Mad Hatter

CHAPTER 6

There was a disturbance on the surface of the water in Brill’s Gentlemen’s Swimming Bath-the First Class Bath- in East Street. A head bobbed above water-level, fairish hair flattened to it, revealing unmistakable signs of baldness at the crown: Albert Moscrop’s. He trod water for a few seconds, rearranging his moustache. Behind him two other swimmers performed stately breast-strokes across different diameters of the circular pool. It was sixty-five feet across, the largest of its kind in Europe. Visitors cognisant of the health-giving effects of manly exercises patronised Brill’s First Class Bath as devotedly in the season as the philharmonic concerts at the Pavilion.

Inhaling deeply to inflate his lungs, he inclined his head backwards and allowed body and legs to swing from the vertical to the horizontal so that two sets of white toes broke the surface ahead of him. First-rate water for floating: sea- water obtained, as the management were at pains to point out in a notice in the foyer (in view of recent disclosures in The Lancet), from Cliftonville. He relaxed in this supine position, exercising his mind on the meaning of the Latin inscription around the walls; giving that up and looking at the gallery, empty today, but with seating for 400 spectators; finally putting his head right back in the water and enjoying the beauty of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s domed ceiling. All so congenial that he wished he could credit himself with the idea of coming here.

The proper cause of his visit was seated on the tiled perimeter of the pool with feet dangling in the water, testing its temperature and trying to appear casual about it-Gregory Prothero, M.D., in stripes worthy of a Hokey Pokey cart.

Moscrop’s conversation with Mrs. Prothero on the beach the previous afternoon had been a revelation. His first reaction had been one of shock, she was so unlike the personality he had assigned to her when he watched her through the binoculars. He had automatically classed her with the numerous sweet, shy and submissive young women catalogued in his memory from hours of observation of seaside promenades and beaches. Yet there she was, as exquisite as any of them, in a single breath invoking the Deity, castigating a domestic and addressing a total stranger in terms of intimate endearment. If his legs had not lost all mobility he would certainly have turned and fled. How could a vision of such elegance and refinement come to possess a turn of phrase like that?

The devil of it was that as the first shock receded he had found himself increasingly fascinated by the gravelly voice assaulting his sensibilities. The perfect consonants and immaculate vowel-sounds gently teased him into a state of acceptance. Before the conversation ended he was snatching up the familiarities like dropped coins. The character he had given her in his imagination was quite displaced and so, if he admitted it, were the characters of all the winsome subjects of his observations. If she was so different on acquaintance, why not they? There was nothing else for it but to renounce the achromatic lens for ever.

For all the strength of her invective she was disturbingly vulnerable. Jason’s adventure, by her own admission, had driven her to the brink of despair. Guy appeared to hold her in total contempt. As for her husband. . One did not want to jump to conclusions. Perhaps she was justified in accepting Prothero’s word that when he left her to spend the day alone it was because he was visiting former patients. Perhaps the red-headed young woman riding beside him in the King’s Road parade was known to her only in a medical capacity. Tea-rose complexion and flashing eyes notwithstanding, she might well be recuperating from some debility discernible only to a medical man. It was also conceivable that the lady harpist in the Aquarium Orchestra was a convalescent whose condition was a matter of professional concern to Dr. Prothero. In matters as delicate as this one was well-advised to preserve an open mind for as long as practicable. Nevertheless, the possibility existed that an innocent and trusting woman was being deceived. Without committing himself any further, Moscrop had resolved to watch Dr. Prothero very closely indeed.

For all that, it was a matter for self-congratulation that he was watching him from his present position. A lesser man might have baulked at the door of Brill’s, particularly when arriving there without a costume. It took considerable savoir-faire in such circumstances to arrange with the attendant for the hire of the requisite garment. He had followed Prothero there from the forecourt of the Albemarle Hotel, which he had now taken in as part of his morning constitutional-the major part, in fact, for he had passed three-quarters of an hour patrolling it, before the doctor’s appearance soon after eleven. He had then discreetly pursued his quarry along the front, in some anticipation of witnessing an assignation.

But at East Street Prothero had turned in to Brill’s. And although the sign Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s First and Second-Class Swimming Baths caused Moscrop a flutter of expectation, it was subdued at once by the discovery that there were separate entrances for the sexes. Mixed bathing was strictly confined to the more remote stretches of the beach. Brill’s Gentlemen’s section, he soon discovered, was not unlike a club, with its uniformed staff, lounges, reading- and billiards-rooms. There were also the two main pools, a vapour bath, a medical douche and a barber’s shop. If anything untoward happened here, it was not a clandestine meeting between a gentleman and a lady.

So he had paid his one shilling and sixpence, picked up his borrowed costume-‘every one freshly laundered after each hiring, sir,’ he was assured-and followed the doctor’s top hat through the steam to the First Class pool. There, with a touch of brilliance, he had let himself unnoticed into a cubicle on the side opposite, stripped as if his life depended on it, put on the costume and jumped into the water before the doctor unbolted his door. Even as he surfaced, a pair of still-stockinged feet were visible through the gap under Prothero’s door. Who would suspect as he entered a swimming bath that a bather already immersed had followed him there?

What he had not allowed for in his inspired rush to the water was the scarcity of swimmers. He was only the third to take the plunge. Between leaving terra firma and making his first contact with aqua marina he suffered an instant’s apprehension that the water-temperature might be the reason, but he was reassured. It was pleasantly tepid. Doubtless like most social institutions, Brill’s was heavily patronised at certain times and deserted by all but a few enthusiasts at others.

