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Paul Temple and the Tyler Mystery
Francis Durbridge
When two young women are found murdered within a week of each other, Scotland Yard enlist the help of sleuthing crime writer Paul Temple to unravel the mystery.Working in tandem with his astute and elegant wife Steve, Temple takes up the scent and discovers a dark secret that places them both in mortal danger.
FRANCIS DURBRIDGE
Paul Temple and the Tyler Mystery
Copyright (#ulink_696aa6a7-f045-57fe-a877-ae8d1ae36815)
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
Hodder & Stoughton 1957
Copyright © Francis Durbridge 1957
All rights reserved
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover image © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Francis Durbridge has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
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: 9780008252908
Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008252915
Version: 2017-06-29
Contents
Cover (#ud51ba79f-dd02-50c4-8ea8-6f1155d7d1e9)
Title Page (#u58fec502-9850-540d-b952-68441301d8cb)
Copyright (#u2adca6b0-2f11-5a45-b9d5-59e2febe4f26)
Chapter One (#u8afe375d-b3ff-5941-a680-323bae43a667)
Chapter Two (#u90d9c828-39dc-561a-b430-23d82c7787f8)
Chapter Three (#u1adf5a3b-5e35-5f5d-95a3-afc95a6e65d1)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also in This Series (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_76b4d81a-b99d-59f9-8d28-8b378a54e2ff)
At about ten-thirty on a Thursday evening in early May a prowl car of the Oxford Constabulary was patrolling the Chipping Norton road a few miles outside the city. There had been complaints of wild driving on this fast section during the lurid period immediately after the closing of the pubs.
Sergeant Long turned his Austin a few hundred yards past the Welsh Harp and began to motor decorously back towards Oxford. Only a few weeks earlier the landlord of the Welsh Harp had been warned for serving customers after the prescribed hour. He had made sure of emptying his premises in good time that night. The parking space out in front was already empty, and through the uncurtained windows the two policemen could see the proprietor and his barmaid as they moved among the deserted tables collecting the empties.
‘Not much doing tonight,’ Long remarked to the constable at his side.
‘Pay day tomorrow,’ Benson answered briefly. He was a man of deep thoughts and few words; he spoke in a curiously oblique way which implied more than he actually said.
Three miles further on, a signpost with the words Lay-by swam up into the headlights. As they passed the bay at the side of the road Benson screwed up his eyes to note the number of the solitary saloon car parked there.
‘4006 JDR.’
He repeated the number aloud and switched on the light which illuminated his message pad.
‘Same number, all right.’
Long had already applied the brakes. Both men had memorised the number as belonging to one of the cars stolen in Oxford that evening. He put the Austin into reverse and with one arm laid along the back of Benson’s seat, manœuvred the police car back into the lay-by. Before he had stopped with his bumpers almost touching those of the stolen car Benson was out on the roadway.
The now abandoned saloon was a black Jaguar Mark VII. It was complete and undamaged. Benson opened the door, felt for the light switch and turned on the side-lights. Immediately he did so the interior light came on. Benson sniffed. His sensitive non-smoker’s nostrils had detected a whiff of woman’s perfume. He noted the ignition key still in the slot, the neatly folded travelling rug that lay undisturbed on the seat beside the driver.
‘What’s up?’ Long called from the police car. ‘No ignition key, I suppose.’
‘Key’s there, all right.’
To Benson’s tidy mind something about the situation did not make sense. Cars were frequently ‘borrowed’ by young men who could find no other way of arranging an hour’s privacy with their girl friends. But if that were the case it was unlikely that the rug would have preserved its immaculate neatness. And how had the pair gone home? Surely they would not drive out of Oxford for the mere pleasure of walking back again. There were no houses close by to which they could have gone. A thought struck Benson and he checked the petrol gauge. The tank was still half full.
For no particular reason he walked slowly round the Mark VII. It happened that at this moment a pair of sports cars came racing up the road at full-speed – an Austin-Healey pursued by a Triumph. For a few seconds their brilliant lights floodlit the rear of the Jaguar and in that time Benson’s eye was caught by a minute triangle of green at the edge of the luggage compartment lid. It was dark again before he could grip the chromium handle and open the lid. Instantly an automatic light came on inside the compartment, and at the same time the scent of perfume became stronger. The light illuminated the body of a young woman lying huddled on the corrugated rubber flooring. She was dressed as if she had changed to go out for the evening – a green ballet length dress, small handbag, necklace and bracelet to match, court shoes. Round her neck was a colourful silk scarf picturing well-known views of Paris. Benson, though he had never been there, recognised the base of the Eiffel Tower, the pillars of the Madeleine and the façade of the Opera. This scarf, instead of being folded casually round the girl’s throat, had been knotted with savage tightness at the back of her neck. One look at her face was enough to show Benson that she had been strangled.
Carefully he closed the lid of the boot and walked to Sergeant Long’s window.
‘You and I aren’t going to get much sleep tonight, Sergeant.’
Steve Temple stood in front of the fireplace in her new drawing-room and tried to see it with the eyes of someone coming in for the first time. Did it look too much of a mixture? She and Paul had tried very hard to avoid the impersonal effect of a room which had been ‘done’ by one of the fashionable interior decorators. Since it was they themselves who were going to live in the flat they had decided to decorate and furnish it according to their own personal tastes. If George II had to rub shoulders with Louis XIV, then that was just too bad.
