Paul Temple and the Kelby Affair

by Francis Durbridge

  ‘Hello,’ said Paul. ‘How’s Mrs Ashwood now?’

  Leo stared at him for a moment without answering, then he managed to speak. ‘She’s in bed, sir. Took one of Miss Leonard’s sleeping pills and went to bed early. She takes things hard, does Gladys.’

  ‘She was obviously attached to Mr Kelby.’

  ‘He was a good employer.’ Leo knocked back the rest of his drink and banged his glass on the counter. ‘I must be off. Good night, Mr Temple.’

  But he paused by the door and looked back. ‘By the way, Mr Temple, you do know that Mr Kelby went across to Galloway Farm on Monday evening, don’t you? He was seen there, whatever Ted Mortimer may say.’ Then he left.

  Detective Inspector Vosper arrived at eight o’clock. He bought half a pint of bitter and took Paul through into the parlour. ‘I like to relax when I’m off duty,’ he said. ‘I don’t like people staring at me as if I were a policeman when I’m drinking.’ He raised the half-pint glass. ‘Cheers, Temple.’ The three regulars in front of the fire continued to discuss the Morecambe and Wise Show on television and laughed loudly from time to time. ‘Who’s the man with the short fat hairy legs?’ one of them called, much to Paul’s alarm. But they took no notice of Paul or the inspector.

  ‘Leo comes in here every night,’ said Charlie Vosper confidentially. ‘He’s been hitting the bottle since his boss was murdered. Poor devil. Quite convinced that Ted Mortimer is the murderer.’

  ‘He told me Kelby was seen on Galloway Farm last Monday evening.’

  ‘The village is seething with rumour.’ Charlie puffed at his pipe and grinned. The off-duty policeman relaxing. ‘But all the rumours seem to emanate from Leo. I can’t build a case on Leo’s vendetta against a neighbouring farmer.’

  ‘There’s one thing that troubles me,’ said Paul. He waited while Charlie struck some more matches for his pipe, and then asked why Kelby had been so generous with his money. ‘Two thousand pounds is a significant sum even for Kelby.’

  ‘He did it for Leo.’

  Paul raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Not for Jennie?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Leo and Kelby were very close, and Leo got himself into serious trouble when Jennie was fourteen. He had an affair with her. That could have meant prison for Leo.’ Charlie Vosper chuckled at a private joke. ‘Jennie used to visit Melford House after school, and apparently Kelby gave her some private coaching for her A levels. It looked rather bad for Kelby as well, actually. Ted Mortimer thought they were both having it off with the girl. But Kelby wasn’t, not at that stage.’

  ‘I see.’

  Paul went to the bar and fetched another round of drinks. He could understand why Tracy Leonard had been so upset. It must have been a nasty scene. And the fact that eventually Kelby had lent the man two thousand pounds would only have confirmed his guilt in Tracy’s eyes.

  ‘That makes Leo rather a swine,’ Paul began when he returned to the chair in the corner.

  ‘I’m not sitting here having a friendly off-duty drink with you for your benefit, Temple,’ the inspector interrupted. ‘You were going to tell me about the diary. Why have I been warned off?’

  They stayed in the smoke-filled parlour for another hour. Paul told him nearly all he knew about the missing diary, although he became rather vague about his visit to Harry in Whitehall.

  ‘You mean government security is involved?’ Charlie demanded, ‘or that some previous politician’s reputation is at stake?’

  ‘No,’ said Paul. ‘I expect the assistant commissioner still feels that the Delamore murder is his own case.’

  By the time Charlie Vosper had cursed the lost opportunity of imprisoning Grover and had told Paul exactly what he thought of the hon. sons of lords who lent their names to shady enterprises he had reduced the atmosphere with his pipe to something like a shunting yard.

  But he wasn’t happy. ‘It’s coincidental,’ he muttered. ‘If they had the diary they didn’t need to kill Kelby. Even little Willie Price-Pemberton wouldn’t mind now, twenty years later, because he’s fallen into obscurity. I always said the diary was irrelevant!’

