Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery

by Francis Durbridge

  ‘Eventually,’ said Paul. ‘But I have another reason for being in Geneva. Julia Carrington wants to see me.’

  Neider looked impressed. ‘Miss Carrington? Surely she has no interest in the Milbourne affair?’

  ‘I hope not. Do you know Julia Carrington, Mr Neider?’

  ‘Everyone knows Julia Carrington.’ Which wasn’t quite true. Neider confessed that like nearly everyone else, he knew of her. ‘Actually I’ve only seen the lady once. She keeps herself very much to herself.’

  ‘When did you see her?’ asked Paul. ‘Recently?’

  ‘On January the fifth.’

  Paul was surprised at the accuracy, the precision of the man’s memory. But it turned out to be the date of Mrs Neider’s birthday, as well as the day after the accident.

  ‘I took my wife out to dinner, to a restaurant near Vevey,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Miss Carrington was at the next table with her secretary, Danny Clayton. They were both in very high spirits – especially Miss Carrington. It was almost as if they were celebrating something.’

  As Paul was leaving another question occurred to him. He paused as he was about to convey Sir Graham’s best wishes for the new year. ‘Neider, tell me: does the name Richard Randolph mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘He’s an author,’ said Paul, ‘he’s written a book called Too Young to Die. I believe it comes out some time next month.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him or the book. Should I have?’

  ‘No,’ said Paul. ‘It’s a very bad book. It isn’t in the least important. Forget I asked.’

  ‘I’m sure it is important, Mr Temple,’ Neider said with a smile, ‘or you wouldn’t have asked. I’ll remember the name.’ He handed Paul his card and told him to drop in any time he needed help.

  ‘You’ll regret that invitation, Neider,’ said Paul. ‘I’ll probably pester the life out of you.’

  Well, at least that proved that the accident was probably genuine. Neider had been convinced. Paul walked towards the lake wishing that he had a staff to make those obvious checks that took so much time – checks on who inherited Carl Milbourne’s estate and how much of it there was, and what would have happened if Milbourne had not been killed. Was he in debt? Come to think of it, Paul decided he didn’t really know enough about Carl Milbourne.

  The man’s wife loved him, and he conducted a gentlemanly business. He was also sharp, clever and had married a fashionable actress. Lacking in dress sense and with a poor eye for prose. A finance firm would require a little more information before lending him money. What did the blighter do when he wasn’t publishing books?

  Steve was sitting on a seat near the bridge waiting for him, feeling restless and demanding a long walk to whet her appetite for lunch. Which suited Paul. He had a vague memory of an excellent restaurant on the other side of the lake.

  It was half past one when they discovered the restaurant and Steve demanded a dry martini with the desperation of a not so bright young thing during the prohibition era. The restaurant was cosmopolitan and crowded with people. As Paul was wondering whether to order the plat du jour a film director came in.

  ‘We might just as well have stayed in England,’ said Paul. ‘Everybody connected with this case has come to Geneva.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Steve, ‘that’s Vince Langham.’

  Vince ambled across to join them. He embraced Steve as an old friend and sat at the table. ‘Do you come here often?’ he said cheerfully. ‘This is my favourite restaurant. Have you seen the view?’

  ‘You’re disgustingly cheerful,’ said Paul. ‘Has Julia Carrington granted you an audience?’

  ‘I’m seeing her tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You are?’ Paul said in surprise.

  ‘I phoned her the moment I arrived and I was lucky enough to get the great lady herself. When I told her who I was she became pretty friendly. Quite different from that creep Danny Clayton.’ He laughed proudly. ‘She’s giving me half an hour tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll sell her the idea in half an hour?’ Paul asked. ‘I gather she isn’t keen on making a come-back.’

  ‘If I can persuade her to read the book, that’s all it needs.’ He turned to Paul. ‘I found my copy of Too Young to Die in the drawer to my desk. It wasn’t lost after all.’

  ‘Oh well, if she doesn’t want it perhaps you’ll lend it to me,’ said Paul. ‘I lost my copy on the train.’

