The Man in the Dark Read online

  Susan Scarlett

  The Man in the Dark

  “Yes, and then I’ll go over Miss Kay’s rooms with either you or the housekeeper.”

  ”There is no housekeeper, Miss.”

  From his voice it sounded as if the housekeeper had been strangled and her body put in the cellar; it nearly made Marda giggle.

  James Longford, a wealthy former racing car driver with vision loss from an accident several years before, hires 26-year-old Marda Mayne as companion to his newly-orphaned 17-year-old American ward Shirley. His main concern is to avoid being troubled so he can continue to live in self-imposed isolation, but as plucky, practical Marda and flirtatious, kind-hearted Shirley take his intimidating household staff in hand (and find an unexpected ally in that surly butler), they also begin to revive James’ interest in life. The trio will have to brace themselves, however, when his self-absorbed, manipulative sister Vera—who sees his fortune as practically already hers—announces a visit.

  The Man in the Dark is the fifth of twelve charming, page-turning romances published under the pseudonym “Susan Scarlett” by none other than beloved children’s author and novelist Noel Streatfeild. Out of print for decades, they were rediscovered by Greyladies Books in the early 2010s, and Dean Street Press and Furrowed Middlebrow are delighted now to make all twelve available to a wider audience.

  “A writer who shows a rich experience in her writing and a charm” Nottingham Journal

  FM89

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page/About the Book

  Contents

  Introduction by Elizabeth Crawford

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About the Author

  Adult Fiction by Noel Streatfeild

  Furrowed Middlebrow

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  When reviewing Clothes-Pegs, Susan Scarlett’s first novel, the Nottingham Journal (4 April 1939) praised the ‘clean, clear atmosphere carefully produced by a writer who shows a rich experience in her writing and a charm which should make this first effort in the realm of the novel the forerunner of other attractive works’. Other reviewers, however, appeared alert to the fact that Clothes-Pegs was not the work of a tyro novelist but one whom The Hastings & St Leonards Observer (4 February 1939) described as ‘already well-known’, while explaining that this ‘bright, clear, generous work’, was ‘her first novel of this type’. It is possible that the reviewer for this paper had some knowledge of the true identity of the author for, under her real name, Noel Streatfeild had, as the daughter of the one-time vicar of St Peter’s Church in St Leonards, featured in its pages on a number of occasions.

  By the time she was reincarnated as ‘Susan Scarlett’, Noel Streatfeild (1897-1986) had published six novels for adults and three for children, one of which had recently won the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Under her own name she continued publishing for another 40 years, while Susan Scarlett had a briefer existence, never acknowledged by her only begetter. Having found the story easy to write, Noel Streatfeild had thought little of Ballet Shoes, her acclaimed first novel for children, and, similarly, may have felt Susan Scarlett too facile a writer with whom to be identified. For Susan Scarlett’s stories were, as the Daily Telegraph (24 February 1939) wrote of Clothes-Pegs, ‘definitely unreal, delightfully impossible’. They were fairy tales, with realistic backgrounds, categorised as perfect ‘reading for Black-out nights’ for the ‘lady of the house’ (Aberdeen Press and Journal, 16 October 1939). As Susan Scarlett, Noel Streatfeild was able to offer daydreams to her readers, exploiting her varied experiences and interests to create, as her publisher advertised, ‘light, bright, brilliant present-day romances’.

  Noel Streatfeild was the second of the four surviving children of parents who had inherited upper-middle class values and expectations without, on a clergy salary, the financial means of realising them. Rebellious and extrovert, in her childhood and youth she had found many aspects of vicarage life unappealing, resenting both the restrictions thought necessary to ensure that a vicar’s daughter behaved in a manner appropriate to the family’s status, and the genteel impecuniousness and unworldliness that deprived her of, in particular, the finer clothes she craved. Her lack of scholarly application had unfitted her for any suitable occupation, but, after the end of the First World War, during which she spent time as a volunteer nurse and as a munition worker, she did persuade her parents to let her realise her dream of becoming an actress. Her stage career, which lasted ten years, was not totally unsuccessful but, as she was to describe on Desert Island Discs, it was while passing the Great Barrier Reef on her return from an Australian theatrical tour that she decided she had little future as an actress and would, instead, become a writer. A necessary sense of discipline having been instilled in her by life both in the vicarage and on the stage, she set to work and in 1931 produced The Whicharts, a creditable first novel.

