Step in the Dark

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘Oo-er!’ remarked Detective-Sergeant Boyce, an irrepressible extrovert.

  ‘Come in!’ Pollard called, drowning Toye’s scandalized rebuke.

  The man who entered, limping slightly, was of medium height and build, and pale and scholarly in appearance. He wore spectacles, and his thinning hair was receding from his temples.

  ‘Alastair Habgood,’ he said. ‘I’m librarian here. This mayn’t be according to the book, but my wife would be glad to send down some tea if you’d care for it.’

  ‘That’s awfully good of her,’ Pollard replied. ‘I must say we’d be glad of a cuppa. As a matter of fact, I was just coming to ask if you could spare us a few minutes.’

  ‘Supposing you come up and have one with us, then? We’re just starting tea, and can send some down here for your colleagues.’

  With tactful slowness Pollard and Toye followed Alastair Habgood upstairs. As they passed through the door at the top, the oppressive deadness of the ground floor was replaced by cosy domesticity. There was a welcoming smell of toasted buns. They crossed a small landing, Pollard’s quick eye for the layout of the building enabling him to locate the door on to the gallery, deeply recessed in a thick wall. Two women sitting by a tea trolley looked up with interest as they came in.

  ‘I’ve brought along Superintendent Pollard and Inspector Toye for a working tea, dear,’ Alastair Habgood told his wife.

  In the small bustle of introductions and the bringing up of extra chairs, Clare Fenner undertook to take a tray down to the library, and went out. Pollard looked about him, and tilted his head back.

  ‘What a marvellous room,’ he said. ‘I suppose this is the oldest part of the building?’

  The Habgoods reacted with pleased surprise, and for a short time the conversation was historical and architectural. As they talked, it struck Pollard that Laura Habgood was a very different type from her husband. A cheerful, practical sort, he thought, studying her broad animated face, lively dark eyes and springy hair. Decided, too, with that strong chin. He remembered that according to Cook’s report in the case file she had had little use for Annabel Lucas, and felt no doubt at all that the girl had been responsible for the break-in.

  ‘Well,’ he said, when a pause developed, ‘I’m afraid I must bother you with a lot of questions, most of which you’ll have answered already. We Yard chaps do like to get our facts at first-hand. How about Miss Fenner? She was here on Wednesday night, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ Laura replied. ‘All right, Alastair, I’ll get her.’ Forestalling her husband, she was at the door before he could get out of his chair.

  Clare Fenner reappeared and slipped into a chair next to Toye, who smiled at her encouragingly.

  ‘Were you surprised,’ Pollard asked without preamble, ‘when you heard that your Chief Constable had called in the Yard?’

  Both Habgoods nodded affirmatively. ‘Very much so,’ Alastair replied. ‘It’s a wretched business with a tragic ending, but hardly complicated, I should have thought.’

  ‘It’s time now, I think,’ Pollard said, ‘that you were put more fully into the picture. As well as Mrs Lucas, there were two other unauthorized people in your library during Friday night.’

  He watched momentary incredulity give way to horrified dismay in their faces. He also thought that there had been a fleeting glimpse of something very like relief in Laura’s.

  ‘It’s absolutely appalling to think of all this going on under our own roof!’ Alastair exclaimed. ‘I can only say I’m thankful Scotland Yard has been called in.’

  ‘You’ve both made very full and helpful statements to Inspector Cook,’ Pollard told them, ‘but there are just a few points I’d like to take a bit further. Where are the keys to the Yale lock of the yard doors kept? On the key board in your bedroom with the others?’

  ‘One is. Mrs Lucas has the other. She parked in the yard when she was working here. We shall get it back, shan’t we?’

  ‘Of course, although probably not until the end of the inquiry. Were the doors kept locked?’

  ‘No, not by day. The cleaner opens them in the morning to get to the dustbins. Mrs Lucas always shut them when she went in the evening, unless we told her we were taking the car out. If it wasn’t one of her days here, one of us would shut them at half-past five, when the library closed.’