  They ordered lunch and listened to Vince rehearsing his sales talk about Too Young to Die; he made it sound a more interesting book than the one Paul had begun. For one thing, Paul hadn’t reached the part where she became a dipsomaniac.

  ‘Were you on the train that reached Geneva at about ten this morning?’ Paul asked. ‘We didn’t see you –’

  ‘I stayed in my carriage, working on a film treatment,’ said Vince. ‘I always write my own scripts.’

  ‘So Norman Wallace was saying.’

  Vince Langham winced. ‘Oh God, was he talking about publishing my film scripts again? They’re only the damned words!’

  The waiter arrived with the meal: pieces of lamb and bacon and a dish of haricot beans in sauce from the Danube; Steve sniffed ecstatically and quite lost interest in literature or crime. After all, as she said to Paul, this was supposed to be her holiday, remember?

  ‘Dining with a brilliant film director I can accept,’ she said with a grin at Vince. ‘I don’t mind dining with a famous American actress. But I refuse to spend my time worrying about clues.’

  Julia Carrington lived in an isolated manor house thirty kilometres along the shore of Lake Geneva. It was less than twenty minutes along the wide motorway and another twenty minutes through the narrow mountain roads which brought them suddenly down to the lakeside once more. The manor house had four spires silhouetted against the night sky.

  ‘I always say to Julia,’ Danny Clayton observed ambiguously, ‘that she lives like a film star. What do you think of all this?’

  ‘Impressive,’ Steve murmured.

  They had been driven at high speed through the countryside by Danny, with headlamps dazzling across motorway and the wide expanse of snow, sometimes stabbing through empty blackness to a distant corner. It would have been safer, Paul was convinced, to keep the speed down to fifty; he would have had fewer bruises on his arm from Steve’s tight grasp.

  ‘How did you find Miss Carrington when you got home?’ Paul asked him.

  ‘She was in a curious mood,’ Danny said over his shoulder. Paul wished he had kept silent. ‘I asked her if she had received any more letters, but she refused to discuss the subject.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep turning round to look at me,’ Paul said as they skidded round a bend.

  ‘Before I left for London she was in a terrible state. That was why I came to see you. But now –’ He changed gear and the car roared across a narrow bridge. ‘She still seems worried, only more relaxed. Or perhaps more resigned, I don’t know. Maybe she’s a fatalist.’

  The driveway seemed endless, and when eventually they drew up outside the house the massive doors were opened by a coloured manservant like Rochester. He ushered them into the hall and took their coats. There was a chandelier high above them, and expensive paintings faced them where the grand staircase in the centre forked and reached up to the balcony. Julia Carrington made her first appearance from a bedroom and came slowly down the staircase.

  ‘How very nice to see you, Mr Temple. Mrs Temple. So good of you to come.’ She was wearing a long white evening gown that trailed behind her. ‘This is a pleasure,’ she said as she reached the bottom stair and held out her hand, ‘it really is. I’ve heard so many things about you.’

  ‘Nice things, I hope?’ murmured Paul.

  ‘Always nice things. Let’s go through into the drawing room. I hear you had quite an eventful journey.’

  She was probably fifty, but she would have passed for thirty-five or even thirty in
the artificial light. She had raven black hair and the figure of a girl. Only the faint lines on her neck and a tendency to crows’ feet round her eyes made it seem possible that her first film had been made twenty seven years ago.

  ‘There was fog in London,’ said Paul. ‘I think we’d all forgotten what it’s like to cross Europe by train.’

  ‘So I gather,’ she said with a surprisingly throaty laugh. ‘Suitcases falling in the night. Poor Danny looks like a featherweight boxer.’

  Danny was at the tray pouring drinks. ‘You don’t understand, Julia, the sleepers are different over here. They aren’t like the ones back home.’

  ‘Silly boy,’ she said mockingly. Julia Carrington bounced on to a chaise-longue and drew her legs up under her; the tomboy pose was in strange contrast to the grace with which she accepted her drink. ‘How do you like our home, Mrs Temple? You must allow Danny to show you round before dinner.’

  ‘I’d love that,’ said Steve. ‘Was that a Matisse I glimpsed in the library?’

