He continued to focus on Laura. Her obvious fear of himself must, of course, be connected with Annabel Brown’s death. It suggested that Brown had been blackmailing her and that she was afraid both of the subject of the blackmail’s coming out, and of Brown’s hold over her being seen as a motive for the girl’s murder. But what could this hold have been? Some sexual indiscretion in the past? The age gap between the two women made it unlikely that Brown could have uncovered anything in Laura’s pre-Ramsden past. And Inspector Cook had been emphatic that no scandal of any sort had ever arisen in connection with the Habgoods. Laura was obviously passionately devoted to her husband. Could it possibly be that he was the one who had put a foot wrong, and that Brown was blackmailing her as the price of keeping quiet about it? From his impression of Alastair Habgood, Pollard felt that this was unlikely but he filed the idea in his mind for future consideration. It was a mistake to be too subtle, though. Brown might have got on to some small fiddle of Laura’s over the catering, for instance.
The train roared hollowly over a bridge, and then resumed its steadily pulsating rhythm. At this comfortable distance from Ramsden and its tensions, one could view the case more dispassionately. Pollard recognized that — surprisingly, in view of his initial reactions — he was now more hooked than ever. Was it because the virtual impossibility of finding out what had happened to Annabel Brown at the last was arousing bulldog tenacity in him? Not altogether, he admitted to himself with discomfort. It was the conviction that the essential clue had at one moment been in his hands, and he had let it slip...
Suddenly, the ticket collector thrust open the door of the compartment and broke into these reflections. Pollard put his punched ticket back into his wallet and decided to go along to the buffet car for a snack. He found the crumbs and slopped liquid on the tables so off-putting that he had a hasty sandwich standing at the bar, and then went back to his compartment. He would just about have time to put together an interim report for his Assistant Commissioner before getting in.
Later, on reading it through, he thought he could detect undertones of annoyance at having his leave postponed, and wondered how near the wind he could risk sailing. Then, with a grimace, he stuffed the sheets into his briefcase, and saw that the train was running into Paddington.
Almost as if echoing his thoughts on the Habgoods, he found the reports on them that he had asked for awaiting him. He studied them with interest but they were unilluminating. Both Alastair and Laura had come from middleclass homes and had had a grammar school education. Alastair, the elder by five years, had been allowed to sit for his FLA before call-up, subsequently serving with distinction in the Italian campaign, being invalided out in 1944. Laura Marsh had gone straight into the Wrens from school. Her war record had been creditable and on demobilization she had married Alastair, in 1946. At this time, he had a post in a city library in the Midlands and they had moved to Ramsden on his appointment as Librarian at the Athenaeum. That was all there was to it.
Pollard put the reports aside and inspected the documents set out on his desk. The pull of home was almost irresistible, but there were really urgent matters needing his attention. He reluctantly buzzed for his secretary and got down to work. They had almost cleared the most pressing backlog when a message came over the intercom demanding his presence in his Assistant Commissioner’s office. Smothering an imprecation, he snatched up the Ramsden file and dashed out of the room.
The AC contemplated him quizzically, and indicated a chair.
‘So, according to you, the answer is a lemon?’ he opened, tapping the brief report in front of him.
Pollard sat down. ‘I don’t see any other solution, sir,’ he said impassively, correctly interpreting this verbal shorthand.
The AC tilted his chair back, looking amused. ‘I’m inclined to agree — on paper, so to speak. At the same time, disregarding the fact that you hate my guts at the moment for postponing your leave, and handing you a case unlikely to boost your inflated reputation still further, something’s biting you, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose you might say so, sir,’ Pollard admitted guardedly.
‘I am saying so. Stop being bloody-minded, Pollard, and discuss the case rationally.’
Pollard, never able to stand out for long against the AC’s barbed perceptiveness, looked at him and grinned.
