Paul Temple and the Harkdale Robbery

The author was Paul Temple. In the last few lines of his article he mentioned the Harkdale robbery as proof of his argument. The series of articles had obviously been written well in advance, and the reference to Harkdale would have been a last minute insertion. Betty was impressed, especially when she arrived at the television studios and found that Paul Temple was to be a star guest in the Brian Clay Show that evening. She determined to tell him what had happened.

It would be easier to talk to a stranger than to someone she knew, even someone as close as Rita Fletcher. Rita came to the rehearsal for about an hour in the afternoon, and she sensed that something was wrong. But Betty couldn’t talk to her.

‘I’m depressed, I suppose,’ said Betty. ‘There’s nothing wrong.’

‘You girls are always down about something. Are these men worth it? I wish they didn’t exist!’ Rita was an extrovert woman in her mid-forties, and clearly men never gave her any trouble. She was bosomy and corsetted and her men did as she told them. ‘You need a rest. You ought to go home to mother for the weekend. On Monday you’ll be a new girl.’

‘It’s all right, Rita –’

‘Go home. Mr Coley won’t miss you for two days.’

Betty nodded gratefully. She hadn’t been home since Christmas. Maybe she could leave her problems behind in London. ‘I’ll telephone my mother during the break.’

She almost went home without talking to Paul Temple. He was a debonair type, smoothly relaxed with all the terrifying television people. As the evening wore on Betty’s resolution began to fail. She tried to speak to him twice, but he was always surrounded by producers and people like that. He had an amused manner which helped to make some politician Betty had never heard of look ridiculous. Even though Paul Temple smiled at her rather sweetly the things she had to say about Harkdale seemed too trivial, and she didn’t want to look a fool.

Then as she was leaving the studios she had seen him being driven away by a woman who didn’t look much older than herself. Betty had swung round in indecision and fallen across her suitcase. That was how she came to tell Paul Temple her troubles. [They gave her a lift to Oxford. She told her story over a succulent steak at the Coach House.]

‘Desmond seems to have completely disappeared,’ she concluded. ‘When I read about the robbery in Harkdale, and the man who was killed, the man they called Skibby, I realised what had happened.’

Paul Temple nodded in encouragement. ‘Tell me, Betty, did you ever meet any of Blane’s friends? Renson, or the man called Skibby, for instance?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’d never heard of them before that phone call.’

His wife, Steve, looked disappointed. ‘But surely you must have met some of his friends?’

‘I know it’s peculiar now that you mention it, but I didn’t. We went out quite a lot, but always it was only the two of us.’ She finished the steak, and felt contentedly full. The club itself impressed her. ‘Actually Rita came with us on one occasion. It was a Sunday and the three of us drove out to Maidenhead for lunch.’

‘When Desmond came to the club, to the Love-Inn, was he always alone?’ Steve asked.

‘Yes, always. Except on New Year’s Eve.’ Betty suddenly remembered the occasion, it was almost the first time she had met Desmond Blane. Most of the members had been drunk and Cynthia Elphinstone had nearly been sacked for doing a strip tease to Auld Lang Syne. ‘He had another man with him that night, a man called Arnold something or other. I didn’t like him very much. He stared at us girls.’

‘What did he look like?’ Paul Temple asked.

Betty closed her eyes in an effort to remember. She wasn’t very good at describing people. ‘He was about sixty, I suppose. Almost as tall as me, and he smiled the whole time. Perhaps he was just good natured. Oh yes, and he had a northern accent.’

When they dropped her off at the end of her road it was gone half past one and Betty Stanway was worried again. Not as worried as she had been, because Paul Temple had promised her there would be no unpleasantness, no publicity. He had a friend at Scotland Yard called Charlie Vosper who was a very nice man, and Charlie Vosper would come and see her on Monday when she was back in London. But it didn’t seem right.

‘I know you’ll probably think I’m crazy,’ she had said as she got out of the car. ‘But in spite of what’s happened, with Des walking out on me, I’m still very fond of him.’

Paul Temple’s smile was warmly reassuring, and then the Rolls drove on. She watched it out of sight before walking the last fifty yards to the house where she had spent her childhood. The semi-detached houses were all in darkness and they all looked strangely the same to her now. She deliberately tried to feel her way back to the girl who had known every kid in the street, who had belonged among these gardens and homes and the footpaths at the back, a securely happy and slightly reckless Betty Stanway.

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