Paul Temple and the Tyler Mystery

The Frazer Nash surged quickly from forty to sixty miles an hour as Temple pulled out to pass. It occurred to him that the Triumph was going to have to brake very sharply to avoid hitting the stationary car. Just at the last moment the goggled driver put his hand out and edged the Triumph on to the centre lane. Temple found himself being forced out towards the oncoming bonnet of the brick lorry, now only thirty yards distant, his only way through blocked.

There was no time to sound a horn or curse. The lesser of two evils was to shunt the Triumph but even that would mean an impact of fifty miles an hour and Steve’s forehead was terribly close to the dashboard.

The man at the wheel of the brick lorry, with the vigilance typical of British transport drivers, applied his vacuum brakes and stopped the vehicle in its own length. Temple swerved sharply to the right, aiming the Frazer Nash across the front of the brick lorry. Nothing but a machine developed in trials and racing would have accepted the brutal change of direction; tyres shrieked but the car remained on four wheels. She missed the lorry by two feet, rushed on to the grass verge and passed between two trees. Still miraculously in control, Temple put her through an open gate into a grass field beyond. The car skidded on the soft surface and ended up facing the gate through which it had come. Temple had kept his engine running. He selected bottom gear and drove back on to the grass verge.

‘Sorry, Steve. It was the only way out.’

Steve produced a compact and began to powder her nose with slightly trembling hands. Temple switched off his engine and took a deep breath before he stepped out of the car. The lorry driver had driven another hundred yards up the road and was climbing down from his cab. The white Triumph, now moving very fast, was just disappearing round a distant bend.

Temple went to meet the lorry driver as he walked towards them.

‘Your missus all right, mate?’

‘Yes, thanks. I’d like to thank you for keeping your brakes in good order and using them so promptly. It saved our lives.’

The driver scratched the back of his head and stared down the road.

‘Didn’t even stop, the—. Pity we couldn’t get his number.’

Temple offered his cigarette-case to the driver without answering. He had made a mental note of the Triumph’s registration number when it first passed him. He intended to write it down in his diary before he rejoined Steve.

‘Police ought to do something about them sort of drivers,’ the lorry man went on. ‘If he’d been trying to do it deliberate he couldn’t have put you in a worse spot.’

Out of respect for Steve’s nerves, Temple drove slowly the rest of the way to Sonning. Neither of them spoke a word until they had turned off the main road and were idling down the minor road that led to the village. Then Steve turned to examine Temple’s profile.

‘Paul. That was a deliberate attempt to kill us.’

Temple was ready for the remark. He took his eye off the road for long enough to give Steve a reassuring smile.

‘I don’t think so, Steve. Probably some idiot who doesn’t know his car. Too many of these fast machines get into the hands of people who can’t control them.’

‘I thought he controlled his rather skilfully,’ Steve remarked drily. ‘His timing was absolutely perfect.’

The Dutch Treat stood on the river bank just beyond the Sonning bridge. On a well-kept lawn between the verandah and the water were placed a number of gaily painted tables and chairs, shaded by striped Continental style sun-shades tipped at rakish angles. Temple parked the car, then Steve and he went into the building by the hotel entrance. Steve said she wanted to fix her hair, and while she went off to the Ladies’ Room Temple waited in the foyer.

He caught the eye of the reception clerk and went over to speak to him.

‘Mrs Draper owns this place now, doesn’t she?’

‘That is so, sir.’

The clerk, hardly glancing at him, answered in the impersonal manner of his kind.

‘Can you tell me where I would find her?’

‘Perhaps I can help you, sir?’

‘I’m afraid not. This is a personal matter.’

‘Mrs Draper is not in the hotel, sir. She will not be returning till after lunch.’

‘Well, we are lunching here, so it doesn’t matter very much. When she returns will you tell her that Mr Temple would like to have a word with her?’

‘Very good, sir.’

Temple was amused to note that as he turned away the clerk returned not to his register of guests but to study a copy of the Sporting Life. The reference book which he pulled down from a shelf was not a Bradshaw but Ruff’s Guide to the Turf.

