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  STEP IN THE DARK

  Pollard & Toye Investigations

  Book Eight

  Elizabeth Lemarchand

  To all my friends at the Devon and Exeter Institution

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  ALSO IN THE POLLARD & TOYE INVESTIGATIONS SERIES

  Chapter 1

  On a November evening the Ramsden Literary and Scientific Society held a sherry party to celebrate its centenary at the Athenaeum, its headquarters in Abbot’s Green.

  Soon after six, Laura Habgood adjusted an earring and came out of her bedroom in the Librarian’s flat. This occupied the upper floor of the fifteenth-century gatehouse that formed the front section of the building.

  ‘I’m going down,’ she called to her husband, who was reading The Times in the sitting room. ‘People turn up fantastically early.’

  The Times crackled.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better follow on,’ Alastair Habgood replied reluctantly, hoisting himself up and retrieving his stick. A war injury thirty years earlier had left him with a permanently damaged left leg.

  Laura went out of the front door of the flat, hoisted up her long skirt a few inches and ran down a short flight of stairs to the entrance hall. She gave a quick look round, straightened a notice pinned crookedly on a board and went to the library. A rapid flicking of switches flooded the great room with light. It occupied the site of a former eighteenth-century house that had replaced the original mediaeval house and its courtyard. Evelyn Escott, founder of the Society, had bought the property, gutted it and converted it into the present impressive library. The windows were bricked up, lighting being provided by the fanlights in two cupolas in the roof. A narrow, encircling gallery gave access to the upper levels of shelving and was reached by means of a spiral staircase at the far end of the room and a door from the librarian’s first-floor flat.

  Old Evelyn’s square, forceful countenance, framed in prolific facial hair, looked down on his achievement from his portrait over the fireplace. The forehead was prominent, the nose flattish and the lips thick. The very intelligent dark eyes were alight with the intoxication of nineteenth-century scientific progress, and the expression was one of unquestioning optimism.

  Oblivious of past history, Laura Habgood checked over the trays of snacks she had prepared during the afternoon. On her husband’s appointment to the librarianship in 1948, she had taken on the domestic responsibilities of the Athenaeum and carried them out with marked success ever since. Satisfied that everything was in order, she turned to greet two male members who had volunteered to preside at the bar.

  ‘It looks smashing, Mrs H.,’ one of them remarked, gazing round the library. ‘Made for a party, this room.’

  ‘If old Evelyn heard that, he’d turn in his grave,’ remarked James Westlake, Chairman of the Trustees, coming up to the group. ‘You must read the Minutes of the early meetings of the Trustees some time... The flowers are really magnificent, my dear,’ he added, turning to Laura. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’

  ‘Your chrysanthemums,’ she reminded him, gratified.

  By now there was a steady stream of arrivals, and James Westlake went over to the door to welcome them. Most people came in couples or small parties but a short stocky woman entered alone and was on the point of slipping unobtrusively past the Chairman when he caught her by the arm.

  ‘Miss Evelyn Escott! First of the family to turn up! So glad you’ve been able to make it!’

  She coloured a little, made a formal reply, then headed for the far end of the room.

  In the hall Alastair Habgood was making conversation with Colin Escott, the founder’s great-grandson, and his wife Daphne. Colin, bull-necked in a dinner jacket, and redolent of aftershave, appeared jocularly self-conscious, and kept looking about him as he talked. Daphne Escott, impeccably groomed and with-it, combined conventional good looks with a blank expression. She finally broke in with a suggestion that they were monopolizing Mr Habgood and had better move on.

  ‘I’m sure it’s going to be a super party,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘Such a splendid lot of people here...’

  As they moved on they ran into James Westlake who had emerged from the library. He greeted Daphne politely, Colin more briefly.

  ‘Glad to see the family well represented,’ he said. ‘Your cousin, Miss Evelyn Escott, is here already. Peter coming along?’

  ‘We left him in the bath,’ Colin replied. ‘No earthly reason why he couldn’t be ready on time. He’s coming on in his own car — or so he said.’

