‘A couple of sheets of glass and a strong light might help,’ Pollard said. ‘Let’s get hold of that bright lad, Neale.’
Detective-Constable Neale eagerly produced these requirements and added a powerful magnifying glass. Pollard sat down at the table and began an inch-by-inch scrutiny of the carbon. After some minutes he muttered something under his breath, and bent forward to peer still more closely.
‘Laura, followed by a capital M,’ he said, ‘Mrs Habgood’s maiden name was Marsh. This could be the blackmailing link. Take a look yourself, Toye.’
They finally agreed that nothing more was decipherable.
‘If Mrs Habgood went to this college,’ Pollard said, making a mental calculation, ‘it can’t be far short of thirty years ago. Before Brown was born, so how could she — Brown — have got on to anything shady that happened to Mrs H. as a student? Whatever it might have been, you wouldn’t think it would be worth much to a blackmailer, after all this time.’
‘Suppose Mrs H. was booted out for being pregnant, then produced an illegitimate kid?’
‘That’s a possibility, of course, especially if Habgood never knew about it. But I still can’t think how Brown could have found out.’
They sat in silence, Pollard frowning heavily.
‘If there’d been a kid,’ Toye said, ‘you’d think the Yard would have got on to it when they were getting together that report on her.’
‘There wasn’t anything to get on to!’ Pollard almost shouted, in sudden excitement. ‘She never went to this place at all — that’s what it is! The report says that she went straight from school into the Wrens. She must have told the Athenaeum people she had a diploma when she hadn’t. Now, that’s the sort of thing Brown might somehow have found out. I believe we’re getting somewhere. We’ll ring the Yard and have inquiries made at the College at once.’
After putting this in train, Pollard deliberated for a couple of minutes, then rang James Westlake.
‘I want to ask for some information that you’ll probably think absolutely beside the point,’ he said. ‘Can you think back to 1948, when your Society was appointing its Resident Librarian?’
‘Clearly,’ James Westlake replied. ‘It was a terrific time for RLSS. Crest of the wave, after a shutdown had looked inevitable.’
‘Thanks to you and John Donne. Briefly, what was the shortlist like? What made you decide on Alastair Habgood?’
‘There were some good candidates, to answer your first question. We settled for Habgood for several reasons. He had the qualifications, but wasn’t too big for the job, if you get me. Psychologically, and also because of his war injury, we felt that the working conditions would suit him. Reasonable tempo, and independence and so on. And, of course, we were influenced by Mrs Habgood’s being competent to run the domestic side of the Athenaeum and willing to take it on. She has a domestic science diploma of some sort. Does that answer your second question adequately?’
Pollard thanked him and said that it did. He returned to Toye, and passed on the information.
‘We must wait to hear from the Yard,’ he said, ‘but I think it’s reasonable to assume that something conclusive will come through, and there’ll be nothing for it but to tackle Mrs Habgood. About the blackmail first, then the implications re Brown’s death. Pointless, really, you know. Neither of us can win. Motive or not, we can’t prove that she was responsible for it, any more than she can prove that she wasn’t. The sort of proof that would stand up in a court of law, I mean. And whether she’d guilty or not, the unfortunate woman will be haunted for the rest of her life, knowing that the inquiry could be reopened at any time.’
‘Funny that her husband didn’t know that she hadn’t got this diploma affair,’ Toye commented. ‘You don’t think he was a party to the fraud, do you?’
‘I’m certain he wasn’t. Men are pretty vague about women’s education and, anyway, he’d have been away at the war when she left school and would have been taking the domestic science training for the Diploma, if she’d had one. He’d just accept what she said, when the matter came up.’
‘So Brown could have threatened to tell him — rather than Mr Westlake, for instance?’
‘This is it, I’m certain. Mrs H. worships her husband, and Brown knew that she’d got her by the short hairs. What a clever devil she was in her squalid little way, and how I loathe this beastly job of ours. This interview with Mrs H. turns my stomach... Come on, we may as well get cracking on the first part of our report.’