  ‘I understand,’ Pollard said, ‘that she shut them as usual last Wednesday night, but that Mrs Habgood opened them again shortly afterwards, having just heard from Miss Fenner that she was arriving shortly by car for the night.’

  ‘Quite correct,’ Laura agreed.

  ‘Now the point I want an opinion on is this. We know that Mrs Lucas came back here on foot. If she did this with no criminal intent, while the gates were open for Miss Fenner, would she have been so surprised that she would have gone into the yard and had a look round?’

  The Habgoods looked at each other.

  ‘I suppose she might have,’ Alastair said doubtfully. ‘To see if my wife had taken the car out for some reason for instance, leaving me in bed in the flat. If she had come to fetch something she’d left behind, she mightn’t have wanted to ring. But I should think she could have seen at once if our garage was open and empty without going right into the yard past the boiler house door and noticing if it was open. This is what you’re getting at, I take it?’

  Laura Habgood had been barely concealing her impatience.

  ‘Surely this is a bit far-fetched?’ she broke in. ‘I mean, if somebody else had got into the library, they’d have had to get hold of two keys, as well as managing to unbolt the boiler house door on the inside. Pretty difficult for an outsider.’

  ‘All the same, we can’t altogether rule out the possibility at the moment,’ Pollard replied. ‘Can we accept the fact that no one in Ramsden besides yourselves knew that Miss Fenner was coming on Wednesday evening?’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better come in here,’ Clare said. ‘I didn’t know myself until nearly half-past five, when my boss came in and gave me an unexpected week off while he flew out to Malta to see his new grandson. It was a bit late to get down to my parents in Devon that night, so I thought of my uncle and aunt here, as it’s on the way.’

  Pollard smiled at her and thought how attractively serious she looked. ‘You seem to have the right sort of boss, Miss Fenner. I’m sorry you’ve landed up in a trouble spot, but you can start for Devon any time you like now.’

  ‘Actually, I’m staying,’ she told him. ‘I might be some help when the library’s opened again.’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ Pollard told Alastair, ‘we’ll be through by tomorrow evening, at latest. I’m afraid the place is in a bit of a mess.’

  ‘We’ll soon get it straight for reopening on Monday,’ Laura said briskly. ‘The sooner members can come in again, the better.’

  During a short pause Toye turned over a page in his notebook.

  ‘To move on to another topic,’ Pollard resumed, ‘we’re naturally anxious to pinpoint the time of Mrs Lucas’s death. According to the pathologist, she was killed immediately. Her fall must have been a hefty crash, and she dropped an armful of books as well. I know the back wall of this part of the house is very thick, and that you’ve told Inspector Cook that you heard nothing but I want you both to think yourselves back into Wednesday evening between six and eight. This period covers the pathologist’s time limit. It’s often surprising what one can remember without realizing it.’

  There was a further pause.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m really no go on this,’ Alastair said. ‘I’d had a bad day with my beastly leg, and had taken a good whack of painkillers. I took it in when my wife came and told me Clare was coming, but I dozed off again, and was only very dimly aware of domestic noises. The linen cupboard door, and my wife bustling around, and kitchen noises: clinking of plates and stirring, and the electric blender...’

  ‘Hold it!’ Pollard cut in. They stared at him. ‘Those electric gadgets make a terrific row, do
n’t they? Can you remember when you were using the blender, Mrs Habgood?’

  ‘Heavens! Not to the minute. Just let me think.’

  Laura sat for nearly half a minute with her face in her hands. Finally she said that she remembered using the blender early on, to puree some cooked vegetables for soup. Then, almost as her last job, she had used an electric beater for egg whites for a chocolate mousse. ‘Say at about ten or five minutes to seven,’ she concluded.

  ‘That would tie up with my surfacing,’ Alastair said, ‘I think it woke me up, and then Nox — that’s our cat — finished the job by landing on my chest, and you came in almost at once to ask me how I was and if I wanted any supper. We heard Clare’s car arrive while we were talking.’