  ‘I’ve always agreed with you,’ Paul said happily.

  Charlie Vosper was angry. ‘I know! So what the hell? Why is Sir Philip Tranmere dead?’ He hurled a match into the fire. ‘I’ve a good mind to arrest Ted Mortimer and close the bloody case!’ He lapsed into gloomy silence.

  A telephone was ringing somewhere in the pub, and a few minutes later the barman came in search of Inspector Vosper. He was suitably apologetic, but there had been an incident up at Galloway Farm. Would the inspector go there immediately? To Paul’s amazement Charlie said no, they had both been drinking. ‘Tell the local force to send a car!’

  They reached Galloway Farm at a quarter to ten. There were three police cars in the dirt road to the house with searchlights beamed on the building. From the distance it looked like a southern mansion on party night, with elegant guests milling about in the grounds. Which only emphasised the drab contrast, the neglected air of the house when they reached it, when the guests were visibly policemen.

  The policeman on the door reported all quiet. Leo was sitting in the porch with his head between his knees. He didn’t look up as they went past him into the kitchen. There Ted Mortimer was having his cuts and bruises tended by his daughter.

  ‘Who called the police?’ Inspector Vosper asked.

  ‘I did,’ said the girl. ‘My father was being beaten up rather severely. I tried throwing water over them, but that didn’t help. Leo was drunk.’

  There was a young man in plain clothes lurking by the door. Paul didn’t need to ask who he was. An earnest young man in a raincoat, wearing spectacles. He said he was waiting for his photographer to arrive.

  ‘Wait for him outside,’ said Charlie Vosper. ‘When I want the local press I usually send for them.’

  The young man winked disconcertingly at Paul and went into the passage.

  ‘He knows what happened already,’ said Jennie. ‘He must have friends at the local police station. He promised to put my photograph in the paper this week.’

  ‘I told you to keep out of this,’ Ted Mortimer said sullenly. ‘You don’t know what it’s like here any more. Ouch!’

  She reminded Paul irresistibly of a female second at a wrestling match as she pushed Ted Mortimer’s head under the cold water tap. She ignored his cries of pain and set about rubbing ointment into his wounds.

  ‘I know how strong Leo is,’ she said with a fierce glare at the police. ‘He used to beat me when I was young.’ It looked improbable. The girl’s soft curves were effectively disguised by the black leather tunic she was wearing. The boots would terrify most professional wrestlers.

  ‘Leo looks quite docile out there at the moment,’ Paul murmured.

  ‘He’s been out here every night. Banging on the doors and shouting in the road. My father has been living in terror these last few nights. Leo stands out there in the dark and bawls abuse until he passes out. I suppose he wakes up a few hours later and goes home. He hasn’t been there when my father gets up at first light.’

  ‘What does he shout about?’ Paul asked.

  ‘He accuses my father of killing Alfred Kelby.’

  ‘That’s enough, Jennie. It’s none of their business. Ouch!’ He clutched at his swollen cheek. ‘I can fight my own battles.’

  ‘So why haven’t you opened the door to Mr Ashwood before?’ the inspector asked tactlessly.

  ‘It was common sense not to.’

  ‘Because Leo is a great deal stronger and ten years younger than my father. He’s a barroom brawler. Look at these bruises—’

  ‘Ow!’ Mortimer grunted. ‘Tonight Jennie was here. She opened the door.’

  ‘Nobody terrorises me,’ she said with a flick of her blonde hair.

  She suddenly picked up a heavy saucepan and hurled it past Paul Temple’s right shoulder. Paul ducked, but from the grunt behind him he realised it had been aimed at somebody else.
Leo Ashwood had come gingerly into the kitchen with two more policemen.

  ‘I want to prefer charges for assault,’ Leo was saying.

  ‘Not in this bloody house you don’t!’ Jennie shouted.

  She flew across the kitchen and attacked Leo with a large oven casserole. The policemen drew back in surprise and watched as the casserole broke into five pieces. Leo cowered against the dresser, hands over his face, quite unprotected as she hitched up her leather skirt and raised her knee sharply into his groin. Amid the flashing of press camera lights Leo sank to the floor in a similar posture to the one he had adopted in the porch.

