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.’
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