There was still no sign of Steve. Temple noticed a public call box at the end of the foyer. It was unoccupied. He went over to it slowly, closed the door on himself and asked for Vosper’s number at Scotland Yard. The Inspector had gone home to lunch, but his assistant was there. Temple gave him the number of the offending Triumph and suggested he should check up on it. He was about to open the door and step out, when he hesitated. A man, emerging from the passage which led to the dining room, had entered the foyer at the same moment as Steve reappeared. He was only a few yards from Temple’s call box. When he looked towards Steve he stopped dead, and a flicker of surprise crossed his face. He turned on his heel and went quickly back the way he had come. As he passed, Temple made a note of his features. He was aged about forty-seven or -eight, athletically built, though rather on the short side, clean shaven and well dressed in a tweedy kind of way. Steve had not noticed him and he had certainly not spotted Temple in the gloom of the call box.

Temple claimed Steve and together they went through to the dining room. For the summer season the dining room had been extended on to the verandah and boxes of flowers on stands lined the glass walls. The whole effect was very French. It remained to be seen, Temple thought, whether the cooking came up to the same standard.

A maître d’hôtel, poised before a desk bearing the list of table reservations, waylaid them as they entered.

‘Name, sir?’

‘Temple. I telephoned last night.’

‘Ah, Mr Paul Temple, isn’t it? I have a nice table for you, sir.’

After an appreciative glance at Steve in her neat suit and flame-coloured shirt and shoes, the maître d’hôtel, walking with unction and brandishing his pencil as if it were a conductor’s baton, led them to a table flanked by tumbling geraniums. At a twitch of his fingers, a pair of waiters materialised from the carpet and set in front of Steve and Temple a couple of menus as big as railway posters.

When they had given their order Steve folded her hands and looked around her with appreciation.

‘It’s rather nice to be alive, isn’t it? We so very nearly weren’t. You can’t fool me, you know. I saw you coming out of that call box.’

Temple sipped his Tio Pepe and concentrated on Steve. A quick glance round the room had shown him that the startled man he had seen in the foyer was not here. Several faces had turned towards him with recognition, but there was no one he knew.

‘Perhaps it did look rather like a deliberate attempt—’

‘Looked like! If you hadn’t spotted that gap in the wall we’d have been finished. Was it anyone you’d seen before?’

Temple shook his head.

‘Even if it had been I wouldn’t have recognised him with all that stuff on his face.’

‘But why pick on us?’

‘The only reason I can think of is that someone is under the impression that I am investigating the Tyler case. Though why that should justify my execution I fail to see.’

At that moment the service squad arrived with the eats and drinks for the Temples’ first course. During the next hour they were far too preoccupied with the pleasures of living to worry about their escape from death. Mrs Draper’s imported chef was a genius and Temple rejoiced to have found for once an establishment which did not grudge the few shillings needed to supply the kitchen with adequate wine for the sauces.

After the meal, at the maître d’hotel’s suggestion, they took their coffee in a pleasant sun lounge built out over the water. They were still there, fingering liqueur glasses, when Mrs Draper came up and introduced herself.

Lucille Draper was a striking woman. She looked a good deal less than her forty-odd years; only a certain severity of expression, reflected in the cut of her black suit, showed that she had seen some of the darker side of life. She had accepted her widowhood as a challenge and had put all the money left by her husband into The Dutch Treat. She seemed to have an exceptional gift for business and in a very few years she had turned the hotel into one of the most popular out-of-town rendezvous.

She had heard a great deal about Temple from her brother and her pleasure at meeting him and Steve appeared quite genuine. She accepted Temple’s invitation to join them for a few minutes, but refused a liqueur or coffee. She seemed to sense that there was more than affability in his request to speak to her. Temple was perfectly frank with her. After complimenting her on the cuisine and service he came to the point.

‘What I really wanted to ask you, Mrs Draper, was whether you could give me any news of Harry?’

Temple purposely kept his eyes on his liqueur glass as he asked the question. He knew he could rely on Steve to watch her reaction.

Mrs Draper answered without the slightest hesitation: ‘It’s funny you should ask me that. I had a letter from Harry only two days ago. He’s doing wonderfully well out there.’

She leaned towards Temple and gave him the full benefit of very blue eyes.

