The two policemen were large men who seemed to crowd her tiny sitting room to suffocation point. They were kind and helpful, concerning themselves at first about whether she needed medical attention. The young constable was then dispatched to the kitchen to make her a cup of tea while Sergeant Mills of the Ramsden Constabulary questioned her minutely. He was sandy haired, with sharp grey eyes that she felt were boring into her.
‘You say you didn’t hear anybody following you on the way home, or see the chap who knocked you over,’ he said. ‘Did you get any idea if there was more than one person in on it?’
Evelyn shut her eyes and tried to think.
‘I don’t think so. I didn’t hear footsteps running away, or anything. It all happened so quickly.’
Sergeant Mills nodded. ‘Now, if you’d just describe the handbag and what was in it, Madam?’
‘It wasn’t an expensive bag,’ she began, still agonizingly undecided about the stamps. ‘A dark brown synthetic one, medium-sized, with handles. There was a red purse inside with about a pound in small change, I think. A pen, and my diary, and a shopping list. Oh, and a few stamps. I can’t think of anything else.’
She held her breath. If he asked about the stamps she would have to tell the truth, of course.
Sergeant Mills showed no interest in them.
‘Very sensible of you to carry your latchkey in an inside pocket, Madam,’ he remarked. ‘I wish all you ladies would do the same. Real careless with your handbags, some of you are.’
‘Do you think there’s any chance of getting mine back?’ she asked him anxiously.
It struck Sergeant Mills as surprising that she should be so concerned about a cheap bag with next to nothing in it, but he replied encouragingly.
‘I’m afraid there’s not much hope of seeing your purse again, and maybe not your pen either. But the bag could turn up. A chap who’s done a snatch usually gets rid of it quick, once he’s cleaned out any valuables or cash. Chucks it over a wall or dumps it in a dustbin. Anyone finding it often brings it along to us, though. We’ll contact you at once, of course, if it turns up. We’ll take a look in the gardens just round here right away.’
He rose to go, advising a good hot bath in case she was stiff after her fall, and some aspirin.
‘A nasty experience for you,’ he said. ‘It could have been a lot worse, though, couldn’t it? Suppose you’d cashed a cheque at the bank today?’
Evelyn managed a rather wan smile as she thanked him.
Ernie Dibble watched the police car coast slowly along the road from the cover of some shrubs in the garden of the house opposite. He was disappointed and puzzled. His first mugging hadn’t gone the way of the ones in the papers. He’d got the old cow’s bag all right, but why hadn’t she yelled blue murder instead of just lying there, then getting up and going into the house as though nothing had happened? She’d got the fuzz along fast enough, but there’d been no siren on the car or lights flashing. Not that he hadn’t got his escape route lined up, over the wall at the back.
Finally he gave up and emerged cautiously. Ramsden born and bred, he knew the town like the back of his hand, and made his way unremarked through the streets to the graveyard of the parish church. A footpath cutting through it was deserted at this hour, and after a quick look round he dived behind a large box tomb. In the light of a conveniently situated lamp, he eagerly opened the handbag.
His inflated expectations took a hard knock. No notecase, bulging with five pound notes. No keys, opening up thrilling possibilities. No valuables, and only loose coins in the purse. Even in the pocket with a zip-fastener there were only a few stamps. Deciding that they were foreign stamps, he transferred them to the pocket of his anorak for his kid brother, together with the purse and the fountain pen. He found a leaflet about some meeting at the place in Abbot’s Green where his mum cleaned, and a diary with a name and address in it. There was nothing else. He sat back gloomily on his heels.