  ‘What a crowd!’ Daphne said, attempting to introduce a more festive note. ‘I’m sure it’s going to be a splendid party. Come on, Colin.’

  James Westlake bore down on Alastair Habgood. ‘Where on earth’s Professor Thornley?’ he demanded. ‘He ought to be here by now. Awkward if we have to start without him.’

  As he spoke, the front door opened to admit a small, almost bald man with rimless spectacles, wearing a tweed overcoat and woollen muffler: a well-known Oxford social historian who had just joined the Ramsden Literary and Scientific Society for the research facilities afforded by its library. On catching sight of James Westlake, he raised a hand in greeting.

  ‘Run it a bit fine, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Train was late.’

  Edging him towards the cloakroom to deposit his overcoat and muffler, James Westlake assured the newcomer that there was plenty of time. Blast-off wasn’t until half-past six, and they were always a few minutes late in starting.

  The library was now full to congestion point. People were circulating with difficulty, glasses of sherry in their hands, and there was a babble of conversation. At twenty minutes to seven, having deposited Professor Thornley with Alastair Habgood, James Westlake made his way to the librarian’s table and surveyed the scene before him. He was a tall man in his middle sixties, with thick white hair shaggy at the back and a countryman’s weathered face. Taking up an ivory gavel, one of Old Evelyn’s legacies, he hammered vigorously. The noise gradually died down and the crowd orientated itself in his direction.

  ‘Fellow members and guests of RLSS,’ he began, looking round with unconcealed pride and satisfaction, ‘it is with very great pleasure...’

  A young man in a light suit with fashionably wide lapels and sporting an eye-catching tie slipped into the room and took up a position next to Annabel Lucas, Alastair Habgood’s assistant. She made a slightly provocative movement of her left shoulder as they exchanged glances. He responded with the lift of an eyebrow.

  ‘On this notable and happy occasion,’ James Westlake was saying, ‘our thoughts turn, of course, to our founder, Evelyn Escott, whose munificent endowment of RLSS with the freehold of this building was followed by the equally munificent bequest of his personal library.’

  ‘Old bastard!’ muttered Colin Escott. ‘Robbing the family for his ruddy Society.’ Several heads turned. Daphne kicked him on the ankle.

  ‘...pleasure of having members of the family with us this evening,’ pursued the Chairman. ‘Mr and Mrs Colin Escott, with their son Peter, all keeping up the link. Miss Evelyn Escott is here, too: great-great-niece and namesake of our Founder. She has recently come back to her native town, to spend what we hope will be a very happy retirement, after working for many years in London. Most appropriately she is going to write a long-overdue history of our Society.’ There was a polite spatter of applause as the Chairman bowed in Evelyn Escott’s direction. She had made no attempt to j
oin her relatives and was standing by the fireplace under her great-great-uncle’s portrait.

  ‘God!’ Peter Escott remarked audibly to his neighbour. ‘It only wanted this.’

  Annabel Lucas managed to convey complete agreement while remaining outwardly impassive. Lounging against a book-stack with folded arms, he eyed her appraisingly. Distinct possibilities, he decided, but definitely not his type. Too angular, and the sort of lips that became a thin line when she was off guard...

  A perceptive observer would have detected resemblances to their forebear in the faces of the Escotts present. Colin, a successful Ramsden estate agent, had inherited the massive jowl and blunt nose, but shrewdness rather than the thirst for truth looked out of his eyes; and he had the stamp of good living and a philistine bonhomie. In Peter Escott, the Founder’s prominent brow topped a narrower face with similar, if less luxuriant, sideburns. He looked intelligent and disgruntled; and was a salaried employee in his father’s firm. Evelyn Escott was the sole survivor of an unsuccessful junior branch of the family. In her the strong lines of old Evelyn’s face were softened by sensitive features and a frame of lightly curling hair, hardly as yet touched by grey.

