Brighton Rock: Part III, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Spicer is out walking, trying to calm his frayed nerves, but everywhere he goes and everything he sees reminds him of Hale’s murder and the inquest, the conclusions of which make no sense to him. He worries constantly that the truth will come out. He pins the last shreds of his sanity on the races starting soon. They’re his only hope for peace. While he ponders the Hale case, he runs into Crab, a thin man whose appearance has changed radically since Spicer last saw him, when he and the rest of Kite’s gang ran him out of town. He has had his Jewish characteristics erased. His nose is straightened and scarred. His hair is red. Greene writes that he’d been a Jew once, but that a hairdresser and surgeon had taken care of that.

Spicer asks Crab why he’s back in Brighton and if he had his looks changed out of fear of being killed. Crab says that Spicer should be respectful. He is now Colleoni’s right-hand man. Spicer says he better hope Pinkie doesn’t hear of his return. Crab informs Spicer that Pinkie is at the police station. Upon hearing that news, Spicer runs in a panic off toward Pinkie’s boarding house. Pinkie isn’t there. The room looks abandoned. Spicer sees himself in the mirror and in that reflection sees a man who looks like he might rat his friends out to the cops.

Spicer stands in Pinkie’s empty apartment and thinks of Nottingham where he hopes someday to open his own pub. He realizes, though, that Pinkie and the rest will never let him leave. He knows too much. He is stuck in the mob forever. Staring down the boardinghouse’s winding staircase, he sees an old-fashioned telephone. It starts to ring.

Spicer puts off answering the phone, thinking he can’t handle more bad news, but no one else comes to get it, not even the boarding house owner, Frank, so eventually he picks up, and it’s Rose asking for Pinkie. Spicer gets increasingly agitated as she talks. She says that Pinkie asked her to call if anyone ever came by asking questions, and that a woman and a man did come by and now she needs to talk to him. Spicer, beginning to sweat, drops the receiver and leaves the boarding house, swearing to himself that he will not squeal.

Spicer walks quickly down to the pier, telling himself over and over that he will not go to the cops. Still, it wasn’t his idea to kill Hale, which, in his mind, makes him a relative innocent in the whole affair. He trips on a shingle and nearly falls, catching himself on some rocks that are cold with sea wind and salt water. The nearby shops are closed, but the peepshows and carnival games are still going. A seagull heads straight for his face, banking fast to miss him. Spicer wonders what Rose knows and, stationing himself near the women’s lavatory, keeps his eye out for the police.  What he sees instead are tourists heading to the aquarium and cheap stores selling candy, namely Brighton rock.