‘You’re just a couple of overgrown schoolboys,’ said Steve when they were in bed. She slithered down between the sheets, yawned, and snuggled against Paul. ‘With every glass of whisky Sir Graham became more and more reactionary, and you encouraged him.’ She giggled. ‘I think Sir Graham is terribly sweet, but I don’t understand how he became an assistant commissioner of police in this day and age.’
‘He’s damned good at his job,’ said Paul. ‘And after they’d taken away his colonial regiment naturally they had to find something for him to do. Otherwise he’d have gone into politics.’
Paul opened the file and propped it against his knees. He had enjoyed the evening; conversation had ranged euphorically from the cinema to literature to Sir Graham’s slightly peppery views on society. They had been laughing a lot, and it required an effort of adjustment for Paul to turn his mind back to the Curzon case.
He studied the file. It had been a small private charter plane, en route to New York via Manchester for Amsterdam.
There had been only forty-six passengers, and they had all died instantly. American tourists, several civil servants, a trio of Dutch schoolteachers, a few businessmen and someone called Duprez. Duprez?
‘What,’ asked Steve suddenly, ‘makes you so sure this air crash has anything to do with Curzon?’
‘I’m not so sure. But the time factor interests me. It was after the plane crash that things began to go wrong with Baxter. That was when Peter Malo went sailing with Tom Doyle and a pair of binoculars, and then the boys disappeared. Carl Walters was in Dulworth. I don’t approve of coincidence.’
Duprez was a mystery. The airline apparently knew nothing about him except that he was French and had booked as far as Manchester. The French police had not been able to contact any relatives and there had been no enquiries about him. A note in the file mentioned an impression formed by the customs officer at Schiphol that the man was something to do with the motor industry, but the impression could not be substantiated. All papers and documents had been destroyed when the plane caught fire on the cliffs.
So that didn’t help Paul very much. If Duprez were a contact between the continent and Curzon’s organisation it was obviously a false name, and now he was dead.
‘What happens now?’ asked Steve.
‘I don’t know.’ Paul turned out the bedside lamp and stared into the darkness. No help from the report, no help from the notebook. ‘I suppose we must tackle Carl Walters—’
‘Tackle Walters?’ Steve said indignantly. ‘What the devil do you think I was doing this evening?’
‘Risking a fate worse than death.’
When Paul telephoned next morning Carl Walters readily agreed to meet him. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘I had the pleasure yesterday of meeting your charming wife. Bring her along as well.’
‘She’d be delighted,’ Paul said bitterly. ‘How about lunch at the Savoy grille?’
‘Okay, why not? By the way, can you tell me what all the cloak and dagger stuff is about?’
‘It’s about a friend of yours called Lou. He says you hired him to steal a notebook from me.’
‘Never heard of him. What sort of notebook is this?’
‘A lot of measurements. You know, X marks the spot.’
Walters laughed and said that he didn’t know what the hell was going on. But he’d see Paul for lunch at one o’clock.
At a quarter past one Carl Walters had not turned up. Paul ordered two more sherries and tried to suppress the desire for lunch.
‘Did I tell you about my meeting with Jimmy Forester-Ford yesterday?’ he asked Steve.
A look of instant boredom descended on Steve. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Did he tell you to sell your Imps and buy Canpacs? Oh look, I’m sure that girl was on the cover of Vogue last month.’
‘We were discussing Baxter most of the time. I wanted to know what his reputation was. Whether he’d ever been drummed out of the Stock Exchange, that sort of thing.’
‘I suppose,’ Steve said abstractedly, ‘his word was his bond?’
‘Well, yes, but he wasn’t very highly regarded. Jimmy said that he didn’t consider Philip Baxter a gentleman. He played the market like a gambler and made a fortune in the early days of the takeover boom, before the Stock Exchange drew up its rules to stop the kind of practices which Philip Baxter helped to invent.’
Steve nodded. ‘In other words, Philip Baxter was none too scrupulous.’
‘None too,’ Paul agreed.
Someone was waving from the other side of the diningroom. Waiters moved aside in alarm as Kate Balfour pushed between the tables to reach them. She was out of breath and slightly flushed. ‘I’m sorry it took me so long,’ she gasped, ‘but the traffic is awful. I came as soon as I got your message.’