  By 1937 Noel was turning her thoughts towards Hollywood, with the hope of gaining work as a scriptwriter, and sometime that year, before setting sail for what proved to be a short, unfruitful trip, she entered, as ‘Susan Scarlett’, into a contract with the publishing firm of Hodder and Stoughton. The advance of £50 she received, against a novel entitled Peter and Paul, may even have helped finance her visit. However, the Hodder costing ledger makes clear that this novel was not delivered when expected, so that in January 1939 it was with Clothes-Pegs that Susan Scarlett made her debut. For both this and Peter and Paul (January 1940) Noel drew on her experience of occasional employment as a model in a fashion house, work for which, as she later explained, tall, thin actresses were much in demand in the 1920s.

  Both Clothes-Pegs and Peter and Paul have as their settings Mayfair modiste establishments (Hanover Square and Bruton Street respectively), while the second Susan Scarlett novel, Sally-Ann (October 1939) is set in a beauty salon in nearby Dover Street. Noel was clearly familiar with establishments such as this, having, under her stage name ‘Noelle Sonning’, been photographed to advertise in The Sphere (22 November 1924) the skills of M. Emile of Conduit Street who had ‘strongly waved and fluffed her hair to give a “bobbed” effect’. Sally-Ann and Clothes-Pegs both feature a lovely, young, lower-class ‘Cinderella’, who, despite living with her family in, respectively, Chelsea (the rougher part) and suburban ‘Coulsden’ (by which may, or may not, be meant Coulsdon in the Croydon area, south of London), meets, through her Mayfair employment, an upper-class ‘Prince Charming’. The theme is varied in Peter and Paul for, in this case, twins Pauline and Petronella are, in the words of the reviewer in the Birmingham Gazette (5 February 1940), ‘launched into the world with jobs in a London fashion shop after a childhood hedged, as it were, by the vicarage privet’. As we have seen, the trajectory from staid vicarage to glamorous Mayfair, with, for one twin, a further move onwards to Hollywood, was to have been the subject of Susan Scarlett’s debut, but perhaps it was felt that her initial readership might more readily identify with a heroine who began the journey to a fairy-tale destiny from an address such as ‘110 Mercia Lane, Coulsden’.

  As the privations of war began to take effect, Susan Scarlett ensured that her readers were supplied with ample and loving descriptions of the worldly goods that were becoming all but unobtainable. The novels revel in all forms of dress, from underwear, ‘sheer triple ninon step-ins, cut on the cross, so that they fitted like a glove’ (Clothes-Pegs), through daywear, ‘The frock was blue. The colour of harebells. Made of some silk and wool material. It had perfect cut.’ (Peter and Paul), to costumes, such as ‘a brocaded evening coat; it was almost military in cut, with squared shoulders and a little tailored collar, very tailored at the waist, where it went in to flare out to the floor’ (Sally-Ann), suitable to wear while dining at the Berkeley or the Ivy, establishments to which her heroines – and her readers – were introduced. Such details and the satisfying plots, in which innocent loveliness triumphs against the machinations of Society beauties, did indeed prove popular. Initial print runs of 2000 or 2500 soon sold out and reprints and cheaper editions were ordered. For instance, by the time it went out of print at the end of 1943, Clothes-Pegs had sold a total of 13,500 copies, providing welcome royalties for Noel and a definite profit for Hodder.