It was barely a week since the Temples had moved into the Eaton Square flat. For months before that they had been brooding over wallpapers and pastel shades, selecting carpets and the additional pieces of furniture needed for the more spacious rooms of their new residence. Yet when the carpets had been laid and each article had been moved into its predestined position everything seemed just a little uneasy. Gradually, during the past week, the correct place for every chair, table or cabinet had revealed itself to them. The flat was at last beginning to look like a home, but the result was that both Temple and Steve had itching fingers. They could not leave things alone. Now, before she could check herself, Steve moved impulsively to transfer a bowl of flowers from the top of a tallboy to a low occasional table.
She was studying the effect with her head on one side when Temple’s key sounded in the door of the flat. She heard it open and then close again with the comforting thud of a mass of mahogany going into place in an eighteen-inch wall. Temple’s footsteps crossed the parquet floor of the hall without pausing and she visualised him throwing his hat onto the hall table as he passed.
As soon as he entered the room she could tell by the expression on his face that the meeting with his agent had turned out successfully. But she knew him too well to expect him to burst out with the news immediately.
‘Hello, Steve.’
He stopped, smiling at her, thinking how well the setting suited her. She had been created to stand against an Adam fireplace under a high ceiling, surrounded by the most skilful achievements of craftsmanship. Almost immediately his eye moved to the Queen Anne card-table standing now between the two tall windows. Steve had moved it there since he had gone out that morning. She studied his face anxiously.
‘How do you think it looks in that position?’
Temple came into the middle of the room, eyeing the table judiciously.
‘That’s the right spot for it. Now that it’s there I can’t imagine why we wanted to put it anywhere else.’
‘I keep moving things and then putting them back again. Paul, do you think there’ll ever come a time when we can say it’s done? Sometimes I wonder if we’ve got the fidgets about the flat.’
Temple nodded towards the empty space above the fireplace.
‘When we find the right picture for that spot we’ll draw the deadline, shall we? Make a rule that we shan’t move anything for a month.’
‘Good idea. Now then. What are you going to have to drink?’
Steve walked to the huge bow-fronted corner cupboard and opened it with a flourish. Inside a light went on and revealed two well-stocked shelves of bottles. Temple stopped with his lighter halfway to his cigarette.
‘By Timothy! There’s enough booze to sink a battleship.’
‘I stocked up this morning. We shall need all this sooner or later and it looks rather gay, doesn’t it? Liqueurs, port and brandy on that shelf, bits and pieces for cocktails down here. What’ll you have?’
‘I’ll have gin and Cinzano, with a strong dash of Angostura bitters.’
While Steve was mixing the drinks, Temple glanced at the paper which Steve had thrown on the sofa. It was open at the page on which the Tyler murder was reported. She handed him his glass, chilled by a marble-sized lump of ice from the baby refrigerator built into the back of the cupboard. Temple met her eyes as he sipped it, toasting her silently.
‘It’s wonderful to be able to get back home so quickly. I was with Watson only a quarter of an hour ago. If we were still living at the old place I’d have probably lunched in town.’
‘How did you get on with Watson?’
Steve tried to make the question sound casual, though she knew that Temple was holding something up his sleeve.
‘How would you like a trip to Paris?’
‘Paul! Do you really mean that?’
‘I do. I’ve sold the film rights on my last book to an American company. They want me to go over to Paris the week after next and meet one of their producers – a chap called Pasterwake.’
‘Darling, how marvellous! I shall be able to buy some new clothes. I haven’t a stitch to my back.’
Steve parked her drink down on the mantelpiece and put her arms round his neck.
‘If you haven’t a stitch to your back,’ Temple retorted, ‘why did you insist on a built-in hanging cupboard running the whole length of your bedroom wall?’
‘Fashions change, darling. Hadn’t you heard about Balmain’s exciting New Line?’
‘And hadn’t you heard about the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s boring old line?’
‘We’ll get around that. This man Pasterwake will be reeking with dollars. You can ask him to give you an advance on the film rights. What day shall we go? We’ll fly, of course. Can we stay at the Pompadour again? I love being near the Champs-Élysées.’
As she talked Steve disengaged herself from Temple and with apparent casualness picked up the paper from the sofa, folded it and pushed it in amongst the other periodicals in the magazine rack. Temple watched her with amusement. He could see perfectly clearly what was going on in her mind.
‘You needn’t bother, Steve. I’ve seen it already.’
‘Seen what, darling—?’
‘The report of the Tyler murder.’
‘The Tyler murder? What’s that?’
Steve knew he had seen through her, but for the sake of appearances she kept up the deception a little longer.
He took the paper out of the rack, found the passage and read it aloud:
‘“Police are still baffled by the case which has already become known as the Tyler Mystery. Blonde, pretty Betty Tyler, aged 24, was found strangled in a stolen car on the outskirts of Oxford the night before last by a police patrol car. Betty worked at the Oxford salon of Mariano, fashionable Mayfair beauty culturist, whence she had recently been transferred from London—”’
‘That’s the Courier,’ interrupted Steve. ‘Have you seen the Echo?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Let me read it to you: “Scotland Yard has been called in by the Chief Constable of Oxford. Interviewed today at the Yard, Sir Graham Forbes denied a report that approaches had been made to Paul Temple, the well-known novelist and criminologist. Knowledgeable observers, however, reaffirm that this case sets precisely the kind of problem in which Temple has so often assisted the police in the past”.’