‘I shall always be so grateful to you for helping Harry in the way you did. Giving him that money was the most generous—’

‘I didn’t give it to him,’ Temple said uncomfortably. ‘It was only a loan – which he repaid in full.’

Lucille Draper, with a gesture which appeared sincere and impulsive, laid a hand on his arm. Her nails were deep scarlet and several diamonds glistened on her fingers.

‘But it was the gesture that counted! He felt that someone really had faith in him.’

Temple tried unsuccessfully to imagine the hard-bitten Harry Shelford voicing any such sentiment. He tried to steer the conversation back on to course.

‘He wrote you from Cape Town?’

‘Yes. Of course he travels a lot – searching out really good second-hand cars, you know. He takes care not to sell anything shoddy.’

‘Forgive my interrupting, Mrs Draper. Has Harry ever talked of coming back to England?’

Mrs Draper’s pretty mouth remained open for a few moments to express her amazement. Then she gave a tinkle of laughter.

‘That’s the last thing he would do. Why should he come back to England when he’s making a fortune out there? And an honest one, too. Harry’s going straight now, Mr Temple, I can assure you of that. He wouldn’t let you down; not after what you did for him.’

Just for a moment Temple believed he detected real sincerity in her voice. He did not try to question her any further. After a few moments of small talk during which she turned rather ostentatiously to Steve, as if inviting her to join a private conversation, she claimed pressure of business and rose.

When she had disappeared into the hotel proper, Temple turned to Steve with a smile. She was looking daggers.

‘Well?’

‘Bogus, from the peroxide down.’

‘I’m not worried about whether she bleaches her hair or not. Am I mistaken, or was she covering something up?’

Steve grinned at a private thought.

‘I was watching her when you first asked her about Harry. She was ready for the question and waiting for it.’

‘I thought she was a shade too glib. Of course it’s difficult not having met her before. Some women are always like that with men, but she seemed somehow strained, brittle—’

‘I know what you mean. She’s worried about something. Do you know why she refused coffee?’

‘No.’

‘Because her hands weren’t steady. And she didn’t dare to look my way till the interrogation was over. She knew another woman would see through her.’

The Temples were loth to leave the pleasant lazy atmosphere of Sonning on a warm May day. It was four thirty before they arrived back in Eaton Square.

Charlie had left a note propped on the hall table: ‘See me soon as you come in’.

Steve picked it up and threw Temple a despairing look. Charlie answered the drawing-room bell promptly.

‘There was a telephone call for you about an hour ago. From Guildford. It was a girl – she seemed young, anyway – called Jane Dallas. She wanted to speak to you personally. Sounded pretty desperate, she did.’

‘What did she want to speak to me about?’

‘She wouldn’t say. She closed up when I told her you weren’t available.’

‘Jane Dallas. She didn’t mind giving her name, then?’

‘Well,’ Charlie’s face was disfigured by a self-satisfied smirk. ‘She thought I was you, see? When I answered the phone I said “Eaton double two, double four – who’s calling please?” She says, very quick like, “Oh, Mr Temple, my name is Jane Dallas. I have some very urgent—” Then I thought I’d better stop her before she spilled the beans.’

Charlie gave such a vivid imitation of Temple’s voice and that of the unknown Jane Dallas that he and Steve had to smile.

‘All right, Charlie. Thanks.’

Temple frowned thoughtfully at Steve as the door closed on Charlie.

‘Guildford? We don’t know anyone called Jane Dallas.’

‘Perhaps it’s someone else who wants you to take cigars to her brother in Paris,’ Steve suggested lightly.

‘Then she’s going to be unlucky. Now, I’d better telephone Sir Graham. He’ll be disappointed that we’ve nothing more definite for him.’

Temple sat down beside the telephone table. He was about to lift the receiver when the bell began to ring. He picked it up and repeated his number.

The operator said, ‘Go ahead, Guildford.’

It was a girl’s voice, faint and distorted by interference on the line, but unmistakably frightened.

‘This is Temple speaking.’

‘Oh, Mr Temple. I read in the papers that you are investigating the Tyler mystery. I have some very important information. I’ve got to see you immediately.’

Jane Dallas sounded a very excitable young lady. There was a touch of hysteria in her voice.