‘Sorry, sir. The fact is, I’m not really satisfied with the rational approach. I’ve got a hunch that I’ve missed something vital, but God only knows what. Toye and I have gone over the known facts till we’re dead stale on them.’
‘Where’s Toye at this moment?’
‘Down at Ramsden, sir, working on Peter Escott’s movements last Wednesday night.’
The AC grunted and lapsed into silence. ‘I’m satisfied with the way you’re handling the inquiry,’ he said at last, dropping his bantering tone. ‘Perfectly sound to amass all the data about this young Escott before bringing a burglary charge. As you say, he might possibly crack and admit having had a struggle with the girl. Don’t let yourself be distracted by wondering what to do next if he can prove he was clear of the place before the boy heard the crash. And go home for a breather before you meet this Professor johnny: you’ve got several hours in hand. How’s the family?’
‘The twins have got chicken-pox,’ Pollard told him.
‘Filthy complaint, especially when the scabs start dropping off all over the place. I hope to God you won’t pick up shingles, Pollard. You could be off for weeks.’
Heartened by the implied compliment in this final remark, Pollard returned to his room. Within ten minutes he had rung Jane and was on his way home.
As he pushed open the front door of the house, the twins erupted from the kitchen in their dressing gowns.
‘Daddy!’ Andrew yelled, ‘Rose has got hundreds and hundreds of spots! I only had five!’
‘Every bit of me’s spotty, Daddy,’ Rose assured him.
‘Coming!’ Jane called down from upstairs. ‘I thought the best thing was to get their baths and supper over!’
Family life closed over Pollard’s head.
Two hours later, sitting with Jane at the kitchen table after a leisurely meal, he stretched and looked at his watch. ‘I needn’t push off for another twenty minutes,’ he said.
‘Tell me,’ Jane asked, ‘when did you begin to feel that this vital clue had slipped past you?’
‘This is it. I’m not sure. Quite early on. I’d seen the Habgoods for the first time, and vetted the shop, I think. Then I had a nightmare about it: a beastly one. I was just catching up on the blasted clue when something unspecified and catastrophic happened to me — just as I woke up, all sweaty.’
Jane gave him a quick, unhappy look. ‘Don’t! Tom, it isn’t a — a violent sort of case, surely?’
‘Not in the least,’ he reassured her. ‘Forget the nightmare. It was obviously indigestion. The Castle Hotel food is the good, solid type.’
‘Much more likely to have been subconscious rat-race worry. How I hate the publicity racket,’ she added vehemently.
‘Come again,’ he invited.
‘I mean that you’ve been so conditioned by your success story that when you get a no-go case, you feel you’re falling behind by not —’
‘Hitting the headlines?’ he chanted. ‘You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one day, darling. In self-defence, pay and prospects do come into it, you know.’
‘Listen,’ Jane said. ‘We’ve often talked about my going back to work, and something turned up a couple of days ago. It got round to the Inner Surrey College of Art that the twins are starting full-time school next term, and they’ve offered me a couple of half-days to start with. More in September if I want it... Lovely lolly coming into the house... Don’t look so startled. You haven’t been permanently conditioned into being our Universal Provider, have you?’
‘A lot of my age group still fancy themselves in the part, you know. You’re quite sure you want to go back to teaching, and that you
can carry it without killing yourself?’
‘Have lots of surplus energy. Will cope... So do I take it that we embark on the next phase of our married life?’
Pollard grinned at her. ‘Yeah, it looks like it. I’ll soon acclimatize. I’m a conservative type — small c.’
Jane rested her head on her hand, studying him critically.
‘True,’ she said. ‘The odd thing is that you’re basically newsworthy, too. I don’t know why it is but some people are like lightning conductors where publicity’s concerned. Honestly, you needn’t bother about your image.’
‘If I hit the bloody headlines over the case of the late Annabel Brown, love,’ Pollard told her, getting up from the table, ‘we’ll rustle up a babysitter and have the night out of a lifetime in the West End. Hell! I must run for it!’
