Paul Temple and the Kelby Affair

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.

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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.’