Peter Lovesey - Mad Hatter

He paced the corridor uneasily, peering ahead for a glimpse of the boy, but feeling obliged to simulate some interest in the tanks, rather as one casts an eye over tombstones on a cathedral tour. A skate came close to the glass of one and hovered there, a grotesque parody of a human face, with wicked twinkling eyes and mocking mouth. Mackerel and herrings played among the rising bubbles. Bass dived repeatedly into the fine grit at the bottom of their tank, rolling themselves in it with evident relish. In the main tank, over a hundred feet long, porpoises darted easily from end to end. A line of visitors watched in hushed amazement at such quicksilver velocity contained within a foot of their faces.

Halfway along the corridor there was still no glimpse of red in the line of shuffling visitors. He kept towards the centre, near the small tanks of tropical fish mounted on pedestals. He smiled wryly at one labelled Shanghai Telescope Fish. Newtonian or Cassegrainian? Whichever they were, they would find it a challenge to produce any image at all in this dim underworld. No telescope he knew could retain sufficient light to be of any use here.

To his right he noticed a passage leading to a separate exhibit. The New Alligator and Crocodile Cavern is now completed and Open to the Public announced a board beside it. He hesitated. Might such a curiosity interest a boy of fifteen? He supposed it would. As a meeting-place, however, it was a singularly unlikely choice. She of the fluttering white hat was impossible to imagine making a rendezvous in a reptile-house.

He reviewed the line of visitors filing past the tanks. Several straw boaters were prominent. Not a single red blazer. There was nothing for it but to try the Crocodile Cavern.

The interior was darker than the main aquarium. Hissing gas-jets situated at floor-level threw a yellowish light over indeterminate areas of mud and vegetation. He waited at the entrance, accustoming his eyes to the conditions. Reassured that there was actually a four-foot barrier of iron and glass between the human and reptilian occupants of the cavern, he stepped forward. It was as crowded as the bar in a music hall. Instead of shouting for drinks, the customers passed the time peering downwards, telling crocodiles from logs of wood. Saturday afternoon zoologists. He had no desire to join in, but to see anything at all he needed to gain a place at the glass. And getting there was certainly harder than ordering drinks at the Alhambra. Those at the front refused to move on before observing some sign of life in the tank, and the reptiles were not disposed to co-operate.

At length he wedged himself between a clergyman and a large woman in a plush hat. To establish his interest in crocodiles, he tossed a penny over the glass on to the back of an unblinking twelve-footer. Then he looked along the barrier at the line of human faces to his right. The light directed upwards from the tank caught the undersides of their features. Chins, lips, noses and eyebrows were illuminated in the manner of murderers’ effigies in Madame Tussaud’s. He sighed. In these conditions you would be hard put to it to recognise your own mother.

There was a small stir at the far end of the barrier. A child was being held up for a better view, a boy of two or three in a white cotton sailor-suit. Tiny, fat fingers gripped the edge of the glass above the heads of the onlookers. A shock of flaxen curls appeared behind them and was helped above the glass, to project over the top, giving the child a bird’s-eye view of the crocodiles. He was supported at the ankles. From where Moscrop was, it looked an uncomfortable vantage point. And so it appeared to someone else, for a young woman was protesting actively, trying to haul the child down to a safer height. ‘No, Master Guy, he don’t like it. He don’t like it at all. Can’t you see he don’t like it? Put him down, for pity’s sake.’ From her dress and manner, she was the child’s nursemaid, quite properly demonstrating her concern for its safety. Master Guy was unimpressed, though. He edged the ankles higher, beyond her reach. The weight of the child’s head began to draw it downwards. One of the reptiles in the tank moved. The girl screamed. Several sets of hands at once combined to pull the child to safety. It seemed quite unharmed. Probably it had never been at risk. There is nothing like a scream in a reptile-house to lead people to hasty conclusions. Certainly the young man named Guy was treating the matter lightly, laughingly ruffling the curls that were now drawn implacably to the nursemaid’s bosom.

Moscrop watched him with increasing interest, not because the incident was of any importance, but because now that the child was reunited with its nurse, he could see for the first time what Master Guy was wearing: a blazer, flattened against the glass by a sudden concentration of pressure from the crowd and caught in the gaslight as red as a signal-flag. What luck! He backed away from the barrier at once to the back of the crowd and moved as near as he could.

‘Be reasonable, Bridget, dammit,’ he heard from in front. ‘Anyone would think from your behaviour I was trying to get rid of the child, like someone in the police reports.’ The voice was pitched high and carried well. Whatever Bridget thought, the crowd would be left in no doubt about the young man’s good intentions. ‘The boy wanted to see the brutes for himself. Part of his education. You’ll have to keep a check on yourself, my girl, or you’ll get us into no end of trouble, won’t she, young Jason?’ If it was the youth Moscrop had followed from the bathing-station, he spoke with a self-assurance beyond his years.

A shifting of positions among the crowd settled the issue. The wearer of the blazer emerged within a yard of Moscrop, girl and child in tow. His hand lingered automatically among young Jason’s curls, but his eyes, what was visible of them in the shadows, glinted in a most unrepentant way. The Awakening Conscience! Beyond any doubt it was the boy from the beach. Moscrop stepped in behind, resolved not to lose him again.

In the main aquarium, the light that had seemed poor before was as good as daylight now. They crossed a central vestibule and entered the second part of the main aisle, Moscrop keeping within twenty yards of them. Their step was business-like. Tank after tank was passed without the inmates receiving even the compliment of a glance.

He presently became aware of a sound from the end of the building, a persistent throbbing, soon detectable as the percussionist’s contribution to a waltz-tune. It sounded curiously unsuited to the surroundings, even when the full orchestra was audible. To their credit, the aquarium managers had provided a small forest of palm trees in tubs, to make a distinction between the musicians and the specimens of marine life. Members of the public were making their way there with the resolute tread of Sunday morning church-goers. They were passing straight through into a further room, towards which Guy strode, with the girl a step or two behind, the child now dormant in her arms.

He followed them into a spacious conservatory, well-provided with bentwood and bamboo chairs distributed at random among tall sub-tropical shrubs. Most were turned in the direction of the Aquarium Orchestra, a dozen instrumentalists mounted on a small platform behind a fernery, but a number of the audience elected to promenade around the extremities. There was much to charm the eye: cascades and fountains and miniature Alpine scenery.

Which way had they gone? Heavens, these were practically jungle conditions, with fronds and ferns making it quite impossible to see more than a dozen yards in any direction. ‘There is ample seating on the far side, sir,’ a bored voice advised him.

‘I was-er-with the people ahead. Young fellow in a red blazer.’