Prothero was patently in no hurry to swim. He had appeared from his cubicle some three minutes after Moscrop’s immersion and remained by the door, limbering up with toe-touching and knee-bending exercises, an exasperating little man, spry in movement and trim in figure. If anything, he appeared younger out of his clothes than in them. Moscrop wondered as he watched from the pool whether a reassessment of the doctor’s age was in order, bald head or no. It was easy to understand a man in such fine physical shape having a certain attraction to the fair sex. Not at all surprising that he should have married three times. Why, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that he should. . Good Lord! Was this keeping an open mind? To discipline his thinking, Moscrop put thumb and forefinger to his nostrils and dipped his head under the water. When he surfaced, the doctor was sitting at the edge with legs neatly crossed.

‘How’s the water?’

The words literally went over his head as he floated there. He was not used to conversations interrupting his vigils. Observation was essentially a silent occupation. He was still making a mental estimate of the positions of the other two swimmers to ascertain which one Prothero was addressing when the question was repeated.

‘I said how’s the water?’

No doubt about it. The doctor was speaking to him. Deuced awkward. This wasn’t at all a part of his strategy. What could he do-ignore the fellow? Pretend he hadn’t heard? It might have worked if the bath had been swarming with swimmers, but this morning it really wouldn’t do. He lifted his head and his eyes met Prothero’s.

‘Thought you were wearing ear-plugs for a moment. Is it cold this morning?’

Small-talk. Best to go through the formalities and then swim out of earshot at the first opportunity. ‘Not excessively.’

‘I believe in accustoming the body to the water gradually,’ Prothero explained. ‘There’s no benefit in sudden shocks to the system.’

Was this his way of saying he had observed the splash in the pool a few minutes before?

‘Mind you,’ the doctor went on, ‘once I’m in the water I don’t believe in paddling about. Oh no, it’s important not to catch cold. Used in the right way, sea-water’s the finest balm a doctor can prescribe, did you know that? Marvellous for scrofulous infections.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes, indeed. All forms of paralysis, nervous afflictions, hysteria, headaches, indigestion. Nothing like sea-water to cure ’em. I wouldn’t recommend bathing from a public beach, mind.’

‘No?’

‘By God, no! Contaminated water. The stuff you’re lying in is pumped from Cliftonville, or I shouldn’t have my feet in it, I can tell you. I’ve no liking for open-air bathing, anyway. Did my share of it as a young man, you know, but that was when a fellow wasn’t ashamed to swim in the buff.

‘Here for the season, are you?’

‘Er-yes.’

‘Me, too. I never miss it. There was one year when I was here from race-week to Christmas and I don’t think I missed more than half-a-dozen balls all season. That was a long time back, though. I’ve buried two wives since then and acquired a third.’

Moscrop was not sure whether to offer condolences or congratulations. The doctor was not waiting for responses, anyway.

‘Emily died of smallpox. Solicitor’s daughter with a good dowry. Set me up in practice. Stella was my second. One of the Pelhams. D’you know ’em? Landed family. She ate some bad fish. Killed her overnight. You can see why I’m so strong on contamination.’

‘By Jove, yes. But you married again?’

‘My third?’ Prothero sniffed. ‘Yes. Went for good looks this time. Married a bit beneath my station. Shop-keeper’s daughter. Easy on the eye, but a bit of a liability on social occasions.’ He got to his feet. ‘Time I got my costume wet, I think.’ He entered the water with an agile header and struck out powerfully for the opposite side, using the new Trudgeon stroke. It would not be wise to under-estimate Dr. Prothero.

Moscrop contrived to keep well clear of his new acquaintance, employing the more conventional side-stroke to cross the pool at a different angle. It was as well that he had the physical exercise to occupy him, for he was shaking with indignation, outraged by Prothero’s contemptuous description of the woman he was privileged to call his wife. To say that Zena-from now on, he refused to think of Prothero’s name in association with hers-was ‘easy on the eye’ was like calling the Crystal Palace a glass-house. The man was boorish and insensitive, totally unworthy of her. And, what worried Moscrop more, he had admitted to regarding her as a ‘liability’; what on earth did that 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 procession of five women in black dresses. They wore aprons and white hats and carried trays of silver tea-pots and cups and saucers and plates, which they presently arranged on the table. Then they withdrew without a word and disappeared between the hovels as uncannily as they had arrived.

The apparitions were not finished yet. From the same spot glided a young woman in a gown of some exquisitely fine material, percale or camlet, in peacock blue, and carrying a matching parasol. Prothero rose to meet her and kissed her hand. Then he presented her with the chocolates. As she looked down to examine them, part of her hair was momentarily freed from the parasol’s shadow. It glowed a copper colour. She was Prothero’s riding-companion of the King’s Road parade.

He watched them for more than an hour. Impossible to hear what they were saying, but their expressions, their gestures told everything. When they got up to leave, she took his arm as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They walked up the slope linked, as brazenly as that. He was so absorbed in this monstrous infidelity that he quite failed to realise the way they were taking. Only when they had passed between the cottages and disappeared did he descend the slope to examine the place for himself. As he got there, the line of servant-women passed him on their way to retrieve the tea-things, stone-faced as only the best-trained domestics are. But if they revealed nothing, at least the secret of their miraculous appearances was laid bare: the arched entrance to a subterranean tunnel, through which Prothero and his companion had undoubtedly passed. A passage under the Marine Parade to the private gardens of Lewes Crescent.