Paul Temple and the Kelby Affair

by Francis Durbridge

  ‘Yes, Charlie—’

  ‘But I know you, Temple. You’ll go sniffing after that diary, because you’re a literary sort of gentleman. So get this straight. If you stumble across anything interesting I want to know. I don’t care why you think it wouldn’t interest me, and I don’t mind you interrupting my routine work. You get straight on to me. Right?’

  ‘Unambiguous, Charlie.’

  Charlie climbed from the car muttering about literary bloody gentlemen and the gritty realism of police work.

  The lights were on in the house. And while they had been talking a couple of white faces had appeared silhouetted in the windows. Paul felt distinctly inadequate as he saw Gladys Ashwood running across the forecourt towards the car. He knew she was going to be upset, and something of his feeling must have shown because she stopped a few yards away and just stared.

  ‘He’s dead?’ she asked eventually.

  Paul Temple put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s go back inside, Mrs Ashwood.’

  Her husband Leo was standing in the side doorway. ‘What happened?’ he asked hoarsely.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Kelby has been murdered.’

  Leo muttered: ‘Oh my God.’ It was a pretty conventional reaction, but it was genuine, like his wife’s tears. She sobbed in total incomprehension. After Paul and Leo had got her to the kitchen she asked the usual unanswerable questions, about who could do such a thing and why it was necessary.

  ‘Where did you find him?’ Leo demanded.

  ‘In a barn on Ted Mortimer’s farm.’

  ‘Mr Kelby lent him two thousand pounds,’ Leo said harshly. ‘That’s why he killed him. Did the police arrest the bastard?’

  ‘Well no, they don’t yet know who actually killed Mr Kelby.’

  ‘They don’t know?’ he shouted angrily.

  And in counterpoint his wife was whispering that Mr Kelby was such a wonderful person, always so thoughtful and kind to everyone. She couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Does Mr Ronnie know what’s happened, sir?’ asked Leo.

  ‘Er yes, I think the inspector is telling him now. My goodness, Inspector Vosper will be wondering where I’ve got to. I told him I was off back to London. Well, look after your wife, Mr Ashwood. It’s a tragic blow…’

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ she was sobbing. ‘Poor Mr Kelby. And I was going to pick up his suit from the cleaners this afternoon. There are so many jobs to do, and there isn’t any point now.’

  ‘Go and pick up the suit,’ Leo ordered gruffly. ‘We’re still working.’

  As Paul slipped out of the house he found Scott Reed arriving in the black Rover. Paul greeted him with some surprise.

  ‘I came to see whether they’ve found Kelby. I feel so responsible, having given him the diary to read. And I promised Bella Spender a decision today.’ He was flapping. He wanted to say all the things on his mind in one speech. ‘Has anything happened?’

  ‘We found Kelby, but I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  Scott was silent and the colour drained from his face.

  ‘We found him a couple of miles away, in a rain butt.’

  ‘My God! I’d better go in and offer my condolences. I asked him to read that diary, you see.’

  Paul watched him cross the drive and go uncertainly into the house. He looked a worried man. But he couldn’t have foreseen that this would happen, Paul thought to himself as he drove away. It surely wasn’t Scott’s fault.

  *

  ‘Do you think I look like a unisex person?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Paul was suddenly suspicious. ‘Why? What would that make me?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was that awful dowager. She was being nasty about my trouser suit. She said I was thin.’

  ‘So you are. It’s all that slimming.’

  ‘Paul! I thought you liked me to be beautiful?’

  He laughed. ‘You are beautiful. That’s what I call a compact figure. It doesn’t flop about all over the place. Let’s go to bed. I haven’t yet adjusted to English times.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means, but it sounds as if you shouldn’t have had that extra brandy after the wine. Paul! Put me down!’

  Kate Balfour bustled in from the kitchen, stopped abruptly and then bustled back. She removed her apron and crept silently from the house.

