FRANCIS DURBRIDGE

Paul Temple and the Kelby Affair

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Hodder & Stoughton 1970

Copyright © Francis Durbridge 1970

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 design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover image © 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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008125684

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008125691

Version: 2015-06-23

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

About the Author

Also in This Series

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

SCOTT REED had intended to come at eleven o’clock: he arrived at ten. His Rover 2000 turned into the gravel drive as the clock above the stables was striking. The telephone call announcing his visit had sounded urgent, but then Scott Reed always left decisions until they became urgent. His office had telephoned at nine o’clock.

‘Is that Mr Alfred Kelby?’ the girl had asked.

‘Yes,’ said Alfred Kelby.

‘I have a message from Mr Scott Reed. He is driving straight over to see you, and he expects to be there at eleven.’

Scott was one of the older school of publishers. He was slightly ashamed if a book sold well and he pretended that all their best sellers were the mistakes of his partner. Scott was a gentleman. He leaned over the back seat of his car and tenderly gathered up a packet. Then he came up to the house.

‘Scott! Come in. I was just having breakfast.’

Kelby waved him into the library. One alcove in the book-littered room was clear and set for breakfast. Kelby removed a pile of manuscripts from an armchair and told Scott Reed to sit down. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

‘No thanks.’ Scott sat on the edge of the seat. ‘Or perhaps I will. Yes thanks.’ He was unwrapping the packet as he changed his mind. ‘I want you to read this, Kelby. It’s a bombshell.’

It was a diary, bound in calf and written in green ink. The tiny, precisely rounded hand of a woman.

‘Something you’re going to publish?’

‘Yes.’ Scott Reed stared into his coffee. ‘Well, we might. I was waiting for your opinion. And it depends on whether we can get an indemnity from all the living people who are mentioned in it. To make sure they don’t sue us for libel.’ He fidgeted slightly. ‘What do you think?’

As an historian Kelby considered that very few diaries should be published. ‘Serialisation in the Sunday papers,’ he complained. ‘It starts all the amateurs dabbling in history, writing letters. Clutters up scholarship.’ His voice died away as he browsed through the yellowing pages. ‘Good gracious me! Who was this woman? I take it the writer was a woman?’

‘Yes. Lord Delamore’s mistress.’

‘Lord Delamore?’ Kelby looked pleased. ‘I knew him.’ He read through a few more pages with intense fascination. But gradually he was frowning and clucking his tongue. ‘This isn’t history, it’s downright scandal. Does she have much to say about the way he died? That was the great mystery of 1947.’

‘She says a lot about that.’ Scott Reed rose to leave. ‘Perhaps you could read it through and have supper with me on Thursday?’ He smiled distractedly. ‘You can sign the release then.’

‘Release?’ Kelby was obviously delighted. ‘Am I mentioned in this?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Scott was edging his way to the door.

‘I say, are you off already? I wanted you to meet my son, Ronnie. I don’t think you’ve—’

‘I’m sorry, Kelby, I haven’t been to the office yet. I’m late. When does Ronnie go back to the States?’

‘Well,’ Kelby began hesitantly, ‘he may be staying in England—’

‘Good. Bring him with you on Thursday evening. My wife will be pleased to see him.’ Scott Reed patted the diary. ‘And don’t lose that, for God’s sake. We haven’t been allowed to make a copy until the contract is signed.’

Kelby was protesting that copies were an historical imperative, but Scott Reed was scuttling across the lawn like a white rabbit, looking anxiously at his watch and eventually scrambling into the driving seat of the Rover. He hooted twice on the horn and vanished towards Melford Cross.

Alfred Kelby was a distinguished historian: he looked like a don and in fact he had been one until he found that it was interfering with his work. He was sixty-three and had too little time left for teaching thick-headed students. He now confined his lecturing to rare and highly paid television appearances, and spent most of his days researching a life of Neville Chamberlain. He ambled back to the alcove in the library, to finish his cold toast and marmalade.

It was early spring and low shafts of sunlight were penetrating the dusty corners of the library. Those intimations of summer that usually made him feel optimistic in March, that reconciled him to the rural remoteness of Melford House. But after the briefest glance at the larch trees opposite the window he was browsing again through Scott Reed’s diary. He didn’t hear Tracy Leonard come in.

‘The post has arrived,’ she announced. ‘There’s a reply from Ted Mortimer.’

It should have an index, of course. Kelby had instinctively turned to look up Chamberlain in the index. These amateurs, dabbling in history. Not that Chamberlain had any connection with the Delamore affair.

‘I said there’s a reply from Ted Mortimer.’