  ‘And so, members and guests,’ the Chairman concluded buoyantly, ‘I give you our Founder, all benefactors past and present, and the Ramsden Literary and Scientific Society’s next hundred years!’

  Glasses were raised amid loud acclamation and laughter.

  ‘Blah!’ Colin Escott commented under cover of the noise. ‘Look, there are the Medways. Let’s join up.’

  Now that the formal part of the proceedings was over, the gathering began to fragment into small groups. Friends hailed friends and members of the Society’s various sections plunged into discussion of common interests. Prominent among these was the recent discovery of mediaeval foundations in the course of demolition work in the town centre. The library rang with angry denunciations of the apathy of the Council and the blind commercialism of property development companies. More temperately, the Natural History section debated the reliability of an alleged sighting of a mealy redpoll in the district. It was a lively and attractive scene, the formal dignity of the great room relieved by bright lights, the bronze and gold of massed chrysanthemums and autumn foliage and the kaleidoscopic colour pattern of the women’s dresses, caught up and repeated in the spines of the thousands of books on the shelves.

  After a time James Westlake managed to extricate himself and rejoined Alastair Habgood and Professor Thornley.

  ‘Impressive set-up,’ the latter remarked, looking around. ‘I gather this room was old Escott’s brainchild?’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ James Westlake replied. ‘He gutted the Georgian extension grafted on to the gatehouse and rebuilt it to provide this library. Against his architect’s advice, of course. It nearly sank the Society, in due course.’

  ‘Maintenance, you mean?’

  ‘Maintenance, and heating and cleaning costs. The Trustees were on the point of packing in the whole show after the war.’

  ‘I expect you’ve heard how our Chairman saved the situation?’ Alastair Habgood put in.

  ‘Found the manuscript of that hitherto unknown Donne sonnet, didn’t you?’ the Professor asked. ‘How did it happen? It must have been an incredible experience.’ James Westlake briefly explained how, on demobilization, he had returned to farm his small family estate near Ramsden. In the course of the war the Society’s Board of Trustees had become depleted, and he had agreed to become a member and help to arrive at a decision on whether it was practicable to carry on. After lengthy discussion, the Trustees came to the conclusion that the only course open to them was the winding-up of the Society, and instructed their legal adviser to look into the procedure involved.

  ‘Soon afterwards, I came along here in a nostalgic mood one afternoon,’ James Westlake said. ‘Local history’s one of my hobbies, and I thought I’d have a look round to see if there were any reference books, or whatever, that I might be able to buy in. The building was in an appalling state: damp patches on the walls, the roof leaking in places and that awful stink of dry rot. I started going through a cupboard stuffed with heaven knows what and found a lot of old local maps. The Donne manuscript was in with them.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ ejaculated Professor Thornley. ‘Was it much damaged?’

  ‘Surprisingly, very little. Of course, I couldn’t positively identify it on the spot, but my local history hobby has made me fairly familiar with seventeenth-century scripts, and the signature was plain enough. And there was the sonnet form and the Donnish title: “A starre called Wormwood”. When I came to, I packed the thing in what clean protective wrapping I could find, and the next day I took it up to a chap I knew at the British Museum.’

  ‘Fetched the earth at auction, didn’t it?’

  ‘A hundred thousand. When we’d got our breath back we roped in assorted experts, and got cracking as fast as the post-war building restrictions allowed. And we were lucky enough to find Habgood here.’ James Westlake grinned appreciatively at the librarian. ‘What’s more, he’d had the foresight to acquire an absolutely invaluable wife with a domestic science diploma, who’s shouldered all that side of the business for us ever since.’

  ‘Nice work,’ Professor Thornley summed up. ‘I remember the furore in the literary world at the time. Then I suppose you decided to reorganize the library for local environmental studies?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Around them the party was gathering momentum. Laura Habgood contrived to keep an eye on the circulation of drinks and snacks while chatting to members. She also unobtrusively watched her husband, now deep in discussion with James Westlake and Professor Thornley, and wished that the trio would go and find somewhere to sit. If Alastair stood about much longer, his leg would start playing up.

