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  Send for Paul Temple Again!

  First published in 1948-72 (Broadcast/Novel)

  Copyright: © Estate of Francis Durbridge; House of Stratus 1948-2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Francis Durbridge to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755119037 9780755119035 Print

  0755134532 9780755134533 Kindle

  0755134540 9780755134540 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Francis Henry Durbridge was born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1912 and was educated at Bradford Grammar School. He was encouraged at an early age to write by his English teacher and went on to read English at Birmingham University. Whilst an undergraduate he started to develop the radio play format for which he first became known. At the age of twenty one he sold a play to the BBC and continued to write following his graduation whilst working as a stockbroker’s clerk.

  In 1938, by this time writing full time, he created the character Paul Temple, a crime novelist and detective. With Steve Trent, a Fleet Street journalist and later his wife, Temple solved numerous crimes.

  Durbridge’s style was very much in the mode of the earlier ‘Golden Age’ middle class amateur detectives. The first book, Send for Paul Temple, was written with John Thewes as the novelisation of a radio serial. Many others followed and they were hugely successful until the last of the series was completed in 1968. In 1969, the Paul Temple series was adapted for television and four of the adventures, prior to this, had been adapted for cinema, albeit with less success than radio and TV. He also invented a new character, Tim Frazer, an undercover agent who appeared in both novels and as a TV series.

  Francis Durbridge also wrote for the stage and continued doing so up until 1991, when Sweet Revenge was completed. Additionally, he wrote over twenty other well received novels, most of which were on the general subject of crime. The last, Fatal Encounter, was published after his death in 1998.

  Chapter I

  DEATH AT THE BRAINS TRUST

  Arthur Montague Webb had occupied the position of ticket inspector for over fifteen years. It was a position of which he was more than a little conscious, as those unfortunate passengers who tried travelling ‘first’ on a third-class ticket had reason to aware. Even during the war years, when he fought his way endlessly down jammed corridors, his attitude seldom relaxed. Very occasionally, he might install a harmless old lady in a first-class compartment, with an apologetic and slightly anxious glance at the other occupants.

  Mr. Webb’s raucous, “Tickets, please!” echoed down the corridors of the Manchester-Euston express one rough night in the late autumn. He paused to pull up a window in the corridor which was admitting a half-gale, then opened the door of a compartment which had a single occupant who was stretched full length along the seat. The occupant of the carriage was rather a dark young man of about twenty-seven, with unruly black hair and glistening white teeth, which he exposed in a pleasant smile. He seemed in no way upset at the inspector’s intrusion.

  “Sorry to wake you, sir,” said Mr. Webb mechanically. It was his inevitable formula on night trains.

  “That’s all right,” yawned the young man, fumbling in his pocket for his ticket. “Lordy, I was hard on!”

  Mr. Webb’s ears, attuned to dialects from every corner of the country, immediately registered the young man as being of Welsh origin.

  “What time is it now?” asked the passenger, inserting a finger and thumb in his upper waistcoat pocket.

  “It’s half past ten, sir,” announced Webb, producing a large silver watch, and glancing at it for corroboration.

  The Welshman yawned again.

  “About another hour before we get into Euston?” he queried.

  Webb nodded, and waited while the young man found his ticket.

  “Not many people travelling tonight,” said the young man, his Welsh accent as pronounced as ever.

  “Haven’t had it as quiet as this for months,” the inspector informed him, clipping the ticket and handing it back. “Thank you, sir. Good night.”

  The young man nodded and composed himself to sleep again as the door of the compartment slid softly to, and Mr. Webb went on his way.

  Webb muttered a soft imprecation to himself as he came out into the corridor again, for the window he had closed had slid down, and once more he got the full force of the biting wind. He snatched at the strap, pulled up the window and passed on to the next compartment. There was no light in this compartment and the blinds were drawn, but in the faint glow reflected from the corridor Webb could discern the figure of a woman slumped in the far corner with her back to the engine.

  “Ticket, please, miss!” called the inspector. At that moment the express began to rattle noisily over a viaduct, and she gave no sign of having heard him. Webb repeated his request and advanced a step into the compartment.

  “Cor blimey!” muttered Webb, who never ceased to marvel at the way people slept on trains. The girl remained indifferent to his presence, so he moved across and shook her shoulder vigorously.

  “Come along, miss, wake up!” he urged in an authoritative tone. “Wake up now! I want to see your ticket.” He shook her again. Suddenly and quite without warning her head jerked forward.

  Webb released her shoulder and, turning, switched on the lights in the compartment. The girl was in the early thirties, with red-gold hair and large eyes. Beneath an elaborate make-up the face was ashen.

  “Strewth!” murmured Webb expressively under his breath. Then, without any further ado, he turned and went back to the compartment he had just visited.

