Читать книгу Paul Temple and the Kelby Affair - Francis Durbridge, Francis Durbridge - Страница 7

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.