Design For Murder Read online

  FRANCIS DURBRIDGE

  Design for Murder

  PLUS

  Paul Temple’s White Christmas

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MELVYN BARNES

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by

  John Long 1951

  ‘Paul Temple’s White Christmas’ first published in Radio Times 1946

  Copyright © Francis Durbridge 1946, 1951

  All rights reserved

  Francis Durbridge has asserted his right under the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

  Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

  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: 9780008242077

  Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008242060

  Version: 2017-09-26

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Chapter I: Death of a Policewoman

  Chapter II: A Lift From Doctor Fraser

  Chapter III: The Cottage on the Cliff

  Chapter IV: Sir Donald Angus Is Perturbed

  Chapter V: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

  Chapter VI: Mr Linder Has an Alibi

  Chapter VII: Miss Beaumont Remembers

  Chapter VIII: A Warrant for Mr Luigi

  Chapter IX: A Woman’s Intuition

  Chapter X: Guest Night at the Palais

  Chapter XI: Exit Mr Luigi

  Chapter XII: Presenting: ‘Mr Rossiter’

  Paul Temple’s White Christmas

  Also in This Series

  By the Same Author

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  In November 1951, when John Long published Design for Murder, Francis Durbridge (1912–1998) had for many years been the most popular writer of mystery thrillers for BBC radio and was soon to make his mark on television and in the theatre. He remains best known as the creator of the novelist-detective Paul Temple, who first appeared in the 1938 BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple. This was an immediate hit, and led to Paul and his wife Steve rapidly becoming cult figures of the airwaves in the sequels Paul Temple and the Front Page Men (1938), News of Paul Temple (1939), Paul Temple Intervenes (1942), Send for Paul Temple Again (1945) and many more. These first five radio serials were all novelised, published by John Long between 1938 and 1948, and most recently reissued in 2015 by Collins Crime Club.

  In 1950 there was an interesting development in Durbridge’s career with the publication of Back Room Girl, a novel that was not based on any of his radio serials. He followed this in April 1951 with Beware of Johnny Washington, a rewrite of his first novel Send for Paul Temple with various plot changes and a new set of characters, including replacements for Paul and Steve.

  From this it appears that in the early 1950s Durbridge was trying to widen his appeal to the reading public, and although his radio serials had made him a household name his books gave him the opportunity to be recognised as more than the creator of Paul Temple. This might also have been insurance against the slim possibility that after five novels some readers might have begun to tire of the Temples, which was a factor that shortly afterwards influenced Durbridge to create a brand of record-breaking television serials that deliberately excluded them.

  Design for Murder, his next book, was the novelisation of his radio serial Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair. Originally broadcast from 17 October to 19 December 1946, its ten episodes made it the longest Temple serial. The plot was vintage Durbridge, with Sir Graham Forbes of Scotland Yard enlisting Temple’s help in investigating the murder of a young woman found in the sea off the Yorkshire coast. As always Temple is reluctant to become involved, until he finds the body of another young woman in his garage and the two murders are linked by the message ‘With the compliments of Mr Gregory’.

  Given the passion for Durbridge on the continent, several European countries produced their own radio versions. In Holland it was broadcast as Paul Vlaanderen en het Gregory mysterie, in Germany it was Paul Temple und die affäre Gregory, in Denmark it was Gregory-mysteriet and in Italy it was Paul Temple e il caso Gregory. The BBC maintained for many years that the original UK ten-episode scripts had been lost, but several decades later a full set was recovered and used to re-create the serial for broadcast in 2013.

  In respect of his books, however, Durbridge was keen to continue demonstrating his non-Temple credentials to his readers. So Design for Murder, instead of the Temples, features Detective Inspector Lionel Wyatt and his wife Sally who have retired to a smallholding in Kent. Wyatt has left the force with the nagging regret that he never succeeded in identifying and arresting the one person who merited the description ‘master criminal’, but soon his former chief convinces him that his arch-enemy is again terrorising Londoners with kidnappings and murders. The latest victim is Barbara Willis, found strangled in the sea off the Devon coast, and this has been linked with the disappearance of a policewoman whose body Wyatt later finds in his garage. As with the radio serial, in both cases there are cryptic messages – but this time it is ‘With the compliments of Mr Rossiter’. Although almost every character name is changed, the book follows the plot and dialogue of the radio serial very closely and Durbridge’s trademark cliffhangers make effective chapter endings.

  Rather strangely, there have been two versions of this novel published in Germany. Schöne Grüße von Mister Brix appeared in 1961–62 as a serial in the magazine Bild und Funk, with yet another change of names as Inspector Richard Grant and his wife Margaret pursue Mr Brix! The slightly later version, Mr Rossiter empfiehlt sich, was a direct translation of Design for Murder with the Wyatts pursuing Mr Rossiter.

