3rd October, 1882
‘To Mr. A. Moscrop.
Our analysis of the liquid you brought in yesterday morning shows it to be a weak solution of chloral hydrate (CCL3 CH 20H). The charge is two shillings and sixpence.’
‘He said it would be here somewhere,’ said Thackeray. ‘Oh, he’s a leary old cove, is my sergeant.’
‘How did he reason it out, then?’ asked Murphy, not without a tinge of scepticism.
‘He didn’t say, but it’s obvious enough-if you’ve done a bit of detective work before. Mrs. Prothero asked this man Moscrop to get her sleeping-potion analysed to see what her husband was dosing her with, d’you see? Her maid collected it from Moscrop and took it to her. Now when she goes off along the beach and gets murdered, she’s going to have it on her person, ain’t she? She ain’t so daft as to leave it in the hotel-room where her husband might pick it up.’
‘Clever,’ said Murphy, genuinely impressed. ‘I’ve got another question for you now. How did Mrs. Prothero come to be on the beach on Saturday night?’
‘Now that’s something Cribb and I are working on,’ said Thackeray, leaning forward across his bin. ‘Her husband thought she was already drugged with chloral and asleep, but we know she was awake. We’ve got two people’s word for that-Bridget, the maid, told Mr. Moscrop, and young Guy told the sergeant. So there was nothing to stop her from putting on her clothes and going out.’
‘The others would have noticed,’ said Murphy.
‘Perhaps they did. Nobody’s asked ’em yet. She could have slipped out while they was on the balcony watching the fireworks.’
‘Why would she want to go out?’
‘It seems to me that there’s two possible answers to that question,’ said Thackeray, prodding the air magisterially with a wooden spade. ‘Either she thought she would go down and see if her husband was among the crowd watching the fireworks, or she had decided after all to thank Mr. Moscrop for bringing the good news about the chloral.’
‘And then someone murdered her,’ said Murphy. ‘It’s a pestiferous quarter at night, is Brighton beach. No place for a respectable married lady. It could be one of hundreds that struck her down. I don’t envy you, trying to find the one that did it.’
‘It
‘We haven’t even found all the clothes,’ said Murphy, ‘unless there’s something in that pile of yours. What about her shoes, for example? There isn’t a shoe among this lot.’
‘I wasn’t expecting to find any,’ said Thackeray. ‘Shoes are very significant things. We can tell a lot from a shoe at the Yard. I reckon myself that the killer realised how much they give away and carried ’em as far from the scene of the crime as he could. And some of the clothes, too. He probably had a bag of some sort, and stuffed everything in that would go. The jacket and skirt, being larger than the rest, had to be left behind. No, we won’t find any more of her clothes than we’ve got already. This piece of paper is the most important thing. How about that cup of tea?’
In other circumstances the long ascent of Dyke Road on to the Downs would have enraptured a man equipped (as Moscrop now was) with a powerful pair of binoculars. The views of the town behind him and the sea beyond, of Hove, Kingston, Shoreham and the mouth of the river Adur had him feeling for the buckle-straps of his instrument-case repeatedly, only to check himself with the thought that there could be just one subject for study that afternoon. It was essential that he gave himself absolutely to the task of spotting Dr. Prothero on the slopes ahead.
Soon after sighting Patcham windmill (he was grateful for the map he had snatched from his landlady’s hallstand drawer) he reached the top of a ridge where the road forked and a sign indicated the way to Poynings. Saddlescombe, a small village in a hollow half hidden by trees, lay below, but he elected to continue along the Dyke Road, reasoning to himself that it was wise to gain height by the quickest route. Prothero had still been walking at a sharp step when he had last seen him an hour before, and he doubted whether it was possible to win back much of the ground between them, but there was the massive expanse of downland ahead, with only low bushes intervening. The glasses would be a potent ally up there. He would reach the brow, some seven hundred feet above sea level, and then sweep the landscape repeatedly. Until he reached there, the prospect of recognising anyone at such a distance was remote. If he got the glasses out for a moving figure it was ten to one that it would be a grazing sheep.
He completed the final ascent to the ancient wind-swept hill-camp forming the summit of the Downs at this point and sat to recover his breath in a clump of long ur-grass the sheep had left. The range of vision on every side was now so vast and the panorama so intricately varied that it could well take an hour’s work with the binoculars to isolate a single moving figure. He would need to stake everything on Prothero still being somewhere on the Down. The foot of the escarpment that had come so suddenly into view as he reached the top, dipping sheerly ahead into the vast plain of the Weald, was rich with autumn foliage-unbelievably beautiful in the afternoon sun, but making it well-nigh impossible to track a man with binoculars.
He took out the Zeiss and cast about to decide which direction was the most promising. To the west, on the brow of Fulking Hill, a mile or so distant, he fancied he could see a movement. He trained the glasses in that direction, first finding the prominent circle of beeches known as Chanctonbury Ring, altogether too distant. A small inclination to the left and a delicate movement of the screw-focus gave him what he wanted. There was a figure, human and moving-but mounted. He let the glasses drop.
Below and to his right more figures were positioned on either side of the Devil’s Dyke, the spectacular gash in the hillside from which the long road up from Brighton took its name. For some reason he had not remembered its existence until this moment, in spite of having toiled up Dyke Road for more than an hour. He had read all about it in the gazetteer, in the train, two Saturdays ago. So recent as that? Unbelievable. At any rate, legend said that the Devil cut the cleft through the chalk with the object of letting in the sea to flood the churches in the Weald. Certainly it had a devilish look to it from this view, with its steeply sloping sides a thousand feet apart, faced with smooth turf. A small hotel on the near side bore witness to the Dyke’s popularity with excursionists from the town.
He now began systematically examining through the binoculars the people in view on either side of the ravine, eliminating women and children at a glance, but several times finding himself compelled to wait for a man to turn his face out of shadow, and then being disappointed. Then, when he was ready to believe his wily quarry had somehow escaped, the glasses picked out a fawn-coloured object on the far side of the Dyke. The knapsack. And as the field of view moved left, he saw Dr. Prothero standing and staring at something, shading his eyes with both hands.
For a moment he had the uncomfortable feeling that the doctor was looking straight at him. As he put the glasses embarrassedly down, he realised how impossible it was. Besides, Prothero had no reason to suspect he was being followed.
What was he looking at, then? A landmark, most likely. He was taking his bearings before moving on. Away to the north was the blue mound of Leith Hill, beyond which was Dorking. Was that where he was making for? It was twenty-five miles away, six or seven hours of walking, even at Prothero’s sprightly step.
He put the glasses to his eyes again and as he did so Prothero picked up the knapsack and began walking back in the general direction of the road, still looking anxiously about him as though he were expecting to see something or somebody he had not found. Some fifty yards on, he stopped, produced a white handkerchief and began waving it energetically. In an agony of curiosity, Moscrop dared not move the binoculars off him to see the recipient of the signal. Soon it was obvious that Prothero, now picking his way quickly up the slope, the knapsack fairly bouncing on his back, had established some kind of contact. There was not long to wait. Near the top of the