  Chapter 5

  PAUL TEMPLE was making notes for the book he had thought of in America. He was trying to decide whether Crime and Punishment was a thriller, and whether death was tragic. He wanted his murder to be a gratuitous act, rather than an acte gratuité, with about as much dramatic meaning as a car crash: that would be its significance. But perhaps he was becoming pompous. He went through into the kitchen and made a jug of coffee.

  ‘Can you see any reason why Kelby’s death should be connected with the diary?’ he asked Steve. ‘Or why he should have been killed because of a quarrel with Ted Mortimer? Maybe his son coming back from America at this precise moment has nothing to do with anything.’

  Steve nodded patiently. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I just thought…well, he might have been killed by a tramp or a drink-crazed bank manager. Think of the great national pool of hatred that must exist against television performers; Kelby often lectured on television, and now perhaps he has paid the price of fame. The drunken bank manager then realised what he had done, panicked, and hid the body in the barn. Why should it all tie in with everything?’

  ‘I know this mood of yours, Paul. You talk like this when you want to write the Bleak House of the twentieth century. The great Elizabethan novel. Sit down and let me pour the coffee. You’ll soon feel better.’

  Better! Words flooded into his mind and became jammed. Better?

  ‘Kelby might have caught the handyman stealing the spoons. Ashwood. He might have been calling the police to arrest Ashwood.’

  Steve was busy with the coffee. ‘Yes, dear, he sounds a dubious character. I’d look into Mr Ashwood.’ She nodded in vague encouragement.

  ‘Darling, don’t be silly. Ashwood wouldn’t have killed him.’

  ‘No, dear.’ She rattled a few cups. ‘That was your idea.’

  ‘I simply wondered whether we were being too logical.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  Paul sat in his chair at the massive desk and stared at his notes. They were pompous. He went over and sat in the Swedish egg chair. The Times crossword puzzle. That would clarify the mind. He sipped his coffee and picked up the newspaper. He had nearly finished the crossword yesterday, which showed that his mind was confused. The egg chair shut out the world. He browsed contentedly through the paper.

  ‘Historian dead in rain butt,’ ran the headline. Paul read the story automatically:

  ‘Alfred Kelby, the historian, was found upside down in a butt of water yesterday after a three day search by the police had led them to a farm two miles from Alfred Kelby’s home in Melford Cross. The police are treating it as a case of murder…’

  As the crossword was on the back page it meant you had to browse through the whole paper to reach it. Several pages later Paul glanced at the obituaries:

  ‘Alfred Kelby was an idiosyncratic historian whose wayward and controversial career sometimes obscured the real scholarship which lay behind his work…’

  There was no mention of Kelby’s girlfriend. The young, extrovert blonde Paul had seen with him on those social occasions. Paul wondered why he hadn’t come across her, or heard mention of her in Melford Cross.

  ‘Steve!’ he called. ‘What happened to Kelby’s girlfriend?’

  She was only the other side of the room, but she scarcely heard his muffled voice.

  ‘Darling!’ He sprang into the room. ‘Do you realise there’s no woman in this case? That isn’t natural.’

  Steve smiled sweetly. ‘What about me?’

  ‘You don’t count.’

  ‘There’s Tracy Leonard. I thought you were rather taken with her. Couldn’t she have been involved?’

 
Paul grunted something about motives. ‘I doubt if there was a romantic link between her and Kelby – someone else would have known if there were. Leo or Ronnie would have known. There wouldn’t be much of a financial motive; I expect Ronnie stands to inherit what money there is. She’s an independent girl. A promising young history student in her own right. If she were in trouble or bored with her work she would presumably marry and live happily ever after in Hendon.’

  ‘So perhaps it was Ronnie, to lay his hands on the inheritance.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be a fortune,’ said Paul. But he knew people had been murdered for less. He picked up the telephone and dialled Scott Reed’s office. ‘I’d rather find a woman in the case.’

  He invited Scott to dinner.

  ‘He’ll know about the girl,’ Paul explained to Steve. ‘It was at one of his parties we met Kelby with that blonde girl on his arm. He’ll know who she was, or who replaced her. Anyway I’d like to see Scott again. This case revolves around his missing diary. Kelby may have been killed by someone who was anxious to obtain that diary.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Steve. ‘I wonder where it will end.’

