance to Mutton’s from a position on the promenade where he could appear to be feeding seagulls.

Prothero must have had a second bowl and perhaps a third, for it was almost two o’clock when he appeared again. He set off along the front on the shop side of the street, retracing his steps towards Brill’s, past the Old Ship and the pungent hop-smells of Black Lion Street. At East Street, Brighton’s most fashionable row of shops, he turned left. Window-displays of wigs, china and antiques, artfully arranged to catch the seasonable visitor’s eye, left him unmoved; he walked with the resolute step of a man with somewhere to go. This proved to be the French chocolate shop halfway up the hill. He marched straight in and presently came out carrying a box tied with a ribbon.

Chocolates. He had bought some chocolates for his wife.

Moscrop, watching discreetly through festoons of lace in the window of Chillmaid and Tinkler, felt something sinister stirring in the recesses of his mind. A macabre association. Chocolates. . and Brighton. What on earth was it? Something to do with Punch, or one of the humorous journals. Three or four years ago, it must have been. Chocolate. . ah! Chocolate creams! The case of Christiana Edmunds, that wrong-headed young woman who had injected chocolate-creams with strychnine. She had returned them to a Brighton shop vainly expecting that the man she secretly loved would buy them for his wife. A child of four had consumed one and died. The press-he remembered clearly now-joked after the conviction that it was now easier to sell ice-creams to Esquimaux than chocolate-creams in Brighton. Appalling case. Good gracious, how one’s mind wandered!

Prothero re-passed the shop, heading towards the King’s Road again. The benevolent look in his eye struck deep into Moscrop’s conscience. Dammit, the man was taking chocolates to his wife. To connect that laudable action with the sordid circumstances of a murder case was unforgivable. Outrageous.

When Prothero reached the front he crossed the road and approached one of the penny-a-peep men at the promenade railing. What could he want with a telescope? The Brighton was not due to sail for another hour and there was not a decent-sized vessel in sight. He seemed to know what he was about, though; swung the thing straight round and focused it along the water’s edge in a westerly direction. Was it the water he was watching, or the beach itself? Yes, by Jove, he had it trained on a stretch of shingle somewhere in front of the Grand. The very spot where Zena liked to sit. But of course! He was planning to surprise his young wife with the chocolates. He was making quite sure that she was there.

Moscrop looked away, his whole impression of Dr. Prothero thrown in doubt. What more touching testimony to conjugal love was there than the spectacle of this middle-aged man clutching his chocolates and seeking out his wife?

It was as well that he looked again, for when Prothero had taken his pennyworth at the telescope he turned about and set off at a stroll in precisely the opposite direction from where Zena was. The bounder made off along Junction Parade as if he had no ties at all. At the clock-tower over the Aquariam entrance, he checked his watch again. It was not the automatic gesture a man on a walk might make; he actually stopped, produced a pair of pince-nez from one pocket and the watch from another, stared hard at the clock, waiting, and, when the large hand made its small movement to the twentieth minute, he lifted his own time-piece in front of his face, like a chemist studying events in a test-tube. Then, without making any adjustment, he pocketed watch and glasses and moved on. Either he was in possession of a suspect watch or there was some rendezvous he was most conscientious about keeping.

Moscrop followed at a strategic distance, hands clasped behind his back, eyes ranging convincingly to left and right, professing strong interest in a goat-chaise or pleasure-yacht or whatever came within his purview. There was small chance yet of the doctor spotting him if he turned round, but he was using this more populated stretch to practise a convincing afternoon stroll. The esplanades beyond the Chain Pier were disturbingly less frequented.

Sensibly, he refused to countenance feelings of guilt about what he was doing. It was his privilege to spend his holiday in whatever way he chose. If other people preferred to wander aimlessly along the promenades or sit bemused on the beach they were perfectly entitled so to do. He had always maintained that his optical experiments were merely a more purposeful way of enjoying the bounties of the seashore, the intelligent man’s style of vacation. And his innovations this year were a logical extension of those experiments. The previous holidays, whether at Eastbourne or Folkestone or Worthing, had all, on reflection, been somewhat sedentary in character. This year he was getting exercise as well as ozone.

The afternoon was splendid for walking: a bright, clear sky; the sea full of interest, flecked with white; the tamarisk on the slopes below the Madeira Drive stirred by a soft sea-breeze. Dr. Prothero walked with the air of a man intent on savouring the balmy atmosphere to the full, rakishly raising his hat to ladies reclining on hotel balconies or in the backs of phaetons, ruffling the hair of a child who came within range and stopping to take a long proprietorial look at the Royal Crescent. For his pursuer, this uneven progress was more than a little trying, particularly when the last of the shops was passed and there were so few pedestrians that everyone took an interest in everyone else. He kept some fifty yards behind, taking the sea-wall side of the Marine Parade, although it afforded less cover, simply because it would have been conspicuous to have taken the other. After the fashion of apartment-letting localities, the street-doors were left open as if to invite inspection, so unless you were seeking accommodation you used the sea-wall side. Although this saved him from the serious scrutiny of landladies, it made him the cynosure of the bow window and balcony set, so it was essential to present the appearance of a casual stroller.

After more than a mile, the broad lawns fronting on Lewes Crescent interrupted the line of terraces. Here Prothero paused, as he had at the Royal Crescent and Marine Square, and took stock of the architecture. Moscrop, alive to every shift of the chase, descended some convenient steps and seated himself on the sloping lawn between Marine Parade and the lower esplanade. It was an inspired manoeuvre, for Prothero, fifty yards ahead, found a similar row of steps and began to move purposefully down the slope towards one of the several alcoves built into the sloping cliff wall. It was set out with a table and seats. He stood beside the table and examined his watch. Moscrop did the same. Two minutes to three.

Next he witnessed a spectacle that made him inclined to believe, even in that brilliant afternoon sunshine, that he was watching some psychic manifestation. Below him and to his left, but above the alcove, were two humble cottages, gardeners’ dwellings, he would guess. From between these, as if at a signal, there emerged a