  ‘Yes, and there’s a Utrillo behind the door. But they aren’t all old masters. I bought a Lowrie last time I was in –’

  ‘I’ll show her the lot, Julia,’ interrupted Danny. ‘Just let Steve get her breath back after the drive. The poor girl hasn’t recovered.’

  Julia chuckled and began talking about the weather. Geneva was a shade dull in the winter, she admitted apologetically, not at all the same as St Moritz, and to make matters worse the authorities turned off that fountain at the end of summer. But it was better than living in Little Rock, after all.

  ‘I was born in Alabama,’ she drawled theatrically. ‘Hence the accent.’

  When Steve had been taken off to view the house Julia Carrington poured more drinks and then walked across to the window. ‘Mr Temple, I owe you an apology, and I just don’t know how to begin.’ She turned with a sad smile to face him. ‘I sent Danny all the way to London, just to see you, and…’ The smile disappeared. ‘As it turns out, it was quite unnecessary.’

  ‘I understood from Danny that you’d received some particularly nasty letters. That you were being threatened with blackmail.’

  ‘I thought so at the time.’ Her gaze was direct and calculating. ‘But perhaps Danny tends to exaggerate a little. That’s the trouble.’ She turned away to stare at the haze of light through the window. ‘However, there’s nothing for you to worry about, Mr Temple. I’ll pay your usual fee and all expenses –’

  ‘Miss Carrington, I’m not interested in the financial aspect of this affair. But I would like to know why you were worried enough to send Danny all the way to England to fetch me.’

  She hesitated, and then sat in the chair beside him. ‘All right. I received several unpleasant letters. Naturally I was worried.’ She paused to give him another direct stare. ‘Then yesterday morning quite by accident I discovered that the letters were written by a man who used to work for me. I simply threatened him with legal action, of course, and so he came to me and apologised.’

  ‘It was as simple as that,’ Paul murmured.

  ‘I’m afraid it was.’ The stare was faintly challenging. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Temple. I do feel guilty about dragging you and your delightful wife across to Switzerland. I would have sent a telegram, but you were in mid-channel –’

  ‘There’s nothing for you to feel guilty about, Miss Carrington. We both love Switzerland and we were coming here anyway. I’m sure my wife will insist that we stay here for several more days, so if you change your mind about the man who used to work for you…’

  ‘I always prefer to forget the past, Mr Temple. But it’s sweet of you to be so understanding.’ She took Paul’s hand. ‘Let’s go through and see whether dinner is served. I told cook eight o’clock.’

  ‘I’m going to St Moritz,’ Paul continued as they entered the dining room. ‘I expect Steve will insist on a few visits to the ski slopes, although I’m mainly concerned to make enquiries about a man called Carl Milbourne. I expect you’ve heard of him?’

  Paul felt her hand momentarily tauten. ‘Milbourne?’

  ‘He was killed last month in a car accident.’

  ‘I think I remember. I read about him somewhere. An English publisher, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right. He visited you just before he died.’

  ‘I believe he did.’

  She sat at the table, and as Paul adjusted her chair she glanced up at him.

  ‘But I didn’t see him. I make a rule never to see publishers. The poor man thought I was writing my memoirs. As if I’d spend my time living in the past. I couldn’t bear it. I hate watching my old movies, and as for thinking about those days in New York –’

  Steve returned at that moment with Danny. They had clearly enjoyed their tour, and for the next half hour, through the avocado pear and the American-style grill, Steve and Julia talked about the collection of pottery. Steve had thrown a few pots the summer after she had left art school, but had given it up and gone back to design when she realised that she was no Wedgwood, nor even a Spode.

  ‘I’m rather attached to my Spode,’ Julia said indulgently. ‘Next time you come to dinner we might get it out. Unless you present me with a Steve Temple set for Christmas.’

  ‘After all this time,’ Steve said with a laugh, ‘if I made a plate the bread rolls would roll off it! I’ll stick to designing books and publicity. I’ll design the jacket for your autobiography when you write it.’

  ‘Julia isn’t going to,’ Paul intercepted.

  ‘Oh, but I thought –’

  ‘And I’ve no intention of making a come-back,’ said Julia. ‘I just can’t convince people I really do want to be left alone, I’m always being pestered by newspapers and publishers.’