Ernie was an under-sized fourteen, with a peaky face and mousy hair. Nine years earlier, his father, an unskilled labourer, had walked out, leaving his wife with two small boys, and successfully eluding all attempts by the welfare services to trace him. Flo Dibble was a scant five feet but what she lacked in inches she more than made up for in willpower and energy. From the day of her desertion these qualities were concentrated on what she called ‘living right and proper’. The boys were brought up in an atmosphere of unremitting hard work, economy and respectability. She was so dominant in their lives that Ernie had only just, in his fifteenth year, arrived at breaking-out point. The Ramsden Comprehensive School had offered him a variety of constructive outlets, but they were either beyond his capacity or too communal for his taste. Gang activities had no appeal for him, and his first serious attempt to assert his independence had taken the form of this single-handed incursion into petty crime.
At first, as he rocked to and fro on his heels, disappointment at his meagre haul blotted out everything else. But a hard life had taught him to compensate. Gradually the fact that he had pulled off his first snatch began to bolster his ego. As footsteps approached, he squared his shoulders. As they drew near, he leaped out, in imagination...
High overhead the church clock chimed the first quarter. Ernie decided that he had better make tracks for home. His mum would be back from her office cleaning job in an hour’s time, and she’d blow her bloody top if he hadn’t come in. No sense in asking for trouble, even if he had knocked an old woman down and got her bag. Most people had gone home to an evening meal by now, and he had no difficulty in pushing Evelyn Escott’s handbag into one of a stack of cardboard containers put out for the refuse collectors at the back entrance of a shop. He was now free to concentrate on essentials. After study of a display card, he went into a snack bar and bought a large, expensive ice-cream. He walked along briskly, slowly savouring its delectable sweetness and creaminess, reminding himself that he owed it to his enterprise and guts. Feeling jaunty, he diverged from the direct route home to stroll round Abbot’s Green. It was a quiet sort of place, he told himself, and the lights weren’t all that bright. Suppose there was a chance of another bash?
Apart from a man some distance ahead of him who was walking away round the far side of the Green, there was no one about. Ernie swaggered along, pausing to try the door of a solitary parked car. It was locked. He kicked its nearside front wheel and went on. He had once been to the Athenaeum with his mum, and now paused outside its front door. The big brass handle she was always shooting her mouth about shone in the light of the street lamp close by. On impulse he stepped forward and tried it. It turned easily. The door opened and, amazed at his own daring, he slipped inside.
He was in the hall, with all the notice boards on the walls. He could see quite well, as some light was coming down the stairs. He stood sniffing delicious cooking smells that made his mouth water. Moving very cautiously, he tried several doors unsuccessfully, then advanced on the one which he remembered led into the big room with the books. It had an iron ring hanging down instead of a proper handle, and slipping his hand through this he turned it gently.
To his horror, a latch shot up on the inside with a hideous clatter. As he froze, there was a funny sort of scrambling noise inside the room, followed by somebody screeching and calling out. Then some small thuds, and a big one. There was the sound of a door closing very quietly. Terrified by what sounded like a car drawing up outside, he pressed against the wall, trembling with terror. The noise stopped and, throwing caution to the winds, he opened the front door and ran for it. Peering out from the bushes in the centre of Abbot’s Green, he could not see a car, and decided that it must have driven off. He stayed crouching on the wet ground for what felt like a lifetime.
Far away, small and faint, came the seven strokes of the hour from the clock in the tower of the parish church, but he still dared not move. At the sound of another car he waited with his heart in his mouth. It came nearer and nearer, and finally a Mini turned into the
yard at the side of the Athenaeum. At the same moment, the front door opened, letting out a shaft of light, and a woman hurried round to the yard. A girl was getting out of the car and they hugged each other. Tears of self-pity sprang to Ernie’s eyes as he suddenly thought of the reception awaiting him on his belated return. He watched the two women shut the yard doors and go into the house, before emerging cautiously on the far side of the bushes and starting reluctantly for his home.
After the police had gone, Evelyn Escott realized for the first time just how shaken and exhausted she was feeling. She had eaten nothing except a few sandwiches since breakfast, but the idea of food was nauseating. The thought of struggling round to the Athenaeum to tell Alastair Habgood of her probably ill-judged action and the appalling disaster that had followed left her paralysed. It was with overwhelming relief that she remembered he would be in no state to listen to her story after a bad day and the large doses of painkillers he was obliged to take on these occasions. In any case, nothing more could be done tonight. The police had been informed. She would go around the very first thing the next morning, arriving with the cleaning woman at half-past seven. Laura had once said that she came down every day to let her in then...