  Susan Scarlett novels appeared in quick succession, particularly in the early years of the war, promoted to readers as a brand; ‘You enjoyed Clothes-Pegs. You will love Susan Scarlett’s Sally-Ann’, ran an advertisement in the Observer (5 November 1939). Both Sally-Ann and a fourth novel, Ten Way Street (1940), published barely five months after Peter and Paul, reached a hitherto untapped audience, each being serialised daily in the Dundee Courier. It is thought that others of the twelve Susan Scarlett novels appeared as serials in women’s magazines, but it has proved possible to identify only one, her eleventh, Pirouette, which appeared, lusciously illustrated, in Woman in January and February 1948, some months before its book publication. In this novel, trailed as ‘An enthralling story – set against the glittering fairyland background of the ballet’, Susan Scarlett benefited from Noel Streatfeild’s knowledge of the world of dance, while giving her post-war readers a young heroine who chose a husband over a promising career. F
or, common to most of the Susan Scarlett novels is the fact that the central figure is, before falling into the arms of her ‘Prince Charming’, a worker, whether, as we have seen, a Mayfair mannequin or beauty specialist, or a children’s nanny, ‘trained’ in Ten Way Street, or, as in Under the Rainbow (1942), the untrained minder of vicarage orphans; in The Man in the Dark (1941) a paid companion to a blinded motor car racer; in Babbacombe’s (1941) a department store assistant; in Murder While You Work (1944) a munition worker; in Poppies for England (1948) a member of a concert party; or, in Pirouette, a ballet dancer. There are only two exceptions, the first being the heroine of Summer Pudding (1943) who, bombed out of the London office in which she worked, has been forced to retreat to an archetypal southern English village. The other is Love in a Mist (1951), the final Susan Scarlett novel, in which, with the zeitgeist returning women to hearth and home, the central character is a housewife and mother, albeit one, an American, who, prompted by a too-earnest interest in child psychology, popular in the post-war years, attempts to cure what she perceives as her four-year-old son’s neuroses with the rather radical treatment of film stardom.

  Between 1938 and 1951, while writing as Susan Scarlett, Noel Streatfeild also published a dozen or so novels under her own name, some for children, some for adults. This was despite having no permanent home after 1941 when her flat was bombed, and while undertaking arduous volunteer work, both as an air raid warden close to home in Mayfair, and as a provider of tea and sympathy in an impoverished area of south-east London. Susan Scarlett certainly helped with Noel’s expenses over this period, garnering, for instance, an advance of £300 for Love in a Mist. Although there were to be no new Susan Scarlett novels, in the 1950s Hodder reissued cheap editions of Babbacombe’s, Pirouette, and Under the Rainbow, the 60,000 copies of the latter only finally exhausted in 1959.

  During the ‘Susan Scarlett’ years, some of the darkest of the 20th century, the adjectives applied most commonly to her novels were ‘light’ and ‘bright’. While immersed in a Susan Scarlett novel her readers, whether book buyers or library borrowers, were able momentarily to forget their everyday cares and suspend disbelief, for as the reviewer in the Daily Telegraph (8 February 1941) declared, ‘Miss Scarlett has a way with her; she makes us accept the most unlikely things’.

  Elizabeth Crawford

  CHAPTER ONE

  Marda woke up to the consciousness that she was twenty-six. There are a lot of milestones on the road of a life. There is getting into double figures, that’s a fine big milestone, ten is much more important than nine. Then there are the teens, the milestone of being thirteen when you were twelve is a pretty considerable one; after that milestone talk of responsibility usually begins. Then there is the gay shining milestone for twenty-one, it is at the top of the road and a signpost by it says “freedom”; it is a lying signpost, but nobody knows that when they first reach the milestone. After twenty-one the milestones grow smaller and they shine less. The first is twenty-six. Twenty-five is still a girl, twenty-six is a woman.

  Marda thought these things as she lay on her back and saw the hot blue of the July sky through the leaves of the plane tree outside her window.

  “Twenty-six,” she murmured, “and never been kissed except by a relation. I should think I am what is known as a failure.”

  She got out of bed and pulled on her dressing-gown and slippers, and went over to the dressing-table. She took up her comb, but paused with it halfway to her hair, studying her face. She gave it a nod.