‘Message?’ said Steve. ‘I thought perhaps you’d come for the food.’
‘What message was this?’ asked Paul. ‘We haven’t—’
‘A man telephoned to say that you wanted to see me here, urgently. Said he was the head waiter.’ Kate looked bewildered. ‘Was it a joke then?’
‘No,’ Paul said thoughtfully, ‘No, it isn’t a joke, Kate. Someone knew that we were here and they wanted to get you out of the flat. At this very moment I expect we have visitors.’
The flat had been, in police terminology, well turned over. Steve gasped in horror at the sight. The drawers were all pulled out and their contents had been tipped on the floor, the books had been tipped off the shelves, pictures had been thrust aside, furniture moved and the carpet disturbed. The search had been thorough in the living-room and the study. Steve ran off upstairs to see the damage to the bedroom.
‘I suppose he was looking for the notebook,’ Paul said bleakly.
Kate Balfour stared at the mess in the kitchen. ‘Was it that man you were meeting at the Savoy?’
‘Carl Walters? He certainly knew we’d be out, didn’t he?’
‘I’ll give him hell if I lay hands on him!’
Paul went upstairs in search of his wife. The side effect of such housebreakings, Paul knew, was that women took them symbolically as a violation of their domesticity. Steve might be distressed.
She was sitting in the middle of the bedroom surrounded by a pile of clothes which had been roughly thrown from the wardrobe and the cupboards. There were cosmetics and jewellery strewn across the dressing-table. ‘It’ll take hours,’ she said unhappily, ‘to sort these out again.’
‘Is there anything missing?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Mr Temple! Here, quickly!’ Kate Balfour had continued from room to room, and her voice came from the bathroom. ‘Look who we’ve found.’ She poked her head out and waved agitatedly.
It was Carl Walters, lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, half unconscious and moaning to himself. Paul knelt beside the man, but there wasn’t much he could do.
‘I’m Paul Temple. Lie still and we’ll call a doctor.’ He nodded to Mrs Balfour. ‘Will you, Kate?’
She looked as if she wanted to stay and tick the man off for being in the flat and making a mess of her kitchen, but another fit of coughing from Walters sent her hurrying downstairs.
‘Who did this to you?’ Paul asked gently.
‘Don’t move me,’ he whimpered, ‘leave me alone. God, it hurts!’
‘I’ll fetch some brandy,’ said Steve.
Paul loosened the man’s collar and made him comfortable. There was a strange smell of perfume in the room which somehow didn’t tie in with Paul’s image of the dying man. Paul put the oddity to the back of his mind; he would worry about peculiar smells when there was more time.
‘You must tell me who did this,’ Paul insisted. ‘I know you were searching my flat to find the notebook. But somebody interrupted you, didn’t he?’
Walters nodded. ‘Temple,’ he said, nearly inaudibly, ‘You’ve got to stop Curzon getting the diamonds. Don’t let him—’ Suddenly his voice was lost.
When Steve returned
with the brandy Paul drank it himself.
‘Why should they turn your flat over, Temple? We’ve got the notebook down at the station. Why didn’t they come and turn over my office?’ Charlie Vosper fulminated for several minutes to establish that friends of Sir Graham Forbes were as nothing to him. ‘What was the idea of meeting Carl Walters at the Savoy anyway?’
‘I wanted to find out what this case was about.’
‘So now you know,’ the inspector said heavily. ‘It’s about diamonds.’
‘I know.’
Steve brought in a tray of tea and toasted scones, which worked a minor improvement on the policeman. He almost smiled. He ate three scones while he was sitting at Paul’s desk reading the sheet of paper in the typewriter. Then he grinned. ‘That’ll make Professor Stein stick to his lunatics, won’t it? I don’t understand a word of it, but I’m sure it’s very amusing.’
They were taking Carl Walters away, and Steve stood by the door and watched him pass. ‘Poor man,’ she murmured. ‘I rather took to him, you know. He had a smooth mid-Atlantic façade and lots of charm, but underneath it he was a rather nice man. He enjoyed his life.’