Presently she roused herself to heat some milk, then drank it with a great effort. She really must pull herself together, she thought miserably. Perhaps the best thing was to have a hot bath and go to bed. Take some aspirin, as the policeman had suggested. Try not to think what she might have lost the Society. Of the story getting out, and the publicity ... the sort of things the Colin Escotts would say about her ... of having to resign because it was so unbearable.
She slept very little, unsuspected bruises and jolts from her fall asserting themselves. The night, too, turned wet and stormy, rain lashing against her window like handfuls of flung gravel. At half-past six she was glad to get up and dress. Now that zero hour was nearly upon her she felt almost relieved and managed to eat a little breakfast before she started out — muffled in mackintosh and rain hood and struggling to keep up an umbrella against the driving wind and rain.
The streets were almost deserted and she met only a few hurrying figures, dressed, like herself, for the weather. Cleaning women going to their jobs, she thought, and found herself envying the simplicity of their lives, free from the sort of ambition that had made her struggle for the unattainable all her days.
Presently she turned into Abbot’s Green. It was more sheltered here and she made better progress. She saw that the double doors into the Athenaeum’s yard at the side of the building were partly open. Of course, Annabel hadn’t shut them properly, and the high wind had forced them apart. The thought of the girl’s slackness gave her a fleeting satisfaction. There was a light in the Habgoods’ bedroom window, but she had arrived too early. Once the front door had been unlocked she could go in quietly and upstairs to the flat. The best thing would be to wait in the yard, out of the wind.
As she reached it, Evelyn was unpleasantly surprised to see a strange car parked there. Laura had said nothing about a visitor: it would make the situation even worse if one had turned up. She was staring at the car in dismay when she heard the unmistakable sound of the boiler house door banging in the wind. That it should be open at all was so incomprehensible that she forgot her immediate worries and went to investigate. Much to her relief, the boiler seemed to be functioning normally, but anyone could have got into the library, of course. She hesitated for a moment, switching on her torch. For the first time, terror gripped her.
The trompe-l’oeil was opening very slowly...
The next moment she cursed herself for a fool. It was only the draught of course. She grabbed the swinging panel and pushed it open, stifling a scream as the beam of light from her torch picked out old Evelyn’s portrait, bringing him out of the darkness towards her...
Once more under control, she walked deliberately into the middle of the library, playing the light round the great room, to assure herself that all was well.
In due course, it rested on the huddled form of Annabel Lucas at the foot of the spiral staircase.
She was dead, her cheek marble to the touch of a finger.
Evelyn Escott reached her breaking point and fled in panic.
Chapter 3
‘Soon as I saw’n I said to myself, why that’s Miss Fenner’s car, an’ the wind’s blown them yard doors open again,’ Flo Dibble remarked as she took off her dripping mackintosh. ‘My, did ’ee ever see a mornin’ like et? ’Tis all they people flyin’ about up there in the ’evins, I says. ’T’weren’t never meant.’
‘A real beast of a morning,’ Laura Habgood agreed, avoiding controversial topics. ‘Aren’t your stockings wet, Flo?’
‘They’m dry as a chip, thank you, Miss Habgood, thank to me boots. I’ll jest get me slippers on, and there won’t be no wet on the ’all floor.’
Flo Dibble believed in keeping to your routine. As usual she started off with a vigorous attack on the cloakrooms, kitchenette and office. Next she turned her attention to the hall, and rounded off this section of her work by polishing the brass handle of the front door until it positively gleamed. The fact that it was raining did not deter her. In her view, the way you kept the brass, rain or fine, was your status symbol as a cleaner.