They worked until nearly one o’clock, when the call came through from the Yard. Pollard took it on the extension in their room, jotting down a few notes.
‘Briefly,’ he told Toye, ‘Brown wrote about a year ago to the Alexandra College, saying that she was trying to trace a relative called Laura Marsh, who was believed to have taken a diploma course there, some time between 1945 and 1955. Was this correct, and had the said relative been in touch with them since? They replied that there was no one of that name in their records. On thinking it over,’ he went on, after a pause, ‘I’ll see Laura Habgood on my own. Somehow, I must manage to get her without her husband. I should think he’d be on duty in the library from about two onwards, and it’s the sort of time when you would normally find women at home if they don’t go out to a job.’
Toye concurred.
Pollard had timed it well. On his arrival at the Athenaeum he found a notice on the office door directing inquirers for Alastair Habgood to the library. He went upstairs to the flat, unobserved, and rang the bell.
Laura Habgood opened the door. In the moment of confrontation he saw that she knew intuitively why he had come. Without speaking, she stood aside to let him pass, then led the way into the sitting room. Here the initiative passed to himself. He indicated a chair and, when she was seated, took one himself. Laura Habgood, sitting stiffly upright, looked straight at him and asked if he had come to accuse her of killing Annabel Brown.
‘If I had, I should have been obliged by law to caution you, Mrs Habgood,’ he replied. ‘Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? She was blackmailing you, wasn’t she?’
Laura nodded but said nothing.
‘How did she find out that, when your husband applied for the post here, you falsely claimed to hold a domestic science diploma from the Alexandra College in North London?’
Watching her closely, Pollard saw that his detailed knowledge had breached her defences.
‘If you know all that,’ she said slowly, but with an undertone of astonishment, ‘I suppose you understand why I did it. I just had to get this job for Alastair. He couldn’t have stood up to the ordinary public library. The Trustees interviewed me, too — simply as his wife in the first place — to see if I’d fit. They touched on the domestic problems in a place like this, and I saw that it might just clinch things if I said I could cope. I was a fool, really. I don’t think they cared in the least about my having a diploma. I know it was wrong....’ Her voice trailed into silence.
‘About Annabel Brown,’ Pollard prompted.
‘It was a sort of millionth chance... You wouldn’t believe it if you read about it. When she first came, we tried to be friendly and make her feel at home; and she was on her best behaviour, of course. There was an RLSS party: she was being rather gushing about the catering in front of some of the members, then suddenly asked if I’d been to a Domestic Science College and taken a diploma. Quite innocently, I think. It was so long ago since that interview that I suppose I may have hesitated — I don’t know. Anyway, I rather lost my head and said yes, I’d been to the Alexandra College. It isn’t very well known, but I’d just happened to see something about it in the paper a few days before. Well, she’d lived quite near the college and a cousin had been there.’
Laura Habgood broke off, twisting her fingers nervously and looking at him with wretchedness in her eyes.
‘So I suppose she began asking questions and caught you out?’ Pollard asked.
‘Yes. And a few week
s later she brought me a letter from the college saying I’d never been there, and started blackmailing me.’
‘Threatening to tell your husband?’
Once more, Laura nodded affirmatively without speaking. Pollard allowed a pregnant silence to build up.
‘When you went out to the gallery last Wednesday night,’ he said abruptly, ‘what exactly was Annabel Brown doing?’
She stared at him blankly. ‘I don’t understand. You know I never went into the library.’
‘I know that you deny having gone in,’ he replied. ‘Not quite the same thing, is it? I repeat, what was she doing?’
He watched her drag her hand over her hair in a desperate gesture. ‘But I didn’t — I swear I didn’t. You’re trying to make me in — incriminate myself. It’s wicked! Don’t you want the truth?’
‘I’ll tell you what she was doing, Mrs Habgood,’ Pollard went on, disregarding her reply. ‘She was at the cupboard that had been broken open, helping herself to some valuable books. You startled her and she came towards you. You met at the top of the spiral staircase, didn’t you?’