‘I’ll hold you to that night out,’ Jane said, muffled in his hasty embrace.
Paddington was cavernous and echoing, its lights haloed in mist. The Oxford train was standing at its departure platform. Pollard walked its length twice and satisfied himself that none of the passengers already sitting in it was Professor Thornley. He continued to stroll up and down, keeping an eye on the barrier, his shoulders hunched against the cold.
He felt revitalized and relaxed. One simply took the obvious next step and let the outcome decide the following. As the minutes went by, however, he began to hope fervently that Professor Thornley would not run it too fine. It would be the absolute end to have to travel down to Oxford with him and then somehow get back to Ramsden.
At last a group of people, with an indefinably festive air, came through the barrier. Wedding guests, Pollard thought instantly, and went forward. The next moment he raised his hat to a short man with rimless spectacles, wearing a tweed overcoat and incongruous woollen cap.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, proffering his official card, ‘are you Professor Thornley?’ As he spoke, Pollard was conscious of interest tinged with hilarity on the part of the younger members of the group.
‘Coo, it’s the fuzz!’ a voice remarked audibly. ‘What’s Gramp been up to?’
A pair of sharp and humorous eyes behind the rimless spectacles were raised to Pollard’s. ‘Yes, I’m Thornley. What can I do for you? Go along and set some seats, the rest of you.’
Pollard stated his connection with the inquiry into Annabel Brown’s death in the Athenaeum library at Ramsden.
‘Yes, I’ve read about it,’ the Professor replied. ‘Where do I come in?’
‘We understand, sir, that in the course of the party held in the library last Tuesday evening, you were taken up to the librarian’s flat to see the ornamental plasterwork of the ceilings. Is this correct?’
‘It is. So what, as the modern young say?’
‘Would you state, as accurately as you can, all that you can remember about the time you spent there?’
‘Certainly. A young man called Peter Escott took me up, having been humiliated beyond endurance by the inanities of his parents, who had been introduced to me. He was a young puppy, but reasonably well informed on the history of the building and the plaster moulding of the ceilings. I found the latter interesting, and he offered to get me a pamphlet about them from the office. In his absence, I sketched a few of the motifs. He returned, apologetically, having been unable to find a copy of the said pamphlet. Shortly afterwards, we returned to the library together. Another member of the Escott family was engaged in showing other guests the ceilings while I was up there, a lady.’
‘How long was Mr Escott absent while you were sketching, sir?’ Pollard asked.
Professor Thornley gave him a long and very hard look.
‘It is difficult to be exact, Superintendent, but certainly not less than five minutes. Seven or eight would be nearer the mark, I think.’
Chapter 10
Monday was ushered in by a false dawn in the small hours. Pollard got stiffly out of the train at Ramsden and gave up his ticket to a porter, who was manhandling milk churns and looked at him curiously. He walked down the deserted platform, his steps echoing. In the station yard he was confronted by Toye, against the background of the Hillman.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ Pollard demanded. ‘The hotel’s only a bare five minutes from here. You ought to have turned in.’
Toye remarked, incontrovertibly, that the car was there to be used. He added that he had had a nice bit of shut-eye in the TV lounge; and that the night porter would have a pot of tea lined up when they got in.
‘All in order,’ Pollard told him as they moved off. ‘Professor Thornley’s prepared to state on oath that Escott was out of the flat for not less than five minutes. He finally put it at seven or eight.’
‘That idea of yours about the boiler house being unlocked from outside was a winner, sir,’ Toye observed.
‘I ought to have got on to it a lot sooner. It’s quite extraordinary how slow one can be to cotton on to the obvious. What have you got up your sleeve? You’re positively sleek.’
‘I managed,’ Toye said demurely, ‘to take possession of X’s gloves.’
‘Good God! Do you mean the ones he used for the break-in?’
‘That’s it. Rubber ones. The dabs have been checked up.’