‘Mortimer?’ Kelby smiled, because she was attractive, especially for a secretary. ‘What does he want?’ Severe, but that was all part of her efficiency thing. Like her habit of slightly bullying him. Tracy Leonard was efficient.

‘He wants to talk to you about the loan.’

‘That means he still can’t repay me.’

‘Presumably. And I’m not surprised.’

Tracy Leonard sat at her desk and crossed her legs with elegant disdain. She flicked open her notebook and leaned forward to write. It made Kelby feel slightly sad that the curve of her thighs against the chair should be so perfect. They had worked together for many years, yet he still felt a pang when she came into the room, when he saw that sweeping gesture with her brown hair. He would never totally know the girl now, and the pangs made him feel like an elderly reprobate. Kelby wondered whether she had a lover, but he didn’t dare ask. She had become inviolable.

‘Shall I telephone and make an appointment for you to see him?’

Kelby nodded. She had admired him once, and Kelby had thought himself in love with the girl. He remembered her embraces that summer and found the memory painful. To her it obviously meant almost nothing, except that if she thought about it she would probably despise him. He was a foolish old man.

‘Tell him I might drop in at Galloway Farm this afternoon. At about half past four.’

She had been a softly spoken and submissive girl until that afternoon when Ted Mortimer had burst into the library while they were working. He had made a scene, shouted his accusations, and Tracy had never forgotten them. That was why Kelby hated the man when he thought about it. He rarely did think about it. He picked up the diary from the table.

‘You look pale,’ said Tracy. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to put the whole business into the hands of your solicitor?’

‘No, that would be vindictive. He probably hasn’t the money, and it wouldn’t help anybody to sue him.’

There was nothing submissive about her face at the moment, her long mouth tight with disapproval. Perhaps she was vindictive, he decided, unless she wanted to save him pain.

‘I don’t have any other appointments, do I?’ He smiled and made a conscious effort to become his old impish, happy self. He saw himself as mischievously cheerful. ‘I can make this afternoon.’

‘Yes, there’s only the council meeting at half past eleven this morning, then you’re free for the day.’

She was looking at the calf-bound diary, trying to see what had been so absorbing him. It was sheer perversity of Kelby to pick it up and put it secretively in his briefcase. ‘I’ll read this during the meeting,’ he chuckled. ‘More interesting than education business.’

‘It looks like a diary,’ she said casually.

‘Just something Scott Reed wants me to look at. They’re thinking of publishing it.’

Kelby left her feeling pleased with himself. His simple pleasure at thwarting her survived even seeing Ronnie come down the stairs, in his pyjamas, at half past ten.

‘Aren’t you dressed yet?’ he asked automatically, but his mind was elsewhere. He would leave Tracy Leonard to squash the wastrel son.

‘Don’t worry, father, it’s on the agenda.’

As Kelby left the house he could hear his son attempting his irresistible charm on the secretary. ‘How romantic you make that sound, Miss Leonard. “There’s nothing in the post for you, Mr Kelby.” That sentence is the basis of our relationship.’

‘We don’t have a relationship, Mr Kelby.’

‘You wait till I land a plum job, Miss Leonard, then you’ll be impressed.’

‘I certainly shall be.’ Her voice was wholly discouraging. ‘At the moment you don’t even receive letters saying the position has been filled.’

Kelby was walking towards the garage, but then he glanced at the sky and decided to walk. He had meant to ask Scott Reed about a job for Ronnie; perhaps one of Scott’s competitors needed a charming young man to hasten their flight into bankruptcy. But Kelby hated asking favours. He felt relieved that the subject was postponed until Thursday. Ronnie deserved a chance, but Kelby wondered whether the chance shouldn’t have been given him ten years ago – when his mother had died. Kelby quickly pushed the past to the back of his mind.

There was plenty of time to walk to the village. Forty minutes. And anyway Kelby was only a co-opted member of the education subcommittee. He paused at the gate and spoke to Leo Ashwood. Leo was the gardener, handyman, butler, the whole team of male servants, who had been attached to Melford House ever since Kelby had bought the place. Ashwood and his wife had come with the house. Leo understood about nature.

‘It’s weather like this, Leo, that reconciles me to the rural remoteness of the country.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Leo was the stolid type. Thickset, forty, and not plagued with the need to express himself.

‘I like this time of year. Nobody ever declares a war in March.’

‘No, sir.’

Kelby went off down the lane. He wasn’t really a countryman. There were birds in the hedgerow, in the poplars, but Kelby couldn’t be sure what they were, and he didn’t like to ask. He hummed happily to himself. He was a man with no problems.