  After Design for Murder Durbridge went on to produce many more novels. Apart from his standalone title The Pig-Tail Murder (1969), they consisted of two series that could always be assured of a devoted readership: the Paul Temple mysteries and novelisations of his phenomenally popular television serials. Paul Temple books continued to appear from 1957 to 1988, of which three were original novels and five were based on his radio serials, and sixteen of his television serials were also novelised between 1958 and 1982. There were two more books that showed Durbridge to have retained the art of recycling long after the 1950s, because Another Woman’s Shoes (1965) and Dead to the World (1967) were both originally Paul Temple radio serials (Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case and Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery respectively) that became non-Temple novels with new characters.

  So there can be no doubt that this reprint of Design for Murder, a title that like Back Room Girl and Beware of Johnny Washington has been out of pri
nt for more than sixty-five years, is something of an event for Durbridge fans. Similarly, the bonus short story ‘Paul Temple’s White Christmas’ has not been reprinted since its publication in Radio Times on 20 December 1946 – the day after the final broadcast episode of Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, which is mentioned in the story.

  MELVYN BARNES

  June 2017

  CHAPTER I

  Death of a Policewoman

  Ex-Detective Inspector Lionel Mandeville Wyatt sat back and mopped his forehead. It was a warm July afternoon, and he was sitting at his roll-top desk, wrestling with the intricacies of a Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries form.

  Even in his palmiest days at the Yard, Wyatt had been notoriously averse to what was known as desk work, and his hectic life during the war years had not helped him to concentrate his energies upon comparatively minor details.

  His gaze strayed to the window and beyond, where the Kent orchards stirred gently in the hot wind, and there was a shimmery heat haze over the corrugated iron roofs of the sheds in a distant meadow. Away to the right he could see the ample figure of Fred Porter in the midst of a field of beans, hoeing slowly and methodically between the rows as if he had been doing it all his life. It seemed hard to believe that only a year ago Fred had been one of the most reliable drivers in Scotland Yard’s famous Flying Squad.

  Wyatt had been quite surprised at the time when Fred Porter had asked him if he required any help on the small-holding he had bought. The Inspector proposed to retire there at the end of the war, following a series of operations on his right leg that had been badly burnt in a flying accident. Wyatt still limped quite noticeably, and at times leaned rather heavily on the walking-stick he took with him when he went out, but his general health had improved steadily ever since Sally had kept a careful eye on him in this pleasant little house.

  He wished Sally were within call now, but she had gone to Faversham on her weekly shopping expedition, and would not be back until about tea-time. She understood more about the poultry on the holding than he would ever begin to learn. With a sigh, he tore a scrap of paper off a scribbling block and tried to work out how many ducks under six months old they had now.

  Somehow he could never summon up much interest in poultry; on the other hand, bees had fascinated him right from the start. Sally said he seemed to enjoy getting stung, and he was always ready to spend an hour peering into the hive and watching its thousands of inmates minding their own business as avidly as any respectable citizen.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if the little beggars hadn’t their own CID,’ he told Fred Porter.

  ‘Aye, and MI5, too, I shouldn’t wonder,’ added Fred, with one of his rare grins.

  Wyatt flung down his pencil and crumpled the bit of paper into a ball. He was sure they had more ducklings than that. Maybe Fred would know. Anyhow, it was a reasonable excuse for a little stroll on this very pleasant summery afternoon. He was always restless when Sally was out of the house, and if he didn’t have some active occupation he would be positively irritable by the time she returned.

  Yes, he reflected, Fred often fed the ducks when Sally was away; he would have a rough idea. And if the worst came to the worst, they would have to wait until Sally came back, for they certainly couldn’t count them at this time of day, when they were foraging round the orchards.

  Still frowning at the buff form in front of him, Wyatt reached for his favourite cherrywood pipe and slowly eased tobacco into its charred bowl, trying vainly to recall how many ducklings they had had at the last two hatchings … and then there was that box of seven-day-olds they had bought at the market … it was no use. When the pipe was burning smoothly he reached for his stick. At that moment, there was the sound of a car stopping in the short drive at the front of the house. Wyatt stood listening. Surely Sally couldn’t be back already …

  Suddenly the old-fashioned front-door bell jangled imperiously. Perhaps it was Sally after all, and she’d forgotten her key …

  Wyatt limped across the room and into the hall. Before he could reach the front door, the bell rang again even more noisily.

  ‘All right, damn you,’ he muttered under his breath. Little irritations like this upset him more than most people. He flung open the door, expecting to see one of the ladies of the village collecting for some charity.

  But there were two men standing there, and one was a very familiar figure.