  The young man looked up in some surprise as the inspector’s head appeared.

  “What is it? What is it, man?” he demanded. “Have you seen a ghost or something?”

  “Would you mind coming into the next compartment, sir?” asked Webb in a very agitated tone. “It’s—it’s a young lady, sir. I think she’s been taken ill.”

  The young man sat up with a start and at once rose to his feet.

  “Why, yes, of course,” he murmured, following the ticket inspector into the next compartment. They found the young woman had now slid to the floor, where she was lying in an ungainly heap.

  “Take her shoulders,” ordered the young man, catching hold of the woman’s feet. Rather awkwardly, they lifted her on to the seat and laid her full length. The Welshman placed a finger and thumb beneath her eyes, then felt her pulse.

  “What is it? What’s the matter with her?” demanded Webb in an anxious tone.

  “What’s the matter with her! Why, lordy, man, she’s dead!”

  The inspector’s jaw dropped. He bent forward and eyed the body intently, as if he could not believe what he heard. For some seconds ther
e was no sound but the mournful scream of the engine’s whistle and the unceasing clatter of the wheels.

  “Shouldn’t we pull the communication-cord?” suggested the Welshman, an excited flush mounting in his cheeks.

  “Don’t see that can help much,” replied the other gruffly.

  “But, man, we should get a doctor . . .”

  “I’ll see if there’s one on the train first. No sense in losing time if we can help it. We’re running seven minutes late as it is.”

  A sudden draught swept through the compartment. The window in the corridor was open again. The breeze stirred the curtains, which were closely drawn. Something caught the Welshman’s eye, and he drew back one of the curtains. He leaned forward and gazed intently at the corner of the window near where the dead woman had been sitting.

  “What are you staring at?” demanded Webb.

  For a moment the other did not reply. Then he suddenly gave to an exclamation.

  “Look what’s chalked on the window,” he said, moving out of the light, so that the inspector could see for himself.

  Rather laboriously, he spelt out the three letters that were scrawled in vivid red capitals. “R-E-X.”

  “Rex?” repeated the little Welshman, with a puzzled frown.”Now what does that mean, I wonder?”

  Arthur Montague Webb slowly shook his head. He was very puzzled.

  It did not take the police long to discover that the dead woman was Norma Rice, the well-known actress, and within a few hours a dozen newspaper reporters were busily ferreting for facts to add to the rather scanty information about the lady in question which they found in their libraries.

  Norma Rice’s career had always been something of a mystery, true, she made no secret of her origins. She was the daughter of a wardrobe mistress from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and had spent her childhood in Peabody’s Buildings, within a stone’s throw of that famous theatre. Her gamin qualities and their potentialities had soon come to the notice of a certain Madame Terrani, who ran the famous Starlit Juveniles, and it was not long before Norma Rice was the ‘stooge’ of the outfit – the girl who always does the wrong thing and is a couple of beats behind the rest of the talented troupe.

  Norma stuck it until she was fifteen, then she mysteriously vanished, to reappear four years later as the star overnight of a new Broadway musical, Glamour Incorporated, in which she sang and danced with such gay abandon that even the dour H. L.Mencken professed himself enchanted.

  Norma remained in the show for six months, then staged another of her strange disappearances, re-emerging two years later as the lead in a sophisticated Hollywood film, Never Marry Strangers. Once again, the critics acclaimed her as a new star, but when the film company endeavoured to foreclose their option upon her services, she vanished again without leaving the slightest clue.

  Back in England, she invested most of the money she had earned in founding a repertory company which appeared at a tiny theatre in a small town in Dorset. Later she scored a considerable success as Lady Teazle in a revival of The School for Scandal at the Viceroy Theatre in London, and was afterwards seen in several other costume parts. She had, in fact, only deviated from costume comedy on one occasion, to play the lead in The Lady Has a Past, by an unknown young dramatist named Carl Lathom, whose first play it was. It had proved a sensation in theatrical circles, yet once again Norma Rice had disappointed her public by withdrawing from the cast after six months, after which the play slowly fizzled out, despite the fact that the most expensive young actress in the West End had taken Norma Rice’s place.

  It was not surprising that the more sensational newspapers found Norma Rice’s career more than a trifle intriguing, and engaged certain practiced freelance journalists to ‘play it up’. You can’t libel a dead woman, so let’s have a double-page spread with plenty of pictures!

  But none of the articles provided the solution as to how Norma Rice could have taken a large dose of Amashyer, a little-known drug with a delayed action, which had caused her death. Nor could they offer any clue to the identity of the melodramatic individual who had scrawled ‘Rex’ on the carriage window.

  True, the police had discovered that a clever young actor named Rex Wilmslow had played opposite Norma on her last appearance in the West End, but as he had performed in a matinee and evening show in London on the day that she had died, it was difficult to prove that he could possibly have had anything to do with the tragedy.