  Paul laughed. ‘I don’t think Scott Reed is in danger. They presumably have the diary now. Either Lady Delamore or a person unknown.’

  But Steve was fascinated by the idea of a series of deaths arising out of the diary. It was an idea Paul had once used, the serial murder, in an early novel. For the rest of the day while she was alone in the house she convinced herself that it was Scott Reed’s last night on earth.

  Charlie Vosper’s field headquarters were in Melford Cross opposite the town hall. It was a disused drill hall from the days when the county regiment was in full pride. Charlie had ten men, including two sergeants, with two cars and two telephones. From time to time the local inspector drifted resentfully in to check on progress, found they were getting nowhere and drifted happily out.

  Paul passed him in the entrance and said: ‘Good morning, Inspector Hobden. Delivering the morning report?’

  ‘Huh.’ He stopped in country fashion for a chat. ‘Do you know what they’ve been doing? House-to-house statements.’ He glanced up at the sky; it was cloudy but the breeze would soon clear things. It would be a bright afternoon. ‘House-to-house questioning! That’s all London boys can do. They don’t know the area, so all they can do is fall back on routine. Huh.’

  ‘Whereas,’ Paul said, lingering, ‘you’ve known all the people involved since they were so high.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He jammed the flat cap onto his head and stepped into the gravel forecourt. ‘I’ve known them for years.’

  ‘And what would you do, Inspector Hobden, if it were still your case?’

  Hobden glanced right and left, and right again. ‘I’d check on Ronnie Kelby, Mr Temple. Things have changed since he arrived. He’s a comparative stranger, and between you and me, Mr Temple, he’s a smooth one.’

  Paul chuckled to himself as the man strode off towards the police station. He liked the way Hobden worked: it was uncomplicated and direct. He had said the same thing to Charlie Vosper about Paul – a stranger and a smooth one. He probably objected to Vosper for being a stranger, although nobody had ever called Charlie smooth.

  Charlie was sitting on a table sticking pins in a map of the district and biting into a bacon sandwich.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I thought you might be lonely out here among the natives.’

  It was an impressive flurry of activity. The murderer, if he or she could see the concentrated effort, would have confessed on the spot.

  ‘What’s this about Ronnie Kelby?’ he asked Charlie Vosper.

  ‘Have you been talking to Hobden? He’s a village bobby at heart; he doesn’t understand crime. Do you know what he said about Ted Mortimer this morning? That Mortimer is a bit impetuous. What the hell, does he want to send Mortimer to bed without his supper?’

  ‘So what about Ronnie Kelby?’

  ‘He’s a troublemaker. Apparently his father has changed, or rather had changed, since Ronnie came home from America. Inspector Hobden thinks it was Ronnie’s fault that his father quarrelled with Mortimer.’

  Paul nodded. ‘But would Ronnie murder his dad?’

  ‘That depends on how bad their relationship was ten years ago. He seems a bit impetuous and spoiled, to put it mildly.’

  ‘Have you checked on him with the FBI?’

  Charlie Vosper nodded. ‘Nothing criminal, but he had come to their attention. He got into a fight in New York, and once in Boston he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. Those are still crimes in America, but Ronnie boy got off. He’s unstable.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Paul. ‘Dangerous.’

  A uniformed constable came hurrying over to the desk. ‘Your helicopter has arrived, sir,’ he announced disbelievingly. ‘Apparently it’s in a field behind the part-time library.’

  ‘Right,’ said Vosper. ‘Let’s go.’

  The helicopter was surrounded by villagers who were all talking about moon landings. They were staring at the leather-clad pilot and chattering as if he wouldn’t understand what they were saying about him. It was the most exciting event since a German plane had crashed on Armitage’s farm in 1942, and none of them had actually seen that.

  ‘Excuse me,’ called Vosper. ‘Make way, please.’

  ‘What are we doing?’ asked Paul.

  ‘We? I’m spending an hour going across the fields around Ted Mortimer’s farm. Are you coming?’

  ‘What about insurance?’

