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.
CHAPTER 7
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.