The initial shock of his changed tactics had passed, he saw, and something of her robustness of character had returned to her.
‘I repeat,’ she said steadily, ‘I didn’t go into the library again after I locked it up on Wednesday evening. I swear it.’
He went on questioning her with unrelenting pressure, but her denials remained absolute and consistent. His conviction that she was speaking the truth mounted steadily. Finally, he broke off as abruptly as he had begun, and tried the often effective catalyst of sudden sympathy.
‘I’m sorry to have distressed you like this,’ he said, getting to his feet and looking down on her. ‘I’m afraid it’s part of my job.’
She began to cry quietly, but showed no sign of capitulating from exhaustion and sudden relief of tension.
‘If only you’d say you believe me,’ she said unsteadily.
‘Speaking as a fellow human being,’ Pollard told her, ‘I do. As a police officer I can only report to my superiors that you had motive and ample opportunity to push Annabel Brown down that staircase, but that there is no evidence that you did.’
‘And Alastair? You couldn’t — couldn’t be so cruel,’ she burst out.
‘On that score,’ he assured her, ‘you don’t have to worry.’
Laura sank back in her chair, as he picked up his briefcase and went out of the room. He stood briefly on the landing, coming to terms with the inescapable fact that he had reached the end of the road. Perhaps, he told himself, the elusive missing clue had been disguised chagrin at finding himself up against an insoluble problem...
From the hall downstairs came the unmistakable sound of Alastair Habgood’s footsteps, going to the office. On impulse Pollard opened the door on to the gallery and stood looking down. The library was empty. An Anglepoise lamp made a pool of light on the books and papers on the librarian’s table. In the bays, the afternoon shadows were gathering, but across the great room the portrait of the first Evelyn Escott stood out boldly in its massive gilt frame.
Pollard contemplated its purposeful ebullience, wondering if the original had ever been forced to concede defeat.
There were voices in the distance. Pollard listened, and identified that of Toye, who must have arrived with the car and be talking to Alastair Habgood in the office. It was essential not to give the impression of having come from the flat. Pollard tiptoed hastily along the gallery to the spiral staircase.
Without warning several things seemed to happen simultaneously. He trod on something soft and yielding, yet animate, which pushed between his feet with an eldritch screech, throwing him off balance. Encumbered by the briefcase he was carrying, he grasped ineffectively at the rail, saving himself from a headlong descent but falling awkwardly, with his left leg bent under him. An agonizing pain shot through him and for a couple of seconds everything blacked out. He surfaced to the sound of running feet and found himself looking into Toye’s horrified face.
‘Bloody cat,’ he heard himself gasp. ‘Tripped me up. I think I’ve bust my leg.’
There were other arrivals. Alastair Habgood was beside Toye, and he could sense Laura’s presence on the upper part of the staircase. A pillow was slipped under his head, which had been pressing uncomfortably against a tread, and a rug was lowered over him. He caught the word ‘ambulance’. It had an instantly clarifying effect. In a flash, a series of hitherto unrelated facts resolved themselves into a meaningful pattern. He seized on the immediate priority.
‘To hell with an ambulance,’ he told Toye forcibly. ‘Get these trousers off before I’m carted away, and take ’em to the forensic lab with Brown’s jeans. Tell ’em to vet the bottoms of the legs with everything they’ve got ... I don’t care what the ambulance chaps say — this is an order, man...’
In spite of the ambulance men’s skill, being transferred to a stretcher was damnable. Pollard managed to drag out a handkerchief and wipe his face.
‘Don’t have the little perisher put down,’ he said, giving Alastair Habgood a weak grin as he was borne away.
Laura seemed to have assumed that she would accompany him to the hospital. As the ambulance moved off, he reflected that he must surely be the first CID Super to travel in one, minus trousers, and escorted by a woman whom he had just interviewed in connection with a potential homicide charge.
‘Nice, clean fracture of the left tibia,’ the Casualty Officer said, studying the X-ray plates. ‘We’ll soon have you fixed up, old man...’