  ‘If anybody brings a charge of assault,’ she said angrily to Vosper, ‘it will be my father, against him.’

  The policemen clearly didn’t know whether to applaud or arrest her, so they grinned among themselves and shifted their weight from foot to foot.

  ‘That will make quite a picture,’ said the local reporter from the doorway, ‘I liked it.’

  ‘Well,’ she said with a shrug, ‘I learned how to handle Leo when I was fourteen.’

  Vosper shooed the reporter and his cameraman back into the passage and threatened them with charges of trespass and such crimes as interfering with the course of justice. But they didn’t seem very deterred. They obviously knew all the uniformed men.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ Vosper said to Jennie, ‘you’ve obviously got enough problems with your father in this condition—’

  Jennie gave a brisk laugh. ‘I’ve been my father’s daughter for twenty years. I’m used to him. He has a knack of always landing on his neck. He makes enemies easily and he loses money with every project he’s ever taken up. I don’t know how he has survived in this farming business for so long. Perhaps it would have been better if we’d let him go bankrupt.’

  Ted Mortimer was looking sheepish at being so discussed in front of five policemen. He muttered something about selling up and getting out.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Vosper.

  They could have charged Leo with behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace, with or without Ted Mortimer’s consent, but Charlie Vosper was bitterly uninterested. He had Leo driven home by police car.

  ‘I won’t be a moment,’ said Paul. ‘I want to have a private word with Jennie.’

  ‘Why? Do you want to ask her about that letter we found? I’ve already asked her.’ He leaned against the porch and lit his pipe. ‘It was written to her. She admitted it when I spoke to her this afternoon. She’d written to him care of the education committee at the town hall.’

  ‘Why the secrecy?’ Paul asked.

  Jennie’s voice spoke in the passage behind them. ‘Because his son had come home and Alfred didn’t want him to know.’ She laughed with a sideways glance at the photographer who was sitting on the stairs. ‘I think he was embarrassed because Ronnie is older than I am.’

  Paul went back to her. ‘When was the quarrel between your father and Kelby?’ he asked. ‘Was that why you wanted to see him?’

  She looked surprised. ‘I don’t think there was a quarrel. Suddenly Alfred began asking for the money back, that was all. That was why I wrote him the letter asking to see him. He was ruining my father.’

  Her eyes on closer inspection turned out to be hazel. ‘Why did Kelby suddenly want the money back?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t think he did really. But it wasn’t a legally contracted loan and my father hadn’t signed anything. Alfred needed something legal because of his will.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Vosper.

  The inspector gave vent to another outburst against the local press as he passed them. He told them they would be gaoled for contempt of court if they printed a word about the case. It was all sub judice. They nodded cheerfully, and asked him how he spelled his name.

  ‘I’d love to pose for you again,’ Jennie was saying to them as Paul followed the inspector from the house. ‘But I don’t use violence on men just because they ask me to. I have to be angry.’

  Charlie Vosper drove away from Galloway Farm with a stream of curses against country girls who stir up country passions. It was all beside the point, he claimed. If she wanted to get herself raped, sooner or later…

  ‘What is the point?’ asked Paul.

  ‘I want to know how Sir Philip Tranmere fits into all this. And little Willie Price-Pemberton. That’s the bloody point!’

  Chapter 10

  IT was past eleven o’clock and Paul had still not come home from wherever he had gone to. It must have been a long funeral. His absence gave Steve the opportunity to do some of those things which he laughed at when he was home. While he had been in America she had used a face pack on three occasions and it hadn’t done her complexion any harm. She had given herself a nasty turn when she glimpsed herself in the mirror, and when she smiled it had looked as if her face was flaking. A rather H film contribution to youthful charm.

  Bumping noisily along the bedroom floor on her bottom, and hoisting her hips in the air and bicycling with her legs, were much more fun. Steve fundamentally believed in exercise. She lay on the sheepskin rug panting from the exertion of touching her toes twenty times. That would keep her tummy flat and her spirit uplifted!