  Charlie Vosper gave him a withering glare and then climbed into the cockpit without answering. Paul followed him. It was a tiny RAF helicopter that sat two men and the pilot. Vosper and PC Anderson were the two men, so Paul huddled nervously on the floor. As the craft shuddered into the air and the crowd moved back in religious awe Paul succumbed to paranoia. He knew the inspector usually regarded him as a nuisance. It was a plot to kill him. The helicopter suddenly soared to two hundred feet in a vertical take-off and then shot forward towards Melford House.

  ‘What are you grinning about?’ Paul demanded.

  ‘If I didn’t know you as well as I do I’d think you were nervous.’

  ‘I’m uncomfortable, wedged here in the corner. What happens if the door opens?’

  ‘We’ll have to hunt for a parachute,’ said Vosper with a bark of laughter.

  Paul decided to concentrate on the purpose of their mission. Aerial views of the English countryside could usually reveal more than land views about ancient paths and boundaries, they could pick out changes in soil and development. In this case the theory was that they might pick out evidence of a recent walk across the fields, by someone carrying a heavy body over his shoulder when it was too dark to worry about paths. At the very least they should find some fragments of clothing once they had established the route.

  ‘Supposing,’ Paul said perversely, ‘it was Ronnie Kelby. He wouldn’t have taken the body across the fields. He would have gone the long way round in his father’s car.’

  ‘Maybe, but we’ve checked the car and it tells us nothing.’

  They hovered over Melford House. Two policemen and a dog climbed out of a car in the road, waved in acknowledgment and then set off down the road. A hundred yards along they turned left through a swing gate into the potato field. PC Anderson was talking to them through a walkie-talkie.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Ronnie Kelby’s alibi,’ said Paul. ‘He needn’t have put the body in the rain butt on Monday evening.’

  ‘Are you trying to be helpful?’ Vosper growled.

  ‘Anybody could have put it there at five o’clock on Tuesday morning.’

  ‘Why don’t you concentrate on feeling nervous, Temple?’

  Over the brow of the hill the crops changed to corn for nearly half a mile, then to the cow pasture which Mortimer owned. There was a stile between the potatoes and the corn field. The dog appeared to scent a rabbit at that point and it scurr
ied off into the hedgerow, but the policemen had found something by the stile itself. They waved up to the helicopter.

  ‘What have they found?’ Charlie Vosper asked the policeman next to him.

  ‘It’s a note.’ The man sounded excited. ‘A note from Mr Kelby.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  The policeman consulted his colleagues on the ground, and gradually the writing on the wet piece of paper was deciphered.

  ‘It’s from Mr Kelby and it says:

  “Of course I’ll meet you if it’s so important. But it had better not be at the house. You know how things have changed. Can we meet at the stile where we used to meet? Say ten o’clock this evening. Yours ever, Alfred.”’

  Charlie Vosper muttered to himself while he assimilated the new information, then he told the men to continue the search.

  ‘You’ll never believe this,’ Paul said delightedly, ‘but I said to Steve this morning that we need a woman in the case.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Did Kelby have a girlfriend these last few months?’ Paul asked the inspector.

  ‘No, at least not since Ronnie came home. Nobody’s mentioned a girl except you.’ Charlie Vosper snorted grimly. ‘And the girl you described sounded like one of his students.’

  ‘No, not necessarily.’ She had impressed Paul as a sexy little thing with lots of animal vitality. Paul had wondered then how Kelby stood the pace. But of course she could have been an intellectual with it. ‘She was young, that was all.’

  Instead of returning to the field headquarters they went round to the local police station. It was really a house that dated from the days when a village bobby had lived there. But the police had expanded since then, and the small local force used all eight rooms as offices and kept the basement as a lockup for the occasional drunk. They found Inspector Hobden in the erstwhile parlour.

  ‘We need your help,’ said Vosper. ‘After all, you’ve known these people since they were so high. Local man.’ Vosper sat before the unnecessary coal fire and beamed encouragingly. ‘Tell me the gossip on Kelby. Did he have girlfriends? Who were they? What were his sexual habits?’