  ‘And film people,’ Paul added.

  ‘Film people are the worst. They’re absolutely un-snubbable. I wonder now how I stood all those dreary little egotists.’

  ‘Why do you bother to give them interviews?’ asked Paul.

  She stared at Paul in surprise. ‘But I never see them! Danny takes care of all that nonsense for me. Don’t you, darling?’

  ‘Poor old Vince,’ murmured Paul. ‘He thinks he’s having a personal interview with you tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Vince?’ she repeated. ‘I don’t know anybody called Vince.’

  ‘He’s a film director. Vince Langham.’

  Her eyes flashed dangerously as she turned to Danny. ‘Did you tell this film director I’d see him?’

  Paul cut in quickly to avoid a scene. ‘Vince told me that he spoke to you, Julia, on the telephone. But you know how film people exaggerate. He’s so enthusiastic about persuading you to star in Too Young to Die that he –’

  ‘What a dreadful title!’ She pushed away her plate and glared at ‘Rochester’. ‘I’ve lost my appetite. What is Too Young to Die? Is it a play?’

  ‘No, it’s a novel –’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it. And I’ve never heard of this director, Vince Langtry, or whatever he calls himself!’

  ‘Vince Langham,’ Paul said softly.

  But he let the subject drop. Clearly nobody had ever persuaded Julia to do anything she hadn’t wished to do, and trifling matters such as the truth about Langham’s appointment or the threatening letters would change from day to day as her mood changed. Julia cheered up a little during the dessert course, and when they had drunk three cups of coffee and three glasses of Cointreau she became positively mellow. She talked nostalgically of Robert Newton and of the sex life of an English director who had been in Hollywood at the time of her last film.

  ‘That proves she likes you,’ said Danny in the car afterwards. He seemed immensely pleased with the success of the evening. ‘I mean, she talked to you, didn’t she, and she talked about those English guys because she knew you were English. She knew you’d have heard of Robert Newton.’

  ‘We enjoyed coming out here to dinner,’ said Steve, ‘even though there isn’t any mystery for Paul to solve.’

/>   ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Paul began. ‘God, Danny, do you have to drive so fast? I’m not quite sober enough to distinguish the road from the soft shoulder.’

  ‘That was the soft shoulder. Sorry, folks, but it wasn’t my fault. A patch of ice.’

  ‘So slow down, eh?’ Paul waited until they were down to fifty miles an hour. ‘Danny, tell me, did you actually see the blackmail letters? Or did Julia tell you about them?’

  ‘She showed them to me. But I didn’t read them. She wouldn’t let me.’ He glanced in the driving mirror and increased his speed again.

  ‘How long have you lived in Switzerland, Danny?’ asked Steve.

  ‘About four years. Julia bought a house in the south of France originally, but then she decided to…’ He swung the car off the motorway without warning and without slowing down. It was a filter road leading down into Geneva, and as they sped past the more conventional traffic Danny watched over his shoulder.

  ‘Who do you imagine is following us?’ Paul asked when he was sitting upright once more.

  ‘Nobody. Just my imagination, I expect.’ He had to drive more slowly in the city traffic. ‘Yeah, I was telling you about our life in the South of France.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ said Paul. ‘Why not just concentrate on breaking the Swiss speed records? Or alternatively you could tell me who was chasing us.’

  ‘I’ve already admitted that was my imagination.’

  Paul sighed. ‘All right. And the suitcase that fell on your head, was that imagination? Did you imagine you saw somebody who scared the hell out of you on board the channel ferry?’ They drew up outside the hotel. Paul got out of the car and leaned down by the driver’s window. ‘I’m sorry, Danny but I think you’ve been intimidated.’

  ‘I’m easily intimidated,’ said Danny with a grin. ‘When Julia tells me that an ex-employee of hers has apologised for writing nasty letters, who am I to argue with her? She has a forgiving nature.’

  Paul and Steve stood on the pavement and watched Danny drive away. They saw a Citroen come out of the side turning opposite and accelerate after him. A few moments later they heard shots in the distance.