‘Excuse me, am I right for Greatrex Lane?’

A man who looked like a doctor was calling from the car window. ‘Yes,’ said Kelby. ‘It’s about half a mile down the hill. On the right, just before you reach the village.’

‘Melford Grammar School?’

‘That’s halfway down the lane. You can’t miss it.’

An ambulance came speeding towards them, klaxon sounding, and it skidded to a halt on the wrong side of the road. ‘Greatrex Lane?’ the driver shouted.

‘Follow me,’ said the doctor.

Kelby decided to exert his authority. ‘Has something happened at the school? I ought to know. I’m on the board of governors.’

‘A fire,’ the doctor said. ‘It sounds like a bad one.’ He drove grimly off down the hill.

‘I say! Wait a minute!’

‘Do you want to come with us?’ asked the ambulance driver. ‘I suppose it will be all right, you being on the board of governors.’

‘Thanks.’

Kelby clambered into the back of the ambulance. A nurse and a male attendant hung on to him as they sped away. It was a bumpy ride. Kelby settled in the corner by the stretchers clutching his briefcase.

‘Have you been called in from Oxford?’ he asked conversationally.

Through the darkened windows he could see the telegraph poles and the occasional cottages whizzing by. It was a gloomy view. The school in the distance looked positively gothic, a sombre monument to the Victorian spirit of self-improvement. But Kelby couldn’t see any fire. There were boys playing unconcernedly in the playing fields and as they flashed past the school a master was walking casually across the courtyard.

‘That was the school,’ said Kelby.

The male attendant sounded bored. ‘Just relax, Mr Kelby, and nobody will hurt you.’

‘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.

Chapter 2

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.’

Paul agreed. ‘True-life mysteries sell very well. Did the diary give any answers?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know what credence we could give them. I was hoping that Kelby would tell me how true the allegations might be.’

‘Kelby? You mean he saw this diary?’

‘I took it down to him, the day he disappeared.’

‘Oh my God!’

Scott Reed had sprung from the womb-like chair and was flapping about the room like a moth. ‘I had to get him to sign an indemnity, because he was a guest at the shooting lodge when Delamore was killed, and he is mentioned in the diary. But I wanted his opinion about the facts.’ He shrugged abjectly and looked across the Thames. ‘I was worried about publishing it, Paul. The diary was sensational, but it was also vicious. They were a fast-living set, I know, but I couldn’t believe they were quite so nasty. In the end I decided to ask Alfred Kelby whether the diary was accurate. On Monday morning I drove out to Melford Cross and gave him the diary to read.’

Paul Temple waited for a moment, but nothing more was said.

‘Well?’ asked Paul. ‘What else?’

‘Nothing. Kelby is missing, and so is the diary.’

Chapter 3

THE town hall in Melford Cross had been built in 1909, to celebrate the sudden promotion of its occupants from parish vestrymen to borough councillors. It was absurdly grand for the cluster of villages it served. As he went up the twenty-four steps to its entrance Paul Temple half expected the doors to open and two town criers to eject Larry the Lamb. Instead a retired sergeant major in grey uniform saluted and asked if he could help, governor.

‘I’d like to see the town clerk. I’m Paul Temple.’

A painting of the first mayor in all his finery glared down the luxurious winding staircase. The cream and green colour scheme of the interior added a touch of Regency to the atmosphere. It seemed a shame that the building was so silent. The civic splendour of a bygone age. Paul followed the man down hushed corridors to an office looking on to the town square.

‘Mr Temple? I’m Ballard, town clerk. How can I help you?’

They shook hands and Paul sat in a winged leather armchair. The town clerk looked genuinely pleased to see him, which increased Paul’s suspicion that all the other rooms in the building were empty. Ballard was old, absent minded and extremely thin. Perhaps when the place had been evacuated they had forgotten to advise him, they may have even thought he had retired.

‘Things seem very quiet,’ said Paul.

‘It’s all this local government reorganisation. Most of our work has been taken over, and the staff have gone with the work. That’s centralisation, Mr Temple.’

‘But you still administer education from here—’

‘No,’ Ballard interrupted. ‘I suppose you’ve come about Mr Kelby. He’s a co-opted member of the subcommittee for this region. A very good man, very entertaining.’

‘Could you tell me what was on the agenda for Monday’s meeting?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You don’t think he would have been kidnapped to prevent him from attending the meeting? Or to put pressure on him to support some local issue?’