The missing clues — Pollard quickly realized that there was more than one — had surfaced during the tedious sojourn in the X-ray department. What mattered now was the report from the forensic lab, to clinch everything. At intervals, during the process of being admitted to a ward and cleaned up for the theatre, he emphasized to various medical personnel the vital importance of Inspector Toye’s being allowed immediate access to him at all times. The bright and soothing reassurances he received struck him as unconvincing. There was nothing he could do about it, though, and after his pre-med jab it began to seem less important...
Once or twice during the night the pain in his leg woke him, but somebody was there to do something about it, and everything drifted away again. Then it was broad daylight and he was in bed in an unfamiliar small white room. He gingerly explored the armour plating encasing his left leg, and with relief spied a telephone on his locker. They must have put him in a private room.
The door was half open, and a blonde head came round it, topped by a vestigial cap.
‘Awake at last?’ a young voice inquired perkily. ‘I’ll tell Sister.’
Sister momentarily took him aback: with-it hairdo, eye-shadow, lipstick. Plus ça change, though, he thought, under the impact of her competently assessing eye and her bracing information on his progress and prospects. He learned with astonishment that he might be allowed to stand, briefly, later in the day. Mr Wilkinson-Croft, his surgeon, would be looking in during the morning.
He also gathered that he had status, and it told... He might like to ring Mrs Pollard right away, before nurse straightened him up for breakfast. Inspector Toye? Well, the rule was no morning visitors, of course, but under the circumstances... Yes, he had called already, and said he would be back within the hour...
Blast him, Pollard thought, dialling the Wimbledon number. Why hadn’t he left a note? No news, good news?
Jane’s voice came through. ‘Hallo, darling,’ he said, instantly translated to another world. ‘Well, apparently you’re not going to be tied to a helpless cripple for life, after all... No, absolutely all right. Good as new... Yes, by the end of the week, Sister says... Physiotherapy when the plaster’s off... This is it: sick leave plus leave due...’
As they talked, a broken leg — the sort of disaster that happened to other people — began to fit into the context of everyday life. The conversation moved on discreetly to the case.
‘All but home
and dry,’ Pollard told her. ‘I’m lying in bed sweating with impatience for old Toye to come in with the final tie-up. I’m wondering,’ he went on, after her delighted exclamation, ‘if you could possibly do with an addition to the household? Cat, small, black, friendly, answering to the name of Nox. I suspect he’s going to be considered too much of a hazard by his present owners. Have you got him there, by any chance?’
There was a pause, and a gasp of astonishment.
‘How absolutely right I was!’ Jane asserted triumphantly.
‘Right about what?’
‘You being newsworthy, of course. A sort of publicity lightning conductor. This’ll hit the headlines for six! Animals in the news go straight to the Great British Public’s head.’
Pollard was assailed by a horrific vision, which included the reactions of the AC and his colleagues to any development of the sort. ‘Rot,’ he said, with less than his usual conviction. ‘I don’t suppose a fiddling little job like this will make the papers at all.’
Jane chortled. ‘Oh, yeah? Let me tell you that I’ve had two newsmen on the line already this morning. If I’m wrong,’ she went on, in the confident ring of someone betting on a certainty, ‘I’ll stand you a night out on my first earnings.’
Duly straightened up for his breakfast, Pollard, his tension returned, poked half-heartedly at scrambled eggs. His ear was cocked for every footstep in the corridor. Who the hell were all the people who kept passing, he wondered impatiently? When the door suddenly opened he was momentarily speechless with his mouth full of toast, and could only stare at the neat, horn-rimmed figure who stood giving the V-sign.
‘For God’s sake come in and shut the door,’ he said indistinctly, swallowing painfully.
Toye carried out these instructions and came up to the bed. Pollard realized that he was valiantly struggling to conceal emotion. ‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s have it.’
‘Home and dry, sir,’ Toye told him. ‘Identical hairs on both garments, on the inner side of the bottoms of the legs. Identical with the samples Neale got from the staircase treads, and with the cat’s. I took him along for a test this morning.’
Step in the Dark Page 17