barking. Faces appeared at the hotel windows.
‘It came from down on the beach, I’m certain,’ said Bridget.
They went to the railing and leaned over. People ran across the road from the hotels and joined them.
‘Some half-drunk soldier showing off to his doxy,’ someone decided.
‘They don’t carry arms when they’re off duty.’
‘Could have filched a rifle from the shooting-gallery.’
‘Look!’ said Bridget. ‘There’s people down there. With flares. D’you think they’ve found a corpse?’
Moscrop remembered the strange constructions he had seen. The activity appeared to be taking place at about the same spot. They moved with the crowd to get a closer view. They had not gone more than a few yards when there was another sensation down below. A spluttering of flame, a violent hissing sound, and the sight of a luminous projectile speeding skywards and dipping into a spectacular parabola over the sea.
‘A blooming sky-rocket! It’s a firework show in honour of the military.’
It was, and the function of the gibbet-like structures was made clear. They were for the mounting of the set-pieces, the climax of all pyrotechnic displays. Splendid initiative on someone’s part! One hoped that the tableaux would include some fitting tribute to the regiment. Already the town was answering the summons of that first rocket, coming on to the streets in scores and converging on the sea-front. Young men clambered over the railing from the Marine Parade on to the roof of the Aquarium for a grandstand view. Children still flushed with the warmth of sleep were brought into the night air wrapped in blankets, their eyes registering half-excitement, half- apprehension.
‘I’m dotty about fireworks,’ said Bridget. ‘Sky-rockets. Oh, lovely!’
‘Shouldn’t you return to your mistress? She must wonder what is happening.’
‘You’re right. I’ll have a better view from up there. Her room and Jason’s overlook the beach. We’re on the second floor-those windows on the right. Look, there’s Guy on the balcony! Wave your umbrella.’
‘He wouldn’t see us, among so many,’ said Moscrop drily. ‘You won’t forget to give the formula to Mrs. Prothero, will you? Do you think if I waited here I might see her come out on to the balcony? I suppose not. She will not want to put all her clothes back on for a few skyrockets. She can probably see all she wants from the other side of the window. Then she can take her chloral in total confidence and be sleeping when her husband returns. You will remember me to her, won’t you?’
The girl made a curious sound in her throat which began as a gurgle and ended as a gale of immodest laughter. ‘She won’t need no remembering of you, Mr. Moscrop. You ain’t the sort of man she’s likely to forget!’
Deuced impertinence! What the girl meant by her remark he was not sure, but he was damned certain he was not going to allow a domestic to treat him with open derision. He took a breath to deliver a crushing rejoinder, but there was no one to crush. She had turned away, still laughing, and made her escape through the crowd.
A row of Catherine Wheels made a spluttering start on the beach. He turned to look at the Albemarle again. The balcony was empty. It was impossible to see whether anyone was within. The crowd was thick around him, but for once he did not experience any pleasure in being shoulder to shoulder with a mass of people he did not know. Nor did fireworks interest him. There were better shows every Saturday at the Crystal Palace. In ten minutes, he took a last look at the hotel window and edged through the crowd, to begin the walk back along the front to his lodgings.
On the beach, a crocodile made its appearance, the first of the set-pieces, symbolic of Egypt, its jaw opening and closing wickedly. What cheers there were as the sparks spent themselves and the enemy was exposed as a charred and smoking ruin! Marvellous to be British, and in Brighton, and secure from such monsters!
CHAPTER 9
‘It’s a curious thing, Sarge,’ Constable Thackeray observed.
‘What is?’
‘Why, that anyone should think of putting an end to one of his fellow beings at the seaside. A most peculiar thing. I’ve always thought of a holiday as a pleasurable experience. Not that I know a lot about it. The only days I’ve had by the sea have been the “M” Division excursions to Southend, and I don’t usually have much recollection of them. But it stands to reason, Sarge. Murder’s got nothing to do with donkey-rides and sand-castles and- er-‘
‘Punch and Judy?’ suggested Sergeant Cribb. ‘You’re talking through your hat, Thackeray. Murder’s got
‘The whole atmosphere’s against it, Sarge. Sunshine. Promenading. Concert parties.’ Seeing that Cribb was not preparing to respond, he extended the list indefinitely. ‘A plate of winkles. Trips on the
Cribb put down his newspaper. ‘When we get to Brighton, Constable, there won’t be much time for sight- seeing, but I want you to make sure you get a look at that pier you’re talking about. There’s two of ’em where we’re going, paper-doily things, with fancy iron-work all white and smelling of fresh paint. When you’ve had your eyeful of the scrubbed decks and the dapper little buildings, take a look underneath, right under the pier. I’ll tell you what you’ll see. Girders festering with barnacles. Slime and weed and water black as pitch lurching and heaving round the under-structure fit to turn your stomach. That’s part of your pier, too. Just as slums and alleys and back-streets lie behind the nobby hotels along the sea-front. Some can close their eyes to ’em. Not you and me, Thackeray. We ain’t going to Brighton for a paddle, you know.’
Thackeray calmly stroked the underside of his beard with the back of his hand and studied the cocoa- advertisement a foot above Cribb’s bowler hat. He was too experienced to be baited by sarcasm of that sort. Cribb, denied satisfaction, found it impossible to return to his reading.
‘Nothing to do with the seaside? That’s one of the best I’ve heard-even from you. If you’d only widen your reading, Constable, you’d know there’s hardly a street in Brighton without its murderous associations.’ He began counting off the fingers on his left hand. ‘The King’s Road. Charles Bravo met his wife there. Portland Street, where Christiana Edmunds took her poisoned chocolates to be sold. Queen’s Square, where Constance Kent confessed to murdering her stepbrother. Lover’s Walk, Preston, where John William Holloway wheeled the pieces of his wife on a barrow and buried ’em. He was a painter on the Chain Pier, smartening it up for the likes of you to sniff the briny from. I could go on.’
‘Don’t, Sarge. I shall never enjoy another “M” Division outing. What makes ’em choose the seaside, do you think?’
‘Obvious reasons. Place is full of strangers right through the summer. Irregular behaviour isn’t noticed. People tend to be more conversational on holiday, too. Chance of making casual acquaintances.’
‘You’re right, now I come to think about it. You couldn’t find a better place for a spot of murdering.’
‘Accidental deaths are happening all the time,’ said Cribb, warming to his theme. ‘There’s one reported in the paper here. Woman of fifty-five found drowned. Non-swimmer. Seems she took a dip on the last day of her holiday. Ashamed to take a dry costume back to London, so she went for an early morning bathe, when not many people were about. Now who’s to know whether someone didn’t hold her head under?’
‘Blimey, Sarge, you’ve got a suspicious mind.’
‘I don’t say it happened, but it could have. And if she wasn’t murdered, what about the cove that falls off the pier next week, or the one that swims out too far the week after? It’s Lombard Street to a china orange that sooner or later some evil-minded person will see it as a neat way of dispatching a victim.’
‘Well,
‘Exactly. You’ve got to learn to think as they do, Constable. We wouldn’t be much help to the Brighton force if we couldn’t. They’re looking to you and me for something special in the way of detective-work. It’s not like them to