The town clerk was amused by the suggestion. ‘Certainly not. At all our meetings Mr Kelby is in a minority of one.’ His face was creased with happy appreciation. ‘I don’t think Mr Kelby is really in favour of education. He thinks it corrupts young minds, prevents them from learning and exploring.’ He chuckled. ‘Nobody takes Mr Kelby seriously in Melford Cross.’

Paul wondered why he was on the subcommittee.

‘Prestige, I suppose, and the school children love him. He’s very good at speech days.’

Paul asked about the publicity attending their subcommittee meetings.

‘You mean, would anybody know that he had a meeting that morning? Yes, anybody could have known. The meetings of each council cycle are published in the local press. If anybody wanted to know we would tell them and keep no record of the fact. They aren’t secret.’

‘Thanks,’ said Paul. He rose to leave. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

‘I realised what you wanted to know.’ He showed Paul to the door and shook hands. ‘The police inspector asked the very same questions. He even asked why the building was so quiet. But he was rude, he cracked a joke about Larry the Lamb.’

Charlie Vosper was in charge of the case. He was at Melford House interviewing his suspects when Paul called on him fifteen minutes later. Charlie was a copper of the old school, not a bureaucrat. He was a good copper because he knew crooks, he respected them – the ones who were good at their job, and he even liked a lot of them. If Charlie hadn’t joined Scotland Yard and become an inspector he could have been a successful underworld boss. Paul Temple knew him of old. They even liked each other.

‘What do you want, Temple?’ Vosper asked rudely.

‘Just thought you might need some help.’

Charlie Vosper nodded. ‘Like I need a week in hospital. Do you know this chap Kelby?’

‘Slightly.’

‘Come into the library and tell me about him.’

Paul approved of the carved oak and the obvious solidity of the place. It indicated an old-fashioned taste for the good things of life. ‘Kelby seems quite a wealthy man,’ he said as he sat in the chair by the window. He could see the chauffeur–handyman on the lawn: a thickset fellow who was obviously a hard worker.

‘Did you think he was poor?’

‘No. But I thought he might be more superficial than these surroundings suggest.’ When Scott Reed had gone Paul had spent the evening reading history. It was one way of getting to grips with the missing man. And he had found that Kelby’s books were like his television appearances, so brilliant that you suspected him of showing off. He was provocative and witty. Not quite the academic historian.

‘He’s a shabby-looking bloke, I gather,’ said the inspector. ‘Lives a pretty dull life here in Melford.’

‘Yes. I was referring to his mind.’

‘Oh.’

Paul Temple talked for several minutes about the Kelby he had met and how their lives had occasionally intersected. But it didn’t add up to much. On the occasions when Kelby had been accompanied by a woman she had been thirty years younger than himself, which had also seemed ostentatious.

‘Young people have livelier minds,’ said Charlie Vosper. ‘Why should he be compelled to go about with women of his own age? He’s a widower.’

‘Really? I didn’t know he had been married.’

‘His wife died ten years ago. He has a son, Ronnie, who is staying here at the moment. He’s on holiday from America.’

‘Oh yes, of course. Scott Reed said something about avoiding the son; Kelby was fishing after a job for him.’

‘Mr Kelby and his son didn’t like each other,’ Vosper said grimly.

When Paul Temple saw the young man he could understand why. Ronnie was fair haired and charming in an obvious, straightforward way, and his mind was totally conventional. He must have been a grave disappointment to Kelby.

‘Do you think my father has been murdered?’ Ronnie asked.

Inspector Vosper was at his most intimidating. ‘Why, do you think he might have been?’

‘I don’t know. If he’d just been kidnapped we should have heard now, shouldn’t we? It’s five days since he left to attend that council meeting.’ He lit a cigarette and glanced nervously at the constable who was writing everything down. ‘The kidnappers would have asked us for the ransom, or something.’

‘The other alternative is that he simply cleared off. People are doing that all the time, they simply leave home. It isn’t against the law.’

Ronnie shrugged. ‘So what are you doing here?’

‘Making bloody sure, son. What did you do with yourself on Monday?’

‘Monday? Oh, I got up, drifted about—’

‘What time did you get up?’

‘Half past nine.’

‘And where did you drift?’

‘Around the house until lunchtime. I usually spend the morning trying to seduce Miss Leonard. She’s my father’s assistant. Then when I fail I go down to the pub for lunch or over to the golf club. It consoles me, you understand, restores my faith in my virility. On Monday I went over to the golf club and went round with the pro. There was nobody else about and I don’t have any friends in Melford. I came back to the house feeling sorry for myself.’

‘Time?’

‘Oh, between four and five. Then I wrote off for a job.’

‘What job?’

‘With the Arts Council of Great Britain.’