Now it was the turn of the library. Laura Habgood had unlocked it for her, and she headed towards the door pushing the Hoover in front of her, a diminutive figure with an habitual frown etched between her eyebrows and stray wisps of home-bobbed hair sticking out at odd angles.
Her reaction on entering the room was that the central heating must have gone wrong. It felt quite chilly instead of nice and warm as usual. She looked up at the fanlights of the cupolas, expecting to see that a pane of glass had been blown in by the gale, as had happened once before, but there was no sign of any damage. As her gaze returned to ground level it came to rest at the foot of the spiral staircase.
Several seconds elapsed during which Flo stood stock still. Then suddenly she began to scream, shrilly and continuously, unconsciously releasing the pent-up tensions of years.
The horrifying sound penetrated to the kitchen of the flat, where the Habgoods were at breakfast with Alastair’s niece, Clare Fenner. Laura dropped her knife with a clatter and dashed to the door leading into the gallery, with Clare close behind and Alastair following as fast as his limp allowed. One look at Flo Dibble standing in the middle of the library floor sent Laura running to the spiral staircase. She was on it before she saw the body below.
‘Alastair!’ she gasped. ‘Annabel’s fallen right down.’
Before Clare could join her she was on her knees below, looking up at her husband, with an ashen face.
‘I think she’s dead. She’s quite cold.’
‘Dr Masterman,’ he said. ‘If he’s out, 999.’
Laura scrambled to her feet and ran down the library. As she passed, Flo Dibble stopped screaming with the suddenness of a radio being switched off. Clare Fenner, poised halfway down the staircase, and feeling marooned between heaven and earth in the startling silence, manoeuvred herself round and rejoined her uncle in the gallery.
‘It’s your assistant, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘How absolutely ghastly if she’s been lying there all night. Was she working late, or something?’
‘I simply can’t understand it,’ he said, looking appalled and completely bewildered. ‘She came up with my letters just before she went off last night, and there was no question of her staying on for anything.’
‘I suppose she must have come back to fetch something from the gallery. Do you think?’ Clare broke off, realizing he was not listening. He was staring, aghast, at the section of the gallery that ran across the back of the hall.
‘Good God! Look over there — that’s the cupboard where we keep the valuable books...’
In her turn, Clare stared at its forced lock and gaping doors. Alastair Habgood took a few steps towards it, but abruptly checked himself.
‘Leave everything
as it is for the police, I suppose ... I’ll go and ring them. Clare, do you think you could stay up here for a minute or two? I think we perhaps oughtn’t just to clear out altogether, as things are.’
‘Of course I can,’ she assured him. ‘I don’t mind a bit.’
When he had disappeared into the flat she took a step back from the balustrade, and leaned against the bookshelves, surprised and slightly ashamed at her feeling of discomfort. After all, people died in accidents every day. She shut her eyes and tried to analyse her feelings more exactly. Could it be some atavistic taboo about dead bodies popping up? Surely not, in this day and age, when one was twenty-five, and had been holding down a responsible job for years? Clare opened her eyes again, steady blue-grey ones in an attractive, rounded face with a light sprinkle of freckles, and contemplated the broken doors of the cupboard. Wasn’t there something very odd about this whole situation? If you worked in a library it must be fairly simple to pinch books. Breaking in during the night didn’t ring true, somehow. Suppose the girl had come back to fetch something, and surprised the real thief ... and been chucked down the staircase? Murdered, to call things by their names?
The effect of this reconstruction was to make Clare unconsciously edge away in the direction of the flat. As she did so, Laura Habgood opened the library door.
‘Dr Masterman’s on his way,’ she said. ‘Come down and wait here, Clare. I’m just coping with Flo. Where’s Alastair?’
‘Ringing the police. The cupboard where the valuable books are kept has been smashed open.’
Laura vanished with a horrified exclamation.
Dr Masterman, the Habgoods’ GP, and Detective-Inspector Cook of the Ramsden CID stood looking down at Annabel Lucas’s body.
Step in the Dark Page 3