Temple said: ‘The papers are misinformed. It’s not true that I’m investigating the Tyler mystery. Your proper course is to take this information to the police.’

‘I can’t do that, Mr Temple. I’ve got to see you. It’s impossible to explain on the telephone. Oh, can’t you understand?’

The voice was becoming more and more overwrought.

‘I’m afraid I can’t come down to Guildford, Miss Dallas—’

‘You must,’ the girl insisted. Then as if she felt the old tag would clinch matters: ‘It’s a matter of life and death. I’m at 17 Charlotte Street. I’ll expect you at nine o’clock tonight.’

Before Temple had time to object there came a click and the line was dead.

‘That,’ he told Steve, ‘was Jane Dallas.’

‘So I guessed. I could hear most of it from here. She didn’t sound to me as if she was putting on an act.’

‘You mean you think I should have agreed to see her? What are the police for if not to deal with cases like this?’

‘She may have vital information and yet be frightened, for no valid and sensible reason, of going to the police. I felt rather sorry for her.’

This time it was Temple himself who began to whistle: ‘I love Paris—’. Steve remained serious.

‘You say you’re not investigating the Tyler mystery but this morning someone tried to kill us on the Bath Road.’

Temple sat motionless for a moment, then slapped his knee and stood up.

‘All right. This evening we’ll call on Miss Jane Dallas of 17 Charlotte Street. I’ll tell Charlie we want an early dinner.’

Chapter Three

A thunderstorm passed across the Southern Counties that evening, bringing darkness on a little earlier than usual. The rain, while it lasted, was very heavy. Temple was forced to slow down at several points outside Guildford where the water had collected in hollows in the road.

He drove directly to the Police Station and left Steve sitting in the car outside whilst he went to inquire the whereabouts of Charlotte Street. He was out within three minutes.

‘I think we’ll walk,’ he said, and opened the door on Steve’s side for her. ‘The place is only ten minutes away and it’s not nine yet. I don’t want to attract attention by driving the car up to her door.’

Guildford’s steep, narrow main street was still glistening wet. The lights from those shops whose owners considered that their window display justified keeping the illuminations on till midnight sent squiggles of orange, red and green across the roadway. Temple felt Steve’s arm pulling on his as they passed a window where some new silk materials were displayed, draped round bogusly bosomed dummies. A little later she did stop dead, her arm hooked firmly in his elbow.

‘Paul, look!’

They were opposite a brand new shop on one of the most prominent street corners in Guildford. The window display was highly imaginative and for a moment Temple was at a loss to tell what kind of merchandise this establishment was offering. The theme of the display was Mediterranean travel and night life in the gayer Riviera resorts. There were travel posters from Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Yugoslavia, photographs of the Casino at San Remo, the Negresco in Cannes, and some unidentified night-spot in Barcelona. In the middle of all this colour and gaiety was the marble bust of a very beautiful, very twentieth-century woman.

Temple followed Steve’s eyes to the sign painted in flowing letters above the window. ‘Mariano. Coiffeur de Dames.’

‘He gets around,’ Temple murmured.

Steve was enthusiastic about Mariano’s window display.

‘It’s rather dashing, don’t you think, darling? Better than that dreadful wax image with some dead person’s hair planted on it like a wig.’

In fact, Temple noticed, most of the people who emerged now that the rain was over, paused to inspect the gay posters and photographs.

A few hundred yards later they turned into Charlotte Street and crossed over to be on the right side for the odd numbers. The houses here were strictly uniform – arched porches flanked by bow windows and separated from the pavement by sad little patches of downtrodden grass. There was a light on in the hall of number 17 and the black figures stood out clearly on the crescent-shaped glass above the doorway. Temple followed Steve up the three steps and pushed the bell.

The door was opened by a plump and elderly lady who wiped her hands on her apron as she answered Temple’s inquiry. Her name, they learned later, was Mrs Hobson.

‘Is Miss Dallas in?’

‘No.’

‘This is the house, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but she’s not in.’

‘Did she leave any message for me? My name’s Temple.’

‘No. She said nothing to me.’

Mrs Hobson had begun to close the door. She regarded Temple and Steve with suspicion, as if they spelt trouble.