  ‘It was five past seven when I got here,’ Clare contributed. ‘I remember looking at my watch when I pulled up.’

  Pollard sensed barely suppressed questions which he had no intention of answering.

  ‘Was Mrs Lucas a good fit here?’ he asked, abruptly changing course.

  ‘The short answer,’ Alastair replied, ‘is, technically, yes. Personally, not altogether.’

  Conscious once again of Laura’s impatient reaction, Pollard quickly asked him to elaborate.

  ‘She could cope with the work all right. Her typing was adequate, and she had had a little experience in a commercial lending library. I can’t pretend that she was a congenial colleague. For one thing, she hadn’t the general education for the job, and no interest in our aims here. And some of the older members objected to her manners, and her rather free and easy way with men. I think her husband’s desertion had shaken her up badly, and her principal aim in life was to acquire another man as quickly as she could.’

  ‘Did you see much of her, Mrs Habgood?’ Pollard asked Laura.

  ‘As little as possible,’ she replied tersely. ‘I found her a most objectionable young woman, and quite wrong for us here. So did quite a lot of the members. They’re more inclined to complain to me than to my husband.’

  ‘I know she was far from ideal,’ Alastair agreed, ‘but these days you have to take what you can get. It isn’t at all easy to find somebody for a boring and not particularly well paid part-time job. As it was, she had managed to find a pensioner to look after her shop when she was working here. And for all her shortcomings as a person, she was reasonably competent — and no fool.’

  ‘Certainly she was no fool.’

  Laura’s tone made Pollard glance at her.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you have been most helpful once again, and I think we can remove ourselves now. May we just see exactly where the key board hangs?’

  He satisfied himself that it was completely hidden by the door when the latter was propped wide open, as the Habgoods assured him it had been on the night of the centenary party.

  ‘All the doors up here were, so that anybody who felt like it could wander around and look at the ceilings.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know who did come up, I suppose?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. We were downstairs all the evening, and there was a terrific crowd. I think we could produce a list of everybody who came to the party, given time. I know the total because of the catering.’

  Pollard hesitated.

  ‘I’m afraid it means a lot of work, but we’d be glad if you’d make a start on it in case it’s needed.’

  On returning to the police station they were greeted by the news that an obvious lead had petered out. The Yard had located Rex Lucas in the fracture ward of a London hospital, where he had spent the past ten days recovering from injuries received in a car crash. He had made a statement, subsequently confirmed, that he had never married the dead woman, whose name was Annabel Brown. They had lived together, first in London and then in Ramsden. About eighteen months earlier he had got fed up and left her. He had heard nothing from her since, and expressed no regret at hearing of her death, adding that she had nothing to complain about. He had left her with the rest of the lease of the shop and all the stock.

  ‘Dead end number one,’ Pollard said. ‘Not that I thought anything would come from that quarter.’

  He sat on, frowning, for nearly a minute. Then, suddenly thrusting back his chair, he stood up.

  ‘Come on, let’s go and eat, Toye,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll go and have a look at the shop and the girl’s living quarters. And stop grinning, damn you,’ he added, surprising a satisfied expression on his subordinate’s face. ‘All right, all right. I know I bellyached all the way down about getting the case wished on to me, and it’s fifty to one that Brown fell over her own feet. All the same, I’m finding out what these odd goings-on were in aid of, headlines or not,’ he concluded emphatically, and somewhat obscurely.

  Toye looked puzzled, but tactfully refrained from asking for enlightenment.

  Chapter 5

  Later that evening, Pollard and Toye stood contemplating Moneypenny Street, a narrow one-way link between two of Ramsden’s main thoroughfares. It was flanked by small shops and offices and there were few signs of a resident population.

  ‘Part of the historic centre, as they call the middles of towns these days,’ Toye observed. ‘The property developers would have flattened it, else.’

  Pollard reluctantly diverted his gaze from gabled roofs and round-headed windows, and agreed.

