Mad Hatter's Holiday

Mad Hatter's Holiday Read Free

Book: Mad Hatter's Holiday Read Free
Author: Peter Lovesey
Tags: Mystery
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was not shy—the proprietor of a shop could not afford to be—but the enforced intimacy of a First Class carriage was different altogether from the business-like exchanges in his Oxford Street emporium. When the train had approached Clayton tunnel, he had got up to fasten the window and she had nodded her appreciation of the courtesy. In the darkness he had set his eyes firmly in her direction, hopeful that a chink of light might illuminate her features for an instant. He had even strained forward to catch the fragrance she wore. But when the light returned he was stiffly back against the headrest with his eyes trained on the procession of telegraph poles past the window. How odd it was that if the same young woman were now seated on the beach he could observe her minutely without embarrassment on either side!
    For his first concentrated survey he chose the area of beach below the Grand Hotel. The building’s height made it the obvious point of reference. If you did not use some kind of landmark you would lose yourself on the beach just as surely as if you were tramping aimlessly through the shingle. He brought the glasses into sharp focus on one of the Italianate balconies and moved the field of view slowly down the edge of the building that adjoined Hobden’s Royal Tepid Swimming Baths for Gentlemen. A landau passed across the image; he had reached the level of the King’s Road. He dipped the binoculars lower, down the Esplanade wall to the top tier of white-painted bathing-machines. He continued the movement without pausing. Whatever else he may have been, he was no Peeping Tom. The sight of a shapely ankle or a foam-drenched petticoat-hem exposed to the sun to dry was a side-benefit of his researches, but he drew the line at peering into bathing-machines. That was a misapplication of science.
    Pebbles monopolised the scene now, more blue than brown when he saw them closely, and as clean as if every one had been scrubbed that day. Farther down was an upturned fishing-boat on trestles, with children scrambling over it. They were the first live figures the lens had caught and he was pleased at the definition. Some loss of colour was inevitable, but the features were sharp and there was no spectral fringe around them. The Zeiss itself could not have produced a clearer image.
    He discovered a courting couple sitting against a rowing-boat, the girl in a white serge and navy-blue yachting dress with silver anchor buttons (could he really see that well or was his imagination supplying the details?) and a pill-box hat, and the man in ducks, sharing her parasol. The chaperone, heavily veiled and knitting assiduously, sat with her back against the stern. To their right was a poorer family who seemed to have missed the exodus. They were eating shrimps or whelks and passing round a stone bottle, presumably of beer. A fruit-seller approached and just as quickly moved on.
    The band to Moscrop’s rear stopped playing. All that was audible now was the thud of footfalls on the planking and the lapping of the tide. It made an odd accompaniment to the animated scene he was observing. With one faculty increasingly involved in the life below him, the others had become dissociated from what was happening on the pier. The music had blended pleasingly with the images, but now that it had stopped he was straining to hear the crunch of pebbles as someone walked by and the shrill cries of the children playing on the boat. It was like being afflicted suddenly with deafness. His concentration was going.
    Then with that happy facility optical instruments have for chancing on the unexpected, the glasses isolated a young woman of riveting attractiveness. She was three-quarters turned away from the lens and wearing a hat of fine, white straw with an outrageously wide brim which dipped and obscured her face at each step she took. She was making her way up the steep shelf of pebbles towards the bathing-machines. Difficult as this should have been, her

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