Francis Durbridge - Paul Temple and the Kelby Affair

‘Now look here—’

‘Shut up, or somebody will hurt you.’

Kelby remained in the corner by the stretchers clutching his briefcase while the ambulance continued its journey.

PAUL TEMPLE stepped off the VC 10 at Heathrow airport with a feeling of relief. He had liked America as usual, its pace and enthusiasm had been invigorating. But he welcomed London for its coolness and its casualness.

‘Have you anything to declare, Mr Temple?’ asked the customs officer.

Paul Temple nodded. ‘It’s nice to be back in England.’

He had been on a promotional tour, making personal appearances and giving interviews all the way down to California, to boost the sales of his latest novel. He had been on early morning chat shows in Pocatello, Idaho, had given radio interviews in Omaha, Nebraska, and had signed several thousand copies of the book along the east coast. But the interviewers never seemed to have read his books. They had only heard the gossip.

‘Tell me, Mr Temple, why do you get involved in real investigations?’

‘I try not to—’

‘Don’t the police in England resent your intrusion?’

Paul had laughed. ‘Indeed they do.’

A women’s writing circle in the middle west had demanded to know why English small town life was so much duller than Peyton Place. ‘Do you think that murder is a dying art?’ they had demanded.

After fifteen days Paul Temple had arrived back in New York and he still didn’t know what a nickie hokie or a scoopie doo were. He had become tired of hearing that the English are so God-damned polite, and eventually he decided to take offence when a gossip columnist described him as an Englishman in the Empire-building tradition. Paul retorted that the gossip columnist was an American in the Empire State Building tradition. The man had simply laughed. The Americans are so God-damned good humoured.

Glancing at his reflection in the terminal lounge window, Paul decided that the Empire-building eyes were tired and the tall, lithe figure was slightly crumpled. Another week in America and he would have begun to look his age.

Steve and Scott Reed were waiting for him outside the Overseas Building. The publisher was looking like a worried terrier, as usual, but Paul Temple waved happily. The sight of his wife always made him feel quite euphoric.

‘Darling,’ she cried. ‘Hello! How are you?’

‘Steve!’ He embraced her gratefully. ‘I hadn’t realised how I would miss you.’ He shook hands with Scott Reed and sat in the back of the Rover. He knew that this wasn’t simply a chauffeur service: Scott was in some kind of trouble. But that could wait. Paul Temple took his wife’s hand and listened peacefully to the news about London. There really wasn’t any news, which was its charm. Nothing had changed.

‘How did the personal appearances go?’ Steve asked, almost as an afterthought.

‘Pretty quickly.’

She laughed. ‘I knew as soon as I saw you that things had gone well.’ She nodded wisely. ‘You needed a holiday.’

‘Holiday?’

He turned in mock disgust to Scott Reed.

‘All right, Scott. You didn’t come out to the airport to save my petrol. What’s wrong?’

The Rover swerved momentarily. ‘Wrong? Nothing.’ The Mini behind them stopped hooting and Scott Reed settled into the slow lane. Motorways were for people with stronger nerves than his. ‘I’m worried about Alfred Kelby.’

‘The historian? I’ve met him…’

‘Several times,’ Steve intruded. ‘Don’t you remember that dinner party we went to with Scott just before Christmas? He has that marvellous housekeeper and she did a delicious coq au vin—’

‘What about Kelby?’

‘He’s disappeared,’ said Steve.

Paul Temple lived in a mews house. It was the kind of humble property that had suddenly become very fashionable a few years after the war, and was now extraordinarily expensive. When the garage had been a stable Paul’s study had been the hayloft. The living room was the same room as the study but three steps up, above the kitchen and the entrance hall. The windows looked out across the Chelsea embankment and the Thames. It was mid-afternoon when they arrived from the airport. Paul led the way into the smartly modern house feeling a warm sense of homecoming.

‘Sit down, Scott, and put your nervous system together,’ he said.

Paul prided himself that in spite of the books and the paintings, the sharply contemporary furniture that Steve had installed, the mementoes and objets d’art of travel, the first floor was a workroom. A supremely comfortable workroom, but a workroom. The massive leather-topped desk set the tone of the place, he felt. That was where he worked.

He looked down at the silent typewriter and smiled. He had thought of a brilliant plot when he was in America. Tomorrow he would start work. This wouldn’t simply be a murder story, but a study of murder.

‘Steve,’ he sighed, ‘ask Kate to drum up some coffee. Poor old Scott is looking as if he needs it.’

Scott Reed sat in one of the egg-shaped Swedish chairs. ‘Of course I’m worried about Kelby,’ he said hollowly, his voice lost in the acoustic vacuum of the chair. ‘But that’s not all there is to it. He had a diary.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Paul beckoned him to lean forward. His mime had improved since the chairs had been installed. ‘I can’t hear you.’

‘Temple,’ he shouted, ‘if I asked you to name the three most important men in this country during the past fifty years, who would you name?’

‘No need to shout.’ He sat at his desk and decided upon Churchill, Bevan and Lloyd George. ‘Now tell me who I am supposed to say.’

‘Lord Delamore.’

Paul Temple laughed. ‘Nonsense, Scott. If he hadn’t been murdered so mysteriously in 1947 nobody would remember who he was. As a diplomat he was just another Old Etonian. It was the scandal of all those orgies in the shooting lodge that made him into a national figure.’

‘Maybe. Anyway, about two months ago I met a woman called Bella Spender,’ Scott Reed shouted. ‘She lives in the South of France. I was staying there with some friends and—well, we became quite friendly.’

Paul was baffled. ‘Bella Spender?’

‘Yes. You won’t have heard of her, Paul, but you should have heard of her sister, Margaret Spender.’

‘Wasn’t she Lord Delamore’s secretary?’

‘That’s right.’ Scott Reed leaned back in the chair and whispered sepulchrally: ‘But she wasn’t only his secretary. She was also his mistress.’

Steve came in with three cups of coffee and set them down on the glass-topped table. Her interest was immediately aroused by that part of the conversation she had heard.

‘Margaret Spender kept a diary,’ Scott Reed continued. ‘A very detailed diary about her friendship with Lord Delamore and the lives of that whole set. It’s absolutely scandalous. You’ve no idea what those bright middle-aged things got up to just after the war. I mean, that was when rationing was still with us—’ He turned slightly pink as he realised that Steve was amused.

‘Go on,’ said Steve, ‘it sounds fascinating.’

‘Well, about two months ago I had a phone call from Bella Spender. She was over here, staying at Claridges, and she asked me to go round and see her. So I went, because we had been quite friendly, and she gave me the diary.’

‘How had she come by the diary?’ asked Paul.

‘Her sister, Margaret Spender, had died. She was killed in an air crash a few months ago.’

‘And why did she give you the diary?’ Paul insisted.

Steve laughed. ‘Because Scott is a publisher, darling.’ She was enjoying the story. ‘I’m surprised that Margaret herself hadn’t tried to have it published. The mystery surrounding Lord Delamore’s death is one of the most fascinating in the history of murder.’