  ‘This looks like it,’ he said, halting in front of a shop window crowded with an astonishing variety of objects, and surmounted by a lettered board proclaiming ‘You Want it: We’ve Got it’.

  Toye unlocked the door and played the beam of his torch on the walls to locate a light switch, and strip lighting stuttered into being overhead. Apart from a narrow central gangway and a space at the back, the shop was crammed with small articles of furniture and general miscellanea, all set out in orderly fashion.

  ‘First time I’ve seen a junk shop lined up like this,’ Toye said, trying out a rocking chair after removing a stack of suitcases from its seat. ‘I’ve always fancied one of these...’

  ‘Think I’ve brought you on a shopping expedition?’ As he spoke, glancing up from a notebook labelled ‘Sales’, Pollard was suddenly conscious of being watched, and turned abruptly to face the street. Two faces, distorted by avid curiosity, were flattened against the glass. ‘Let’s get upstairs and switch this light off. Half Ramsden will be outside, soon, if we don’t.’

  A short flight of stairs covered with worn linoleum led up to a single large room over the shop, and a minute, scruffy bathroom, built out over the downstairs lavatory. Toye drew a curtain across the window overlooking the street. Bare boards, wallpaper faded to an indistinguishable dun colour and sparse furniture all added up to drabness. But a measure of comfort had been superimposed. There were odd squares of carpet, a comfortable armchair and a TV set. Inspector Cook’s searchers had produced the usual dislocated effect; and a table against one of the walls was stacked with papers, a box file, and a battered portable typewriter. Pollard planted a foot on the rung of a chair and subjected the room to prolonged scrutiny.

  ‘Uncompromisingly single bed, and only one decent chair,’ he remarked. ‘Rex Lucas written off with finality. Let’s go for the stuff on the table. Cook’s chaps have been pretty thorough with the cupboards.’

  They settled down after lighting the asthmatic but reasonably efficient gas fire. According to their usual custom they worked separately, making an occasional note. Apart from the wheezing and plopping of the fire and an occasional car negotiating Moneypenny Street, the silence was oppressive. Pollard finally broke it.

  ‘Odd,’ he said, looking up from an account book. ‘Every penny she’s spent is booked here, down to a single pinta, but no wages entered up. Somebody stood in for her when she was working for Habgood. Give me the file... Yes, a Mrs Pinfold, 27, Longmeadow Road, described as a respectable widow and a pensioner.’

  Toye suggested collusion over an infringement of the earnings rule.

  ‘Not on your life. She never paid on that scale. These accounts of
Brown’s are damned interesting. She was watching every penny, and putting by in the Post Office. My guess is that she’d had a bit too much hand-to-mouth. Probably left home, came unstuck in London, and then Lucas walking out put the lid on it. Remember what Habgood said about husband-hunting? And according to Cook, the chaps who took her out dropped her like a hot brick when they realized nothing was on without marriage lines. Pending which, she seems to have been hell-bent on having something in the kitty. I wonder —’

  Pollard broke off and was silent for so long that Toye looked round inquiringly.

  ‘Petty blackmail? Mind the shop for free — or else?’

  ‘I think there’s just a whiff of it in the air. As a matter of fact it struck me that Mrs Habgood looked a shade relieved when she heard X or Y had been around on Wednesday night. Pure surmise, of course. We’ve nothing to go on at the moment. A chat with Mrs Pinfold tomorrow may produce something... What have you got there?’

  Toye was holding a used sheet of carbon paper up to the light. ‘Looks as though Brown may have done typing jobs for people. There’s something here about students and courses.’

  ‘Impound it. It might be a lead.’

  They reverted to the papers. Toye began a careful perusal of a notebook recording purchases and sales.

  ‘There’s a junk shop near my place where I pick up the odd thing now and again,’ he said presently with apparent irrelevance. ‘Nice old boy runs it, and we get talking. He says he is feeling the draught like everybody else. Auction prices for job lots are up and customers haven’t the cash to pay what’ll give you enough profit to live on. If that’s general, some of these entries seem a bit out of line.’