  As she registered this thought, James Westlake, who took his official duties seriously, disengaged himself for the polite formality of introducing the Founder’s kin present and the distinguished new member. Evelyn Escott was temporarily lost in the crowd, but he located Colin and his wife and son and propelled them towards Professor Thornley.

  This encounter hung fire badly, owing to the fact that the persons concerned were on quite different wavelengths. Colin, aware of being out of his depth, took refuge in a series of facetious remarks about his ancestor, punctuated by guffaws. Daphne, puzzled by the speculative wonder on Professor Thornley’s face, tried to help out by contributing a series of well-meant fatuities. Peter Escott remained sulkily mute. Finally he abruptly cut in, ignoring his parents.

  ‘Are you sold on decorative plasterwork, by any chance, sir?’ he asked. ‘We’ve got some quite decent ceilings up in the gatehouse. I’ll take you along, if you like.’

  Professor Thornley, grasping at a straw, avowed keen interest, if combined with limited knowledge of the subject, and was led away. James Westlake made his apologies and went off. The Escotts looked at each other with relief and uncomprehending shrugs.

  ‘Peter’s useful now and again,’ Colin conceded. ‘Here, since we’ve come to this lousy show we may as well be seen. We seem to be part of the entertainment. Better have a word with dear Cousin Evelyn, I suppose, for the look of the thing.’

  They began to make their way through the gathering, pausing to talk to various acquaintances. Suddenly they found themselves face to face with Evelyn Escott.

  ‘Why, see who’s here!’ Colin exclaimed in mock astonishment. ‘If it isn’t Cousin Evelyn, the budding authoress!’

  Evelyn looked at the couple, aware of being baited. Her self-confidence began to ebb. She suddenly felt that her mass-produced frock was ill-fitting and that her shoes were wrong.

  ‘Good evening,’ she said politely.

  ‘Such a crowd!’ Daphne contributed. ‘All madly excited about birds and things.’

  ‘Found any juicy scandals about the old boy to put in your book?’ Colin inquired. ‘That’s the stuff for a best seller.’

  ‘In the un
likely event of your reading it, you’d find it disappointing, I’m afraid,’ she replied, and moved on.

  To her annoyance, she felt ridiculously near to tears. Her cousins’ unconcealed contempt had dowsed the small glow kindled by the Chairman’s public recognition. Because of her long absence from Ramsden, she knew few people at the party, and a sense of being wretchedly and conspicuously alone engulfed her. Perhaps, if she took down a book and pretended to be absorbed in it, people wouldn’t notice that she was on her own.

  As she made for the nearest shelves a hand on her shoulder made her start. She swung round to find herself looking up at James Westlake.

  ‘Run you to earth at last, Miss Escott,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I couldn’t see you just now when I took your cousins along to meet Professor Thornley, our new VIP member. You must meet him, too, of course. Young Peter’s just taken him up to have a look at the ceilings, but they’ll be down again soon. You’ll be around, won’t you?’

  Once again aware of rising colour at this unexpected attention from the Chairman, Evelyn struggled to appear composed.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Mr Westlake,’ she replied. ‘I’d like to meet him. Yes, I’ll be around somewhere.’

  ‘Good. See you again shortly, then.’

  He was gone and she was alone once more, but the sense of unhappy and despised isolation had evaporated. On impulse she headed for the spiral staircase, and went up to the gallery. Resting her hands on its balustrade, she contemplated the scene below, but her thoughts had reverted to the cramping poverty of her early days and its bitter frustrations.

  Trying to hang on to Escott status by our fingernails, she thought, while Colin’s father and mother pretended we weren’t there... How extraordinarily it is that after fighting my way into good jobs, and ending up with more money than I ever dreamt of, the only thing I really want is to be accepted here in Ramsden as an Escott in old Evelyn’s tradition. To be somebody in RLSS.