Mad Hatter

‘It’s the police surgeon’s report, Sarge. I knew you’d want to open it yourself.’

Cribb opened the envelope and scanned its contents.

‘Does it tell us anything new?’ Thackeray asked.

‘Precious little, so far as I can see. Merely cloaks our own observations in pathological jargon. He hasn’t been able to establish a cause of death. “In my opinion the deceased was a healthy woman aged between twenty-five and forty-that’s a sizeable margin. Slight of build. Dark hair”-we know all this. Ah! Here’s a point of interest. “The dismemberment of the parts was performed with a sharp axe-like instrument employed somewhat crudely. The state of coagulation suggests that the amputations took place up to twenty-four hours after death.” It looks as if our murderer killed the woman on Saturday, hid the body under the arches and returned to finish his work the next night.’

Thackeray lifted two scandalised eyebrows. ‘On a Sunday?'

‘My guess is that he wrapped the dismembered parts in newspaper and buried them a foot or so under the pebbles that night, thinking to come back.’

‘He was taking a risk, Sarge, leaving them on a public beach. Just suppose a child had decided to dig there. It’s unthinkable!’

Cribb shook his head. ‘And unlikely. It’s the site of the fish-market. Nobody sits down there with a child. The smell’s too strong. Our murderer’s a very knowing cove, I’d say, and a cool’un, too. When do you think the hand was deposited in the crocodile tank?’

‘First thing in the morning, as soon as the aquarium opened, I should say. He probably had some of his gruesome parcels in a bag of some sort and got into the reptile-cave before anyone else and tossed them over the top.’

Cribb was unconvinced. ‘I know that crocs are notorious flesh-eaters and scavengers, but its asking the devil of a lot to expect ’em to finish everything before the first visitors arrive. That cave’s a popular place, you know.’

‘The hand was found in the morning,’ protested Thackeray.

‘Only because it slipped between the rock and the glass. No, I think it’s far more likely he got in there by night.’

‘Broke in, d’you mean?’

‘Why not? It’s just a short step from where the parts were buried.’

‘He’d have to be a skilled cracksman as well as a killer to do that Sarge.’

‘Not at all. You haven’t studied the lay of the building, I can see, in spite of walking past it two or three times a day. What’s its situation?’

‘Well, it stands between the upper promenade and the lower,’ said Thackeray, increasingly peeved at Cribb’s manner. ‘In the fork of Madeira Drive and the Marine Parade.’

‘Correct. And one being on a higher level than the other, what’s the effect on the siting of the building?’

‘It’s built hard against the rise of the upper promenade. The roof is on a level with the Marine Parade. They’ve made a terrace garden there.’

‘Exactly! You can walk on the roof. Hundreds of people do without realising it. But if you’ve got a sharp eye,’ (the implication plainly was that Thackeray had not), ‘and you take a look over the balustrades and under ledges you’ll see windows, dozens of ’em. They’re needed at the top to let the condensation out. Now it’s perfectly evident to anyone who walks along there that not all of those windows are closed at night. And it wouldn’t need a Charlie Peace to let himself in through one. It’s no great height, and some of the windows must be positioned over beams and furniture. I think he got in there by night. That’s probably why his aim with the hand wasn’t too good.’

‘Wouldn’t he have risked being seen breaking in?’

‘Hardly any risk at all if he worked from the side nearest the Parade. There’s a kind of well at one point between the building and the road. You can’t see into it unless you stand against the railing and lean over. That’s where I’d make my entry. I’m having one of the local detectives examine the windows there for marks. Well, there’s not much more in this report. How did you get on this morning?’

Thackeray mopped his brow with a large handkerchief. ‘This list you asked me to make is getting longer, Sarge. The Brighton bobbies are doing the door to door work, but I’m kept quite busy taking reports from them. There’s more than a hundred women on it already, and it’s the deuce of a job to discover what their age was. They all left the town on Saturday or Sunday, though. Finished their holidays, you see. I’m beginning to understand what attracts a murderer to a seaside resort. Oh, and the man Moscrop called again.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He asked to see you. It seems he remembered something that might be of vital importance. He wanted to look at the sealskin jacket we found, but I didn’t let him, of course. I tried to explain that it was evidence and that if he became a witness he might be called upon to identify the coat in court, and-‘

‘What did he say about the coat?’ demanded Cribb.

‘Oh it was something to do with a missing button. While Mrs. Prothero was walking along the prom. with him, a button came off her jacket. She put it in her pocket. I think he was hoping to identify the jacket we found by locating the button in the pocket, but I was able to tell him that the buttons was all in place, and we hadn’t found nothing in the pockets. He went away after that.’

‘Did he say which button was missing?’ asked Cribb.

‘The top one.’

‘Fetch the coat.’

‘You won’t find the button gone, Sarge,’ mumbled Thackeray, as he went to collect it. ‘I checked it again myself after he’d gone. But if you won’t take my word for it. . s›. . !s›. . !s›.’

In a moment he returned with the jacket and planted it on the table in front of Cribb with a sigh pregnant with injured pride. Cribb examined each button carefully. ‘Hand me that magnifying-glass, Constable.’ He turned the buttons back and studied the cotton-strands holding them in place. ‘Interesting. The top button’s sewn on with thinner cotton than the rest, but there’s still traces of the holes where the thicker stuff went through. Someone’s had to sew the button on again. I rather think that Moscrop’s come to your rescue, Thackeray. You needn’t do any more work on that list. He’s found the lady for us.’

CHAPTER 12

Moscrop sat on the sea-wall that extended from the Junction Road past the aquarium to the Chain Pier. The position was well-chosen. It commanded a clear view of the front of the Albemarle Hotel from the lower road, without the obvious risk involved in watching from the Marine Parade itself. He could sit here inconspicuously for as long as he liked, pretending to contemplate the symmetry of the structure suspended over the sea between the four tapering towers inspired by the Egyptian architects of Karnak-for the Chain Pier still had its admirers, even if it lacked the amusements of its more fashionable rival farther up the shore-line. Today its clientele were mostly anglers, with some few promenaders tossing halfpennies into the shallows to see the local urchins scramble for them. People said that Tom Sayers, the great pugilist, was once one of these ‘Jacks in the water.’

It was difficult to credit that an incomparable woman had been murdered and dismembered on this beach just a day or two earlier. The town had taken account of the crime and recorded it in its newspapers like one of the events of the season and now it was forgotten, a horror swept clean by the tides, and crushed out of reckoning by the implacable round of promenading, carriage-exercise, concert-going and ‘at homes.’ Landladies were haggling over the price of cod where the day before yesterday policemen and auxiliaries had dug for human remains. Today’s newspapers were full of the Grand Temperance Demonstration by the Band of Hope Union.

He, for one-perhaps the only one in Brighton-refused to forget what had happened and return to the bucket and spade level of existence. It was not the holiday he had planned, this furtive waiting and watching, not quite the scintillating drawing-room exchanges with the season’s gayest debutantes that he had visualised in his most extravagant moments. But if it had not come up to those expectations, it had touched planes of experience he had not dared to contemplate before. They had been momentous, those few meetings with Zena, transforming him utterly, making poor faded cameos of the sights he had caught through his instruments in years past and treasured in his mind’s eye. Now that it was over he was not going to behave as though nothing had