‘That’s odd,’ he persisted. ‘I had an appointment to meet her here at nine o’clock. Has she not been in this evening at all?’

The woman shrugged as if to imply that the movements of her lodgers were no concern of hers.

‘She may have come in and gone out again while I was out feeding my budgies. As often as not she only comes back for long enough to change her shoes or dress before hurrying off to the pictures or the Palais.’

‘Are you sure she’s not in her room now?’

‘You seem very inclined to doubt my word—’ Mrs Hobson was working herself up into a huff over Temple’s insistence.

He said politely: ‘I’ve come all the way from London to see her, so naturally I don’t want to miss her.’

‘From London, are you? Well, I can always tell whether Jane is in or not by her wireless. It switches on from the door as you go in and she’s never in that room without it’s on. I don’t complain because I think she feels the loneliness.’

‘Well, thank you very much, Mrs – er?’

‘Hobson’s my name.’

‘Mrs Hobson. Perhaps we can call back a little later?’

‘Yes. I’ll tell her as soon as she comes in.’

Temple was just turning away to go down the steps when a thought struck him.

‘By the way, Mrs Hobson, where does Miss Dallas work?’

Being called by her name seemed to make all the difference to the landlady. A little primness crept into her pronunciation but she answered more readily.

‘She’s employed at one of those hairdressing saloons. It’s a new place – I can’t remember the name just at the moment.’

‘Is it Mariano’s?’

‘That’s it. I knew it was some French name.’

Steve and Temple walked slowly back towards the main street, watching for any girl coming the opposite way who might be Jane Dallas.

‘Is this coincidence again?’ Steve asked, though she already knew the answer.

‘It can’t be. This girl mentioned the Tyler mystery on the telephone. Perhaps she too was transferred from the London branch and knew Betty Tyler when they were there together.’

‘But Betty Tyler was murdered after she left London.’

‘We don’t know that this “Harry” business didn’t begin when she was still there. I have a feeling that Jane Dallas is going to help us quite a lot.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Ten past nine. I wonder how long we should give it?’

‘Another twenty minutes,’ Steve suggested. ‘Let’s go into this hotel and have a drink. I’m rather cold after that drive.’

Temple was very much on edge and hardly gave Steve time to enjoy her brandy. They were back at the door of number 17 before the clocks started striking the half-hour.

‘She’s not back yet,’ Mrs Hobson assured them. ‘I left my kitchen door open so that I’d hear the front door and no one’s come in.’

‘Mrs Hobson, I wonder if you’d just try her room – in case her radio has gone wrong or something.’

‘Well—’ Mrs Hobson surveyed Steve doubtfully and then opened the door wider. ‘Since you’ve come all the way from London.’

They stood in the narrow hall while Mrs Hobson toiled up the worn green staircarpet to the first floor. The Monarch of the Glen stared aloofly over their heads and a faint odour of primeval cabbage leaked out from the kitchen. In a minute or two Mrs Hobson came back down the stairs, walking sideways and holding on to the banisters.

‘There’s no answer,’ she said. ‘But it’s a funny thing, her door’s locked. She never locks it when she goes out—’

Temple was already moving towards the staircase.

‘Will you show me where her room is, please?’

‘Why!’ Mrs Hobson put out a podgy hand to restrain him. ‘I’ll ask you to remember whose house you’re in.’

‘This is urgent,’ Temple snapped. ‘That girl may be in danger. Now, which is her room?’

Before the expression in his eyes, Mrs Hobson capitulated.

‘It’s the door facing you at the end of the passage.’

Jane Dallas’s door was indeed locked. Temple banged on it and called loudly. Inside there was complete silence. Behind him he could hear Steve talking soothingly to the landlady, who was horrified at the sight of a Man on her first floor landing. He stood back a few feet, raised his right leg and kicked his heel against the door just below the lock. With a splintering sound the door shuddered open. The room in front of him was in darkness. He could see his own shadow, stretched to a grotesque length in the rectangle of light cast by the lamp on the landing.

With his left hand he felt for the light switch and snapped it on. He heard Steve coming along the passage behind him. Over his shoulder he said:

‘Don’t come any further, Steve. Try and get Mrs Hobson downstairs.’