Paul found that his attention was straying as the routine interviews proceeded. He ought to have been interested, as Vosper said, to watch somebody else at work. But Paul hadn’t yet acclimatised himself to the English times. In America they were hours behind and they never went to bed.

He stopped yawning when Tracy Leonard came into the room. She was tall and twenty-five and had straight brown hair. She wasn’t the type to take bullying from Charlie Vosper. She didn’t take to the bluff, fatherly manner either.

‘Mr Kelby is a historian, inspector. He needs his books and his papers, otherwise he can’t work. And he had promised Neville Chamberlain to his publisher by October.’

‘Neville Chamberlain?’ said Vosper blankly.

‘He was prime minister before the war.’

‘I know who he was, Miss Leonard! I just fail to see what Neville Chamberlain has to do with your employer’s disappearance!’

She smiled patiently, a demure advertisement for the very best toothpaste. ‘I am explaining to you that Mr Kelby cannot have left home voluntarily. He is writing a book on Neville Chamberlain, and obviously he will have done absolutely no work this week. He has to work here, among all this.’ She gestured eloquently at the muddle of the library.

Charlie Vosper took three deep breaths and composed his leathery face back into a friendly expression. ‘Well, that seems to imply that he was removed by force. After all, if he were lost or had fallen ill the local police would have found him. They’re known from here to London as the Blue Berets.’ He chuckled to prove his good nature, the policeman with a sense of humour.

‘How did you spend last Monday?’ he asked her.

‘I worked all day. I have a room in what Mr Kelby calls the east wing. It’s a room built on to the side of the house. I came through at nine o’clock and opened the post, sorted out the day’s work…’ She had worked for Kelby for several years and her routine was established.

‘When did you realise Mr Kelby was missing?’

Tracy Leonard smiled. She regarded that as a silly question. ‘He was due back from the town hall around one, and he didn’t return. If you mean when did I really become worried, that was in the evening. Ronnie Kelby and I spent half the evening doing a tour of Melford. We searched everywhere he was likely to be. And then at about ten o’clock we went to the police.’

‘Did Ronnie Kelby,’ the inspector asked surprisingly, ‘share your concern?’

‘I think so. He went for three hours without making a pass at me.’

‘How galling for you.’

‘It’s like having fleas, you don’t notice them after a while.’

Tracy Leonard had been one of Kelby’s brightest students; she had stayed on to do research with him when all her contemporaries had taken jobs as schoolteachers, and she had given up university life when Kelby had. She thought he was a great historian.

‘Have you any idea why he would have been taken by force?’

‘I assume somebody wanted to get their hands on that diary.’

‘What diary?’

‘The diary that Scott Reed left with him on Monday morning. It seemed to be an important historical document.’

Charlie Vosper rose slowly to his feet. ‘You didn’t tell me anything about a diary.’

‘You didn’t ask me. It was apparently rather valuable.’

Paul intervened tactfully to save the girl from the massive wrath of the law. ‘Rather scandalous, actually. I should think a lot of people would give a lot to have it suppressed.’

‘You knew about this?’ Charlie shouted.

‘I assumed everybody knew.’

Charlie Vosper was turning a terrible shade of mauve.

*

‘No, he wasn’t shouting, Mrs Ashwood. The inspector has one of those voices that carries a long way.’ Paul Temple lifted the ladle to his lips and tasted the stew. ‘Especially when he’s angry. This is a stew like they used to make it in the depths of the country, Mrs A.’

‘Mr Kelby is very partial to it, sir.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ Paul continued his approving tour of the kitchen. ‘How long have you been with Mr Kelby?’

‘Oh, it must be more than ten years now. Leo and I moved in when Mrs Kelby was taken ill. That was a sad time for Mr Kelby and he found he needed help. He’s such a good man. We did everything we could to keep this a home for him, especially after she died. Do you think he’ll be all right?’

‘I trust so, Mrs Ashwood. I really hope so.’ She was a large, motherly woman and she was clearly devoted to her employer. Paul sensed the grief that such disruptions of normal domesticity can cause; suddenly Kelby was a human being and it mattered that he should be well.

‘Is Leo your husband?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘I saw him working in the grounds.’

‘He’s a hard worker. It takes his mind off the trouble. Leo is more like a friend of Mr Kelby than just the handyman.’ She allowed a brief laugh to ripple through her ample body. ‘Mr Kelby always says that Leo taught him to be a countryman. They’re very close.’

