It was a field-day for the riding academies, too. Mounts of every size and breed had been hired for the morning. The strain on the resources of the stables was clear from the number of handsomely-dressed riders in the saddles of unmistakable hacks, but they scarcely detracted from the elegance of the parade.
Quite rightly the ladies took the eye, stiff-backed as guardsmen, whether mounted on saddles or carriage upholstery; a severity matched by the style of their costumes- starched collars stretching high up their necks, coats fronted with double ranks of buttons, long kid gloves-and, for the equestriennes, black riding habits, squat, shiny hats, gloved hands managing reins and crop, and a glimpse of boot-heels. The effect was mitigated in a most stimulating way by tiny outbreaks of frivolity-white lace, swansdown, ostrich feathers, the bloom of Piver’s powders and the flash of kohl-washed eyes.
He was studying a team of magnificent black geldings drawing a large family phaeton, when a familiar profile crossed in front. Prothero-riding a bay. And wearing a dapper set of riding-clothes, tailor-made for certain, and a grey top hat.
The doctor’s appearance in the King’s Road was no surprise- where else would a professional man go after church on a Sunday morning? — and on consideration it was understandable that he was in the saddle and not with his family in a carriage. Presumably a locum-tenens was managing his practice and would have need of whatever form of private transport he maintained. No, what made Moscrop stand stupefied on the pavement was Dr. Prothero’s patently flirtatious exchanges with a young woman riding beside him who was certainly not his wife. She was as young as Mrs. Prothero, perhaps still in her twenties, but her hair, drawn back into a chignon beneath a small black riding-hat, was a quite extraordinary shade of red, almost-was this a perverse thought? — the colour of the storm-warning cone kept on the West Pier-head. Her features were neatly proportioned, not beautiful, but lit at this moment with a radiance one could not put down alone to Brighton’s bracing air.
They were past in seconds. The grate of carriage-wheels made it quite impossible to overhear their conversation. Moscrop walked on towards the Pier. Fashionable Brighton trotted past him unnoticed.
Monday it rained. He spent the morning looking at the antique shops in West Street and East Street; it was a longstanding hope of his that he would one day discover an early Venetian wooden telescope among the usual assortment of scientific bric-a-brac. He was not fortunate on this occasion, but it did provide an interesting alternative to the reading-rooms in the public and private libraries, or the humid corridors of the Aquarium, which were sure to have been well-patronised. He felt no enthusiasm for fish that morning, in spite of the attraction of a close-packed crowd of visitors.
In the afternoon he visited the roller-skating rink in West Street-a concert hall recently converted to give facilities for the newest craze. Not that he was interested in learning to skate-it looked quite as dangerous as bicycling and just as difficult to master-but he obtained a spectator’s ticket and enjoyed watching less cautious spirits go through the experience. That evening he attended a concert at the Dome and found it much less diverting. His appreciation of the music ebbed away alarmingly when the thought occurred to him that he had not advanced his scientific knowledge all day.
Nor was Tuesday any more rewarding, although the sun returned and he was able to use the Zeiss from the West Pier. Repeated scannings of the beach produced not one image worth adjusting the screw-focus for. After Saturday’s sighting, the number of subjects that met his criteria seemed to have diminished dramatically.
It was Wednesday morning when a routine sweep with the Zeiss of the sections of beach on the Hove side of the pier stopped abruptly on a group of bathing machines a little to the west of the Bedford Hotel. Fortunately, he was prepared for just such an occurrence. He took out the Negretti and Zambra, his most powerful portable telescope, and mounted it on a tripod, indifferent, in the way dedicated surveyors are, to the idle curiosity of passers-by. It gave him a diamond-sharp image, a positive identification that set his heart pounding with excitement. For this was a coup unequalled in his experience: he had spotted Dr. Prothero’s second son, the child Jason, sitting in his perambulator playing with a small Union Jack in front of the bathing-machines. Who else among the thousands who held telescopes to their eyes around Her Majesty’s coasts would have been so observant as to recognise that tiny scrap of humanity in a sailor suit-and wearing a large white sun-hat that almost obscured his blond curls?
Curiously, young Jason appeared to be quite unaccompanied, although he was amusing himself contentedly with the flag. The beach west of the pier drew few visitors. Almost all of the Corporation’s two hundred and fifty-eight machines (Moscrop had found nothing better to do the previous afternoon than count them) were concentrated in the stretch between the two piers. A few were clustered in front of the Bedford, but only the most decrepit of that hotel’s guests made use of them, everyone else favouring the facilities farther along. A brief peep at the scene without the aid of the telescope showed Jason to be in sole occupation except for two couples spooning against the breakwater, and the bathing-machine attendant. The latter was a mountainous, bare-armed woman with an incipient moustache, a worthy descendant of Martha Gunn, Mrs. Fitzherbert’s dipper in Regency times. As Moscrop watched, she ambled over to the child, took the slack of flesh on his cheek between the first two knuckles of her right hand and jerked his head affectionately. Jason looked surprised and stopped waving his flag.
What possible reason could there be for the child’s evident abandonment on that desolate stretch of beach? Where on earth was Bridget, his nursemaid? Moscrop’s sentiments plunged from triumph to acute anxiety. Could Jason have been snatched away from his nurse and parents and deposited down there? Having sighted the child, he felt increasingly responsible for its well-being. He pulled distractedly at the ends of his moustache and beat a tattoo on the pier-deck with his left heel. With an air of decision, he dismantled the tripod, put the parts in his bag and left the pier at a quick step.
The bathing-machine woman was monstrous, quite capable of earning a second living in one of the freak shows in the arches under the promenade. When Moscrop reached her, she had taken Jason out of his pram and put him into a Corporation bath-towel which she was holding at both ends and using as a swing-boat. The child was taking the exercise manfully.
Moscrop coughed. ‘You’ll pardon me for asking? I think I recognise the little fellow. Is it Dr. Prothero’s child?’
She stopped swinging and Jason came to rest with a springy impact against the swell of her stomach. ‘What?’
‘The child, Ma’am. I was inquiring if it was young Jason Prothero.’
‘Couldn’t tell you.’ She had tiny brown eyes that seemed devoid of intelligence. ‘Couldn’t tell you nohow.’
‘That’s his pram for sure.’
She wriggled her shoulders in a non-committal way and her chins vibrated. Jason rebounded against her stomach. ‘If you say so.’
‘I’m certain of it.’
There was a period of silence between them with only the roll of the waves intervening.
‘I see that you’re looking after the boy,’ he began again. ‘He’s in good hands.’
There was no response.
‘I know something of the family, you see. It’s unusual for them to be this far along the beach. Most irregular. I wonder now, would you-er-happen to have noticed who left him here?’
She took the two ends of the towel in her right hand, so that Jason was suspended inside like Baby Bunting, and pointed out to sea with the left. ‘Her.’