  ‘Good lord! Sir James!’ murmured Wyatt, blinking in the strong sunlight. For the Assistant Commissioner of New Scotland Yard was one of the last visitors he had expected to see there. Apart from the prompt payment of his pension, Wyatt had received no communication from his former employers for over two years. One after another, several suspicions surged through Wyatt’s mind as to why his former chief was visiting him, but Sir James offered no immediate solution to the problem.

  He stood there smiling, looking as distinguished as ever in his well-cut medium-grey suit, neat black tie and white shirt. His hair was a shade more sparse around the temples, but he looked much the same as ever to Wyatt.

  Sir James introduced his somewhat saturnine companion as Chief Inspector Lathom, who was new to Wyatt, but seemed to have heard quite a lot about him. They gossiped for a few minutes, with Sir James explaining that he and Lathom had been to Sittingbourne and had decided to make a detour on their way back to look up Sir James’ former colleague.

  ‘You’re just in time for a cup of tea,’ said Wyatt, after they had accepted his invitation to come inside. ‘Unless you’d prefer a whisky and soda.’

  ‘Just a small one, if you can run to it,’ said Perivale. Wyatt looked across at Lathom, who nodded his agreement, and he took three glasses from the sideboard.

  Wyatt poured a generous three fingers for each of his visitors, and a smaller measure for himself.

  Perivale took a gulp of whisky with obvious satisfaction and leaned back in the large armchair he had taken. ‘I could do with that, Wyatt,’ he murmured. ‘We happen to be on rather a tough job at the moment.’

  Wyatt sipped his whisky somewhat cautiously, and ventured no comment, except to say that Sir James was looking quite fit.

  ‘I feel pretty tired,’ murmured the Assistant Commissioner. ‘I don’t mind admitting that this Willis case is taking it out of me.’

  Wyatt looked thoughtful.

  ‘Wasn’t there something about it in the papers?’ he enquired politely.

  ‘There certainly was!’ put in Lathom. ‘Barbara Willis was quite a well-known Society girl – they don’t disappear without trace every day.’

  Wyatt shrugged.

  ‘Yes, of course. She disappeared,’ he said casually. ‘Women are always doing it; they often turn up again.’

  ‘You certainly haven’t been reading your papers lately,’ said Lathom.

  ‘No, I haven’t, as a matter of fact, we’re pretty busy here this time of year, and I don’t seem to get a chance in the mornings … what happened about the Willis girl?’

  Perivale placed his glass on a small table beside him and leaned forward in his chair.

  ‘On the day Barbara Willis disappeared,’ he began slowly, ‘she had been to the theatre with her fiancé, a young fellow named Maurice Knight. Afterwards, they went on to the Alpine Club in the Haymarket, leaving there about eleven-thirty. Knight apparently had some trouble with his car, so he put the girl into a taxi. The next time he saw her was four weeks later – when he was called in to identify the body.’

  Wyatt whistled softly under his breath, and rammed his thumb hard into the bowl of his pipe, which he had picked up while his former chief was talking.

  ‘Sounds like a cosy little case,’ he commented in a non- committal tone.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Perivale. ‘There’s plenty more to come. Two days after the Willis girl had vanished, her fiancé received a diamond brooch by registered post. She had been wearing that brooch the night she disappeared; he was quite positive about it. In that registered packet w
ith the brooch was a slip of paper, and on it was scrawled in red ink: “With the compliments of Mr Rossiter”.’

  ‘Well, it’s a fairly well-known name,’ ruminated Wyatt, sipping the last of his whisky. ‘Another of these exhibitionist crooks, eh?’

  Sir James flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette.

  ‘The point is,’ he added deliberately. ‘The man who wrote it wasn’t named Rossiter. I had a couple of handwriting experts checking that writing for the better part of a week, and they are pretty certain it’s the work of your old friend who used to call himself Ariman. That was your last case before you joined up, wasn’t it?’

  Wyatt nodded shortly. The man who called himself Ariman had been the toughest customer he had encountered, a blackmailer of the most unscrupulous type, two of whose victims had committed suicide. Though the Yard had been very close on the heels of the master criminal, he had used his gang unscrupulously to cover his retreat, and had managed to get out of the country at a time when most of the police resources had suddenly to be diverted to tracing a black market in forged coupons. The police had never seen him, they had no photograph, and his associates had either been sacrificed when he made his getaway, or had contrived to disappear on their own account when there was a depleted staff at the Yard, where they had been secretly relieved to discover that Ariman himself had flown. All he had left them by way of souvenir was a torn scrap of a letter addressed to one of his victims in what was presumed to be Ariman’s own handwriting.

  Wyatt sat for a few moments deep in thought.

  ‘So that customer’s back,’ he murmured at last. ‘I always thought he’d be here again one day. I suppose he’s run through the packet of money he’s said to have taken out of the country with him. Tough luck, Sir James.’