  “Many happy returns. You haven’t improved with the years. Features irregular, grey eyes, scrubby eyelashes, and hair which, if you were honest, you would call mid-mouse.”

  Because she knew she was an idiot talking to her own reflection, she gave herself a shake and snatched up her washing things and went to the bathroom.

  Marda was right in essentials about her appearance, but unjust to the whole. Her hair was mid-brown, her eyes grey, and her features irregular; but her eyes were full of intelligence and humour, her mouth generous, and her hair, if not distinctive in colouring, grew charmingly off her wide forehead in a natural widow’s peak. She had, too, that quite undefinable attribute, personality.

  Crossing to the bathroom Marda met her father, fully dressed, coming up the stairs. His face lit up at sight of her.

  “Many happy returns, darling.” He kissed her. “There’s a parcel for you somewhere.”

  She gave him a hug.

  “I heard the night bell. What was it? The Spooner baby?”

  He nodded.

  “A boy. Mrs. Spooner’s all right.”

  She gave him a little push.

  “Who would be a doctor? Go and take your things off. I won’t be any time in the bath, and I’ll turn it on for you.” He yawned.

  “I could do with a bath, and some coffee.”

  Marda opened the bathroom door.

  “You shall have it. Lots of it, very hot and very black.” Alistair Mayne had been considered brilliant in his medical student days; he had been supposed by all his friends to be certain to get to the top. He had started off as a house surgeon, and from there he had been offered two chances. One, on tuberculous research, and the other as a partner to a successful specialist. He had chosen the latter, the fact that he had fallen in love and wanted to marry influencing his choice. Two years after the marriage Marda was born, and she was followed ten years later by the twins, Edward and Clarice, and they by Timothy.

  Timothy had been a frail baby, from the start a constant anxiety. Naturally Alistair called in his partner to look after his son. His partner took an infinity of trouble and endless tests and prescribed this and that, but the baby got no better. When he was one and a half he died. In the cause of science Alistair thought it his duty to find out what had been the matter with the child; his partner was away and he got an old medical school friend, who had a large general practice, to help him.

  The post mortem had shown an operable condition. Appalled, Alistair had said:

  “Only that, all the time.”

  His friend had patted his arm.

  “Looks simple now that he’s opened up, but mind you it’s hard to detect.”

  “Would you have got on to it?”

  The friend collected his instruments.

  “Possibly, but you see I’m a G.P. I spend my days looking at sick people who’ve no money for expensive cures. You specialists find it hard to look for simple causes.”

  Alice, Alistair’s wife, was up in her bedroom when he got back from the mortuary. She had a little case on the bed and was packing in it some of Timothy’s things; a teddy bear, some red shoes, and a musical box. She had been crying, and her eyes were red-rimmed.

  Alistair sat on the bed and told her what they had found. At the end he said:

  “I dare say nobody’s to blame, but I feel as if I were. I’d like to throw all this up and become a G.P. amongst quite poor people. If I did any good it would be a memorial to Timothy.”

  Alice looked round at their lovely house and saw quite clearly what the future would be, but her face was happy for the first time since Timothy died.

  “I’d like that,” she said, and went on packing.

  The practice when found was a mixed one. It was in the Victoria Station neighbourhood. One part was the poorest of the poor; another, those even sadder people, starving gentility, keeping up appearances; as well, there were a sprinkling of the well-to-do. These last were known to the Mayne family as “The Jams,” because they were the people who put jam on their bread. Even Hannah, the general who had been housemaid in their rich days and moved with them, knew “a Jam” when she saw one; she never had approved of Alistair ceasing to be a specialist, flying in the face of providence she called it; and when a rich patient arrived, no matter who was with him, she would burst in and whisper hoarsely in his ear, “There’s a bit of Jam in the waiting-room.”

  Marda came out of her bath, her towel over her arm, and yelled to her father to hurry or his bath would overflow. At once the twins’ doors flew open and Edward’s and Clarice’s tousled heads came out.