‘Can it be that you’ve spent my absence in breaking and entering?’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ Toye admitted, carefully negotiating the entrance to the hotel car park, ‘you might say that I have.’
‘You’re not fit to be left on your own. Lead me to that pot of tea: you can come clean before I’m asleep on my feet.’
The day got off to a second start at half past seven, when a prearranged ring on the house telephone jerked Pollard into reluctant consciousness. Half an hour later, in the middle of a monosyllabic breakfast with Toye, he was summoned to take another call. As he dodged past waitresses carrying loaded trays, a string of possible callers ran through his mind, Jane among them.
‘Pollard speaking,’ he said, on taking up the receiver.
Someone he had not thought of was at the other end.
‘Habgood here. I hope it’s all right to ring you at your hotel?’
‘Perfectly OK, Mr Habgood. Go ahead.’
‘The books have turned up. They’ve been dumped in one of our dustbins.’
Pollard wondered fleetingly why he had not given more consideration to this possibility. He assessed its implications while asking the obvious questions. He learned that the books were parcelled up in some sort of cellophane, and had been discovered by Clare Fenner about ten minutes ago, when she was taking out some rubbish to the bins in the yard.
‘Nothing’s been touched, I hope?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. Clare put the lid on again and came to tell me. She slammed the doors. Nobody can get in.’
‘Fine,’ Pollard said. ‘We’ll be right along.’
Back in the dining room, he briefed Toye, while gulping down the remains of his coffee. Five minutes later, they were driving out of the hotel car park.
Alastair Habgood was hovering on the threshold of his office as they walked into the Athenaeum: he was looking, as Pollard afterwards remarked to Toye, several years younger.
‘Clare thinks there are about eight books there,’ he told them, without preamble, ‘so the whole lot may have been brought back. I hope to God they aren’t damaged, especially the Chairman’s History of Glintshire. It’s in manuscript. I’ve got the key here,’ he added, with barely concealed impatience.
‘I expect they’ve been taken care of for the sake of their market value,’ Pollard said, as they went out.
The yard doors showed no sign of forced entry or of having been recently sealed. The loose gravel immediately inside was trodden and scattered by the frequent passage of people and cars, and he realized that there would be no useful impressions here like the ones behind the oil tank.
‘It’s the dustbin on the right,’ Alastair Habgood prompted.
Toye eased off the galvanised
iron lid by its rim: Pollard looked down at the package of books resting on a roughly folded sack.
‘Don’t you use this bin?’ he asked. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any rubbish in it.’
‘It’s the one we keep for waste paper. We put it in the sack, and the collectors tip it out into a separate part of the van. They collect at about eleven on Wednesday mornings. My wife says no paper’s been thrown out since. We haven’t been functioning normally since all this happened, you see.’ At Pollard’s suggestion, he and Toye lifted the dustbin by its side handles and carried it round to the office. He then rang the police station and asked for a fingerprint expert to be sent round.
‘They’ll get someone along at once,’ he said, putting down the receiver and turning to the others. ‘Meanwhile, I’d like to see Mrs Habgood and Miss Fenner. Toye, would you stay and get the chap started when he turns up?’
Alastair Habgood reluctantly detached himself from the books and led the way upstairs. Laura and Clare left their household chores and joined them in the sitting room. There was a general atmosphere of relief. Clare looked happy and excited. Nothing, Pollard thought, could make it clearer that Annabel Brown had been an alien element in the Athenaeum set-up. She had never belonged: beyond the passing inconvenience of the loss of her services, she would neither be missed nor regretted.
‘I take it,’ he said, addressing himself to the matter in hand, ‘that your cleaner isn’t here this morning?’
‘No, she isn’t, much against her will,’ Laura replied. ‘She has to go to court with her boy this morning — the one who robbed Miss Escott, so I told her not to think of coming to work, poor little thing. She was so upset. I had to promise her to polish the brass handle of the front door, myself: it’s her pride and joy.’
Step in the Dark Page 14