It was relaxing in the kitchen. Gladys Ashwood lived in a nice world of nice people. She was sympathetic about Mr Ronnie. ‘Well, he was devoted to his mother. Her death was such a blow that he needed somebody to blame. He blamed Mr Kelby. But they’ve made it up now. Mr Kelby was so pleased that his son came home the other week. There’s even talk of Mr Ronnie staying…’ She liked Tracy Leonard: ‘Such a brilliant girl and ever so much the lady. She’s been here for nearly five years…’ None of these nice people would ever harm Mr Kelby. The only person she had bad words to say about was Ted Mortimer.

‘I feel responsible in a way,’ she was saying. ‘Ted Mortimer used to be very close with my husband and me. We used to see a lot of him. But he’s not a countryman. He was in the merchant navy.’

Paul was drinking a cup of tea she had poured him and he scarcely heard her story about the row Kelby had with the neighbouring farmer. ‘Mr Kelby was going over there on Monday afternoon,’ she said, and the words registered with a sudden shock.

‘What did you say, Mrs Ashwood?’

‘To see Ted Mortimer. He was going over to Galloway Farm—’

‘Did he ever arrive?’

‘I couldn’t say.’

‘What was their row about?’

‘I wouldn’t know, Mr Temple, but they do say in the village that there was a quarrel about money. We don’t see Ted Mortimer any more, you see, and I’m not one to gossip myself—’

‘Of course you aren’t, Mrs Ashwood. But you’re a wonderful raconteur. Excuse me if I dash away.’ He squeezed her shoulder affectionately. ‘By the way, this is my card. If you do remember any gossip, please let me know. I’m a devil of a gossip myself.’

She was laughing complacently as he left the kitchen and collided in the hall with Charlie Vosper. The inspector had come running from the library.

‘Where are you off to?’ Vosper asked suspiciously.

‘Me? Oh, I thought I’d make a tour of the neighbouring farms. It hasn’t been done, has it?’

‘No, it hasn’t. Would you mind driving with me, Temple? I’d like to be sure I know all that you know before we search Ted Mortimer’s place. I like to keep abreast.’

They walked across the drive towards the police car with studied casualness. But the inspector reached it first.

Chapter 4

‘OF course there never was such a diary, my dear. How could there be when Dickie never had such a mistress? Dickie had his faults, I’d be the first to admit them: he was a bore and he danced abominably, but I never noticed people rushing off to enter up their diaries whenever Dickie trod on their corns. What did you say this person’s name was?’

Steve persevered with the assignment. ‘Miss Spender. Margaret Spender.’

‘Never heard of her!’

‘She was your husband’s secretary.’

The frail old lady said: ‘Oh!’ like an ancient bird sighting a small field mouse. ‘That Miss Spender. I always felt sorry for her. She was a big girl. We called her the last of the big Spenders.’ Her eyes sparkled with malicious life.

‘Miss Spender did keep a diary for those ten years,’ said Steve, ‘and of course that included the period after the war when your husband was murdered.’

‘Killed, dear. It could have been an accident. I expect it gave her something to do in the evenings.’

‘And now that she is dead her sister has decided to publish it.’

‘How very demeaning.’

Steve had felt slightly nervous when she arrived at Delamore House. But she had made an appointment with Lady Delamore’s secretary, which Paul had said was significant. She’s worried, he had said, or else she wants to know what is going on. A butler had shown Steve into the drawing room; and then Lady Delamore had bustled in calling for Simpson to bring tea.

‘We’ll have tea early today,’ she had said pedantically. It was only ten minutes to four. ‘Mrs Temple looks as if she needs sustenance.’

She was not putting Steve at her ease.

‘You young people are so thin these days. I’m thin, but then I’m eighty-five. When I was your age I had a generous bosom and a bottom you could really sit on.’

‘You must have led a busy life in those—’

‘It must be all this unisex that you people go in for these days. It makes everybody thin.’

The butler brought in tea at that point. It gave Steve an excuse to change the subject. She talked about the diary although Lady Delamore’s attention soon wandered.

‘How do you come to be involved in this?’ she suddenly demanded.

‘My husband is a crime writer, and it was his publisher who acquired the diary.’

‘Crime, eh?’ She laughed derisively. ‘It’s a little late for solving any of the mysteries which surrounded my husband’s death. Those of us who are still alive have forgotten what little we knew.’

‘Nobody is trying to solve anything, Lady Delamore,’ Steve said provocatively. ‘The solutions are all given in the diary.’

‘Which has disappeared, you said?’

‘A man has disappeared, Lady Delamore. The historian, Alfred Kelby. The diary is incidental, although if we found that we might also find Mr Kelby. My husband wondered whether you, or some of your friends, might be being blackmailed. Whoever has this diary might try to extort money by it.’

