Free Mad Hatter's Holiday by Peter Lovesey Page A

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