Francis Durbridge - Design For Murder - Based on ‘Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair’

PLUS

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MELVYN BARNES

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

John Long 1951

‘Paul Temple’s White Christmas’ first published in Radio Times 1946

Copyright © Francis Durbridge 1946, 1951

All rights reserved

Francis Durbridge has asserted his right under the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008242077

Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008242060

Version: 2017-09-26

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page FRANCIS DURBRIDGE Design for Murder PLUS

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter I: Death of a Policewoman

Chapter II: A Lift From Doctor Fraser

Chapter III: The Cottage on the Cliff

Chapter IV: Sir Donald Angus Is Perturbed

Chapter V: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Chapter VI: Mr Linder Has an Alibi

Chapter VII: Miss Beaumont Remembers

Chapter VIII: A Warrant for Mr Luigi

Chapter IX: A Woman’s Intuition

Chapter X: Guest Night at the Palais

Chapter XI: Exit Mr Luigi

Chapter XII: Presenting: ‘Mr Rossiter’

Paul Temple’s White Christmas

Also in This Series

By the Same Author

About the Author

About the Publisher

In November 1951, when John Long published Design for Murder , Francis Durbridge (1912–1998) had for many years been the most popular writer of mystery thrillers for BBC radio and was soon to make his mark on television and in the theatre. He remains best known as the creator of the novelist-detective Paul Temple, who first appeared in the 1938 BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple . This was an immediate hit, and led to Paul and his wife Steve rapidly becoming cult figures of the airwaves in the sequels Paul Temple and the Front Page Men (1938), News of Paul Temple (1939), Paul Temple Intervenes (1942), Send for Paul Temple Again (1945) and many more. These first five radio serials were all novelised, published by John Long between 1938 and 1948, and most recently reissued in 2015 by Collins Crime Club.

In 1950 there was an interesting development in Durbridge’s career with the publication of Back Room Girl , a novel that was not based on any of his radio serials. He followed this in April 1951 with Beware of Johnny Washington , a rewrite of his first novel Send for Paul Temple with various plot changes and a new set of characters, including replacements for Paul and Steve.

From this it appears that in the early 1950s Durbridge was trying to widen his appeal to the reading public, and although his radio serials had made him a household name his books gave him the opportunity to be recognised as more than the creator of Paul Temple. This might also have been insurance against the slim possibility that after five novels some readers might have begun to tire of the Temples, which was a factor that shortly afterwards influenced Durbridge to create a brand of record-breaking television serials that deliberately excluded them.

Design for Murder , his next book, was the novelisation of his radio serial Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair . Originally broadcast from 17 October to 19 December 1946, its ten episodes made it the longest Temple serial. The plot was vintage Durbridge, with Sir Graham Forbes of Scotland Yard enlisting Temple’s help in investigating the murder of a young woman found in the sea off the Yorkshire coast. As always Temple is reluctant to become involved, until he finds the body of another young woman in his garage and the two murders are linked by the message ‘With the compliments of Mr Gregory’.

Given the passion for Durbridge on the continent, several European countries produced their own radio versions. In Holland it was broadcast as Paul Vlaanderen en het Gregory mysterie , in Germany it was Paul Temple und die affäre Gregory , in Denmark it was Gregory-mysteriet and in Italy it was Paul Temple e il caso Gregory . The BBC maintained for many years that the original UK ten-episode scripts had been lost, but several decades later a full set was recovered and used to re-create the serial for broadcast in 2013.

In respect of his books, however, Durbridge was keen to continue demonstrating his non-Temple credentials to his readers. So Design for Murder , instead of the Temples, features Detective Inspector Lionel Wyatt and his wife Sally who have retired to a smallholding in Kent. Wyatt has left the force with the nagging regret that he never succeeded in identifying and arresting the one person who merited the description ‘master criminal’, but soon his former chief convinces him that his arch-enemy is again terrorising Londoners with kidnappings and murders. The latest victim is Barbara Willis, found strangled in the sea off the Devon coast, and this has been linked with the disappearance of a policewoman whose body Wyatt later finds in his garage. As with the radio serial, in both cases there are cryptic messages – but this time it is ‘With the compliments of Mr Rossiter’. Although almost every character name is changed, the book follows the plot and dialogue of the radio serial very closely and Durbridge’s trademark cliffhangers make effective chapter endings.