‘He was a gangster,’ said Charlie Vosper. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if some of his boys didn’t shoot that girl in the pub – you know, Bobbie Jameson. He had quite an organisation. What I don’t understand is why he was doing your flat over himself. He should have got Joe to do it, or Lou Kenzell even, if that story about Lou working for him was true.’
Paul sipped his tea. ‘Walters said he’d never heard of Lou.’ Something in the back of Paul’s mind was stirring to connect. Lou Kenzell, he said to himself, Lou Kenzell. What was it?
‘Carl Walters wouldn’t have had his own girl-friend shot,’ said Steve. ‘That’s ridiculous. Carl Walters was obviously working on the other side, against our mysterious friend Curzon. That’s why he’s dead.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Vosper. ‘Perhaps he was on Baxter’s side.’
‘Lou Kenzell!’ Paul said suddenly. ‘Of course, that’s who it was, Lou Kenzell! He came here to search the flat for the notebook and he found Carl Walters already on the job. I couldn’t place the smell, but I remember now—’
‘What smell?’ asked Steve.
‘Old Spice. There was a strong smell of Old Spice in the bathroom.’ He turned to Inspector Vosper. ‘That was the first thing I noticed about Lou Kenzell when we encountered him on the motorway.’
Vosper was sceptical. ‘Do you seriously expect me to pull him in on that kind of evidence?’
‘Yes.’
Vosper picked up the telephone and dialled New Scotland Yard. He gave instructions that Lou Kenzell should be brought in for questioning and warned that he might be dangerous. ‘I’ll be in my office in half an hour,’ he concluded, ‘and I want Kenzell there waiting for me.’ He hung up, finished his cup of tea and picked up another scone. ‘Are you coming along, Temple? I’ll need a statement from you anyway.’
Paul went along.
They found Lou Kenzell sitting in the police station with a policeman either side of him. He was contriving to look outraged, but he was obviously agitated. Vosper sniffed fastidiously and nodded to Paul. ‘I see what you mean.’
Kenzell had sprung to his feet as the inspector came into the office, he demanded an explanation, but when he saw Paul Temple he subsided into his chair.
‘What am I supposed to have done now?’ he asked morosely.
A police sergeant sat at a desk in the corner of the room with a pencil poised above his notebook. Vosper made the man turn out his pockets. The tension was almost physical, Paul could sense it even with his back to the scene as he looked out of the window.
‘If you think you can get me for picking your pocket, Mr Temple, it’s not on,’ he said desperately.
‘You lied to me about that, Lou. You said that Carl Walters had hired you, and it wasn’t true. Carl Walters denied your whole story.’
‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? I mean, that—’
‘Where,’ Inspector Vosper cut in, ‘were you this afternoon at half past one?’
‘I want to ring my lawyer.’
‘I don’t like liars, Lou. You were told to steal that notebook by Curzon, weren’t you? And Curzon said that if you were unlucky enough to be caught you should say you’d been hired by Carl Walters. Isn’t that so?’
‘I’m not saying anything.’
Inspector Vosper was a big man with very wide shoulders and he weighed fifteen stone. He loomed over Kenzell as if he would swallow him in one gulp. ‘Louis Joseph Kenzell, you are not obliged to say anything, but I must warn you that anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence.’ The inspector returned to his chair behind the mahogany desk. ‘Now, where were you at half past one this afternoon? We know you weren’t at your flat—’
‘There’s no law against going to the pictures, is there?’
‘None at all.’ Charlie Vosper called across to the sergeant. ‘Did you get that answer, Simpson? He replied, at half past one I entered Mr Temple’s flat in order to steal a black leather bound notebook, and there I encountered the aforesaid Carl Walters—’
‘Hey, that’s bloody lies!’ said Kenzell indignantly. ‘I was at the pictures, and nobody aforesaid anything about Carl Walters being there.’
‘Write that down, Simpson. A scuffle ensued between Walters and myself, at the height of which I lost control. I brought his head into heavy and deliberate contact with the wash-basin, thus rendering him unconscious, whereupon I kicked him repeatedly in the ribs and stomach. These kicks I now understand led directly to the death of Carl Walters shortly after I had effected my escape from the premises.’
‘Death?’ he repeated softly. ‘You mean he’s dead?’