  She went to bed feeling fit and beautiful. Paul claimed to have read somewhere that making love was the physical equivalent of a seven-mile walk, but that was probably because he seldom walked anywhere. It was a relief sometimes to have him out of the house when she was preparing for bed. Novelists can be around the house too much.

  She turned out the bedside lamp. Perhaps there had been a wake after the funeral; sending the dead cheerfully on their journey, and renewing life on earth. Steve knew what she would say if Paul arrived home with whisky on his breath. She didn’t like the sound of that Tracy Leonard, with her aura of mystery and total self-possession.

  What was the point of keeping an ear to the ground in Melford? Sir Philip Tranmere had never been near the place, and they knew Lady Delamore had the diary in her possession. There were two perfectly obvious alternatives to choose from: go and steal the diary back, or telephone Jeremy for a chat about record sleeves.

  Jeremy had suggested she stay the night that Wednesday, but he always suggested staying the night to women, it was part of his image. He thought women expected it of him. Steve smiled to herself as she thought how surprised he would be if somebody accepted. She pushed back the bed clothes and slipped out of bed. She dressed quickly in the dark and went quietly out of the house. She took the Hillman Super Imp and drove to the other side of London.

  The square was deserted. An all-night bus was creeping into the distance. Steve glanced up at the towering silhouette of the house looming against the night, then she hurried down to the basement flat. She assumed these to be the butler’s quarters. They seemed to have direct access to the rest of the house.

  Steve slipped a sliver of perspex against the catch and pushed open the door. There were no audible alarms.

  She ought not to have been there, of course. Paul still believed somewhere in his mediaeval soul that she was the little woman to be protected, left at home in the warm while he ventured out and faced the world. But she was a stubborn creature. She thought that she had shared so many cases with him and shared so many risks that she was a fully paid up partner in the firm.

  Besides, she wanted to read that diary.

  She was wearing a black cat suit, big black woolly jumper and soft leather boots, which were more appropriate to a spot of burglary than the beads and bangles which she regarded as the only possible accessories. She jangled as she walked.

  The basement door opened directly into the butler’s kitchen. Steve picked her way through the clutter of waste bucket and vegetable rack and miscellaneous cans to the sliding door into a narrow corridor. It smelled damp, she was thinking as she kicked over some empty beer bottles.

  She waited for three minutes, but the butler did not appear. The gentle snores from a room along the corridor on the r
ight continued evenly. So Steve took a pencil torch from her belt and lit the way to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Keep to the wall,’ she murmured to herself, the first law of burglary, ‘because all stairs creak.’

  The stairs creaked. She ran up three at a time against the wall and then stopped to listen again. There was no movement from the butler’s bedroom.

  She emerged from what looked like a broom cupboard into the main hall. The front door was bristling with wires that could only lead to burglar alarms. Steve shone the torch briefly against each door and up the stairs.

  The door into Lady Delamore’s drawing room was at the end of the hall. The floors were thick with carpets, which helped her to move soundlessly and fast to the door. It was the room where Steve had been received on Thursday so she knew the geography without falling over armchairs.

  A faint moonlight helped as Steve set about searching the room. She felt behind all the cushions, moved the books in the bookcase and looked in a cupboard in the corner. The escritoire by the window was locked, so Steve prepared to work on it with a hair grip.

  A chauffeur-driven car drew up in the street outside. Steve watched as two men got out of the car and went up to the door of Delamore House. They knocked with the heavy authority of the police. And almost at once there were footsteps on the stairs, the front door was opened and there were voices in the hall.

  Steve looked about her in alarm, and was struggling to hide in the window when the drawing room lights were turned on.

  Chapter 11

  IT was nearly midnight. The Thames near Marlow threaded into a black nothing of fields and towpaths, with barely a light from the houseboats moored alongside to show them the way. The water lapped noisily against the hulks, and occasionally a fish surfaced, splashed, and left a strange silence behind, to be broken eventually by the rustle of a vole or water rat in the bank.