‘I never pay blackmailers,’ she pronounced aphoristically, ‘and none of my friends have any money. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.’

Steve helped herself to another tea cake. ‘Alfred Kelby was reading the diary to give his opinion on its historical authenticity,’ she said.

‘I don’t understand. Do you mean he could confirm that my husband was really murdered? And murdered by whomever Miss Spender accuses? Surely if Mr Kelby knew that he should have said in 1947, when poor Sir Philip Tranmere was arrested. I believe there was a Mr Kelby in the party up at the shooting lodge at the time, but I don’t remember that he was really in with the best people.’

Steve suggested that Mr Kelby could find the diary explanation convincing or not. ‘He would know the people involved, and he might be a better witness than you, Lady Delamore, on the subject of Miss Spender.’

‘What would a historian know of my poor late husband’s sexual relationships? This publisher should have asked me. I could have told him that Dickie’s morals were above reproach. He snored in his sleep and his feet smelled. Those are not characteristics that attract stray women. What is more, after three whiskies he fell fast asleep. What would he want with a mistress? I never knew a man who slept as much as Dickie.’

Lady Delamore had already spent eighty-five years of her life keeping people in their place. Steve found it almost impossible to guess whether she was worried, guilty, or sublimely above the contemporary world. But just as she was about to leave the butler appeared.

‘Excuse me, my lady. Sir Philip Tranmere is on the telephone.’

‘I’ll ring him back, Simpson.’

‘He says that it is most urgent, my lady.’

Lady Delamore sighed. ‘The silly man. It is not urgent to me. Tell him that everything is perfectly in order, and I’ll ring him this evening. Mrs Temple is about to leave.’

Steve left. After the afternoon’s ordeal it was almost a shock to see the mini and maxi skirts and fashionable long hair, people on the streets who belonged unmistakably to the 1970s.

Paul was still out when she reached home. So Steve helped Kate with the housework and allowed her mind to freewheel over the things Lady Delamore had said. She had a record sleeve to design by Monday, but she didn’t want to become absorbed in anything else until she had talked to Paul. He arrived shortly after nine o’clock to find Steve doodling at the drawing board.

‘Lady Delamore didn’t feel worried or guilty, I’m sure of that,’ Steve assured him. ‘In fact I don’t think she gives a damn about anything or anybody. I only hope I’ll be like that when I’m eighty-five. She was so dreadful she was rather splendid.’

Paul laughed. ‘I’m sure that when you’re eighty-five you’ll be absolutely appalling!’

‘Flatterer.’

‘It’s nice to be back.’ He poured himself a whisky and sat beside Steve. ‘Hello, have you been commissioned to do some work?’

‘Yes, I saw Jeremy while you were away.’ She smiled quickly. ‘He said the work was flowing in again. Design looks up. Britain will look a better place to live in—’

‘That sounds like Jeremy. While I was pounding along the Atlantic seaboard earning dollars for Britain Jeremy was seducing my wife with record sleeves.’

Steve laughed. ‘I sat here night after night, thinking of you and knitting in front of the fire. I read Dylan Thomas in America to keep myself company. But did you miss me?’

‘I’ll say I did, my darling.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Next time I see Jeremy I’ll punch him on the nose. Do you want some whisky?’

‘Not at the moment. I’ve spent a hideous afternoon to discover what that old crone knew about the diary. So listen and sound interested.’

‘Mm. Tell me.’

‘I think the diary is probably in her possession.’

Paul stood up in amazement. ‘Really? Steve, you’re marvellous! How did you establish that?’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t. Call it feminine intuition.’

‘Oh, that. You mean you’re guessing.’

‘I’m convinced of it. Can I have some brandy?’

Paul went across to the sideboard and opened a bottle of brandy. ‘I suppose she would be the number one suspect for stealing it. But I can’t see an eighty-five-year-old woman kidnapping Kelby.’ He looked at the bottle for a moment, then said quietly: ‘Did I tell you? We found Kelby this afternoon.’

Charlie Vosper had driven like a stunt man in a silent film to reach Ted Mortimer’s farm. He had telephoned for two constables to conduct a search of the premises. The constables arrived from the opposite direction at the same time as Charlie Vosper swung into Galloway Farm and narrowly missed three hens out for a walk. They drove in convoy past the barn and cattle sheds alongside a field of sheep to the rambling farmhouse. By the time the two cars had skidded to a halt Ted Mortimer was already in the doorway.

‘Do you realise it’s dangerous to drive at that speed?’ he demanded.

He was a big man with a red, weather-beaten face. His arms were tattooed with swords and snakes. An aggressive man who was none too pleased to see the police.

