Peter Lovesey - Mad Hatter

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.

From North street, where the next day’s observations had led him, Moscrop heard the boom of the mid-day cannon. He kept his hands stubbornly away from his watch-chain. The curious thing about an annual summer holiday was that one spent the rest of the year looking forward to the escape it would provide from the daily round of breakfast, cab, business, lunch, business, cab, dinner, bed-and promptly surrendered to a routine just as rigid, reinforced by a pier cannon and a landlady’s gong. By the end of the first week one was telling the days by the menu. Quite innocent events, the first chord of the lunch-hour concert, or the hoot of the steamship Brighton, took on an awful, inexorable sameness. It was impossible not to count the days already gone and, with increasing agitation, the few left. Harassed visitors in their second week could be observed wading out determinedly into the unfriendliest of seas. The ultimate defeat was the visit to the promenade photographer to set the holiday on record; by then one was mentally already back in London.

His own case was not quite like that. The pressures he felt were not to be resolved in some shabby photographic studio. It seemed to him that a situation of tragic proportions was being revealed to him. There was nothing he could do to intervene. He had to submit to its inevitability, watch it progress in its own time, like the tide. Each contact with the Protheros laid bare a fresh layer of deceit, the deceit being practised on an innocent woman by everyone around her, husband, son, servant. If anything could be depended upon, it was that Zena Prothero’s pathetically misplaced trust would soon be shattered. The prospect was hideous, unspeakable, too awful to contemplate, and he could do nothing but watch and wait.

At this moment she was admiring North Street’s window-show with her two sons, Guy and Jason, and the maid, Bridget, the four of them idling along the pavements towards East Street, stopping frequently and remarking on things that caught their attention, the very image of family harmony. In a lemon-coloured gown, sealskin jacket and black bonnet, she looked particularly frail this morning. Oh for the reassurance of her robust style of conversation!

Obviously they would turn into East Street and make their way down to the front, so with a touch of brilliance he got ahead of them on the other side of the street, turned the corner, walked some fifty yards and stepped out of sight into a shop entrance. Not by chance had he chosen the finest toy-shop in Brighton for cover. He was fast learning the tactics of the chase.

They came with suspenseful slowness, stopping at several other shop-fronts before they reached the toy-shop. It was double-fronted. In the first window a topical set-piece had been mounted, hundreds of toy soldiers engaged in battle. ‘The 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards on the Field of Tel-el-Kebir,’ announced a card. ‘We salute our Heroes on their Return to Brighton.’ Jason left his mother and pressed face and hands against the glass.

‘It accounts for the flags all over the town,’ Guy was saying to her in that insufferably conceited voice, as they came within earshot. ‘The 4th have their barracks somewhere out along the Lewes Road, you know. Any excuse for a bit of flag-waving. I suppose we shan’t be able to move for the militia after tomorrow. It’s really too bad when one has booked for the season.’

She did not answer. She stood behind Jason and submitted to the spell of the toy-shop window, looking past the battle-field, which was lined with soldiers of all Her Majesty’s Imperial armies, like unfavoured guests at a ball. The dolls on the shelves at the back had caught her fancy, pretty porcelain things with real hair and perfect clothes in miniature. Moscrop watched her from his position in the shop entrance, through the glass angle of the projecting shop-front. He was near enough to hear every word they said, and they would recognise him at any moment, but he wanted to prolong watching her through the glass until the last possible second.

It was Guy who interrupted his reverie. ‘Look who is here, stepmother. Jason’s guardian angel.’ Spoken without a trace of good will, nor even the courtesy of touching his cap.

‘Mr. Moscrop! But darling, how absolutely charming to meet you again.’

What a gulf there was between these two!

‘The pleasure is all mine, Ma’am, I assure you,’ said Moscrop. ‘I trust that your little boy suffered no aftereffects from his adventure the other day.’

‘Good God no. The brat’s as tough as a mountain goat. But, my dear, I shudder every time I see that dreadful groyne where you found him. You’re a hero, did I tell you? I’m dashed if I know why Brighton gets excited over battles in Egypt when acts of valour are performed by spunky little shopkeepers on its own beach.’

‘Thank you, Ma’am.’

‘But that’s what’s so ridiculous, my chuck-we haven’t thanked you. You wouldn’t let me tell Prothero.’

‘Quite proper, Ma’am.’

‘But there must be something I can do.’

‘Since you mention it, Ma’am, there is one small matter over which’-he coughed discreetly-‘you might indulge me.’

‘Of course! What is that?’

‘Allow me to renew my acquaintance with young Jason. We were becoming quite firm friends. I should dearly like to take him into this establishment and purchase some small memento for him.’

‘Memento? Darling, I couldn’t possibly allow that! We are in your debt.’

He raised his bowler politely. ‘Then with all due respect, Ma’am, you have no choice but to let me have my way. Come, Jason.’

The child took his hand obediently and they went inside. He hoped to find a wooden telescope, but the plan was frustrated. Almost everything else was available, hoops, tops, toy guns, model yachts, cricket bats. Even, suspended ominously over the counter, a selection of birch-rods. He allowed Jason to make his own choice from the variety of playthings the assistant produced.

The others were waiting when they came out into the sunshine. ‘My stars, Jason, how lucky you are!’ said his mother. ‘What a beautiful thing! What is it, Mr. Moscrop?’

‘A wooden crocodile, Ma’am. Once it was placed in his hands he wouldn’t let go of it. The jaws open and close like nutcrackers, you see. I don’t think he can injure himself with it.’

‘He’s partial to crocodiles,’ said Guy, with a sly smile at Bridget. ‘Most civil of you to stand treat to my stepbrother in this way, sir. Now we must be moving on. I was planning on a swim before lunch. Good-day to you.’

‘Perhaps Mr. Moscrop is going our way,’ said Zena, with emphasis.

‘As it happens, I had it in mind to take a look at the sea, Ma’am.’

‘Splendid! Then we shall all go together.’