  A murder of a well-known person like Norma Rice presented many difficulties – always presuming she had been murdered – for a woman in her position was likely to have made enemies in almost any sphere of life, and such enemies might just as easily be in America as over here. It was a by-word, for instance, that she had alienated at least half a dozen big executives in the stage and film world by her impetuous actions, which had cost them thousands of pounds, and by her vitriolic tongue, which she never made the least attempt to restrain. As long as stage people could remember her, there had been rumours about Norma Rice. She was said to have slapped three dramatic critics’ aces, one after the other, during a first-night party; she was said to have extorted thousands of pounds from the Earl of Dorrington, whose son had been infatuated with her during his ‘Varsity days; she was reputed to have obtained the famous Calcutta Pendant by a trick; she was said to spend months under the influence of opium, hence her mysterious disappearances . . .

  Few people had liked Norma Rice, but her bitterest enemies had to admit that she possessed that certain something which held an audience from the first moment she set foot on the stage.

  Naturally, all these sidelights on Norma Rice’s character ended to confuse the issue, and the Special Branch Commissioner of New Scotland Yard was more than a little worried when he attended the third conference in the office of Lord Flexdale, Secretary for Home Security. It was by no means the last conference. The Norma Rice murder was followed by two more within a comparatively short space of time.

  Newspapers made Rex the subject of leading articles which cast no uncertain aspersions at the efficiency of the police force.

  The name Rex could be overheard in conversation upon almost any public vehicle as passengers opened their morning and evening papers, and the Sunday Press indulged in a shoal of speculative articles, signed by so-called experts. When the total of Rex murders was up to four, Lord Flexdale decided it was high time drastic action was taken, and bluntly intimated as much to Sir Graham Forbes.

  Sir Graham protested at some length. He was one of the old school who disliked the private affairs of New Scotland Yard being dragged into the limelight. He maintained that the Yard would get its man in the long run, and he chafed at the impatience of government officials who panicked at a few articles in what he called the ‘Scare Press’.

  But on this occasion Lord Flexdale was adamant.

  “It’s no use, Forbes,” he declared flatly. “We can’t hope to tell where this fellow Rex is going to break out next. There appears to be no connection between any of his victims, and his motives are all quite obscure so far. We’ve got to call for wider co-operation from members of the public. It’s been done before, and it worked. I see no reason why it shouldn’t work again.”

  “That’s all very well,” grunted Forbes, “but remember you’re giving a devil of a lot away to Rex if you admit—”

  Lord Flexdale broke in impatiently.

  “I shall admit as little as possible.”

  “Then what do you propose?”

  “I have already arranged,” Lord Flexdale informed him, “to speak after the nine o’clock news.”

  Forbes grunted again. Privately, he thought Lord Flexdale welcomed any opportunity to address himself to the nation.

  The discreetly shaded reading-lamp near the fire revealed a room furnished in a manner sufficiently unusual to arouse a visitor’s curiosity as to the character of its owner. There was a strange jumble of small ornaments of Oriental origin, an assortment of Persian daggers on the walls, a life-size
bust of a Chinese idol standing on a pedestal, two enigmatical pictures by Picasso or one of his disciples – it was difficult to judge in the subdued light – and a wide assortment of cushions ranging through a spectrum of colours.

  The recumbent figure in a large armchair stirred as a clock in the hall outside softly struck nine, and a slim, perfectly manicured hand stretched out and switched on the radio. It seemed that the clock in the hall was slow, for the announcer was just concluding the news. There was an impatient exclamation from the armchair.

  After a suitable pause, the announcer continued: “As listeners to our earlier bulletins will already have heard, we have with us in the studio this evening Lord Flexdale, Secretary for Home Security, who is broadcasting a special message to listeners, both in this country and the United States of America. Lord Flexdale.”

  There was a slight cough, a shuffling of papers, then the measured tones of the Cabinet Minister.

  “It is exactly two months since we read in the newspapers about the murder of that distinguished young actress, Miss Norma Rice. As you will no doubt recall, the body of Miss Rice was discovered in a railway compartment in the night express from Manchester to London. The official who discovered the body has already recounted at some length how he noticed the word ‘Rex’ marked on the window of the compartment. Since that particular night, there have been three more murders, all as yet unsolved, and in each case the perpetrator has left this solitary clue to his or her identity.”

  The minister paused, as if to allow this statement to impress itself upon the listening public. Then he continued with slightly more emphasis: “I am authorised by His Majesty’s Government to state that a free pardon will be given to any person, other than one actually guilty of wilful murder, providing the said person will furnish the evidence necessary to secure the arrest and conviction of the criminal responsible for these tragic misdeeds, which are a menace to the existence of social security.”