‘What’s all the panic?’ he asked.

Charlie Vosper showed his identification. ‘We’re investigating the disappearance of Mr Alfred Kelby. I believe you knew him. He’s been missing since Monday morning, and I wondered whether you could help us to locate him.’

Mortimer shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Kelby and I weren’t really on visiting terms.’

‘He was coming over here on Monday afternoon.’

‘That’s right. But he never arrived.’

Charlie Vosper stared at the farmer, deciding whether he was ‘straight’ or not. It was a careful examination and Paul could see why the man should glare so aggressively back.

‘Do you mind if we look over your farm?’

Mortimer was ungracious. ‘Go ahead if you must, but don’t disturb my livestock. They aren’t used to policemen.’

The farm was obviously run down. Ted Mortimer himself bore a grudge against the world, and his men bore a grudge against Ted Mortimer. The animals obviously didn’t give a damn for anyone. It was something to do with the weather, Paul decided as he wandered round in the wake of the police. The weather was always bad for farmers.

‘Bad weather for the crops,’ he said conversationally to Ted Mortimer as they came out of the tractor shed.

‘We’re mainly livestock here,’ he said. ‘Dairy farm.’

Paul nodded. ‘Shocking weather.’

The two constables had been through the rooms and attic and cellars of the house, without success. Of course a body could have been buried in the fields. But they went through the outhouses and ramshackle cattle sheds systematically. They found Kelby when they reached the barn.

The barn was built on two levels. The ground level was scattered with sacks of fertiliser and a set of disc harrows. On the upper level a rusty old bath kept company with an abandoned sewing machine, a child’s rocking horse and an odd assortment of junk. One of the constables on the top level was leaning out of the loading bay as Charlie Vosper and Paul Temple reached the doors.

‘He’s down there,’ the man called. ‘The rain butt by the corner.’

Paul and the inspector ran to the back of the barn. The rain butt was very large, and unless you were deliberately searching you wouldn’t have seen the hand resting over the edge by the drainpipe.

A police ambulance and a doctor were sent for, as well as the photographer and a fingerprint man from the lab. Paul Temple watched in fascination as the whole organisation moved smoothly into action. A constable stayed on duty by the body and the other took statements from the farm hands. It was such a routine operation for them that a man’s violent death became almost an irrelevance.

‘Nobody’s been near this bloody barn for ten days. You can see it’s hardly used at this time of year.’

Paul Temple realised that the farmer was still standing next to him. As the only other man without a part to play he had stayed helplessly by Paul’s side, watching and feeling sorry for himself.

‘When did you last see Mr Kelby alive?’ Paul asked him.

‘I saw him in the village about a week ago. But I didn’t speak to him.’

‘Why not?’

‘I saw him first.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘What do you think it means? It means I avoided him.’ Ted Mortimer stepped aside to allow the doctor to pass. They were about to move the body. It was a bloated, blue-hued impersonal thing, nothing more to do with Alfred Kelby. ‘Wouldn’t you avoid someone if you owed him two thousand quid, and you were up to your bloody ears in debt?’

Paul smiled thoughtfully. ‘That’s a good question. I think I probably would, Mr Mortimer.’

The farmer looked at him for a moment, not quite sure what to make of Paul’s attitude. Then he turned away to stare at the ambulance. The stray hand was visible again, hanging below the white sheet.

‘Did you know that Mr Kelby was coming to see you on Monday afternoon?’

‘That stuck-up secretary of his telephoned; it was like announcing a royal visit. But Kelby didn’t turn up.’

‘Were you at home Monday afternoon and evening?’

‘Yes,’ Mortimer said angrily. ‘And I didn’t see anybody putting him in the rain butt. I would have sent them both packing if I had!’

‘What time do your men go home?’

‘At this time of the year about six o’clock. Now do you mind if I get some work done? I’ve a livelihood to earn.’

Ted Mortimer strode away to the house. Paul smiled to himself and went across to join Charlie Vosper. The ambulance was just departing, and Charlie was watching it go as he lit his pipe.

‘Well?’ asked Paul.

The inspector growled and carried on lighting his pipe. ‘He’s been in that water some time. Probably since Monday.’

‘Was he drowned?’ Paul asked.

‘I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy.’ He threw a match into the ground level of the barn and watched to see whether it carried on burning. ‘From the look of him I’d say that his neck was broken, but there’s bound to have been a struggle. I’d like to know which happened first.’

Paul nodded. ‘It would make quite a difference.’

‘If he died of a broken neck he could have been killed elsewhere and then brought here later. That would be easier.’

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