‘I mean you killed him. I have made this statement of my own free will and so on and so on. Get that typed out, Simpson, then bring it back for signature.’
Paul watched the sergeant leave the office with his solemnly copied shorthand notes. He smiled to himself. The style was wrong, Lou Kenzell didn’t talk like that. But Kenzell was horrified. He was standing hypnotised as the sergeant left.
‘I was at the pictures,’ he said numbly, ‘I told you. I wasn’t anywhere near Mr Temple’s place. I don’t even know where he lives. I went to the Academy.’
‘Alone?’ Inspector Vosper asked wearily.
‘That’s right. Is there any objection to my going to the pictures by myself?’
Vosper shook his head. ‘But unfortunately it doesn’t provide you with a very good alibi.’ It was clear from his manner that the interrogation was over. They were passing the time until Sergeant Simpson returned.
‘When one is innocent,’ Kenzell said with an attempt at simplicity, ‘one doesn’t need an alibi.’
Charlie Vosper laughed unkindly.
‘I’ll tell you, I went to the Academy at about one o’clock, and I left around three. I’d only been back home a few minutes when your cowboys arrived to arrest me.’
‘What film did you see?’ asked Paul.
‘Hamlet.’ He turned defiantly to Paul. ‘Do you want me to tell you the plot?’
‘That won’t be necessary. Did you see the entire film?’
‘No, I was only there for two hours. I couldn’t possibly have seen the whole film, could I?’
‘No,’ Paul agreed, ‘it’s a very long film.’
Charlie Vosper perked up with a sudden look of intelligence. ‘Oh, I remember that film. With Laurence Olivier and Jean Simmons, the one in glorious Technicolor.’
‘Yes,’ Kenzell said eagerly, ‘that’s the one.’ Then he suspected the trap. ‘Or at least, I’m not sure whether it’s in Technicolor. But Laurence Olivier was in it—’
‘Not sure?’ Vosper demanded angrily. ‘You saw the film an hour ago and you forget whether it’s in colour? You squalid little man, you can’t even think of a decent alibi, can you? You’re a petty crook, a small bit killer. Sit there and shut up till the
sergeant comes back!’
Kenzell cowered back in his chair and kept silent.
Vosper was going through the contents of Kenzell’s wallet. He put the large pile of bank notes in one corner of his blotting-pad, stacked the club cards, driving licence and credit cards in another corner. ‘Did you know that you haven’t signed your driving licence?’ he demanded. ‘That’s a legal offence.’ There were no incriminating letters. A few photographs, one of which was obscene, another of which was highly moral and depicted his late wife, two more were of men involved in his professional life. Vosper grinned.
‘Here’s a photograph of you, Temple.’
‘Taken from one of my dust jackets,’ said Paul. ‘It’s a wonder he picked me out from the crowd, isn’t it?’
Paul picked up the second photograph. It showed a man with a toothbrush moustache and close-cropped hair, pointed features and the dapper dress of someone probably small and finicky. ‘Well well,’ said Paul, ‘this is interesting.’
‘Who is it?’ Vosper asked.
‘A man called Duprez.’
‘Duprez? You mean that Frenchman who was killed in the air crash?’ Vosper took the photograph and glowered at it. ‘His name was Rene Duprez, born in Orleans, 1932. That’s what it says on the back.’
Sergeant Simpson tapped on the door as he entered with the statement typed in duplicate. He gave a copy to Kenzell and the original to Inspector Vosper.
‘Ah, good. Read that through, Kenzell, and then sign it. Take your time, there’s no hurry.’
Kenzell read it through as he was told and then signed the confession. Paul Temple signed as a witness with the sergeant.
Chapter Nine
‘Paul, I’ve been thinking about this business. About the Curzon case. There’s an awful lot I don’t understand.’
He smiled. ‘There’s quite a lot I don’t understand myself, darling.’
They had been driving for six hours and Steve was feeling bored. She preferred a small car for such long journeys, where you were aware of the ride and could feel some sense of adventure. The smooth and spacious Rolls could be tedious. She had been staring from the window at the desolate moorland since Malton, wondering whether to wave at the sheep or eat a box of After Eights.
Paul Temple and the Curzon Case (A Paul Temple Mystery) Page 10
